Project MUSE®: US Latina & Latino Oral History Journal - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/758
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in US Latina & Latino Oral History Journal.daily12026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVolume 1 (2017) through current issue
Latest Articles: US Latina & Latino Oral History JournalTWOProject MUSE®US Latina & Latino Oral History Journal2574-01992574-0180Latest articles in US Latina & Latino Oral History Journal. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Foro: Moving Beyond the Geographic and Methodological Boundaries of Latinx Studies
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974245
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In February 2025, Stephen J. Pitti (Yale University) led a panel discussion with four scholars who are using oral history to excavate the histories and experiences of Latinx peoples in some unexpected places. Foro editors Pitti and Max Krochmal (University of New Orleans) originally conceived of a conversation that would take journal readers beyond the US Southwest and the nation’s major Spanish-speaking cities to some “new” sites for Latina/o oral history. Yet our interlocutors—A. K. Sandoval-Strausz (Penn State University), Iliana Yamileth Rodriguez (Emory University), Lori A. Flores (Columbia University), and Sarah Fouts (University of Maryland, Baltimore County)—instead problematized the concept of “newness”
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/758/image/coversmallForo: Moving Beyond the Geographic and Methodological Boundaries of Latinx Studies2025-11-06text/htmlen-USForo: Moving Beyond the Geographic and Methodological Boundaries of Latinx Studies2025-11-062025TWOProject MUSE®485672026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-11-06Pathways in Oral History: James E. Garcia
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974246
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Please summarize what the play Voices of Valor is about. Voices of Valor is a full-length drama based on the oral histories of Latino World War II veterans and their families. As the author of the play, I culled through hundreds of written and recorded oral histories gathered by the Voces Oral History Center, at UT Austin.1 The storyline follows the diverse experiences of a half dozen composite characters before, during, and after the war, including life in the battlefield, and what it was like for Latino veterans to return home empowered by the experience and, in some cases, their newfound desire to assert themselves in society as full-fledged Americans.How did you get involved in using oral history interviews to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/758/image/coversmallPathways in Oral History: James E. Garcia2025-11-06text/htmlen-USPathways in Oral History: James E. Garcia2025-11-062025TWOProject MUSE®166782026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-11-06Visualizing a Puerto Rican Mennonite Woman in Pennsylvania: Photographs, Oral History, and Fiction
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974247
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Ramona Rivera Navedo, a Puerto Rican woman living in Pennsylvania, shared this photo from her family album during our interviews between 2015 and 2024. We used it for the exhibition Dutchirican: A Latinx History of Central PA because we considered it emblematic of some of the dynamics intrinsic to women’s narratives that informed our research. The picture, taken with her friend Darlene Weaver, is likely from the 1960s. It shows Ramona at about thirteen years old in a “plain” dress adopted by conservative Mennonites to signify humility, a pursuit of a life independent of fashion trends, and a reflection on spiritual values. Ramonita, as many call her today, wears glasses, and even though her brown skin contrasts
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/758/image/coversmallVisualizing a Puerto Rican Mennonite Woman in Pennsylvania: Photographs, Oral History, and Fiction2025-11-06text/htmlen-USVisualizing a Puerto Rican Mennonite Woman in Pennsylvania: Photographs, Oral History, and Fiction2025-11-062025TWOProject MUSE®721342026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-11-06Barrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City by A. K. Sandoval-Strausz (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974248
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Barrio America is about the audacity, capacity, and tenacity of millions of migrantes who left their countries of origin, started from zero, accepted whatever salary the market offered, adapted to new historical circumstances in a new country, culture, and language, organized collectively to protest, and achieved common goals. In Barrio America, A. K. Sandoval-Strausz centers the stories, struggles, and contributions of Hispanics, Latinos, Latina migrants, and immigrants (migrantes) toward navigating the urban crisis in the United States. They “saved areas of American cities, repopulating neighborhoods and revitalizing economies that had been in decline for decades” (18). This book thoroughly describes historical
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/758/image/coversmallBarrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City by A. K. Sandoval-Strausz (review)2025-11-06text/htmlen-USBarrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City by A. K. Sandoval-Strausz (review)2025-11-062025TWOProject MUSE®130792026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-11-06Notes from the Community: Aquí me sembré: UConn Puerto Rican Studies Initiative Oral Histories Project
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974249
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In his oral history interview, Tony Colón used the words Aquí mesembré (I planted myself here) to describe how he chose to settle in Hartford, Connecticut, during the late 1950s. Colón arrived in Hartford via Massachusetts, where he had first landed to work in the tobacco fields earlier that decade. Colón grew up in the southern part of Puerto Rico, where he earned 25 cents per hour working in a sugar cane plantation. Around 1952, he took advantage of a special Puerto Rican government project that sponsored local laborers to migrate to mainland states and work in various industries.1 Colón arrived in Massachusetts to work the tobacco fields and was paid one dollar an hour. Soon, he was able to save enough money to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/758/image/coversmallNotes from the Community: Aquí me sembré: UConn Puerto Rican Studies Initiative Oral Histories Project2025-11-06text/htmlen-USNotes from the Community: Aquí me sembré: UConn Puerto Rican Studies Initiative Oral Histories Project2025-11-062025TWOProject MUSE®227032026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-11-06“We Became What She Taught Us”: A History of Colegio Altamirano, 1897–1958
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974250
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We were almost halfway through our interview when I asked Beatriz Barrera González, “What do you remember about your teacher at El Colegio?” She closed her eyes for a moment and let out a soft sigh before she answered my question. With a subtle shake of her head, she said, with flowing but slightly punctuated words, “I admired her like all get-out.” Barrera González, born in 1932, studied for three years at El Colegio Altamirano, the escuelita, or ethnic Mexican community school, during her childhood in the late 1930s and early 1940s in Hebbronville, Texas. Her teacher, Emilia Dávila, recognized by her community as a “true intellectual mother” to the children of Hebbronville, taught a mix of poor and wealthy
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/758/image/coversmall“We Became What She Taught Us”: A History of Colegio Altamirano, 1897–19582025-11-06text/htmlen-US“We Became What She Taught Us”: A History of Colegio Altamirano, 1897–19582025-11-062025TWOProject MUSE®1494572026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-11-06Songs My Mother Sang to Me: An Oral History of Mexican American Women by Patricia Preciado Martin (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974251
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Songs My Mother Sang to Me presents the oral histories of ten Mexican American women born in Arizona during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Patricia Preciado Martin collected these oral histories herself, and some very brief ethnographic notes by the author accompany the book’s introduction, reflecting her experiences at family gatherings with some of the interviewees. Besides the ethnographic notes and the introduction, the author’s voice is not dominant throughout the rest of the text, where the ten women and their voices take center stage. Preciado Martin emphasizes that her role was mainly to edit for “flow, continuity, and chronology” (xxiii), maintaining confidentiality and removing
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/758/image/coversmallSongs My Mother Sang to Me: An Oral History of Mexican American Women by Patricia Preciado Martin (review)2025-11-06text/htmlen-USSongs My Mother Sang to Me: An Oral History of Mexican American Women by Patricia Preciado Martin (review)2025-11-062025TWOProject MUSE®85292026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-11-06“I’m Not Gonna Die in This Damn Place”: Manliness, Identity, and Survival of the Mexican American Vietnam Prisoners of War by Juan David Coronado (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974252
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Juan David Coronado’s “I’m Not Gonna Die in This Damn Place”: Manliness, Identity, and Survival of the Mexican American Vietnam Prisoners of War recounts the stories of the ten Mexican Americans who were captured during the Vietnam War. Although there were a total of 629 prisoners of war throughout the conflict, Coronado focuses on the ten of Mexican American descent to argue that their ethnic identity uniquely shaped their experiences as POWs. The book’s central thesis argues that the POWs’ upbringing in the American Southwest, “where they endured poverty, prejudice, and inequality,” prepared them to survive their captivity (36). Utilizing personal interviews with survivors and their families, Coronado’s project
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/758/image/coversmall“I’m Not Gonna Die in This Damn Place”: Manliness, Identity, and Survival of the Mexican American Vietnam Prisoners of War by Juan David Coronado (review)2025-11-06text/htmlen-US“I’m Not Gonna Die in This Damn Place”: Manliness, Identity, and Survival of the Mexican American Vietnam Prisoners of War by Juan David Coronado (review)2025-11-062025TWOProject MUSE®93652026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-11-06Lay Leadership in Rural Hispano-Catholic Communities: A Case Study of Concho, Arizona
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974253
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This article centers the oral histories of residents of Concho, Arizona, a small town located in Apache County, in northeastern Arizona. Many individuals and families who founded Concho in the 1860s hailed from present-day New Mexico and, in migrating to northeastern Arizona, brought with them a sense of place informed by their Hispanic lineages and farming and sheepherding practices. I argue that, additionally informed by their ethno-religious identity as Hispano Catholics, their roles as lay leadership within the San Rafael Catholic Church in Concho have been central in practicing Catholic traditions brought from New Mexico as well as maintaining a keen sense of ownership of the faith community their ancestors
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/758/image/coversmallLay Leadership in Rural Hispano-Catholic Communities: A Case Study of Concho, Arizona2025-11-06text/htmlen-USLay Leadership in Rural Hispano-Catholic Communities: A Case Study of Concho, Arizona2025-11-062025TWOProject MUSE®1123782026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-11-06Latinas/os in Voces of Animation: Drawing New Lineages
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974254
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David A. Pacheco still remembers visiting the cinema as a kid and seeing his first animated film—Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). It made such an impression on him that he can still recall what we he was wearing, where he was sitting, and what the theater looked like. It was summertime in 1960, and he wore short pants and a striped olive-green-and-white T-shirt. He was four years old. He and his family sat toward the back left of the theater, the room’s wallpaper adorned with flowers, filigree, and a fine trim. As the room darkened, he quickly became immersed in the fantasy being projected before him. He distinctly remembers the scene with the Huntsman—and how, with bated breath, he watched as
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/758/image/coversmallLatinas/os in Voces of Animation: Drawing New Lineages2025-11-06text/htmlen-USLatinas/os in Voces of Animation: Drawing New Lineages2025-11-062025TWOProject MUSE®1170452026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-11-06Editor’s Note
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974567
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In March 2025, news broke that the Trump administration was doing away with web pages honoring Black, Latino, and women military heroes on the Arlington National Cemetery website. One of the pages paid homage to Hector Santa Anna, a World War II bomber pilot and great-great-grandnephew of the Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna, who defeated Texan forces at the Alamo in 1836, during the Texas bid for independence from Mexico. Hector Santa Anna, a courtly man who passed away in 2006, was included in a section on Hispanic heroes. His information wasn’t deleted altogether but rather moved into a section, titled “Prominent Military Figures,” that was less about the distinctiveness of his ancestry and more about
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/758/image/coversmallEditor’s Note2025-11-06text/htmlen-USEditor’s Note2025-11-062025TWOProject MUSE®124692026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-11-06