[title slide]
INTERVIEWER: Thank you for being here with us today. We are just going
to start off with some very easy questions. So, of course, what is your name, birthday, and birth place?OLIVENCIA: Oh, I have to tell you the truth. Okay. [laughter] My name is Nelia
Olivencia. I was born in Harlem, New York. I was born on June 21, 1941.INTERVIEWER: What are your parents' names, their birthdates, and their birthplaces?
OLIVENCIA: My father's name is Eurides Olivencia, and he was born in Las
Marías, Puerto Rico. I think he was born on July 9, 1913. And my mother, her name is Marcelina Nieves, known as Celine Nieves, and she was born on April 28, 00:01:001912, in Corozal, Puerto Rico.INTERVIEWER: Okay. Do you have any siblings and if so, what are their
names, birthdates, and birthplaces?OLIVENCIA: I have my older brother, his name is Joseph. He was named after
my grandfather, but everybody calls him "Pepi" for "Pepito Olivencia" and he was born on April 13, 1938, I think. I didn't expect these questions. I have to think about it. Then I have a twin brother and he was born in, well, he was born on the same day I was in the same place that I was. Then I have a younger sister, Maureen Olivencia, and she was born on April 18, 1945. She's 00:02:00coming to visit me in a couple of weeks.INTERVIEWER: Wow, that's awesome. Alright, now we'll get to some tougher questions.
OLIVIENCIA: Those were tough! [laughter] I had to think about them.
INTERVIEWER: These questions are about your Latina identity. How do you
identify yourself? Do the words Latina, Chicana, or Puertorriqueña fit into your identity at all?OLIVENCIA: Yeah. It depends who I am with, you know? So, I usually start
with Latina or Hispana. Hispana is, for some people, is the least threatening one. It could [inaudible]. Then a Latina or Hispana would mean, people would ask, "¿Tu eres Hispana? ¿Eres Latina?" to find out if you spoke Spanish. That 00:03:00was what I found in the subway, people come up to you and ask you that. And so, I never thought much about it, it wasn't the political identity, it was a way of people trying to identify if you could speak Spanish. Then my Puerto Rican identity came into being I guess when discrimination started. Which was very early on, probably five or six years old, when people would start calling me names and treated my brothers and sisters the same way, and I remember people yelling all the way home and calling us names, and so that is when I started developing my Puerto Rican identity.INTERVIEWER: So, did your identity influence the type of activism that you
partake in, that you have involved yourself in over the years? If so, how?OLIVENCIA: Yes, well, it's my identity. I had to fight to be who I was and
00:04:00part of what you can turn around, rejection, turn it around, from a negative into a positive. And what I did was I turned it around and since people rejected me for who I was, I took great pride in being who I was. And in part it comes from my mother and father, because I would come home and I'd tell them what people would tell us, and she said, "Always be proud of who you are. Siempre. . . debes este tener orgullo; orgullo de lo que eres." She would always tell us that. But it was hard when you were five, in a way, to even know what "orgullo" meant. Later on, I took it to heart. It was their problem, not mine, if they didn't accept it. I just learned how to live by myself. Fourth 00:05:00grade it got too hard to deal with people, so I withdrew, and I would go to the playground and stand in the corner by myself. And I said, I don't need to be put down. So, I said, "I can survive on my own and I'd rather be alone then to always have to measure people and know whether they're going to like me or not like me or accept me or reject me." So, I learned to stand alone at that age. It was hard the first week or so, but then it got easier. So, I got used to being on my own and standing on my own.INTERVIEWER: Wow, that's amazing. So, what were the most imperative issues
facing the Latina community when you first began to be active and how did you address those issues?OLIVENCIA: I don't know at which level you're talking about because as a child,
00:06:00you interact with the world in an emotional way than you do later on in life. So, as a child, I remember defending my sister and brothers. More my sister, you know, because my brother could take care of himself. I remember defending her. She went to kindergarten in a public school. We went to Catholic school. Which we did not have to pay for because if we did, we would not be able to afford it. So she went to kindergarten, and every day that she wanted to use the bathroom, she had to pay money. People would, what would they call it, blackmail her, and if she did not have a nickel, a penny, or whatever they wanted, they would not let her use the bathroom. She was smaller than the other kids. We did not know about that, we found about it later and my mother immediately took her out of that school. But she was small for her size. She 00:07:00was always petite, so that was something I always tried to defend her and try to protect her. But I forgot the gist of your question, which was. . . how did I develop. . .? Go ahead, tell me again.INTEVIEWER: What were the most imperative issues facing the Latino community
when you first started getting involved in activism?OLIVENCIA: It could be at different levels. People wouldn't rent to us, okay,
that was one. I remember my parents being turned down for apartments. Later on, when I applied for jobs, I remember in fact being turned down for jobs. It was . . . I'm trying to think of different things. Right now I'm sort of blank on some of them because later on I became involved in. . . There were a lot of gangs in the neighborhood in which I grew up in. It helped that my brother was 00:08:00involved in gangs and they kept changing. People would leave us alone and not harass me. Since I always was going out, I would never be threatened to stay in the house. I would always go out there and face the world, whatever it took. I'm blank on the early part. I'm a little better at the teenage and in college.INTERVIEWER: So, I guess would you say that in college you really started
getting involved in activism in the community, or when would you say?OLIVENCIA: I would say probably college because what I did was, I became
resentful and I hated people. And I didn't want anything to do with them. I was one of the first Puerto Ricans. . . probably not the first, but one of the first 00:09:00of many, who knows, but when I went to Brooklyn College, which is part of the City University of New York, I was one of the eleven Puerto Ricans or so that was at the college. There were about 21 of us, African Americans and Puerto Ricans, and we stayed together at the same table. And I developed a very. . . I became very. . . I don't like words like "loner". [laughter] Those are all criminals. I was used to being alone so then I turned against . . . I was very Anti-American. I was very pro-Puerto Rican, very pro-Black. I tried to join a Black sorority, and I belonged to NAACP, because, there were no Latin 00:10:00societies. There was nothing for Latins, so I joined that group and I went to Black fraternity dances and I went to the Black sorority. I did go to the first few meetings, but I didn't have any money either so I couldn't join any even if I wanted to. But I hung around with them. So, then I became much more aware of my own history, but that was on my own. There were no courses, nothing. Yet now, Brooklyn College has one of the best Puerto Rican studies programs in the country. But there was nothing when I was there.INTERVIEWER: How did those early experiences in college and with groups like
the NAACP shape your goals both personally and professionally?OLIVENCIA: I was not going to be racist. I knew what it was like to have people
00:11:00be racist against me. I said, you can't be a hypocrite. You can't say that people are being racist against me and then turn around and be racist to somebody else. I made a point of always stepping into the point of defending people who were discriminated against. In my younger days when I was a teenager, there were gangs all over around me, and they had all their turfs. One of them was my brother's gang, which was Puerto Rican. We moved into the wrong neighborhood; it was an Italian neighborhood. That was when I was fifteen. They had a gang called [inaudible], which was a training ground for the mafia. They were like small little beginners. And so, I lived in the building in which they had a candy store. [laughter] So, instead of coming home 00:12:00the short way, we would turn the corner because then they would harass me and touch me and start doing all sorts of things. I would take the very long way to get into the apartment building. It was the wrong area and then across the street there was the church, and the black students were there. And they had a group called "The Sportsmen," so they had like, three different converging groups at one time and at one point, I was fifteen. I can talk about these things, they don't hurt as much. I was coming home with my books and these guys from the Italian gang followed me into the house, into the building, and I threw my books because they were going to pull me into the basement and do something to me. Which I don't wanna talk about that. But then I started 00:13:00screaming up the stairs from my mother, and she was always quick. She heard me, and she started screaming right back and she always carried a broom. [laughter] So, she heard me and then when she started cross pulling me back, and I started to run up the stairs; they said they better stop it. So, the police was called, and I was supposed to finger them [identify them]. And I felt I didn't want to do that, in a way. I mean, it's part of the neighborhood kind of thing where you don't finger people. But the worst people weren't, when they lined them up, they weren't there. So, I don't think they stopped bothering me. It wouldn't be, they stopped doing that kind of thing, trying to pull me into the basement. But when I go up and try to do stuff in the neighborhood, they 00:14:00surround me and feel me up and then laugh at me. So, I started really hating them. It starts shaping a certain either attitude toward me to really be pro-Puerto Rican, be anti-certain things. So for a while I was anti-Italian because they made my life absolutely miserable every day, and I don't like being touched unless people, I tell them, "Se mira, pero no se toca." You know, don't. Even later on in life, some guys have the nerve to go and I say, "Se mira, pero no se toca." Look at them. But these guys, I couldn't stop them, so it was very humiliating. I'm giving you pieces. I'm not giving you total stories, sorry.INTERVIEWER: No, it's totally fine. As you left New York, and as you left your
00:15:00neighborhood, and even as you left the university, how did you stay involved and become active in your new communities that you came into? And what sort of groups did you join during that time?OLIVENCIA: In New York, there weren't that many groups when I was involved.
They were out there but I didn't know about them, so the [inaudible] didn't come about until after I was out of New York City. And I moved, I went to Washington University in St. Louis. So there, I don't think there were many Puerto Ricans. I probably was the only Puerto Rican I knew at the time when I was attending, so what I did was I hung around with the international community. I was friends with all these students from all over the world. And I think it's interesting 00:16:00because that's what Barack Obama did in his early life. He had all these friends, etc, were international. Part of it was there was nobody else that was like me there and so I have more similarity with them than what I did with the other people. So, I hung around them and I belonged to their organization and. . . it's the [unclear] club or something like that, I'm not very religious, but we used to go to [unclear] club and international organization. And I guess when I became politicized was when I moved to California. Very politicized. That's when I became involved in and started teaching this [unclear] and then we had a strike. And the strike had to do with open admissions. It had to do with starting Ethnic Studies, and it was like an explosion because it wasn't only Ethnic Studies, it was Black studies, Native American studies, so I got involved in all of this, I started demonstrating, we all got involved, there 00:17:00were three of us Latinos. . . No, maybe four. The other three were Mexican, Mexican American, actually Mexican American from Arizona, from Michigan, and the third one was from New Mexico, and then I was the only Puerto Rican. And we always hung around together. We did everything together so I would always warn one of them, my friend from Arizona, I would tell him, he would always lead the demonstrations and I would tell him, "You're gonna get arrested." So, I put him to UC-Berkeley to support them, they'll come down over or I go for the Black Studies department. I went to Sacramento too, we went and demonstrated in Sacramento and talked about initiating, in essence, program Ethnic Studies, in this case, Chicano Studies, and it was odd that I was the only Puerto Rican. But that made sense to me to have a Chicano Studies out in the West Coast, not 00:18:00Puerto Rican Studies. Didn't make sense. Puerto Rican Studies was going on in the East Coast and my brothers and sisters wanted CCNY, and they were involved in the same struggles that I was involved in the West Coast for open admissions and Puerto Rican studies and on the West Coast it was Chicano Studies and Black Studies, and eventually Native American and then the last one was Asian Studies.INTERVIEWER: Do you wanna just pick up right there and start talking about
just, I think where we left off last time was the involvement and how you pushed for those programs at San José, right?OLIVENCIA: San José State, yeah. So well, I guess what they declared a strike
against the University not to teach. It was a strike for everyone not to teach and to protest. So, we would march back and forth all day trying to close the 00:19:00school down. What I didn't do, because I didn't think was fair to the students, I didn't feel that I should, even though I was very much in sympathy with everything that was going on, I didn't think it was my right to deprive the students if they didn't want to strike, so I held classes off campus is what I would do. But I said, "It's not my right to take away from them their education." So, I meet outside, off-campus with the students and continued what we had to do. But it was very intensive. We would like spend all day even between 9:00 in the morning and 3:00 am. We had meetings that went on and on, it was negotiating and eventually we lost. So, a lot of people who are either not in [inaudible] or. . . 00:20:00INTERVIEWER: What year was this?
OLIVENCIA: This was in 1968.
INTERVIEWER: 1968? So, during this time, is this when you knew you wanted to be
an academic for your whole life? Is that the career that you knew you wanted to pursue?[cell phone rings] [people talking over each other]
[cell phone ringing]
[laughing and talking over each other]
INTERVIEWER: So, what I asked was, during that time at San Jose, was that when
you knew you wanted to be an academic and dedicate your life to academic studies?OLIVENCIA: I think I've done that before, because I started teaching
00:21:00at Washington University. Graduate school. . . right out of Brooklyn College they hired me in the first semester that I was at Washington University. I had to teach three courses, and I had took three courses and taught three. And then somebody took pity on me and they said, "That's not right," for me to be teaching, and they were three different courses and I had nobody to tell me what I needed to do. They gave me a book and said, "Go and teach." So, I taught Spanish and then the second semester I only taught two different courses and I took three courses. So, I found out that. . . I had a way about me that was conducive to being a teacher. So, this part of me came out. When I was a little girl, I just trained in music so I was singing from the time I was five onward, 00:22:00or three or four. That was my first language, and the nuns would take us down to the Bowery to beg for money, [laughter] and I would be in the front. And I didn't know anything. They'd say, "Sing!" And we would sing and I would sing and then they would go around collecting money. And then I also took piano, voice, and dance lessons when I was a little girl. Again, the scholarships, there was hardly any money, so I did that all the way through college, and so being public in a way was not that hard for me. I mean, developing public identity, aura or persona.INTERVIEWER: So how was being involved in an academic environment, being
a professor, helped you further your activism?OLIVENCIA: How has it furthered. . . It gives me a forum for students, to be
00:23:00able to present to them materials. And they're willing, they're a wonderful audience, and so I worked it here in Whitewater campus, UW-Whitewater for almost twenty years where I handled the Latino student programs, and I was also the advisor for Latinos Unidos, the group, the ALMA dancers who was their dance group. And we put on a Latino Heritage Month every year and we would bring these speakers from all over as a result of my involvement with the Puerto Rican Studies Association, and the Chicano Studies Association, and my travel studies backgrounds. So, I brought some people from Peru and from Mexico and Cuba and Puerto Rico, from all different parts. Plus, a lot of the good people 00:24:00that I knew from the states who were very involved in academic and in activism. I also used my musical background because I would do things where the students would put on plays. They would put on performances, dance performances, and I was used to that. I loved it and they did it and I would challenge them. Not challenge them, in a good way. I was in a nervous wreck, they actually put on a play. One of Luis Valdez's plays. They did one of the acts and they put on. They had to do the costuming; they had to do everything, the furniture, they had to do everything. And like a week before we were supposed to put the performance on, the whole thing was a mess. And I was like, [gasp], I was choking. I said, "What if they blow it?" Totally, it would blow up for them it would blow up for me and everything. But they put it together and I stuck by. I was very faithful and loyal to them and gave them room to do what they 00:25:00wanted to do and expand themselves and in return they also allowed me some ability to expand so we took them. They had participated in Chicano Studies association; they present. I wouldn't take them unless they did research presentations. The Puerto Rican Studies Association, I say, "I don't care what your background is. You need to be involved in all these things. You need to know about backgrounds and different Latino groups. So,the U.S. Spanish leadership conference, we have gone almost twenty years to them, and one time I had to shush them because they saw historical figures and they would talk through them. And one of them was Felisa Rincón. ¿Cómo se llama? I forgot her name. She was the first mayor from San Juan, Puerto Rico. She was ninety-six when she came to speak. So, I said, "Listen to her. She's not going 00:26:00to be here forever, and she brings to you. She's a live history of a certain period. The way she talks and everything. Listen to what she has to offer." The same thing I expanded their minds to travel abroad. I said the one way you learn about the world is to travel abroad, so I took them to places. I started in here, Puerto Rico and Mexico, and added Jamaica then Peru. Then I started taking them further afield, Spain and Morocco. I took them to cradles of civilizations like Egypt, Greece, Turkey. Took them to France, to Paris, and I did a course called Exiles. . . Americans in Exile. Anyway, I did the whole curriculum for that course and I also took them to Italy. So those are some of the programs I did. I can't remember all of them right now, but I wanted them to expand in every area. Don't just stick to one area, start 00:27:00with what's most, what you need to find out about your background and then learn and expand on that to learn about the world and the commonalities that we all have as people, as victims also as [inaudible].INTERVIEWER: So, take us back to your strike. You're striking. How did it
feel to kind of go through the strikes? What motivated you to keep on going because you talked about how it started really early in the morning and it went through the madrugada the next day, what kept you going for all those hours?OLIVENCIA: To finally have a voice. Finally have a voice, and I had meaning.
What I did, my life had meaning. And it wasn't the only meaning for myself, but also meaning for the people that would follow. It would give them a chance and 00:28:00opportunities that I had to fight so hard for. That I wanted to open the doors, the opportunities for them, and that they wouldn't have to fight, or be, or have to go through the hard times or suffer in a sense in order to. . . They wouldn't have to insist their identity, and be as lonely and reserved as I was for a long time. It excited me. It was one of those exciting times in my life. To be able. . . It was like a flower blooming, I was allowed to be me and it was okay, and I don't mean that pero [inaudible]. It was wonderful.INTERVIEWER: That's great. Back when you were talking about your time at the
00:29:00University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, how long have you been there and what positions have you held since you've been there?OLIVENCIA: In Whitewater, I only had one position. It was Director of
Latino Student Programs, and for eighteen-and-a-half years, not quite twenty. So, I started out. I was only seen as an advisor and I should say only, because advising is absolutely critical to students and it's still considered a key element, fundamental key element to be able to encourage students and help students [inaudible]. So, it is very essential, but I also knew that there were other things that I wanted to do beyond that. I wanted to have them be. . . One of the things I started was making them actually, in the programs, I made them take a lead in the actual programs. I said, "You put the program together. 00:30:00You're going to be the person that is going to introduce the program. You're going to be a speaker, but you're going to run the program, I'm not. I'll be in the background helping you, supporting you, and anything you need. But you will be to be running the whole program." And I started a committee which included as many students as wanted to be on it, and any idea they brought forth I would follow through with it as much as I could, not censoring anything because whatever they brought was important to them. So, then you know that's the way I developed many of the programs. And that's, if they wanted don't want to go in this section, in this way they would go in another way but that got copied by the other programs at UW-Whitewater, and also my fundraising because I went outside. I didn't have any money to do what I was doing, so I went to each of the departments and each of the colleges and I asked them for support, and when they found financial support for these programs, and I put together a whole 00:31:00package that I could then use to bring speakers in and also to take students out to make research presentations for Chicana Studies, for Puerto Rican Studies, for the USHLI, the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute, and also for AMSLC, the American Multicultural Student Leadership Conference. So, I had one student there make a present, I really measured her, and she ended up making the first, one of the key presentations, key speaking student leader presenters. She was the first student leader presenter they had as part of the program. I'm trying to remember her name, Dolores Mendez. And she's back, originally she's from San Antonio, Texas, and so she was scared, but she did a wonderful job. She got an award for that, so that was part of my 00:32:00role and then also expanding, like I said, travelling abroad. I wanted them to study, all of them, to study a semester abroad because I wanted them to know English and Spanish equally well. I thought it was critical for them. That was before we were a majority, which we now are in terms of minorities. But I was preparing them for that. So, I told them, you have to travel abroad, you have to live, I don't care, I want you to go to a Spanish speaking country. Choose the one you want, but I'll make it possible for you. So, one of the ones I did was in Mexico. I worked with, I brought the agreement with El Tec, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, ITSM. 26 campuses across Mexico; it is a private institution, I actually wrote that and I got that approved by the University. Then I started another one with Puerto Rico, the University of Puerto Rico. They didn't let me get too far in that, because they, for whatever reason, they weren't so keen on that. But later on, I 00:33:00ended up being a contact for that program too. So, for both of them, I ended up having exchange programs to study abroad. This was beyond studying abroad because, semester programs or a year. So, we had students from Mexico coming here, and we had students from here going to Mexico for a semester, or up to a year. And the same thing with Puerto Rico, we had fewer because they had to know Spanish and for El Tec, you could actually learn Spanish even if you knew Spanish [inaudible], but I did those about 66, 70 exchanges back and forth and that was overall. . . It wasn't over a twenty year period, it was over fifteen to sixteen year period.INTEVIEWER: How did you, and you touched on it a little bit here, but how do
you bring your personal politics to work? 00:34:00OLIVENCIA: I guess the longer I've lived, the longer my views have become
global, or internationally perspective. So, I see a role within that. I see a role of Puerto Rican, Chicanos, Salvadorians, some of the other Dominicans, or all of other different groups. I've talked about, I've seen their role within not only the Latino community, and to respect and to learn about the history of all of these groups, the Latino groups, but also expanded it beyond them because I also was very strong to Black Studies, so I know Malcolm X. I got to see him speak in my earlier life, very few months before he got killed. I got to see Martin Luther King, Jr. speak. I got to see the Black Panthers speak, 00:35:00Eldridge Cleaver. ¿Cómo se llama? Newton. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. They were the leaders of the Black students. I got to see the beginning of the Brown Berets, they came. I myself became more, little [unclear], more politically aware, and more knowledgeable. My latest thing was in this past year I became very involved in the political issues in Wisconsin. So, the Governor's thing, so I went and demonstrated, signs, petitions, did calls etc., and with Obama. I joined the headquarters there because I thought it was critical that he be 00:36:00re-elected for us to continue, for us as minorities to have a voice in this country. Not only a voice, but to also have a say in what this country will be like now and in the future. Because the whole dynamics of this country has changed, so has the political, and [inaudible], cultural face has changed totally. It's not the White anymore, it's everything. And I'm excited to see commercials that come in all these different, you have Spanish now on commercials, you have Blacks in commercials, there's nothing new, or African Americans, you have Asians, and it's finally happened, and it's not a crime anymore. It's not seen as something that was a taboo for you to date across ethnic and racial bodies, and I grew up with that. When you dated somebody across racial bonds, you had a tough time, and people really didn't 00:37:00like it. I remember that happening to me, staring. This was in New York, that people would stare at me when I got into a subway. I was dating an African American young man who was middle school-- middle class rather. Better educated, not better educated, came from a better background than I did, and people would just stare at us. Everywhere we would go together, and it was a very heavy burden to [inaudible], every time we would walk anywhere people would stare at you, and you were like. . . It was very hard for people, I'll leave it at that. I didn't expect you take me there, by the way. [laughter]INTERVIEWER: That's great, because I do have some questions about your
political advocacy and about the election, but I'll get to those right after I ask one about your activism. Because during my research, I found out that you were part of groups such as the Wisconsin Women of Color Network, the National 00:38:00Association for Chicano and Chicana Studies, the Puerto Rican Studies Association, the Wisconsin Women's Network. . .OLIVENCIA: I was a founding member.
INTERVIEWER: Awesome. And the Wisconsin Women's Political Caucus and Governor's Commission.
OLIVENCIA: I was on the Governor's Commission.
INTERVIEWER: Can you talk about all of these, or a little bit about each, and
why you were involved?OLIVENCIA: Well, two of those seem very natural to become involved in the
Puerto Rican Studies Association, I became involved in that later than I did in the Chicano Studies Association because Madison really was more Chicano oriented. I mean, that's a fact. It wasn't oriented towards Puerto Ricans, so I did serve here. When I worked in the Madison campus I did serve as a Director for Multicultural Programming, and I was first hired here as a recruiter at UW-Madison. I did that for six months and then I applied for a job and became 00:39:00an assistant Dean of Students on this campus. And so, I worked in with the Multicultural Student Association which included all five groups. Is it more now? [laughter] They had the two Chicano groups, they had Puerto Rican, they had a Chicano group, they had an Asian, and they had a Native American group, and then it was a lot of struggles between those groups at the beginning, and when I came with them, I wrote the first regulations. We need something like: what our purposes are, why we're here. We select proposals for funding. What are the criteria we are going to use for them? And that was a struggle because some people didn't want that, they just wanted to be able to give to their. . . Whoever they wanted to give it to, the funds. So. . . I forgot what the question is. [laughter] 00:40:00INTERVIEWER: I just would like you to talk about some of your activism and
some of these groups, and the one that you're a founding member of as well?OLIVENCIA: Oh okay, so for the Chicano student, it belonged. I had already
been involved in the beginning Chicano Studies. We are called the pre-founders cause people now give us, people who taught, teach it, they don't call it Chicano Studies now, they call it Mexican-American studies at [inaudible]. A couple years ago they had their anniversary and they wanted [inaudible] history, because they knew about me. They didn't know who the pre-founders were, so I said these were the preferred people, their names. I kept in touch with one of them, for sure, and I just got a Christmas card from him the other day. With the other two I sort of lost contact, one of them went to Harvard and got his degree in Linguistics from Arizona. His father was a miner and got black lung disease, so I was more involved in that area and then 00:41:00I started going towards the Puerto Rican Studies Association. I ended up being on both of their national bodies, national executive committees for two-year periods for both of them. It was very demanding to do that, but I thought it would be a very good experience for me to be in those groups, so that I could not only become knowledgeable but have a voice, and show also that in the Midwest we have people who are very involved and whose views are much larger than people assume they are and who's experiences are not tiny, but quite big. So, with the other ones. . .INTERVIEWER: Yeah, which group were you a member of, the Wisconsin Women's Network?
OLIVENCIA: The Wisconsin Women's Network. I was also the Chair of the Council
on Hispanic Affairs towards, before they did away with it, so, that was challenging too. I became the chairperson of that group, and we wrote one 00:42:00of the last reports in terms of the Hispanic services that were being provided by the different state organizations for Hispanics, so I did that one and then I also testified before the Legislature Budget Committee to try to continue it. I did that. I was on the affirmative action, no, not the affirmative action. What was it called? What was it called? The Council? It was for the status of women. I was on that committee and I worked on issues such as marital property reform. The other one that I worked on was women who are in penal institutions, because a large number of them are minority women and there were other couple issues that I worked on while I was on that committee. That 00:43:00committee got done away with so they started the one called Wisconsin Women's Network, and I was one of the founding members. And that, it took a lot of hours to do that all in the evenings and in the weekends, Saturday and Sunday, and it was an incredible group and it's still in existence. So I wanted to continue for working, for minority Latina women, but also felt that part of me, as a women, some of the discrimination you feel is stuck. They go side by side, sometimes I felt dizzy cause you wear so many hats. You wear this hat, then you come and wear this hat. But I felt they were very important issues for both women and for minority women. So that was the same thing for the Minority Women's Network. I was in the beginning when they first started it, but eventually I'm still a member of it, but I'm not that active. But I still have 00:44:00the initial members are very good friends of mine.INTERVIEWER: And now these next questions. . .
OLIVENCIA: And I'm sorry I use my hands a lot.
INTERVIEWER: No, no, it's fine. These next questions are about. . .
OLIVENCIA: It's distracting, you know. [laughter] I can see you looking at my
hands. [laughter] I probably distract everybody else. [laughter]INTERVIEWER: What year was the Wisconsin's Women's Network? When did you start it?
OLIVENCIA: I was one of the starters, I was the only Hispanic women. Latina.
INTERVIEWER: What year was that?
OLIVENCIA: Oh God, I don't remember now. I have to look back at it.
INTERVIEWER: And did you kind of face any of discrimination because you were
the only Latina, or what kind of issues were different because you were Latina and not a majority? I'm assuming the other members were . . . or that's probably a bad assumption.OLIVENCIA: Yes. No, I think that is a good assumption because that started
00:45:00when I was on the commission on the status of women and I remember writing, I got an assignment to write something, some kind of. . . They were going to use it to introduce some kind of either legislation or some kind of position, and I wrote it and I presented it and I didn't sign it, and I remember one of the people who told me, "Who wrote this?" after I had presented it. I said, "I did." And she said, "Well, why didn't you put your name on it?" I said, "I had no pride of authorship." And it was like if she was questioning that I had been the person that had written it and it was hard. I felt really restrained, I said, I didn't feel like I was accepted. I felt like they included me because they have to have minority whatever at the beginning, and eventually what 00:46:00happened is I think, with my persistence in staying on and not letting myself be shunned or put to the side, etc. I ended up earning people's respect and also recognition. Because some of them ended up being friends of mine later on. They came to my house when I bought my house. First house, and only house. I run into them in the Square. They come up to me to ask me how I was doing, so by the time we started the Wisconsin's Women Network, I had already cleared up all of that background and I was an equal to all of them and my work was accepted, but it wasn't easy at the beginning. I wanted to quit.INTERVIEWER: What made you keep on pushing forward at those darkest moments?
OLIVENCIA: There's a woman called [inaudible], I think, and she always taught
00:47:00that she was always so compelled to go forward by fear. And so, I would always face that fear and do it anyway. That's been my philosophy, Never, never give up, and don't let that fear stop you from doing what you think needs to be done, or what you want to do. Both. So I've always had that behind me, that strong determination to not let other things stop me from doing what I think needs to be done or also speaking not only on my behalf, but my people, or people that are like me, in very general terms. Because there are people that don't have voices, and I have one so I'll make sure I use it for them. 00:48:00INTERVIEWER: In regards to that, you talked about your political
advocacy currently and you touched on it a little bit earlier before, but what was your involvement if any in the 2011 with the Wisconsin Gubernatorial Recall election and the 2012 presidential election?OLIVENCIA: In terms of the recall election, I'm very, I guess, I'm
pro-union. There's no doubt about that because people don't understand what collective bargaining or unions mean, basically means that each of us has a voice and collective bargaining means that we together as individuals who want workers, can get together to be able to balance off the head of the corporations. We need a balance, a check and balance system, and we, the 00:49:00unions, or workers, getting together in what we call collective bargaining makes us able to have a voice, and check and balance the power of administrators or corporation heads so that they don't just right hurdle over us and destroy us and take away our right to a minimum wage, our right to take breaks, our right to be able to have a lunch, our right to have benefits. You know, such healthcare, which I think is essential. I worked with Medicaid for over four years, so I am aware that that is a key element. If you don't have healthcare and you get sick, that can destroy you, totally. You will be totally homeless without that. And a right for other benefits, such as workman's 00:50:00compensation, or retirement benefits, which I think are also critical. So, for me that is absolutely important, and when Walker became Governor, that was his first step. To destroy the rights of the ordinary average working American. Working doesn't have any connotation. We all work. It doesn't have any political connotation. It means we are all workers. I have no shame in being a worker. I find no shame. I don't need to call myself administrator or anything else, I'm a working person and so are other people. At all different levels and of that hierarchy. And I don't believe in hierarchies either. Everyone has the right to be treated as a human being, so everyone should have a certain basic working rights, and I've seen that being eroded. So then, by 00:51:00what this governor has done and is continuing to do, so I went, I marched. I went on marches to the State Capitol, and I also ended up doing other type of work, like many telephone lines. I actually went and knocked on doors, too. I don't like doing that at all. So, I did that for him. And then with Obama. I put signs on my lawn. I've never put signs on my lawn because I realized that's also, I'm very aware that people can do damage to you. They can. And I live on main street of a town, so they can do damage to your car. So, I've always never done that, but this time I said, "I don't care." I put signs on everything, on board, people knew exactly where I stood and same thing with Obama when he ran. 00:52:00I said, "This is probably the most brilliant president I've seen in my lifetime. He's a good spokesman, and he represents what the President in the future is, which is a combination of all different races and backgrounds. So, he's both Black and White." He's not only Black and that bothered me, because I said that, "The Whites doesn't admit that he's White and that the people that raised him were White." His Black father played very little in his life, very small almost non-existent role in his life, and yet people say he's Black American, and I said, "I don't have a problem with people saying he's Black American, but they also need to say he's also White. He's Black and White. He's a combination." And that's what this society is. We are a blend of many different races and ethnic groups and he is the first president in the history of this country who represents us in that way. So, I find it very 00:53:00extraordinary, and I am very proud that I have somebody like him, with his intelligence, his acumen, his speaking abilities, his talent. By the way, I don't get sold easily on people, so I'm not blind to his flaws that he may have, he may have and has, like everyone else, but he is an extraordinary person, so I really went out of my way to try to get very active, much more active, including being in a campaign headquarters in Sun Prairie where I stood there. I sat on in an office for Obama, twenty hours a week or more. What happened was I broke my foot during that time, so I was walking around in crutches and trying to do things, and it was very hard, because I finally got over that. I mean, my foot finally healed but it was after the election, and I was . . . 00:54:00Anyway, I'm excited to be part of that electing all of us, and I told him, "Soon you need to be involved in this. All of this that we worked for you to get, such as be able to go to school, and get an Ethnic Studies programs for you. Financial aid that is available to you. All of these programs, such as the [inaudible] program, such as the educational opportunity program. All these things will go away if you don't become involved, and you get involved. This is your life. It's not out there. Politics is part of your life and you, every one of you, can make a difference. Don't sit aside and wait for everybody else to do it for you. It is your responsibility to do that." Sorry!INTERVIEWER: No, that's great. What legacy do you hope your involvement will
have in both the gubernatorial recall election and the 2012 presidential election? 00:55:00OLIVENCIA: Legacy? Just me? It's not my legacy. It's the legacy of all of us
who get involved. We need to be much more proactive because we are at very strange times. I've never seen a country more politicized than I have right now. I have some very good friends who were politically different than we are, and we're no longer friends. Our friendships over thirty years, but you know, and [inaudible] people really, I've never seen that, families were divided. This is worse than in the '60s. They were bad. And the '60s were bad when you became politicized, I was mentioning earlier that when I participated in the 00:56:00great boycott strike, and I was demonstrating, carrying my little thing, in front of a supermarket, a car tried to run us over. And so, there was some of that strong attitudes happening. This was in California, but I saw the same kind of hate and just unwillingness to talk or discuss anything. Everyone is set in their ways. And I think fear is one of the things that drives people, and they don't wanna give up what they have. They do not wanna share anything, and I believe in sharing, and I can be as selfish as they are, and I'm not, because I believe that . . . in the rights for all of us, who have certain fundamental things like the right not to be hungry, the right not to be homeless, you know, and now I'm getting emotional. The right to have people be able to live where you want to, the right to be able to go to school, but 00:57:00the critical thing is that there is no reason why anybody should be homeless in this country, and when I see that it really shocks me, very much. Or the right to, also for, to have protection, and I'm talking about children, or I'm talking about sexual abuse, they call now the issue of sex slavery, where children are being traded and people are being traded. Same thing for immigration. I'm very strong on immigration rights, too. So, those are some of the things I strongly believe in. That we all have to take. . . This world is not only mine, but it's all of our world, and I should be there to help other people, to have the same things that I have. I don't feel like. . . If I have to give up some things, yeah, I'll give them up so that somebody else can have 00:58:00them. At least have the same basic things, so I think I've talked about that already, but you know, those are some of the things I believe in.INTERVIEWER: And that leads us nicely into our couple of last questions.
Are there any causes that you're currently fighting for now, and are any of these causes specific to Wisconsin?OLIVENCIA: I think that, specific to causes, I'm still fighting for the right
for people who work to have. . . be able to speak on their own behalf, and again, people don't know what collective bargaining is, but that's what it means. It means that you and I, and everyone who is in the working environment has a right to speak up, have a right to have decent working conditions where 00:59:00they're not dangerous, to have lunch breaks, to have minimum wage, to have a say in their job, too, and all sorts of other ways like I told you, retirement benefits and healthcare benefits. Retirement benefits are absolutely necessary. So is Social Security. And to turn the young against the old is one of the most idiotic things I've heard because the young are going to become old and that safety net will be there for them, so the safety nets that we have now are being eroded, to such a level that it's so shocking how quickly they're being eroded, and how blind we are to it. And also people, also very logic for gun control because there is no reason that anybody should be working and 01:00:00bringing assault weapons, or any, I don't believe in people having guns. You live in other countries without them. You know, in England, policeman don't carry guns, and I say in this country we are sort of gun crazy, and assault weapons. That is even more mindless. And I'm also for peace, I mean, don't want us to be involved in all these wars that take up so much of our money, and it's insane when the country is in such dire need of services for it's own people. I'm aware that that's a whole another issue. I don't wanna get into it, but I'm also very aware of about of how much of our resources have been drained into wars that weren't really. . . In which we certainly don't have a voice. Something that was beyond all of our control. What enables into that, into [unclear] situation. 9/11 is one of the examples for me. So, I swear I couldn't 01:01:00bear to see it when I first saw it, when I saw it on television. It broke my heart. I was so devastated for three months. I couldn't watch anything that had to deal with that. Like other people, I didn't wanna go out and kill people. I was questioned because I saw some students at Whitewater campus, they had the black and white bands or something, they were wearing them and I told them, "What are those for?" And they told me they were for peace and were also for mourning. For the people that were killed, and I said, "That sort of speaks exactly to the way I feel." So, I got one on them on my jacket, put it on one of my jackets and wore it all the time, and then one day I happened to see somebody who told me what they stood for, and when I told them what they stood for, they said, "How could you? You come from a place like New York. How 01:02:00could you be for peace?" and I said, "Because this whole situation is created because the way that we have looked at the rest of the world, and we really don't understand what is happening in the rest of the world. We have no understanding in the poverty situations that would make people become involved in something like what they did." No, I do not particularly, I'm not for that kind of thing. But you know what sometimes motivates people to take actions that we find reprehensible. And I felt, I still am in mourning for that, now it's a little bit over, but I really, it took me awhile to get over that situation. I said it would change the world, 9/11, when I saw it happen. I said it would change everything that we know about the world and the way we deal with things in the world and it has, and one of the things is Americans are 01:03:00extremely afraid. They're paranoid.INTERVIEWER: So, what was the most radical action you have taken?
OLIVENCIA: Well, I would say, God, that glad that I'm retired. Taking over the
Chancellor's office was radical. And I never mentioned it because, I would assume that people would take me as being irresponsible, radical, you know, one of these, and I'm not any of those. I'm a very thoughtful person. I'm a very responsible person, and I'm a very caring person, and the only way that I could see something, I was younger then, too, but only way I could see making a 01:04:00difference was making a statement like that. The other thing is, every time I would get involved in things like that, one of the things my mother would say, "I don't want you to be selling the Olivencia name," and so when we would go, and my husband was part of this, we would go on demonstrations, we didn't have anybody to back us. So, both of us ended up in jail, there was nobody to help us and I didn't want my mother, I had to go by another name, because I didn't want her to feel upset with me. That I was getting involved in activities that would make me get arrested, and my husband and I made a bargain. When I went on demonstrations, on marches, or whatever. He wouldn't go, because then if I had to be gotten out of jail; he would be there and vice versa. But radical 01:05:00things that I did, one of the ones, too, that I remember was particularly scary was when we went to the first anti-draft resistant movement demonstration in Oakland, California. It was the first one, where they burned the draft cards, and the Oakland police were in like phalanx against us, and these men were big. They were at least 6 feet, and they . . . I understood what the word 'redneck' meant, because they all had rednecks and they would come with these shields, all these, you couldn't see anything behind them, they would come in like a wedge against you. I was terrified in that strike, because I was terrified of being caught between wedges when they come against you, and that I would be hit with. . . What do they call those? I can't remember the name, but that I would 01:06:00get hit with one of those. I'm five foot two, what do I do if somebody strikes me out, and strikes at me like that? But I was willing to face them and do it, because I was against the war in Vietnam.INTERVIEWER: And for the Chancellor's office, like what brought you to do
that? Why did you do that? What kind of actions led to it?OLIVENCIA: They were not listening. We were picketing all day long. We
did different things, and that was probably one way to get people's attention, and again I hesitated because I didn't wanna get arrested. And I also don't wanna give up my freedom. You know, going into jail. They take everything away from you. I was aware of that. You get put in, una carcel. I don't like that. 01:07:00I was willing to take that chance, it was because I felt so strongly about all of us, not just a few of us, but all of us having the same rights. I don't consider them privileges, but you know, the same ability to be able to go to school, to have Ethnic Study programs. Ethnic Studies is basically something that talked to our home history, that represented us in this American world that we're in, U.S.A., which we have no voice, we were invisible, you know. So, I do things, I would do what was necessary to be able to have a voice, for not for me, but everyone who followed us.INTERVIEWER: Can you define community activism?
01:08:00OLIVENCIA: You know, I haven't been able to define that. I don't know what
it is, I'm still trying to figure it out, cause to me community activism in a whole means that I'm willing to go out there to do what I need to do. I mean, but I know that Barack Obama was doing activist work. He was a community activist, I think he learned a lot, and that was in Chicago, and that's where he met his wife by the way. I think she was his mentor when they first, you know, and he had a tough time at the beginning trying to organize people. I think I've done some of that now that I think about it because I was leader of a group here in Madison called, Alianza Cívica Cultural, who started an organization in Madison area. And I was President for three years, I didn't wanna be President for three years, but no one else was willing to take 01:09:00it on. And we were made up of different professionals, from different Hispanic backgrounds, so we had people from Spain; we had people from Mexico, we had people from Bolivia, we had people from Argentina. That was a group that we had in Madison for a while, you know, to try to do things for our rights and we did a lot of work with Los Marielitos. When they first came here, they didn't a home. We had fundraisers for them with food. We went out of our way to allow them to settle down. That was one of the things we do. There was another one, but I forgot too. That is the only one that occurs to me. Oh yeah, started the first Wisconsin Hispanic Women's Organization here. I think this was in 1980, or '81, and we started a group, and it was supposed to be Wisconsin based. So, we went to the first national Hispanic Women's Conference, which was 01:10:00set in San José State, and we were representing Wisconsin. So, we were to form a whole group, and we started doing it, and it took a long time again. Weekends I would be driving to Milwaukee for all day, Sunday, I would be driving to Milwaukee all day. That I helped in incorporating, since I was living in Madison, so I went to whatever that had to be incorporated, the fishing lake, but I had to go and disincorporate it because people broke apart and they turned against each other and I said, "I'm not gonna have people going off on their own speaking." It wasn't me, some of us felt that way, speaking, one person speaking for all of us that we didn't necessarily agree with. Everything we spoke, we were supposed to agree on, so that came to, [inaudible] organizations, we had great dreams when we first got . . . 01:11:00INTERVIEWER: What advice would you give to upcoming Latina or Latino activists?
OLIVENCIA: What's the term? Don't take anything for granted. [Olivencia
finding her words] They think that because people did these things in the past, that they're going to be here in the future. They're going to be here in the present and in the future. We see many of these programs dismantling, that have benefited them, and that have made them be where they are. To be in a university setting, I talked to a group of students who were very rowdy. Came 01:12:00from a high school and they didn't pay any attention to what was going on. Brought them to Whitewater campus, and I came to talk to them, and I said, "I'm embarrassed about the way you're behaving. All of you," I said, "You know, a generation ago none of you would be sitting in this room. Not one of you would have been ever represented and have the opportunity to be on a campus and to walk around the campus, and to know that you could go to a university. And this is the way you're handling it? What would your parents, your grandparents, who had to work so hard so that you could be where you are today, how would they feel about this?" And they shut up, and I'm telling people now, that's the same message. Don't sit there and be self-complacent about everything. Things aren't there; things didn't get there by just you sitting on your behind. They 01:13:00got there because people made sacrifices, and people went out of their way to make these things available for you, and you have to make sure that they're available not only that we keep the . . . We lost some of them already, but that we are able to get the way we were and that they are there, for not only your children, their own brothers and sisters, and the families and people. Don't be so self-complacent about life in general. You have a role to play as a human being in this society. Play it. First become knowledgeable. That's what college is all about. Don't sit there, just take notes, and not learn anything. The point is for you to educate your mind. Become knowledgeable, so that when you speak, you make sense, and you have a face of knowledge, too, in which to speak. Don't come out with stupid things, know your history, know facts, and 01:14:00know how to debate and know how to write. Those are very basic things, know how to write, know how to debate, and also computers, and know how to deal, know how to communicate in all these new ways. It's your responsibility. That's what I would tell them.INTERVIEWER: Dr. Olivencia, thank you so much for your time. We really
appreciate it.OLIVENCIA: Thank you so much for your time. You make me feel like what
I've done, did, will make a difference.