The cultural spaces on campus are longtime establishments with the goal of providing students a sense of belonging, home and family. However, beginning in the 1950s, students had to fight and bargain with the University for these spaces, including La Casa Cultural Latina.
Activism on campus today has evolved for Latino students, who only began to attend the school in extensive numbers in 1968, following a University-wide effort called Project 500. Introduced following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., efforts were made to enroll minority students in greater numbers than ever before.
However, once students arrived on campus, according to Mirelsie Velázquez, professor in LAS, many still felt marginalized in community and education spaces, not seeing themselves in faculty, studies or clubs.
Velázquez is currently writing her second research book focused on the topic of on-campus activism, which came about following an invitation to speak at the Spurlock Museum in 2020 about a mural on display centered on Latino successes.
A main theme of the novel, which is still untitled, is an exploration of Latino students’ internal feelings of displacement and how it can negatively impact them on campus.
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Velázquez would later find in her research that students on campus began to express themselves through art, including elaborate murals on the walls of the Latino House, which would later become La Casa. These murals embodied feelings of displacement, brainwashing and conforming — things that Latino students wanted to reject.
“When they’re here in the early ’70s, they don’t have a space for themselves, and so they start little by little,” Velázquez said. “They start creating, and they don’t wait for the institution to start doing programming for them. They start doing it themselves (by bringing) speakers and throwing dances.”
The buildup of these struggles continued to compound, culminating in protests on campus by Latino students in the early 1990s in an effort to force the administration to make a change.
Students compiled a list of issues and held up signs with phrases like, “If God can listen, why can’t you?” marching for hours around the quad.
Demands included greater diversity in administration, the creation of a Latina/Latino Studies department, increased support for Indigenous students and increased funding and recruitment efforts for Latino students, which had only made up 0.002% of the student body since 1973.
“In 1992, the immediate response following the protests was that you start seeing some courses in Latino studies, but it’s more of a ‘Here you go,’” Velázquez said. “You still have the racist mascot, you don’t have a clear development of a retention program, and so it’s not just about recruitment, it’s retention as well.”
One of the positive changes that has occurred out of this decade of struggle was better housing for La Casa, with the center and its movement having developed heavily throughout the decades. Stephanie Cardoza-Cruz, assistant and interim director of La Casa, said it’s in a strong transitional period, looking ahead toward the future.
“I hope to see a continued future of the great momentum that we have now,” Cardoza-Cruz said. “You see such strong and dedicated student leaders who take up spaces not only within La Casa but far beyond.”
Still, Cardoza-Cruz said, La Casa only has one staff member who works full-time today, demonstrating the lack of resources provided.
“I hope that students feel the longevity of the space and remember the fight that came for us to have what we have now,” Cardoza-Cruz said. “None of it is a result of chance or luck, but rather the good fight that really keeps us going.”
