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Line 1: {{Short description\|American photographer and teacher}} ~~'''Maria Varela''' (born January 1, 1940) was raised in several places across the United States.~~ {{Use mdy dates\|date=June 2022}} '''Maria Varela''' (born January 1940) is a Mexican-American civil rights photographer, community organizer, a writer, and a teacher. She has been actively involved in Civil Rights movements, advocating rights for indigenous communities and protects cultural heritage within African-American, Native-American, and Mexican-American in rural communities. She created and supported several non-profits organizations to help many minority groups, especially Native-American and Mexican-American. She won a [[MacArthur Fellowship]] in 1990 for her endeavor to help with the Native-American communities in northern New Mexico, southern Colorado, and northeastern Arizona to develop economic opportunities and preserve their human rights. ==Early life and education== ~~==Work in the Southern Civil Rights Movement==~~ Maria Varela was born in Pennsylvania and lived in many different places in her younger days, but spent most of her time in the upper Midwest.<ref name="University Press of Mississippi">{{Cite book \|last1=Bond \|first1=Julian \|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt24htrq \|title=This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement \|last2=Carson \|first2=Clayborne \|last3=Herron \|first3=Matt \|last4=Cobb \|first4=Charles E. \|date=2011 \|publisher=University Press of Mississippi \|jstor=j.ctt24htrq \|isbn=978-1-61703-171-7}}</ref> Raised Catholic by her Mexican father and Irish mother, she grew up in a rigorous Catholic environment.<ref name="University Press of Mississippi"/> She went to the St. Louis Academy for Girls in Chicago,<ref>{{cite web \|url= https://news.wttw.com/2017/03/21/activist-turned-photographer-sharpens-focus-social-movements\|title= Activist-Turned-Photographer Sharpens Focus on Social Movements\|last= Miller\|first= Maya\|date= March 21, 2017\|website= [[WTTW]]\|publisher= \|access-date= November 10, 2022\|quote=}}</ref> and then to [[Alverno College]].<ref name="University Press of Mississippi"/> In college, she joined the national [[Young Christian Students]] (YCS) program where she was given the position to travel the country to encourage young students to support [[Civil rights movements\|Civil Rights Movements]]. Varela worked as an organizer, educator, writer, and photographer as a [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]] (SNCC) staff member from 1963 to 1967, working first in Selma, Alabama, and then across the Black Belt South. Raised Catholic by her Mexican father and Irish mother, Varela first got involved in the Catholic social justice movement by joining the Young Christian Students (YCS) in high school and then again in college. After graduating from [http://www.alverno.edu Alverno College], Varela was recruited in 1961 to serve as a college campus organizer for the YCS National Office. She traveled across the country, urging Catholic students to support the Civil Rights Movement and especially the sit-ins. In 1963, Varela went deep in the south to support the Civil Rights Movements where she began working with the [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]] in Alabama and Mississippi.<ref name="University Press of Mississippi"/> She later graduated from [[University of Massachusetts]].<ref>{{cite web \| url=http://www.units.miamioh.edu/anthropology/node/274 \| title=Department of Anthropology \| College of Arts & Science - Miami University }}</ref> Through this work, Varela met Casey Hayden, who recruited her in early 1963 to work for SNCC in the Atlanta Office. This changed when [[Bernard Lafayette]] and Frank Smith, who had recently had worked in Selma, asked that Varela be assigned to work, instead, in Selma to support one of Selma's civil rights leaders, Father Maurice Ouellet, the pastor of the Black Catholic Parish. Ouellet was a strong supporter of the Movement and had opened his buildings to classes and meetings. He also made repeated requests for a literacy project to assist with voter registration. Worth Long, SNCC Alabama coordinator had also requested literacy programming and welcomed assistance from Varela. She married Lorenzo Zuniga Jr.<ref name="people">{{cite news \|last1=Chu \|first1=Dan \|date=January 14, 1991 \|title=Macarthur Grant Winner Maria Varela Shepherds a Rural New Mexico Community Toward Economic Rebirth \|work=People \|url=http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20114225,00.html \|access-date=22 October 2014}}</ref> She now lives in [[Albuquerque]].<ref>{{cite news\|last1=Contreras\|first1=Russell\|title=Latinos inspired by 1963 march to push for rights\|url=http://bigstory.ap.org/article/1963-march-inspired-latinos-civil-rights-fight\|access-date=22 October 2014\|work=AP\|date=Aug 27, 2013}}</ref> Dissatisfied with the white middle class portrayals in literacy materials, Varela began creating materials that reflected Black people's lifestyles. After the notorious Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark shut the [[Selma, Alabama\|Selma]] program down by arresting Varela's project staff, she moved to Mississippi (where she herself was arrested several times) and spent the next three years responding to SNCC organizers' requests for adult education and training materials. == Career == Varela was determined that these materials would show Black people taking leadership to change their segregated communities. As there were no existing materials showing Black people in action, she enlisted SNCC photographer Bob Fletcher to take pictures for her various projects. Fletcher eventually challenged her to learn photography and recommended that she study with Matt Herron in New Orleans. From a young age, Maria Varela has been actively involved in various civil rights movements and organizations, from the Young Christian Student (YCS) program to Latinx Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which sets a foundation for her later work in the Civil Rights movement and in helping Native-American and Mexican-American communities<ref name=":3">{{Cite web \|last=Chasteen \|first=Abigail \|title=UGA lecture: Latina photographer recounts experiences during 1960s civil rights movement \|url=https://www.redandblack.com/uganews/uga-lecture-latina-photographer-recounts-experiences-during-1960s-civil-rights-movement/article_5da30c4e-2c9d-11e8-9651-af7d34ba61fd.html \|access-date=2022-06-02 \|website=The Red and Black \|language=en}}</ref> She helped organize rural development<ref>{{Cite web \|title=Take Stock: Maria Varela \|url=http://www.takestockphotos.com/pages/varela.php \|access-date=2022-06-16 \|website=www.takestockphotos.com}}</ref> and find Tierra Wools co-op.<ref name="people" /> She was also photographer for [[Black Star (photo agency)]] that works to include African-American representations for voters education, capturing critical moments in the Civil Rights Movement.<ref>{{Cite web \|title=Many Paths to Freedom: Looking Back, Looking Ahead at the Long Civil Rights Movement -- bios (The American Folklife Center, Library of Congress) \|url=https://www.loc.gov/folklife/civilrights/events/bios.html \|access-date=2022-06-16 \|website=www.loc.gov}}</ref> Over the next three years, Maria Varela collaborated on a series of books and filmstrips made with photographs and utilizing taped conversations with local leaders including: Something of Our Own (how to set up an okra co-op), Holmes County, Mississippi (political organizing), ''To Praise Our Bridges'' ([[Fannie Lou Hamer]]'s autobiography), and three filmstrips including one on ASCS Elections and one on [[Cesar Chavez]] and the United Farm Workers. She also published two poetry books: ''I Play Flute'' by Jane Stembridge and ''Hoe Trails'' by Charlie Cobb. One of the responsibilities of SNCC photographers was photographing protests to hopefully constrain and/or document any resultant police violence. In 1966, Maria Varela was assigned to photograph the [[James Meredith]] [[March Against Fear]] in Mississippi where [[Black Power]] became the march's slogan. The media spun the story of Black Power as coming from militant Black northerners rather than indigenous rural southerners. One of her images showed a young local black man who had drawn a black panther on his T-shirt. "Through the lens, I saw differently", she recalled, "mirrored in the eyes of that youth was a strength and pride that had been freed from within". She was also a visiting professor at [[Colorado College]],<ref name="University Press of Mississippi" /> and was adjunct professor at [[University of New Mexico]].<ref name="SargentLusk1991">{{cite book \|author1=Frederic O. Sargent \|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bwWL3DmQxyIC&pg=PR12 \|title=Rural Environmental Planning for Sustainable Communities \|author2=Paul Lusk \|author3=Jose Rivera \|author4=Maria Varela \|date=1 October 1991 \|publisher=Island Press \|isbn=978-1-61091-319-5 \|pages=12–}}</ref> ~~==Work in Northern New Mexico Land Grant Movement==~~ In 1968, responding to a request from Reies Lopez Tijerina, leader of the Indio-Hispano land rights movement, Varela moved to northern New Mexico to work with the [[Alianza Federal de Mercedes]]. Members of this organization were families in rural communities who had lived there for generations under community land grants from Spain and then Mexico, before this region became part of the USA. Over time, because US property law did not recognize common lands, families had lost their ancestral lands and subdivided the remainder among succeeding generations. Poverty was rooted in these lost lands and the smaller farms which were no longer economically viable. Because Varela had worked with Black Farmers in [[Mississippi]] and [[Alabama]], she learned there about the economic and political importance of retaining a land base. Black farmers were more independent than those who worked for plantations or the white community. They organized politically and economically to change their communities. === Civil rights movement === The Alianza Federal seemed to speak to these issues. For 150 years, corporate ranchers, environmentalists, and public agencies had taken over the upland areas traditionally used for summer grazing. This left the traditional livestock growers only small plots of land to graze their animals. Their ability to expand their livestock holdings because of lack of land was one of the roots of poverty and powerlessness. Out-migration, especially of young people, was very high. Inspired by the civil rights activism in southern states, New Mexico land grant activists turned to civil disobedience in the late 1960s to protest the theft of ancestral lands. Maria was recruited to New Mexico to act as a bridge between the land grant movement and the civil rights movement. Eventually realizing that the leadership of the Alianza were uninterested in organizing at the local level to build new leadership and improve poverty and powerlessness, she left the Alianza Federal to work in a different way to support the movement. Since college, Maria Varela has been actively involved in the [[civil rights movement]]<nowiki/>t. She believed in what is called “the great leader” theory: in order to have a powerful social movement, the movement needs a powerful leader.<ref name=":3" /> She not only supported the people she believed to be great leaders in supporting the [[Civil rights movement\|Civil Rights Movement]], but she also functioned as a critical figure behind the camera to capture the significant moments in the [[Civil rights movement\|Civil Rights Movement]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite web \|title=Maria Varela {{!}} Black Culture Connection Explorer {{!}} PBS \|url=https://www.pbs.org/black-culture/explore/civil-rights-movement-photography/maria-varela/ \|access-date=2022-06-09 \|website=Maria Varela {{!}} Black Culture Connection Explorer {{!}} PBS}}</ref> Varela recognized the urgent issue of how the images provided for voter education materials excluded African American community and lacked diversity in racial representation.<ref name=":0" /> Thus, her works focused on documenting the significant steps made by African American leaders and captured the progression and evolvement of the [[Civil rights movement\|Civil Rights Movement]]. In 1983, after helping start and run a community based clinic for 10 years, Maria co-founded and helped coordinate Ganados Del Valle/Tierra Wools, a cooperative of sheepherders, weavers, and craftspeople that strove for culturally sustainable economic development and environmental justice. Based in [[Los Ojos, New Mexico]], Ganados has revitalized the economy of the [[Chamba, Himachal Pradesh\|Chama valley]], based on the breeding of Churro sheep, a near extinct breed well suited to the area. Families organized to restore traditional livestock breeds, seeds and methods of agriculture that created the cutting edge of the 'local and natural foods' movement which now has a firm hold in U.S. popular culture. The theory was that making even the small holdings more economically viable and restoring ancestral methods of agriculture and art, that perhaps young people would see the value of staying or coming back to preserve their family land holdings. Ganados was considered a model for culturally appropriate economic development for numerous native nations as well as isolated rural communities in the southwest. === Literacy works === Varela also continued her photography documenting the 1968 [[Poor People's Campaign]], the first Chicano Youth Conference, the 1960s and 1970s [[Chicano Movement]], and the lifestyles of Hispano villages. Maria Varela's literacy work is one of the most under-recognized and almost unstudied literacies in the U.S.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal \|last=Dimmick \|first=Michael \|date=2020-12-18 \|title=Maria Varela's Flickering Light: Literacy, Filmstrips, and the Work of Adult Literacy Education in the Civil Rights Movement \|url=https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/communityliteracy/vol14/iss2/4 \|journal=Community Literacy Journal \|volume=14 \|issue=2 \|doi=10.25148/14.2.009036 \|s2cid=234666495 \|issn=1555-9734\|doi-access=free }}</ref> However, her multimodal works, collaboratively produced by Varela and the African American community, make the important argument about community activism, which is crucial and novel but seldom discussed.<ref name=":1" /> Her work plays a critical role in those communities developing a new ethos of place: an imagined and embodied relationship between local and national communities that offers a new identity and sense of participatory agency.<ref name=":1" /> === Rural communities === In 1990 she was awarded a [[MacArthur Fellows Program\|MacArthur Fellowship]] for her organizing work. Varela has been the subject of a Smithsonian article on conflicts between environmentalists and land based people, was listed as 'Hero for Hard Times' by ''[[Mother Jones (magazine)\|Mother Jones]]'' magazine and in 2005 was among the 1000 Women for Peace nominated for the [[Nobel Peace Prize]]. In addition to her primary work of supporting communities in the Southwest, Varela has been a visiting Professor at the [[University of New Mexico]] and the [[Colorado College]] and is a published author. In addition to supporting various environmental justice and immigrant rights movements, she travels the country speaking at college campuses and exhibiting her photographs. In 1962, Maria Varela was invited to start agricultural cooperatives and community health clinics in New Mexico.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web \|title=Maria Varela \|url=https://www.macfound.org/fellows/class-of-1990/maria-varela \|access-date=2022-06-09 \|website=www.macfound.org \|language=en}}</ref> Since then, she has been working with indigenous leaders to help them develop economic opportunities and protect cultural heritage within African-American, Native-American, and Mexican-American rural communities.<ref name=":2" /> Varela co-founded Ganados del Valle in 1981, a nonprofit, economic development corporation that dedicates to predominantly help Hispanic and Native-American communities in northern New Mexico, southern Colorado, and northeastern Arizona to preserve their pastoral cultures, lands, and water rights. She helped created a wool-growers cooperative that included a weaving and spinning enterprise, training in small business development, and cultural reaffirmation.<ref name=":2" /> She spent years trying to create and enable nonprofit organizations and viable enterprises to build upon and add to existing local resources, and was awarded was an [[MacArthur award\|MacArthur Award]] in 1990.<ref name=":2" /> ==More works== Varela is the first Latina woman to document the 1960s civil rights struggle in the black belt south. For the last five decades, her work has been included in books and photo exhibits featured in galleries and museums, including the New York Public Library (1968), the Smithsonian (1980), the Howard Greenberg Gallery (1994), [[George Eastman Museum\|Eastman House]] (1998), The Colorado College (2000), [[Smith College]] (2005), a traveling exhibit, This Light of Ours (2010) and "Time to Get Ready" which included images from the civil rights movement and her work in northern New Mexico. ~~==See also==~~ * [[List of photographers of the civil rights movement]] ~~==Sources==~~ MARIA VARELA, HOLLOWELL LECTURE, UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA ATHENS. MARCH-20-2018 https://kaltura.uga.edu/media/t/1_5pfdht4r ''TIERRA O MUERTE: LAND OR DEATH'', 1992 documentary https://vimeo.com/75809143 MARIA VARELA CIVIL RIGHTS PHOTO EXHIBIT: ''Time to Get Ready'' , March 3-July 31, 2017. National Museum of Mexican Art. Chicago Illinois. INTERVIEW ON NM PBS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X_URg76Pnk SNCC DIGITAL GATEWAY WEBSITE: Maria Varela's Work in SNCC https://snccdigital.org/perspectives/learning-from-experience/part-1/{{Dead link\|date=March 2020 \|bot=InternetArchiveBot \|fix-attempted=yes }} PBS/BLACK CULTURE CONNECTION: September, 2015. Interview with Maria Varela about her SNCC photos. https://www.pbs.org/black-culture/explore/civil-rights-movement-photography/maria-varela/ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS SPEECH: September, 2013. Maria Varela: Encounters in Liminal Spaces. http://www.c-span.org/video/?321701-1/discussion-civil-rights-movement NBC Latino Varela Op Ed: 50th anniversary of the March on Washington http://nbclatino.com/2013/08/29/opinion-on-civil-rights-then-and-now-its-up-to-the-youth/ Link to Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC ~~Segment of Varela chapter http://www.press.uillinois.edu/wordpress/?p=6444~~ Leslie G. Kelen, ed., ''This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement'' (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011), 217-222. Maria Varela, "Time to Get Ready", ''Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC'', edited by Faith S. Holsaert, et al. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 552-572.▼ Biography of Maria Varela, Take Stock: Images of Change. She graduated from [[University of Massachusetts]].<ref>{{cite web\|url=http://www.units.miamioh.edu/anthropology/node/274\|title=Department of Anthropology - Miami University\|website=www.units.miamioh.edu}}</ref> She was a visiting professor at [[Colorado College]].<ref>{{cite web\|url=https://www.coloradocollege.edu/events/2014-04-01-images-of-liberation-photography-of-the-1960-s-civil-rights-movement\|title=Event detail: "Images of Liberation: Photography of the 1960's Civil Rights Movement" • Colorado College\|website=www.coloradocollege.edu\|date=April 1, 2014\|accessdate=January 21, 2019}}</ref> She was adjunct professor at [[University of New Mexico]].<ref name="SargentLusk1991">{{cite book\|author1=Frederic O. Sargent\|author2=Paul Lusk\|author3=Jose Rivera\|author4=Maria Varela\|title=Rural Environmental Planning for Sustainable Communities\|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bwWL3DmQxyIC&pg=PR12\|year=1991\|publisher=Island Press\|isbn=978-1-61091-319-5\|pages=12–}}</ref><ref>{{cite web\|url=http://www.takestockphotos.com/pages/varela.php\|title=Take Stock: Maria Varela\|website=www.takestockphotos.com}}</ref><ref>{{cite news\|author=Chu, Dan\|title=Macarthur Grant Winner Maria Varela Shepherds a Rural New Mexico Community Toward Economic Rebirth\|url=https://people.com/archive/macarthur-grant-winner-maria-varela-shepherds-a-rural-new-mexico-community-toward-economic-rebirth-vol-35-no-1/\|volume=35\|number=1\|magazine=[[People (magazine)\|People]]\|date=January 14, 1991}}</ref><ref>{{cite web\|url=https://www.handweavers.com/our-story-1/\|title=History\|date=September 6, 2012\|accessdate=January 21, 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite news\|author=Contreras, Russell\|title=Latinos inspired by 1963 march to push for rights\|url=https://apnews.com/08845d50fb0b4c4080300a87f36e6674\|accessdate=January 21, 2019\|agency=[[Associated Press\|AP]]\|date=Aug 27, 2013}}</ref> ~~==Works==~~ {{cite book\|author1=Frederic O. Sargent\|author2=Paul Lusk\|author3=Jose Rivera\|author4=Maria Varela\|title=Rural Environmental Planning for Sustainable Communities\|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bwWL3DmQxyIC&pg=PR12\|date=1 October 1991\|publisher=Island Press\|isbn=978-1-61091-319-5\|pages=12–}} ▲Maria Varela, ~~"Time~~(9 August 2019). ''“Time to Get Ready",''” ''Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC.'', ~~edited by Faith S. Holsaert, et al. (~~Urbana: University of Illinois Press,. ~~2012), 552-572~~pp. 552–572. Maria Varela (21 October 2021). Video of Photo Exhibit: RESISTANCE THROUGH MY LEN. Toward Common Causehttps.<nowiki>https://towardcommoncause.org/calendar/macarturos-platicas/</nowiki> ==References== Line 54 ⟶ 35: ==External links== [http://word.world-citizenship.org/wp-archive/2520 World Citizenship] {{dead link\|date=December 2023}}▼ [https://snccdigital.org/our-voices/learning-from-experience/part-1/ SNCC Digital Gateway: Maria Varela's "The Learning Curve"] Digital documentary website created by the SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University, telling the story of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee & grassroots organizing from the inside-out {{cite web \| title=Maria Varela \| website=MacArthur Foundation \| date=14 December 2023 \| url=https://www.macfound.org/fellows/class-of-1990/maria-varela \| access-date=22 December 2023}} ▲http://word.world-citizenship.org/wp-archive/2520 [https~~://web.archive.org/web/20080516005022/http~~://www.wholecommunities.org/pdf/alumni/peace_or_pacification.pdf Peace or pacification] wholecommunities.org▼ http://www.macfound.org/fellows/414/ [http://sait.usc.edu/spectrum/events_details.asp?EventID=747 Events] usc.edu{{dead link\|date=December 2023}} ▲https://web.archive.org/web/20080516005022/http://www.wholecommunities.org/pdf/alumni/peace_or_pacification.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20120526062604/http://sait.usc.edu/spectrum/events_details.asp?EventID=747 www.alverno.edu {{DEFAULTSORT:Varela, Maria}} Line 72 ⟶ 51: [[Category:People from Albuquerque, New Mexico]] [[Category:University of New Mexico faculty]] [[Category:Fellows of the American Physical Society]]