 And my name is Dr. Mario Longoria, I'm a community scholar, attended University of Texas, quite a year in San Antonio, several years recently receiving a Doctorate of Philosophy in English. However, my background is history. I'm a war historian, a sports historian, dealing primarily with the Mexicano-Mexican-American within the, I guess, the sequence of history, of American history and their omission or their downplay as such. That's the emphasis that I place on that. The most recently I had the exhibit at the Institute of Texan Cultures on the Mexico's 201st Fighter Squadron, World War II, which is again little known and so forth that actually was on exhibit for about eight months or so. And the work that I've done over the over the years and so forth, you know, touches upon, for example, the Guy Gavaldon information you saw in the video, the Felix Longoria affair, the discrimination after death, I think they called that particular episode, and the Puerto Rican 65th Infantry Regiment history. So glad you all are here. And at this point, we would like to feel questions from the audience. I just got a note that I'm going to repeat my intro because the audio didn't work in the back. My name is Patricia Portales. I teach English composition and literature at San Antonio College. My name is Mary Ann Bueno. I am a historian. I have taught history at the University of Minnesota and the University of North Texas, and I'm currently working on a book project about Mexican-Americans in World War II. And my name is Mary Ann Longoria, the Community Scholar and Historian associated with the University of Texas here at San Antonio. We can make a few more connections if you'd like us to, but we wanted you to think about any questions that you may have about this documentary. Our purpose here tonight is to have you view it and then for us to respond to it, but we didn't want to lecture about it. We wanted to make sure this is a community discussion. Or maybe we should ask the audience some questions in terms of what they saw, what they felt, what they could relate to, and things that were maybe very interesting. Yes, sir? Just two quick points. I've served. One of the things I found rather hard was this. They said, me and my comrades overseas for liberty and democracy, and they see these things happening, and they say, well, why don't you begin with your own family? And it's hard to explain that. The second part comes from here. Now, to see Germany after I got out of the Marines, I was with the Army, and the brigade I was in, a lot of times we operated in Central America. So I made the other guys, since my Spanish was kind of poor, they weren't helping me with my Spanish. So one of the sergeants comes up there and he's telling me, you can't speak Spanish. Yeah, I can. Oh, no, you can't. I take my sign and go, what's wrong? You're acting weird. No. I told them, picture this. We're going down to the Panama, or in the town, none of them can speak English. How are we going to let them work again, guys? Think about it. But there was that fear because they hear them speaking German or another language, and they didn't bother. But for some reason, I never understood. They heard me and the guys speaking Spanish. They were fine. So some of the things that they mentioned, World War II, I can relate to, it wasn't huge. Everyone's come out to me. It was the air came and said, dude, I wonder if you, I was by your side. I was touching back. We were in Germany together on the border. And now they said, you're acting weird. I explained that. There could be a simple explanation to your question there. You know, I would call that, it's a stigma. It's a historical stigma that's been attached to the Mexicanos and so to speak, within the history of the United States. It hasn't gone away. You know, it's still there. It just assumes different forms or different ways of presenting itself. Depending on the circumstance that you're involved in. So, you know, it's still with us. You know, we could explain it personally, but as a people, because of the fragmentation in the division, it would be hard to kind of make a political statement on that. I relate to what you were saying earlier. In the Vietnam conflict or the Vietnam War, the Mexicanos would actually go into what they call R&R, would meet at places like in Hong Kong or in Singapore and that sort of stuff. And they would gather basically for protection. Now, even though we were all soldiers and sailors and Marines and Coast Guard and so forth, there was still the fact that when you were on the front line and you were standing and watching that sort of stuff, everything was okay. But once you got away from that, then all of a sudden all those little illnesses that they'd been plaguing our society for so long seemed to all of a sudden surface once again. And that also resulted, you know, there was a lot of racial tensions and a lot of racial conflicts while the service, well, I was there. I was there in 68. While I was there, that you had to form alliances with the blacks and that sort of stuff. And they even had problems with the blacks also because they thought you were Anglo. So the Mexicana was caught there between a rock and a hard place and then you had to defend for yourself and then when you did it, you did it successfully, you were punished. Can I ask, sir, when did you serve? With the Marines? I was with the helicopter squadron here in Virginia. When? What time period? 79 to 81. To 81. And then in 82, I thought I was going to go to school and this army guy showed me pictures of Germany. Oh, cool. So 82 to 87. So I was there 83 to 85. And then in 87 before the wall came down. So I got to see the old Germany slowly becoming a new Germany. But like I said, the one guy, the first he was shot, I didn't know he was Mexican. I was just wondering when you served because during the 80s, the U.S. was involved in a lot of secret wars in Central and South America. And I think because of what Dr. Longoria said that Mexicans, Latinos have often been considered as permanent outsiders in this country and not necessarily accepted. And so I think what we saw happening in the 80s was also this mass flux of immigrants coming in from Central and South America. And so I think oftentimes because we were in Central and South America as a military, some people could perceive perhaps Latino soldiers making alliances with those that they were working against in Central and South America and perhaps maybe not feeling as safe. And again, because the status of permanent outsider not necessarily seen as trustworthy as other. Very much as that because the only way to describe that period of time is when we describe Nicaragua in El Salvador, it was in one country good guerrillas are fighting the bad guerrillas. In the other country, the bad guerrillas are fighting the good guerrillas. Now try and figure out which ones which. So they knew these guys down there weren't Mexicans and we were Americans and they just came down to this strange feeling of we have to be talking about them because we're talking in Spanish. It's like, no, my Spanish is very good and we end up down there in St. Panama. You're going to want someone that's going to be able to make it easier to get along with people so they don't see us as the ugly Americans but great guys, but we can't speak their language. We can't expect them to speak ours and you always keep on telling me, you're an American, speak English, we'll move down to America. I guess we better speak Spanish, no? But it was just like tickling high to me but as far as thinking about any of us having alliances with the Nicaraguans or the El Salvador Indians, not, they pretty well knew it was just two separate groups but I never heard that come up. As far as Nicaragua went, it was like, it was supposed to be like a secret war. The only ones who don't know people down there is the American people. The rest of the world know there's, what did he say? Some American soldier got lost and found himself in Nicaragua instead of starting shooting with the country. One of the things we wanted, when Dr. Longoria talked about historical stigma, social stigma, there's so many contradictions because this film can give so much more context. I think Dr. Bueno is gonna discuss this. But one of the things that occurred that links us to the idea, the image of South Americans or Latin Americans was a good neighbor policy which started well before World War II that even extended into the way that Hollywood would depict Latinos in film. So this is why, if you look at 1930s and 40s films, there's so many that are set in Latin American countries where the idea of like Carmen Miranda sprang from that. But it was to make sure that that image was improved, but then there were so many contradictions that came later. Lady in the blue t-shirt? No, go ahead. Lady in the blue t-shirt had a question. I found that portion in that part of the movie. Really unsettling. And I was just wondering if there was a San Antonio or Texas company that showed it was a pornography, Navy, Machu Picchu, or the zoosuit, or Machu Picchu? Looking at the zoosuit riots of that 1942, I think it was, you know, that gives you a big picture of how the Mexicanos were viewed, particularly when they dressed themselves the way they did. They took a lot of pride in that and so forth, but they just weren't accepted. There's also a correlation there to what the phenomena of the Macintosh suit, which was something that also looks very similar to the way the tailoring is done on the pachucco, on the drapes, on their suits, and so forth, that had a, how should I say, kind of, I'm lost for words in terms of, it meant something. It meant that you were successful and it meant that because you dressed well and so forth, you felt, well, the dress for success type thing, I guess, for the lack of a better description. In San Antonio during that time, in the South Texas, the Mexicanos were just scurrying around back and forth in and out of the military. Basically, the only incident that I recall historically in San Antonio that involved a large group of Mexicanos pertaining to wanting to protest the conditions that they lived in was many years prior to that. So the only connection there is basically the Mexicano image and what it meant to the lingos or the angles at the time and then depending on where you were at, it was dealt a certain way, or whatever the circumstance permitted. I don't know of any similar incident that occurred here in Texas, but the racialized violence that Mexicans experienced in this country in the early 20th century was really quite horrific. And a lot of the violence that happened here in Texas really manifested in South Texas in particular with the lynching of Mexicans. And there is a time period between about 1800, 1880s and the 1930s where more Mexicans were lynched in Texas than African Americans were lynched in the whole U.S. South. And so in the wake of that lynching and that racialized violence, Mexicans, Latinos were joining the armed forces by the thousands and African American soldiers, not necessarily zoot suitors, right? Because the zoot suit culture was very much a black culture as well, but African American soldiers experienced so much racialized violence against them during World War II when they were stationed in the U.S. South in particular. And this was black women soldiers as well as black men. And so it didn't even have to be about wearing something that signified otherness, but it just was about the racialized tension and the way racial formations in the early 20th century manifested in a moment of war. And also one thing we like to add is Dr. Catherine Ramirez has a book out called The Woman in the Zoot Suit. And she really investigated and did some oral histories with the women who were the girlfriends of the young men who were in the C.P. Lagoon trial. And in those oral histories, she asked them questions about how they would adapt their boyfriend's jackets over their skirts that were shorter, about how that created tension generationally because the older generation didn't like that they were wearing that even though it was meant to be like an empowering piece of clothing. But she asked them things about myths about their hair. For example, they would say that the women would create pompadours in their hair so high that the myth was that they had blades inside their hair. And she asked them if they did that, and I remember in her book she says that one of them laughs and says, no, we would have cut our own scalps. We didn't have any blades in our hair. But she also discusses how the women, the girls or the girlfriends of the C.P. Lagoon trial young men were sent to a correctional girl school and because they were actually charged with anything, they were kind of forgotten. No one ever went back to get them removed from that school in the way that the young men had gone and been acquitted. And not only that, but the Pachuca's, they didn't go through a trial. There was no judge. There was no jury. And they remained wards of the state until they were 21 years old. So the implication of just even being a Pachuca could mean time away from the family. I think it's out there. Well, I had a question about two or something, the Latinos before World War II. What about previously to that? And especially in Germany, because before the action story of knowing that they were rounding up the Jews, and in massacring them, they had dead murder groups. And that included blacks, Latinos, and I'm just wondering like, first of all, what are you doing in Germany at that time? And I know it was a, Berlin was like the great site for everything, learning, education. But that was one of the groups and the mentally impaired that they were taking out of institutions and killing them. So do you know anything about what exactly was going on in the point of action when Germany was such a large number? I don't recall the, there was a lot of, you know, there's usually related to war, the Mexican participation in Europe and Germany, for example, World War I and World War II. Although I think there was very few battles fought in Germany in World War I. The only example that I remember in terms of how to meet kind of was treated differently from everyone else, involved a soldier here from San Antonio who served in, during the time of Sergeant York, which would be a little more, I guess a little more familiar with everyone. And he was also credited with capturing I think close to 68 or 64 Germans. He was also, he was, he had, he initially was his officer, officer right above him, but the officer above him was a little different, had submitted him for the Congressional Medal of Honor based on what he had accomplished in a series of battles with the Germans. And he was a United States Army serviceman. And it was turned down the very next day by his commanding officer because that particular gentleman could not speak or write English. So he didn't want someone to receive a medal of that honor to someone who could not read or write English. And that was what he was turned down for that. He eventually wanted to receive it after a few battles after that. He wanted to receive in the Distinguished Service Cross which is second only to the Medal of Honor. Now, connected to that, how I see it is the, is the German population in Texas. The, I remember from our situation, my dad used to refer to him as the Quadrados, which meant square hairs because that's how they cut the hairs. And how difficult it was for them to, in the workplace and also in social places and then social interactions and so forth, there was a huge disparity there in terms of how they treated each other. The first group, which is curious because that was sent after the First World and Germany was so poor, you know, they, and that's really what started setting off, going into war too, besides, you know, Hitler filling that, you know, they shouldn't have to repaid money back, you know. So that's why I was just kind of like, that was a huge mixture. But those were some of the first ones that they, if they could tell, of course, it could, you know, from the different backgrounds and those were the first ones that they had studied. You know, it all boils down to the Holocaust, the treatment of the Native Americans, any kind of, excuse me. Yeah, I should have told, I should have mentioned this very beginning. Whenever I start to talk about certain aspects of the war, can I return to that question shortly? I think I saw a hand up over here. Yeah. My son, I was here with my older brother, talk about Chicano power and the military. You're asking all of us? Go ahead. There you go. I mean, this is like, I always heard him, and then there was something about Brown and Harris. Brown and Harris, yeah. Well, usually what we like to discuss is that, you know, even though people can think of things that happened in the late 60s, early 70s with like the Chicano moratorium or the civil rights movement, those actions really had so many predecessors. So one of those catalysts was what's, what we saw here in the film that returning soldiers would not want to be treated as second class citizens. So that preceded that. But Chicano power was part of the Chicano movement in the 70s. It was very nationalistic. There was lots of connection to, you know, reminding people that, for example, South Texas was once part of Aslan, ancient land of the Aztecs. It was a very nationalistic movement. So really the same bird. Oh, Chicano, right. Chicano usually connotes a person of Mexican descent born and raised in the United States. With the politicized identity. That's what I always tell my students. You can put other and you can write in Chicano, which is what I do. That in itself has a quite remarkable history in terms of the development of that particular identification. You know, Mexican-American, Hispanic, Latino, Spanish surname. And you can go on and on and on and on. The term Chicano actually has some historical basis for that stuff. You know, although a little on the flimsy side, but I'm going to share this with you because it was explained to me years ago because I called myself a Chicano for the longest time because that's the word, the common word that was used in the neighborhood. You know, Chicano this, Chicano that, that sort of stuff. It was just part of a vocabulary. Yeah. And when I got into the military, you know, you run into other, you know, other, other, other mecanos and Chicano and so forth and they use the term just as freely as I did. Back then. No, you're Caucasian. The, that was, that's a, that's a story, another story also. Yeah. I went back, when I, when I, when I found that out and when I finally, it came to me, I had this realization that, okay, what does Chicano really mean? You know, well, he said, it means that you're, you're Mexican, you know, you're, you know, you live with the Mexicans, you work with other Mexicans, you know, you have a Mexican culture, you have all these, it means all those things, see, to some degree or another, see? He said, but why is it that someone else who do looks just like me, speaks like me naturally, doesn't call himself that? And then it turned out that, well, he became a badge of courage, I guess, or a badge of identification saying, well, I'm a Chicano because I'm gonna, I'm gonna do what I need to do for what is necessary for wherever I'm at. And that's also, so it became that, and the word Chicano became kind of flourished a little bit during the 60s, the Chicano movement, so forth. And then you already run into some of these older veteranos from the, from in the neighborhoods that show up 30 or 40 years after they've been gone and they still call themselves Chicanos. It's just an identity you want to assume because it may be, it gives you a euphoric feeling of who you are. Or you wanna be associated with that particular group because maybe some of the things they've done or accomplished or some of the things that they've confronted. You know, so it has many, it has many meanings. Right, well, it, for example, you know, as a politicized term, it had its own conflicts when I was talking earlier about the zootsuits and generationally that was a problem. Of course, I'm sure you've heard that some people say the word Chicano or Chicana is a bad word, that it's derogatory. The older generations might have thought that and then it was appropriated and given that politicized term of power during the 70s, it also brought the idea of ethnic studies, Chicano studies to, ethnic studies to places like UC Berkeley as a form of a field of study that was worthy of study, whereas it had been ignored before that. But it absolutely does depend on where you are, which group you're in. You know, in some places, if you were at, you know, at a campus course that's about Chicano studies, everybody will use that term. If you're somewhere where people are unfamiliar with it or uncomfortable with it, then they'll rely on Hispanic or Latino or Mexican American or whatever they're familiar with. And I'd like to just point out that I think the terms Chicano and Chicana are much more used generally in places like California as opposed to here in Texas. In California, at universities across the state, there are departments of Chicano studies. Here in Texas, there are departments of Mexican American studies, right? So it's, in the Midwest, there are departments of Chicano studies. So it is kind of geographically specific, but it is much more prevalent in California than it is here to be used in institutional settings in particular. That's what you would check out, isn't it? It's called Asian. Racially, people, Latinos are not white. We're mestizos, right? We're mestizas. We're mixed. And again, when I'm asked my race on a forum, I check other and I put mestiza because that's what I am. I'm not white, but I think that's something that perhaps I think some of the younger generations have been more attuned to as opposed to the older generation. Do you have that option of first certificate now that you did in the past? No. Most of the class have been as a teenager? Mm-hmm. Well, if one of them is taking years ago in the academic community, the discussion in the genetics field, the scientists, the learned it, decided that there's only three races in the world, the Caucasian, the Negro, and the Mongolian, the Mongoloids, rather, okay? That's it. Everything was based on that. You know, and that remained the law or the standard for years and years and they don't use it anymore. But there was nothing mentioned publicly to confirm that, okay? But there's no longer use anymore. I know they ask, they sometimes ask people, it's okay, what is your race? And I know they ask you, what is your nationality? And they'll say the race or yes, or what is your race? And they'll give you their nationality or their ethnicity, okay? So that in itself is a little, a jar of a mixture of stuff that doesn't, you know, has yet to be redefined a little better in terms of the way the world, the way the world is today. But I think it's important to note that in this country, socially, politically, we operate by the one-drop rule. Do we know what the one-drop rule is? Right, if we have one drop of African blood in us, we're black. Mexican-Americans, Latinos and generals, like phenotypically, we're not black. So if we're not black and we're not Asian, then we're, by default, categorized as Caucasian. And that was based on a Supreme Court decision, wasn't it, back in the early 20th century? I had a question on the majority up there. One, where is the rivers and up to what point did they begin allowing gunners to be buried in that cemetery? They don't. They don't. It's segregated. Three rivers, it's south of San Antonio, about two hours, more or less, two and a half hours. And if you go to South Texas and walk through most cemeteries, they're still quite segregated. So South Texas, the beginning of the valley? No, not that far, not that far south. It's more heading west. Northwest from here, it's trying to, not to, in the valley area. Three rivers? Three rivers, yeah. No, three rivers to south. South. Yes, it's south. It's not that far, not that far from here. They have a huge refinery there. The big Valero refinery is there. It's between here and in Edinburgh. Edinburgh. About halfway. Not quite to Alice, Texas. Okay, between, maybe halfway between here and Alice. Yeah. A couple of years ago, three rivers received a historical marker at the Rice Funeral Home, stating that the Longoria Affair occurred there. And I, I freelance as a journalist and I was assigned to write about this historical marker. And so I called three rivers and I was so flabbergasted to discover that they didn't want to talk about it. They would, they would actually say, why are you still talking about this? Or, you know, those people exaggerated and they would hang up on me and I would call back and I would try, you know, a couple of city council members or the mayor. And I really was surprised at how much they really just wanted to erase that. I was thinking this camp, I must be on, like on a prank show or something because they couldn't possibly want to completely erase that. But they were pretty angry about that historical marker. John Valadez, who directed this episode right here, also has a document, a 56 minute documentary like this called Just a Longoria Affair and, you know, draws it out much more than this did. But at least they have the historical marker that is there now. I just want to make one other, I'm sure we have many points, but what other connection to San Antonio? During 1939 to 1944, I'm sure you've heard of an actress whose name was Lupe Vélez. She starred in a movie that was, the first one was called The Girl from Mexico. And again, it goes back to that good neighbor policy and, you know, this improved image of Latinos in film. And then The Girl from Mexico, she plays a singer in Mexico in a fictional town and an American man who is a scout looking for a singer goes down there, finds her and asks her to come back to New York. That turned into an eight-part series of films that was called The Mexican Spitfire. And Lupe Vélez was the star in all of that eight-part series. And just coincidentally, it ran from 1939 to 1944. And the only reason it stopped in 44 was because she committed suicide. Well, there's some controversy about her death. But she has a connection to San Antonio because when she was very young in the 20s, she had been a student at Our Lady of the Lake School, not university, but at the school. And so there's a couple of documents that want to claim her as a San Antonio and although she was only here for maybe one or two years. But Warner Archives just released that on DVD about two years ago, so you can get the DVD with the full eight-part series. The first few films are, they're very silly. They're all comic films, but they're pretty silly, but the later ones, at least the characters, you know, are obviously supporting World War II. They're, you know, the characters are, you know, helping the Red Cross and doing all of that. How's it going? And they wanted to just... Were you drafted? Weren't you drafted? Yeah, yeah. Both. They entered at their own free will and then were drafted. And in the first one, I'm mistaken. And this comes from the Raul Morin, World War II book, Among the Valley. He mentions a Mejicano by the name of this part who is actually one of the... When the draft began, he was the first one, he was the first draft when the armed forces were back in the War Department to set up the draft. The first one was a Mejano, the Los Angeles. But for the most part, they went on their own free will because that was their duty as part of, as being a citizen of the state. And that hasn't changed. Yeah, that hasn't changed at all. We lied. That a friend of mine who was part of that unit. Dr. Mary, you're about 25 years in World War II and shows women for about three years. One minute. I timed it. And the narrative becomes dominated by it. And there's women in the pictures that were only told about it three years ago. He's also part of the story. But who else is in the story that we hear? We did not plant him in the audience. But this is one of my major critiques of this documentary. This documentary really does put forth the traditional narrative of Mexican-Americans in World War II. And because of, well, there is a vast amount of scholarship these days about Latinos in World War II. The biggest source of information locally is at UT Austin, where a professor there, a professor of journalism, Dr. Maggie Rivas Rodriguez has started an oral history collection in the late 1990s. And she has collected with a team of scholars, community members, volunteers, over 900 oral histories with Latinos and they're about their experiences in World War II. Of the 900, there are only 10 interviews with women who served during World War II. So this is the largest archive, the largest collection about Latinos in World War II. Why Mr. Valadez didn't access that archive a little bit more baffles me because among the materials collected are beautiful pictures and letters and diaries and photos and posters that the women collected, that the women wrote, that the woman took pictures of. And there are some of the women who served, that their stories are part of that collection. World War II really impacted their lives. And so unfortunately, you know, the documentarian gets to pick and choose what they include in their piece. And Mr. Valadez didn't really access that archive in the way that I felt a documentarian can and should access. But there were 15,000 Mexican nationals served in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II and we only heard one of their stories. You know, Macario. Macario. So I think it was a documentarian. One story? I think it was a story. So if you would add it, it would tell us about it. Any part of it? Sure. One of my favorite World War II stories is this woman, Mary Sally Salazar from Laredo, Texas who used her sister's birth certificate to join the Armed Forces during World War II. And she came to San Antonio. She took a bus. She said she was going to visit family. She enlisted in World War II into the Armed Forces. She went home. She, her enlistment papers came to the house. The poster worker delivered it. And her dad freaked out. Her mom freaked out. And her dad wanted to turn her in as somebody who enlisted using somebody else's birth certificate. Her mom got really worried. Said no, no, no, please don't. Please don't do this to our daughter. She's going to get in trouble. So her whole time in the service, Maria Sally Salazar went by her sister's name. Her dad ultimately did not turn her in. She served in the Pacific. And she was, I forgot which island she was on in particular. But she was part of the, she saw so much devastation. She saw soldiers coming back from the Philippines after the Bataan death march. She saw the Marines loading up to go hit Okinawa and the Japanese islands. She was so negatively devastatingly impacted by her time during World War II. She never really fully recovered physically or even in her mental health wise. But she says straight up in her interview, I would do it 100% again. I have no regrets. It was the time of my life. And her story really always stays with me. And partially because in McAllen, Texas, there's a Texas Veterans Memorial and there's a seven foot tall bronze statue of Maria Sally Salazar. And I just, I love that statue. I have pictures taken, you know, by it. And that story just always stuck with me because, you know, she lied to her parents. She almost got in trouble. But she stuck it through and she had to do all this paperwork and legal work to get her name changed from her military workers so that she could access the veteran services like the GI Bill and whatnot after the war. So I think she's a pretty cool woman. And I think it would have been great to include her picture, her story and the picture of at least the seven foot tall bronze statue in the documentary. So it's on the basis for a human being. Yep. Absolutely. I would include, you know, I told you earlier that I collected the oral history of my aunt. And what really happens just like in the film is that so many, you know, we could say that of course the bravery of people who served in the Pacific Theater and the European Theater and that kind of service deserves all that attention. In my family, my father is the youngest of eight. His two oldest brothers, one served on a supply ship in the Pacific and the other served at Normandy in the Utah section on D-Day. And then my aunt was married to a man named Omedo Esquivel who had been a Japanese prisoner of war. And that was, that was all I knew. And so when I interviewed my aunt, it was originally because they said, you know, ask her about Theo Homer's experiences because he had already died. But in doing the oral history, you know, they give you this learn how to interview kit. And the first thing you have to ask is what were you doing during the war? And when I asked her that, she said, oh, I was welding bombs. And I didn't know that. No one in my family had ever brought it up. I almost fell out of my chair. You know, I just said, why is this not the main story? And then she told me and then she even said, you know, this is why I have all these scars on my neck because we used to wear the welding mask but some of the sparks would, you know, fly under it. And she said, you never noticed these scars and I have to admit I never had. But that information of how empowering it was for them, not only to learn new skills because she had only been a domestic worker before that, worked as a housemaid with my grandmother, her mother, how empowering it was for them to learn industrial skills, to wear a uniform that they had never worn pants. She said she was wearing coveralls and boots and a mask and it really empowered them in different ways. Her shift was 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. She said sometimes they would use those wages, the women would go together and eat breakfast. I think very humorously at a place that she said that was called the Alamo and that was the name of the restaurant. You know, and I asked her, you know, how was the initial reaction to you working from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. And she said, you know, it was actually pretty easy because a lot of women were doing it. Everybody was in that sentiment that we were going to help. So it was pretty easy at the time. But kind of, you know, compartmentalized, it was only easy because of that. Had it been just before that or even just after that, she thinks that restriction would have been worse. In the film, did she happen to mention if the shifted attitude put in their place again automatically, they didn't remain in that status of we don't move it? Right. Well, I think that was part of the campaign was that they wanted people to say things like, you know, oh, well, here, we're going to leave this place to give it back to these deserving men and soldiers who are returning. So part of the campaign was to teach them that their job was only temporary. But Mexican women worked outside of the home before the war and after the war because that was how the families survived, right? And if they weren't working outside of the home before the war, they were bringing in money in other ways, doing laundry, subletting rooms in their homes to renters and whatnot. So Mexican women and working, it's always, always, always happened. Especially pecan shelling in San Antonio, which could be done at home. In reference to the question that gentlemen asked a little while ago about, you know, the, just the women, you know, the role that women played in such a huge historical span of time there. And I, I recalled, I was working on a project many years ago and I was very interested in the women air service pilots, the WASP. So I decided, I think there's got to be some Americans in there soon, you know, there's got to be some. So I did the research and I found one. Her name was Vernita Rodriguez. She was from Chicago, Illinois. And she wound up flying down here to McAllen and to Brownsville where they would deliver planes to the, their job was primarily, they got taught as pilots and they knew how to fly all the planes that were coming off the assembly line that were taught the different models and so forth. And then they were all given assignments to fly a certain amount of planes to certain bases around the country on a regular basis as they were, as they were being produced by the, by the, by the manufacturers. And I did, all I was able to find on her was that she was one of the, she flew, she flew missions down into Kansas and then down into Texas. But I, I, my research didn't get in, didn't get far enough to find exactly what those kinds of missions were and what kind of planes she was flying as such. But there was one, he kind of participated in that particular, also almost forgotten piece of World War II was the WASP. And I'd like to note that the 10 oral histories that the UT Austin holds about Mexican women, Mexican American women who served during World War II is they came back and they were very active in their communities. They were politically engaged with the PTA, with church organizations, with the YWCA, with political campaigns. Just as much as Hector P. Garcia was with the GI forum. And at some level we think only maybe men were the political movers and shakers, but these women, they were on the ground and they were hustling and fighting for their families, for their communities, for themselves and their civil and social rights. We really encourage you to go, Google both Voices Oral History Project at UT Austin. They have a learn how to interview kids. So if any of your family members, your elders have those memory from the home front or service, they will collect it and archive it and it will stay there so that future generations can know about it. And they're collecting, not just for World War II, but oral histories with the Korean War and the Vietnam conflict. We've reached 8.15, so it's the end of our program. Thank you all so much for coming and thank you to our scholars. I want to repeat one more time that this program was brought to us by the American Library Association, the National Endowment for Humanities who received a competitive grant for Latin America's 500 Years of History. Next week, October 15th, we're going to have another great program. Dr. E. K. L. Long, he's the producer of stolen education. He will be presented to you because of the documentary that's about the discrimination that Mexican American Indians faced in the 1950s in Texas and then the federal court case that they testified in. And so that's at Parment Branch Library. I'll tell you.