Contributed by Anne Gebelein

Students Travel to the U.S./Mexico Border to Learn about Collective Action for Social and Immigrant Justice

From May 19-May 29^th, 10 students joined Professor Anne Gebelein at the border to learn more about the network of activist groups that organize to support the rights of both immigrants and border residents. Tucson AZ is a special place in which to study organizing, as it hosts a wide, interconnected network of agencies and citizen advocacy groups that work collaboratively to promote the rights of all peoples in the region. The program was hosted by Borderlinks, an educational non-profit born in the 1980s to contextualize the sanctuary movement started by the First Presbyterian Church. Church members protected asylum seekers escaping U.S.-backed torture in Central America, and their movement became a nationwide phenomenon, as over 500 churches ultimately housed vulnerable migrants and paved the way for current sanctuary church practices.

Students met with activists, traveled to 2 border towns in Mexico, spent time at the border wall, participated in workshops hosted by Borderlinks, and listened to UConn faculty experts lecture about border issues via webex. They hiked in the desert, placed water for people in danger of dehydration, attended a mariachi mass, and visited a migrant shelter. Students examined intersections of immigration, gender identity, asylum, collective action and art. They also had time to explore Tucson, a vibrant city with a rich artistic tradition influenced by Mexican muralism and tilework. Students earned 3 credits in LLAS or HRTS from participating in the program and course, which was designed by many hands: Anne Gebelein, Mark Overmyer-Velazquez, Kathryn Libal, Megan Berthold and Rodolfo Fernandez. Professor Fernandez will run the course from May 18th-28th in 2023.

Contributed by Charles R. Venator-Santiago

The Puerto Rican Studies Initiative for Community Engagement and Public Policy (PRSI) is a research initiative that can help document and support the Puerto Ricans’ vital economic, intellectual, and cultural contributions to Connecticut and provide research-based support for the development of public policies addressing the needs of Puerto Ricans in the State of Connecticut. This initiative is part of a collaboration with El Instituto (CLAS, UConn Storrs) and the Puerto Rican and Latin@ Studies Project (School of Social Work, UConn Hartford).

Professor Charles R. Venator-Santiago was awarded a $500,000 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grant from the Connecticut General Assembly for 2022 and 2023. Professor Venator-Santiago presently holds a joint appointment between the Department of Political Science and El Instituto.

This year, the PRSI will focus on the following areas of research:

1. Data Analysis. Drawing on publicly available data, the PRSI will release a series of data sheets and reports designed to create a profile of Connecticut’s Puerto Rican residents.
2. Research Reports. The PRSI will conduct several research studies and publish detailed reports on the findings. This year the PRSI will focus on a series of reports that focus on structural challenges for Puerto Rican electoral participation, small business access to capital (in collaboration with Professor Jorge Aguero), and climate driven emergency response (in collaboration with the Caribbean Preparedness and Response non-profit), Congressional opinions about the Puerto Rican political status (in collaboration with Professor José Javier Colón Morera – University of Puerto Rico)
3. Oral Histories. Working in collaboration with Professor Fiona Vernal and the Engaged Public, Oral and Community Histories (EPOCH) program, the PRSI will begin to build a public repository of oral histories from Puerto Rican community leaders in Connecticut.
4. Public Archives. The PRSI will build 3-4 public archives/repositories of primary documents including the Puerto Rico Citizenship Archives Project (revised), the Puerto Rico Federal Status Archives Project, and the 1909 Survey of Puerto Rican Elites. Accompanying publications for each archive will also be released.
5. Civic Engagement. The PRSI will also promote a series of collaborations to promote civic engagement among Puerto Ricans in Connecticut. These collaborations include a civic education television series with El Show de Analeh (Univision), bringing programing to local community venues, and organizing a series of symposia and meetings.
6. Academic Activities. We are also committed to developing a series of institutional projects including the creation of a Puerto Rican Studies peer-reviewed journal and an academic association tentatively titled Society for the Study of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans,

Please contact Charles R. Venator-Santiago for more information about the Puerto Rican Studies Initiative.

Contributed by Anne Gebelein 

Dr. Anne Gebelein of El Instituto, Dr. Fiona Vernal of Africana Studies Institute, and Dr. Jason Chang of the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute are collaborating in an effort to help CT teachers better understand the role that Puerto Rican, West Indian, and African American migrants have played in the state’s historically most significant crop. They have teamed up with Tom Thurston of Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center and doctoral candidate at University of Michigan Elena Rosario to deliver workshops on Agricultural Labor in CT’s Shade Tobacco Industry. This fall series is part of a 3-part, yearlong program funded by the CT Humanities to assist teachers in developing new materials in the state-mandated course on African American, Latino, and Puerto Rican history. Gebelein and Vernal have been involved in conversations in the development of the course, and Chang has been instrumental in the development of a new high school course on Asian American and Pacific Islander history that will begin in 2025.

This ongoing collaboration between UConn’s cultural institutes, Yale’s Lehrman Center, the Anti-Racist Teaching and Learning Collective is known as the Black and Latino History Project. Its aim is to support teachers in the teaching of the new high school course and in teaching more inclusive history. Gebelein is organizing the fall series on Agricultural Labor in Shade Tobacco; Dr Daniel Hosang Martinez of Yale is organizing an early spring series on Eugenics; and Vernal is organizing a late spring series on Black and Puerto Rican Migration.

If you know of any educators or graduate students interested in teaching these topics, it is not too late to register or view online materials. Contact anne.gebelein@uconn.edu or go to https://www.blhp.yale.edu/ for more information.

Contributed by Bethsaida Nieves

On September 14, 2022, esteemed professor, Suzanne Oboler, visited LLAS 1000-001 Introduction to Latina/o Studies. Welcomed by a curious group of about 50 undergraduate students, Professor Oboler opened her lecture with a boisterous greeting and invitation to critically think about the ethnic label, “Hispanic.” Drawing from her recently published book chapter, “Disposable Strangers: Mexican Americans, Latinxs, and the Ethnic Label ‘Hispanic’ in the Twenty-First Century,” Professor Oboler engaged students in a discussion about the intersectionalities of race, citizenship, and belonging by focusing on both the theoretical concepts within her research and the lived experiences of the students. She walked students through the creation of the term “Hispanic” in 1977 by the United States Office of Budget and Management, and the ensuing homogenization and racialization of Latinx communities; to the present day linguistic formation of a new label “Mexican,” which is being used beyond nationality to define Latinx individuals as “foreign” and “illegal.” Through her discussion of the socially constructed stranger, Professor Oboler masterfully explained the historical genealogy of labels that have transmogrified Latinx individuals from citizens to foreigners. Her final call to students was to engage, organize, and contest all dehumanizing labels and categories, and to be the ones that write and define their own histories and identities.

Bio: Suzanne Oboler is currently a Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, New York where she teaches courses in Latin American and Latinx Studies. In 2011, the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro honored Professor Oboler with the title of Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Studies. Throughout her career, Professor Oboler has been at the forefront of innovative and groundbreaking scholarship in the areas of human rights, race, immigration, and citizenship. Among her numerous academic accomplishments, Professor Oboler was the founding editor for Latino Studies from 2002-2012, and has served in various editorial roles for seminal works in Latin American and Latinx Studies including, Latinos and Citizenship: The Dilemma of Belonging
(2006), the Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in Contemporary Politics, Law and Social Movements (2 Volumes; 2015), and Neither Enemies nor Friends: Latinos, Blacks, Afro-Latinos (2005), and many more noteworthy publications. One of her most famous and groundbreaking scholarly publications is, Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives: Identity and the Politics of (Re)Presentation in the United States (1995), which received high praise from several notable historians, including Professor Evelyn Hu-DeHart of Brown University, and Professor Emeritus Ramón A. Gutiérrez of the University of Chicago.

Contributed by Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann

On Friday, April 22nd, El Instituto had the pleasure of hosting award-winning fiction writer and author of the short story collection Love War Stories, Ivelisse Rodriguez. Rodriguez is from Puerto Rico and grew up in nearby Holyoke, MA. She visited my LLAS/SPAN 1009 “Introduction to Latino Literature, Culture, and Society” class to answer our questions about her short stories that we read for class. Rodriguez also met with my students from the fall 2021 LLAS 3230 /WGSS 3258 “Latina Narrative” course where we also read the Love War Stories collection for coffee at the Benton Museum café, and she discussed her research for her historical novel in progress with Prof. Guillermo Irizarry and me over lunch. The visit culminated with a reading co-sponsored with the UConn Humanities Institute, the Literatures, Cultures, and Languages Department, the Africana Studies Institute, and the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program.

The reading was attended by undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and staff. She read from one of the highlight stories of the collection, “Holyoke, MA: An Ethnography,” a story that responds critically to an ethnographic photography project of the Puerto Rican community of Holyoke by taking a close look at the life of a popular high schooler named Veronica alongside a history of the city in which she resides. After the reading, we were all so eager to talk to Ivelisse Rodriguez about her work that we kept talking with her for informally for over an hour. Many members of our community were inspired by the opportunity to hear from her, to connect with her, and to hear her read her work. It was a very special day for El Instituto and for UConn.