Recovering and Reconstructing Latin American History at Duke and Durham: 100 Years of Connections – Duke Chronicle

On the evening of Oct. 4, Duke academic departments and cultural organizations celebrated the connections between Duke University and Durham’s Hispanic, Latino, and Latino communities at an event in the Friedl Building’s Fredric Jameson Gallery. The celebration consisted of presentations and performances that focused on the experiences and work of students, faculty and community members who helped build the Duke-Durham connection.

“100 years of relationships. Hisp@nos in Duke, Durham y más allá” opened with a warm welcome from moderator Betzaida Fernandez, a senior lecturer in Romance Studies who works in the Duke and Durham community, followed by remarks from faculty members in the Spanish and Romance Program The program for Service Learning (SLP) of the Research Department. Duke SLP emphasizes building connections with local communities by combining traditional learning with community-based learning.

Senior Lecturer Joan Munné and several of his students then presented their SLP project: a bilingual exhibit on the history of Latino students at Duke. Drawing on the efforts of two generations of service-learning students, Munné identifies the place of the Latino community at significant moments in Duke’s history. The exhibit – which can also be viewed online – features interactive historical panels and artwork that explore the life of the Latino community and the underrepresentation of Latinos at Duke.

Silvia Serrano and Stephanie Contreras, both Romance Studies lecturers, offered insight into the community research they are doing through Bass Connection’s “Celebra mi herencia” project. It celebrates linguistic diversity and elevates the Spanish reading skills of Durham’s Latino youth. Drawing on the work of three generations of students, Celebra mi herencia is a year-long project that brings together Latino/a families with Duke students to read children’s books—often written by Latina/o and Latino authors—in Spanish.

Contretras shares three core values ​​of the service research project: ethnic identity, motivation to read, and impact (increasing local families’ access to book resources). The group of students and faculty conducted their research through seven student-facilitated Zoom reading sessions with local families, selecting books based on the children’s interests. By applying treatment and control methods, the project helped to increase not only elementary school children’s Spanish proficiency, but also their English proficiency. Most importantly, the group found that the project was about increasing children’s motivation to read and their connections to their ethnic and cultural identity.

After the “Celebria mi herencia” presentation, Spanish 313 students talked about how they have been actively involved in community service in various areas, including La Fiesta Del Pueblo in Raleigh, the largest and most diverse festival of Latin American culture in the Triangle. Following Spanish 313 was the introduction of Two-Way Bridges, a program that works to establish two-way connections between Duke and Durham’s Spanish-speaking, Hispanic and Latino communities. Two-way Bridges aims to uplift local Latino youth through art connections and partners with universities, NGOs and local organizations to create murals, paintings, videography and other collaborative artworks.

Art has always been a vital part of community building because of its emotional appeal to people of shared experience and background. More importantly, community-based art projects can give voice to underrepresented individuals and preserve marginalized cultural spaces that have often been intruded upon and dominated by the mainstream. Raíces, rutas y ritmos, which emerged after Two-Way Bridges, is one such organization and connects North Carolina-based Latina/a/x artists through collective storytelling, exhibitions, events, and collaborations with public and private institutions.

Mexican photographer Alex Cordova then presented, focusing on the themes of connecting North Carolina’s Latino/a/x communities to Latin America and preserving spaces for cultural practices. Cordova shared her experience building the LGBTQ+ Latino community through Lila, the first North Carolina-based non-profit organization supporting equality and rights in queer communities in the Triangle and Latin America. Finally, the presentations were closed with a performance of Afro-Colombian music by musician Daira Quinones.