Academic

Our family house in La Colonia (2012). Courtesy of the author’s photo collection.

“Public histories provide meaning to places.”
David Glassberg, Sense of History, 18

Being an academic migrant, I always find myself searching for a sense of place, the feeling of home. Home is the location of your childhood or family memories. For me, this place is La Colonia, especially Bonita Avenue.

The following is an excerpt from my manuscript (rough draft), Searching for Memories in La Colonia: Migration, Labor, and Activism In Oxnard, California, 1930-1980, focusing on my mother’s life in La Colonia.

Throughout the years, I have had many conversations with my mother, Gloria about her life growing up in La Colonia. She has shared stories of migration, culture and community. Her understanding of these experiences shaped her identity as a Mexican. In this post, I share my mother’s reflection on growing up in La Colonia through her interaction with her family and community.

My mother, Gloria was born in 1952 in a one-story house in the Colonia Village’s housing project on Bernarda Court in La Colonia. Her father Carlos was a packinghouse worker and her mother Margarita was a housewife. She was the second child of Margarita and Carlos, whose family included two more children from a previous marriage. In 1956, she moved from the housing project to her grandfather’s house on Bonita Avenue.

My mother attended grammar school in La Colonia; Ramona School is only four houses down from her home. Juanita School is only two blocks away. It was not until the mid-1960s, that she attended a school outside her neighborhood. In 1970, she graduated from high school and one-year later she married my father, Louie.

Her understanding of culture, migration, and community has shaped her identity. Historian Juan Gómez-Quiñones states “culture is learned rather than ‘instinctive,’ or biological.” My mother learned to identify as Mexican from her parents and community. Throughout her life, her Mexican identity has been questioned by American society because she does not “look Mexican” due to her light skin, freckles and reddish hair.

During one conversation with my mother, I asked her the following question: have you been treated differently due to the color of your skin? She responded with the following story; as a child, she recalled going to events in downtown Oxnard with her grandfather, Jose. Individuals at those events would ask her grandfather if he was baby-sitting her. Their remarks frustrated her grandfather for they did not just come from Whites, but also from Mexicans. Listening to those comments introduced my mother to how people in the United States use skin color to define race, ethnicity, and nationality.

Eventually, my mother came to an understanding that many people do not see her as being Mexican. But she explained that the color of her skin did not make her Mexican, instead her history and her community did, and for most of her life, she has lived in La Colonia. Her neighborhood has influenced her culture and her history, shaped by many generations of migration.

This discussion of a family history and of migration does not have an ending. Growing up in La Colonia has affected the way my mother sees herself and the way she has raised her sons. In her heart and mind, the little house on Bonita Avenue has always been home and community to her, no matter if she did not live there. Those experiences have defined my mother’s life. She sees the world differently now. She sees the need to be a defender of her community, an activist who informs her community about their human and civil rights. My mother continues to play a role in supporting and participating in the struggle to end the brutalization, marginalization, and segregation of the Mexican community in Oxnard, California.

It is essential to mention, it was a sad day for my mother on September 2012, as she turned off the lights and closed the door knowing she would never return to her grandfather’s house again. But it was time to move on after years of personal struggles with numerous family members over the direction of the property.

In the end, my mother took with her the memories of struggles, happiness, and love. And no one can take those memories anyway!

c/s

“The role of Chicana/o Studies is to organize and systemize the knowledge of people of Mexican descent, as well as to serve as a pedagogical tool to educate and motivate.”

Rodolfo F. Acuña, The Making of Chicana/ Studies, xxi

As we end the year, I reflect on the opportunities I have received this year. One of them was to present on the importance of Acuña’s Occupied America in Chicana/o Studies and History at the annual NACCS Conference in Chicago. This panel would not have happen without my conference booking agent, my brother Jose G. Moreno. Thanks for the opportunity!

My short presentation was titled, Searching For Chicana/o History: A Reflection On Dr. Rodolfo F. Acuña’s Occupied America And Archives. Here is the rough draft of the presentation. I hope you enjoy it!

Today discussion plays an important part in our struggle for liberation. And yes, I said liberation! As we sit here reflecting on the impact of Occupied America inside and outside of the ivory tower. There is a war-taking place throughout the United States and we (Chicana/os and Latina/os) are still the target.

The attacks toward us in Arizona, Alabama, and elsewhere are not new. Since the construction of US/Mexico Border in 1848, we as a community have faced decades of discrimination and attacks! Those attacks have made us stronger and has created a collective memory of struggles. So in this context, Dr. Acuña’s Occupied America was written.

For me, I share the 40 years history with Occupied America due to being born in 1972. But it was not until 1993, that I was introduced to his writings in my first of many Chicano Studies classes. And believe me, I taken many classes, which I have earned three degrees in Chicano Studies.

Throughout the last 40 years, Occupied America has gone through much revision by expanding the story. For some of us, we return to Occupied America, First Edition were he argues, “that Chicanos…are a colonized people.” And he is “convinced that the experience of Chicanos…parallels that of other Third World people who has suffered under colonialism.” Just like that, in the first few pages of Occupied America, First Edition, he introduces us to colonialism and connect us to the larger struggle against imperialism in the world.

But by the Second Edition, he returned “to the basics and collect[ed] [the] historical data.” Making “this version of Occupied America reflect[ing] [his] current understanding of the history of Chicanos.” He pointed out that, “all research must be put into the context of the historical process.”

In the following editions after one and two, he continued to re-examine the historical process by expanding the narrative of the story. By doing that, making each editions different from each other or he would say “less imperfect that previous one.”

It is important to mention and give credit to Dr. Acuña and Occupied America, First Edition, which challenged the “Frontier Thesis” of borderland scholars and history by addressing race, class, and later gender in the development of the West (or the Southwest). He addressed the “legacy of conquest” years before the movement of “New Western History” in the late 1980’s. And I believe without Occupied America, First Edition, you would not have the works of Limerick, Weber, and other borderland scholars. But that is a story for a different discussion or panel.

Moving forward, my presentation will focus on my experience on organizing Rodolfo F. Acuña Collection at CSUN by reflecting on my search for Chicana/o history through his archives and Occupied America. The overall goal is to highlight the importance of archives in the writing of Occupied America.

I began this story in 2004, when I was a graduate student in Chicano Studies at CSUN. As, I was waiting for a class; I came across a flyer announcing that the Urban Archives Center was looking for interns to help in the processing of Dr. Acuña Collection. So like any other graduate student, I decided to add more work to my life and took on an internship at the center. And I guess the reason I took on the task is to gain a better understanding of the historian craft and Chicana/o history. But the real reason, I wanted to see or find the sources of his writings, especially Occupied America.

And for the record, the task of processing his collection would not be easy due to being composed of more than two hundred boxes! For being a historian, he decided to save mostly everything he collected in his career as activist-scholar. For me, I took on task of processing his collection by taking on the role of a detective. In this role, I began to search every boxes looking from the evidence or connection to Chicana/o history!

As time want on, I came across numerous archives, like the Paul Taylor Collection and the Federal Writers’ Project, which focused on farm labor and strike of the 1930s. Also, he saved numerous journals, newsletters, and newspaper, like La Gente de Azltan, El Popo, and La Raza Magazine. But the most important find for me was an original draft of Occupied America. I was amazed that I found the draft but I was shocked that it was typed on yellow notebook paper! Yes, yellow notebook paper!

During the three years of processing his collection, I moved from an intern, to a graduate archivist, and at the end was an assistant archivist. In this time, I also came to realize that every historian is archivist and every archivist is a historian. The overall experience of searching for Chicana/o history among his archives gave me a stronger link to our collective history. In this sense, I came to understanding through his archives and Occupied America the importance of the historical document in the narrative of Chicana/o history.

So, I end this presentation with the following statement, they can ban our books but they cannot destroy our collective memory or knowledge of our community. The time is now to FIGHT BACK!

c/s

A Sense of Place: La Colonia & Bonita Avenue

(RE)reading Occupied America…