Documenting Resilience
(AHR I & II)

 Documenting Resilience in Tucson’s Southside is a co-creative visual and spatial engagement program created out of a partnership between Sunnyside Foundation, a leader in advocacy for Tucson’s Southside, and the University of Arizona project team.
Founded in 1975, El Pueblo Center is a hub for recreational and public services, neighborly exchange and community placekeeping in Tucson’s Southside. Wrapped in murals and memory and traversed by families and public servants, the center, located at the intersection of Irvington Road & South Sixth Avenue, is now the focus of efforts by numerous stakeholders in the city and private sector for revitalization and reinvestment. With the generous support of the Arts|Humanities|Resilience grant, the team established residencies for local artists to work with community advisors, archivists, and scholars to document, explore, and manifest a “living” archive of El Pueblo Center and the communities that surround it. 

Blending engaged visual and spatial research and contemporary image-making, the project fuses public archival efforts with university resources to translate privately held memories and experiences into a collective narrative of place. Its process, products and iterative display in celebrations, viewing sessions and salons across sites highlight the arts and humanities dimensions of Southside resilience. Taken together, they show what a future “living” archival infrastructure for Southside communities might support—the means for community members to continue adding their own multimedia histories and stories made at and with the El Pueblo Neighborhood Center and Sunnyside Foundation. An ongoing project, the Arts|Humanities|Resilience grant funded activities between April 2023 to Summer 2024.

Principal Investigators: Selina Barajas (Sunnyside Foundation), Jacqueline Barrios (College of Humanities), Meg Jackson Fox (Center for Creative Photography), Elizabeth “Liz” Soltero (Sunnyside Foundation), Kenny H. Wong (College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture)






SS22.STSTORIES SOUTH OF 22ND INFO
FEEDALL GALLERY
CATEGORIES
Resiliencia
Arts & Culture  Research
  Video
  Documenting Resilience
  
Luis Fernando Gonzalez
Resiliencia, 2023, digital video, 5:45

Artist’s Statement:

The film is called Resiliencia because of the emotional ability El Pueblo gives to those who lend themselves to it. From mental health support to nurturing racial pride, and everything in between, the center’s “resiliencia” helps its users cope with what they are going through. Giving those in need social support and positive affirmation influences a person to become more resilient. When I started this journey this past spring of documenting the resilience of El Pueblo, I felt like I was returning back to my childhood era. Visiting the recreational center with my daughter or heading to StoryTime at the Frank De La Cruz Library reignited the past I had spent at the center. Being able to feel the center's spirit not only by myself but with my daughter inspired me to discover more and awakened my curiosity. It led me to key community leaders and seniors who cared for this space in the past and today. Their vision and words gave me a sense of acceptance and pride in living and growing up on the Southside of Tucson. The center’s resources not only helped me become a better father, it taught me what it meant to be one—to do what you can to improve the generation that will come after you. This film incorporates media collected from the following sources: Sunnyside Foundation Community Reinvestment Days and PAH 200 El Pueblo Site Visits held in the Spring 2023; interviews conducted with Richard Ortiz Barker, former Director of the El Pueblo Neighborhood Center; Ruben Reyes, District Director for Congressman Raúl Grijalva; and Liz Soltero, CEO of Sunnyside Foundation. Footage also derives from the archive of Raúl “Netza” Aguirre, Ward 1 Día de la Niñez, StoryTime at Frank de la Cruz-El Pueblo Library, and Sunnyside Foundation Gives Day.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Francis Montano Canez and Mary Lou Montijo Granillo who showed me the true resilience of the center through their deep and personal emotional connections with the place. I also wish to thank my family: my daughter Khloe Aleali Gonzalez, my partner Leah Vega and my father Luis Mario Gonzalez for bringing me to the center many years ago.

Many thanks to the staff at El Pueblo, the seniors who I met, and a special thank you to the viewers for taking time to enjoy El Pueblo with us!