Mujeres Latinas program spotlights Hispanic women on campus

As part of the Mujeres Latinas Brown Bag series, an ongoing effort to bring more exposure of Hispanic women to IU, graduate student Tanya Flores delivered a presentation Friday in Ballantine Hall about accommodation theory in Chilean Spanish.

The program was started by Leonice Santamaría, a visiting lecturer who teaches S280: Spanish Grammar in Context.

She said she wanted to allow for more presentations by Hispanic women graduate students, who she feels are underrepresented on campus and in academic life in general.

“I really wanted to focus on women,” Santamaría said. “I have seen Latinas being behind the Latinos in terms of hiring practices by universities and departments. There are more Latino men on campus than Latina women as professors, directors of programs and so on.”

Santamaría went to the Latino Faculty and Staff Council, which approved the program.
The program is also connected to La Casa Latino Cultural Center, the Latino Studies Program and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

Aside from furthering the exposure of Hispanic women academics in general, the program has also functioned as a support system for Latinas on campus, according to La Casa Director Lillian Casillas-Origel.

“It is successful because it’s not only creating an awareness about the work women are doing, but at some point, there are these informal relationships that are being established, where people are saying, ‘Good job’ or ‘Hey, by the way, I’m doing this, I wonder if we could partner with each other?’” Casillas-Origel said.

 “So there’s a lot of different things that can come outof that.”

Santamaría requires her S280 students to not only attend, but also produce an essay, written in Spanish, summarizing the topic and their impressions of it.

She said she believes this exposure to a different cultural perspective is beneficial to students.

“It gives them a real experience about the culture and exposure to Latina women who are role models,” Santamaría said.

“What some of my students have told me is that they want to go and find out about the country that the presenter talked about.”

Santamaría said some of her students have expressed interest in meeting those on the panel and find out for themselves about the cultures.

Students who have attended the lecture agreed about the importance of being culturally aware.

“We’re brought up in this country and it seems like we’re the only thing, English is the only thing,” freshman Stephanie Adjei said.

“But we’re actually behind, because if we’re put somewhere else, we wouldn’t be able to survive, but anyone else could come here and survive. I seriously think we need to put more emphasis on it.”

Because Santamaría is a visiting lecturer who might not continue at IU, the future of the program is not set in stone. Casillas-Origel, however, would like it to continue in any way possible.

“Hopefully she will be here, but because of the great success, I don’t see us not doing this at any point,” Casillas-Origel said. “And again, I hope that she’s around to do it, because she’s really the force behind the Mujeres Brown Bag.”

Mintzi Martinez-Rivera, a graduate student who has already presented a lecture through Mujeres Latinas, also hopes that the program continues.

“We’re all around campus, but at the same time, we’re kind of invisible,” Martinez-Rivera said. “We get lost. So I hope this program continues, to make Latinas visible and their contributions to this University.”