SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – From cultures to customs to changing the narrative. We get to the root of one of the most diverse, rapidly growing communities in San Diego.
ABC 10News anchor Lindsey Peña hosts a panel of community leaders and learns more about what it means to be Latino in America. Different histories and cultures with the same goal.
Join us Tuesday at 7:30 for an ABC 10News special: Latino in America.
Learn more about the community leaders featured in the panel below:
Luis Martinez/ Honduran-American, Entrepreneur
ABC 10News
Luis Martinez, MSOL is an Afro-Latino from Honduras and raised in Brooklyn, New York with an MBA in Organizational Leadership, Luis is an advocate, networker and ecosystem builder for Black, Latinos in technology and innovation across the United States and outside of it.
A former professional basketball player and US Navy veteran, he is currently the director of Startup Grind San Diego. Startup Grind is the largest independent startup community, educating, inspiring and actively connecting 3,500,000 entrepreneurs in over 400 cities.
Luis felt the need to create a movement aimed at creating the super ecosystem for Black & Latino Founders, Venture Capitalists & Angel Investors. The lack of access and information about technology and innovation flowing to these underrepresented communities is causing these communities to fall behind in current math, science and technology.
Also, there is a disconnect between minorities who have been successful in technology and innovation and those who have returned to the communities from which they came. By creating We Tha Plug, Luis is connecting businesses, organizations and individuals, leveraging their resources and talents to build a stronger Black & Latino tech and innovation community through collective effort.
Jennifer Rocha/ Mexican-American, SDSU Police Officer
ABC 10News
I am the daughter of two Mexican immigrant farm workers who crossed the border from Michoacan, Mexico to Calexico. I was born and raised in Indio, CA and am the third first generation graduate behind my two older sisters. My father always talked about the dangers he had to undergo in order to try to pass. Being forced to go under a train, risking being crushed by it, crossing the long hot desert on foot for days, being an eye opener to what immigrants have to go through to achieve that “Dream” American”.
I started working as a migrant farm worker with my parents as a freshman in high school and throughout my college years. I have always been surrounded by Latino/Hispanic individuals because Indio, CA /Coachella, CA has a diversity where the majority are Latino/Hispanic. Throughout my K-12 school years, I went to schools that were predominantly Latino students. To learn English I had to take ESL classes. However, I never felt isolated because most of the students were like me.
On another note, when I graduated high school I was accepted to UCSD and it was a culture shock due to the low percentage of Latino students. I started taking classes that focused on the growing Latino population/culture in San Diego. I came to understand the importance of immigrants in the United States, as they are essential to our economy and bring unity through our culture. Latinos are the backbone of our economy as they work in dangerous, harmful jobs such as gardening, cleaning services, farm workers, factory workers, etc.
To focus primarily on farm workers, I was able to experience hot 120 degree summers with minimal short breaks, dangerous conditions and low wages along with cold 20 degree winters without moving my fingers or the legs. As individuals, we don’t realize how essential farm workers are, without them we wouldn’t have food on our tables. Although here in San Diego, you don’t witness many agricultural fields, you can see immigrants working through food trucks, ice cream carts, fruit carts and so on. In San Diego, we witness a different way how immigrants contribute to our economy (as mentioned above) and how they bring together the culture of different parts of Mexico and Latin America.
With that said, I am now serving and protecting the community as a Peace Officer. So many incidents where I have had the privilege to help Haitians, Mexicans, Salvadorans and many different ethnicities and it shows how San Diego is built as a unique city with so many cultures and languages. Being a bilingual speaker in a city where the Spanish language is essential has made me realize the importance of making sure our language is never lost.
Therefore, immigration is more than just individuals crossing borders to stay permanently in a country. They flee their countries of birth in hopes of giving their children a better and safer life away from the violence and poverty they experience. However, they bring with them their own cultures, experiences and will to survive and work hard contributing to our city/community/economy.
Dr. Roberto Hernandez / Mexican-American, SDSU professor
ABC 10News
Dr. Roberto D. Hernández (Xicano) is an Associate Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at San Diego State University and an actively engaged, community-based scholar, researcher, teacher, and writer. Born in Mexico but raised in San Ysidro, within blocks of the world’s busiest port of entry, the US///Mexico border has figured prominently in his intellectual, political, and professional development and engagements. He earned a Chicana/o Studies Honors BA (with an emphasis in Political Theory), as well as a Masters and Ph.D. in Comparative Ethnic Studies (Black, Native, and Chicana/o Studies) from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was also a Scholar with the Center for Latino Policy Research and a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Social Change. He was previously a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Black Studies Research and the Chicana/o Studies Institute at UC Santa Barbara, where he taught Chicana/o Studies and Black Studies. Dr. Hernandez also coordinates several advanced international research institutes for young scholars: Decolonization of Knowledge and Power (in Barcelona), Critical Muslim Studies (Granada) and Latin American Decolonial and Feminist Thought (Mexico City).
The research, publications and teaching of Dr. Hernández focuses on the intersections of colonial and border violence, the geopolitics of knowledge and cultural production, decolonial political theory, social movements, hemispheric indigeneity, masculinity, and comparative border studies. Specifically, he teaches courses on US///Mexico border history, theory and contemporary issues, Chicana/o and border folklore, Community Studies, and racial/gender slavery and incarceration from colonialism and slavery to the industrial complex of prisons and immigration detention centers. He co-edited the anthology Decolonizing the Westernized University: Interventions in the Philosophy of Education from the Inside and Outside (Lexington, 2016) and is the author of US Coloniality///Mexico’s Border: Power, Violence, and the Decolonial Imperative (Univ of AZ Press, 2018). He has served on the board of directors of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) and was involved in writing a NACCS Amicus Brief at the height of the legal battle over the attempted ban on Mexican American Studies in Arizona in 2010. Finally, Dr . Hernandez is an accomplished translator of important scholarly works and has several ongoing translation projects in progress.
Fedella Lizeth/ Nicaragua, Chicana, Photographer
ABC 10News
Fedella Lizeth is a 22-year-old Queer, Nicaraguan, and Italian photographer from San Diego, California. Her father having immigrated from Nicaragua, Fedella continues to embrace her experience as a first-generation Central American, a new-generation Chicana, and simply a community member with a passion for commemorating the cultures that nurtured her.
