This month, the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida features excerpts from a 2019 interview with Lyvia Rodriguez [R], the executive director of a community land trust in Puerto Rico who was instrumental in the establishment of La Casita, the Institute of Hispanic and Latino Cultures at UF when she was a student. She was interviewed by Maria Espinoza [E] and Omar Sanchez [S]. Excerpt edited by Beth Grobman. For the full interview go to tinyurl.com/Iguana2179.
E: Would you introduce yourself a little bit, tell us a little bit of your background?
R: I’m from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and I went to the University of Florida to do my Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning; I graduated in 1997. In Florida, other than completing my degree, I got engaged in a lot of community activities, not only from the Latino perspective, but also with organizations and Student Government. After I graduated from UF, I came to live in Puerto Rico. I currently am executive director of the Proyecto ENLACE del Caño Martín Peña, and the Fideicomiso de la Tierra del Caño Martín Peña, which is a community land trust that just won the United Nations World Habitat Award a couple of years ago … The experience of being engaged in leadership positions at college was very significant for my professional career afterwards.
E: You are basically a legend, here, surrounding La Casita. So it is awesome to hear how your work here at UF carried on with you afterwards … How was the Gainesville area when you got here?
R: The Gainesville I have in my mind is in the 1990s. It was quite a small town, it was a college town. The University was the heart of the town. But, what really struck me was how different it was from the world that I knew … I saw a headline of a Letter to the Editor in the Alligator that said, “Blacks are Animals,” and it really shocked me that it was published as the headline in a student newspaper. It gave me a different perspective of what the place I had moved to was like. It seemed like the issue of race and the lack of tolerance was really alive, and I came to learn that was the reality of Gainesville. My friends told me how the previous year they would see Ku Klux Klan marching in Gainesville, and this was the 1990s already, so I would have thought that those were issues of the past, but they were still extremely present in Gainesville.
There was no talk about the reality of Latinos in Florida at all, or at the University of Florida. So, the experience of Latinos at the time was totally ignored. The university had over 2,000 Latinos, almost 3,000, Latino students. There was not a support structure for Latinos. They were not even formally recognized as minorities; the Latino population was not part of the conversation, the issues that were talked about, or the policies of the university. And, that’s when we decided that we needed to bring that to the table and also make alliances with all the minority groups as well.
S: Did Hispanic students face discrimination?
R: Faculty members from Latino descent were so few. There was pretty much no staff that was Latina, other than perhaps Minerva — who had been recently appointed, Minerva Casañas. But I really don’t recall anyone else from the staff, or having any programs catering to the Latino population. Also, there was no recruitment effort of Latino students.
E: You mentioned hearing about the KKK marching in Gainesville, and so my question is, did you feel safe being here at UF?
R: I wouldn’t say there was an issue or I was fearing my personal safety with that regard, other than—I cannot say I didn’t feel safe, personally, but it didn’t mean that I didn’t feel that there were deep racial issues that needed to be dealt with and that many people didn’t want to have that conversation. So it was like it didn’t exist and must be ignored. Something that we were trying to do was bring those issues to the limelight and start talking about those issues, and generating those conversations.
S: So, how did you guys go about forming La Casita?
R: La Casita, it was an initiative to get a space where, Latino, Latina, students from Latin American descent could feel that they had a place to go where they can manifest their culture, really, without having anyone criticize them for speaking Spanish—which is something that I did experience, being in groups and talking Spanish amongst yourselves and then people would actually point back to you like, “You’re in America, you’re supposed to be speaking in English.” So those sort of comments we used to get all the time. So, we thought that we needed a space where we could express ourselves, not only in terms of culturally, but also a place where we could start having the opportunity to learn and explore what the Latino experience and its adversity was like. What the Latino issues in Florida, and the [United] States, was like. And, have the opportunity to get engaged on those issues from an activist position.
At the time, Florida had the third and most important library of Latin America, had this Center for Latin American Studies, but, again, the focus of the Center was to do research regarding Latin American countries, nobody was looking or talking about the Latino experience within the U.S. Even though Florida had thirteen percent of its population, at the time, from Latino descent. It was the fourth largest state with Latino population at the time, but at the University of Florida, which is a public university, those issues were not discussed, not taught, not dissected. And, we felt that there was a void there … So, a few students created an organization that was called Latinos en Acción which was more like the activist branch of the Latino movement, and then other organizations started to follow through. There was CASA, which was a Cuban American Student Association.
The people who really got engaged in politics were the Greeks or the ones associated to the Greek houses, which was a majority male population — a white male population had all the control over the power structures in Student Government.
So it was a moment in which all the people start to challenge those structures as well. Within that, we were looking at Latino issues and I recall that as part of this we started holding alliances with women’s groups, and the LGBT community, which at the time—I mean the issues of discrimination against the LGBT community were extremely serious in Gainesville as well.
We decided out of that to create a Hispanic-Latino Student Council. One of the proposals of the Hispanic-Latino Student Council had to do with the need to create the Institute of Hispanic-Latino Cultures. I recall that the relationship with the university administration was a little bit tense at the time as well, because of the lack of recognition of the importance of certain issues in the university policy agenda. They felt that they were doing enough with having a minority students office, and dealing with Black issues, and that was enough.
We reached out to national organizations such as La Raza—the National Council of La Raza—who intervened in the process on behalf of the Latino students. We started doing different events to gain attention, and use the student media—which was the student newspaper—but also to reach out to other student organizations for support. We really had to do a lot of organizing and work, and meetings … Some of these administrators would make expressions, “Oh Latinos, they don’t face discrimination they are not from the United States, they should go back to their countries.”
S: Was there anybody that was like a mentor who helped you do all this?
R: We did have a lot of support by some university professors other than Minerva Casañas, while the time she was there she was extremely supportive of all the initiatives and noise we made, which was a lot.
E: Yeah, I think for sure all of the work that you guys did has been so incredibly impactful and meaningful to all of the Hispanic students that have come since you guys started this effort and this work. UEPA right now is still one of the biggest Hispanic organizations.
R: Oh it’s still there!
E: UEPA is huge. Yeah and I think for sure, all of the things you guys worked and all of the effort you guys put into La Casita and just the visibility of Hispanic and Latino students here made a huge impact in our experience at UF … You talked a bit about a comment your friend made about your efforts not being recognized. Could you tell us a little bit more about that? Was he was referring to the students or, maybe, administration?
R: No, no, no, he was talking about the students. The administration, well, they gave us a really hard time, we gave them hell, in many instances. But, in the end they came through because I guess they realized the power of Latinos beyond the university and what that would entail to them if we made this a national issue. I guess that they realized that they really had to pull through. And, I guess, a letter from National Council of La Raza saying, “We are watching what you are doing,” really was instrumental in the process. So in the end they were there at the ceremony on the inauguration of La Casita.
S: Can we talk a little bit about the process of getting La Casita? Did you have petitions, protests?
R: Yeah. We had petitions, we had—it was an electoral year, I guess Bill Clinton came to the university for something, so we would go to those activities and be present and make a lot of noise … We thought that we really were going to have to recur to other civil disobedience strategies. And we started to talk about that, but all of a sudden the tides shifted and we were told that they were gonna approve the funding for La Casita.
E: Tell us a little bit more about the interactions you had with the administration at the time. Maybe a little bit about, if you interacted with the president, John Lombardi?
R: Yes many times. With the president, with the vice-president of student affairs … They would always complain that there were no funds for what you were requesting. There’s no money to create positions for Latinos. They didn’t have information characterizing the issues that affected the Latino communities, rather, they would gather a lot measures in terms of Black students retention rates and so forth, not of Latinos. And again, it wasn’t an issue about the need that that had in terms of the Black population, but rather the invisibilization of other groups that were facing their own struggles in Florida at the time and that needed to be part of an agenda … I recall that we had very difficult conversations within the UF student body and student body governance, and the way they looked at Latinos. So when we were trying to create Latinos en Acción, it was an issue because they already had a Hispanic Student Association. Again, it’s this issue of, “You have one, that’s enough. Shut up.” No recognition of diversity, of positions, or the fact that Latinos was a very large group within the UF student body at the time.
S: You said, at one point the administration, they just had a change of heart, right? What do you think caused that change of heart?
R: I think that, as I said earlier, it was external pressure. I mean we started to write to everyone. We started to call everyone, we started to call UF alumni that were of Latino descent and tell them what was going on. Some powerful people in Florida, in other areas of the state, they started also to voice their concerns to the administration. We started to reach out to students all over Florida and other states, and we started to reach out to national organizations. Not only the National Council of La Raza, but other national organizations regarding Latino issues, as well. So I guess that really raised some alerts that this needed to be dealt with before it became something more serious for them. So I guess that was it. Telling you all the time, “Oh, the issue is that there is no money,” and all of a sudden there’s money, something happened there.
E: Do you remember the moment you guys found out that you guys had won, that you guys got La Casita?
R: No, I just remember being very excited about this, and celebrating. I just remember the day in which La Casita was inaugurated, and I remember that all the groups got together and started making, que se yo, los artes y the banners that we were gonna put out, and inviting people, and all that process.