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'Nuestras Historias' Explores Richmond's Latino Community

Courtesy of Wanda Hernandez

 

 

There are approximately 100,000 Latinos in the Richmond area, and across the state the population has skyrocketed in recent years. This summer, a museum in Richmond is exploring the Latino experience with a new exhibit.

 

 

Last year, for the first time, Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond held a special ceremony for its Latino graduates. Parents in the audience, many of whom were celebrating the first college graduate in their families, heard this poem by student Vei Citlalin Bobadilla.

“We were born under the light of a split sun.

The duality of which will never let us sleep undone…

We sought out uncharted territory. The college experience.

And just like that we left our homes with hope and notebooks in hands.

We took our abuelos blessings and made a new life in no-man’s land.”  

That story and and a recording of the poem will be one of many featured as part of an exhibit this summer at Richmond’s Valentine Museum.

The exhibit, “NuestrasHistorias” is part of a larger effort to engage the city’s Latino community. A highlight of the show will be audio, interviews with Richmonders collected by curator Wanda Hernandez.

“I love hearing stories of how people got here and then of course I think it’s equally if not more important to understand why they’re here, this push pull factor between the United States and the Latin American countries,” says Hernandez.

When she was listening to people’s stories and pulling together the exhibit, she imagined the audience as someone like herself. Hernandez grew up in Northern Virginia, but her parents are Guatemalan.

“Because you live in this awesome, awesome border world within yourself of going home and having beans and tortillas. But then also know how to navigate this Anglo-American world,” Hernandez says. “That’s who I was really targeting, someone who could dip their foot in El-Salvador and also dip it in Richmond.”

And increasingly, that’s a lot of people. Census projections from University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center show Virginia’s Hispanic population is expected to top a million by 2020.

That’s spurred by growth in Northern Virginia, but also in Richmond and its suburbs, the Norfolk region and smaller cities like Charlottesville, Roanoke and Lynchburg.  

Despite the rapid growth, Latinos are still underrepresented in government. Of Virginia’s 140 state lawmakers, only one is Latino.

For the project, curator Wanda Hernandez interviewed Jaime  Areizaga-Soto, who is Virginia’s Deputy Secretary of Veterans and Defense Affairs. He was born in Puerto Rico.

 

“Nobody should for a second should think that because we come from somewhere else or that because we have either an ancestral home, a homeland or something else, that means in any way a divided loyalty or a less loyalty to Virginia,” says Areizaga-Soto in exhibit audio. “As I tell many people ‘Yeah, some people are Virginians by birth. But some of us are by choice.’ And I can’t wait for the day we have a hispanic governor of Virginia.”

The exhibit opens July 27 and will run through April.

This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association

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