Watsonville is in the Heart

Humanities, Social Sciences, and Arts

WHO: Ian Hunte Doyle, Julie Fintamag, Jose Maciel, Maia Michelle Mislang, Jacob Press, Janeth Pérez-Quirke, Sharan Sethi, Kathleen Gutierrez (PI, History), Steve McKay (PI, Sociology), Christina Ayson Plank (head curator and director of digital archives, HAVC), Meleia Simon-Reynolds (director of digital archives and educational programming, History)

WHAT: The Watsonville is in the Heart (WIITH) community archive and research initiative preserves and uplifts the stories of the manong and manang generation (Ilokano/Tagalog for "older brother" and “older sister”), the first wave of Filipino settlers to arrive in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. Focused on Filipino families of Watsonville and the greater Pajaro Valley, the archive enshrines the manong and manang, and their descendants’ memories of migration, labor, leisure, and community formation. As a community-engaged research project, WIITH positions second-generation Filipino Americans as expert knowledge producers. In partnership with members of The Tobera Project, a grassroots Watsonville Filipino American history organization, WIITH conducts oral history interviews, archives family photographs and heirlooms, curates exhibitions and creates educational resources and programming.

WHY: WIITH is committed to expanding knowledge of Pajaro Valley Filipino American history; applying community-driven research methodologies; increasing accessibility of historical primary source materials; and centering undergraduate student education and agency.

WHAT'S NEXT: WIITH will investigate transpacific connections between the Pajaro Valley and the Philippines. Our team seeks to explore the memories of the manong and manang generation among communities and family members who stayed behind in the Philippines. This Summer 2024, WIITH will send its first undergraduate researcher, Madeline Bautista Maurer (ENVS, Literature), to conduct an independent research project with institutional partners at Pangasinan Polytechnic College, located in one of the largest manong sending regions in the early 20th century. Our partners have agreed to facilitate meetings between Madeline and local families. In the coming years, WIITH will continue cultivating relationships with partners in the northern Philippines and conduct community-engaged research to explore stories of migration, agrarian life, and kinship. This research will lay the foundation for a traveling pop-up exhibition featuring oral history recordings, archival materials, and contemporary art.

THE WOW: In April 2024, Sowing Seeds: Filipino American Stories from the Pajaro Valley, an art and history exhibition at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, debuted. Sowing Seeds culminates four years of WIITH’s community-engaged research with descendants of the Pajaro Valley manong and manang. Through oral history interviews, archival photographs and heirlooms, and contemporary art, it explores Filipino migration and labor from the 1930s to the present. It also highlights the different ways in which descendants memorialize their family and community history. California-based contemporary artists were invited to engage with community memories and archives to create novel artworks. Featured artists include Minerva Amistoso, Johanna Poethig, Ruth Tabancay, Jenifer Wofford, Ant Lorenzo, Connie Zheng, Sandra Lucille, and Binh Danh. To celebrate Sowing Seeds, WIITH has created a robust suite of events, programming, and educational resources. WIITH held an opening reception on April 12, 2024 attended by over 250 community members and university affiliates. In May, WIITH hosted a mixer for local educators that featured curricular tools and resources including a K-12 lesson plan designed to supplement Sowing Seeds entitled Dear Watsonville: Recording Our Family Histories. Upcoming events include The Humanities Institute’s Night at the Museum event titled From the Archives: Conversations on Filipino America (June 5), a family day at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (July 17), and a poetry reading (August 4) on the final night of the exhibition. In addition, WIITH developed interactive field trips of Sowing Seeds for 6th-grade to college students facilitated by WIITH undergraduate students. Sowing Seeds and the accompanying programming were made possible through generous grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and California Humanities.

In May 2024, WIITH launched its Mapping a Recuperative History of Filipino Farmworkers in the Pajaro Valley project. With funding from the University of California Humanities Research Institute, WIITH collaborated with UC Berkeley to create two multimedia digital maps. One map traces the events of the 1930 anti-Filipino Watsonville race riot and its transnational reverberations. An additional map visualizes spaces of Filipino community formation in the Pajaro Valley over the 20th century. Through community-engaged fieldwork, archival research, and analysis of newspaper reporting, oral history interviews, and film footage, the WIITH team uncovered histories of Filipino resilience including diasporic critiques of white supremacy and US colonialism in the wake of the 1930 riot and murder of Fermin Tobera, a 22-year-old Filipino farm worker who lived in the Pajaro Valley.

WIITH’s undergraduate researchers supported and led all of WIITH’s efforts to curate Sowing Seeds, develop public programming and educational resources, and create digital maps. In addition, WIITH’s students are working on their own research and creative projects. These include designing lesson plans, curating digital exhibits, collecting visitor data on and evaluating WIITH educational programs, writing an academic essay, and creating a zine.

Undergraduate Student Team:

Ian Hunte Doyle – Major: History

Julie Fintamag – Major: History

Jose Maciel – Major: Critical Race and Ethnic Studies

Maia Michelle Mislang – Major: History

Jacob Press – Major: History; Minor: History of Art and Visual Culture

Janeth Pérez-Quirke – Major: Education, Literature, and Latin American & Latino Studies (LALS)

Sharan Sethi – Major: Literature and Philosophy; Minor: History