UT Collections
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Aurora Estrada Orozco and her four daughters - María Teresa, Sylvia, Irma, and Cynthia - have been active in the fields of art, politics, journalism, and historical research. The collection contains letters, articles, press releases, clippings, handbills and posters relating to Chicano student activism at the University of Texas and elsewhere, Chicano cultural events in Austin, Texas, feminist issues, and political campaigns. Several issues of Para la gente, and Austin paper edited by Irma which supported the Raza Unida Party, are included.
Civil Rights, Segregation, and Apartheid, Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, Gender and Sexuality1976-present -
Consists of 59 original photonegatives and corresponding prints showing Mexican American communities in South Texas. The photographs were taken in June, 1941. Images show housing, schools, water supplies, sanitation, and construction techniques in several South Texas counties. Includes pictures of winter housing of migrant agricultural workers, and the small communities of Concepcion, El Sauz, La Grulla, Las Cuevitas, Los Ojuelos, San Ygnacio, and others. The photographs are said to have been taken with a borrowed Kodak as part of a report on conditions in South Texas for the U. S. Department of Agriculture.
1941 -
In 1988, the Political Asylum Project of Austin / Proyecto Asilo Político de Austin (PAPA) began with two employees and by 2003, PAPA had grown into a staff of ten, including four attorneys. Its original mission was to promote the human rights of refugees and immigrants in Central Texas through legal representation, public education, and advocacy. Its mission today is to ensure that asylum seekers and immigrants in Central Texas continue to receive the resources and advocacy that they need to stay in the United States. The organization also provides education for other advocates and for law enforcement on legal and social issues related to immigration issues and political asylum. The collection includes documents from PAPA’s founding in the 1980s as well as PAPA publications and outreach documents from 1990-2001.
1987-2002 -
Bob Sanchez was a civil rights activist and attorney who focused his work on the rights of Mexican Americans. He helped to found the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and Texas Rural Legal Aid during the 1940s. Subsequently, Sanchez became involved with the American GI Forum, the National Council of La Raza and various migrant farm worker organizations. Sanchez was also active in Democratic political campaigns at the local, state and national levels, supporting candidates whose platforms on social justice and the civil rights of Mexican Americanss corresponded to the needs of Mexican Americans as Sanchez saw them. The collection includes materials from each of Sanchez's organizational involvements, his written works, collected materials of interest to him and photographs corresponding to various events sponsored by his organizations.
1921-2005 -
Raúl Valdez was known for murals painted in Austin, Texas, with Mexican American themes. He was also active in veterans' groups supporting peace in Central America. Slides in this collection show Valdez' murals, paintings and painted sculptures with themes that emphasize Chicano heritage and human rights.
1976-1984 -
The Raza Unida Party (RUP) was a political party founded in Crystal City, Texas, in 1970. As an alternative to the two-party system in Texas, RUP sought social, economic, and political self-determination for Chicanos, other minorities, and the disenfranchised through local and, later, state politics. Although RUP saw some success in local politics, and particularly in counties with large Chicano populations, it never successfully entered state electoral politics as a strong player. Nevertheless, RUP served as a forum for expressing the political views and priorities of Chicanos throughout the state. Materials in the collection include documents related to the founding of the Party, campaign ephemera from elections around Texas and related audio-visual materials.
1969-1979 -
The Rethinking Power and Resistance: Gender and Human Rights from Texas to the Transnational Americas Conference Footage collection contains edited footage from the 2012 conference, including several panel discussions, a radio segment aired on KOOP 91.7 fm, and a post-conference promotional video produced by Andrea Zarate. The conference was sponsored by the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Texas at Austin as part of its Embrey Women’s Human Rights Initiative. The Rethinking Power & Resistance organizing committee envisioned a conference that would bring organizers and activist scholars together and foment collaborative work beyond the conference. As such, the conference centered around three community-university collaborations with the Transgender Jail Project, Conspire Theatre, and the Polochic Evictions Counteraction and foregrounded the themes of arts as advocacy, pedagogies of alliance and resisting criminalization. Videos are in English, Spanish and Portuguese, with some videos featuring consecutive translation into English.
Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, Gender and Sexuality, Immigrant Rights, Indigenous Rights, Prisoner Rights2012-2013 -
The collection of writer, historian, and professor Ricardo Romo contains correspondence, manuscripts, research papers, publications, clippings, programs, and photographs related to his activities and interests, such as East Los Angeles: History of a Barrio and New Directions in Chicano Scholarship, Mexican American athletes, mural painting, immigration and urbanization, discrimination in education and employment, Mexican American theater, and prominent Mexican Americans.
1967-present -
Silkscreens, lithographs, and watercolors comprise this collection of art prints by Mexican American and other artists produced at Self-Help Graphics studio in Los Angeles, CA, and Coronado Studios in Austin, TX.
1981-present -
Houston-based commercial litigation lawyer, Scott J. Atlas, collected the materials that comprise this collection through his pro bono work as a defense attorney for the capital murder trial of Ricardo Aldape Guerra. Guerra was an undocumented immigrant from Mexico wrongfully held on Texas Death Row for fifteen years before being exonerated in 1997. In 1982, twenty-year-old Guerra was arrested and indicted for the capital murder of Houston police officer J.D. Harris, despite all physical evidence pointing to Roberto Carrasco Flores as the one who shot and killed Officer Harris. Harris County prosecutors appealed to heightened anti-Mexican immigrant hostility in Houston by repeatedly emphasizing Guerra's undocumented immigration status to the jury in order to help secure his conviction and death sentence. After being released in 1997, Guerra returned to Mexico a national hero for overcoming what many Mexicans thought to be an unjust Texas legal system intent on punishing undocumented Mexican immigrants. The Scott J. Atlas Collection of Legal Materials on the Ricardo Aldape Guerra Case consists of digitized copies of all Atlas' related case files as well as audiovisual recordings of press coverage of the Aldape case. All the digitized case files are available for viewing online.
1982-2005
