"Los Inmigrantes," film showing interviews with Boulder Chicanos, 1979

"Los immigrantes," interviews with Boulder Chicanos, 1979 film

Detailed Summary: 
This 27-min. film was made around 1979 as part of a project called “Boulder’s Chicano Community: Where Is It?” The organizers of the project were Jesse Velez Lehmann, Manuel Arcadia, and Regina Vigil, and it was funded by the Colorado Humanities Program. The film consists of excerpts from videographed interviews, with a small amount of additional footage and background music. Topics discussed are: Canyon Park in Boulder; work in coal mines; inter-ethnic marriages; importance of education to earlier Chicano parents; early migration to Boulder, 1910-1930; isolation of Mexican-American communities; child labor; coal mining unions (IWW); striking miners shot to death at Columbine Mine; cabbage harvest, Boulder County, 1978; previous and current migrant employment in beet fields, working especially for Great Western Sugar Company; bad living conditions in shacks/houses provided for the workers, including no inside water, gas, or electricity and contaminated well water; difficulty of going to school for migrant children; change of Spanish first names to English version; current bilingual education and its goals; previous discomfort or discrimination against Spanish-speakers in stores. Sequence of scenes and people who appear or speak: 1. Woman with cane shown and speaking, Emma Martinez; 2. Man in blue, a former miner, at that time a minister somewhere on Pearl St.: Joe (José) Arroyo, father to Patrick and grandfather to Candy and Linda; 3. Woman: Jesse Velez Lehmann; 4. Man with beard: Abe Maestas, Virginia’s husband; 5. Woman dancing: Jesse Velez Lehmann (the music is the “March of Zacatecas,” often played at weddings); 6. Narrator describing Mexican Revolution and migration to Boulder (probably Manuel Arcadia, a graduate student at CU-Boulder); 7. Man speaking in Spanish: David Toledo; 8. People on the porch of house: David Toledo’s wife Julia and their daughter Phyllis; 9. Joe Arroyo speaking again; 10. Picnic table in park: David Toledo and Joe Arroyo; 11. Harvesting cabbages, dated 1978. Cabbages are harvested usually in September, so film cannot be earlier than fall, 1978 (background song: a corridor); 12. Woman on couch talking: Dora Bernal, Virginia Maestas’s mother; photo of Dora Bernal’s parents and uncle; the woman doing the interviewing: Jesse Velez Lehmann; 13. Scene of woman and children around the table: unidentified; 14. Woman making tortillas and talking: Jesse Velez Lehmann; 15. School rooms with kids: Virginia Maestas is the bilingual teacher. First scene is at Columbine Elementary School in Boulder; second is at Aurora 7 Elementary; 16. Speaker: Abe Maestas. His and Virginia’s daughter Veronica is behind Abe to the left; grandniece (Celeste) on the right; 17. Speaker: Virginia Maestas; 18. High school graduation: probably Boulder High, possibly Centaurus in Lafayette; 19. Narrator: Emma Martinez; 20. Woman walking in the park and talking: Emma Martinez; 21. Shot of Emma Martinez’s daughter-in-law; 22. Man in hat with horses: Miguel Gomez; 23. Back to Jesse Velez Lehmann; 24. Protest/commemoration march at CU-Boulder in honor of “Los Seis de Boulder,” those killed in the 2 bombings; quick image of Roberta Martinez in the crowd; poster showing Corky Gonzalez of the Crusade for Justice. This film was made by Manuel Arcadia (a CU-Boulder graduate student); Jesse Velez Lehmann; Regina Vigil (an Anglo who married into the Latino community); and Fred Worden. Not mentioned by name is Marta Romero, a CU-Boulder graduate student, who wrote the application to the Colorado Humanities Program that resulted in the grant for this project.
ID: 
BCLHP-MKM-046
Location: 
Boulder County; see also BCLHP-MKM-755 through 759
Date: 
1979
Time Period: 
1900-1919
1920s-30s
1940s
1950s-1965
1966-1970s
Keywords: 
parks
People Shown or Mentioned: 
Emma Martinez; Joe Arroyo (father to Patrick Arroyo and grandfather to Candace Arroyo and Linda Arroyo); Jessie Velez Lehmann; Abe Maestas; Manuel Arcadia (voice only); David Toledo; Julia Toledo; Phyllis Toledo; Dora Bernal (mother of Virginia Maestas); Dora Bernal's parents and uncle; Virginia Maestas; Veronica Maestas; Emma Martinez's daughter-in-law; Miguel Gomez; Roberta Martinez; Corky Gonzalez; Regina Vigil (named); Fred Worden (named)
Location of Original: 
Margaret Alfonso, personal copy