Richard T. and Virginia M. Castro Past Professors

Visiting professor Nancy López, Ph.D., author of Hopeful Girls, Troubled Boys: Race and Gender Disparity in Urban Education, is the eldest of five U.S.-born children of Dominican immigrants. Guided by the insights of intersectionality in all her work, Dr. Lopez directs and co-founded the “Institute for the Study of ‘Race’ and Social Justice.” She is a professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico.

Ernesto Quiñonez is an acclaimed novelist, essayist, screenplay writer, and oral storyteller for the Moth. He was raised in Spanish Harlem, New York City, by a communist father from Ecuador and a Jehovah’s Witness mother. He is a product of public education from kindergarten to his Masters at the City College of New York where he studied under Walter Mosley. He is a Sundance Writer’s Lab fellow and last appeared in the “Blackout” episode of PBS American Experience. He is currently an associate professor at Cornell University’s MFA program.

The New York Times claimed his debut novel, Bodega Dreams (Random House), a “New Immigrant Classic”, which has since gone on to become a landmark in contemporary literature and is required reading in many high schools and colleges around the country. His second novel, Chango’s Fire (HarperCollins) was also well received, the Washington Post declared, “it succeeds in its rich characterizations of the people of the Barrio. Quiñonez ably illuminates the sordid politics of gentrification and the unexpected places new immigrants turn to for social and spiritual support.” His essays have appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, Newsweek, El Pais, Latina Magazine and elsewhere.

In an interview during his acceptance of a Latin Trendsetter Award, Ernesto Quinonez said, “Yes, the cards were stacked against me but I never got stuck in victimization. I had a vision, and though “The Man” is real and is out there to throw road blocks at you because you are poor and Latino, that never took away my focus and drive in accomplishing what I was after. In today’s world being Latino—to me—means Representing. Letting others see that putting aside hate, resentment, defeat and all those qualities that make victims, and instead embracing hard work and patience we will achieve. We can aspire to the highest levels. Poverty is violence. Growing up in New York City during the 70s and 80s was tough. These were the years of no heat, no hot water, rats, crime and arson. But with good parenting, a love for all mediums of art, and a bit of luck I did ok. Today, I try to keep a modest and humble attitude, while continuing to help my students and anyone else in whichever way I can. There is no better example than one’s own life, and if some young gun from some low income neighborhood sees that a kid from El Barrio is now a writer and an Ivy League professor, he/she might say, ‘If that dork did it, I can do it, too, and I can do it better.’ You go, man. Pa’lante, siempre pa’lante”

As a reporter who was the first Latina in many newsrooms, Maria Hinojosa dreamt of a space where she could create independent, multimedia journalism that explores and gives a critical voice to the diverse American experience. She made that dream a reality in 2010 when she created Futuro Media, an independent, nonprofit newsroom based in Harlem, NYC with the mission to create multimedia content from a POC perspective. Futuro does this in the service of empowering people to navigate the complexities of an increasingly diverse and connected world.
As the Anchor and Executive Producer of the Peabody Award-winning show Latino USA, distributed by NPR, as well as Co-Host of In The Thick, the Futuro Media’s award-winning political podcast, Hinojosa has informed millions about the changing cultural and political landscape in America and abroad. In her new book, Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America, Hinojosa tells the story of immigration in America through her family’s experiences and decades of reporting, painting an unflinching portrait of a country in crisis. She is also a contributor to the long-running, award-winning news program CBS Sunday Morning and a frequent guest on MSNBC.
Hinojosa’s nearly 30-year career as an award-winning journalist includes reporting for PBS, CBS, WNBC, CNN, NPR, and anchoring the Emmy Award-winning talk show from WGBH, Maria Hinojosa: One-on-One. She is the author of two books and has won dozens of awards, including: four Emmys, the John Chancellor Award, the Studs Terkel Community Media Award, two Robert F. Kennedy Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Overseas Press Club, and the Ruben Salazar Lifetime Achievement Award from the NAHJ. She has been honored with her own day in October by New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio and has been recognized by People En Español as one of the 25 most powerful Latina women. Additionally, Hinojosa was the first Latina to anchor a PBS FRONTLINE report: “Lost in Detention” which aired in October 2011 and was the first to explore abuse at immigrant detention facilities, garnering attention from Capitol Hill as well as both the mainstream and Spanish-language media.
As a reporter for NPR, Hinojosa was among the first to report on youth violence in urban communities on a national scale. During her eight years as CNN’s urban affairs correspondent, Hinojosa often took viewers into communities rarely shown on television and continued that work longform on Now on PBS. At Futuro Media, Hinojosa continues to bring attention to experiences and points of view that are often overlooked or underreported in mainstream media, all while mentoring the next generation of diverse journalists to delve into authentic and nuanced stories. In 2018 she was a Fellow at Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School and is a frequent speaker across the country. In 2019, she was named the inaugural Distinguished Journalist in Residence at her Alma Mater, Barnard College.

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the Director of the Texas Center for Education Policy. Previously, she taught in the Department of Sociology at Rice University in Houston (1990-98), and she was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston (1998-99). She completed her Ph.D. at Stanford University. She is the author of the award-winning book, Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring (1999), Leaving Children Behind:  How “Texas-style” Accountability Fails Latino Youth (2005) and Growing Critically Conscious Teachers: A Social Justice Curriculum for Educators of Latino/a Youth (2016). She also founded and operates an education blog titled, Educational Equity, Politics, and Policy in Texas.

Dr. Valenzuela serves on the LULAC National Task Force on Higher Education, and she is the Executive Director of the National Latina/o Education Research and Policy Project (NLERAPP), a consortium of ten institutions that enhances teaching for high school youth in Texas, California, Wisconsin, Chicago, New York, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. Currently, she is also a member of the Biden-Harris Transition Team, focusing on education policy.

Luis Alberto Urrea, 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction and member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, is a prolific and acclaimed writer who uses his dual-culture life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss and triumph. Born in Tijuana, Mexico to a Mexican father and an American mother, Urrea has published extensively in all the major genres. The author of 13 books, Urrea has won numerous awards for his poetry, fiction and essays. Urrea lives with his family in Naperville, IL, where he is a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Christine Marie Sierra is Professor Emerita of Political Science at the University of New Mexico. From 2011 to 2014 she served as Director of the Southwest Hispanic Research Institute at the university. Her expertise is in American politics with a focus on race, ethnicity, and gender. Her publications include work on Mexican-American activism on immigration policy, Hispanic politics in New Mexico, and the politics of Latina women in the United States.

Biography from https://polisci.unm.edu/common/sierra-emerita-profile.pdf

Laura E. Gómez is a Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law, with appointments in UCLA’s Departments of Sociology and Chicana and Chicano Studies. In recent years she has served as Interim Dean of the Division of Social Sciences in the College of Letters & Science and Vice Dean of UCLA School of Law. Her research focuses on the intersection of law, politics and inequality both today and in the distant past. Her books include the following: Misconceiving Mothers: Legislators, Prosecutors and the Politics of Prenatal Drug Exposure (1997), which is widely taught in law and society and gender studies courses; Mapping “Race”: Critical Approaches to Health Disparities Research (2013); and Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race (2007), which is widely taught in ethnic studies and history courses.

Professor Gómez is proud to have co-founded and served as the first co-director of UCLA School of Law’s Critical Race Studies Program. She served as the youngest and first women-of-color president of the Law and Society Association, a multi-disciplinary organization of scholars. She has served as an associate editor, a member of the editorial board, or a reviewer for a number of prominent scholarly journals, including the Law & Society Review, Law & Social Inquiry, Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, to name a few.

Prior to her career as a law professor, Professor Gómez clerked for Judge Dorothy W. Nelson on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and worked as a legislative aide to U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, focusing on Central American policy, South African policy, and Armed Services. She graduated with honors in Social Studies from Harvard as a Truman scholar. From Stanford, she received an M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology, and a J.D.

Biography from: https://latino.ucla.edu/person/laura-e-gomez/

David Avalos came up in Old Town National City (OTNC), California, a Mexican-American community that nurtured his parents and family, and produced internationally recognized Chicano artists, human rights activists, scholars, and educators who continue to influence Avalos’ thinking and actions. A Vietnam-era U.S. Army veteran stationed in West Germany in the late 1960s, he was able to attend South Bay Trade School, SDSU and UCSD on the G.I. Bill. At the Centro Cultural de la Raza throughout the 1980s he worked with multi-disciplinary artists, including the Border Art Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo, a collective focused on the dynamic balance of US-Mexico absurdities. As a CSUSM teacher since 1991, he learns while teaching students who bring their diverse backgrounds, world views, intuitions, insights and ideas into the classroom. Writings about and by him are included in numerous academic publications and archives. His art works are in regional and national museum collections.

Biography from https://www.csusm.edu/sofa/art-media-and-design/faculty/david_avalos.html

Alma Lopez is a visual artist and currently, a visiting lecturer at UCLA. Over the last two decades, Lopez’s work has been exhibited in over one hundred national and international solo and group exhibitions. In 1999, UCLA’s La Gente Newsmagazine dubbed Alma Lopez the Digital Diva for her groundbreaking photo-based digital series Lupe and Sirena. That series, and most of Lopez’s visual work, raises questions about popular Mexican icons filtered through a radical Chicana feminist lesbian lens.  One of those images, titled Our Lady is the subject of the book Our Lady of Controversy: Alma López’s “Irreverent Apparition,” which López co-edited with her spouse, Professor Alicia Gaspar de Alba, and published by the University of Texas Press in 2011.

Biography from https://www.clgs.org/gallery-items/2015-harkness-lecture-alma-lopez/

Though she is best known for her book Enrique’s Journey, Sonia Nazario has had a distinguished career as an award-winning journalist and writer.

Nazario was born on September 8, 1960, in Madison, Wisconsin, to Argentinean immigrants. Her father, Mahafud, was born in Argentina and is of Syrian descent. Her mother Clara was born in Poland, but fled to Argentina during WWII to escape persecution. Nazario’s parents emigrated to the United States in 1960. Her father wanted to escape Argentina’s militaristic government, which suppressed academic freedom. Nazario was raised in both Kansas and in Buenos Aires.

Nazario earned her B.A. in History from Williams College in 1982, and her M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 1988. In 2010, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Mt. St. Mary’s College. Nazario initially worked as a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal, covering social issues from New York, Miami, Atlanta, and Los Angeles for over ten years. She began working for the Los Angeles Times in 1993 as a reporter for projects and urban affairs.

Nazario has won numerous awards for her journalism, including the George Polk Award for Local Reporting in 1994, for “The Hunger Wars — Fighting for Food in Southern California.” “Orphans of Addiction” was a 1998 Pulitzer Prize finalist, and winner of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency PASS Award. Nazario also won the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence of the San Fernando Valley Special Recognition Award for her article “Sobering Facts” in 1999. She won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for her series “Enrique’s Journey,” first published in The Los Angeles Times in 2002. In 2012, Nazario was listed among the “40 Women Who Changed Media Business in the Past Forty Years” by Columbia Journalism Review.

Biography from https://www.gradesaver.com/author/sonia-nazario

Delilah Montoya was born in Texas to a Latina mother and an Anglo father. Her mother raised her in Nebraska until she relocated to New Mexico to attend college.  She studied at the University of New Mexico where she earned her BA, MA, and MFA in Photography.  While continuing to practice as a studio artist, she remained in academia where she has taught at the University of New Mexico, California State University, and the Institute of American Indian Arts. Montoya currently is a professor of Photography at the University of Houston in Texas.

 New Mexico held ancestral roots that nourished her exploration of her Chicana identity. Montoya’s photography conceptually delves into the experience of the Southwest people that is the mix of Native American, Aztec Mexican, and Spanish lineage.  These cultures offer rich historical traditions and folklore imagery based in spiritual and religious practices. Montoya visually explores this iconography to discuss and confront outsider assumptions on stereotypes and the “documentary gaze” towards the Mesoamerican community.

 She uses traditional photographic techniques, mixed media, composites, printmaking and sculptural aspects to her work.  New and mixed mediums allow her to continue to push boundaries and make conceptually challenging work.  Her installations are narratives that involve not only the participation of the viewers cultural, historical, and spiritual knowledge but also their senses.

 Montoya’s photographic work is celebrated within the Latino community as well as internationally. She has shown extensively in solo and group exhibitions throughout the world. Her work can be found in private and public collections as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, New Mexico Museum of Art, Mexican Museum, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

Biography from https://www.pdnbgallery.com/delilah-montoya-biography

Carrasco is the Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America in the Harvard Divinity School, with a joint appointment with the Department of Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He is the author and editor of over 15 books including the award winning Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire, Cave, (Chancellors’ Book Award, University of Colorado) City and Eagle’s Nest: An Interpretive Journey Through the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan #2 (Gold Medal-Publishers of the West) and the Director of the Raphael J. and Fletcher Lee Moses Mesoamerican Archive (located in the Peabody Museum, the oldest museum of archaeology and ethnology in the U.S.) which has helped organize new knowledge about the religions and cultures of Mesoamerica.

Davíd Carrasco was born in Bainbridge, Maryland and grew up in Washington D.C., Maryland, and Mexico City. His father was the first Mexican American to be a Head Basketball Coach and Director of Athletics at a major US university. He spent his formative years on the campus-the American University in Washington D.C. when the struggle for racial integration in sports was underway. During the summers of his college (Western Maryland College) years he worked in community development projects in Puerto Rico where he discovered the historical linkages between colonialism, sugar cane factories, el baile merengue, and café de Yauco.

Davíd Carrasco and Mircea Eliade at the University of Colorado, 1982

When Carrasco attended the University of Chicago he shifted from training in campus ministry to a Ph.D. program in comparative religions and studied with the historians of religions Mircea Eliade and Charles Long. He first taught at the University of Colorado where he was an award winning teacher (President’s Excellence in Teaching Award) and author (Chancellor’s Book Award) of Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire: Myths and Prophecies in the Aztec Tradition. During his tenure at Colorado he participated in the excavation and cultural interpretation of the Great Aztec Temple and other ceremonial buildings of the Aztec empire in what is now Mexico City. Carrasco then moved to Princeton University where he was the first Mexican American tenured professor in the school’s history. Professor Carrasco was the editor in chief of the award winning Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures (chosen by New York Public Library as Best Reference Work of 2001) At Princeton Carrasco worked closely with the African American novelist Toni Morrison in several classes and escorted Ms. Morrison to Mexico City on two occasions to confer with Gabriel Garcia Marquez as part of their ongoing exploration of the relations between race and religions in the Americas.

Carrasco’s work as an historian of religions has focused not only on the role of religion in the rise of the first cities in the Americas but also on the cultures and religious exchanges in the Mexican-US borderlands. This combination led to his leadership in producing the film “Alambrista: The Director’s Cut” which puts a human face on the lives of undocumented workers from Mexico.

Carrasco was elected as a member of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2004 he was awarded the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest recognition which Mexico gives to foreign nationals for their contributions to the understanding of Mexican culture and history. Recently, Carrasco won the Petra T. Shattuck Excellence in Teaching Award from the Harvard University Extension School. In 2011 he was elected as a miembro corresponsal de la Academia Mexicana de Historia Correspondiente de la Real de Madrid.

Carrasco’s teaching career at Harvard has included significant team taught courses with anthropologists Arthur Kleinman, William Fash, Michael D Jackson and linguist María Luisa Parra.

Biography from https://davidcarrascohistorian.com/about

Born in Chihuahua, Mexico, and raised in Los Angeles, Lourdes Portillo has been making award-winning films about Latin American, Mexican, and Chicano/a experiences and social justice issues for nearly thirty years. Since her first film, After the Earthquake/Despues del Terremoto (1979), she has produced and directed over a dozen works that reveal her signature hybrid style as a visual artist, investigative journalist, and activist.

Portillo’s seventeen completed films include the Academy Award® and Emmy® Award nominated Las Madres: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (1986), La Ofrenda: The Days of the Dead (1988), Columbus on Trial (1992), The Devil Never Sleeps (1994), Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena (1999), Señorita Extraviada (2001), My McQueen (2004), Al Más Allá (2008), and her new short film animated film State of Grace (2020).

Biography from https://www.lourdesportillo.com/about

Daniel Valdez, Rosana De Soto, Tish Hinojosa and Jesse Borrego of Westside Oratorio

WHERE THE RIVERS MEET

By Anthony J. Garcia

The confluence of two mighty rivers and the buffalo path, Caused the Arapahoe and Cheyenne to follow their food source. Thye camped in the lands in the early summer when food was abundant. Here they traded, and renewed themselves after a hard winter. The summer grasses were thick and the buffalo had grown fat, It was in this sacred triangle that life began, As it had been preserved for the ancestors before them They would gather to protect the land Reaching forward to provide for seven generations

The Westside Oratorio is a beautiful, sweeping and poignant epic that boldly brings to life the stories of seven generations of Mexican-Americans who made West Denver, Auraria, their home; but whose drive to live, struggle and create is shared universally by marginalized communities. The Westside Oratorio is an original Su Teatro production by resident playwright and composer Tony Garcia in collaboration with Daniel Valdez of El Teatro Campesino who composed most of the music for the production thanks to a grant from the American Composers Forum Continental Harmony Project. The play made its world premiere in December, 2004. This year, the production is the result of a partnership with the University of Colorado –Denver Theatre Department. Daniel Valdez will be in residency through the end of the production. Students from [MSU Denver] and Escuela Tlatelolco worked with Garcia and Valdez in 2004 to gather oral histories from Westside residents and to create the libretto for the piece. “What is being created in actuality is an historical presentation for voice of the Mexican-American’s migratory path through the Southwestern United States,” Garcia says, “It is not just the journey of this neighborhood, but of so many Mexican American families.” Valdez adds, “We are finding that the stories are universal in that they speak of the need for security, family and love. A better life for their children. Everybody wants the same things. Chicanos are no different.” Valdez continues, “This process has taught me that even in the simplest of experiences that there is something greater that elevates our lives to a level of historical significance. This work is about simple people, our parents, with simple experiences that have tremendous historical repercussions on future generations, namely, us.”

Actor Cheech Marin is one of Hollywood’s most recognizable Hispanic stars. Once half of the stoner-hippie comedy team Cheech and Chong, he enjoyed immense success in the 1970s, but went on to tackle a far wider range of roles. To the surprise of many, he has even played a police detective, and in 1992 released an album of children’s songs. Marin has also become a renowned patron of Chicano art, and is thought to own the largest collection of such in private hands. “I personify all the changes our generation went through, in the extreme,” he joked with a People interviewer in 1998.

The actor was born Richard Anthony Marin on July 13, 1946, in Los Angeles, the third generation in a Mexican-American family. English was his first language, and the accent he later used in the Cheech and Chong routines was wholly fabricated. His father was a Los Angeles police officer, and an uncle on the force was the LAPD’s highest-ranking detective of Hispanic heritage for a number of years. The “Cheech” nickname came from an uncle, who peered at the infant in his crib and declared he resembled a chicharron, the Mexican deep-fried pork skin treat. Marin and his three sisters grew up first in the South-Central area of Los Angeles, a rough section of the city. “By the time I was 7, I had seen three murders,” he told People magazine. His parents then relocated to the San Fernando Valley area, settling in Granada Hills. “It was like moving from Nigeria to Knotts Berry Farm,” Marin said in a San Francisco Chronicle interview with Jesse Hamlin.

Biography from: https://biography.jrank.org/pages/3925/Marin-Cheech-1946-Actor.html#ixzz72mtp90Ze

Dolores Huerta was born Dolores Clara Fernández on April 10, 1930, in the mining town of Dawson, New Mexico. She was the daughter of Juan Fernández and Alicia Chávez. Her father was a farm worker, miner, and union activist elected to the New Mexico legislature in 1938. When she was three, her parents divorced. Huerta moved with her two brothers and mother to Stockton, California, where she spent most of her childhood and early adult life.

Huerta’s mother was known in the local community for her kindness and compassion. She was actively engaged in her community of working families of Mexican, Filipino, African American, Japanese, and Chinese descent. Huerta later credits her mother with providing her with the inspiration for her nonviolent stance and her work organizing farmworkers.

Huerta earned a teaching credential from University of the Pacific’s Delta College in Stockton. After graduating, she worked teaching the children of farmworkers. It was this experience that catalyzed her into her labor activism. She recalls, “I couldn’t tolerate seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children.” She left teaching to work in the leadership of the Community Service Organization (CSO), which worked for the economic improvement of Latinos. In 1955, during her work with the CSO, Huerta was introduced to César Chávez, its executive director. In 1960, Huerta founded the Agricultural Workers Association, which organized voter registration drives.

Huerta and Chávez soon realized they shared interest in organizing farm workers. In 1962, they left the CSO to launch the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). In 1965, the NFWA was approached by grape workers in Delano, California to support their strike. They were striking for a wage increase. The Delano workers were mostly Filipino laborers affiliated with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC). The NFWA merged with the AWOC, ultimately forming the United Farm Workers of America in 1966.

Huerta took an intersectional analysis to organizing the farm workers, meaning that she considered how the specific needs of workers varied depending on their diverse identities. She observed that women farm workers were at unique risk of sexual violence, and that the children of farm workers had specific concerns for their rights as younger laborers in the fields working alongside their parents. Her concern for the needs of the families of workers influenced her stance on the necessity of nonviolent action.

Huerta is still active in community organizing. In 2003, she established the Dolores Huerta Foundation for grassroots community organizing. The Foundation works to organize communities and develop future leaders. Huerta often advocates and encourages Latina women to become involved in public office. She sees the work of her foundation as continuing the legacies of the nonviolent movements for civil rights that she participated in. The Foundation continues to engage California residents in voter registration drives and nonpartisan candidate forums, continuing Huerta’s work that she began with the Agricultural Workers Association in 1960.

Dolores Huerta is the recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights (granted by the President of the United States), the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and other awards. In 1993, he was the first Latina inducted into the US National Women’s Hall of Fame. She has also been recognized by the communities she fought for: numerous murals and corridos (a traditional Mexican type of song) have been created in her honor.

Biography from: https://www.nps.gov/people/dolores-huerta.htm

Elena Avila(1944-2011) is the author of the national bestseller Woman Who Glows in the Dark: A Curandera Reveals Traditional Aztec Secrets of Physical and Spiritual Health. Before becoming a spiritual counselor, Avila studied nursing and psychiatric nursing. In addition to her book, Avila also wrote poetry, plays, and gave lectures throughout the United States.

Biography from https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/250419/elena-avila/

Elizabeth Martínez, in full Elizabeth Sutherland Martínez, byname Betita, (born December 12, 1925, Washington, D.C., U.S.—died June 29, 2021, San Francisco, California), American activist who fought against poverty, racism, and militarism in the United States.

Born to an American mother and a Mexican father, Martínez grew up in a generally comfortable economic environment in the United States. Her father told her stories of the Mexican Revolution and about policies of U.S. imperialism and fostered her awareness of the discrimination suffered by Mexican immigrants. She also experienced firsthand the effects of discrimination as a child of color in all-white schools in the Washington, D.C., suburbs.

In the early 1960s she began working as a volunteer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as a way of fighting racism and supporting the civil rights movement. Between 1964 and 1967 Martínez was director of the New York City office of SNCC and also a SNCC traveling representative in Mississippi and Alabama, one of only two Latina SNCC staff members.

After moving to New Mexico in 1968, Martínez cofounded El Grito del Norte, an activist Chicano movement newspaper. She also co-founded the Chicano Communications Center in Albuquerque in 1973, which used theatre, music, and guest speakers to educate Chicanos about history and current issues in their struggles for justice. By 1982 she had moved to San Francisco, where she became the program director of Global Options, an advocacy organization for labour and social issues. She joined the socialist Democratic Workers Party and ran for governor of California on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket in 1982. In 1997 she co-founded the Institute for MultiRacial Justice in San Francisco, which served to combat white supremacy and advance solidarity among people of colour. Between 2002 and 2003 she was one of the editors of the antiwar newspaper War Times, which was founded in response to U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite suffering a stroke in 2005, Martínez continued to lecture and collaborate with Latino youth groups.

Biography from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Betita-Martinez

Ana Castillo (June 15, 1953-) is a celebrated and distinguished poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist, editor, playwright, translator and independent scholar. Castillo was born and raised in Chicago. She has contributed to periodicals and on-line venues (Salon and Oxygen) and national magazines, including More and the Sunday New York Times. Castillo’s writings have been the subject of numerous scholarly investigations and publications.

Among her award winning, best sellling titles: novels include So Far From God, The Guardians and Peel My Love like an Onion, among other poetry: I Ask the Impossible. Her novel, Sapogonia was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She has been profiled and interviewed on National Public Radio and the History Channel and was a radio-essayist with NPR in Chicago. Ana Castillo is editor of La Tolteca 2.0 on her blog, an arts and literary zine, which features creatives of all backgrounds, while focusing on the marginalized.

In 2020 Dr. Castillo was the recipient of the Northeastern Illinois University Distinguished Alumnus Award, the highest alumni honor the University bestows. It recognizes a particular achievement of note, a series of such achievements or a career of outstanding accomplishment. In 2014 Dr. Castillo has held the Lund-Gil Endowed Chair at Dominican University, River Forest, IL and served on the faculty with Bread Loaf Summer Program (Middlebury College) in 2015 and 2016. She also held the first Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Endowed Chair at DePaul University 2001-06, The Martin Luther King, Jr Distinguished Visiting Scholar post at M.I.T. and was the Poet-in-Residence at Westminster College in Utah in 2012, among other teaching posts throughout her extensive career. Ana Castillo holds an M.A from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D., University of Bremen, Germany in American Studies and an honorary doctorate from Colby College. She received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for her first novel, The Mixquiahuala Letters.

Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012) was one of the most influential and celebrated voices in Latin American literature. He was the author of 24 novels, including Aura, The Death of Artemio Cruz, The Old Gringo and Terra Nostra, and also wrote numerous plays, short stories, and essays. He received the 1987 Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world’s highest literary honor.
Fuentes was born in Panama City, the son of Mexican parents, and moved to Mexico as a teenager. He served as an ambassador to England and France, and taught at universities including Harvard, Princeton, Brown and Columbia. He died in Mexico City in 2012.

Biography from https://us.macmillan.com/author/carlosfuentes/