Friends:
Happy to share these published videos, Parts I, II, and III, the beginning of what will be several installments accessible at Latinopia.com that were recorded and published by legendary filmmaker and director, Jesús Treviño, with the assistance of Nelson Melgar.
In a reunion of elders in Chicano/a Studies, Jesús captures conversations that some of us in Chicana and Chicano Studies, including several of the founders of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, had on December 10, 2021 at the University of California Berkeley Latinx Research Center in Berkeley, California directed by Professor Laura E. Pérez.
From left to right, seated at the table are Drs. Pat Zavella, Lalo Valdez,Emilio Zamora, Teresa Carrillo, Ines Hernandez, David Montejano,
As you can hear for yourselves, the conversation is wonderfully textured, acknowledging major accomplishments as a field of study simultaneously with the notion that so much more remains to be done. That said, we thoroughly enjoyed reconnecting and catching up with each other's lives and learning about all the great work that all are still involved in because the movimiento continues.
As Dr. Rosa-Linda Fregoso aptly notes in Part II, "Chicano and Chicana Studies comes out of a social movement. It's not something that was top-down. It was bottom-up." This positions us well for what she observes as emergent social movements outside of the academy for which we all need to be prepared. "Intersectionalities," she notes, are less about identity these days and more about intersectional struggles with the idea that we have been building the requisite knowledge "for that moment."
To be sure, hope dies hard, if ever, for us movimiento activists.
Its progeny are the thousands upon thousands of students who have gone on to work as educators, community advocates, hold elective offices, and are otherwise well represented in leadership positions today, remaining deeply connected to their communities, influencing policy and practice from wherever they find themselves.
Pursuant to this important convening, our hopes and plans are to broaden the conversation in the future so that many more "elders in the movement," if you will, can similarly provide their takeaways from 50 years of being activist, community-engaged scholars. So stay tuned as there will be more to come, including on Latinopia, a wonderful website that has generated a substantial archive unto itself of the Chicana and Chicano experience.
Perspectives and reflections like these are so necessary for the generations coming forward. I know that I myself would not have survived academia without Chicano/a Studies. Even today, it continues being a fountainhead that continues to nourish, motivate, and inspire.
Enjoy!
-Angela Valenzuela
On the weekend of Dec. 9-12, 2021, a group of Mexican Americans scholars met in Berkeley, California to celebrate fifty years of Mexican American Studies. The group included many who were founders of the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS). In 50 Years of Struggle Part One they review the past fifty years of struggle, celebrated the victories and identified areas that still need to be addressed.
On the weekend of December 9-12, 2021, a group of Mexican Americans scholars met in Berkeley, California to review the progress made in fifty years of Mexican Americans Studies. In this, Fifty years of Struggle Part Two, the group, Reunion de Colegas, continues their dialog with a discussion of environmental racism and how it impacts Latino communities and the need to impart the knowledge and experience garnered from the Mexican American civil rights movement to younger generations.
Fifty years of Struggle Part Three, the Reunion de Colegas scholars group continues their dialog about the present and future of Mexican American Studies.
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