Watsonville is in the Heart – The Humanities Institute

Watsonville is in the Heart (WIITH) is a community-driven public history initiative to preserve and uplift stories of Filipino migration and labor in the city of Watsonville and greater Pajaro Valley. Presently, the WIITH team is creating a new archive documenting the plight, struggles, vitality, and resilience of the manong generation of Filipino migrants who first settled in the Pajaro Valley in the early twentieth century. The archive features manong experiences and those of their families through oral history accounts, photos, personal records, and material culture objects.

The initiative will include the launch of an interactive digital platform featuring the archive, the creation of a California K-12 curriculum component responsive to Ethnic Studies guidelines, and the mounting of a culminating art exhibit that brings together the WIITH archive and the Bay Area and Central Coast artist communities.

View the Watsonville is in the Heart Digital Archive here: https://wiith.ucsc.edu/

The project is spearheaded by Dioscoro Recio, Jr. (The Tobera Project) in partnership with UC Santa Cruz faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students:

Co-PI’s: Kathleen Cruz Gutierrez, Assistant Professor of History; Steve McKay, Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Labor Studies
Doctoral Candidate Researchers: Christina Ayson Plank (HAVC) and Meleia Simon-Reynolds (History)
Undergraduate Researchers: Markus Faye Portacio, Katrina Mitsuko Pagaduan, Gracie Mendoza, David Mlynski, and Eva Mcbride
Community Research Assistants: Olivia Sawi, Amanda Gamban
Organizational Partners: Watsonville Public Library, Asian Cultural Experience

This project has received support from The Humanities Institute, the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County, the Ow Family Foundation, the Filipino Community Center of Watsonville, California Humanities, the UCSC Committee on Research New Faculty Research Grant, and the UCSC Arts Research Institute.