Listening for Latina/o Voices: Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez

Public Historians at Work

For journalist and oral historian Dr. Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, her mission is clear: to record the experiences and contributions of Latinas and Latinos within the United States. As she explains to Dr. Josiah Rector during their conversation on March 2nd, 2021, for too long have her people been underrepresented within primary sources and scholarship. After noticing this lacuna in histories about WWII especially, Dr. Rivas-Rodriguez set out to establish the Voces Oral History Center at UT Austin in 1999.

Since then, this project has captured 1,250+ oral histories on themes like political and civic engagement, Vietnam, and now, the COVID-19 pandemic. Along the way, Dr. Rivas-Rodriguez has learned valuable lessons about the process and technology for recording histories as well as how to best involve the public in this work.
Check out the Voces Oral History Center: https://voces.lib.utexas.edu/
See also the Voces YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSJD8CV0-mI

The Center for Public History at the University of Houston. https://uh.edu/class/cph