By Jose A. Robles II, FOCAS Intern Spring 2025, University of Arizona
During the Spring 2025 semester, I was lucky enough to be a part of Los Descendientes de Tucson and The Mexican American Heritage and History Museum, alongside Melissa Berry. Alisha Vasquez and Rikki Riojas were fantastic mentors and supervisors throughout my time with Los Des.
Thanks to Los Des, I got an all too brief history of the exposure to TCE and the complications that began to occur within the Latino and Southside communities of Tucson. I learned about how the community of Tucson’s southside was exposed to TCE due to the neglect of the Tucson Airport Authority. This contamination disproportionally affected Latino communities. Many residents of the area began to suffer from lifelong complications in the 70s. This history resonates strongly with the history of Nogales, AZ and Sonora, where I am from, and how the drinking there was also contaminated by the maquilladoras in Nogales, Sonora. This contamination also resulted in people being diagnosed and suffering with rare forms of cancer and organ damage.
Throughout the semester, my main focus was assisting Los Des and Alisha with a variety of different projects on the digital front of the MAHH Museum. While my primary project was the digitization project, due to time constraints and lack of available material, I was only able to facilitate the digitization of the Los Changuitos Feos tapes and the home videos of Victoria Vasquez, the latter of which were graciously donated to the museum.
Even though I was only able to get one series of tapes digitized, I gained a lot of knowledge and experience when it came to managing time tables, communicating with my supervisors and third parties, and developing the archival skills needed to work in an almost exclusively digital space. I developed a self-paced schedule especially once I received the digital materials. I took the time to sit through the materials and made notes of; length, date recorded, and subject.
Alongside the digitization project, I helped Los Des in updating their website, translating materials in Spanish, and provided assistance with the TCE Retrospective Program. A lot of the translations I provided were for the TCE program and project, where alongside Dove, another intern from a different university, provided translations of the history of TCE contamination in Tucson, and how it affected mainly Latino communities. I also provided translations of the forms people would fill out if they wanted to have their home videos and other delicate media digitized by Ping Pong Media. I provided insight and clarification about the legal language in the forms in order to make sure people were aware of the potential risks in having fragile materials handled.
Throughout the semester, I participated in a variety of different events as well, both related to TCE and non-TCE. I joined Mauro Trejo in tabling the ¡Resistir! March, rally and car show. Melissa and I were introduced to the board members of the museum during their monthly meeting in February, and we were able to participate in an archival training meeting along with them in March. Melissa and I also regularly attended TCE events throughout the semester with Alisha where we assisted her and Alex Jimenez with the TCE Memorial project at libraries across Pima County. We assisted people in preparing clay bricks and milagros in order to commemorate those lost due to illnesses stemming from TCE and those still suffering today. As well, we joined Alisha at Pima Community College for a panel discussing the history and the importance of water security, especially right now.
In the end, I gained a lot by working with Melissa, Alisha, and the other members of Los Des. I hope to use the skills I learned throughout the previous semester in the LIS field soon. I want to give my thanks to Maria Torres and the rest of FOCAS for giving me the chance to work with Los Des and to have the chance to get to know other students and professionals within the LIS field. As well, I wanted to thank Los Des for the opportunity to not only learn technical skills but also to learn about a modern issue that has impacted the Latino community so close to home for me.
If you want to learn more about TCE, Los Des, and/or the Mexican American Heritage and History Museum, you can go to https://losdestucson.com . There you will find some of the information I had a hand in translating and developing.