 "Photo: JC Speck / UCD Advocate")
On a snowy day last November, Mary Somerville sat down to write a grant proposal. “I actually had time to work without interruption,” she said and laughed.
Somerville, who is university librarian, library director and co-director of the Center for Colorado and the West at Auraria Library, was seeking a grant from the University of Colorado Diversity and Excellence Grants for a very special project. She wanted to honor the displaced Aurarians who lost their homes when the Auraria Higher Education Center was built in the 1970s.
“We’re approaching the 40th anniversary, the 40th year of their displacement,” Somerville said. Residents were forced from their homes to make room for the campus, which is why there are houses and repurposed churches on campus.
Somerville was not alone in her task. Tony Garcia, artistic director and resident playwright for El Centro Su Teatro, a nearby Chicano theater that serves the Auraria community, helped formulate the proposal. “He happened to be at his computer in Su Teatro, so I was able to send him versions [of the proposal],” said Somerville.
Magdalena Gallegos, author of Auraria Remembered, a narrative focusing on the voices of displaced Aurarians, also climbed on board with the project. Gallegos is gathering family photographs from these Aurarians to be used in a play by Garcia, a promotional video, and a collection of digitized photos for the Denver Library, which has relatively few photos of Denver-area Latinos.
Displaced residents and their descendants are entitled to full scholarships, tuition, and fees to UC Denver, Metro, or CCD for four years, said Somerville. “Part of the outcome [of the project] is granting scholarship benefits to three generations. So what we have here in the grant are three generations of Latinos,” she said.
Somerville, who began working at the Auraria Library in September 2008, said she enjoys working collaboratively with the three institutions. “Fulfilling this tri-institutional mandate requires forging robust relationships with administrators, faculty, and students across campus,” she said.
Somerville has other library projects in the works. “In addition to the Displaced Aurarian project, we are involving students at UCD, Metro, and CCD in a Latinos in Colorado project and a Native Americans in Colorado project, which offers stipends to students in history, anthropology, digital media, and graphic design,” she said.
“I love information, can you tell?” said Somerville, printing out some documentation about the Displaced Aurarians project. “I love having pieces of information and putting them on the table and creating something beautiful from them.”
For some, Somerville’s project may indeed be something beautiful and could mean much to the former residents and their descendants.
“It permits underrepresented voices to be heard,” Somerville said. “And it also honors the sacrifices of the Latino community members who were relocated so that generations of students could be educated at the three schools on the Auraria campus.”
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