Interview with Nelia Olivencia, June 9, 2015

TESS ARENAS: All right. So . . .

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Let's start with Nelia's name, and let's start with today's date.

TESS ARENAS: Okay. So, Nelia, your full name?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Today is . . .

TESS ARENAS: What, the 9th?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I think it's the 9th, yeah, 2015.

TESS ARENAS: And this is Nelia Olivencia . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Oh, and this is Nelia Olivencia. Is that it, or do you want me to say more?

TESS ARENAS: You, I wanted to clarify something, first of all. Nelia, were you born on the island or in New York? I don't recall what your profile said.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I was born in New York City . . .

TESS ARENAS: New York . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: . . . in Fifth Avenue Hospital, which serves Harlem, Spanish Harlem.

TESS ARENAS: Got it. Okay. Good. Now one of the first things I wanted to hear 00:01:00was a little bit about your childhood, any key experiences that influenced your activism.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yes. I was looking at that. One of them was poverty, you know, being raised in a very . . . you know, your voice is not coming through that well . . .

TESS ARENAS: Okay.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: It's very . . .

TESS ARENAS: I'll take you off speakerphone.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Excuse me?

TESS ARENAS: Yeah, sometimes my phone crackles. Now I'm off the speaker. Is that better?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: That's much better because your voice was cracking, and I was missing parts of what you were saying.

TESS ARENAS: Okay. So, can you . . .

TESS ARENAS: . . . tell me a little bit about your childhood and some of the experiences that might have contributed to your community activism?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: We were raised in a very poor environment where we lived in 00:02:00three rooms. One of the rooms was too cold to even use, so we basically lived in two rooms. It was a tenement building built in 1868. It had no amenities. It didn't have hot water. It was cold. It didn't have electricity..., well, it did have electricity. That's it, but no hot water, and I had no outside bath, no inside bathroom and no inside, we just didn't have a bathroom in home to take a bath or to use it so we'd have to go outside to use the toilet, a common toilet that other people used in the same floor. In the winter it would freeze, so it would be very hard to use it.

The other, so poverty was part, it wasn't only physical poverty, but also, I 00:03:00guess, social, because I never invited anyone over. We never invited anyone over because we didn't want them to see how, our situation, you know, so I never invited anyone over, maybe, until I was 15 years old, when we had moved out of that apartment.

Yeah, so taking a bath was very difficult because we didn't have a bathroom, so we would take it in, out in the kitchen where there would be a, I'm not even sure what they call it, where you can wash clothes, you know, and that would be once a week. My mother would warm up the water in cubos [buckets/ pails], which are, anyway, the word cubos [buckets/ pails] is escaping me in English. But we would, you know, she would warm it up and put it in the bathtub, and she would have people, we would each take a bath, and she would tell everyone else not to 00:04:00come into the kitchen.

So, you know, it was not, and then I shouldn't even say this, but we also did our needs, our one and two, in another, in un cubo [bucket/ pail]. What is the word for cuboo [bucket/ pail]? Do either of you know it?

TESS ARENAS: No.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: No, I . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Oh, cubo [bucket/ pail] is a pail. That's it.

TESS ARENAS: A pail, pail.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: You know, it would be a pail, and that's where we would do our necessities, and then she would go out to the outside toilet and empty them.

TESS ARENAS: Wow . . .

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Nelia, for, how did that inspire your activism, that poverty? What . . .

INTERVIEWER 3: Before you answer that, I just want to clarify the years that you're talking about.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I'm talking about, let me see, that, I have to think about that. It would probably about 1940 since I was five years old, okay, five or 00:05:00six, so it would be like 1946 through 1958, 1959, you know, or '60, some, up to that time.

So, well, the, you know, it inspired me in terms of motivation. I guess it didn't motivate me right then, but I did know that I didn't want the other people to be exposed to that type of situation, and I didn't want them to feel ashamed.

You know, so, I mean, and the other one was the way women were treated. I didn't like that at all. That included my own mother, where my father would dole out very little money to her. I loved my father very much, but he was a very 00:06:00frustrated individual, and he would, he was not working. And she'd worked in a garment industry before that, and in Puerto Rico, she did embroidery work. And then when she came here, she, to the United States, then she worked in factories, or she worked for, in piecework.

So, she quit when she got married. And he would give her very little money to keep us dressed, you know, nicely, so she would always make sure we had a nice outfit in Easter. And that would be the one event that she would, and we, she would, we would walk our feet off, so she could find things that we could wear and that would look nice on us. And she talked about that all the way until her death. She would always mention that holiday was . . .

You know, the other one was living, oh, I guess, one of the other things is, we, 00:07:00not only did, we had to deal with mice, rats, and also, what are the ones that you find in, fleas? Not fleas, which ones are the ones you find in bed?

TESS ARENAS: Cockroaches?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Huh?

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Cockroaches?

INTERVIEWER 3: Cockroaches?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: The ones that, chiggers, is it chiggers? No, it's not chiggers. You know, they . . .

TESS ARENAS: Bedbugs?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Bedbugs, that's it. You know, so I had bedbugs, and she would wake me up at 12:00, 2:00 in the morning to use a match to find them in the coils and then kill them. And I remember being woken up quite a few nights and being very tired, and she said, no, you can't go back into the bed because they would bite into you. You know, so and rats always scared me very much because they were in the basement, all over the basement. I mean, there were like hordes of them all over the basement, and they also came up. And one time we opened up 00:08:00our apartment door, and it was like a three-foot rat looking at us.

TESS ARENAS: Oh, my God.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: And my mother put the, she took a broom and chased it down the stairs. It scared me because it was almost like a small child, you know.

TESS ARENAS: Yeah, it sounds like huge.

[Simultaneous discussion]

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I guess, you know, those were just memories that I have, but I, overall, I never felt it, I didn't feel, what would they call, less of a person. I always was, it was just there. It was just the environment that I grew up in. I didn't feel, the only time I would feel embarrassed was when, you know, I could never invite anyone over when I found out they had apartments like I saw on television, you know, with living rooms and real bathrooms. So, to this day, I have a fixation with bathrooms. That's the first place I look at anywhere we 00:09:00move to see the bathroom. Yeah, anyway . . . did I answer your question?

TESS ARENAS: You did . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Oh, that one, okay . . . go ahead.

TESS ARENAS: Think about, you know, poverty and the living conditions and that, although you were quite young, it did give you a sense of, this has to change.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yes, that . . .

TESS ARENAS: And it was . . . yeah?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I wanted better for everyone, and I was afraid. And the other one, she . . . she, we learned very early to fight back, you know, not to let people destroy us, but to fight back . . .

TESS ARENAS: And where do you think that came from?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: She always says that she was a navierarita del campo [little marine from the fields], somebody from el campo [migrant fields]. She always 00:10:00said that all her life. She was 5' tall, and she, or under 5', and she weighed like, at the end she weighed like 86 to 90 pounds, but she was a slight woman, but ferocious, you know, very ferocious.

And she herself had a very tough upbringing. She, you know, she was pulled out of school when she was seven to eight to raise her sisters and brothers. And she really, she never said it because you didn't say that in her generation, but she resented that she was not educated. You know, she did learn how to read and write, so that was very important to her. But she never was educated, so that was a very, very important thing for her, for us to have, and not to go to prison, and not to have . . .

[Simultaneous discussion]

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Okay.

TESS ARENAS: So, do you think that in your early days, your ethnic identity played a role in your activism, and did that identity change over time?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yes, because people would call me names, you know, so it made me very aware. They would always tell you, go back where you came from, and I'd be confused about that, you know, because I was born in the States. And then, I remember asking my mother, what, why do they tell me that? I said, where am I going to go?

You know, and she, because it was, really confused me, and then, because I didn't know why they would tell me to go back where you came from. And the other one, you know, Puerto Rican, being Puerto Rican, and . . . my, I started out as being very aware of who I was as a Puerto Rican because Puerto Ricans were highly discriminated against. We didn't get, we couldn't get apartments. There were a lot of things that . . . but then, also, the other thing, later on, was 00:12:00being a Latina. There is a lot of static right now.

TESS ARENAS: Yeah, what is that?

TESS ARENAS: Yeah, I did hear that.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Okay.

TESS ARENAS: I'm not moving my phone, so I don't know where it's coming from.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Eventually, my identity started out as a person born in a certain area. But it expanded, incredibly, to being, seeing myself as a Latina in general, becoming aware of all, you know, the multitudinous elements that make up the Latino in the United States.

You know, also, traveling made me aware and made me appreciate the highly rich cultures that we came from. So it was a very, I guess it was an extraordinary, and it added to my sense of security and my sense of being, to know who and what 00:13:00I was and that it was a very rich, you know, that we had a very rich culture that we could all, that we had a right to, that we had, that there was no reason to put us down. You know, anyway, does that answer that one?

TESS ARENAS: Yes. And then my, a little follow-up to that was, was there ever a racial or ethnic identity imposed on you by others?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Oh, yeah. Since I was a child, you know, it goes back to that question, when they would tell me to go back where you came from. You know, that would always bother me, and I have to mention, a part of it is, I went through a very tough time when I was 15 of being molested every day by a group of . . .

TESS ARENAS: Yeah, I read that. It's in your transcript. And I was crying. It's 00:14:00really, really difficult.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: It had made it very difficult because, I mean, physically. It wasn't just fear. They would actually touch me, and then, you know, touch my body, and it would make me very angry at times. And if anything, it strengthened my sense of wanting not to have others have to go through it. It strengthened my sense of anger too, and in a sense, resilience, because I had to go through that for a whole year. You know?

TESS ARENAS: Right. You had to survive that. Yeah.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: It happened later on, but this one was the most, you know, the most, I guess, raw, because it happened in job situations, and it happened in, when I attended Brooklyn College. It happened in graduate school. It happened 00:15:00later on. But that was the really, a very raw kind of experience to have to go through all the time, every single day, where I'd be afraid to go home because they would come right before, they even could come into our, you know, into, inside the doors, you know, into the hall.

And sometimes they would trap me, and eventually I talked about them trapping me and trying to drag me to the basement. And my mother, that would've been a very bad situation. But they were really pushing me, and I threw my books at them, you know, because I was coming home from high school. I . . . them, but that was not going to hold up since there was, maybe, four or five of them that were going to . . . you know, my mother came to the rescue.

And, you know, she started screaming. I started screaming up the stairs, and she came. She was alert, and she came and started screaming down the stairs, and it 00:16:00alerted everybody in the building, so police was called. You know, anyway, I'll leave it there.

TESS ARENAS: Did that contribute to your work on women's issues?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yes, definitely.

TESS ARENAS: How so?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: The helplessness that a woman feels and being trapped in a situation, I'm talking about the physical situation in which, she may not be able to get out of. There is tremendous amounts of anger, but that thing of anger that people would invade my physical space, my body, okay, which is mine. It's nobody else's. I just had a very, felt strong sense that my body was like, that's the one thing that people could not invade, my body or my mind. And when 00:17:00they invaded my body, it was a total, you know, denigration of me as a human being.

So, it made a very strong impression on me to make sure that, you know, women had rights in all areas. And one of them is physical rights so that they didn't, shouldn't be afraid to walk down the street or even walk in the hall of their apartment building or whatever, that women, that we have rights as human beings.

Other, the other ones who are things like birth control, because a lot of the people in my neighborhood got pregnant at 14 or 15 at the latest, and, you know, and they were taking care of babies. You know, and it, I also said to myself, I'm never going to allow myself as a woman to be ever caught in a situation where I get pregnant by a man, or that if I needed to have, also, in terms of my 00:18:00reproductive rights as a woman, and also my right to choose who I wanted to be with me. But, I mean, there were very, very basic kinds of things. I learned them in a very, in, I guess, in the streets. You know, it wasn't like taught to us?

TESS ARENAS: Right.

TESS ARENAS: Wow.

TESS ARENAS: Now when we looked at your work in the wide varieties of areas, I mean, it's so amazing from the Chicano/Puerto Rican studies area to, you know, working with students to program development. What is your definition of community activist, or is there another word that you would use to describe your work in the past and now?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: One of them, I, you know, the word, that's the problem with community activism, it's, or activists. It's become, I mean, it's prototypical, and it means nothing now because it's been used so many ways, so many times, you know, that its meaning has become so watered down. You know, it, community activism means your ability and your willingness to go out and talk to other people in, my mother, in a sense, was a community activist, you know. I wasn't aware of . . .

TESS ARENAS: How so?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: . . . she, one of the things, our building, people would come and defecate in the, you know, I, sometimes I'm a little, this may embarrass me a little bit, but . . .

TESS ARENAS: No, I understand.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: . . . there would be people that were, you know, that staircase 00:20:00that led to the basement, and people would use that to defecate and urinate. And so, when you walk into the building, it was a terrible stench, you know, when that was the first thing that met you.

And so, my mother organized everyone or went to talk to all of her neighbors to tell them that they should be, that it was their place, they lived in it, and that they should get together to clean up and not allow that. You know, so she took a very active role in cleaning up. And it was not a pleasant thing to do, but in keeping, you know, the halls clean and the basement to, you know, so people wouldn't come there and basically, do things that people shouldn't be doing in an apartment building. You know, so she did that . . .

TESS ARENAS: And how old were you when she did this?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I was a little girl. You know, some of that, I was aware of it, 00:21:00and some of it, I wasn't totally aware of. I was aware that she would always fight back at everything. And once, when, on second grade, when I had a nun, and by the way, it was not a, the school was free, and that's why we went to Catholic School, because we didn't have any money to pay for private school.

So . . . we were in that school, and one nun would grab me around the neck and squeezed hard because I would cough in her classroom. And what I had was whooping cough, and I didn't know it. And she was very angry that I would, you know, cough, so when we were online to go outside, she'd tell me, don't you ever cough in my classroom again, so she started choking me.

And so, I came home, and I had marks all over my neck, and my mother said, "What are those marks? And I said, "oh, a nun tried to choke me because I was coughing." And she went, she was really angry. So she immediately, with her 00:22:00limited English, but she went to school, you know, and talked to the principal and told him that she was going to take her children out and that she was going to make a ruckus because no child should be treated that way. You know, so I remember that.

I really, I guess I was happy because, happy, I was pleased. You know, you're a little girl. But I was pleased because after that, I never was choked again by that nun. You know, eventually they removed her from that setting because there was something not quite right about her, but she was a very frustrated woman. You know, so she did that, and she would do other things. She worked for the community in the Henry Street Settlement. I don't know how she did that because I don't know that much about it, but she would do like, I think, food or work. I 00:23:00don't know what she did.

But I remember getting a scholarship to attend the Grand Street Settlement and the Henry Street Settlement, where I studied voice. I studied piano, and I studied tap dancing, and I started performing when I was a little girl, you know. But voice was my one love, so I would go every Saturday, and I would always take advantage. But I didn't know, you know, that she made it possible for us not to pay either or, not pay, or pay a limited amount for voice lessons and for what I was doing, because I was very active little girl, you know, and I . . . I belonged to the band, to the school band for four years. You know, and I love voice still. I mean, I've gone back to it.

TESS ARENAS: Yeah?

[Simultaneous discussion]

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I'm taking voice lessons.

TESS ARENAS: Wonderful.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: And it's a new discovery, a new rediscovery for me, and I'm taking guitar lessons right now

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Wow...

NELIA OLIVENCIA: but not piano.

TESS ARENAS: That's fantastic.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: And . . .

TESS ARENAS: All right.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I've seen . . .

TESS ARENAS: Now when you think about starting your activism, how do you think it got started? What was the cause of, what was the issue that got you going?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I got thinking of . . .

TESS ARENAS: I read, in your transcript you talked about your college years as being fundamental to your development as an activist, but were there, was there any time before that that you were involved?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Only on a personal basis, you know. I, in those days, it was like men or, you know, the women, there wasn't that much activism. I mean, I 00:25:00knew, I'd heard, when I was ten, I think, or so, or earlier, yeah, there was the nationalist movement in Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico [Spanish]. And when, you know, when Lolita Lebrón and the nationalists shot the building. . . tried to do, two things they tried to do. And when they tried to do that, my parents were frightened to death because they thought that they would be sought and, you know, arrested.

TESS ARENAS: There would be backlash.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yeah, backlash . . .

TESS ARENAS: . . . Were the independistas [Puerto Rican Independence Party] also, were your family independistas [Puerto Rican Independence Party] or nationalists also, or would they just, or was it a general backlash they were fearful of?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: It was the general backlash, you know. My, I mean, that, my father was just trying to make a living. My mother, if she, she didn't know much about the nationalist independista [Puerto Rican Independence Party] movement. 00:26:00She didn't know much about it, but if she had known more about it, she probably would've been for it, you know. But she was, they were both terribly frightened because it was the same time that the same, what was it happened, the, with Ethel Rosenberg, was it, when . . .

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Oh, yeah, Ethel Rosenberg.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yeah, they were put to, you know, both of them were put to death.

TESS ARENAS: Executed, right.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Executed, and that happened around the same time that, you know, I don't remember which one went first. I would assume the Rosenberg situation went first, and then the nationalists the events that happened came a little bit later. I haven't looked at history, but I know they were terrified because the Jews or Jewish people were equally terrified when the Rosenberg's were executed.

Everybody, the whole community became very sensitive in a terror, and it was over the anti-communist era. Everybody was, you know, very, very scared at the 00:27:00time, and I remember my parents saying, speaking about, oh, what are they going to do to us now? You know, they were very afraid.

So, I don't know how that, but that made me aware of, you know, in a sense, being Puerto Rican, because I knew that it was not a positive thing in society and that we could, that we could be followed or whatever. There was some fear about that in . . . yeah. Did you want to talk? Things did happen to me in school. You know, I remember being called names a lot, and I remember I became . . .

TESS ARENAS: What kind of names? You know, when you say, school, are we talking your college years or public . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Elementary school.

TESS ARENAS: Elementary school, okay . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yeah . . .

TESS ARENAS: You had discrimination?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Oh, yes. They did call us Speeke Españoles [Spanish Speaking 00:28:00Spic]. You know, I don't know where they got that from. But, I mean, it would be, basically, they'd call us, and I don't use those names because I don't like them, but they would call us those epithets.

And, you know, and then I was rejected, and I was excluded from activities in school, so I, very early, said, I'm not going to, at nine, I decided. I made up my mind in the yard where we play, and I said, I'm not going to have people decide whether or not that they're going to exclude me. Someday they'll, sometimes they included me. Sometimes they didn't, and it hurt. So, what I did was, I just, basically, excluded myself so that people wouldn't hurt me, and I would stand in the playground by myself.

You know, I would stand up against the wall. I said, I'm not going to be hurt by 00:29:00anyone because I can just be myself. I think that's where I started being independent of anyone around me. I'd rather not be part of something if it was going to be, it, I would be compromised, you know. So, I started that very early in life.

And but later, on I did the same thing when I was 14 and 15 when I saw all the girls getting pregnant and the guys still coming back to the dances and the girls being excluded. I said, I'm not going to be one of those people where, you know, you're taking it that, you're made pregnant, and then you're excluded, and you're mistreated. And the guys or the men kept going to dances and enjoying life, and the woman's life was over. You know, so it was, I don't know, learning by experience, I guess, or watching others. I didn't, you know, I, did I answer your question?

TESS ARENAS: Yes, you have. You know, and I would tell you. Usually what I want 00:30:00is more, so don't worry about over-describing right now. It's really, really helpful to us. So, it sounds like discrimination, marginalization made you very much aware that things had to change.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yes.

TESS ARENAS: When do you think you got involved in the Latino community, and in what way?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Well, it started indirectly. You know, it started with me being involved in marches in college . . . have to look it up. It was the McClellan Act. It was the first march I ever attended, and that was in, I was like a sophomore in college. I knew it would have something to do . . . people's rights away, so I joined it. You know, it was just on a peripheral basis.

And then I was not happy with the way black Americans were being treated because 00:31:00I said, we are like them. They're not, they are like us. And I saw certain things, discrimination against blacks, and I didn't find, I didn't consider myself different. I said, I'm discriminated against. They're discriminated against. So, I remember already starting to have a sense of commitment or awareness of, you know, that there are some people who have everything given to them, and there are other people who are excluded and treated very poorly.

So, it wasn't until college where I became a member of NAACP, an active member, and I think I was the only non-black that was in it, in the organization. And I also, I actually tried to join a black sorority. I would've been the only 00:32:00non-black, but I couldn't join it because I didn't have any money so I remember I came home, and I asked my mother if I could have $100 for a sorority that I wanted to join, and she said, are you crazy? We don't have any money, you know, which we didn't. So that stopped that, but I remember being involved with African Americans, you know, and being aware that their concerns were my concerns.

And then, eventually, since there was so few of us at Brooklyn College, this was already in college. There were like 10 or 15 Hispanics, Latinos, or whatever we want to call them. Primarily they were Puerto Rican. And I realized what a small number we were. You know, in a school of about 20,000 or so, I was one of the few. You know, we could count them in our hand.

And then I went to, one time, saw a counselor because I didn't know what, I didn't even know how to, what courses to take and how to go about it since I was the first one, I think, in my whole neighborhood to go to college. I never told anybody I was attending college, by the way, because . . .

TESS ARENAS: Why not?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Because I would be treated, I might be excluded because I . . . I would think that I might think that I was better than other people. So, throughout my whole undergraduate years, you know, I'd go to parties and hang around with people. Most of them, a lot of them didn't go, had never even finished high school. And some of them went to high school, but I only met one person that had gone to college then. And he actually went to Brooklyn College, but he was not Hispanic or Latino, Puerto Rican, you know. And I remember asking them, him what college was about, you know, because I didn't know anything about college.

So, the first time I went to get enrolled in college and take, to be enrolled in classes, I got lost getting there, so I never made it, you know, the first time. And I'd never been exposed to college, you know, before I went there, so I was terrified to go into that environment because I had no sense of where I belonged. It was such a totally different world, no people like me around me at all. So, I became totally closed up and totally, but again, it was the same thing, hanging by myself, you know, and not making, just doing what I had to do and getting out of there and just leaving when I could.

And then later on, I found out I couldn't study at home because my parents, 00:35:00nobody understood in my family that, what I was trying to do. They didn't let me study. There was no place to study, so I ended up having to, you know, begin to use the library at Brooklyn College, which was always too crowded. There weren't enough seats. So, if you found a seat, a chair, and a place where you can sit and study, you'd have to stay there all day because if you left for a second, your seat was taken and so was your space.

So, you know, I, but I ended up having to not do any studying at home because people didn't have any respect or knowledge or regard for what I was trying to do. They didn't know what college was about, you know, so it was very hard at times. And I made it through, and sometimes I'm, when I go back to those days, I'm surprised that I made it through, you know, because it took some doing . . .

Yeah. It wasn't until the fourth year in college when I started feeling a little bit part of it, and it was because I started dating a Puerto Rican guy like me, another Puerto Rican, who was from the Bronx, you know, the south Bronx, what people called the real Bronx. I mean, so he was from, you know, he was like me, so we worked. We got together. I felt strong, strength in him because he was the same way I was. Or he wasn't exactly because he wasn't at all, you know, socially aware. He didn't care that much about being socially aware of situations. You know, he just wanted to get ahead. So, I probably helped him, you know. If anything, I probably made him a little more socially aware than he was when he first went out with me.

TESS ARENAS: Okay.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Okay.

TESS ARENAS: So, I noticed that when, in your profile you talked about some 00:37:00professors that were influential in your intellectual and your activism growth. Could you tell me how they influenced your activism?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Well, one of them was in undergraduate school when he, I don't know if he influenced my activism. What he has influenced was my sense of, what is it? He made me aware that I was intelligent.

You know, he pushed me very hard to, he actually had me teach classes. In, you know, the course he was teaching, he had me prepare a whole class and get in front of my peers and teach the class, and again, I was terrified. I didn't sleep the night before because I didn't, you know, I, it's teaching in front of 00:38:00your own peers, you know, is quite a feat. So, I frightened that they would either laugh, or they would ignore me or, you know, but he sat in the back, which, I think, might have helped. I think he was in the back. So, I taught the whole lesson, and then he told me that I was graduate material.

And so, he was a Sephardic Jew, you know, so I knew he was in the minority and so he was also, lived in Turkey. He came from Turkey, and he had been raised, so he knew Jewish. He knew Arabic. He knew French. Of course, he knew Spanish, and he knew English. So, he would act out scenes of Don Quixote and scare the whole audience, the whole class sometimes because he would just go into these, you know, he'd act like him, and he'd look like him, and I was scared of him.

But eventually, he made me like an assistant and had me do, copy like the Romance poems. He'd have me check them out. Boy, was he a romance [romance], you know? The things that he knew in his mind that were oral, he wanted them to be put into writing, you know, so he gave me a list of them, and then I would put, I would come home and type them and give them back to him. It was interesting.

So, you know, he made me aware that there were other things outside of being Puerto Rican and outside of being an American because he exposed me to a world that was much larger, much more challenging. When he would go and do the call, you know, to prayer in Arabic in class, I remember the students would start 00:40:00giggling and stuff. I'd be, I was amazed by it. And he would eat yogurt, white, I mean, it's tasteless yogurt.

TESS ARENAS: Yeah, the, I, yeah, raw.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Raw yogurt, and he'd eat it with some kind of a muffin that was totally tasteless. And he took me a couple of times. He would bring me along to lunch. By the way, he was a lot older, so there was no, nothing there, you know. He was like what I considered ancient, maybe like 65, you know. And I'd watch him, and I tried it. I tried eating the yogurt and the muffins. But it really didn't taste much like anything. I didn't particularly like, but he was . . .

TESS ARENAS: So, it sounded like he certainly opened your mind up to other ways of connecting with a greater being and supported you for the idea of graduate studies. And but again, was there any way that they talked about your political 00:41:00activism? Did they support you or model anything? Because I wasn't clear on that in your profile.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: That's true. You're right. The one class, it was a class that I had to take in education because I have a teaching licensure to teach, you know, in, what is it, middle school and high school in Wisconsin and in New York.

But that teacher showed me. That teacher was a summer school course I took, and it was a sociology, I think, of education. And he showed a movie that I had, that just left me stunned, and it was called, it was a movie about the Mexican youths, very poor youths in Mexico. I can't, right now the name escapes me. I 00:42:00think I may have given it to you.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Very famous director, one of the most famous . . . directors, I saw that movie.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Julian Samora.

[Simultaneous discussion]

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: No, he's a Mexican director, one of the most famous from that period.

[Simultaneous discussion]

NELIA OLIVENCIA: . . . you know, I'd have to remember his, the name of the movie, but it's, these children were very poor, and they lived in trash, basically. And the main character is killed at the end, and he's quite young, and his body is thrown over the side of a hill. And I said, what it made me aware of was, I said, the poverty that exists. This doesn't only exist where I was living. But if these circumstances exist, and it opened up my world, exist 00:43:00in other areas, so it gave me a much, what would they call it, not Internet, global, the word then didn't exist. But it drives me to other parts and that other people were going through the same kind of experience.

And I wrote a paper in that class, and the teacher thought it was very good, you know, because I was probably the only one that really was struck by it with such force. You know, and I can't remember. I have the film here somewhere. It's grainy and old. You know, maybe I could give that, the name of the film to you. And it doesn't come out that well, but it was a very powerful movie, so that, in a sense, gave me a very strong sense of social consciousness. It was slowly in building.

It wasn't really until I got to, oh, there were other events in college too. One 00:44:00other event was when the SNCC, you know, Students for Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. I had a friend . . .

TESS ARENAS: And were you involved with them?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I was not involved with them. I was in the periphery, and I was sitting or auditing or sitting in a class my girlfriend was in. And they came to recruit people to go down south and sign up people, you know, to go down south to get people to sign up for, to get people to vote. And what struck me about it was that, and it was probably a, it wouldn't be what you would want it to be. But what struck me about it, I said, I wouldn't do that because I figured I'd lose my life, you know, that taking that kind of, I had a sense that there was 00:45:00hatred. And discrimination was so keen, you know, that I would be jeopardizing my very life if I signed up to do that.

And I was amazed that people just got up, and I don't think many of them had a clear sense of what racism was about, you know. But, you know, I, because I found out my girlfriend, the one that I, I found out she was one of the people that signed up. She never talked to me about it a couple of years . . .

But she was very naïve, you know. She was always an apple-in-the-sky kind of thing. I would always walk her home from dangerous, in dangerous neighborhoods. I'd be the person that would walk people home through the bad neighborhood because they'd come and visit me sometimes. And then they said, but, you know, 00:46:00your area is so bad, and so I pick them up and bring them over to where I was and then walk them back home. And I said, what did I think I was doing?

TESS ARENAS: Right. You're exposing yourself.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: That's right, a 5' 2" woman, you know, taking up the world as if it, I would provide their security . . .

TESS ARENAS: Now let's talk a little bit, Nelia, about your sacrifices. That's one of the things we're looking at. When you think about the activism you've been engaged in throughout your life, do you believe you've made sacrifices, and if so, what were they?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yes, I did make some sacrifices. The sacrifices, it's being exiled from the mainstream society or from people around you who really play it 00:47:00sense and want you, want to conform to everything around you. And I guess my, a big sacrifice I did was when I was in San Jose State, teaching.

TESS ARENAS: What year was that?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: That would've been 1968. And I was teaching, and the university, not the university, the people, AFT, American Federation of Teachers went on strike for open admissions and for the creation of Ethnic Studies. And I joined the group. There were five of us, no, four of us that, who were Hispanic or Latinos. The three other people were Mexican Americans. The word Chicano had not come in then. It came in, you know, after that, and they were Chicano, 00:48:00Mexican American, and I was Puerto Rican. And we formed a very tight, you know, friendship, the four of us.

And so, we demonstrated. We would stay up at, we went on the demonstrations. They tried to close the campus, you know, for these, for, to close the campus down, too . . . and one of the things is, then, I told, I think it was Eloísa. I can talk about these things now because I don't have to worry about being employed or being seen as the saboteur, whatever, but, you know, we did take over the chancellor's office.

And we slept, we took a, you know, we took it over for three, or three to five days, and people would deliver food to us through the windows. You know, and we 00:49:00slept on the floor, and one time I, with the, we slept in the bathroom, and we would sort of divide. We would sleep in the bathroom, and then we just stayed in the room. And . . .

TESS ARENAS: How long did this occupation go on?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Three to five days, you know, and . . .

TESS ARENAS: And then what were the implications for you afterward, I mean, the political implications for you afterwards?

[Simultaneous discussion]

NELIA OLIVENCIA: . . . the political implications, I basically gave up my chances of being hired, you know, at all, in a more permanent position, or I just, I was not going to be hired. But interestingly enough, because of my activism, the following year, I was hired into what was created at San Jose State College as the New College, which was an innovative, smaller unit, and we 00:50:00introduced, you know, and they introduced like ethnic courses, and in this case, Chicano studies.

So I taught the course on, you know, on Chicanos, and I remember some of my students were part of El Teatro Campesino [The Farmworkers' Theater] because they're, the head, the person that started El Teatro Campesino [The Farmworkers' Theater] and his brother did graduate from San Jose State College.

TESS ARENAS: Oh . . . yeah.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yeah, I didn't know that. You know, I didn't know that.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Luis and Danny, they both did. Wow.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: They both did so he, you know, he came and played for us at, I don't remember what he played for us, but it was a, it might've been somewhere near San Jose State. And I was wondering, why is he coming down here? Because I 00:51:00didn't know he graduated from there. And then later on, we met at Sacramento State when he was forming El Teatro Campesino [The Farmworkers' Theater] and talking about theater, and I went to that meeting, and it was a . . . meeting. I had to use theater, and I had to use art forms to . . .

TESS ARENAS: And what year was that?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Excuse me?

TESS ARENAS: What year was that?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Oh, that was in, I think that was also in, towards the end of 1968. You know, so his students, the first time I saw Yo soy Joaquín [I Am Joaquin] was in 1968, and what, it was a slideshow, a slide.

And the students, some of the students in my class were members of that El Teatro Campesino [The Farmworkers' Theater] who did, you know, Yo soy Joaquín [I Am Joaquin], and so they were in the music, everything. It was a, they were part of a shooting of, you know, they were members of El Teatro [The Theater]. And they'd go out in the weekends to the fields to present the show because 00:52:00that's how they support people. They would have these improvised theaters and they go to seek people. So, you know, it was, and I thought it was absolutely great to use art in that form.

TESS ARENAS: Yeah. Well, certainly the, yeah?

WOMAN: Hello?

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: I'm wondering if you could switch me over to my home phone.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Oh.

TESS ARENAS: Okay. That would be, Edgar, are you on the line?

MAN: Yes, I am.

TESS ARENAS: Okay. Can you call Eloisa on her home phone now? And she'll hang up her cell phone when that call comes in.

MAN: Okay. Sounds good. I'll . . .

TESS ARENAS: All right. Okay. Thank you.

MAN: Yep.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: And I should stay on the line, of course, right?

TESS ARENAS: Yeah. Oh, it's still recording, so we can keep talking.

[Simultaneous discussion]

TESS ARENAS: You talked about the personal sacrifice. Certainly, when you took over the chancellor's office, you know, there was that employment option that closed. But then, miraculously, something even more came up for you, and that was your involvement in seeking Chicano studies.

Can you talk about, before we get into the whole area of ethnic studies, which you have a significant role in, can you talk about barriers you encountered in your activism and how you responded to those barriers? And by barriers, it could be the way people treated you or the way they included you or excluded you because of your activism. So, what barriers did you feel you were presented with as an activist?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: You know, if I may go a little bit in, tangential to that is 00:54:00that I was thinking that I should mention that I did sit in the chancellor's chair.

TESS ARENAS: Nelia you, naughty girl.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I know.

TESS ARENAS: I love it. I love it. I love it. Of course, and there's no photos of this, right?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: No.

TESS ARENAS: There's no photos. Oh, that would be a perfect picture . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Well, you know, and people laughed because I said, I'd like to try this chair to see how it feels.

TESS ARENAS: Unbelievable.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Sorry.

TESS ARENAS: That's all right. No, I like it. I like it a lot, shows your spunk. So, okay, let's go back to the barrier thing now.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yeah . . .

TESS ARENAS: As an activist . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: The barriers . . .

TESS ARENAS: . . . what kind of barriers did you face, and how did you deal with those?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: You know, I'm trying to think . . .

TESS ARENAS: Oh, let me give you an example to help you think. You know, you're 00:55:00Puertorriqueña [Puerto Rican], and here you are at the ground floor, building NACCS, a Chicano organization. Was there ever any barrier in that sense or based on your gender or perceived accent or your politics? You know, does that help you think about barriers?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Well, I, yeah, it does help me. One of the things that it had to do, I had to tape my mouth shut to, in some areas. I did not speak about my activism. Tess, you didn't know about it, did you?

TESS ARENAS: Not really, no . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: No . . .

TESS ARENAS: . . . not until you went to Cuba. When we went to Cuba, I learned about what you've done. I mean, I knew about NACCS. You did a mainstay, you and Maria Flores. You've been, you were the main hub of NACCS as it formed. But 00:56:00other than that, no, I did not know your other work, and you're saying that's because you kept that quiet.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yes, on purpose.

TESS ARENAS: And why did you?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Because . . .

TESS ARENAS: What were you trying to avoid?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Avoid . . .

TESS ARENAS: Okay . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Not being hired, not being, you know, being seen as a deviant, you know, and that was there. You know, people don't talk about it, but it was a very strong, if you were a deviant, you would be cut out of every market, job market, etc. if you don't do, conform to what other people want you to conform to. So that also affected the way you dressed, the way you behaved in some cases.

You know, and I remember when I had to start wearing suits with little bow ties. I never wore the bowtie, you know, and I said, I refuse to be less of a woman in 00:57:00order to compete in a man's world. You know, that was hard because it was, you had to sort of compromise a little, so you had to compromise. And I love things that are flairy, and I think you know that.

TESS ARENAS: Yeah, you always had a flair. You still do and so what you're saying is, one of the barriers you encountered was that of how to conform as a proper professional, and even more so, a proper female professional.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Mm-hmm.

TESS ARENAS: Okay . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: And that meant hiding everything that I had done in the past . . .

TESS ARENAS: In . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: . . . you know, and because the whole thing in San Jose State sounds like a little passing minute, but it was like staying up at night. You know, it was being at meetings until 3:00 in the morning, and this was several months.

You would, I would go and teach because what, I did not want to deprive my 00:58:00students of, so part of it, you weren't supposed to teach or do anything. Close down the university. I said, I can't do that. It's not my right to make decisions for my own students so I would teach off campus, you know, and I would continue teaching the students off campus because again, I did not want to deprive them of an education that they were entitled to. But that was hard because at the same time . . .

TESS ARENAS: So, the campus was shut down, and you went and taught somewhere else.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Somewhere else. I didn't think, you know, it was all shut down, but there was an attempt to shut it down, so I would teach. And then I would be gone in the morning between 8:00 in the morning until, maybe, 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, until 3:00 a.m. the following morning, because then, after that, we would plan. And we would have discussions about what we were going to do, what would be the next steps.

I remember sitting up for meetings that were, oh, I would say, 60, 70, 80, 100 00:59:00people, where people would talk things out. How are we going to deal with this situation? What are we going to do? What's next?

And many people lost their jobs. You know, they were fired. One guy had a proposal for quite a few hundred thousand dollars from the federal government, and they took it away from him, and he was fired. Another friend of mine, you know, who's still in San Jose State or was in San Jose State and is retired now, he was an art professor. He was one of the four individuals, and they almost fired him. You know, he was able to make it through eventually.

You know, another guy dropped out because they brought felony charges against him, saying that he had hit a policeman. You know, they broke into his house and this, broke into his house in the middle of the night, ransacked his house at 01:00:00times. Those were things that were, I'm just, I'm giving you the tip of the iceberg, and later on, it wrecked his life. So, I don't know what, he was a, he had studied at Harvard in linguistics, and he was a Chicano from Arizona, you know, and very Indian looking, pero [but].

TESS ARENAS: Yeah.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: And, Nelia, what were the efforts trying to accomplish? Again, if you could, just restate that.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: The efforts for all that was to accomplish open admissions, and that meant, basically, to open up the college to minorities, to people who had been denied education at a college level. And the other one is to make, to offer courses that were relevant to them and their existence, you know, so that they 01:01:00would not be on, outsiders in society and outsiders in education.

TESS ARENAS: So, this really is the precursor to your interest in the ethnic studies discipline.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yes, and I actually wrote courses. We wrote a syllabus for courses, and we also, the four of us stayed up late preparing a whole syllabus for a bachelor's degree. I don't know if we went actually, I have some of that here. I found some things and . . .

TESS ARENAS: Good. We need that for the, your archives.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Right. I can give you some because I . . .

TESS ARENAS: Yeah, we need those for your archives. Yeah.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: So, you know, we'd stay up and developed a whole series of courses, and we would sit there and debate it back and forth to see what we needed to do to make, to create a Chicano studies curriculum. You know, so . . .

TESS ARENAS: Was it implemented? Was any of it implemented?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yes, eventually it was, but not when, you know, we were the pre 01:02:00group that came before the recognized group. You know, and he, his name was Rogelio Reyes, and I looked him up the other day, and he's deceased now. And I looked up the other individual too, Gonzales Lila, no. I have to remember. I have all that information to look her up and what she did in her life. And only one of them, you know, the art professor is still alive, and I keep contact with him. But, you know, it did have an impact on our lives, I mean, the future of our lives.

And Rogelio eventually did finish at Harvard. He did go back to Harvard and finished his degree in, you know, Ph.D. in linguistics, and I found out that, towards the end, he was teaching at San Francisco State. He came back to, you 01:03:00know, to San Francisco State. And, you know, I looked him up to see how he was and what happened to him. But we were very close at one point in time, and we, you know, we did put all our energy and our dreams and our life into this.

So it wasn't, you know, it wasn't a movie where, it was our future because in a way, it jeopardized my future career and my future life by being involved in these activities. And people don't realize that now, you know. Go ahead.

TESS ARENAS: When you were doing the work at the campus level as an instructor, and then you move on to work in ethnic studies, and all of the other activities you've been involved in, tell me about your support. How did you receive support? Who supported you, and how, throughout your life of activism? And it 01:04:00could be more than one person. It, we're trying to get a sense of, when women engage, who helps them as they make this, these changes that are so important to us all? So, who were the, your support people?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Well, you know, I've thought about that, and I think those are excellent questions. In California, those, that four, the four of us were very supportive of each other, you know. And I went to the trials for Rogelio Reyes because they were serious charges. He would go to prison. Eventually he, I think he, not, I think, he did get out of them, but I was the only person that, myself and my husband, that went to see it every day to see, you know, the testimony 01:05:00they brought against him, etc.

So, I mean, I found it also a very hurtful, you know, because they were destroying his career, his being and every, you know, they were destroying him as a person. And all the people that were there initially, marching, and I'm talking about the non-minority people, none of them showed, you know, to, and I had told them. I said, that's what's going to happen.

So, if you make yourself very obvious, because he would lead them, demonstrations. I said, don't go there. Don't go out there in the branch because it's going to be behind you, you know. Be very careful. And I was a kid. You know, he was at least ten years older than I was. You know, and they did come in behind him, and he got left, stuck with these charges against him.

In terms of the people, you know, they were supportive. Then I got, you know, I brought that activism with me to Wisconsin. I did start a, there were four, we 01:06:00did start a Hispanic women's organization in Wisconsin, which, you know, which I had, I wrote the papers, and I got us recognized for tax purposes and everything. So . . .

TESS ARENAS: And when was this? When was this?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Oh, this was, oh, God. This was . . .

TESS ARENAS: Even decades is helpful.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yeah, '70s, you know, and it was a, I started a, we were going to be statewide, and I remember spending a lot of weekends traveling to Milwaukee. And we would . . .

TESS ARENAS: And you were in Whitewater at the time?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: No, I was in, here, in Madison, you know . . .

TESS ARENAS: You were in Madison. So, you're in Madison, and you had formed this . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yeah, I would be driving. You know, I would drive from Milwaukee, or I would drive to other areas. We'd meet at them, as many as we 01:07:00could, to get the organization started for, you know, Latina woman.

That's where I met, at least, there's more than one Maria Flores. That's where I met a Maria Flores that I worked with, you know, in Milwaukee. And then we went to the first nationwide Hispanic Women's Conference, which was in San Jose, and that took place in 1980, I think. You know, so I actually ran into some of the students I'd had at San Jose State because I, they remembered me, and I remembered them. And it was an explosive kind of meeting in that organization. So many things happened.

And trying to get women together from Colorado who have a different, well, the Chicano world is so varied. It's . . . difference. Each state has a different 01:08:00perspective, and Colorado women had a different perspective than the Texas women versus the California women versus the Arizona women, you know, and so on. So, when I went to that meeting, that all came together, but I don't think people were ready for that explosion that occurred, you know, within it. So that, you know, so I, in terms of the people who, I don't think I got that much support. I think I sort of got involved in things, and people either supported me, or they didn't because I started . . .

TESS ARENAS: Well, what about your, within your family, you talked about your husband being at the trial of Rogelio. Was your husband playing a support role for you, or was he right alongside you? I mean, because you mentioned it.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: No, my husband is, I have to say that, outside of my mother, I thought about it because a lot of, you know, I, there are people that support 01:09:00you or that you, get your commitment and your heart and soul. It gets fed correctly. You know, but on the personal level was my mother and my husband, who always supported me in anything I did. And that meant like the demonstrations in, because we were just newlywed, you know, and I tell him.

He was in classics. He was studying classics at Stanford University, and so we'd go back and forth. You know, I was teaching at San Jose State, and he was in classics of, working on his Ph.D., and we lived in Mountain View, which is in between both of them.

But he supported me 100% all my life in everything that I have ever done. He encourages me, and he never stopped me from, he was actually proud of me when I did these things, you know, because sometimes, I didn't know what I was capable of. But, you know, or I would come home so late, and he'd worry about my health, 01:10:00but he supported me in everything I've ever undertaken. I can never thank him enough. You know, he's deceased, but so but he was my base. And sometimes there was . . .

TESS ARENAS: Did you talk politics with him? Did you talk politics and strategy?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yeah, I always, I checked everything with him. You know, he, one of his majors was political science, so he knew. That wasn't my major even though people always think I'm a political science, but he would always give me the support and also, he'd tell me what main, the main society was like because at times, I was like raised in an environment that was not the mainstream environment, so I did not know what was acceptable, you know so I could really go off in a, the direction which would be okay for me, but it would not 01:11:00accomplish what I wanted to accomplish, which was to make change so he was very supportive.

I started this organization here in Madison called El Centro [The Center], no, cómo se llama, El Civico-- um-- Alianza Cívica Cultural [how was it called, Cultural Civic Alliance], and it was a combination of cultural and political. You know, so again, we also got recognized. And it was a combination of people that were only involved in cultural affairs, because at the beginning, there were two organizations, one only in cultural, and the other one in politics. So we weren't that many, so we worked, you know, I was in both of them, and I said that, you know, we needed to get together, so we tried bringing them together, 01:12:00and I was the president of the organization for four years, so . . .

TESS ARENAS: And when was this?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: This was from, God, my guess is from, maybe, it's just a guess right now, from '76 through 1980. You know, and one of our, I don't know whether you want to call it a crime, but one of our fundraisers was when those, the Cubans came, yeah.

TESS ARENAS: Sure-- the third flotilla [fleet].

NELIA OLIVENCIA: ¿Cómo? [What?].

TESS ARENAS: The third flotilla [fleet]?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: No, it was a, it wasn't a, what was it called? Los [The]... uh

TESS ARENAS: ¿Marielitos?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Marielitos.

TESS ARENAS: Marielitos.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Right, the Marielito's, because they came here . . .

TESS ARENAS: Okay the fourth wave

NELIA OLIVENCIA: . . . and they . . . yeah, the first wave, not the second one. Yeah, and so we did fundraisers. You know, we got food. We did food events, 01:13:00which, you know, to invite the whole community to come, and we fed them and everything, and I remember that was time consuming. We had somebody that could actually cook for 100 people, you know, so we got that event going.

And then we also did it on a personal and on a group basis, so we got them clothes. We got them, helped them get apartments, helped them with education, because at that time, I was working at UW-Madison. I remember getting one of the young men. He happened, they also let, a lot of people they got rid of were gay people, so he was, you know, and he was, that's why he'd been in prison.

And so, he came to see me, and I was able to get him in touch or get him connected up so that, eventually, he got a degree from UW-Madison. You know, but and some, so that was one of our events that we did. We did all sorts of other 01:14:00events, and right now, it's a little vague in my mind . . . Betsy Basientos and her husband . . .

TESS ARENAS: Oh, I remember Betsy . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yep. She and her husband were part of that. The people in that organization, on the whole, were educated in the sense that almost all of them had Ph.D.'s, you know. And I thought it was sort of strange, in a way, that I was a member of it, but, you know, they were very active people like, what's his name, Pancho . . .

TESS ARENAS: . . . Rodríguez.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yeah . . . no . . .

TESS ARENAS: From La Raza? [Independent Mexican American Party]. Right.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: That was another thing I had to deal with, but I don't know if we want to deal with it here.

TESS ARENAS: Well, tell us about that. No, tell us about that. I mean, if that was a challenge or a barrier, I think that's important to the overall picture. You wouldn't be the first to make reference to it, so, no, go for it . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Well . . .

TESS ARENAS: . . . if you're comfortable, only.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Okay. Well, I didn't know him as Pantillo. I knew him as Francisco Rodriguez, you know. And I actually got the job as the recruiter at UW-Madison that he had left behind. And the reason I got it, or the reason, not that I got it, the reason he was let go was because he didn't have a college degree, you know. So then, I was, I mean, they recruited for it, and I, at the point, I didn't know whether I'd even get the job, but at that point I already had my Ph.D. But I took my Ph.D. out. I, you know, I removed it from my syllabus or whatever, my resume.

TESS ARENAS: You removed it. Oh, my goodness.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yeah, I removed it.

TESS ARENAS: Why?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I didn't think I'd be hired.

TESS ARENAS: Because you were overeducated?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: That's right. So I . . .

TESS ARENAS: Wow. So you actually sacrificed sharing what your real accomplishments were in order to be effective in another position.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Right, or to even be considered for it. So and I found out, also, that some people, when they found out I had a Ph.D., they would say, in the community, would say that I had no idea of what it was like to be poor because I had an education, you know. I, it was terrible.

TESS ARENAS: And how did you deal with that? Because that is a barrier. I mean, how did you deal with that?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Well, the thing is that it wasn't directly. You know, it wasn't, I didn't hear about it directly. I was also told at one point that, when I was the dean of students at UW-Madison, I was told . . . using their funds to travel to Puerto Rico to visit my family, and I was like, what? I see my family 01:17:00. . .

TESS ARENAS: I was born in New York, and how do you know who I have on the island? Wow. Were there formal charges or an audit?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: No, this is just, no. They were just allegations that came, you know, to the forefront. And there was a group of, a very, very tight group. As I said, there are different Chicanos in each community, and this was a Texas group that took over UW-Madison, and they were a very tight group . . .

TESS ARENAS: And what year was that?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Oh, wow, 1974, they were here. Let me see if that was 1974. I think so, around that time.

TESS ARENAS: That correlates with another woman who was there at the time in '72 to '74, and she has similar stories, you know, that it was a difficult time for her.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: It was very difficult. In this case, when I went to interview 01:18:00for the recruiter job, the group that was looking at the candidates, they boycotted it. They didn't show up for the interview.

TESS ARENAS: For all interviews or yours?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Mine.

TESS ARENAS: And do you know why?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yes, because I was Puerto Rican and not Chicana. You know, and that really hurt me. I mean, personally, it really, not . . .

[Simultaneous discussion]

NELIA OLIVENCIA: It really hurt my feelings because, I said, here, I went through all this in California, and now I'm from the, you know, from the group that I most work with and that I having this group who is discriminating against me.

You know, so despite that, I think it backfired because of the head, the person 01:19:00that was running that program said, they're not going to tell me who to choose. You know, and he said, and he told me, I'm not going to allow them. You know, so I said, what do we do? So he said, I'm going to interview you, you know. So, I got interviewed, and I was the first non-Chicana, I guess. I don't know how many people there had been before me. I know that . . . Francisco might be the first one.

So but then, when I started my job, I would have people sabotaging things, you know. I mean, I remember my, I had a, you know, I'm, it was above the bar. I, do you know that? It was above a bar in University Avenue. The settings that we had were not the best. It was, you know, we had this old building, and that was where I was placed. The, all of the minority recruiters were placed in there. 01:20:00No, I don't think the African American was in there, but the Asian, I don't know if we had Asian. I know the Wonkeek, the Native American, and ours were in that building.

So, you know, in the morning, when I come in, there'd be throw-up or vomit or something else in the first two steps, and I'd have to jump over it to get to, upstairs. And the building was sort of abandoned or, you know, so my offices were, I'd have a derelict sometimes wandering up to the second floor.

TESS ARENAS: Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness, gracious. Oh, my. Oh, my. Oh, my.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: . . . and I said, well, I'm glad that I came from where I came because things like that didn't intimidate me. You know, I didn't think they 01:21:00were good, but people would keep wandering up there, but and having to jump over stuff like vomit and whatever else to get up to the second floor was, I think other people might have quit.

TESS ARENAS: Right. How long did you last in that job then? How long were you there?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I was there for six months because then, I applied for the dean of student's job. And that, again, you know, was another situation in which a small group tried to, also, do damage to me because that's when they, the groups got divided into Chicano and non-Chicano, okay, but there was a Puerto Rican student organization that started then . . .

TESS ARENAS: Yeah, Unión [Union] started by then, right?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Excuse me?

TESS ARENAS: Unión Puertorriqueño [The Puerto Rican Union] started around that time.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: . . . yeah. And then that was another whole history too because 01:22:00I dealt with that group too. They, some of them were something. Some of them were wonderful students, and some of them weren't. Many of them . . .

TESS ARENAS: In Unión [Union] or outside of Unión [Union]? I'm not clear.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Oh, both. You know, I've got, I mean, and all the Chicano students, you know, I had some students who were absolutely marvelous and then some that weren't. But that was another very interesting time in my life because I headed, I was, in a sense, the director of multicultural programming.

TESS ARENAS: Mm-hmm. And there you were, and they were boycotting you.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Actually, they fought like, you know, all of them fought with each other. And one of the things that I, you know, I did, one of the things, we didn't have any kind of structure when I got put into directing that program so 01:23:00I, with a committee of students because I said, I'm not going to develop this by myself so with a group of, you know, the students, I developed the whole procedure and a whole structure for the multicultural programming. I'm sorry . . .

TESS ARENAS: Wonderful.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: . . . this sounds very strange and funny.

TESS ARENAS: No, it sounds wonderful. I mean, it's, you know, there's all these facets to your activism. When we look at your role models, you've mentioned in your profile a very long list of people as your role models as activists. Was there someone closer to home that modeled what, and you mentioned Malcolm X and, you know, H. Rap Brown and Angela Davis and on and on, the big names that were getting the media attention, some media attention. But were there any activist 01:24:00role models that were closer to home to you that made an impression for you?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Close to home, like in Wisconsin?

TESS ARENAS: I mean, like was there an uncle or an aunt or a cousin or a, was there someone in your, another role model that might have influenced you early on?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I, you know, I don't know if I can know of an answer for that. I do know . . .

TESS ARENAS: Okay. You mentioned your mother.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: . . . I mean, I, what I can tell you, my mother, but I do know now in my later life, I found out that when I go to Puerto Rico, I'm treated well, you know, with the family, and that they always invited me to a special 01:25:00dinner or something like that for me. I could never figure out why.

TESS ARENAS: And do you know why now?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yes.

TESS ARENAS: Why?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I finally found out why, because I was the first one on the, in the mainland to achieve a Ph.D. You know, I was the first one to, and I didn't, it never even occurred to me. You know, it just, I didn't even think about it. So, it to this day, I'm given a certain recognition, you know, by my family that I was totally unaware of because I was always puzzled when my mother said, oh, they're having this thing for you. And I said, why are they having this for me? Because I was, you know, I couldn't figure out why. And then I found out now. I said, oh, that's what it was.

And since then, I have some other cousins. I have one that's a chemistry professor. He teaches at . . . in one of the, not-- I have another cousin that 01:26:00became an MD, and that was from my father's side. I mean, I got to, much later in life. And then I have another cousin that's up here, up in the Upper Peninsula, and he was, he's a doctor, up in Wisconsin. But, you know, I found out, and then I have another cousin that, oh, he was like the Colonel. He became the Colonel, I don't know what the title was, for Fort Buchanan. He was a pilot, an air, you know.

And, you know, it was like, to me, it was like a surprise, okay, because when I went to Puerto Rico, they, I'm included in that group, you know, so but I'm not 01:27:00sure if I'm answering you. You know, I had models . . .

TESS ARENAS: Well, I think, you know, your role models that you've mentioned have been your mother and then the larger named, well, more recognized activists of their time. And was there a particular female . . . professor. Was there a female adult other than your mother?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Oh, yeah, one of the . . .

TESS ARENAS: . . . activist? You talked about Lolita Lebrón.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: She became . . .

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Tell me a little about . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Well, I mean, in, later in life, I found out that she was the one that was, that headed that whole contingent that tried to assassinate Truman, and she also went to the assembly, you know, and she did that. You know, she was, again, the leader of that group.

And that, and then the other one is Julia de Burgos, who died in New York. I 01:28:00found out her background is extremely interesting. You know, she lived in Cuba for nine months. She was married to this guy. I mean, it, she's a fascinating woman, but her poetry was excellent, you know, about the two Juana, Julia de Burgos.

Of course, Juana Inés de la Cruz really impacted me because of, you know . . . she decide intellectualism over, you know, being, that's why she went into the, in, you know, to become a nun, because she could at least develop her intellectual abilities. And I thought of writing my Ph.D. on her, you know.

TESS ARENAS: When did you learn of . . . Sor Juana?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Where did I first hear about her or . . .

TESS ARENAS: Yeah.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: That was . . .

[Simultaneous discussion]

NELIA OLIVENCIA: . . . in graduate school. You know, and I started reading all of her stuff, and I wanted to write it on her. But so much had already been written on her that I would spend more time reading what, trying to find out 01:29:00something that had not been written on her. You know, so but she was amazing to me, and she opened up my world, and, I mean, there's so many. Hmm?

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: And the poet was Julia de Burgos.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: It was the two Juana's, I think. There were a few, two or three poems that are so touching and come to the heart because she talks about the interior or the internal Julia de Burgos and the external Julia de Burgos, the one that . . . you know, that sees, that world sees, and then the one that she really is. You know, and she was extremely poor too. Her whole town came up with the money to send her to the University of Puerto Rico.

TESS ARENAS: I remember that.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yeah, and she, I think she graduated in 19 years of age, you know, but I didn't know that. That was gradual. All of these has been disclosures, I mean, piece by piece of these people.

Dolores Huerta was another heroine of mine, and I always thought, why don't they pay attention to her? They always give it to Cesar Chavez, and she was like his other hand. I mean, they were, you know, left and right all, you know, whatever.

TESS ARENAS: And she was raising 11 children while she was doing it. Thank you very much.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yes . . .

TESS ARENAS: Just like when we say, what can Ginger Rogers do that Fred Astaire can't? Dance the same moves in high heels. Well, you know, what did Dolores Huerta do that Chavez didn't do? She bore 11 children throughout her activism.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: And she's so active.

TESS ARENAS: I mean, it's amazing.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yeah, she's amazing, and I got this . . . several times, you know, but she really, I also got to meet and talk to Corky González, and I had him for a whole week, and I spent with him and his bodyguard. You know, he wrote Yo soy Joaquín [I am Joaquin]. So, we had long talks . . .

TESS ARENAS: And when was this? When was this?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: This was in about '76 or, '70-- I brought him in as a speaker, and I was delighted. No, this might have been earlier. This might have been when I was in La Crosse because in La Crosse, I demonstrated against West Side Story because they had all, an all-white cast. And my daughter . . .

TESS ARENAS: I had problems with the movie in general, but the white cast isn't part of it. But, no, I hear you. So, then these larger-name women or, you know, you had a chance to really study, and they inspired you.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: They did . . .

TESS ARENAS: Well, when we look at women in leadership, and you've been a leader in so many ways, do you have a specific political or social change framework that you would use to describe the kind of activism you're engaged in? So, for 01:32:00example, some people might look at fairness or equity or empowerment models. Do you have a term or, for the framework you use when you engage?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: No. You know, I did go through social justice training for a 40-week training program, 40 hours, which was a week of training for that, but I . . .

TESS ARENAS: Where was that?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: This was at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, yeah. We went through, yeah, a series . . .

TESS ARENAS: Was it based on someone . . . or a specific era--? for example, Alinsky or Chávez or MLK?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: No, I don't think so. I don't, you know, if they did, they were peripheral. But, you know, Saul Alinsky, also, I remember being very admiring of his, he's, if I remember correctly, he's the one that gave César Chávez, one 01:33:00of the people.

You know, there was another guy too, because but that's what I found interesting about César Chávez. He, it was not a Chicano movement per se. He wasn't, even though they put him as part of the Chicano movement, he was beyond it, you know, because he had Filipinos and the grape . . . strike. And, you know, at sometimes, he, it bothered him to, he didn't like to be labeled or put in, you know-- a box. You know, he did not like that.

And I admired Lopez, Reies López Tijerina because of his land reform. I thought that we had a right to ask for our land. Corky was honest because he was an artist, you know. And I also liked Rudy. I think it's Rudy Anaya, the writer who wrote Bless Me, Ultima. And I also had time to meet and talk and sit down with 01:34:00him and Corky and not Reies López Tijerina, but with Rudy Anaya. What I really admired about him is that he was encouraging. He was in, on editorial, is it Público [Public]? I can't remember which . . . it was. And he was a member of that, and he encouraged women to submit, you know, their books for publication.

TESS ARENAS: I did not know that.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I, well, yeah, that was, you know, what I knew about him.

TESS ARENAS: That's wonderful.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: And I had a great admiration for him. And then Bless Me, Ultima is such a beautiful little classic, and he's such a modest, open, I mean, modest, really, you know, sweet man.

TESS ARENAS: Humble.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Humble, humble, you know, and very admiring of him, and, you 01:35:00know, in terms of Antonia Pantoja, I did not get to meet her, but she started-- um-- se me olvida el grupo [I forget the name of the group]. She was an organizer too. She also was a lesbian, but in, I don't think it ever got publicized. ASPIRA, she started ASPIRA.

You know, and then the other person I admired, a woman, was Felisa Rincón de Gautier, who was the first mayoress of San Juan, and she was doing stuff before anyone else was. And I was so happy that I got too see her speak like three months before she died. It was like '94 or '95, you know.

I mean, I belonged to women's groups. I still belong, here in Madison, I still belong to the Minority Women's Coalition, which started in 1985. I'm a member of 01:36:00that. I was the president or the chair of the Spanish speaking, the governor's, what is it called, the Governor's Committee on Hispanic Affairs. I chaired that. I was on the Commission on the Status of Women, and that . . .

TESS ARENAS: When was that?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: That was in, they, in the, 1976 or so, or '77. They did away with it, and I became, they did away with it, and the people kept going. So, they started a group called NOW. No, it's not NOW. It's Wisconsin Women's Network, and they were all the people that came out of the Affirmative Action Committee, plus they were way ahead. They had also worked with NOW. So, I was a founding member of that group. I remember giving up a whole summer to attend 01:37:00their meeting . . .

TESS ARENAS: And which one was this?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: The Wisconsin Women's Network, and I was the only Latina.

TESS ARENAS: Wow, Nelia, what a groundbreaker you've been.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Well, that's . . .

TESS ARENAS: When you look back over your activism, which would you say was the most impactful work you've done, and why?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Oh, in the past, I would say, what I did at San Jose State. They have a, I think they even have a Ph.D. program now. I'm not 100% sure, but I know they were discussing it. In more recent times, when I've felt pride in that I accomplished was getting together or being able to get the travel study courses, at UW-Whitewater . . .

TESS ARENAS: The study abroad for students of color to visit countries where we're the majority.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Right . . .

TESS ARENAS: Yeah, those were a spectacular model that I tried to shift system-wide because it really hits on so many cylinders. And why would you think 01:38:00that activism around creating that series of courses and trips is one of your more impactful efforts?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: It was, because at first, I started with the concept that you would first go to what was most familiar to you, you know, with the students. So, the first course that I put together, we visited Puerto Rico and Jamaica because those students were primarily, that, we might have had some Native American or Asian. But they were much smaller in number. But the two largest numbers were Latinos and African Americans, so Jamaica, you know, I aimed it for African Americans, and Puerto Rico for Latinos.

And I followed that soon thereafter, so with a course on Mexico because I wanted 01:39:00to give it special attention, which, and I did. So, I brought students. First, we traveled from Monterrey, of course, all the way down to Guadalajara, and we stayed on the campus of El Tec, which is a private university system of 26 campuses across Mexico. So, I made contact with them.

And I not only did the study travel, but I also did the semester and annual course, exchanges, so I wrote those, you know, to get them moving. And in the time, I was there, we had a successful program of about 66 people that participated in it, all from Mexico coming here and people from here going to Mexico. You know, and so some of the students ended up studying for a whole year, or some of them ended up studying for a semester. But it really changed 01:40:00their life in terms of their approach to the world and became much more fluent and much more aware of their culture as Chicanos.

Not all the students that went there were Chicanos. I had some Puerto Rican students that I hand twisted, you know, because Puerto Ricans can also be narrow-minded. You know, so I did it so that, one student I had went there and ended up teaching in, una prepa, a preparatory school for El Tec, and actually, I have to give credit to my daughter. She also ended up studying in Mexico and teaching in one of the prepas [preparatory schools] for a year.

You know, so and the other students, or one student, it changed her life. She became a Spanish teacher. Actually, she had contacted me. She's African American, and, you know, it broadened, altogether, it broadened their experience on both sides. I'm talking with the interchange program, but also taking them to 01:41:00other places to broaden their horizons, to make them aware that we're living in a global society and to be aware that, you know, what is it?

Exploitation and racism and discrimination exist not only in our environment within the United States or within our states or, you know, local, regional, but also globally. So as a result, I ended up taking students to places such as Egypt to have them understand cultures, that we're related, all of us.

I took them first, when I started that, the broadening, I started first with Puerto Rico and Jamaica and then Mexico. Then I took them to Spain and Morocco, so I did it because Spain was for Hispanics, and Morocco was for African Americans. You know, so that went, and then it started spreading in other areas, but altogether, I taught 14 study abroad courses, and I wrote 18. Four of them 01:42:00didn't, you know, didn't take off, but 14 did.

TESS ARENAS: I remember when Vietnam was canceled, or was it Cambodia?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yeah, that one I wasn't happy, yeah.

TESS ARENAS: One of those that was a hard one to put together, I remember it was quite complicated.

TESS ARENAS: Yeah. Well . . .

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: So, when you, pardon me.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: The one to Cuba was very difficult . . .

TESS ARENAS: Yes, I loved it, and that's when I said, it has to be across the system, but I never get any money to implement it. But I thought it was a fabulous model. Now when you look at your activism now, how would you describe it?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I, it continued, and one of the things is, you don't work on your own. What you do is, you work in a, on a group basis. So, when I work to get changes made, I don't do them as an individual. I recruit, or I work with 01:43:00other people, you know, to form a group because, a group of people to bring across change.

And as the last thing I did at Whitewater campus to, I started the Latino Forum. And first, I started, it was in, you know, ethnic studies. You know, first within, you know, even a smaller group within Hispanic, you know, whatever we had was Hispanics, but then I incorporated ethnic studies, and then I went beyond to include the campus as a whole. I started the Latino Forum, you know, so it was much more broad . . .

TESS ARENAS: I participated in that this spring, and it was fabulous . . .

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Yeah, and what is the Latino Forum?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: It was a group, who's, are you asking the question? Who's asking . . .

TESS ARENAS: Yeah, it's Eloísa.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Oh, Eloísa, it was a group that, we got together to deal with specific issues that impacted Latinos, so it dealt like with things like 01:44:00immigration. It dealt with, I know one of the, education, we had one on education. And what I did was, I tried to get people in the different disciplines, you know, to talk, either to present or, present on the key areas that impacted such a thing as immigration from a political, sociological, cultural, you know, aspect. I have all of that somewhere around here, you know, but . . .

TESS ARENAS: It was really, again, a unique endeavor because, when I think about the other institutions, when I was at . . . that kind of cross education was not formalized. You know, and a unit might hold a cultural event or bring in a guest speaker, but I think Whitewater was one of those few campuses that had a 01:45:00continual series that was offered to the entire campus. So, you know, kudos on that one. That was, I was very, very impressed . . . over the years.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: And your point was that you didn't do it alone, but you brought in others . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: That's right. I brought in others. I did the same thing with Latino Heritage Month. I didn't have the resources, you know, monetary resources to put on a full-blown program, so I went and recruited, or I recruited. I went and begged the different . . . you know, to support some of those things that I was doing.

So, we developed a full-blown Latino Heritage Month. So, we had one on bilingual, being bilingual, and, you know, that one, basically, we incorporated 01:46:00the needs of each of the colleges. And they participated in the program, you know, I mean, made a point of having education, business, letters and sciences, and the other one was art school. So, I had, it was a total program.

So, for instance, in art, we would have an exhibit, an art exhibit, so I had one from Oaxaca, a full-blown exhibit of the artists from Oaxaca who came here. And, I mean, we had their art, their paintings and other like ceramics exhibited during Latino Heritage Month. Another time, I did it in Las Pidieras [Spanish], which are like, oh, in English, Las Pidieras [Spanish] are, they're where you sew together the . . .

TESS ARENAS: Oh, yes, the tapestry.

[Simultaneous discussion]

TESS ARENAS: Right, from Latin America.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Right, and that one, I brought people from Chile. That was our, and I brought somebody who was an expert on Chile and talking about revolution, desaparecidos [the ones who vanished]. You know, so I remember doing that, but I also, that one was an art part of it.

And I also brought musicians, music into it, so it included our own students. We had some students who were like DJs, you know. And I would make sure that in all of the Latino Heritage Month activities, we always had a session run by the students themselves.

You know, and we had, one student wrote a play on Frida Kahlo, a one-act play, and she was responsible for getting the whole thing, she directed it. She chose the people who were going to play in it. The, she did everything, you know, so it was a, I was amazed. I thought that was a very good one. Another time, I had another student who produced a one-act, she got all the students together. That 01:48:00was her project, and she got all the students to do Josefina Lopez, I think? Do you know who she is, a Chicana writer?

TESS ARENAS: Yes.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: You know, so she put on that show, and she even had to do, I was scared because I just gave it to her. And, I mean, I said, here. This is your baby. You take care of it. And I thought it was going to fall on its face. And when we sent out the invitations that, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, you know, but they pulled it together.

So, you know, I worked hand-in-glove with the student organizations and the community because I also did work. I also got stuff done with Whitewater High School, so we started having an assembly during Latino Heritage Month. We would have a Latino assembly program at the beginning of the year in which we had coordinated efforts between their students' groups and our student group. So, 01:49:00they put a whole show together for them.

And then I also brought somebody from California who's done a one-act show for the history of, you know, Latinos and Chicanos, you know, into the show. But it was a wonderful, you know, collaborative effort. But I was doing that same thing too.

Oh, I did another special program with immigrants and immigration, and in that case, in that situation, I brought in some of the lawyers that we have from Wisconsin, outstanding lawyers who are very good at immigration. I had like 200 or 300 people who came from the community because the program was held half in Spanish, in Spanish and in English.

And one of the things, I had the people in the communities write their questions on little cards in Spanish or English, and making sure, passing the card, so that they would not be identified. You know, in case somebody was out to see who 01:50:00are, who was here illegally. And, you know, that program went on until 11:00 at night. It started at 7:30, and people were still there at 11:00 at night. Those are some of the activities . . .

[Simultaneous discussion]

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: . . . Tess asked the question; how would you describe your activism now? And I wrote down what you said, which is, it continues. What does that mean? So, are you active in community issues now?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Right now, I'm more active, you know, because I got, I'm the chair now of the, this year, I'm the chair for the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, which is a, as I think you know, NACCS, which is a nationwide organization. So . . .

TESS ARENAS: The first Wisconsin woman ever, and she's Puertorriqueña [Puerto Rican]. Can I hear a, oh, yeah? Can I hear a, yay?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: They, by the way, the theme that we used this year was very controversial at the beginning . . .

TESS ARENAS: I remember.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: You remember? It was, and then we had to rewrite it, and we did rewrite it, and they said it was, they think it was one of the most, if not the most successful conference that they've had in years.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Felicidades [Congratulations].

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Si, de verdad, porque eso me sorprendió [Yes, for reals, because that really surprised me]. It really surprised me. I was very pleased. And the people that were most against, it was about the issue of incivility and civility. And the people that were most against it told me at the end of the conference that they were wrong in objecting to it, that it was a very, very provocative thing that made everybody think.

We had like, we had people, so many people. I read over 303 proposals because I, 01:52:00last year, I was the chair-elect for the program, you know, that we had in San Francisco in April 2015. So, it was very time consuming, but I found it a delightful, not delightful, that's trivial. I found it a very meaningful kind of participation by everyone.

And I was very pleased that we talked about civility and incivility, not only at the local, but also what's happening at the national and also at the international level, you know, and how it's affecting our society, which is global in nature. So, you know, it went very well.

TESS ARENAS: I'm happy for you because it was incredibly tense for a while amongst the women I was talking to. They were not happy because they inferred civility meant compliance . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: That's right, which it didn't.

TESS ARENAS: . . . to hegemonic norms. And what you were promoting was civility 01:53:00amongst a cohort of activists, scholars, so that you can exchange information for the betterment of the discipline. And people were very, very hung up on this fear of abandoning radical work, and that's not what you were proposing, so I'm really delighted to hear it turned out this well.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I'm so glad that you, I mean, you articulate it so well . . .

TESS ARENAS: Well, it's because I had a lot of e-mails sent to me when the announcement went out, and people were very upset. And I moderated it by saying, I think what is being said is, civility amongst ourselves, because I had heard the year before that conference people were screaming at each other.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Oh, yeah . . .

TESS ARENAS: And you told me that, Nelia.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yes, I did.

TESS ARENAS: And so, I'm really excited that your worst detractors became your endorsers by the end of the conference because it was an important confrontation 01:54:00. . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: That's right.

TESS ARENAS: . . . that we all needed. Yeah.

[Simultaneous discussion]

NELIA OLIVENCIA: And it . . . you know, they were civil. The screaming people were very civil and very moderate and moderated in there, you know, in their dialogues. And we, it was in the plenary session, which, you know, as the chair-elect, I had to chair, not, I had to, I did chair, was one of the best, informative, all the people that attended it said it was the best program that's ever seen, you know, or the best in many years. The students were saying, I want to come back and be a member, you know, of the association because this was so impressive.

TESS ARENAS: That's great.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Congratulations.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: . . . you know, and one of the people wasn't . . . it was Cherrie Moraga, was the center, you know, and she also . . .

TESS ARENAS: I read her e-mails. I mean, they were scathing.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Really?

TESS ARENAS: Oh, yes.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Okay.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Before we ask our last question, I did want to ask, one clarifying question, which is about the Hispanic women's organization that you started in the 1970s.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: '80s, I think it was right before 1980, I think. Yeah.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: In the, so in the late 1970s, what was the name of the organization, and what were you trying to accomplish?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Oh, my God. Women, you do know, you know . . . it's been historically documented that, in many cases, women were the driving force behind many of the movements . . .

TESS ARENAS: For sure.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: . . . and that they, you know, their contributions were never acknowledged in many cases. And that included, for sure, the Hispanic woman 01:56:00because many times they were pushed to the back and, you know, as nonexistent, almost.

You know, an example of that was, I made, right before here, when we were talking about Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, so she, her . . . not acknowledged until now, lately, and by women before that now. But it's, you know, during the big time or the, when Cesar Chavez movement was really high in the horizon, no one ever talked about Dolores Huerta. And I always wondered, why don't they?

But now, you know, that's an example of the impetus to do that Hispanic woman, you know, Hispanic, I think it was called the Wisconsin Hispanic Association or something like that. I have to look back, you know, because I, that's the term I was, I incorporated that group, you know, and I also incorporated La Alianza 01:57:00Cívico Cultural [Spanish] because I had to . . .

[Simultaneous discussion]

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: What was the purpose of the Wisconsin Hispanic Association?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I think it was to give women a voice and also give them a place in which they could speak about issues that were related to women. That's what I remember it being, you know. And we started. It didn't work out is when I guess, you know, because people, anyway, I'm not answering you, but that I remember, it was because we did not have a voice. And we were being put, you know, pushed to the back.

And that's true also in the NACCS conference. Not, that's one of the reasons why the organization's name was changed. In a sense, they took over that role because it's National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, and before it 01:58:00was the National Association for Chicano Studies. I think you know that, or don't you? I don't know who knows it or doesn't. But, you know, but it had to be changed.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: And how long did the organization last? I mean, what, I know you mentioned . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: It didn't really, yeah, it didn't last that long because there was so much infighting. There was infighting was caused around who would be the leader, or who would be the people calling the shots. And those of us from Madison that were involved in it, it wasn't a matter of who was the leader. It was a matter of getting a group, you know, statewide that dealt with women's issues.

But some people started rumors about other people not doing, you know, or not doing the right thing, and that they were using it to get ahead, the same things that always happen, that they were doing, organizing so that they could get 01:59:00ahead themselves. You know, and it was very tragic for me because I spent a lot of weekends driving to Milwaukee, and I don't remember what other campuses, but I think I may have even gone up to, I don't think I went up to Eau Claire. But, you know, I drove by myself, and I would spend my whole day, Saturday, you know, and evenings, you know, to get the organization started. And . . .

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: So, this was more of a college based . . . association?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: No, it wasn't. It was a community people, so I, you know, this was a while ago, so I don't remember it that in detail, but I remember we also had the whole Waukesha contingent. They were community women, a lot of them, and, you know, in Madison too, they were community people. No, it wasn't university. It was community, you know, and just community in general.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Sure. Yeah. Got it. Okay. I hadn't heard of the organization. I think that was wonderful, that there was an effort to work with women across the state.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yes.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: That was great. And . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: It was a lot of effort.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Yeah. Tess?

TESS ARENAS: Yeah.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Okay. I know we have one last question, or do we have more? Because I want you to . . .

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: No, I think . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Mm-hmm.

TESS ARENAS: I was just going to ask, for future generations of Chicano and Latinos, is there anything that you'd like to share that you haven't shared already about activism?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: One thing is to be willing, activism to me, it's not taking the 02:01:00forefront. But always be willing to, what would you say, generate the action to be done by more than one person, and not necessarily to, for whoever is getting the whole thing moving, to get, you don't get credit for it in the end. Nor is it the purpose of it, to get credit. Is, am I making any sense?

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Yes.

TESS ARENAS: Absolutely.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Okay. Because one of the things, what happens is, some people get caught, you know, like working with the, now, as chair of this group, it was a matter of encouraging other people to participate and to also, it, for me, that theme was so important because we go off all on these tracks.

And the main thing that I felt that, in this society, was just all out of kilter 02:02:00right now, that we treat each other so badly. And I was also thinking of the legislature, not only in Wisconsin, but I was thinking in the United States, you know, the federal government. I was thinking of that, and I was thinking about what's happening in Africa with attitudes of, you know, about women being abused.

I was thinking in, you know, I was thinking so much beyond Chicano thing. I was just thinking about the whole movement in the world, the way that we're going right now, that I want us to be able to have dialogue and talk to each other as civilized people and human beings.

And I'm very disturbed, the way people are sometimes, how that is breaking down. You know, I'm very disturbed about what is happening in Wisconsin right now. I'm very disturbed about the tenure question that's occurring right now. I'm just 02:03:00very disturbed that $250 million were cut, you know, that it was a $250 million cut. I'm very disturbed that the secondary, you know, the whole K through 12 system is being destroyed. I think that's, you know, by this, a person who wants to do it for his own personal and selfish ambition.

To me it's mind-boggling, and that people in the state don't recognize what is happening, and that they're letting it happen, destroying things that are so incredible, the DNR, Department of Natural Resources. You know, it's very upsetting. The fracking is another situation, I mean, that I see. So, I see so many issues. But, you know, and part of it is being able to talk, and not only to be civil but also to be informed when you're talking, and not to throw 02:04:00accusations at each other, okay, left and right.

By the way, I did write, for the introduction for the NACCS counselors, I did write an introductory welcome piece. It's very short. In a way, it was to address all the criticism that was heaped on us, when we first came up with this theme. You know, and I'm also responsible now for getting the proceedings published for this conference right now, and I'm working on that. But I wrote that second piece to address people's misinterpretation, you know. I'm, you know, Tess, I'm so happy that you really understood what the gist of it was, I mean, what the theme was about.

TESS ARENAS: Oh, well, that's because I've got, like I said, I had people from 02:05:00Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, and all over, writing to me about just having seen it. And I'm like, no, I didn't, and then I read it, and I went, oh, I know what that means. And then, you know, I just leaned back and watched people comment. And but I'm just so pleased that it all worked out.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: It did.

TESS ARENAS: That's a testimony to . . . ability to bring in diverse voices.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: It did, and it was, again, it was do outstanding. I still would like to have a, the plenary session. Cherrie Moraga, she, and this, don't quote, okay, this is public.

TESS ARENAS: This is public.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I know. But the, I guess, what I can say is, she was impressed at the level of sophistication of the presentations that preceded her, and that, you know, of the whole plenary session, because she said she wanted to be the last speaker in the plenary session. And she was very pleased . . .

TESS ARENAS: Good.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: She was very pleased. Her presentation was excellent. All of them were . . .

TESS ARENAS: Yep. That's amazing. I'm telling you, that's amazing . . . I am so happy for you, really.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: . . . Nelia, thank you so much for all this wonderful information. It is just incredible. We appreciate the time and energy you've given us. I would imagine that some of this was not easy for you. But we certainly think about it as an opportunity for others to learn, people who are more contemporary than ourselves, and the younger people to come. So, thank you once again, and . . .

[Recorded Interview Ends]

NELIA OLIVENCIA: . . . thank you.

TESS ARENAS: . . . is there anything else you wanted to mention before we wrap up?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: You're going to give me a copy of this, right? And what I'm going to do is, I'm going to find out, find as much information as I have. I don't think, I don't know if you would like to have the most, you know, like what was done with the Chicanos, the program that got put on . . . level.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Are you referring to archives?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: What you wanted included in that historical society, yeah.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Right. What we look for are your notes, not public proceedings, so anything that's being mass-produced would not be part of an archive collection. However, what we would want are notes, when you planned an agenda for NACCS, when you're handwriting or off your computer, with some notes scribbled on the side, because that's how, another side of who you are as an organizer.

So, we're not looking for mass produced, for example, some woman gave her business cards and promotional material for her business. Nope. They're mass-produced. We'll keep a business card because it's something that she was proud of, but we were looking for letters, journals, photos of you as young, a young child, immigration papers, confirmation certificates, things that are . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: . . .

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: . . . only to you, and that, and any written documents that you've produced, and no one has seen. Or there was no need for them to see it because it was not the final version. Am I making sense?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Okay . . .

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Because all of that insights into who you are as a thinker.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Okay. Yeah, because that included the latest one, you know, I mean, that included the coming up with a theme for this conference.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Sure, all of those notes, that would be awesome. So, what you can do, Nelia, is let me know when you want us to come over, and we, Hector and I can work with you. And you just scan them, or copy them and take the originals, whichever you prefer.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I'd probably want to go over to you, you know, instead, and the reason is, I'm still recovering from my husband being gone.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: I know.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: And, you know, I'm still dealing with a lot of issues here, so my house is [Spanish]. It's like a . . . tornado, and my husband was a collector of everything.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: All right. Well, you let me know when you're ready. Now I'm done July 31st, but I moved to the north side of town, and my e-mail . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: . . . she needs it by August 1st, right?

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Right, but, I mean, what I'm saying is, my e-mail address will remain the same because I . . . status, and my research will be housed up there and stuff, so, you know, I'll do the work. We'll still be doing the work. I just won't be getting paid for it.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Okay. By the way . . .

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: So, we're still working on this.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: I wanted to congratulate you . . .

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: For what?

NELIA OLIVENCIA: . . . for all the work you've done, Eloise . . . and, Hector, in the background. You guys have . . .

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: He's probably asleep now, poor guy. He's . . .

HECTOR: I'm here . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: [Spanish]. What happened? No, say that again. I missed something. Hello?

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: He just said he was here, and he was listening.

HECTOR: Yeah.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Oh, yeah . . . you know, things, again, I always, it's what I've told you. I don't, I mean, it was, when I mention it, things don't get done by single individuals. You know, they get done by people, a group of people. And we, you know . . .

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Right. And Hector has been on this for years.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Right. You know, we . . .

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Hector has been here from the very beginning, and he's really helped me a lot.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Yes, and you guys, you know, are awesome, as my daughter would say. You know, or, no, actually, my grandchildren use that term, awesome.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: We're trying. We're just kind of trying to document your awesomeness back at you. Okay. Girl, I think we're done for tonight.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Thank you guys.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Thank you, everyone.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: This was . . .

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: And, all right, Hector, I'm going to log off. Everyone can log off, and you can stop recording, and then upload.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Okay. Thank you.

HECTOR: Sounds good.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Have a good evening.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: All right. Thanks, Hector. I'll be in tomorrow.

HECTOR: Thank you . . .

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Okay. Bye-bye.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Thanks, everyone. Bye-bye.

NELIA OLIVENCIA: Thank you, everyone.

ELOÍSA GÓMEZ: Bye-bye.