Episode 014 – What happens when we center “Latinx” in Digital Humanities?

[0:00:02 Speaker 0] mm hmm, mm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. You’re listening to latin experts. A podcast of latino studies at the University of texas at Austin latin experts features the voices of faculty staff and students as well as friends and alumni of the department of mexican american and latino latino studies, the latino Research Institute and the Center for Mexican american Studies join us for this episode of latin experts. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Mhm. So welcome to the latin experts podcast hosted by mexican american latino studies at the University of texas. The Center for Mexican american Studies and the latino Research Institute. My name is Professor Maria Patera. I am a new faculty at malls and I’m delighted to introduce you to some women who I respect very deeply in her at the leading edge of latin X. Digital humanities. Gabriella Base Aventura is an associate professor of Hispanic literature in Hispanic studies at the University of Houston where she teaches courses on U. S. Latino literature for graduate and undergraduate students. She’s also the executive editor of Arte Publico Press where she supervises the production of up to 30 books a year. Her publications include a monograph on the representation of mexican women in spanish language newspapers in the United States, two anthologies on U. S. Latino literature and an edited volume on the poetry of a renowned chicana poet ankle Adios. She has also translated over 30 books for Children and young adults from spanish to english, where she and her colleague Carolina viral are copia is on An Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to establish the first program on US latino digital humanities in texas and in the nation. Also with us is Carolina Villarroel who holds a PhD in spanish literature with a specialization in U. S. Latino literature and women’s studies. She’s the former archivist in charge of the mexican american and african american collection at the Houston Metropolitan Research Center at the Houston Public Library. And in 2000 and 11 she became a certified archivist through the Academy of Certified Archivist. Her expertise in U. S. Latino culture and literature has been fundamental to her positions at the University of Houston where she is the Brown Foundation director of research of recovering The. US. Hispanic literary heritage. A national program whose goal is to identify preserve study and make accessible the written public production of Latinos and Latinas in the United States from the colonial period until 1960. She and her colleague, Gabriella, Vice Aventura Arco P. I. S. On the Andrew Mellon Foundation grant to establish the first program on us, Latino Digital Humanities. So I have invited them here to talk about the future of U. S. Latino digital humanities will start actually just by welcoming them welcome to you. I’m so excited to have you here. Like I said, you’re at the leading edge of of this emergent field. And so I feel like I should ask you first, kind of the most important question, why is it important to have a center dedicated specifically to latin X. Digital Humanities? Um why do we need this now? Well, thank you. Thank you Maria for this invitation to be part of this um, of this podcast to talk about some of the work that we’re doing also were honored to participate with you as long as you’re also a leader in the digital in the field of Digital Humanities and giving us a lot of important theory to discuss right into center, some of the work that we’ve been doing for a long time. So this is, you know, when, you know, the the urgency for having this center, there’s there’s I mean, for me, there’s an urgency to having to establishing a center. Centers are established for all kinds of reasons that, you know, an academic institutions all over the US. And a lot of times those centres, unfortunately, there’s a lot of promise right to do things for the community, but a lot of times they don’t necessarily do it. And so we’ve been working, you know, and the and the under comments right, working on, you know, uh you know, below all the infrastructure having, you know, the recovery program has existed for Almost 27 years already having, you know, discover documenting the presence of Latinos in this territory that we call the United States now. Uh and so the urgency for establishing a center in digital humanities that would extend the work of the recovery program to continue to document and disseminate uh the literature, the, you know, the the litter the literary production of Latinos in this territory from the colonial period up until the 1980s. Uh was it so needed? Not only because we’re extending that work, but also because we are teaching and sharing this knowledge with newer generations, training our people on how to do digital humanities, working with the community center in our community as as producers of knowledge right? For us, that is key and all the work that we do. We want to make sure that the work does not stay at the academic institution. We want for this for all of these materials to go into the communities. And so for us, the importance of having this center is this, I don’t know, it’s a hundredfold right for us as all latino projects are. It’s it’s about creating the space within the institutions so that we have uh so that the institution has to reconcile with the fact that there are faculty doing work that work that deals with the community that deals with languages other than english, that deals with, uh, with histories that are not incorporated into the, you know, the traditional, um, literary and historical discourse. Um, and then also to, to extend the work from the, from the academic world into the community to us. That’s extremely important. We do that through working with students at all levels. Undergraduate graduate post dogs training, faculty, faculty who are already, um, are established faculty teaching and digital to, you know, the skills and digital tools so that they can enhance their work and reach their students. What else can go well? Uh, yeah, that’s exactly then, thank you, Maria again. Uh, and also, I think that, uh, the idea was to activate, if you can call it that way, the already existing community of Latinas and Latinos working with digital humanities that was there. But there were some how isolated and thinking that they were alone doing this work. So I think one of the first things that we did was to call out into the community and create our basic spreadsheet with projects with people all over the country, creating activating this community, uh making it part of something to in turn um you know, korean representation in different institutions around the country. Um And also in a institutional level is, you know, talking about the recovery program and all the archival work that we’ve been doing for years, ah with our all of our associates all over the world. It’s a we also through this project this program, because it has so many tentacles, you know, everywhere, it was to create access innovative access to this archive and create, expand the conversation and how this archive should have prominence in this digital conversation. Yeah, I mean, and it occurs to me like that, you know, Some of our listeners might not understand the significance of the recovery work that Arte Publico has been doing since what 1984. So Arte Publico started in 1979 with the revista chicano re kenya. Right. And then in the 19 eighties, it published its first book, La Carita Made a U turn by to Talavera, which is a collection of poetry. Right? And then from then on the revista chicanery, kenya evolved into uh, the Americas Review. And so the goal for for for the for the creation of of that magazine and the publishing house was to serve as a venue for uh for the work of uh, of academics, artists, writers, you know, and writers of all genres poetry, fiction, nonfiction. Uh you know, in academics who could who could publish the work in a place where where their work would be read and evaluated by people who were latino, right? Who knew about, you know, what was happening with latino literature, latino culture in the United States, who could genuinely uh evaluate and respect that work right in center. The work from from the perspective of Latinos in the United States. And so, you know, the press is fully nonprofit. Later on in the in the nineties, Arte Publico Press developed its imprint pinata books, which these which went into publishing books for for the for Children, right, Children and young adults, which now is like a whole new monster of its own right now. We there’s, you know, a lot of other presidents have have evolved as a result of that, which is wonderful. And then recovery project, uh the recovery program started in the 19 in 19 nineties. Um Mercado, maybe you want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah. And and and and again, it’s like a response like at the public or like the notebook is a response to a need from the community, you know, in this case, in the historical side to be able to recover all these hidden literature and and written legacy that uh you know, it’s colours knew that was there, but we didn’t know where exactly, and it was scattered through, you know, addicts and garages and all that. And we’re still doing that work. I mean, it’s still important word that is going on. So promoting preserving, locating, first preserving and um you know, educating libraries and archives about the importance of their uh recovering these kind of materials and included and their archives and also um creating a scholarship around it with all the different scholars in different fields, history, anthropology, religion, literature, etcetera. Uh and uh and that’s how in 1991, uh the recovery project came to be with us, a group of scholars from different institutions around the country. Mhm. And that initial project was really about recovering um work from a specific period right from the colonial era to was a cut off 0.1960. Yeah, it was the 1960s and then it moved to 1980 a few years ago. Uh under recommendation from a a board member Jose Aranda from Rice University who proposed to move, you know, and it was logic you need to move 20 more years. So we are able to recover part of the chicano movement and and you know, and include everything that you’ve been recovering. Yeah. quite taken up on me rasta that was not part of the recovery and this way it becomes part integral part of the recovery program. And you know, what I found so interesting about Arte publico is is that in the recovery project in particular is that in many ways you were early adopters of um you know, sort of early digital humanities tools. In other words, your your move into the world of digital and public humanities is not new. And so do you want to tell us a little bit about how um you, you know, in those early years as an organization shared um uh some of the recovered objects, particularly newspapers, I think as the major contribution, uh spanish language, newspapers. Um So so what kinds of technologies uh did you and have you used to share the this important archival material with with the rest of us? Well it was interesting now that we look back, you know, and I say this and some of the presentations we started digitizing materials with I think I mean just a few people were doing that years ago. So for people who understand about the difference between PDFs and thieves and all that. We were scanning at the maximum Tiff quality. That was 90. If you consider that now archival, I mean the standards are 300-600 d. p. I. We were doing a 90 and that was the maximum. So we were reading the newspapers, everything by hand with the manual, you know the reels and manual machines and all that. And then it’s scanning. We had one scanner where we scan the materials and created the database. Is it was it was huge. You know, labor by students, graduate students. We were graduate students at that time. Uh and uh and uh you know, recovering materials, but also as a researcher. And as a student was so rich because you were there reading the newspapers, you know, tracing history and and looking for hidden voices or last voices within the spectrum of literature. So we were discovering that uh someone writing under a pseudonym was such as a writer that was not known. So it was it was such an important work. So we had to move with, you know, with times and the digital world, we had to move from 90 and risk and things, you know, and move it to to higher resolutions and all that. And it was a challenge to think about sharing this material because at that time nobody was talking about portals creating websites. And, and as you know, Maria, it’s difficult to upload images the size of this size and with the difficulties that we have with the newspapers there. Sometimes we are not um very, I mean newspaper, the paper that used for newspaper is really, it was really acidic. So sometimes it was not readable at all. We had to use Photoshop to clean images. So you know, researchers were able to read the newspaper so to upload these huge images into something to make it available, it was impossible. So we we started conversations with f school first and they offer us to create a platform to showcase our databases, especially newspapers as you mentioned. And uh and they will do all the work and this was the first archival um platform they will that they were creating. So we were the prototype for a school for the following archival, you know, work that they’re doing right now and especially in spanish. So a lot of conversations of what the importance of recovering this, uh, the importance of recovery materials other than english as Gabby mentioned. And, and uh, we were able to successful published with them to databases with hundreds of articles, thousands of articles from newspapers and hundreds of texts. Um, but we do have much more so with the digital humanities when when we discover digital humanities, we discovered also that we were doing digital humanities way before everybody else. So it was a natural step for us, but also allow us to take control of what we wanted to share and how we wanted to share it without had to go without having to go to a middle person to negotiate things. Um, and then we were able to release a database of 400 newspapers with news bank. And that was a game changer for, for our scholars because they’re all over the world. And with this database are able to access the newspapers from their homes to do their research that before was impossible. Which has become ever more critical in covid times. And so, you know, so, um, so when did you, um so when did the melon grant uh come into being and what compelled you to reach out to melon and ask them for support? So I’m very curious about this process because I know that and I’ll just give a little my little backstory to this. I know that um some years back, you know, a group of us had had been talking about how the D. H. World in the Foundation World had really not actively uh solicited or supported um digital humanities projects focused on the latin X community. I mean, this was conversation rolling around with a few of us that were engaged. You know, I started uh, with linda Garcia, merchant, Chicano Batman Gaza in 2009, by around, you know, 2012 2013. Uh, we were experiencing a lot of challenges in terms of getting support for our work, both locally and are at my institution and nationally through large or major grants. And I know we, you know, we started a conversation with you about your own challenges that you’re facing and thinking about, you know, the larger field and, um, really how Latin X communities and histories and experiences continue to be quite invisible in the field of digital humanities. So, um, can you tell us a little bit about the genesis of your melon grant and, and uh, fill in the blanks that I loved, I guess. Yeah, so with Arte Publico, we’ve, you know, we we are non profit, so we primarily work with foundations to get grants to publish most of our books. And so we have a history of working with various foundations. Um, Carolina has always does a lot of research. She’s an amazing, you know, scholar and researcher is always trying to figure out like ways to locate funds for, you know, to continue to hire graduate students to do, you know, research assistants to bring in volunteers interns, you know, so that we can, um, pay them right, while they do well. They do some of the, of the work that they need to do for us. And so, um, she identified the melon grant, the program that was offering grants for digital humanities. And she said, she came into my office and she said, this is it, this is the one that we’re applying for. And then I said, oh, well, I don’t know if if I want to, you know, I don’t want to if if I want to do that, it sounds like really complicated. They’re not going to give it to us. And then she was like, no, she’s like, we have it all, it’s it’s all here. You know, we’re gonna sit down, we’re going to start working on it. And we did, uh, we we sat down, we started, you know, looking at what we could do. Um, one of the very interesting and not interesting, but well, it is an interesting thing that, that when we first met with the Mellon Foundation, one of the first things that they told us the project officer or the uh, the officer at that moment told us that we were very ambitious. And, and I was at first I was like, you know, at my colonial, my, you know, my colonial uh attitude at that moment. Yeah. I was like, oh, you know, thank you for acknowledging that I’m ambitious. But then I was like, what the hey, you know, Yeah, of course I’m ambitious. I have to be, you know, and then I came back I kind of, I think very maybe like maybe kind of brush or like like root, right? And I said, well, I have to be ambitious. We don’t have any other option because our initial grant was for a million dollars. A million 0.5. I thank you. Yeah. Million $0.2. See how she she remembers everything. Um and so we have we, you know, we had a plan to do uh, some training, like a lot of free training for our communities, uh, a lot of like pedagogy, pedagogical training, a lot of different projects. Um what else? Cattle? We had a lot of really grant in aid because the recovery for a while when the when the recovery established, they issued a lot of grant in aid to bring in scholars from all over the world to do research into allowed to help us disseminate some of the materials that were in in at the recovery. And so we included all of that. And so They set us down very nicely and told us that well, you know what, they couldn’t give, you know, to Latinas $1 million, but they could maybe help them with a planning grant, right? Which which was a very gentle nudge from the Mellon Foundation. We later found out that usually when they when they allow you to apply for a planning grant, that means that they are looking at your project, that’s one that can receive further funding from them. And so we took, you know, we took that as something very positive. We worked with an amazing project uh coordinator at that moment, or I can’t remember the title of the uh program officer. He was very, very supportive of our work. He helped us and and guided us into into, you know, creating a planning grant that took us to the several centers throughout the United States to research the type of work that they that they did several Digital Humanity Center. Because the goal for for this grant was for us to create a digital humanity center. Right. And so we we toured a bunch of different digital humanity centers across the nation, made amazing people at some of these centres established a network. We already we already had a network of digital humanities scholars with whom we have been communicating with and participating at conferences. Uh and so they when we visited the centers, we were able to see what was working and what was not working. And we received a lot of affirmation about the work that we had already been doing. You know, a lot of the work that had been there was ongoing at the recovery program was work that some of these centers were barely strike starting to do. But they had like, huge budgets, right? And here we were like struggling. And they were like, well, we don’t know how to work with the community. Well, we don’t know. I mean, how did you all do it? You know? And it was and it’s all because we were working. You know, we are, you know, we go to the source, we we center our communities, we were not afraid to get our hands dirty. And also we were very generous with the with the knowledge that we have in the information that that is in our, you know, that is in our environment. We we want to train people so that there’s more of us and not just a few of us doing the word and that, you know, trickles down. It’s the idea is that we train more people so that more people are going out there to train people like us, right? So that we uncover all of these materials that are hidden in some of these archives or in communities where people where people still don’t feel comfortable, uh, sending their materials to uh, you know, university or an academic or traditional archives. So if I might add something, I think that during the conversations, uh, the officer, uh, he’s not, he’s no longer and uh the foundation he suggested for us to apply for a grant with Clear and I’m trying to counsel of library and information and love information resources, resources. So and they are very tight to uh to men and we didn’t know at that time. So we I just got an email from them and from clear. So they are connected with the L. F. That it’s big on digit documents and archives. So that conversation, I mean uh the officer uh suggested for us to apply for uh postdoc from Clear. They had a new program to uh you know, invite uh for institutions to serve as hosts for post dogs in latin american and caribbean, you know archives and uh so we said but we are not really latin american and caribbean. So the conversation with care started, you know saying, yeah we want to apply for this that we want you to expand it and look beyond this because you have a whole community here in the United States, You know, the U. S. Latinos and Latinas that need to be represented on this. So we made the case and they agreed and they let us apply. And that’s how we got our programs manager. Now, that’s not in a throat. And that initiated a conversation and we were able, I was able to meet uh don’t water the officers from, from melon during that initial meeting uh for clear where we uh were invited with Lorena to participate. That led to a whole, like I said, a whole new conversation and opportunities for us to be included in this uh in this space where we’re not invited before. And that ended up last a few months ago when we’re invited to present at the the Left Digital Library Federation. So it’s been one thing creating connections with another and bringing our people with us, you know, including everybody students. Like we said everybody into the conversation to the conferences and you were there Maria where we had for the first time, you know, posters for the recovery conference and we had, we had high school students prison, right? That was huge for us, but for them of their careers and how they think about their careers as futurist colors, you know, in this, in this field. Yeah. And and making a lot of these, a lot of the workshops and the presentation’s free, you know, and accessible to all the communities and, and, and, and, and then, you know, and also in in languages other than english as well. Because that’s one of our, that’s one of our goals. One of the, one of the opportunities that we had when speaking to john waters in, in a couple of those meetings was the opportunity to, they were very receptive to um, to be like educated about, you know, what Latina digital humanities is and what it is not right because um, it was, it’s unfortunate that a lot of times, uh, it is believed that because something is just done in spanish, it represents the latino community and it really doesn’t right. And so a lot of, and a lot of times were not given the opportunity to explain some of the, some of the, you know, the theoretical practices that are, that involved doing us latino the th, you know, and, and we were given, you know, some of those opportunities to talk about that and they were receptive to that. And so I think that also led to opening up spaces for, you know, new scholars that are coming up in digital humanities that, that are really doing Latinas th work uh, you know, latin american or just spanish language th which is totally different. Well. And after we received that grant, we were able to apply for the second round. A big one. Grant, you know, the big one, maybe one, tell us about the big one. So, um you guys are doing some really amazing work with this melon ground. And so if you could just tell us what it is that the melon grant has enabled you to do uh in the two to build or maybe even just like tell us, um you know, the purpose for in your mind, the right the mission um that you want to pursue. And and then the parts of that mission, whether the different things you’re doing from grants and AIDS to any other aspect, I know you have a post doc. So, so tell us a little bit about what this melon grant has opened up for um for the project. I think it goes back to what Gabby said at the beginning and I mean to be a multi fault, you know, purpose, but I think uh you know, to create opportunities for for uh Latinas and Latinos, colours to work in digital humanities to become acquainted with. There’s a two create digital scholarship was one of them uh create access to the recovery archives, you know, uh and first, but then to bring visibility to the different archives that are out there that related to the latino and Latina community, um and consolidate this this community center, you know, uh program where are collaborating? We are promoting our work where uh creating lists of people that should be invited to presentations, you know, to conferences when they’re looking. So it really really uh program that was community um oriented and the grant, I think allow us to do that. And one of the most important things that it’s been very fruitful as being the grant in aid, you know, as Gabby mentioned before the recovery program throughout the 20s, 20 something years, almost 30 years of work Had granted, I think I want 182 grand tonight and that builds the scholarship that literally built a scholarship. So we thought we need that money, we need that money to give opportunities because we had people knocking on our door, scholars and students saying, hey, I want to learn how to do that. I want to apply, you know, my research and, and you know, make it look like this or learn new ways to do it. And we really wanted to facilitate that. So the purpose of the grants in aid was to provide training and support for scholars to to create to to create the projects and then to promoted and you know, and shepherd them through the whole process. And I think that’s been a very successful. We are really, really happy with the seven grand seen as the first one. And it became very competitive. Like immediately, I think that this year we received More than 30 proposals for seven grand tonight. So that that that says something, you know, there is that need still out there in the community for this kind of money that will allow people comfortably to work in a project and completed and you want to continue? No. And I think I think you hit on all the points, the grants in aid and in the, you know, building the scholarship uh helping um usher and train the new scholars in this field. And I would the last thing that I that I’m gonna say is is to continue to disseminate the work that recovery has, the recovery arte publico um all the, you know, the are all of our ancestors in in recovery work throughout the United States have been doing right into making these materials accessible to a larger audience. And that to me, was was one of the, you know, the biggest goal of this, of this creating this center. You know, that’s that’s still like the, like the top thing that we want to do. And the last thing is that latino experts list that we’ve created because we have a lot of experts in our field, you know, and and and you know, in in recovery work and in digital humanities. You know, there’s a lot of Latinas who are doing a lot of, a lot of this work that a lot of times don’t get invited to do presentations, keynotes and that’s what we want to do. You know, we want to make sure that when people, you know, look at the uh, you know, U. S. Latino digital humanities that they think of a of a wide range of people who are doing a bunch of different things and, and uh, and we hope that, you know, that the list that we have created that are on our website, um, are visited options so that, you know, people see and, and also that people act themselves to these lists because it’s important that we, you know, support each other and share this knowledge with others. Yeah, if I can mention to two things. One is that related to the grant is that we were able to bring a postdocs, you know, uh, to and work. We’re very happy with our pastor linda Garcia version. She she was the perfect complement to what we were doing, you know, to help us expand in in in in in in in lines and ways that we needed to expand. So I think it’s a fantastic addition. And we were able to create a position for the for the digital humanities component of a program manager that it’s uh it’s Lorena got through opposition right now. So we were able to create a team that to to work together to keep applying programs but also to keep supporting each other to uh you know, maintain this uh this big program that is going on right now. And the other thing is to mention because I’m really happy about this, I think that this is really reflects our work with the community. Uh some of the spreadsheets that Gabby mention that we mentioned before. So we have different spreadsheet, One for programs, one around the country, one for professionals, you know, th and in the one for projects around the country, we asked people to other projects in there so people can use it for classes. And it’s a spreadsheet and We started conversations with Lulac with Lulac 60, the historical Lola here and uh community historians. And it’s very satisfactory because what the community historian here, David Contreras took ownership of the spreadsheet and I thought it was marvelous. He started adding a lot of materials in the spreadsheet, you know? And uh and he created an alternative spreadsheet within the spreadsheet to list lulac news that he was researching to make it available to everybody. I mean, how wonderful is that is the perfect connection. But the thing that we wanted to do the most, you know, between the connection between their academia and the community where they can take ownership of the knowledge that they are creating. You know, not for us to be using their knowledge for you know, academic purposes, but for them to use this academic spaces for their benefit. So that that was amazing. Yeah. I mean I think um it makes me think about some conversations that we have had in the past about what distinguishes latin X. D. H. From regular D. H. Or other forms of sub D. H. I don’t even know, you know, like DHS are very expansive and complex world. It includes people who are more, you know, involved in infrastructure and tool development and people who are interested in archives and making them available. And you know, other people who are into experimental writing and rhetoric, you know, so it’s really heterogeneous. Um but uh and also you know, digital studies in which is another area that I think, you know, I know I’ve been thinking a lot about this that, you know, there’s not enough coherence and visibility for those scholars uh you know, for for a latin X. Digital studies approach, right? Which I think could be linked to D. H. In very interesting ways. Um uh but what would you how would you describe what makes Latin X. D. H. Uh distinctive in your mind? How is it different than other projects or maybe even, you know, what does it share with other projects and approaches? I think one of the one of the for me, one of the things that stands out is the the colonial aspect of digital humanities and in Latin X work, you know, we are consistently discussing issues of of how do we uh center and and and the and and de colonize some of the spaces right from where we’re working. You know, we are constantly asking ourselves are we reproducing the systems of power as we, you know, analyze, you know, some of the work that we’re doing when we create like a like a digital exhibit, we always ask like what would this author want to do if they had the opportunity to, you know, to do this exhibit themselves, You know, how would they center themselves? And so a lot of times, because we work with a lot of materials that are, you know, recover where the author, you know, is no longer alive. We rely a lot of uh, on the context and historical context, on social context, right? We were working with the newspaper. It’s not simply, you know, taking the articles from the newspaper and and readjusting them and making them look pretty. It’s actually like reading the entire newspaper to see what was the tone, You know, what were the tenants that were being discussed? You know, what is the, you know, how do we anchor this? This this uh writer this this I don’t know these materials within the specific context. And so and so we we do we are embattled a lot of times with these uh colonial practices, right? And where we need to ask ourselves, are we are we gonna reproduce some of these systems that continue to oppress and and and create, you know, a system of second class citizen citizenry for for our projects and for our communities. And so, um I think that’s, to me that’s what us Latinas work does. And and and it has to do with with language, it has to do with discourse and it has to do just and it also has to do a lot with even like the accessibility, right? We we we our goal is to always choose uh software that is free so that if we have, you know, opportunities or cases where community wants to reproduce, you know, the or do this reproduce the same, I don’t know, use the same software to to do their own project. We want them to be able to learn it and to use it on their own. Um also, you know, low bandwidth as well so that it’s readily available to to our community. So we’re always like, we have between the four of us uh Doctor Lorena got throw like dr linda Garcia merchant Caroline and myself, we’re like always asking, you know, we all offer a different evaluation of each of the project so that hopefully we meet, you know, some of those goals and when we check some of the work that we’re doing, Yeah, and for me, I mean it’s what Gabby just mentioned and it were very uh strongly rooted on on social justice, like many of the Latinos or Latinas and Latinos project latino projects out there, you know, that I’ve seen we have the tendency of being very social justice oriented and it makes sense because we want to include these these stories that we find mainly in our community, so including that including our communities, it’s something that is very important. Mhm. And it also seems to me to be um capacity building, like I often like everything you’ve described is really about building capacity um to to move forward to, you know, sort of, you know, from the recognition of expertise and the expertise people bring to the table to training to um empowering communities to take control of their own archival projects, you know, um to empowering you know, small D. H. Projects with grants and aid um to get them started, it’s just you know, about building the field. So what what is next? Uh First of all, I mean just in a very particular sense, do you are you going to run the grants and aid program one more time? How many years you gonna do that or does the grant allow? And then what is next on the horizon for um US LDH. So we have yeah, we have one more, we have one more year through. So the Mellon Foundation gave us enough to offer 14 grants. So we were in the process of uh evaluating the next set of grants. Um We’re, you know, we’re always in the process of applying for more grants because we do want to continue to offer grants in aid. You know, the grants in aid for the recovery program basically were foundational to the field of latino studies, right? And and also in in securing tenure positions for many of latino studies scholars. Um and so we find that that this is this is also fundamental for for D. H. Scholars. Uh we uh we were hoping that we can bring in another post doc. Our goal is to always have a postdoc who is in training at the recovery program, right? So that they can learn all the different skills that we can offer. Um continue working with volunteers and establishing different uh pathways and grants. It can hopefully offer like paid internships and, you know, just continue to do the same work that we’re doing. But, you know, we’re very active in trying to secure more grants that hopefully will, will help us build out the recovery US LDH and to um what the recovery has become, you know, a very important program, a program that is uh fundamental to the field of latino studies. And so we hopefully us LDH will will continue will become that in, you know, in 10 years. And then, you know, we’ll have, you know, some of our students who will be 10 year D. H. Faculty, you know, at university, that’s that’s my goal to see that, you know, um I think we’re fortunate enough that, you know, that uh Lorena was able to stay with us um you know, in a semi permanent position at the University of Houston and that’s what we would like for our post talks to continue to hopefully secure positions that become, you know, uh you know, permanent or near permanent positions so that they can continue to do the work, you know, the committed work that they’ve been doing up until now. Um, Yeah, yeah. And I think that one of the things that one of the goals that we had at the beginning was to, but it was, I don’t remember what the last goal that we had to become a house because we understood the struggle of the community archives before Maryland came up with the community Archives, you know, grants that is, you know, it was, it’s great. But we want, we, we, because through the years of working with recovery, we knew their struggle and the struggle of the community trying to preserve their, you know, histories and not trusting archives to preserve their history. So it’s always the fear, you know, working with newspapers, there’s always the fear that that’s going to be, that’s going to be lost. Like we lost many newspapers that we know that we’re not going to be able to find it anymore. So that’s always, it was always in the back of our head head. We need to somehow become a hub. That’s a huge it was a huge dream because because of all the infrastructure that need to be in place to do that. The team, it was just carry on me at that time. So the team that needed to be in place to be able to become that have to help and to create all them guidance of uh working again. And at the colonial way, we don’t become providers of the acknowledge but become a half that it’s voluntary. And where we can assure people we’re not going to own your collection. We can help you preserve it. But we will not, you know, and people can come through us. They know that we will have that information stored story for you. So, and I think that working on all the other areas and creating connections with different groups, we have been able to advance on that goal, you know, without even, you know, trying that match because there was something something so big. So there are things coming up, we can’t talk about it. But the things coming up that are very exciting that are moving us forward in that sense. Right? And so when you say a hub, you literally mean like um uh the dream that other actually other archivists have held, Latin X archivists have helped for many years of a central repository of some sort for the Latin X cultural history literature. Kind of exactly, just like recovery is for the, you know, the written legacy. Yeah. But before the digital, you know, materials are out there like collections are out there. Well, this is amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your story and the story of U. S. L. D. H. And after politico and the recovery project and your big dreams. I completely endorse them. I think it’s necessary to document these histories obviously, but it’s also important to have and you know, a kind of ethical grounding in a d colonial grounding for for how we go about doing that. I’m excited to to see where all of this goes. Thank you. And we’re very excited to have you close now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us. Bye bye bye. Thanks bye. Hi. All this is Ashley Nava Montero’s the Communications Associate Latino Studies. Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. Make sure to check out the latino studies instagram page. Follow us at Latino Studies. Ut to keep the conversation going