As part of my research I have to work with hundreds of historical documents and they each represent a piece of an individual woman’s narrative. These women have lived through unique experiences but shared many of the same hardships. Through such struggles, they are connected to each other and when displayed together, they paint a more accurate of history.
I worked closely with the archive of a woman named Elena Herrada. She was a Detroit native and she attended Wayne State University in Detroit, where she became involved with activism and Chicano-Boricua studies. Her activism focused around Los Repatriados, a group of Mexican immigrants who were blamed for the Great Depression and were then deported from the country. Her family had to go through such struggles and returned to Mexico for a time before making their way to Detroit.
Her activism and political stances have been a great impact in the Detroit area but her history was obscured and the Chicana Por Mi Raza archive project has allowed her story to be told.
A particular endeavor of hers that resonated with me involves the comic below.
Elena brought attention to the underlying issues the comic represents and even fought with the newspaper. Mexican were taking the blame for issues once again and the stereotypes only seemed to get worse. The average person believes all the hate the comic represents and will pass it on to their children and so on. Elena tackled that issue many years ago in her own city but the issue was never fixed anywhere. It just resonated with me how history can be overlooked and the same issues from 20-30 years ago still have not progressed, if not gotten worse.