TUCSON – “[Archiving local history is] so valuable … because if you don’t document it, you do not exist. It did not happen.”
Isabel Garcia, an organizer with Coalición de Derechos Humanos, grew up on Tucson’s Southside and spent much of her youth at El Pueblo Neighborhood Center. Her perspective reflects a broader community sentiment: El Pueblo has shaped generations, yet its history has never been formally preserved — until now.
El Pueblo is a community-built cornerstone of the Southside: a grassroots headquarters for the Chicano movement in the 70s where political organizing, community services and the arts intertwined. Since opening its doors in 1975, it has provided infrastructure for mobilization, leadership development and a sense of identity in a part of the city long underserved by public resources…