Latino Americans: PBS Documentary

My first time taking the tram! I was so excited - it had such beautiful views of the surrounding area.

This evening I had the opportunity to attend a screening of the PBS documentary Latino Americans. A group from Linfield and I made our way via streetcar, shuttle bus, and tram to an OHSU auditorium where we were greeted with food and drink. My goodness, the food! (I know, I know, always with the food.) They served tamales, beans (ugh they were DELICIOUS), rice, chips, and salsa. There were alcoholic beverages available, but I obviously opted for horchata.

The screening showed about 45 minutes of excerpts from the documentary. I encourage you to look it up on PBS.com and watch it. It brought up much of the history and many of the struggles faced by Latino Americans through the last century, from the conception of Texanos to the picketing of East Los Angeles schools. It highlighted a few persons of interest including Juan Seguin, a Texano and former mayor of San Antonio; Guy Gabaldon, a soldier credited with over 1,500 Japanese prisoners captured; Herman Badillo, a former U.S. Congressman; and Sal Castro, a former Los Angeles school teacher. These people and their struggles were news to my peers and I!

We had a quick debrief/discussion after the film (over flan and coffee, nonetheless) and realized that we do not know a lot about our history as Latino Americans. We each shared a part of the screening that stood out most and talked about parts that we wished the documentary would have expanded upon. For instance, there was a brief segment about the rise of Latin music and stars such as Gloria Estefan and Ricki Martin. We wanted to know more about how that came to be - the struggles they faced in producing songs, marketing songs, and dealing with their increasing fame.

We discussed the changes we wanted to see in society and talked about certain changes we felt were possible within Linfield to accommodate and welcome underrepresented students. We talked about how many students felt cut off once reaching the nursing campus because the Latin@ group was not as strong as the one back in McMinnville and talked about the changes the one in McMinnville was experiencing. We have come up with some ideas as to how we want to expand and incorporate nursing into the club and I am very excited to implement them this year.

As we were heading back, I felt extremely lucky to have had the opportunity to see the film and be able to discuss it with a group of people that was not only concerned by what we saw, but wanted to act on our collective concern.

One of my friends sent this to me in an email once and I think it definitely applied to our discussion tonight: Unity makes us stronger- La union hace la fuerza.

Tram by nightfall. Still beautiful.