Melissa’s Story—Tanner Symposium

O.C. Tanner Symposium
By Melissa Salcedo

The O.C. Tanner Symposium took place at Utah State University from April 2nd-4th. The title was Celebracion: Latino Contributions to U.S. Culture. The symposium consisted of poets, filmmakers, musicians, artists, storytellers and historians all of which told stories about accomplishments made by Latinos in the United States.

The USU Special Collections Department spoke about their Latino/Latina Voices Project. The project, which began in fall of 2007, is part of USU’s Northern Utah Speaks and is an aggregate of USU Special Collections & Archives’ rich oral history collections. The project is under the direction of Randy Williams and Elisaida Mendez. Williams is the USU Folklore curator and oral history specialist. Mendez is the Latino Voices Assistant Director.

The Latino/Latina Voices mission is to identify oral history projects in areas critical to the people, environment and history of Northern Utah.

At the beginning of the session, Williams spoke about how one should go about conducting an interview. The interviewer should be well prepared, which includes having appropriate questions beforehand. The interview should be audio or video recorded and a transcript of the interview should be made following the interview.

Mendez then spoke about goals of the project. One of the most important goals is to bring the Latino community together and for Latinos to have a voice in their community. Latinos have a story to tell of their upbringings and what brought them to Cache Valley. By conducting interviews with these people, their strength and character will show. Jorge Rodas, a recruiter for the Latino/Latina Voices project, got the word out to the community about the project. He found people who wanted to contribute by being the interviewer or the interviewee.

After the interviews are conducted, they are translated into either English or Spanish, depending on which language the interview was given in. The reason for this is so that people can access the interviews through the Special Collections archives in the language of their preference. The translations are done by USU Spanish Masters students and are not native Spanish speakers. Each interview is stored in the library on the library server, c.d. and Mp3’s.

One interview that was used as an example was with a woman named Lucy D. Lucy is an undocumented Mexican living in Cache Valley. She does not have a last name. Lucy spoke of her motivation for crossing the boarder and coming to Utah. Her husband came first and she later came. She paid a man to bring her two children to Logan. Lucy knew that that was not a smart thing to do, but she had no other choice and prayer for the safety of her children.

Lucy felt inspired to come to the United States, despite not being able to speak English. When asked about her experience while crossing the border, Lucy was reserved and didn’t say much. She spoke about how her religion played a role in facing challenges. She relied on help from God.

After she read the transcript of the interview, she held it next to her heart and said, “It will be wonderful when my grandchildren can read this.”

Since fall of 2007, there have been 12 interviewers who have conducted 45 interviews. Some common themes for interviews have been work ethic, family unity, holidays and family naming patterns.

What do you think? Hit "Comments" below.