Project for an Oral History of the Boston Latino Community (POHBLC), 1955-1985

These research files document Miren Uriarte’s dissertation research on Boston’s Latino community. To support her research, Uriarte collected publications and copied records of Latino community organizations; she also conducted interviews with community leaders in her oral history project, “The Development of Community Based Agencies in a Latino Community.” The collection includes meeting minutes, correspondence, reports, and audiocassettes. With the exception of the audiocassettes and interview transcripts, many of the records in the collection are photocopies. Records document Latino organizations in Boston, especially La Alianza Hispana, the Hispanic Office of Planning and Evaluation (HOPE), and Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA). Issues such as housing, bilingual education, mental health and community development are the focus of the publications and the organizational records Uriarte copied.

The collection arrangement was established using Uriarte’s organization of her files. Series titles include Uriarte’s original categorization in parentheses, such as “Documentary Data.”

In addition to Uriarte's research files, the collection contains a related oral history project, carried out by her husband Mauricio Gastón, the "Project for an Oral History of the Boston Latino Community (POHBLC)". This oral history project remained in Uriarte’s possession after his death. The collection therefore contains two discrete sub-series of oral history interview transcripts and audiocassettes.

Series 1: Community Leaders (People) includes resumes and biographical information on key members of Boston’s Latino community dating from 1972-1977 such as Frieda Garcia, Peter Calcaterra, Alex Rodriguez, and Richard Badillo.

Series 2: Community Organizations (Organizations) documents the activities of Boston Latino community organizations like the New England Spanish American Institute (NESARI), Puerto Rican Entering and Settling Services (PRESS), and Association Promoting the Constitutional Rights of the Spanish-Speaking (APCROSS) dating from 1967-1987. It includes correspondence, meeting minutes, and reports found at other organizations and copied by Uriarte or donated by community members. Uriarte kept these brief overviews of organizations separate from the organizational records of Series 3.

Series 3: Organizational Records (Documentary Data) contains records of the Emergency Tenants’ Council (ETC), Hispanic Office of Planning and Evaluation (HOPE), and La Alianza Hispana that Uriarte copied from the organizations’ originals. ETC later became Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA). Documents include correspondence, meeting minutes, memoranda and reports dating from 1965-1992. Uriarte kept these in-depth organizational records separate from the organization overviews of Series 2.

Series 4: Oral Histories (Interview Data) contains transcripts and audiocassettes from two different oral history projects, “The Development of Community Based Agencies in a Latino Community” and the “Project for an Oral History of the Boston Latino Community (POHBLC),” dating from 1955-1987. Interviewees include Uriarte, Frieda Garcia, Rev. William Dwyer, and Peter Calcaterra. An audiocassette and transcript is available for most, but not all, of the files. Additionally, the POHBLC subseries contains materials from a UMass course taught by Mauricio Gaston, the participants of which carried out the oral history project.

Series 5: Publications and Reports (Secondary Data) includes academic essays, government reports, and community organization publications primarily about the local Latino community dating from 1956-1989.