Chicana/o student journalism, Peldaños 1974­-1977

My engagement with a local student news publication named Venceremos, which had first been published 1993 and was later revived after a five-year hiatus in 2008, provoked larger-scale critical inquiry on the history of alternative Chicano/a journalism in the state of Utah and the University of Utah campus. When it was suggested that Venceremos had a predecessor on the University of Utah campus, I engaged in historical research to locate the archives. I found the archives and the name of the historical college newsletter, Peldaños. The newsletter was produced by a Latino student of the university's Department of Communication and other members of the Chicano Student Association in the 1970s. My research analyzes the ideological, literary, and structural components of Peldaños as journalism in effort to answer the question: What did the Utah Chicana/o student newsletter Peldaños communicate in the mid-1970s and to who? Guided by theoretical frameworks of journalism practice and literature of alternative and/or community media, copies of Peldaños had been "coded" for content analysis. I also collected an oral history of a former student editor to supplement my research objective. The contents of Peldaños are discussed in historic context and in relation to current and future implications of media education through community and/or alternative journalism practices.

CHICANA/O STUDENT JOURNALISM, Peldaños 1974­1977 By Abby Michelle Reyes A Senior Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The University of Utah In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Honors Degree in Bachelor of Science In Communication Studies Approved: Sonya M. Alemán, PhD Kent Ono, PhD Thesis Faculty Supervisor Chair, Department of Communication Julia Corbett, PhD Sylvia D. Torti, PhD Honors Faculty Advisor Dean, Honors College April 2015 Copyright © 2015 All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT My engagement with a local student news publication named Venceremos, which had first been published 1993 and was later revived after a five-year hiatus in 2008, provoked larger-scale critical inquiry on the history of alternative Chicano/a journalism in the state of Utah and the University of Utah campus. When it was suggested that Venceremos had a predecessor on the University of Utah campus, I engaged in historical research to locate the archives. I found the archives and the name of the historical college newsletter, Peldaños. The newsletter was produced by a Latino student of the university's Department of Communication and other members of the Chicano Student Association in the 1970s. My research analyzes the ideological, literary, and structural components of Peldaños as journalism in effort to answer the question: What did the Utah Chicana/o student newsletter Peldaños communicate in the mid-1970s and to who? Guided by theoretical frameworks of journalism practice and literature of alternative and/or community media, copies of Peldaños had been "coded" for content analysis. I also collected an oral history of a former student editor to supplement my research objective. The contents of Peldaños are discussed in historic context and in relation to current and future implications of media education through community and/or alternative journalism practices. i TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………….…………………………………….. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………..….… iv PREFACE…………………………………………………………………………..……. v INTRODUCTION……………….………………….…………………………………… 1 LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………………………....………………... 4 i. U.S. News Media Consumption, Latinas/os, and Chicanas/os…………...…. 4 ii. Community and/or Alternative Media………………………..…………….. 6 iii. Venceremos--Bilingual Student Press at the University of Utah…………….. 9 METHODS……………………………………………………….…………………….. 13 i. Historic Archives…………………………………………….…………… 13 ii. Content Analysis & "Coding"……………………………..……………..… 14 iii. Oral History……………………………………………..………………….. 15 RESULTS……………………………………………………………………….……… 17 DISCUSSION & CONCLUSION………………………………………..…………….. 25 APPENDICES……………………………………………………………..…………… 28 A. Coding sheet for content analysis of Peldaños …………………………..... 28 B. Cover pages of Peldaños ………………………………………………………….. 33 C. Transcription of interview with Judge Gilbert Martinez on Peldaños........... 37 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………. 61 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of this document developed into a material reality due to the cooperation of several people, offices, and accessible resources. Although not all who shared their time, skills, and knowledge are named in this document, I consider all the support for this endeavor valuable. To my thesis supervisor, Dr. Sonya M. Alemán, thank you for welcoming me to participate and contribute to your longstanding work with the publication Venceremos. This experience provided me with an interesting topic for my thesis and your academic and professional support was encouraging. Of course, this document would not be nearly as informative without the students, class peers, writers, and community members who contributed to my research via focus groups, interviews, editing, and feedback. Your willingness to personally collaborate with me had been vital to my learning and understanding of this project. The J. Willard Marriott Library has vast collections of interesting items from seemingly every discipline imaginable (to an undergraduate, perhaps). It is here I located the well-kept "secret" of Peldaños among other sources. This library employs the keenest library staff I have ever met who were quick and eager to come to my aid with whatever question I had. Other helpful institutional resources were the Office of Undergraduate Research and the Department of Communication as they introduced me to the "ins and outs" of different research processes. Thank you to Janet, Jennifer, Jill, and Rachel, the women in these offices who helped me navigate administrative details of undergraduate research and secure travel funding. iii A significant amount of gratitude is reserved for instructors, employers, and co-workers throughout my college years who enhanced my educational experience through enriched learning environments and opportunities. I acknowledge University of Utah faculty Glen Feighery, Sonya Alemán, Robert Gehl, Julia Corbett, Kimberly Mangun, Ye Sun, Heather Palmer, and Christine Jones; members of KUER 90.1 fm staff Tristin Tabish, Nastaran Alimadadi, Gayle Ewer, Susan Kropf, Elaine Clark, Benjamin Bombard, and Doug Fabrizio; BobbiJo Kanter of Special Olympics Utah; and members of the University of Utah's CARMA Center Kavitha Damal, Vineela Maddukuri, and Nathan Burgon. You each gave me so much of your time, in and out of class or "the office," and contributed to the bulk of knowledge I retained as an undergraduate. Finally, to my dearest friends--Ashleigh and Brian--and familia--Sara, Casey, Paola, Stephanie, y Madre--whose interactions and discussions kept me talking and thinking as I fine-tuned my educational objectives, muchas gracias. Your often direct and nonchalant honesty proved greatly amusing, which kept the workload manageable. iv PREFACE In January 2013, I registered for an upper-level undergraduate communication course named Media & Diversity at the University of Utah. Throughout the semester my peers, professor, and I discussed notions of class, gender, race, and physical ability representations or reports in mainstream media, including news and entertainment sources. This experience resulted in my gained understanding of critical interpretation of media and journalism practices as well as local media alternatives. One year later, I was invited to engage in research of the only bilingual student newspaper currently circulating on-campus and within Salt Lake communities named Venceremos. In January 2014, I applied to and was granted an assistantship for participating in the University of Utah's Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP). My research objective at the time included a mixed-method approach in attempting to gauge what levels of civic engagement and/or activism have been fostered as a result of Venceremos for students and community members. At the beginning of the semester my research advisor, Dr. Sonya Alemán, and I partnered with AbsolUte Communication, a student marketing and public relations firm on-campus, to design a survey. This survey included numerous in-depth questions to gain insight of community responses to Venceremos' content. We printed 9,000 surveys of which 6,000 were written in Spanish and 3,000 in English. Half of these surveys were mailed out with the first issue of the semester just before the University's spring break in March. The last half had been mailed out with the second issue of Venceremos near the end of the semester. On March 1, 2014 I conducted a focus group to examine how former contributors measure Venceremos' impact on their lives- professionally, personally, and/or v academically. A similar virtual survey had been created using Qualtrics, a digital survey design and distribution software, and sent as an alternative form of participation to former contributors who expressed interest in attending the focus group but were unable to. The findings of a section of this focus group were presented at the University of Utah's Undergraduate Research Symposium in 2014. Somewhere in the process of researching Venceremos' impact and history, I came across the suggestion that a student Chicana/o newspaper named Peldaños had been published decades earlier by students of the campus. This discovery led me to engage in historical archival research that resulted in the recovery of four issues of Peldaños which became the foundation for this thesis. vi INTRODUCTION A common sentiment regarding the news media is that it is a "fourth estate" of the U.S. political system, assuming a watchdog role to the American public while providing checks and balances to protect public interest. This fourth estate conception is associated with "the press" or print journalism and theoretically assigned as working in conjunction with government and citizenry (Conboy, 2010). This sentiment provides the premise to assume that people value news media and supports the notion that media matters and affects us all. In fact, mass communication research of news media reflect similar conclusions but suggest various methods in which valuable information exchange takes place among people and newsmakers. In 2013, the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) reported that an estimated 69% of U.S. adults read newspaper content in a myriad of technological platforms, including print, on any given week or month (Naa.org, 2015). This does not ignore the 59% of young Americans aged 18-24 assumed to be apathetic of news (Naa.org, 2015). This information connotes that the public cares about newspaper content. Notwithstanding, there are noteworthy changes taking place in the newspaper media industry and among social interactions with news media. The State of the News Media reported that the year 2013 marked a continuous decline of mainstream media affecting "content and audience satisfaction" (Pew Research Center's Journalism Project, 2014). The findings of change and, often, decline in the production and consumption of original mainstream news through traditional media platforms such as television and print provides an impetus to review the state of news media alternatives. 1 This text examines how community and/or alternative news media have fared on a large-scale and further delves into the performance of niche media markets such as ethnic-based journalism. Do the mainstream media trends apply to community and/or alternative news media? To answer these questions, it is important to understand that some alternative and/or community media have distinctive journalism and development practices catering to audience niches. The following pages will first introduce audience consumption trends of mass news media content. With this background, I review the literature of news media alternatives with a particular focus on Latina/o1 media trends and conceptualizing community and/or alternative journalism. The introduction and literature review are structured to serve as a transition to understanding the significance of small student publications incorporating Chicana/o journalism. Chicana/o are terms used for self-identity by Mexican-Americans (del Olmo, 1971). The methods section discusses the mixed-method research approach with the objective of understanding the study of a particular Chicana/o student publication named Peldaños. Peldaños was a college newsletter published in the 1970's and produced by a Latino student of the University of Utah Communication Department as well as members of the Chicano Student Association (CSA). In analyzing Peldaños' articles and with the supplement of an oral history of a former student editor, I analyzed the Chicana/o journalism practices of Peldaños. I ultimately discuss Peldaños as a historic journalism 1 I use the term Latina/o rather than Hispanic in this text to be more inclusive of gender and ethnic identity when referring to individuals of Latin American descent and living in the U.S.; I use the term Hispanic only as it appears in a citation. 2 alternative with consideration to historical context of Chicano social movements in in the 1970's. This thesis is organized around the following tenets as a whole: a) U.S. News Media Consumption, Latinas/os, and Chicanas/os b) Community and/or Alternative Journalism c) Venceremos--bilingual student press of the University of Utah d) Research methodology and results of Peldaños study I conclude this document in discussing the relevance of elements reviewed in the literature and to the findings of Peldaños. 3 LITERATURE REVIEW U.S. News Media Consumption, Latinas/os, and Chicanas/os The Pew Research Center conducted an annual report on the State of the News Media in 2014. At a glance, local television remains the dominant source in which Americans consume news, reaching nine out of ten U.S. adults (Pew Research Center's Journalism Project, 2014). Local television stations, however, were producing less original content than in 2012 as fewer companies controlled more stations through convergence or consolidation of media ownership (Pew Research Center's Journalism Project, 2014). From a development viewpoint, traditional advertising from print and television account for more than half of the total revenue supporting news (Pew Research Center's Journalism Project, 2014). Print advertising revenues, however, were reported to be in "rapid decline" affecting the business and employment models of print journalism (Pew Research Center's Journalism Project, 2014). An analysis of newspapers by John Murray of the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), reveals that the digital landscape of newspapers partly helped to increase daily circulation (Pew Research Center's Journalism Project, 2014). Murray further reported that 15 of the nation's largest newspapers have just under 55% of their total circulation in print implying alternatives for the other 45% (Pew Research Center's Journalism Project, 2014). Moreover, in 2012, a national decline of 6.4% of full-time professional newsroom employment was expected to continue in trend including the loss of hundreds of newspaper jobs (Pew Research Center's Journalism Project, 2014). Paralleling this national trend is The Salt Lake Tribune, Utah's currently most widely-circulated newspaper reporting news since 1871 (digitalnewspapers.org, 2015). The 4 newspaper today covers local, national, and international news but in September 2013 experienced a loss of 19 staff members, 2 of whom were employed part-time (Semerad, 2013). The cut had been the result of declining revenue and the struggle to acclimate to the economics of a growing online readership (Semerad, 2013). In less than one year, the Tribune laid off 8 additional staff members and discontinued its Faith section as a print feature for similar cost reduction reasons (Semerad, 2014). The failure of producing overall original content in televised news and the loss of employment at mainstream newspapers may result from multiple factors. One increasingly interesting factor to investigate is the correlation of viewer and readership choices of diverse audiences. The Pew Center predicts "dramatic changes" to occur in news media industries due to shifts in U.S. demographics (Pew Research Center's Journalism Project, 2014). For example, an increase in the population of Latinas/os accounts for half of the nation's growth between 2000 and 2012 (Guskin and Anderson, 2014). In relation to media, at least nine predominantly Spanish-language local newspapers were established in ten of the largest U.S. Latina/o metropolitan areas by population from 2000 to 2004 (Developments in Hispanic Media Market, 2014). According to the Pew Center, Spanish-language media remain important to Latinas/os and reported that Spanish-language media fared better overall than their English-language counterparts (Guskin and Mitchell, 2015). The total number of Spanish-language newspapers remained stable with regard to the decline of the English-language press (Guskin and Mitchell, 2015). The Pew Center emphasizes the importance of ethnic media in multiple languages as they inform the public "about places and issues that are often absent from the mainstream media" (Guskin and Mitchell, 2015). 5 Spanish and/or bilingual newspapers are not a contemporary phenomena. The Chicano Press Association (CPA) is the product of uniting several papers in the mid- 1960's in effort to support the Mexican-American civil rights movement occurring in the U.S. (Murphy, 1974). A particularly catalytic moment was the California grape strike in 1963 in which the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) was formed (Murphy, 1974). The UFWOC had created a newspaper called El Malcriado and had been printed in both English and Español2 (Murphy. 1974). The newspapers compiled as collection of the CPA had similar goals of establishing a "voice" for Chicanas/os to "correct" representations of themselves in mainstream media (Murphy, 1974). The organization highlighted events and issues relevant to Chicanas/os as a community and nationally. Many of the papers did not rely on advertisements for revenue but rather garnered support from "sympathetic organizations" (Murphy, 1974). This non-profit journalism model shares some commonalities with community and/or alternative journalism. Community and/or Alternative Journalism In the foreword of Jock Lauterer's book Community Journalism, journalism educator Gloria B. Freeland writes that community newspapers are thriving (Lauterer, 2006). Lauterer states that in 2006 community newspapers were dominating the U.S. newspaper landscape comprising a total of 97% of U.S. newspapers classified as "small" community newspapers (Lauterer, 2006). From the mid-1990's to about 2006 there was 2 I use the Spanish word, Español, for the name of the Spanish language throughout this text 6 an increase in "weeklies" reaching people with increased average circulation (Lauterer, 2006). In recent years, the Pew Center reports that overall, "circulation for the top 20 alternative weekly newspapers declined again in 2013, but at a slower pace than in previous years: 6% in 2013, compared to 8% in 2012" (Pew Research Center's Journalism Project, 2014). It will be important to follow the trend of consumption for these weekly newspapers these next few years. Although they are correlated, it is important to avoid conflating community journalism with alternative journalism. Each term is used to describe journalism practices in varying contexts. This said, media researcher Susan Forde provides an organizational definition that places community journalism as a sub-classification of alternative journalism alongside grassroots, radical, citizens, and independent (Forde, 2011). Forde defines alternative journalism as an all-encompassing term used to recognize different journalism types that are participatory, non-mainstream, and/or not motivated by commercial or political influences (Forde, 2011). Research of community journalism reveals a more nuanced conceptualization of the term and its applications. Community journalism have varying definitions but a collection of its denotations can be summarized with certain characteristics. Community journalism is journalism for groups of people who share "professional or ideological interests, geographic ties, identities, and/or common causes" (Reader and Hatcher, 2012). Another journal defines it as "intimate, caring, and personal," reflecting community through storytelling and leadership (Lowrey et al., 2008). The National Newspaper Association (NNA) describes community journalism as meeting specific information needs of a community 7 contributing to "a shared sense of belonging" (Terry, 2011). Lauterer provides a limit for the size of community journalism as "a publication with a circulation under 50,000" taking into account its dispersion cycle, e.g. monthly, weekly, or daily (Lauterer, 2006). Community and/or alternative journalism remain relevant to the lives of members of a given community. In an article written by Thomas Terry, a subscriber of the Woburn (Mass.) Advocate is quoted as saying, "We don't want to know what's going on in Russia, Boston, Wakefield, and Winchester. We can read about those in the Boston papers," (Terry, 2011). This is a noteworthy attitude as it implies that this particular subscriber gathers information from diverse news sources. The statement connotes that they expect to receive national news from mainstream newspapers but do not expect that same news from their community newspaper. The mere fact that they subscribed to a community newspaper implies some level of interest and/or investment in their community that national news could not cover to their satisfaction. At a symposium on community journalism in 2004, David Moats, Pulitzer -Prize winner referred to his readers as "citizens, not consumers" (Terry, 2011). Terry quotes Robert Putnam that newspaper readers are more "engaged and knowledgeable about the world" as well as "rooted in their communities" than non-readers (Terry, 2011). Ultimately, Terry argues newspaper readers are civically engaged at higher rates than those who do not read newspapers or only watch television (Terry, 2011). With the surge of inevitable and constant media industry changes, media decisions are predicted to rely heavily on readers rather than other externalities (Terry, 2011). This results from audiences participating in "information communities" where they "cognitively" participate in creating and forming information (Terry, 2011). 8 Community journalism is explained to be a process and not a "static goal," where reporters are continuously negotiating their goals and identities as they learn more about one another (Lowrey et al., 2008). In the journal article "Toward a Measure of Community Journalism," the authors assert that community news media have a responsibility to aid the process of symbolic meaning-making and organizational understanding within a community (Lowrey et al., 2008). According to the article, the role of community journalism is to "listen" and "lead" by "encouraging pluralism and offering cohesive, coherent representations of the community," (Lowrey et al., 2008). Notably, the notion of carefully considering representation in community journalism is reflects similar notions in the literature examining media choices of diverse audiences. Ultimately, community journalism strives to be accessible and "human scale," told in community voice for greater relevancy (Lowrey et al., 2008). Lauterer describes the emergence of community journalism entering higher education curriculum (Lauterer, 2006). If this is the case, it is a point of interest to examine community journalism at the collegiate level. Venceremos is an example of a student publication associated with a college media and journalism course that tailors to Chicana/o communities in Salt Lake City, Utah. Venceremos--bilingual student press of the University of Utah With the understanding that community journalism integrates racial identity as community and that Latina/o media are faring generally well in their niche markets, I describe a combination of these media attributes in closer examination of a non-profit Chicana/o student publication named Venceremos. 9 Venceremos is a news publication produced by students at the University of Utah advocating social justice for communities of color in the Salt Lake valley and greater Utah (venceremosutah.com, 2015). Venceremos translates to "we shall overcome" and aims to serve as a platform for socially just journalism providing accessible information, news, and stories incorporating everyday concerns encountered by students and members of Latina/o, Chicana/o, and communities of color in Utah (Alemán, 2012). The writers are referred to as guerrilleras/os or "warriors of the pen" and are comprised of students and community members. Writers elaborate on topics such as immigration, ethnic and gender stereotypes, language, education, and many more areas of interest in their articles (venceremosutah.com, 2015). The student staff print anywhere from 6,000 to 8,000 copies at the end of each school semester and with the help of volunteers, distribute to several locations on-campus, as well as local community hubs such as markets (mercados), businesses, cafes, etcetera .Venceremos was created in the fall of 1993 by seven Chicana/o students who implemented alternative journalism practices in the newspaper (venceremosutah.com, 2015). In the 2007- 2008 academic year, the revival of Venceremos is accredited to 12 Chicana/o and Latina/o students after a five-year hiatus (Alemán, 2011). This newspaper is unique in that contributors are encouraged to integrate methods of "testimonio" into their journalism. This requires that a reporter assume a first-person narrative style in efforts of acknowledging their agency as a reporter. This practice challenges constructed standards of objective neutrality in mainstream news journalism and reporting rhetoric. 10 The model for objective reporting traditionally follows an "inverted pyramid" style with the most valued details summarized first followed by facts organized by decreasing order of importance (Corbett, 2006). American journalists are trained to commit to "objectivity and fairness" in their reporting striving to remain as personally detached as possible in their writing (Corbett, 2006). In a chapter discussing news media in her book, Communicating Nature, Julia Corbett explains a metaphor that describes journalists as "gatekeepers," who decide which information passes to the next phase of news production and which details are left out (Corbett, 2006). Journalists construct a news story based on news values such as timeliness, i.e., event-driven, and they frame their articles through the selection of facts and guidance of new values (Corbett, 2006). In following objective reporting styles, the mainstream press is made up of journalists who frame articles subjectively through the selection and organization of facts. This construction of news stories helps to guard a system of social control supporting news values and "status quo's" more often than not (Corbett, 2006). This challenges the metaphor of news media being a fourth estate and perceived as a watchdog for public interest. The news media have advantages in indirectly or directly supporting their economic interests and dominant social paradigms to ensure social control. Many news media are profit-driven and reliant on compliant advertisers for revenue. The purpose of including "testimonio" into a reporter's journalistic practice in Venceremos is to reveal biases, feelings, and/or responses to the stories they engage in. This allows a human source of a story to reflect on a reporter's transparency as they share their own thoughts and experiences (González et al., 2003). Venceremos student reporters often write first-person accounts of their experiences or interactions integrating the 11 practice of "testimonio" into their journalism. This is also reflected in the staff's editing practices. The student staff are responsible for editing their peers' articles and communicating any changes to their human sources. This unique editing feedback loop is designed to ensure the article contributor and human sources are overall satisfied with the representation of their content for the final product (Alemán, 2012). This is especially important because of the extensive transcription and translation process of languages that takes place, from Spanish to English and vice versa (Alemán, 2012). The academic literature on Chicana/o student publications is sparse. Ernesto Bustillos wrote in 1992 that Chicana/o journalism has a long history of publication (Bustillos, 1992). Bustillos asserts that journalistic papers were published towards supporting efforts of Mexican liberation as early as 1850 with El Clamor Público (Bustillos, 1992). Many of the publications mentioned afterwards were "united" through the Chicano Press Association (CPA) from 1965-1975 (Bustillos, 1992). From 1977- 1982, CPA gathered around ten student newspapers through the South California Chicano Newspaper Workshop (CNW) (Bustillos, 1992). These timelines intersect with high activity of Chicana/o student movements calling for civil rights in the 1960's and 1970's (del Olmo, 1971). However, literature on these student publications could not be located to supplement this particular research. Nonetheless, understanding the theoretical framework and practice of Venceremos as Chicana/o journalism provides a unit for comparison to its historic counterpart Peldaños. 12 METHODS A mixed approach of quantitative and qualitative methods embody this research and includes historic archival research in the J. Willard Marriott Library, conducting an oral history with a former student editor of Peldaños, analyzing "coded" copy content of Peldaños. Historic Archives In reading through the history and research of Venceremos, which was first produced in 1993, I read about a publication that preceded it and that had been produced by students of the University of Utah decades earlier. The publication had not been relocated before spring 2014 (Alemán, 2009). My research interests in student media informed my decision to contact the University of Utah's Special Collections archives at the J. Willard Marriott Library to help me locate the historic college newsletter named Peldaños. The preliminary search began online as I sifted through the University's digital library archive with keywords such as: Peldanos , Chicano or Chicana news, Chicano or Chicana journalism, and Chicano or Chicana student organization. In using Peldanos as a keyword, I was granted access to two separate and potentially relevant archives. The first finding of the keyword Peldaños had been stored in the University of Utah Ethnic Studies Office records archive in a collection named " Navarro, Armandos to Peldaños " and located in box 7 and folder 9 (Peldaños , 1975). The second finding of the keyword had been stored in the Inventory of the Spanish-speaking peoples in Utah oral histories archives in the "Transcripts" collection located in box 7 and folder 4 (Peldaños , 1975). In being able to successfully locate the digital summaries of these archives, I contacted 13 the Special Collections department of the J. Willard Marriott Library to schedule a meeting to examine the articles within. In doing this, I located four issues of the historic college newsletter, Peldaños, which were immediately scanned and printed. Content Analysis and "Coding" Copies of each Peldaños newsletter located on record were analyzed. To analyze content of Peldaños, a document used in the past to "code" Venceremos content had been revisited and modified to consider Peldaños (see appendix A). The original form had been created to "code" for levels of engagement in Venceremos and was performed by several people (Alemán, 2009). For this study, I was the only individual to "code" all Peldaños content and so the results of this analysis were influenced solely by my own critical literary interpretations of the articles. Coding, in this case, refers to the practice of structuring and categorizing literary content based on a series of questions framed by my research question (see appendix A). The ultimate count included a total of four issues of Peldaños newsletters as listed below by month, volume, and number: [Peldaños 1]: November-December Vol. 1 No. 1 [Peldaños 2]: February-March Vol. 1 No. 2 [Peldaños 3]: November-December Vol. 1 No. 2 [Peldaños 4]: April-May Vol. 1 No. 3 It is important to note that the only issue that explicitly had the year of publication printed on its cover page is [Peldaños 4] April-May, Vol. 1, No. 3 and this was in 1975. Additionally, there are two issues labeled Vol. 1 No. 2 but each of these issues were dated with different months and published original content from one another as demonstrated by their cover pages (see Appendix B). Although the date had not been printed on the cover of the other issues, several articles and headlines reported on issues 14 and events that included mention of the years: 1974, 1975, 1976, and 1977. For this reason, it remains an estimate that all printed issues were published within this time frame. The articles were classified additionally by the author, topic, source(s), perceived audience, geographic region and perspective, perceived level of social justice activism, and written language including Español, English, or a combination of the two languages (English and Español). The coding form required that I include rhetorical devices or phases from the article as evidence to justify the rationale of each specific question (see appendix A). Regardless of their categorization, each headlined article was coded with the same form. Oral History During the early process of coding Peldaños content, I noticed the names of authors and editors printed in the newsletter. I asked community members and academic professionals if they had contact information for any of these former student editors. The odds were in my favor as a faculty member was able to help in providing me with contact information for Gilbert Martinez. Martinez was one of the student editors of Peldaños whose name I saw printed in the newsletter. He lived in Utah at the time of my research and so was available to meet with me vis-à-vis. On July 7, 2014, Dr. Sonya Alemán and I met with Gilbert Martinez, who became a federal judge throughout his career, to interview him about his involvement as a student with Peldaños in 1975. This 90-minute interview was recorded and transcribed (see appendix C). Judge Martinez informed Dr. Alemán and me on the history of Peldaños and his involvement as a student editor 15 providing details on the editing process, printing resources, audience perception, and the names of other relative student newsletters of the time (Reyes et al., 2014). 16 Table 1.1 RESULTS The four issues of Peldaños yielded a total of 83 headlined articles which were further categorized by type, language written in, reporting source and style, article topic, perceived audience, and geographic perspective. The four issues of the newsletter included a total of 83 headlined articles which were further categorized as: 1) news (60 articles); 2) poetry, short story, and/or fiction (12 articles); and 3) Other (11 articles) comprised of labeled editorials, announcements, congratulations, and lists of relevant courses or recent graduates. Table 1.1 depicts the classification of articles by their type and the majority of articles were classified as news while table 1.2 demonstrates that the majority of articles were written in English. All 60 articles classified as news were written in English along with 5 English poems and 11 English articles labeled Other. 17 Table 1.2 The issues that comprised most of this English news were [Peldaños 2] and [Peldaños 4], which were more than twice as large in article count than the other two issues. Taking this into account, the English news trend is relatively proportionate in each issue when all issues were compared with regard to their size. The larger issues, [Peldaños 2] and [Peldaños 4], were the only issues that included articles written entirely in Español while the smaller issues, [Peldaños 1] and [Peldaños 3], were the only issues that included individual articles written with a combination of English and Español. Articles written entirely in Español include 5 poems and articles written with a combination of English and Español consist of 2 poems. This adds up to a total of 76 articles written entirely in English, 5 entirely in Español, and 2 with a combination of English and Español. 18 The reporting source and style of articles were classified as subjective, objective, reprint from other communication source, and/or staff or anonymous. A subjective classification included an author's description of a detailed personal experience or integrated first-person and possessive pronouns such as "I," "our," and "we" into their text. Objective reporting followed the structure of mainstream and traditional Western reporting norms in journalism as described in the literature review where first-person accounts are avoided. Most of the announcements, agendas, and lists were classified as objective. Some issues contained articles that had originally been published in another printed communication source and had been selected to be reprinted in Peldaños. These other publications included national and local mainstream newspapers and magazines such as TIME, Arizona Daily Star, The Salt Lake Tribune, and the college newspaper The Daily Utah Chronicle. There was one article named "Harvest of Hunger" that did not seem to fit a mainstream classification and had been reprinted from Maryknoll, described as a "Catholic Foreign Mission." These reprinted articles were explicitly cited with the name of the original publication and the original author. All articles meeting this criteria were classified as reprint from other communication source in the content analysis. Not all headlined articles were accompanied by an author's byline and remained anonymous. Other articles were written either collectively or individually by a staff writer as the byline reads "staff". The implication here is that even if there was one or more writers they remained individually anonymous. If a headlined article was unsigned, missing a byline, and/or written by "staff," the article was classified as being staff or anonymous. 19 Table 1.3 Each article had been counted as being either independently subjective or objective but not both. In this case, the subjective and objective graphic columns in table 1.3 should and do add up to 83--the total amount of articles analyzed. However, it was evident that an article could be objective and reprinted from another publication or written by staff or anonymous. Conversely, an article could also be subjective and reprinted from another publication or written by staff or anonymous. These examples help explain why an article might have multiple classifications in this section of the analysis. Table 1.3 reflects the complex relationship of the articles' reporting sources and styles. Upon closer examination, it is evident that the majority of all articles (61.5%) were written with a traditional objective reporting style with [Peldaños 4] comprising nearly half of this calculated amount. Notably, [Peldaños 4] also included all but one of 20 the reprinted articles. In correlation, 38.6% of the full articles were written by staff or anonymous and distributed nearly equally between [Peldaños 2], [Peldaños 3], and [Peldaños 4]. Perhaps the most intricate analysis of authors' writings were their topics. These included: Education, Business or Labor, Crime (through social justice lens), Grassroots work or Protest, Poverty or Lack of resources, Chicana(o) history including reclaimed, U of U events, Injustice or Racism or Discrimination, Culture or Art or Literature or Film, Identity or Belonging, Language or Bicultural experiences, Legislation or Government, Statistics, Chicana/o leaders, Immigration or Other ethnic group experiences, and Other which is comprised of announcements, short stories, explicitly labeled editorials, and select social services. Each article was assigned at least one topic but it was common for an article to include more than one topic. Table 1.4 depicts the article counts for each topic. Education was the most common topic comprising. It is interesting that the topic Other was the second most popular categorization. One explanation for this is that many of the short stories, poems, announcements, agendas, and lists were assigned to this topic. This aside, the next Chicana/o leaders, Culture or Art or Literature or Film, U of U events, and Culture or Art or Literature or Film followed as the most classified topics. [Peldaños 2] had the highest count of articles in each of these popular topics with the exception of [Peldaños 4] comprising over half of Other. 21 Table 1.4 22 Table 1.5 Just as informative are topics that were least popular to report. At a total of 2 counts for each topic, these were Business or Labor, Crime, Grassroots work or Protest, Statistics, and Immigration or other ethnic group experiences. Additionally, these unpopular topics were found in [Peldaños 2] or [Peldaños 4]. In determining who the perceived audience of each article were, the results were Students, Latinas/os or Chicanas/os, Community Members, University Members, Legislators, White Collar, Working Class, People with Racial Prejudice, or Other. The Other group consisted of specific mentions of mothers, women, migrants, members of a religion, a general public, or it was otherwise unknown who the perceived audience were. For this classification, it was evident that some articles were written for more than one group of people or audience and so were counted in the analysis as such (see table 1.5). 23 Table 1.6 Overall, articles were written for students first and foremost as this group comprised 32.7% of the perceived audience. Similar to the analysis of article topic, Other was second in popular count followed closely by Latinas/os or Chicanas/os, Community Members, and University Members. A very low count existed for Legislators, White Collar, Working Class, and People with Racial Prejudices found only in [Peldaños 2] or [Peldaños 4]. The options listed in measuring the geographic perspective of an article are U.S. (National), Utah (local), International/Global, U of U Campus, or Other Utah Campus. Most articles were written with a Utah (local) perspective with just over half of this count contained in [Peldaños 2]. U.S. (National) and U of U Campus were equivalent in count. A total of 2 articles were written through an Other Utah Campus perspective (see table 1.6). 24 It is important to note that these articles were counted and analyzed manually without guidance of statistical software such as SPSS. Basic arithmetic had been carefully used to calculated summations and percentages. It is possible, however, that human error miscalculations exist in the data. 25 DISCUSSION & CONCLUSION The college newsletters Peldaños and Venceremos have noticeable differences in their organizational infrastructure. Each were published at different times, one in the 1970's and the other is a product of the 1990's and later became a millennial paper after a hiatus. However, both papers possess very similar ideologies of social justice through educational support for Latinas/os and Chicanas/os. Each were products of University of Utah Chicana/o students who organized. Peldaños was a newsletter unlike many of its printed counterparts at the University of Utah at the time. Martinez discusses the difficulties some students seemed to have in writing critically about issues that affected them (Reyes et al., 2014). Martinez describes turning to friends and community members to ask for printing discounts and "favors" recounting that, perhaps tedious or strenuous, these were his fondest memories of involvement while working with the paper (Reyes et al., 2014). The paper tailored most often to Chicana/o students at the University of Utah. The newsletter provided a support system organized in literary form for more accurate representations of Chicana/o student experiences at the time. It was in Peldaños that students found information regarding Chicana/o events on-campus, courses on Mexican-American history, reflections of national and local Chicana/o leaders, and stories of challenges or opportunities in the pursuit of accomplishing educational objectives. The newsletter was a form of community journalism for students premised on an ethnic identity in a collegiate climate. The personal narrative style "testimonios" that is readily practiced in Venceremos is also present in Peldaños before the any located literature of the style had been 26 published. Admittedly, additional research on the history of student Latina/o or Chicana/o newspapers would be advantageous to better measure their historic and contemporary social impact. This is particularly necessary with the consideration that the news media industry is rapidly and constantly oscillating in measurements of perceived success. News media industries are experiencing unique challenges and opportunities with cyclical changes in audience choices, technologies, and business models. Print news is not an exemption to this claim and closely aligns with it. The future implications of engaging in community and/or alternative media research are promising. In converging student journalists and community members, media educators can carefully but successfully establish models for valuable learning experiences. With the understanding that people are interacting with their news in increasingly interactive and participatory ways, the state of community and/or alternative journalism will be a vital research tool for media educators and student journalists alike. Striving to assume the idealistic role of a fourth estate watchdog may end up being a much more continuous and collective effort. 27 APPENDIX A 28 29 (Text Format) Peldaños / Venceremos Content Analysis Form: Civic Engagement & Activism 1. Circle the themes or topics that pertain to this article. If there isn't one listed below that fits, write one(s) that best summarize the theme or topic of the article in the line provided. Educational systems or experiences Business Crime (reinvisioned through a social justice lens) Poverty Labor Grassroots organizing Protests Lack of resources (educational, financial, citizenship) Chicano history U of U events Injustices Race, racialization, racism Discrimination Other:_________________ History (reclaimed) Culture / art / literature/ movies Identity / belonging Language struggles / challenges Legislation, gov't policy (supportive of or challenging of) Statistical information (gov't, academic, community-based) Chicano leaders Immigration Bilingual / bicultural experiences Other ethnic group experiences Media critiques Challenges majoritarian ideas DATELINE 2. Indicate the dateline of the story (that is where the story is geographically based from): Local (Utah) US-based U of U campus Other Utah campus National International / Global CHALLENGES TO MAJORITARIAN STORYTELLING 3. Does this story challenge, subvert or deconstruct majoritarian ideas / dominant discourses about race (such as deficit and stereotypical notions of Latinos, colorblindness, meritocracy, white privilege, etc?) Yes No Give examples below from the article of how it does this (@ least two) 30 SOCIAL JUSTICE ACTIVISM 4. Does it encourage action, activism on the part of the reader? Yes No If yes, describe the action below. Does it inform or educate? Yes No Please give an example of the argument / rhetoric used in the text to inform or provide knowledge: Does empower the reader? Yes No What argument / rhetoric in the article does this? Does it promote social justice? Yes No Please give an example of rhetorical phrase, argument or device that spurs activism. Does it promote liberation? Yes No What argument / rhetoric does it use to do this? Rate how well it promotes social justice: poor fair good excellent LANGUAGE 5. Terms written in a language other than English: EXPERIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE: 6. Does this article validate experiences of oppression / marginalization / racialization / racism?Yes No What argument / rhetoric from the article does this? Does it legitimize community / cultural / collective / historical / indigenous knowledge? Yes No What argument / rhetoric from the article does this? SOURCES: 7. List the sources used in this article and identify the type of source it is: a. expert politician academic website mainstream news article community leader student book other: How is source used to drive / promote / catalyze civic engagement or activism? 31 b. expert politician academic website mainstream news article community leader student book other: How is source used to drive / promote / catalyze civic engagement or activism? c. expert politician academic website mainstream news article community leader student book other: How is source used to drive / promote / catalyze civic engagement or activism? d. expert politician academic website mainstream news article community leader student book other: How is source used to drive / promote / catalyze civic engagement or activism? e. expert politician academic website mainstream news article community leader student book other: How is source used to drive / promote / catalyze civic engagement or activism? PERSPECTIVE: 7. Tell what you learn about the reporter in the article. (For example, does the author reveal that they have Chicana/o sensibilities? Can you tell their particular Latinidad? Are they a student? Community member? Spanish-speaker? Citizen? A parent? Young? Older? Provide as many of these descriptors as you can, using evidence from the article: Do they use "I," "our," or "we" to include themselves in the article? Yes No Please provide examples of this from the article below: Which type of perspective is evident in the article? US-based Global Utah-based Panethnic Latinidad Please provide examples of the arguments or rhetoric from the article that demonstrate this perspective: AUDIENCE: 8. Circle the primary audience you think the article is written for: Latinos Whites Other communities of color Heterosexuals LGBTQ communities Students Community members University members Legislators White collar People with racial prejudices / racially ignorant Working class / laborers Other: What rhetorical devices / phrases / choices help you determine this? 32 APPENDIX B 33 34 35 36 APPENDIX C Transcription of interview with Federal Judge Gilbert Martinez, July 7, 2014 ~ 11:30am by Dr. Sonya M. Alemán and Abby M. Reyes Gilbert: Let me know when you're ready Abby: yeah thanks for waiting for me okay I think we are ready Gilbert: okay, my name is Gilbert Alejandro Martinez de Martinez. My mother's maiden name is Martinez and my dads name is Martinez. My parents were born in (Taos) New Mexico. And my grandparents and great grandparents were born in (Taos) New Mexico and if you wanna follow our bloodline it goes back to the Spanish priest back in 1598 so it goes back even further back than Plymouth Rock. Plymouth rock like 1614 or something like that Yeah Gilbert: so when I tell the gringos the Americans we're the first ones here. We're the ones who own this land cause we go back to 1598. Now my dad had a big family there were like 15 kids in his family and my mom had uh 12 kids in her family. ((Taos)) New Mexico was primarily all Spanish speaking. The Spanish Americans settled in that area. But if you go there today. (Taos) ahs been bought out by Texas and California and it has been turned into a big tourist attraction. Skiing for the winter and the art festivals in the summer. The (placeta) where they had the cathedral and then the uh mayors office and all the little towns and all the little shops, they were owned by Garcia and Lopez but today none of them is owned by the local people, its all been bought out. Well my parents got married, Ursula Martinez and Osio? Martinez and they had seven kids. I'm the baby. All six kids before me were born in (Taos) New Mexico. I was unfortunately born in Toole Utah. which has a little story. My dad was driving a logging truck in the mountains of (Taos) New Mexico. And during world war two and the ____ went to northern New Mexico to recruit people to come and drive trucks. So my dad who is driving a logging truck to earn wages took this federal goverment job and went to Toole so when my parents arrived in Toole. I was born in a little clinic in Toole and when the nurse came in the nurse asked my parents well what's the baby's name and my da says his name is Alejandro Martinez named after my tio my dads favorite brother Alejandro my tio Alejandro and the nurse went back there and she couldn't spell Alejandro so she came back and she says well does he have a middle name and one of my older brothers Fred said oh call him Gilbert so she went and she put on my birth certificate Gilbert a Martinez. So she changed my name. My parents when I was a little kid always calling me Alejandro but then when I went into elementary school they changed it to Gilbert a Martinez and then all of a sudden I'm now a Gilbert. It's just kind of unfortunate. Now in Toole where I went to school. Every grade that I was in I was the only Hispanic kids in my classroom all the kids in the classroom where white and Mormon and I was Catholic and Hispanic. So I can remember that they had like the little league and the babe truth and the cub scouts. I was never invited or allowed to participate because I didn't belong in the majority group. So I can remember even valentines day I was in the third grade. The teacher had everybody get a shoe box and decorate the shoebox and wed put the shoeboxes on the windowsill and everybody in the morning would come and drop their 37 valentine in the shoebox. Well when it was Valentine's Day I would get into a big circle and put our valentines box in our laps and the teacher went around student-by-student having them open up the box and show our valentines. Well there were 30 kids in the classroom and my dad taught me if you have something you always share with the other kids well. I didn't have a lot of money. My dad we were we were very poor people but I still managed to get valentines for all the classroom. All 30 kids, but when it was my turn to open up the box I opened up the box and I only had 2 valentines in the box. Now, that didn't bother me but the fact that I had to show it to other people really devastated me. It made me feel like I didn't even belong in this classroom. But that continued throughout my life but when is ay we were poor I can remember my dad working a full day at the Toole army ____ and then wed go cleanout the back of Safeway, wed clean out the store of Safeway but we never even got paid for it. My dad did it so we could get food. The food that they would throw away they would pay us so we would have food. Okay so lets move this along I graduated from Toole high school in 1965. And as a prerequisite I had to meet with my counselor, didn't even know who the counselor was, never talked to the guy. But right a month before graduation I sat down with my counselor and he looked at me and he said well Mr. Martinez what would you like to do when you graduate. And I said well id like to be an attorney and he looked at my grades and says you'll never make it and he says what else would you like to do and I say id like to be a news reporter id like to work on TV news. And he says you'll never make that either. So remember this is 1965. Course you're too young you must be too young too. The Vietnam War started in 64 and president Lyndon b Johnson increased the draft the summer of when I graduated and my counselor says well Mr. Martinez the only thing I can recommend for you is to join the military. I walked out and I talked to my dad and my dad says I don't know if that's a good idea. Well a month later my brother Manuel and I we graduated at Toole high school together got our draft notice and we joined the Marine Corps under the buddy plan. Well I went into the marine corps and you get tested in boot camp to see whether you're gonna be infiltry or artillery or supply what you're gonna be in. so I remember in boot camp my brother cause I'm Gilbert and he's Manuel he's sitting right behind me. He taps me on the shoulder and says Gilbert do your best do your best. And I'm thinking oh my god my counselor said I'm dumb from Toole high school he said I'm dumb cant do anything. So I took the test and then after boot camp we got our orders and reported to ncrd in San Diego and they put me in a room about the size of this and there were 15 guys in the room. 15 marines. And all the 15 marines that were with me all graduated from college. They were college graduates and I was the only one that was not. And then in walked this general with these two captains and they looked at us and they said congratulations gentlemen you're the best the marine corps has to offer. You're the best and the brightest. I'm __ be in the wrong classroom. I says I remember the days when I wasn't even one of.im now one of the best and the brightest. I don't know how I made that big leap. well that brings me to you know my mom and dad had seven children and the two youngest ones Manuel and I were the only ones who graduated high school. the other five never made it to high school because out in Toole they were considered troublemakers. but one sister was saved. My parents sent my sister Lillian down to (Taos) where she went to catholic school where she graduated. Because she was with Hispanic 38 kids down at (Taos) and she was in a catholic where I was with white kids and Mormon kids Abby: what did you say your sister's name was? Lillian. L-i-l-l-i-a-n. Abby: okay Gilbert: so out of seven kids only three of us graduated from high school. Manuel and I from Toole and Lillian down at (Taos) Catholic high school. The other ones dropped out because they were troublemakers, well I joined the Marine Corps on the buddy plan and after I finished my nine months of communication school. I got a-I'm missing a little part of the story, I gotta tell you this part of the story--lets go back to the room where the general Watson tells these 15 marines you're the best and the brightest. He says you're going to be going to this communication school for nine months and the students who finish number one and number two get to pick their next duty station. And so I said to myself, I'm going to beat their ass. I'm gonna work harder than they do and when I graduate I'm gonna finish one or two and I'm gonna pick Spain. I'm gonna go to Spain. So guess what after the nine months of graduation they brought us back to this room and the general came back into the room and he says congratulations, the guy who finished number one is private d.w. Lawrence from buffalo, NY. Well DW Lawrence happened to be my best friend. We were tight really close. So they called him up to the stand and the general said well de Lawrence private (Lawrence) where do you want to go? And he stood up tall with his little bald hand ___ and said sir I'm a marine sir and I wanna go to Vietnam sir to fight for my country sir. I'm sitting in the back of the room saying why'd in the hell did he do that. So I knew that I was pretty close to the top but I didn't know I was number two and so the general says the person who is number two is lance corporal Martinez. And what do you think happened next? The general said Martinez where do you wanna go and I said, sir, I'm a marine sir and I want to go to Vietnam--- (laugh) but you have to understand Sonya: sure Abby: sure ?: You're a unit. ?: mmhmm Gilbert: you're like tied like brothers together and my best friends going to Vietnam I guess I'm going with him so anyway I went to Vietnam. I got to Vietnam Sept. 20 1966. I was on the war first started escalating '65, '66 I was up in the northern part along (dmz?) and I was a radio operator so I carried my pack my rifle and the radio. And I remember when we go out on an operation with sergeant and the platoon argent would say Martinez were gonna go up there and were gonna go up to the hill 101. He says I don't care if you don't come back, but that radio is coming back. So, and the reason is the radio was the only communication we had with our troops in the back or at the planes and their artillery to give us you know support.so that was what I was in Vietnam. And something happened. Well, a few of my buddies got killed. And I said to myself, I'm never gonna allow somebody to tell me that I cant do something. So when I got back, I decided to go to college. I went up to the university of Utah and I tried to enroll but they wouldn't take me. And I say well I went and fought for my country and was in the Marine Corps for 3 years Vietnam, for thirteen months. Sept. 1966 -- Oct. '67. And they said no we cant take 39 you cause your grades are too low from high school. So I went what is was then called Utah trade tech, it's now called salt lake community college and my brother Manuel and I went there and I got my 2 year associate degree in electronics. But still, because I fought for my country and I saw some of my buddies get killed I says no I'm not giving up on this dream. So I graduated from Utah technical college in 1970 and I went out got a job at ____ making 2.90 per hour. And is till had that dream to go to college. So in 1972 I went back up there and I transferred as a student from trade tech and went up there cause I had like a 3.9 grade point average at the salt lake community college. And that's how my college career started in the department of communication _____. And I went there from '72 to '75 and I graduated with my bachelor's degree after three years. And never, let me tell ya what happened to me next. I went running around all the places the Deseret newspaper the salt lake tribune and the three local TV stations and my main goal was to become a news reporter like Geraldo Riveras. And my real dream was to replace Larry King, I wanted to be able to interview in these top government officials I wanted to really get into to really top news. And I can remember like it just happened yesterday at the KSL interviewing with the news director and the news director at the interview was very open and honest and he says well Mr. Martinez you've got a very impressive resume you served our country in the marine corps you graduated, I think with a 3.6 at the university, communications. But were looking for females. And if you were Hispanic female wed hire you today. And I don't know if you remember and you probably know through your studies but back in the 50s and 60s if you turned on the news it was Walter Cronkite it was always a male news a male doing the news. He was the anchorman ok. So I'm gonna say it was about the middle 70s that they made a push where now today you see a man and a woman a man and a woman. But if you go to California and Texas and even New Mexico what do you see? You see brown people. You see either a brown man or a brown woman but there's always brown on there but here in Utah, I think Christina Flores is about the only anchor lady that I know. Abby: But she came in afterwards too Gilbert: yeah, yeah after me. Yes. But she's the only anchor lady that I know of, now they had the guy on the other channel, he does he's kind of like the street news guy, does the news and then reports in Sonya: Yeah they have umm Dan ___ I wanna say for but he's not our anchor and then there's is it (Martin?)____ is that his name? He has a mustache Gilbert: Yes that's the guy (I'm talking about?) yeah Sonya: Yeah but he's not an anchor, Gilbert: But as far as I know in Utah the only anchorperson is Christina Flores. I think as this thing has evolved, just look at the sports, there was a time that there were only men sports reporters now women, but what do you find that's consistent with the women? They're hiring the one with the pretty face. Yeah they want they want some image. And if I go back to the interview that I had back in 1975 the guy says were looking for a certain image on TV yeah and I think they're looking for the pretty faces rather than the people that are really devoted to the news. So I couldn't get into the uh a job with anybody. Now I have to back up a little bit and tell you that when I was going to the university of Utah department of communications I was going to my GI Bill but I didn't have enough money with the GI Bill so I got a job at the financial aid department, this 40 probably is no interest to you but I found out when I was working at the financial aids department that there were students right out of high school that were getting more out of financial aid than the guys that were getting GI benefits. Abby: oh wow Sonya: and wasn't that supposed to cover like your entire tuition? Gilbert: the guys that were getting financial aid were getting more than we were getting as veterans and the thing that really bothered me was the fact that these college kids that were getting financial aid they drive up to the financial aid to pick up their check in sports cars and fancy cars. And back then to get financial aid you only had to establish two things. One was that you no longer lived with the parents. And that the parents were not claiming you as a dependent on their taxes. And they had to do that for two years they're not living with their parents for two years and their parents are not claiming them as a dependent for two years then the financial aid would just look at their income, the student's income, the students basically were living off mom and dad, with their fancy sports cars but when they come to the financial office they say I have no job and no income so there were big zeros but they would get the maximum amount of financial aid and here I was from a poor family from (Taos) and then Toole, Utah, I didn't get one penny in financial aid now why is this all important in this discussion is that it offended me dearly when I graduated from law school and I would run into attorneys and he says oh Martinez you got your law degree off some kind of minority program and I didn't get a penny in any kind of financial aid or anything. So that's kind of where I had that story ok so. There's another part of the story that you need to know about me is that because I loved the news, I also loved politics cause they kind of go hand in hand so I became very involved in the Democratic party here in Utah and I worked for a U.S. congressman from '72 to '74, same time I was going to college. But the job I had with the congressman was a half time job 20 hours. I was actually working more than that but that's what they think Abby: yeah, haha Gilbert: and uh, I served the summers in Washington and the school years I was here in the federal building. So when I graduated from the department of communication, congressman Owens asked me well what are you gonna do and I said well I cant get a job. He says well then you go to law school. So the U.S. congressman called the dean of the law school and got me admitted into law school. Now why is that kind of significant to the story? That the Utah state bar five)? Years ago I think I think I have the newspaper published the first fifteen minorities fifteen minority attorneys that got admitted into the Utah state bar and I was one of the top fifty, actually I think I was number 36, well what was kind of interesting about that list was that the first 20 were not Hispanic. The first twenty were primarily Asian. I think the first Hispanic was like number 21. So, we were just to look at the first Hispanic attorneys in Utah, I was number 11. One of the real pioneers, I guess. Abby: Yeah, seriously Gilbert: So anyways, because I couldn't get a job in journalism in 1975 when I graduated Congressman Owens who I worked for two years got me into law school, I went to law school from '75 to '78. And I graduated in '78 and again I had the same problem, I could not get an interview with any law firm. So at the time Governor Scott Matheson who I also worked with and he was a Democrat. He hired me to be the 41 administrator of the internship program for minorities in 1978? And we did we hired 20 students up from the University of Utah that were on this intern program and we gave them part time jobs while they were going to college that years. And I administrator of that program and then from there, Governor Matheson appointed me and this probably haven't even heard of this term, the Utah Hispanic Ombudsman, Have you heard of that term? Abby and Sonya: Yes. Gilbert: Ok, well ______ that was created by Governor Rampton to have a liaison between the governor's office and the Hispanic community and the first Hispanic Ombudsman was a guy named Gil Ramirez, Gilbert Ramirez. And the second guy was John Medina who just passed away this last March. And I was number three Gilbert Martinez. I worked under Governor Scott Matheson, and I did that for three years. From about '78 to '81. And then after that I went into my law practice and then in 1985, a Republican governor Norm Bangeter appointed me as a judge in the state I was state workers compensation judge and I was the State judge from 1985 to 1980 to 1990 basically. And then I then became appointed as a federal administrative law judge in October 1989 and that's what I do today. I've actually been here now almost 24 years. 25 I'm going on 25 years. So that's kind of my story and as a the uh final tidbit of the story is I come from a very poor family. Just as an example, my dad, only went to the first grade, my dad could not read or write English and he could basically say he was illiterate. My mom only made it to the 8th grade. And in many ways I have to say that I think my other brothers and sisters were all smarter than me but the reason I made it and they didn't is I think when I was in Vietnam, I changed. And I said, nobody's gonna tell me no again. Nobody's gonna lock that door. And then from there I decided I was gonna fight my way through. And that's how I think I eventually able to make it to the university and graduate from the department of communications in '75, law school in '78. And I've been a federal administrative law judge for the last 24 years. Ok that's basically the main highlights of my story; I didn't mean to bore you to death. Abby: No, that was not boring at all. Sonya: So and along the way you got married? Gilbert: Yes, 1981. Sonya: Uh huh, and so do you have any kids of your own? Gilbert: We have one daughter, Beatriz is her name. B-e-a-t-r-i-z she has a different spelling and my wife is from Peru. Sonya: So you met her here? Gilbert: Actually I was working for Governor as Hispanic Ombudsman when I met her. She came in 1979 and was in a program kind of English as a second language program. And there were some problems with the program, the governor asked me to go investigate it. It was primarily Hispanic students ____ people and that's where I met her. Sonya: and did all your siblings remain here? Did the rest of your siblings. Gilbert: all seven children remained here except my oldest sister. When she turned I think 20 years of age back in like 1954 I think, she said that she'd had enough of Toole, she thought it was too discriminatory in Toole, she went out to California and she got a different job but she's basically lived in its now Pico Rivera? California, which is what Los Angeles County. Where's she's lived, where's she's been married, where she's had 42 her children and grandchildren but the rest of us has pretty much stayed in in Utah. My brother Manuel who was with me went to the Marine Corps with me he lives in Layton, I live in N? Salt Lake and all the other ones live in Toole and T___ and my oldest brother did pass away with multiple myenoma when he was about 80 years old Sonya: and did your brothers that went Manuel that started Utah trade college with you, did he also get an associates or did he no finish?.... Gilbert: No no, we got out the marine corps together we were buddy friend together and we got out December 1968 and we started at Utah Technical college together we graduated 1970 we both got a associates degree in electronics. We both went to _____(sperry ran?) where we worked there for two years, but he went up to Hill Air Force Base and he worked in radar department and then I went to the university of Utah...so he basically retired from hill air force base. By the way I should add to the story umm my brother Manuel had three children and they all graduated from Weber University and the oldest boy is now living in your place (McAllen?) Texas, you familiar with... Sonya: Yes Gilbert: Ugliest town I've ever seen. All: laughs Gilbert: It's the ugliest town. I'm not talking about the people or the culture I'm talking about there's no vegetation out there its like a desert its like sad the lizards don't even want to live there. Sonya: Yeah, my husband is from Kingsville but his grandparents are from more of the valley which is they're actually from (papilla?) which is a tiny tiny little town but its like la villa, McAllen, ___ also all of these little little towns they kind of connect and McAllen is like one of the big ones so when I first when we first started dating and I got to know his family that was my exact comment, cause I hadn't spent a lot of time in McAllen and thought McAllen was so ugly and that I would never wanna live there. but since then I mean I still don't wanna live there but its like exploded multiplied its one of the fastest growing cities... Gilbert: Alright Sonya: so now it looks like a city I mean its still I mean its not green right umm even though there's a lot of citrus growing down there but its very different it looks very different. Gilbert: Well I haven't been to McAllen I was down there doing hearings I wanna say its probably about 1990 so that was about what fourteen years ago so I haven't been there for fourteen years Sonya: Yeah, yeah Gilbert: but my nephew, his name is Salvador Martinez, he's a professor down there I don't know what the name of the school is Sonya: (Panama?)? Gilbert: but he teaches economics. Sonya: uh huh, probably at UT (Panam?)? Gilbert: that sounds familiar Sonya: yeah Gilbert: ok, that's where he's at. Ill take all the questions you wanna ask me. 43 Abby:(laugh) we have a few Sonya: So really wanted to hear as much as you can tell us about Peldaños and I know you shared a little bit with me but if wouldn't mind telling the story again, like what inspired you to create it and publish it, where did the idea come from and how long from like first getting the idea to actually getting an issue printed how long did it take you? Gilbert: ok, well before I give you my history ____ do you know who Robert Archuletta is? We call him Archie Sonya: Yes Abby: yep Sonya: He's who helped me find you Gilbert: Yeah. He told my wife's brother and I don't know if you this but ___ Sonya: I know the name but I don't know____ Gilbert: he's been very active in the Hispanic for like 30 years. Well he says call Archie and I never did but then you called me and then it came together. Ok, Peldaños . You know when you first brought up the name Peldaños it was almost like a dream cause I could hardly remember that much about it. ?: wow. Gilbert: And the reason I can't tell you a lot about it just cause I was the only guy that did the paper. I was the editor, the publisher, the news reporter, I did the whole thing. Ok. and as best I can remember, I did it for two years. Now, I'm not gonna be able to give you the years but my guess its probably '74, '75, that time period. Abby: yeah we have a lot of publications from '75 so it's probably Gilbert: and it was just a monthly. How did it start? I think is started sharing this story with you. When I started at the university of Utah, I was in this English class to try to help build up my writing skills. and, I can remember my days in Toole, I could never talk to the teachers but my English really liked my writing style. and she pulled me to the side and said you've got really unique talented writing style. it was almost like poetic my writing style. and she says I want you to write for the university of Utah newspaper, the Daily Chronicle, so I wrote up an article that we could submit and my grammar was never very good that was never one of my talents. She was just telling me look at all these fragmented sentences. So she worked really hard in cleaning up my fragmented sentences so we submitted my first article to the Daily Chronicle and it was published and they contacted me and they gave me my own editorial column where I started writing for the Utah Daily Chronicle and I think it was called out of step. I think I still have some of them. Now, Abby: out of step, did you say? Sonya: uh huh Gilbert: that was the name of the column, I think, was called out of step. but the articles were different flavors. Now here's where Peldaños comes into the story. Well soon as my articles started appearing in the paper. People started talking who's this Gilbert Martinez who's this Gilbert Martinez? So I was contacted by the Ethnic Studies and I don't know if they still have _______. And they contacted me and they come up ___ Gilbert Martinez was writing for the Daily Chronicle but none of my articles were about the Hispanic people. They were just whatever drove me to write and I just wrote something. And they approached me saying well we would like you to write something 44 about the Hispanic people. And ____ so, I wrote a couple of articles in the university paper, the Daily Chronicle about the Hispanic people but I realized that what I was putting in the Daily chronicle went to all the students, not just Hispanics. So I said well you know, these white students aren't really that interested in these articles so I came up with the idea of having a monthly newsletter. And I threw around the idea I don't know if you know this name Dr. Orlando Rivera. Sonya: uh huh, well... Gilbert: he was the associate vice president up at the university of Utah; he passed away by the way. Long time ago I think about ten years ago. I went and sat down with him and I came up with the idea of having a monthly it was supposed to be like a __- newsletter. and ___ just have articles in the whole motion of the paper was to give Hispanic kids confidence that they could excel. Because I remember my days out at Toole high school. I told you the story of the boxes of valentines, I didn't feel like I belonged, so the whole concept of this newspaper was to try to make the Hispanic kids feel like they belonged and the stories that were in there to try and give them something that they could relate to. and the name Peldaños was steps. and we looked at it back and you gotta remember were talking about the university of Utah back in 1974 75 well we only had very few minority kids. I'm talking if you took the whole Hispanics and Blacks and Native Americans you probably would put them all in this room back in the day. So it called Peldaños is taking steps first we gotta take our baby steps and then learn how to walk and then run. The whole concept of the newspaper was to help the students get the confidence to take those steps and not to give up on their school. That was the whole how it kind of came to be. Then I found I found there's lots of shall we say, roadblocks. I thought I was gonna get some support from the Hispanic students and then the ethnic center and some of the we had a few professors back in those days but every time I went to them I says could you write an article so we could put it in Peldaños we nobody would ever submit any articles. So I became the whole paper. I was the publisher, editor, the reporter, I did the whole thing. Now she asked me something interesting when we were downstairs waiting for you she says well how did you do the printing and I says well I found this Chicano guy I can remember his last name is (layba?) this place called Franklin Frenti)? and he __ someone and guided me to this guy Dr. Rivera. And he sat down one night right after work he says this is what I need you to bring to me, and then were gonna put in the text he's the one who came up with the lettering on the words Peldaños so he helped me probably we could say all the work was done basically by me as the reporter and layba as the printer. We were the two-man show of that newspaper. Of that I wouldn't even call it a newspaper call it newsletter. So we did that for about two years and then I graduated and went to law school and because of my law school studies I just didn't have the time to do it anymore so I dropped it. Sonya?: sure Gilbert: oh and I promised to look I've got a few more boxes to look and I'm hoping to find I think I have saved some of Peldaños and some of the articles that I wrote for the Utah Daily Chronicle. Pull them Sonya: I actually have on this flash drive.... Abby: oh I should have brought mine 45 Sonya: copies of the articles, scanned articles that we have scanned newsletter of Peldaños I brought this for you so that you can at least have a digital copy of the articles that we found that Marriott library so this is for you Gilbert: so, so one of Peldaños was in the library? Abby: we found a couple actually... Sonya: I think we have four total, (right?) Abby: four newsletters of... Gilbert: well I'm guessing there had to be like close to 15 to 18 Abby: wow Sonya: and it was interesting when you were saying the challenges in getting students to submit... Gilbert: nobody wanted to write an article... Sonya: that's still, that still happens today. Gilbert: and I wanna tell why I think the real big reason is, its not cause their talented, no tiene la confianca. They don't wanna put anything other people are gonna read cause then they feel they'll be criticized for it. and if you remember I changed completely in Vietnam. I said you know I don't care how many times I fail and how I fail. I mean, if you run around the jungles and crawling in the mud and seeing your buddies die, nothing gets worse than that. So whatever criticism you have for my articles or for my newsletter, I could care less, but I couldn't get anybody else to have that same confidence to put something in the paper. And not even the university professors would submit anything. And we had a few back in those days, I don't know if you know Dr. Bill Gonzalez who was in the Spanish department, Dr. Ed Mayor, Dr. Ed Trujillo and Trujillo is in the engineering department. Ed Trujillo he's probably all ___ retired. then there was ___ Orlando ___ he was in the chemistry. He went back to Texas. I think he was at the university for two years. but I'm going on rambling... Sonya: no but I think you're right about that and I mean I've worked with students here for the past five years to write for the paper and they're students who have like a real strong sense of their identity right but in terms of and so when you conversation with them right they can really articulate that and articulate how clearly they see this ___ injustices but when it comes to putting it on paper, there's this disconnect right and I think a lot of it has to do with that engrained socialization that they're not good enough right and so there's this huge risk right from telling me sitting me and telling me or telling their classmates to putting it on paper its a huge step for so many students still today. Gilbert: yeah I remember getting back to I told you I worked for Governor Scott Matheson as the Hispanic ombudsman the third one and I had a board of directors __- Hispanic from all the major counties that have high populations of Hispanics, beaver county, Toole county, __ county, and id always brought my journalism into everything I did I said well we gotta let the injustices know, we gotta get to the medium we gotta I set up interviews with all the major TV and they were open to this. You know. and I go down to the TV station and you know what I think it the other day I ___ they were afraid and I shouldn't even use the word afraid, no tiene la confianca expresarse. and for me it would just flow right out of me. For them, they knew the injustices, they feel it in their gut but they just wouldn't they refuse to get in front of that TV camera or write an article. 46 There was a guy that actually did write some articles in the salt lake tribune I don't know if you remember this guy, john Flores, yeah and mike Martinez Sonya: ___ mike Martinez but I know cause john Flores had a column or ___ I think still can do like a guest column for the Deseret news... Gilbert: yes, both of those guys had a guest column mike Martinez is also an attorney, he and I went to law school together. Mike actually was a year ahead of me but john Flores, he was a head of the ER up at the university of Utah, I don't know if you knew that Sonya: yes yes Gilbert: and I also had a little experience with john, remember I told ya I was appointed by governor ____ as workers compensation judge? Well john Flores was appointed by this same governor to be a commissioner ___ so in a sense he was my boss when I was a judge down there so we developed a good friendship back then. I understand he has some pretty bad health problems right now. but anyway, john Flores mike Martinez were the only other guys that I knew of that were willing to put their ideas on the TV, now there were some others I told you about my brother-in-law, ____ he's appeared on different TV programs, there were a handful of us but not many, most Hispanics, they felt the experiences, they felt the injustices but they just weren't willing to get on TV or in the paper. Sonya: I think some of it is also just not trusting them what happens once they like share their story there's just been so many times when that's been appropriated, misused... Abby: dismissed Sonya...to hurt them in the end, right so I think there's a lot of distrust with like keeping a story in a way that ---would allow someone else to do whatever they can so there's some of that fear too. Gilbert: yes. I don't know what the theme is today but were going back to when I was the Hispanic ombudsman in '70 to '81 when I would be on the TV describing the injustices. A lot of the feedback was well you guys are just crybabys. That was the feedback back in those days Abby: "you're overly sensitive" Gilbert:...y can remember the ___ special in the sixties and they did one on the freedom march on Martin Luther King. Even he had that backlash, but it also came from the Black community as well because the young people said his march for freedom was peaceful and they criticized him, even Mohammed Ali the boxer criticized him on that. Sonya: eventually Gilbert: yeah so once you put yourself out there you get criticized criticism not only from the whites but also from La Raza. So you get it from both sides. Sonya: so did Archie were you in school with him at the same time cause we saw his name in at least one of the issues and I cant remember if its cause he was just listed as part of a group or if he contributed something... Abby: I believe he contributed something, I think maybe.... Gilbert: did I go to school with Archie? No, I don't remember Archie as a student when I was a student up there. I can ___ throw a lot of names that. You know judge Valdez? Sonya: uh huh Gilbert: Andy Valdez? Sonya: yes 47 Gilbert: he was a student with me for a lot of years. Pete suaza? Who works with the mayors office... Abby: he was in the paper, yeah Gilbert: ... he was a student with me up there. Sonya: but they didn't necessarily contribute to Peldaños , they just knew what you were doing and like were like good job (laugh) but they didn't write anything? or... Gilbert: this takes me back to my Marine Corps days, the sergeant would always ask for volunteers. Once you volunteer nobody would come and help you. And that's the same thing with Peldaños . When I was called up by ethnic studies and they said well were seniors writing for the Utah daily chronicle but all your stories are about things that are non-Hispanic cant you do something for Hispanic well I got recruited started the Peldaños but then when I turned around and say well where's my helpers, where's somebody that can give me a helping hand nobody was there to help me out just a one-man show basically. Sonya: so was it the academic department of ethnic studies or was it like the center for ethnic... Gilbert: the center for ethnic studies Sonya: ok Gilbert: uh huh Sonya: so was it like the student the center for students who were students of color, so they provided resources and support... Gilbert: well I don't know what they have up there now, cause I haven't been up there for a long time but there at the union building on the second floor there were three offices up there and there was the Native American, the Black, and Hispanic. and I don't think they had but one staff person. S______- Ch______ comes to my mind he worked there as a staff, Phil Romero, who worked UTA is now retired he worked there. That office contacted me to come up there but it wasn't the faculty that contacted me Sonya: sure, it was the staff (?) Gilbert:...at the ethnic center. Abby: and how did you pay for all of this? How did you raise funds for.... Gilbert: out of my pocket. Abby: out of your pocket? Gilbert: well basically, as I remember I told you I went to Franklin ___ it was owned by Chicano owned by L___ and he really gave me a discount price on my paper. So like I say it really was a two-man show. Martinez and l(ayba?) Laybe was the only guy that helped me. Sonya: and so how many copies did you print every time you printed a newsletter? or is it you know a thousand, was it a couple thousand, was it a couple hundred? Do you remember? Gilbert: it was definitely a thousand or more. Sony: ok Gilbert: and were not talking in the ten thousand, no. Id say anywhere from about a thousand to two thousand. 48 Sonya: ok. and so then did you also have to distribute all of them? It was just you two then did were they all on-campus, did you take them to the community, where did you distribute them? Gilbert: I remember basically that we had a mailing list of back in those days we used to have some major Hispanic organizations, which no longer exist. I don't know if these names even come to your mind or to your memory, we had the largest Hispanic organization back in the early 70s it was called SOCIO. Sonya: yeah, I've heard of them. Gilbert: it was spelled S-O-C-I-O. I think its Spanish speaking organization for community integrity and organization or something like that. And this guy I mentioned to you Jorge archuletta, he was president at one time I think john Flores was president of that organization at on e time. E___ welch, my cousin was president of that organization at one time. But that was the largest Hispanic organization and they used to get federal funds. Yeah they would put together a program and they would get funded and that would help develop that organization but they had chapters in just about all the major counties. Anyway we distributed through SOCIO and the other organizations that were very prominent in those days was LULAC. Which was kind of a government entity some members were government employees like from hill air force base or ___ IRS and then there was IMAGE, IMAGE was a big organization back then and then there were, you.... Abby: I don't know very much about it, no. Gilbert: it was a big organization back then. Those were the big ones, I wanna say SOCIO, LULAC, IMAGE, the governors Hispanic counsel, so we would distribute through them and then we also had the Mexican restaurants. god you guys know red iguana? Abby: Totally. Gilbert: ok well I know the owners the C____ course they're divorced now. They're divorced I'm sorry. I knew them when they had the restaurant they had downtown called Casa Grande. And they were married and then they started the Red Iguana and they started making lots and lots of money and then they split up and I think one of them started the Blue Iguana and the other one kept the Red Iguana and that's how that happened. Abby: yeah. That's interesting Gilbert: cause there's the red and the blue. Him and the her (laughs) Sonya: so you would just leave the newsletter there at the restaurant? Gilbert: yeah, there were several of them, there was the Frontera back then and then the other one was the Catholic Church had god what was that place called? The Guadalupe Center and the Guadalupe center they had a restaurant that was run by Father (Merrill?) and it was basically a Mexican restaurant at the Guadalupe center and we distributed at the Guadalupe center and the Mexican restaurant and also up at the university campus to the students up there. But our mailing list we couldn't mail to all the students, just didn't have the money for the postage, didn't have enough funds, nothing for the paper, so basically our mailing was pretty much to the big Hispanic organizations and to the major. Well the restaurants actually I remember dropping them off id drop off stacks of papers and they would distribute to the Mexican customers so they'd get out to the community but you know we didn't have much of a way of getting it out other than through the 49 entities we had back then which were the Hispanic organizations and the Mexican restaurant. That was our best to get out to the community. Sonya: and that's still. Students still rely on Mexican owned local businesses so we the current the venceremos distributes on campus on but probably about 70% or 75% of what they publish goes out to the community and its literally like going into tiendita and saying can we leave this stack here to barbershops to restaurants to any little mercados they walk in and so now they have some relationships since the past five years has been pretty consistent with their publications schedule and they let them leave it there but its literally you know 25 stacks at a time in this store or that store all over and they distribute all on the west side of salt lake so rose park, Glendale, fair park, west valley, Taylorsville, sometimes Midvale we have students Kearns. Gilbert: now I want you guys to know that my newsletter Peldaños really wasn't meant to be newspaper for the community. It was meant to be a newsletter for the university of Utah students to give them encouragement and confidence but we did distribute out to the community just to kind of let them know that we existed. So I stopped short of saying that Peldaños was one of the first Hispanic newspapers because it really wasn't a newspaper. But as my memory's now jogged, do you guys remember the name of Hebrew Rodriguez. Ok he was a guy from Uruguay who actually came up with the Hispanic newspaper that was published in the city. My wife would remember the name of that newspaper. He's now dead he died of a heart attack about ten years ago but I have to say that his newspaper was probably the first that we would say was a Hispanic newspaper. Sonya: and it was published in Spanish? Gilbert: it was bilingual. Sonya: it was bilingual. Gilbert: so ___primarily Spanish because he was a from south America Uruguay and his wife _____ and also I cant say that I was a contributor to that paper but I would have to say that that was kind of a city-wide distribution or state-wide distribution. My Peldaños was more of a college newsletter. Sonya: sure. Gilbert: and I started in 74 now there was something that happened before 74 I have no idea. Sonya: did you get do you remember getting any kind of, what kind of feedback or response from people who did read it or other students or other from the organizations that helped you distribute it.... Gilbert: very good question. I say my biggest feedback was primarily from students. You know when id be walking from building to building class to class, I would go to different activities that the students were___ they were always giving me raw raw speeches. I never never never heard from the community so you know if they picked up the Peldaños at the local Mexican restaurant like the red iguana and it got to the community nobody ever talked to me probably didn't even know who I looked like... Sonya: right, right Gilbert: so I never got any feedback from the community. The only ___ they were very encouraging they kept saying that we needed to have more like I say newspaper rather than this newsletter. But it had never once I went to law school whatever ideas I had kind 50 of just disappeared I went to law school and the only other paper I think that came after me was this one that Heber Rodriguez came up with. I wanna get the name of that cause now its on top of my head but that was the first really but to answer your question, the organization like SOCIO or LULAC and IMAGE they liked the little newspaper but they also saw the same way I saw. More of a student newsletter. And they wanted something more that dealt with like discrimination with Hispanics and housing and employment and mine was more not like that kind of stuff... Abby: kind of student-oriented issues... Gilbert: yeah and they wanted something more like that but nobody was willing to take up the ball and do it. And when I graduated I graduated with in 75 and congressman Owens got me into law school ____ I only had that summer so I didn't have much time to really develop (any student news?) after that. Sonya: sure. Abby: for the students who did read it, did you have a loyal kind of readership or and what was their kind of response to it or did they what was their attitudes towards that? Gilbert: yes. And I don't know if you find this true today I'm sure you do. And I had no idea how many students how many Hispanic...what do you guys prefer Hispanic or Latino? Abby: I go either way to be honest so I'm interchangeable but I use Latino when I'm in smaller circles so... Gilbert: what you like? Sonya: Latino I mean I self-identify as Chicana but I use Latino before I use Hispanic. Gilbert: ok. Do you guys ever use the word Chicano? Abby: yeah well that's kind of the yeah we do. Gilbert: but do a lot of kids like that term today or is that kind of a term in the past. Sonya: the students that I've worked with because of the paper when it was founded it called itself a Chicano student newspaper so it clearly like latched onto that term so everybody that I've worked with in the past five years, not everybody, but the majority of students they need some education around what term means because they very negative connotation as to what it means so they don't necessarily self-identify that way or feel that that term even relates to their experience so we have I have to do some orientation right for why that term exists, what it means, and so then they grow to be comfortable with it but walking in the door that's not how they initially self-identify, the majority of students that I work with. Gilbert: ok. When I was in the marines and this goes back to 65 to 68, there were guys in my platoon from Texas from California basically Utah and New Mexico. We all had different way of referring to ourselves. None of us called ourselves mexican-american. None of us. None if us. The guy from California, he preferred Latino, the guy from Texas, he called himself Tejano and I didn't even know the word Chicano until I went to the university of Utah, never even heard of the term. but I will tell you where the term comes from. A lot of people don't even know where that term comes from. Chicano when all of the western states and were talking Utah Colorado Texas California was all part of Mexico. You had the people from Mexico would refer to us up here as manitos. But the Indians up here would call us instead of saying Mexicanos they would call us Mechicanos. Cause that's their dialect they'd say Mechicano, Mechicano. So they just 51 took of the me- and it became Chicano comes from. From the Native American Indians, primarily the Navajos were the ones came up with that term. So when I went up to the university of Utah there was a big controversy cause I was raised to believe that I was Spanish-American. and these guys said no no you're Chicanos so there was a big debate back then so I think the term Hispanic is a term that came from the federal government. Sonya: yes. Gilbert: because my I prefer ___ as Latina Latinos from South America. So ___ and the reason I bring up these terms is because you asked and you asked well what was the feedback well a lot of the people wanted to change the name of my newspaper from peldaños to Chicano. Abby? oh really? Gilbert: and I say hell I'm not changing it to Chicano, I don't even like that term so I kept it Peldaños . Now my memory is getting even more as we talk here. I hate to even introduce this but when I went to law school I had a little newsletter in the law school I called Uno Muno. I think I published that one year. Course that was much smaller. Sonya: and it was just for the law school (?) Gilbert: and it was primarily just for the law school. As I look for some of these boxes ill see if I can pull up my Uno Muno newsletter. Sonya: and so was it also for... Gilbert: so you can tell my love and my desire for the news business was always with me. But as I sit here today I've been a judge doing hearings for now 24 years and my wife sometimes asks me oh if you had to do something different what would you do and I says yeah I would stayed in the news I would've replaced Larry King. But you know for you that are in mass communication I have to tell you the real bad about the news. It's a real pyramid. There are people that are making tons of money up at the top. Ok these guys on the today show this matt Lauer, he makes like 20 to 25 million a year. Sonya: yeah Abby: yeah, seriously. Gilbert: if you look at the anchor people here on the local news, I think that their salaries range anywhere from about 75 to 100 thousand. You would say that's still a good wage but doesn't compare to matt lauers 25 million and in my opinion they work harder in a year than matt Lauer does telling these jokes on the today show but guess what the guy that's doing the news reporting, the guy that's out there doing the beat reporting news, the guys knocking on doors checking out the police blog doing the real work he's probably making like 30 thousand a year or even less... Sonya: yeah, if he's lucky Gilbert: yeah so the money and the shall we say in the media isn't always the, you know ill show you another injustice, you have these ladies that are now sports reporters, what's that girls name Erin? Name Erin Sonya: yeah, her last name is ______ Gilbert: well anyway, I saw somewhere that she's making 10 million dollars from ESPN. Sonya: yeah Gilbert: and all she is is a pretty face says a few things about sports, doesn't know that much about sports. So the guy that's really doing the hard work makes very little. There 52 used to be a radio station here in Salt Lake City its called call radio, guys probably don't remember. Guy named tom bombari. He was the most popular radio announcer and I got to meet him and I says well tom how much do you make on this radio program and he was making like 30 thousand a year and he was the number one radio guy, imagine what the other guys make. Course this was back, I would imagine the salaries are fairly comparable today I don't know. Sonya: yeah Gilbert: anyway I never got to do news and I never got to be a news reporter. They always had ___ always my dream when I was a kid. but anyway we were talking about someone else and I got distracted Abby: that's fine Gilbert: well I had another question I wanted to now where you got your story the ideas for your articles that you did write since you were having to do all of them. Did students suggest things to you, did the organization say oh, or because it was primarily student focus just you knew what was going on campus and? Gilbert: like I say the community-based organizations like SOCIO and IMAGE, they wanted to see more news... Sonya: right Gilbert: that dealt with the working people Sonya: yeah Gilbert: like housing, employment. And I didn't see my little newsletter in that area so I kind of stayed away from their recommendations. From my fellow students, if anything that I got as far as suggestions from them was to talk about them. Sonya: uh huh Gilbert: I think well my last issue on the back I have a collage of pictures and all those pictures are of students of students families, nephews, children, or something. So what they wanted to see was not so much big headline news... Sonya: yeah Gilbert: ...articles about discrimination but more about their life as students I put in in those terms. So now to be more direct to your question, did anybody ever come up to me and say well you should write an article on dealing with the experience of la Latina in college. The female Hispanic. Sonya: right. Gilbert: none___ suggestion like that. It was more just general feedback. Nobody ever came to the plate to say well let me help you well do a special report on females and then went out and did, no, I never really got what you would say real offers on what to do with the paper so I was pretty much shootin' from the hip ____ Sonya: so do you have like what would you say is your best memory of doing it, of those two years you spent together with ___ you think that you just really cherish and remember. Gilbert: this might sound funny to you but Mr. layba our friend from Franklin were my best memories because you know without him I don't think the paper would've ever got off the ground. And he was so, he didn't charge he and me could've and I guess he really ____ I didn't have money and there was no funds for this paper. My best memories were working with him and putting it together. And he showed me how to do the type setting 53 and all that stuff, that's probably my best memories of the paper. You know I'm sure you could say the feedback would be something you cherish but the feedback was always so like Martin Luther King he had feedback there was positive and negative and sometimes the negative drowns out the positive Sonya: sure Gilbert: and I think that's my experience with Peldaños , you know I had the negative and the positive feedback, it seemed like the negative always has the louder voice that drowns out the positive side... Abby: so did you find that to be discouraging or... Gilbert: kind of, yes I did, uh huh. But then I can't sit here and say that I gave up on Peldaños because of the feedback. Sonya: right. Gilbert: it was all because when I graduated I went up to get a job. I was gonna continue doing something. You know I even had ideas of working with community-based organizations and doing the state newspaper on Hispanics. But it all came to an end when I couldn't get a job in my field and I ended up in law school and if you know anything about law school, that's like, when I would go to law school id show up at 7:30 in the morning and id go home at midnight. Sonya: yeah Gilbert: I was either in class or doing research or doing studies Sonya: yeah Gilbert: I had no time for anything for those three years of law school so everything I did with peldnaos just disappeared as soon as I went to law school. Just didn't have the , so I say why the paper ended is cause law school took all my time. Abby: did you find you had any did you learn anything that you weren't expecting to learn did you kind of have any unexpected surprises that stayed with you, in terms of impact? Gilbert: well you know, I'm separate that question into learning and impact. The learning I learned in doing this paper was the lack of volunteers that I was finding to contribute to the paper. I thought when I started it that I would be getting so many articles that I have to say oh this one a good one this one I have to say I'm sorry I'm not. I got nothin! So I have to say that was quite a learning experience for me. The impact? That's hard to put into words because you know that whole time you know I always go back to the Vietnam war I apologize for that you know today when I think about the Vietnam war its not like a memory anymore. Sometimes I even wonder if I was even there. It's like a dream. A dream that was I there or not there. Oh I can remember some things but I don't remember everything. That's Peldaños . Its kind of like it was a dream that I had, it was there, the dream left me. I no longer have so I cant actually say that I cant put it in terms the impact was because you know I would like to be able to sit here that the impact was so great that there was so much support for us that the people started putting money towards it so I could build it up, no, it wasn't that kind of impact it was if I could put it in these terms the impact was back in 1974 75, the students of color, the Hispanic students were trying to knock on a door, let me in. and Peldaños was little message on the top of the door you can get in. that was my impact. Because what other impact that I had I don't know. It was we can get into this university we can walk into this door, we can take the 54 classes, we can get in. that was about the only impact I can say why I started it and probably the only thing I can say i had impact. Now how many have those students actually graduated because my Peldaños had a little part in that I have no idea. No way of documenting it. Sonya: and so do you think there's still a need for that kind of message? Gilbert: oh hell yes. Uh huh. Hell yes. But you know and I shared this with her ill share it with you, when I was in the marine corps in my platoon there was three of us, Sergio was from California, Narango was from Texas and I was from Utah, New Mexico family. The guy from Texas, he was a hell raiser; he was a fighter he didn't take ___- for anybody for nobody. Where I was more of a peace maker and if we could take the march of freedom, Martin Luther King, he wasn't Malcolm x, he was like me, we were more about the obtaining rights through the peaceful means and so if I would say that we needed we need to have this that doesn't turn off the majority. Because the reality is we got a major conflict going on today its called the immigration laws. Sonya: sure. Gilbert: ok. And I wanna have to tell you this ok. The turn of the century in the nineteen hundreds with the statue of liberty, just about anybody could come to this country. Give me your poor, your hungry, your people seeking justice. That's what the statue of liberty stood for. and anybody that came here got in here until all of a sudden, what happened? Well when we started having mines and the railroad, people from china came in to work on the railroad and the Mexicans came to work on the mines and the white people said well we didn't mean everybody. We didn't mean we want everybody. We want people that look like us... Sonya: right Gilbert: from Western Europe... Sonya: right Gilbert: today if you look at the debate on immigration law, the first thing out of the Republican Party is we gotta secure our borders. Ok well we can all agree in those terms secure our borders but where we disagree is when they start saying well we've gotta build a wall. They're not talking about building a wall on the Canadian border; they're not talking about keeping the Canadians out with a wall. They're talking about a wall to keep out the brown people. Whether they're coming form Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, South America or Mexico, they're talking about we don't want those people. If you want to know cause I did a class in law school my third year of law school with dr. john flin(n) very great guy, tell you lots of stories about him. His brother was a Catholic priest in Peru. and I know I probably am taking too much time is say we oughta have another meeting you know lets not just end this discussion today, I wanna get this thousand dollars program going. I don't want us just to say goodbye and then it's all gone. I wanna somewhat get more involved again. But anyway, where was I going with this. When I was in my third year of law school I took a class and I wrote a paper on immigration law. Did you know what the first immigration law, what it was? What the first immigration law was? Sonya: I don't, I don't know Gilbert: it was a literacy test. Sonya: oh 55 Gilbert: and if you could read and write in English and if you couldn't you couldn't get in well dammit to hell what did that mean? The Chinese people has a totally different alphabet, are they gonna be able to pass a literacy test? That immigration law was all the legislative intent was to keep out the people that didn't know English and that was the Spanish speaking and the Chinese. So and another thing I get frustrated about, lets build a wall, lets secure our borders they say, well yeah, my great grandfather came to this country as an immigrant and I think these people should get a right but they should do it the legal way, they should all get in a line. Now what the hell does a line mean? When I did my paper my third year of law school, you know you have different quota systems for each country. So as an example, my wife nephew was in that waiting line for ten years but the average wait coming from Western Europe was one year. So my first question to these people was what line are we talking about? Sonya: right Gilbert: what line are we supposed to et, now the other thing people don't understand is to get into a line you have someone petition for you and if you don't have somebody to petition for you like a parent or a brother as somebody that has a right to petition for you, you're not getting into any line. Sonya: right Gilbert: so who is coming to this country are the poor people, if you go to Mexico and I've been through all of south America you know cause my wife's from south America I've been to every south American country and you know what makes me really sad about our people is you have the rich class which is about 15% of the country and then the poor people. They really don't have a middle class. and I used to go down there and argue with them and I says well the way you build up your country is you gotta build up a middle class. You gotta educate these poor people so that they can become plumbers and electricians because if they had a plumbing problem they couldn't find somebody because there was no plumbers around. But they don't want to spend the money on the poor people and I feel sad because the people that are crossing the border aren't the rich ones from Mexico or South America. They have plenty of money they don't have to come here. The ones that are coming here are the starving people. They wanna feed their children. It's sad. I have another story to tell you. Go back to my marine corps in Vietnam, it was part of my life remember that. Abby: it's a big part of your life. Gilbert: I told you I was in Vietnam from September 1966 to October 67. I got back went home on leave and then I got my orders. And they sent me to (Yuma?) Arizona. Well you know Yuma do you know Yuma? Ok Yuma is in the bottom of Arizona about 26 miles from the Mexican border. So I fly into this little charter plane from phoenix down to Yuma and I get there and I ask the guy at the right there at the airport. I ask the guy well how do I get to the Marine Corps air station. And he says well you call a taxi or you can walk there. You just go out to the main highway and it's a three-mile walk. So I grab my bag and I'm walking down the highway with my bag. I lost my identification in Vietnam and this border patrol guy (boo boo booop) comes behind me and says who are you? I says my names Martinez. And he says where are you going and I say I'm going down to the marine corps air station, he says let me see your id. I didn't have any, he threw me in the back of the patty wagon, took me down to the immigration holding 56 station. Now lets picture this, a guy that went and fought for our country in Vietnam just gets home and he's thrown into a patty wagon. Is that how we want to treat people? So when I see what's going on today it makes me feel really sad. Abby and Sonya: yeah Gilbert: anyway, they held me at the ___ for about two hours before the sergeant came down to identify me and I got out. But just think of how we treat people. But anyway I can talk about immigration all day long, were not here to talk about immigration. Ok well I get sidetracked here. Sonya: no, no need to apologize... Abby: yeah Sonya: ... and I and I too want to take you up on your offer to continue talking and sharing your memories and stories and one idea I had was to see if invite you to come to the class that I teach this fall. So I mentioned that I teach a class for students who produce the newspaper and so ill teach it this fall and hopefully we can get it into your schedule that maybe you would come and visit with the students that are producing the newspaper now and share your life story and some of you memories... Gilbert: well I would love to as a matter of fact my wife Julia Martinez, she's a teacher at Mountain View elementary, do you know? Abby: I know of the place, yes. Sonya: yeah Gilbert: ok. Mountain view elementary if you walked into it you would think you were in a third world country. The whites are the minorities. Remember I told you when I was growing up in Toole in the 1950s I was the only brown person in each of my class, out there at mountain view, the whites are probably around 20% 80% are other. Hispanic, Polynesian, they even have kids that come in from Bosnia and from Africa... Sonya: yeah, refuge, refugee settlements, families that have been resettled Gilbert: and my wife works for those teachers, why do I tell you that story is that she's had me go down and talk to the students as kind of like a role model. Sonya: uh huh Gilbert: back to the Peldaños Sonya: sure. Gilbert: when there's a door you gotta feel, there's something about the door that makes you feel welcome. So the purpose of being a role model is to make them feel that they're welcome so I would love to do that yes Sonya: great. Gilbert: to answer your question, yes. Sonya: so I want to I will follow up with getting information about the department and seeing what kind of guidelines they might be able to give and express your interest in wanting to earmark it. Gilbert: yes, let me give you why you need to do a little homework. I started a scholarship at the law school, a thousand dollar scholarship, id say about 8 years ago. And what's his name, got in my phonebook he's he works as one of these associate deans. Sonya: in admissions? Or enrollment is it Reyes _____. 57 Gilbert: yeah Reyes. Reyes! Ok Reyes sat me down and he says we cannot put this scholarship as a Hispanic; I wanted it I wanted it only as a Hispanic scholarship and he says we cannot do that because of the federal guidelines Sonya: sure Gilbert: he says what were gonna do is give it a title and I gave it a title I call it ____? Back to the Marine Corps. In the Marine Corps ____ means always faithful. You look at the Marine Corps flag its right there on the box ____. So were always faithful to our troops. So I call it that scholarship and he promised me that he would try to get it to the Hispanics but I noticed over the years that it doesn't always go to Hispanics. Like sometimes there's been Asian students that have gotten there was one Vietnamese student that got it. So it just doesn't go to Hispanics so I don't know how we can set this up with the department of communication. But id like to set it up with the my thousand dollar donation is primarily going to something for Hispanics. So you can do your homework on that. Sonya: ok Gilbert: but no id like to set that up and continue if I could be invited and once a semester to come and go talk to the students. She told me that you were kind of the lone ranger there's only like three Hispanics in the whole department of communication? Abby: in the department of communication? I, I don't know about that, I've met a couple but there's its not a huge group I would say. Gilbert: about three or four? Abby: yeah, maybe. Well maybe in my classes, like in each class. Gilbert: I wonder if you knew my niece, we call her Marisesita but I think its... Abby: well what's her last name? Gilbert: her mom's last name is Morean but I think her dad's last name is another name Abby: I don't know, I've only been in the department for about two years so... Gilbert: she graduated about two years ago. Sonya: yeah we I will then get in contact with you with possible dates to see if that'll work for your schedule cause I'm already planning for the fall, but I just thought that would be a great experience for my students to be able to... Gilbert: wear my Utah...make you feel at home Sonya: and ill have them go over some of the issues that we have archived so then they .... Gilbert: and as you go through this discussion today like me I walk away and ideas pop into my mind and I think gosh I wish I would've asked him this question. So I don't want the door closed. So we can get together I know that as a student classes come first, sure id be more than happy to come to your classroom. Talk to students... Sonya: thank you Gilbert: ...whatever role you want me to play. Sonya: and Abby and I will go over our notes what we've recorded, well type up the stories that we've shared and wed be happy to give that back to you so you could look it over make sure we didn't Gilbert: misstate anything Sonya: yeah, misstate anything. 58 Gilbert: and I will do my homework and continue to look through my boxes to see if I can find some issues... Sonya: that would be great. Gilbert: ...you mentioned that you only found four issues. Abby: we only found four. Gilbert: now I'm sure that there were about 15. I know I did it for two years but I don't know if I did it every month because I think I got a late start in 74. So I think I got up to about 15 issues. And if I find my Uno Muno from law school. Sonya: well check, now that we know the name of it well see if they have anything in the library Abby: in the library, sure. Gilbert: I can't even remember why I put the name Uno Muno. That was really_____ Sonya: well we wont take up any more of your time today... Gilbert: well I have to really apologize, I have a tendency to a) repeat myself and two go on my own little story telling and I go onto this side and that side and probably got us off what you wanted to hear. Abby: there's no need to apologize for that Sonya: yeah. I've really enjoyed... Abby: yeah it was really nice to hear. Gilbert: and you wrote me down your phone number Sonya: yup. Gilbert: and you have my cell phone number Sonya: I do. Gilbert: ok. Sonya: is that the best way to reach you, is on your cell? Gilbert: oh let me, let me give you my mailing address. Sonya: ok Gilbert: so you have that as well. Sonya: and would this be helpful at all to give you the copy of the digital files or would you prefer having our printed copies. I didn't get the chance to print them this morning, I haven't been on campus a lot this summer, but I can give you the printed copy of what we have or I could give you the digital copy of the older issues if you would like to pull up... Gilbert: I was telling her downstairs you may not appreciate this but when I was a student in journalism, we never had computers. We never had tablets, ipads, none of that stuff. So there were three things you had to do, first you had to do research first was a killer that took the most time and then you had to write it out but that was pretty my words always would flow very good, never had problems, I know some people scratch their heads trying to get words on paper, I never had that problem, my words just scattered all over that paper. Abby: I wish... Gilbert: and then the third thing was that I had to type it up. Now I used to bang at that old typewriter. We had you had to do all the whiteouts Sonya: yup Gilbert: with that stupid thing oh that was so much time wasted time compared to today. 59 Abby: I think I'm considered a little more old-fashioned than my peers, I like to write things out too, so Gilbert: oh you like to handwrite it? Abby: for the most part, yeah Gilbert: ok. Abby: I think I'm going to stop this now. Sonya: yeah 60 REFERENCES Alemán, S. (2009). Venceremos: Using a Chicana/o student newspaper to re-imagine journalism education pedagogy and practice. (Doctoral dissertation). University of Utah. Alemán, S. (2011). Chicana/o student journalists map out a Chicana/o journalism practice. Journalism Practice, 5 (3), pp. 332--349. Bustillos, E. (1992). Chicano journalism its history and its use as a weapon for liberation. (1st ed.). San Diego, CA: Author. Conboy, M. (2010). The language of newspapers. London: Continuum. Corbett, J. (2006).<