Q&A: Latina/o and Latin American Studies
The Latina/o and Latin American Studies (LLAS) program is one of ten featured on The Signal’s 10 Most Fascinating People of UHCL of 2019 list.
Read The Signal’s Q&A with Desdamona Rios, associate professor of social psychology and director of LLAS, below and see the complete list here.
Q: Can you tell us a bit about the Latina/o and Latin American Studies program?
A: The Latinx and Latin American Studies minor is fairly new. We are now in our fifth year of offering courses across the [Human Sciences and Humanities] curriculum. Courses under the LLAS rubric include anthropology, art history, history, psychology, sociology, and Spanish. To earn the minor, students only have to take 15 semester credit hours!
Q: What is the importance of having the LLAS program, and why should students enroll?
A: I just read a statistic tweeted by Mark Jones, the chair of Latin American Studies and fellow in political science/Baker Institute at Rice University. He tweeted that Houston is 45% Latinx, yet there is only 1 Latinx person on the Houston City Council, and that is since 1993!
Psychology researchers tell us that people imagine their possibilities in the world based on information available to them. Likewise, we imagine capabilities of other groups based on information available about them. It is remarkable how many UHCL students don’t know about Chicana/o history, the Chicana/o Civil Rights movement, or general contributions made by various Latinx groups (Mexican, Puerto Rican, Central American) to the United States. The general understanding is Latinxs are the perpetual foreigner (usually undocumented), a criminal/gang member or maid, or the romanticized Latina/o (e.g. only focusing on cuisine and/or decontextualized cultural practices).
Few people – including Latinx people – know about the larger political and social history of Latinx people in the United States, and the consequences of that history. Therefore, it is difficult to imagine ourselves as leaders if we don’t know our own history, and others are likely to overlook us for leadership positions if they also don’t know Latinx history.
Q: What are some achievements or challenges LLAS has had this year?
A: We are really proud about launching our inaugural themed Hispanic Heritage Month. Our theme was “Using Art for Social Justice.” We invited prominent and acclaimed Houston-based artists Jesse Rodriguez and Delilah Montoya, as well as a rising star, Stalina Villareal. We carefully selected these artists because they represent the experiences of many UHCL Latinx first-generation students, and their work has been recognized nationally. Thus, providing exemplars our students can identify with.
We also launched our first student art contest, which complemented the speakers series. We were hoping for one or two submissions, and we got 11 wonderful pieces of original art! The winner was Lily Alonso, who created a piece titled “There Be No Shelter Here.”
Challenges we continue to face is lack of institutional support. Our dean, Rick Short, has been amazing in both his presence and providing resources for us to roll out our programs. However, we are still considered a program, which means we have no dedicated faculty or budget for the program. We know an institution takes a program seriously when they provide dedicated support to the program. Otherwise, it is an option, as is the case with many “diversity” initiatives.
For example, diversity courses are considered an elective, not core curriculum. For people of color or other marginalized groups of people (e.g. people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ community), we don’t “elect” to be who we are. Therefore, the fact that learning about the contributions of people of color and other marginalized communities is an option – and not part of the core academic canon – is terribly problematic. Institutions can demonstrate their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion by treating area-studies as seriously as they do English, Psychology, Biology, and other “core” curricula.
Latinx faculty are also not being invited to the table for the initiatives being developed to serve Latinx students at UHCL. The Latinx faculty and other faculty who are trained in area studies have a certain critical consciousness as a result of that training. Without those voices in the room, the one-size-fits-all approach and/or initiatives driven unintentionally by stereotypes are likely to emerge. We are not quite sure why we aren’t being invited in spite of ongoing efforts to lend a hand.
Q: What are some goals the LLAS team has for 2020?
A: Our goals for 2020 include instituting traditions such as our annual art contest and Hispanic Heritage Months. We are also working on putting together an advisory board of prominent Latinx people in Houston. We hope to include activists working at the grassroots level, educators, people in the private sector, and politics.
We are also working on increasing the number of students signing up for the minor. Currently, we only have a handful. This means we have to work on raising the visibility of our program. We could definitely use more institutional support on that front. Finally, we hope to be invited to the decision-making team on how to better serve our Latinx students.
Q: Is there anything you would like our readers to know?
A: Latinx history is United States history. It’s really important that we begin to integrate this information not only as dedicated classes on the topic but also in the core curriculum. United States history is the story of many groups of people building this country. When people know their history, they feel empowered to be better citizens, as well as to be proactive in lifting up their communities.
It is also important to understand that when we say we endorse “diversity” this includes inviting people to the table and incorporating their unique perspectives into decision making processes and outcomes. Simply socializing people of color into the likeness of the majority is not progress; it is the perpetuation of a colonialist agenda that does not value the perspectives of marginalized groups.
