In the summer of 2012 OC Human Relations engaged a multi-generational group of Latino residents in a community-based project called “El Bajio to San Clemente: An Inter-Generational Exploration of a Cultural Journey.”
Residents spent the summer telling the collective story of how almost an entire village migrated from El Bajio, Mexico to San Clemente, including the challenges and struggles of their journey and subsequent adjustment to a new city, country and culture.
To help chart the future of these mostly low-income, immigrant families it was important to first look back to the place they left behind. Images of adobe houses, children swimming in the river and the daughters of the shop keeper who had the only phone in town running through the streets to find you if your children called from the United States paint a nostalgic portrait of El Bajio.
Their stories also showed that they are never too far removed from the memories of poverty and their hopes for a better future in America. The children and grandchildren of El Bajio are the inheritants of those hopes and dreams. They shared their plans to get an education and make their parents proud.
It was our great pleasure to work with residents to create a vehicle for their story to be told to a larger audience. The selection of photos, drawings and stories begin to tell the story of “El Bajio to San Clemente.” Each story is a person, a family, a history. Each time they are read and shared another thread is woven into our local history.
We hope you enjoy reading these stories – to download a copy of the document, click here.
OC Human Relations would like to thank the residents of San Clemente for sharing their stories and the Swayne Family Foundation for providing the funding to make this project possible.
Click here to read the OC Register article, “Tracing Their Roots” published July 6, 2013
