by Samantha N., Latinx Services Librarian | Community Engagement Office
What is Nuestras Raíces?
Simply put, in English, it means “our roots.” It is also the name of Pima County Public Library's affinity team of library staff that celebrates and honors the culture, voice, and linguistic heritage of our Latinx and Spanish-speaking communities in Pima County.
What do we do?
We conduct outreach in the community so people who are part of nuestras comunidades know about all the amazing resources that our library system has to offer. We table at resource fairs and community events. We host programs like El Grito for Mes de la Cultura. This year, El Grito will be held on Wednesday, September 16 from 4:30 to 6:30 at Richard Elías-Mission Library (3770 S. Mission Rd.).
We also organize the library’s stage at the Tucson Festival of Books which hosts 10 author panels over 2 days featuring Latine, Indigenous, and BIPOC writers and creatives.
How long has Nuestras Raíces existed?
The Nuestras Raíces team is the oldest of the library’s affinity teams. In fact, the team has existed since the 1970s, if not earlier, though it was not always called Nuestras Raíces. It started out as the “Services to the Spanish Speaking” committee.
The founding of the Services to the Spanish Speaking committee was not coincidence, and it reflected broader movements happening at the time. The Chicano/Mexican-American Civil Rights movement was active in the 1960s and 1970s. REFORMA, the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish Speaking, was founded in 1971. Right here at the University of Arizona, a program called GLISA was formed. It stood for the Graduate Library Institute for Spanish Speaking Americans and ran from 1975 to 1980. A version of that program still exists today and is known as Knowledge River. Clearly, Tucson has always been at the forefront of libraries advocating for services to Latine and Spanish-speaking communities. In fact, one of the founders of REFORMA, Dr. Arnulfo Trejo, was a professor at the University of Arizona who helped establish the GLISA program.
It was graduates from the GLISA program who made up the Services to the Spanish Speaking committee in those early days. “I learned from a lot of those Glisistas,” said Anna Sanchez, a retired librarian who was part of the committee in its early days, though not a founding member. (By Glisistas, she means GLISA program graduates.).
“I started as a library page in 1978 and you know I saw all of these Latino librarians that, I never even imagined that we had so many, and they were always working on programs or ordering materials and just to hear them talk and how focused on our communities they were just inspired me.”
Sanchez described many of the wonderful things the committee did. They hosted puppet shows for the community, something traditional in Mexico. They started doing Bilingual Storytimes, which was new for the library system at the time (we now offer numerous Bilingual Storytimes at various branches!). They created and distributed a fotonovela titled “Leer Es Poder Con La Familia Sabia” that highlighted the library’s resources. The library received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the committee created a Museo de la Gente.
“A lot of our folks, their families have been here for generations,” Sanchez said. “Some of the families are founders of Tucson, and so they brought their artifacts, their prized possessions from the family and there was an exhibit at El Rio, at the El Rio Neighborhood Center, and then there was something at Armory Park. I remember, too, when some folks also brought their artifacts and I mean it was just a huge cultural celebration. It was just amazing. From way back, late 70s, this library has worked to serve our BIPOC community.”
Back then, Sam Lena- South Tucson Library didn’t exist as we know it today. Instead, the library had a trailer stationed in the parking lot of a tire shop in South Tucson on 29th St. “They would have movie nights. We’d bring a screen and a projector and they would show movies in Spanish for the community and tons of families would come out to see the movies and then the kids could peruse through the books and check out books for themselves.”
Sanchez’s passion for this work is clear. In fact, it was she, along with fellow librarian Helen Gutierrez, who founded the Nuestras Raíces festival in the Jácome Plaza in front of the Joel D. Valdez Main Library. This festival is the precursor to the current Nuestras Raíces stage at the Tucson Festival of Books.
Sanchez and Gutierrez got the idea to establish the festival after attending the Border Book Festival in Las Cruces, N.M.
“Seeing for the first time this literary festival that was specifically geared to our Latino community, meeting all of these authors who are generating these works about our history, and it was just so inspiring,” Sanchez said. “[At the Border Book Festival] we had Sandra Cisneros right there on the plaza just like if she was our best buddy.”
The first year of the Nuestras Raíces festival, 2004, featured renowned author Luis Alberto Urrea discussing his new (at the time) book The Devil’s Highway, among other authors and storytellers. It included screenings of shorts and films by Latine filmmakers. There was also a mercado, a Tamal Fiesta, and art by David Tineo. Another year, the committee organized an homenaje to Lalo Guerrero, a musician from our very own Tucson, at the Fox Theater. (Guerrero even sang about Tucson’s Barrio Viejo, where he was born, in one of his songs). Check out this great book from the UA Press: Lalo: My Life and Music.
“We knew that there was a whole lot of history and talent in our community and we wanted to showcase that,” Sanchez said. “It was a lot of serendipity. I think the community was just ready for something like this. It just all came together.”
The decision to name the festival Nuestras Raíces was grounded in the festival’s mission.
“I just started thinking about what it was that we were trying to do, and we were trying to highlight our roots in this community, to showcase that we have been here longer than many of our leaders... and it just hit me: it’s our roots, Nuestras Raíces, so that’s how we named the festival.”
Eventually, the Services to the Spanish Speaking committee was renamed Nuestras Raíces after the festival, and the festival was folded into the Tucson Festival of Books. Mark your calendars! The 2027 Tucson Festival of Books will take place on March 13 and 14.
Approximately 50 years after the committee was founded, even though the name is different, we still share a lot of the same goals.
Sanchez said that one of her dreams for Nuestras Raíces and the community is to “keep focusing on our youth and just keep raising them up so that they can dream and understand that you know they can do whatever it is they set their minds to. They need to really look to the possibilities. I think we can help them do that.”
She also noted the importance of supporting our multigenerational community. “We’re such a multigenerational community, we take care of everyone from birth to death and I think as a library we need to think about ways to do multigenerational planning, because our kids are losing that connection with the elders. And that is such an important thing for keeping our history alive. For them, understanding that we are what we are because of the folks that came before us.”
It is an honor to continue the work of advocacy and celebrating our roots started by the passionate librarians who created this committee, as well as all the librarians who shaped the committee into what it is today. To learn more about our team and keep up with our book lists, blog posts, and events, you can visit our website or follow us on Instagram or Facebook.
We look forward to celebrating nuestra cultura with you!
