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Materials collected as part of the Boulder County Latino History Project, including oral history interview materials and booklets of stories. Master backup disc of the Boulder County Latino History Project's website is also included in the collection.

Preparations, transcripts, newspaper clippings and other materials related to oral history interviews conducted by the Boulder County Latino History Project for participants with last names starting with D-L. Materials include Hispanic History of Longmont by Oli Duncan.

Preparations, transcripts and other materials related to oral history interviews conducted by the Boulder County Latino History Project for participants with last names starting with S-V. Also includes Boulder County Assessor’s records for Pete Saragosa (original Pedro Zaragoza) and Francisco “Frank” Valenzuela obituary.

Photocopies of parts of two booklets with photos and words by children who participated in the 1977 and 1978 St. Vrain Valley Summer Migrant Education Program, co-sponsored by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. The 1977 publication is titled “Como Ellos Lo Ven: Migrant Children Look at Life in Longmont.” The 1978 publication is titled “Segundo Mirada: Migrant Children Look at Life in Longmont.”

Questionnaires filled out by interns of the Boulder County Latino History Project, summer 2013, submitted in summer 2014 about their families and upbringing.

A series of presentations on Latino experience and culture organized by Frasier Meadows staff and residents.

Oli Duncan is a native of Longmont. Three of her grandparents were from New Mexico and one from Texas. They came to Boulder in the 1920s as sharecroppers. Her father was a coal miner, and was active in the union. She went to high school in Boulder, married, and had three children. When her husband died in 1988, she went to New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas, studied English, and became an English teacher. She started a project to do interviews with Latinos in the 1980s after two unarmed Latino youths were killed by police in Longmont. She talks about discrimination that existed in Boulder County for her parents (such as “whites only” signs), ethnic identity, the importance of education, and the way people mispronounce Hispanic names. She also discusses various terms that are used for people of Hispanic origin and explains that she defines herself first and foremost as an American.

Irle Hernandez was born and grew up in Louisville, Colorado, with a mother who had come from Mexico. At the time of the interview, she was between her junior and senior years at Centaurus High School, and had just participated in the Pre-Collegiate Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In her interview she describes in detail her father's arrest and probable deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and her feelings about visiting him and writing to him in jail. She also talks about her education, the support of her teachers, her career plans, and what it is like to be Hispanic in the United States at the time of the interview.

Linda Arroyo-Holmstrom, born in 1956, is a partially retired teacher. Her Arroyo grandparents came from Mexico to the Trinidad, Colorado, area as coal miners; then moved to Lafayette to work that area's mines when the southern mines closed. Her other grandparents, who were from Northern New Mexico families that had lived in the United States for many generations, moved to Aguilar as coal miners. Her parents moved to Boulder in 1945, where they bought a house in the Gove-Gross area. She talks about her experience of growing up in Boulder alongside a very close extended family. She reflects on her parents' desire for their children to speak English rather than Spanish. She describes her experiences at Casey Middle School, Boulder High and the University of Colorado at Boulder, discussing the support that she received from MAP (Migrant Action Program). She touches on her teaching career, important role models in her life, and her current work of mentoring the teachers and students in the AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) program in the Boulder Valley School District.

This interview begins by covering Virginia Alvarez's early life in northeast Boulder County where her parents were farm workers. Her parents moved to Boulder County from Mexico in 1929, before Virginia was born in 1942. When she was a child, they did farm work in the Longmont area, moving around from one farm to another annually. Virginia talks about feeling isolated when she was very young because there were not many Hispanics in her elementary school and initially she did not speak much English. She went to school in Longmont from first grade through high school, and she remarks on the dynamics between Hispanics and Anglos in the schools, which were, for the most part, lacking conflict. IBM brought in many new Latinos in the 1960s. She describes her family as being poor, too poor for her to join clubs at Longmont High School, for example. She worked for an OEO program with senior citizens in the 1960s throughout Boulder County. She learned her life philosophy from her family, which is to respect people and to do whatever job you're doing the best that you can. Virginia says she sees less division now between Anglos and Hispanics in Longmont, in part because Hispanics have opened businesses that non-Hispanics also support, and in part becasue Hispanic children are getting educations that are opening doors for them.

Carmen Ramirez, born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1960, is the program coordinator for the Community Relations Division of the City of Longmont. She also has been the head of the Latino Task Force of Boulder County and an active committee member of the Boulder County Latino History Project. She speaks about her early childhood with her grandparents and aunt in El Paso, and about her difficult teen years, when she lived on the streets. She started college but dropped out after marrying and having a child whom she had to support. Later she married Ray Ramirez and moved to Longmont. She talks about the importance of family and education in her life, her current job as a cultural interpreter and mediator, and her participation in the Next Generation Leadership Program, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. She describes forms of racism and ethnic discrimination experienced in Texas and Colorado and speaks warmly of the support given to her by her husband.

Arthur Perez, an executive chef who grew up in Louisville, Colorado, talks about the challenges he confronted while growing up as one of very few Latino families in the community. His maternal grandparents were both chefs. His father was a migrant worker from Texas; his mother, whose family moved from Erie to the Goss-Grove neighborhood in Boulder in the 1950s, worked at Valley Lab. His parents moved to Louisville in 1975. He discusses the importance of food in his family's activities, his strong sense of pride in being Latino, the importance of family and religion in his culture, and contributions of Hispanics to Boulder County. He gives examples of racism that he has encountered, talks about how not having learned Spanish at home has affected him, and reflects on the pull of gangs for some Latino youth.

Sonia Marquez is the director for Northern Colorado of CIRC (Colorado Immigration Rights Coalition) and has set up youth groups in Longmont (LYFE) and Lafayette). Her maternal grandparents came to Longmont around 1932 from northern New Mexico in a covered wagon; her grandfather, John Borrego, worked in the fields and then in meat packing. Her father came from Chihuahua, Mexico, when he was 19 and worked on farms and in construction. She describes discrimination experienced by relatives in Longmont during the 1930s and later, including signs in businesses that stated that dogs and Mexicans were not welcome. Sonia talks about her difficulties going through school in Longmont as a Latina, her college education, and being fired from the Longmont Youth Center, which was protested by many of the center's clients. She speaks of the work that CIRC does, especially around immigration reform, her passion for empowering young people, and the importance of perserving people's stories and culture.