The project was carried out in three consecutive phases: (1) a ten-week start-up phase when students received training in photography and oral history interviewing; (2) a five-month interviewing phase when students carried out the initial selection of Chicano/ Latino leader oral histories; and (3) a five-month wrap-up phase when students carried out final Chicano/Latino leader interviews and developed a student-generated film telling the stories of their families and aspirations. This webpage provides content from all three phases of the project.

Student Photographs contains ten galleries that together present more than six hundred images students produced in the project’s first phase. Students took cameras home to depict their own lives and neighborhoods. When you enter a student gallery (each gallery holds one student’s work), you’ll encounter images selected to represent the student’s vision as well as all the useable images the student made. Several students used the camera to probe deeply and widely; other students focused more on interviewing.

Interviews with Chicano/Latino Leaders consists of nine oral history interviews students conducted over the project’s final phases. A biography and a table of contents preface each interview; a full transcript of the interview, edited to limit redundancy, follows. If you place your mouse by a subject in the table of contents, hit your enter key, you’ll be taken to that interview subject. Asterisks in the table of contents indicate a video clip is available. Jonathan Kelen, a University of Utah film student, was the project’s film intern. Video interviews and clips are a result of his initiative to document the project and prepare the clips to fit this site.

A three-minute trailer from the student filmOutside/Inside, completed in the project’s final interviewing phase, concludes web content. Motivated by the accounts of Chicano/Latino leaders, students decided to film interviews with each other and to present their stories to the community. Students originally hoped to accompany their film to community sites, where they would inform people about their individual and collective journeys, discuss film content and implications, and respond to questions during a Q&A period. Time modified their expectations. Several students graduated from high school and moved on to college; others returned to school and became involved with other plans. We are presenting this trailer from several hours of film footage (edited by local filmmaker Steve McCurdy) not as the students’ final work, but as an indication of the direction they were headed.

Reflections/Conclusions

Faces and Voices of Chicano/Latino Leaderswas a challenging, inspiring, and transformative experience for our participants.

First, conducting oral history interviews after a short, ten-week training period, challenged students. Second, students had to sustain a schedule in which they gave up every other Saturday (and time in between) for nearly a year to prepare for and conduct interviews. Finally, students using public transportation to reach our classroom, faced serious weather challenges once winter arrived.

The project, however, strongly inspired students, because Chicano/Latino leaders spoke to them openly and honestly. We never asked informants to share their tough times, or risk being vulnerable. They did it because they wanted students to see them more fully. A few clear themes emerged from the interviews:

1)       Negative stereotyping of Chicano/Latino youth was (and remains) a serious hurdle in public school education;
2)       Many of today’s Chicano/Latino leaders faced extreme poverty while growing up;
3)       Having adult mentors and family support was critical to overcoming social obstacles; and
4)       Fighting discrimination was a collective and individual necessity.

The project (given the above) was transformative in a number of ways. Most obviously, students were amazed to see leaders as people who experienced setbacks and found ways to keep going. Such stories helped students realize they weren’t alone in their suffering and bewilderment, and there were steps they could take to overcome obstacles. More subtly and incrementally, students’ self confidence grew as they saw themselves able to carry out complex conversations with artists, directors of non profits, sitting judges, and members of Utah’s legislature. Possibly the greatest gift students received, though, was the realization they counted; they were the next generation of leaders; and they needed to pay attention to telling their own stories.

Project Personnel

Project Director: Leslie Kelen
Assistant Director and Photography Instructor: Kent Miles
UCLR Advisors: Robert “Archie” Archuletta, Rene Borja, Jennifer Mayer-Glenn, Frank Cordova
Executive Assistant: Doris Mason
Development Coordinator: Mary Lee Peters
Videography Intern: Jonathan Kelen
Social Work Intern: Melissa Liad
Education Consultant: Joyce Kelen
Video Consultant and Student Film Editor: Steve McCurdy
Webmaster: Robert Hirschi