Arelis Hernandez

Arelis Hernandez is a modern-day Latina activist, but she might be a little more modest about that title.

Hernandez, a multimedia journalist for Diverse: Issues in High Education, struggled and campaigned to solidify a U.S. Latina/o studies minor at the University of Maryland at College Park in the spring of 2008.

An article she wrote on her student experience (she graduated last year) was published last month in the Harvard Educational Review. I spoke to Hernandez on the phone a couple of days ago so she could tell me more about her involvement and leadership with the effort against the university administration. Along with other students, faculty and community members, Hernandez peacefully and intelligently stood up to the administration and demanded what she and other students deserved: a right to learn U.S. Latina/o history and a right to have it recognized as a genuine field of study.

Days at the newspaper. Tom Burton, Hilda Perez, Arelis Hernandez and Roberto Gonzalez. Thursday, June 26, 2008. (Marie D. De Jesus/Orlando Sentinel)

In the spring of 2006, Hernandez, whose parents are from Puerto Rico, was reporting for the school’s newspaper The Diamondback, covering the diversity beat. For one story, she headed out to a symposium, where the university was allocating funds to “try out” Latina/o studies.

“It was the first time I’d been in a room with Latino professionals and students. I had no idea they had been fighting for 10 years to get these programs. It was a eureka moment for me,” she said.

Hernandez registered for the first class in the fall 2007 semester, to see what would happen, she said. The class was held in an old field house that was drafty, where the basketball team used to practice and where Elvis Presley once played.

“When I first learned about Latino history, well that class did it for me. I hadn’t had a chance to explore any of these classes…I’m inquisitive and I love history, I thought I had a good sense of American history and there I was, I was completely wrong. I had no idea.”

She said that so much of what she was learning, hundreds of years of history, all the way to the Chicano movement in the 1960s, resonated with her. Questions she had been yearning to know more about, ranging from her Latina identity, to different Latin American countries to Latinos’ place in U.S. history, were now being openly discussed.

When the course was to continue into the spring 2008 semester, professors said the outlook on keeping the classes and turning them into a minor, were grim. Hernandez and some fellow students came together to let administrators know they needed the classes, they had a right to learn more.

She helped in writing press releases, making posters and going out to share, face-to-face, what was going on. People responded and action became greater. A professor encouraged her to write a final paper for her Latino studies class, which ended up being 30 pages – and which ended up published in the Harvard Educational Review, a paper on why the courses matter and the movement at UCMP.

“I learned a lot about the politics of higher education. It works like Congress… slowly, and I found you have to maneuver.”

Students drafted a manifesto, like what they learned in class from El Plan de Santa Barbara, declaring their expectations for higher learning at UMCP. In the end, the administration did allow a U.S. Latina/o minor.

She said the work she did and being published, hasn’t quite hit her yet.

“In retrospect, maybe we didn’t do that much, we were just serious about it.”