Dear Chicanx Latinx Cal Alumni, Students, and Friends,

We are excited to share that the Board of Directors came together in Berkeley this month to check-in on our strategic plan and schedule our programming efforts for the year. We kicked off our time together with our partners at the Chicanx Latinx Student Development (CLSD) office, the California Alumni Association (CAA), and the UC Berkeley University Development and Alumni Relations (UDAR) office, to discuss our current happenings and further explore opportunities for collaboration. 

Pictured (Left Side, Front to Back): CLAA VP of External Affairs, Elizabeth Ramirez; CLAA President, Dr. Maggie Landeros; UDAR Director, Dr. Jay Dillon; CAA Executive Director, Susie Cohen Crumpler; (Right Side, Front to Back): CLAA VP of Administration, Dr. Lourdes Guerrero; CLAA VP of Internal Affairs, Diego Jácome; UDAR Associate Director of Alumni Engagement, Rhonda Kinard; CLSD Director, Lupe Gallegos-Diaz

We continued our planning on the beautiful Cal campus during our full-day retreat. We are eager for the upcoming hallmark events like yield receptions, summer welcome parties, and other local alumni gatherings and professional development. Stay tuned for more details to come in the coming weeks.

Pictured (Left to Right): Joseph-Ham Silvestre; VP of Internal Affairs, Diego Jácome; President, Dr. Maggie Landeros; VP of Administration, Dr. Lourdes Guerrero; Ex-Officio, Lupe Gallegos-Diaz; VP of External Affairs, Elizabeth Ramirez; Juan Aguilera
Not Pictured: VP of Finance, Teresa Martinez-Gonzales; James Sarria; Ricardo Gonzalez

We also want to share that our newsletter will change its cadence from monthly to quarterly. Given our recent partnership with UDAR on their Latinx Alumni Newsletter, we want to ensure that we balance the level of communication our Chicanx Latinx alumni are receiving from us. On occasion, we will send special editions to announce or highlight marquee events and/or time-sensitive information. We look forward to an amazing remainder of or 2022-2023 fiscal year.

In Solidarity,

Board of Directors
UC Berkeley Chicanx Latinx Alumni Association

Sylvia Marina Martinez is a native Southern Californian of Chicana and Honduran heritage. She works as a graphic designer and a mixed media collage artist seeking stories of resilience, hope, and survival. She received her BA in Cultural Anthropology from UC Berkeley in 1996 and a Masters of Public Health from Columbia University in 2000. Her career has ranged from doing research in public health and implementing community health programs to project management and grant writing for community youth organizations to project management in the arts/music industry to an artisan/entrepreneur creating home décor (Mexican Talavera tile serving trays). She only began professionally making collage art in the past 5 years, after surviving a life-threatening hemorrhagic stroke in 2018 at the age of 44. As a survivor, she makes art to heal her own trauma and to provide comfort and hope to those who need it. Her art has elements of her personal journey, family stories, Chicana/Honduran heritage, as well as her love of California and the Southwest. Additionally, she seeks to share stories of resilience, hope, and survival while preserving history and educating about the cultural and socio-political history of the American continent. 

Currently, Sylvia Marina has been commissioned to create digital collage art for the cover of Grammy-winning Dom Flemons' upcoming album, “Traveling Wildfire” to be released March 2024. She also sells art on Etsy and offers family history heritage collages on a commission basis. She has worked with the Smithsonian Institute, Grammy Awards, Columbia University, and as a consultant for the CDC and DHHS. Her décor designs were featured on HGTV.com and HIPLatina.com.

Regarding the new Latinx Student Resource Center

UC Berkeley Comparative Ethnic Studies Professor
"Broadly speaking, I am a twentieth-century U.S. labor historian with interests in transnational migration, social movements, and history methods. In my first book, titled The Strikers of Coachella: A Rank-and-File History of the UFW Movement (UNC Press, 2023), I studied how farmworkers in Southern California’s Coachella Valley (men, women, migrants, residents, Filipino, and Mexican) envisioned their future through their involvement in the United Farm Worker (UFW) Movement in the 1960s to 1980s. I draw, from Latinx Studies, Asian American Studies, and the historiography on US labor and social movements. I also pair archival research with 200 hours of original oral history interviews and 100 oral histories from existing collections. The Strikers of Coachella narrates a UFW history that transcends its famous leadership and argues that everyday people and their aspirations were of utmost historical significance: they initiated and propelled forward the UFW and they helped determine our contemporary fortunes. History often sits among forgotten peoples."

UC Berkeley Alumni
Jesse Leon creates public-private partnerships, grantmaking programs, and impact investment funds to address affordable housing, sex-trafficking, addiction, mental health, homelessness, and LGBTQ+ issues. He is a social impact consultant to foundations in both English and Spanish. Based in San Diego, Jesse is an alum of San Diego City College, UC Berkeley, and Harvard. He is the author of I’m Not Broken and No Estoy Roto published by Penguin Random House.

Thursday, March 2, 2023 | 12pm - 2pm
In his new book, UCB alumnus and UCR faculty, Dr. Richard T. Rodriguez discusses music, culture, and the relationship between British post-punk musicians and their Latinx audiences in the US since the 1980s. Introduced by Dr. John Alba Cutler, professor in the Department of English.

Thursday, March 23, 2023 | 12pm - 2pm
Join artist and scholar Dr. Elias Serna, co-founder of Chicano Secret Service, to learn more about the pop-up book movement - a counterpart to LibroTraficante - that arose in the last decade in response to outlawing of Chicanx Studies books by Arizona Republican lawmakers and to attacks against Ethnic Studies, Black and Brown bodies, and LGBTQ communities. Introduced by Dr. Cati de los Ríos.

Thursday, March 9, 2023
The Big Give is the annual ask for the Chicanx Latinx Student Development Center that provides services and programs for our students. More information will be in our next newsletter.

Thank you for your continued support!