Emily Martinez Interview - Data Wrangler

We were all running a little late for Emily Martinez’s interview. Anna and I didn’t have much trouble finding the room where we’d be meeting up with Emily to do some scanning. Once Prof. Cotera joined us, we officially met Emily Martinez and began looking through part of the archive she had brought for us to look through. She had more stuff in her car so Anna helped her get that while Prof. Cotera went to get the scanner from her car and I manned the room.

Soon we’d find out that I wouldn’t have much to do at the interview since we were missing the USB and power cords for the scanner. We tried to borrow one from the media department at the school but they didn’t have any that would match the scanner. We’d have to take the archive with us and do the scanning at a separate time.

The primary role I played as Data Wrangler was to take notes during the interview and to make sure the video clips were uploaded to the hard drive. I took a lot of notes during the interview wanting to make sure I noted the time at which Emily gave us details about important times in her life. When uploading the clips on the hard drive we had issues with the format they were in (.MTS) not opening on Anna’s computer. So after saving them as .MPG and having them not open, we decided I’d take the SD card and try reloading them onto my laptop at home.

Once home, I was able to resave the clips as .MPG and open them. I also uploaded the videos to iPhoto to make sure we had a backup. Trying to upload the videos to the web was troublesome. It would take forever to upload to Mbox. I used iMovie to trim a clip to post with the reflection and had to put it on YouTube because it couldn’t upload straight onto the blog.

Emily Martinez - Housing Situation

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Some thoughts and reactions to the interview:

Interviewing Emily was a great experience in all aspects. She had a very inspiring and complex history. She did it all! It’s amazing to know that she did so much and can remember so much of it. I enjoyed hearing how it was that she became the motivational and strong woman that she is. I liked that she shared her family dynamics and background because I thought that really helped me understand the story she told. I thought her relationship with and respect for her dad was very interesting. She had utmost respect for her dad and would do as he asked which reminded me how my grandparents have described their upbringings. Having this to reference during her interview I think helped me understand why she would say that you simply wouldn’t question your parents and what they told you to do, you just did it.

Emily shared with us that her dad was pulled out of elementary school because he needed to help her grandfather and that she didn’t go to college because she felt obliged to help her parents. This made me think about the people I know that have been in a similar situation. It made me think about this ongoing chain of missed opportunities. It made me think of all of the people that were forced out of pursuing an education and those that felt that that was the only way they could help their families. When in reality, an education is one of the most secure ways of providing your family with better things. This makes me appreciate being at UofM very much. The amount of support that I’ve had from my family these last 4 years will help me help them more than I could ever imagine.

Seeing the amount of work that Emily has done for Chicanos was incredible. Physically seeing what her effort has yielded over so many years, along with the amount of things I’ve been exposed to in this class, made me think about what I’ve done for “my people”. I feel that I’ve lacked involvement in the efforts being made to help make the lives of Latinos better. I knew before that I would want to continue my recently begun journey as a Latino rights advocate post-graduation, but now I’m certain that I will go on the rest of my life dedicating a portion of it to “my people”.