Cartas a la Familia 

"Jesusita hasta Jane"

https://familyletters.unl.edu/en/search 
The family letters include incidents and comments from the 1800s to the present.

 

Cartas a la Familia was the product of a collaboration between Dr. Isabel Velázquez from UNL’s Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, the Shanahan family of Davey, NE, the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, and nearly a dozen graduate and undergraduate students.  The digital project contains letters spanning decades between family members corresponding between Mexico, Colorado, and Nebraska, photographs from the family’s collection, teaching tools, and analysis about the experience of immigrating to a new community.

It was critical that this project be available in both Spanish and English. Students were already hard at work transcribing and translating letters so that they were available in both Spanish and English. Meanwhile, the CDRH dev team was contemplating a few questions:

Cartas a la Familia: A Lesson in Internationalization

Until late 2019, the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (CDRH) had no multilingual sites. Despite creating and maintaining dozens of sites with content spanning disciplines, the only projects that even came close were the and The Good Person: Excerpts from the Yoruba Proverb Treasury: . Though both of these have contents in multiple languages, the overall websites (navigation, about pages, etc) are English only. With the launch of Cartas a la Familia or Family Letters, the CDRH has taken its first step at a truly multilingual site with a project that is in both Spanish and English. We are excited that we have built some of the infrastructure needed to create more multilingual sites, and we hope that we have the opportunity to create such projects. If we learned anything from the process of creating Cartas a la Familia, it’s that the hardest part of a multilingual site is not the technology or the language, it’s us. 

The Family Letters project preserves, digitizes, analyzes and makes public a collection of the correspondence and other personal documents of a Mexican American family that migrated from the state of Zacatecas, Mexico, to the states of Colorado and Nebraska during the first half of the twentieth century.

The objects in this collection allow us to learn about the life of Latin@s in the Midwest at the start of the past century. They also provide us with a better understanding of the impact of migration on their everyday lives. The features of their writing and the events narrated in these letters provide us with important clues about the varieties of Spanish they spoke, and about their overall language experience.

Even though Mexican immigrants started to arrive in the Midwest at the end of the nineteenth century, their experience and their writing have remained mostly forgotten. This site outlines the trajectory of a family whose members exchanged personal letters written in Spanish and English over the span of several decades. These documents allow us to observe the ways in which broader historical events intertwine with the lives of ordinary people.


ABSTRACT: 

 
Pairing preservation with analytical endeavors, the corpus for the present analysis consists of 345 digital objects that include one or more iterations of the personal name of the mother and daughter of a Mexican American family that migrated from Zacatecas, Mexico, to the American Midwest, during the first half of the 20thcentury. Data were analyzed along the following dimensions: self-presentation, language(s), geographical location, temporality, public/private space, and type of text. At the same time, we describe the challenges involved in encoding names that follow different naming conventions, that were produced by speakers of two different languages, and that changed over time. We seek to contribute these voices to the scarcely studied social history of Mexican Americans in the MidWest

                                                                                                                 
 
https://familyletters.unl.edu/en/browse/places 
By frequency of 61 locations family letters 

 

https://familyletters.unl.edu/browse/person.name  
Frequency of the 124 individual among the correspondence of family letters.
203 Baros Schubert, Santos
158 Baros Torres, Jesusita
69 Schubert, William F.
32 Torres, Maximino
26 [unknown]
24 Baros, Jess Jesús
16 Schubert, William D.
15 Aguilar, Teresa
14 Flemate, Demetrio
12 Samaniego, Nemecio
12 Torres, Clemente
11 Schubert, Pamela L.
9 Baros, Helen
9 Samaniego, José Jesús
8 Schubert, Robert S.
7 Baca, Felipita N.
7 Flemate, Guadalupe
7 Shanahan, Elizabeth J.
6 Baros, Jerry
6 Villanueva, Faustin
5 Medrano, Patricia
4 Baca, Freddie
4 Hurtado, Reynaldo
4 Muñoz, Mary

These individuals have appeared among the letters of correspondence THREE times.
Aviña de Torres, // Victoria, Baca, Felipita, //  Baros, Mark, // Lucy //  Muñoz, John, // Schubert, Gwendoly


These individuals appear among the letters  TWICE in family  correspondence.
Al,  // Baca, Betty, // Baca, Lenore, // Baros, José Jesús, // Flemate, Candelaria, // Flemate, Mercedes, // Lara Miranda, José, Lilian, //  Montoya, Odelia, //Muñoz, Joe, //Schubert, Elizabeth J.,// Schubert, John Jack, //Schubert, Robert D., // Tabor, Carlotta Elizabeth, // Villanueva, L.,

These individuals have been mentioned ONCE in the family  correspondence.
A: Alanis, Juan, // Anderson, Mrs, // Alanis, Juan,Arroyo, // Concepción, Arroyo, Rafaela, //Autobus, Tammy, // Ayna, Della, B: Baca Sánchez,Aurelia, // Baros, Kathy, // Beltrán, Ascensión, //Botello, Gloria,
D: de Arroyo, Julia, //Dominguez, Joe, // Duran, Eddie, Ela, // Estrada Quirarte, Esperanza,  
F:  Fe, Barbara, //  Flemate Medrano, Guadalupe, // Flemate, Consuelo, // Flemate, Danielito, // Flemate, Guadalupe "Lupe", Flemate, José Jesús, //  Flemate, José de Jesus, // Flemate, Julia, // Flemate, Margarita, 
G/H: Gann, Joseph M., // Garza, // Gomez, Julia, // Gonzales, Joe O., // Helen, // Hernandez, Pauline, 
J/L:  Jess,// Johnny// Juillen, Frank R. // Logothetis, Tony, //  Lopez, Antonia, // Lujan, Benny, //Lujan, Roy,
M/N: Manvile, John, // Montoya, Josephine, // Montoya, Salomone, // Moreno, Mary,//  Muñoz, Manuel, Nieto, Josephine, //Nolasco, Benny, // Odelia Montoya,
P: Padillia, // Parkhurst, Vera, // Pearcy, Helen,  //Pearcy, Roger Dale, // Perez, Angie, // Perez, Dora, Perez,  
Leandro Jesús, // Perez, Manuel, Perez, Mary, // Perez, Raymond, Perez, Teresa,
R:  Ramirez,  // Ramos, Narciso, // Rangel, Victor, //  Romero, Helen, Ruth, 
S/T: Samaniego, Jesús Ascensión, // Samaniego, José Ascensión, // Samaniego, Tomasa, // Sarah, Schubert, Carol,  Schubert, John R., // Schubert, Rodney ,// Schulte, Paul C., // Shanahan, Steve, // Tabor, Joel, // Torres Aviña, Rodolfo,
U/V: Unkel, Eddie, //Vaga, Frances,// Vi, //Villanueva, Faustino,// Villanueva, Placido, //Villanueva, Shone, Wilhem, Lillian,

Teachers:
This letter is to greet and introduce you to:
 Language, migration and daily life in the experience of one Mexican American family, Classroom Materials for High School and college Spanish learners


The following materials were designed to address the needs of High School and college Spanish learners at the intermediate/advanced levels. Our general goal is to allow students to use the resources of the Shanahan collection to develop their linguistic skills and their cultural competence as they learn about the experience of Mexican American families at the start of the Twentieth Century.

The activities presented here were developed for two types of students: Those who are speakers of Spanish as a heritage language, and those who are learning it as a second language.

Following Beaudrie & Potowski (2014), we believe that speakers of Spanish as a heritage language bring with them linguistic, social and cultural knowledge that must be valued in the classroom. We understand a heritage language learner as a student who grew up in a family or community environment where a minority language was spoken, and who possesses an affective and cultural connection with that language.

We acknowledge the fact that, in the context of the United States, most Spanish classrooms serve both types of students. Each teacher will be free to adapt this material (and the other resources in the collection), to fit the specific needs of their students.

 

Elizabeth Jane Shanahan and her husband created The Jesusita and Santos Courage and Fortitude Fund to help educate and empower Nebraska Latino youths of migrant families with their the funds provides.  They have given away over one hundred scholarships since 2016 to worthy students in Nebraska since they created this Fund to honor Jesusita and her mother Santos.  

The funds are given to and distributed through non-profit organizations, Migrant Education Program, Latino Youth Summit of Nebraska, and True Potential.  The non-profits make the selection of the winner. 

The text below is a sample of Jane's presentation to educators, parents, youth and other organizations dedicated to helping children of  migrant families..


Migrant Education Program Talk:

Thanks to the Dept of Education, and its staffs, volunteers and most importantly, thank you parents and students for attending!

Thank you for inviting me to speak for a few minutes on my grandmother, Jesusita and my mom, Santos and tell why, and how I created The Jesusita and Santos Courage and Fortitude Scholarships.

It all started with my grandma, Jesusita, almost 100 years ago. She  hoped for a better future, so she left her small village in Zacatecas, Mexico with her two youngest children, my mom Santos and my uncle, Jess.

As she journeyed over, she needed courage, fortitude, and stamina to face a new beginning without knowing the language or the culture, such as many as you have faced! Who knew what lay on the other side of the border for her?

She took that chance and stepped across, thereby fulfilling her destiny. You also have a destiny to fulfill, you too, will need courage, fortitude and stamina along the way.

Earliest documents find my grandmother, in New Mexico in the mid-1920’s, then in Wyoming and Colorado with the sugar beet work. Finally settling in Eastern Colorado. Along the way Jesusita, was able to help others with hopes of their own. She helped them with food, shelter and finding work.

Later in life, Jesusita wrote letters to her now married daughter, Santos of getting an education, otherwise ‘you work like a donkey’. She also wrote she was old, but she loved to learn. She took English classes and citizenship classes.

Jesusita taught her children to accept and embrace the traditions of their new country. Her daughter, my mom, Santos took on her new culture with the same courage and fortitude Jesusita had done. She left her safety of life in Colorado near her relatives, married, and moved to eastern Nebraska. She faced prejudice and had the courage and stamina to overcome it.

They both traveled to the United States in the hope of a better life and while neither of these women were able to go to college, they did believe in education. This is where I come in.

During 5 years of research, I discovered this journey that these ladies took, from Mexico to the United States, by going thru old letters, documents and photographs.  I knew I had to help other Latinos get an education. This is why my husband created The Jesusita and Santos Courage and Fortitude Fund. I can help educate and empower Migrant youth, with the scholarships our funds provide.

Jesusita and Santos’ legacy lives on in their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren here, and those still living in Mexico. You and your parent’s hopes and legacies will also live on!

This is my story, but every single one of you have a story!  Your stories today are exactly why 100 years ago a woman from a small town in Zacatecas, Mexico left Mexico. She had hope for a better future! Go out, live your destiny and tell your story!

Thank you! And now let me welcome ----to the podium and introduce the recipients of  today's winner of  The Jesusita and Santos Courage and Fortitude scholarship.

https://familyletters.unl.edu/en/search