PAH 420 Spring 2025:  Southside Stories of Environmental Resilience and El Pueblo

Resilience, defined as a set of practices and a communal identity enabling neighborhoods to respond to forces of global change, finds lived expression in the Southside of Tucson. A key narrative in this wellspring of environmental resilience and care is the Southside’s ongoing story to repair experiences of environmental harm from the Trichloroethylene (TCE) water contamination crisis that ensued in the 1980s from the improper disposal of the harmful industrial solvent by Tucson’s aviation and defense industries. Much of this work has been and continues to be nurtured at the El Pueblo, a hub for recreational and public services, neighborly exchange and community place-keeping in the area and beyond. This semester,  PAH 420 students applied a suite of innovative design strategies to prototype projects connecting users to the stories of environmental resilience we encountered  in and through Southside communities at El Pueblo and beyond. Using multimedia spatial research and storytelling, students designed publicly-engaged projects amplifying how Southside communities’ preserve and imagine their relationships to the environment, especially its historic journey to care for their water.
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Acknowledgements:

None of this would be possible without campus and community partners especially from Department of Public and Applied Humanities (PAH), UArizona Libraries (UAL) Special Collections & CATalyst Studio; College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture (CAPLA), Center for Creative Photography, College of FIne Arts (CFA), Arizona Institute of Resilience (AIR)  as well as Sunnyside Foundation, Office of Congressman Raúl Grijalva, the Unified Community Advisory Board (UCAB), Tucson Water, Frank de la Cruz Library, the El Pueblo Senior Center, City of Tucson Parks and Recreation, with special thanks to the offices of Pima County Supervisor Adelita Grijalva & Tucson Council Member Lane Santa Cruz for visiting our class. The instructors would especially like to thank reviewers, speakers, site-/archive- visit experts and consultants who accompanied us along the way including Paulina Aguirre-Clinch, Selina Barajas, Cassandra Becerra, Dr. Paloma Beamer, Becca Cammack, Marcos and Nicki Cardenas and the seniors of the El Pueblo Senior Center Art Class, Jasmin Chan, John Choi, Rachel Castro, Sharon Collinge, Laura Corrales, Hilda Cortez, Veronica Cruz-Mercado, Bob Diaz, Sophie Didier, Alba Fernandez-Keys, Sara Fraker, Sofia Forier-Montes, Heather Froehlich, Julissa Galindo, Yolanda Herrera and the members of UCAB, Christine Hoekanga, Cynthia Leo, Cynthia Lopez, Dr. Denise Moreno-Ramírez, Ellen McMahon, Nicholas McCullough, Jennifer Nichols, Chairman Ned Norris, Perri Pyle, Beki Quintero,  Niko Sanchez, Elizabth Soltero, Liz Petterson,  Alana Varner, Alysha Vasquez and the Mexican-American Museum/Los Descendientes Survival & Resistance: Remembering the Southside Environmental Justice Movement team, Dr. Monica Ramírez-Andreotta, Mia Ruiz, Elliott Welch, Jessica Wolff, Kenny Wong. A warm thank you to Angus Leydic, our PAH 420 Graduate Teaching Assistant, and Jasmin Lopez & Sarah Snyder, who expanded our study of Southside’s stories of environmental resilience through their internships this semester.  We also would like to acknowledge support for this course from the  UA Library Digital Borderlands Fellowship as well as Arts Research + Resilience Grants programs, enabling instructors to bring new tools and resources for teaching and learning interdisciplinary storytelling to Southern Arizona communities. We also want to acknowledge support from  PAH, Hispanic Serving Institute (HSI) Initiatives, Design Accelerator, Marshall Foundation, American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the Arts|Humanities|Resilience (AHR) grant program, administered by AIR and the College of Fine Arts. Thank you for seeding our educational investment in Southside communities in partnership with the Sunnyside Foundation, that has laid the foundation for today’s work. 
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