Pride on Display
Latinos exhibit their past, present at historical museum
WORCESTER - From historical newspaper clippings and traditional instruments to live music and oral histories, the Latino presence in the city was on display Friday night at the Neighborhoods of Worcester exhibit at the Worcester Historical Museum.
“With the Irish, Italians, African-Americans and other groups, people will say, ‘this is your history;’ oftentimes people don’t get to tell their own stories,” said Maritza Cruz, a Boricua/Puerto-Rican American. “So we get to do this.”
The one-night exhibit was what William Wallace, executive director of the historical museum, called an “interim report” on the Latino History Project of Worcester, a five-year undertaking to document the Latino presence in the city. To accomplish this, members of a steering committee have worked with scholars at the historical museum, the Worcester Public Library, professors, teachers and students at local colleges and high schools and, perhaps most importantly, the Latino community to collect artifacts and stories documenting the community’s history in Worcester.
The resulting display consisted of four primary parts; each reflecting the idea of “neighborhood.”
Artifacts represented the 21 countries and their cultures that are part of the Latino diaspora, Ms. Cruz explained.
Video screens displayed residents providing oral histories and photographs from some of the major Latino areas in the city, such as Bell Hill, Main South, Plumley Village and Great Brook Valley.
Large panels presented a narrative timeline of the Latino arrival and impact in Worcester - from a Cuban who entered College of the Holy Cross in 1844 to the emergence of the community with political and community leaders in the 1970s and beyond.
And reflecting the present presence, Bancroft School Spanish in a Global Context students filmed oral histories from exhibit attendees such as Francisco Rivera, a Puerto Rican resident who said he had just recently moved to Southbridge in part because of the current debt crisis in the U.S. territory.
Meanwhile, the collection - which will ultimately form a traveling exhibit - and the party continued to grow on the second floor of the museum as the evening went on.
“It’s packed, the music is great, we have such a diverse crowd; it shows it’s not just about Latinos, it’s that other people are interested in our culture and that we’re vibrant and contributing,” said Hilda Ramirez, a member of the history project’s steering committee. She said they already told Mr. Wallace that "we don’t want the little room, we need the whole museum next time for a day.”