UWM's Latino Activism Archival Collection 
 5/14/2018 
 
 
           
          Marla Anderson speaks with the police while occupying the Chancellor's  
          office/María Anderson habla con la policía mientras ocupa la oficina del rector 
 
The UWM Archives is one of the only institutions in Wisconsin with a social justice collection 
strength. Combined with its focus on Milwaukee and UWM history, the repository is filled with 
local stories of community organizers and activists. UWM’s Latino Activism collection contains 
photos, correspondence, press releases, newspaper clippings, and official university documents 
that detail the struggle for Latino rights on campus. In the early 1970s, Milwaukee’s Latino 
population exploded, but the number of Latino students on campus was pitifully low in 
comparison. University staff and community members attributed these low enrollment rates to 
the lack of support for Latino students on campus, so Latino activists took their case to 
Chancellor Klotsche. After sit-ins, protests, camp outs, and several arrests, the Spanish 
Speaking Outreach Institute, later called the Roberto Hernandez Center, began to connect with 
and assist UWM’s Latino population. I took a look at some of the records in the Latino Activism 
collection to see what they had to say about the power of Latinx rhetorics and community. 
 
 
 
Community was the backbone of the Latino activism movement at UWM in the 1970s. This flyer, 
titled “Latin community takes over UWM Chancellor’s office”/ “Comunidad Latina retoma la 
oficina del rector de UWM,” is an explicit call to community for assistance in direct action. 
Calling themselves “the latin community,” there is no distinction between students and non-
students, only the call to “support” in occupying the Chancellor’s office. This blending of 
community and use of family support has been a class trend for Milwaukee-based Latino 
activism. They rhetorically link their purpose in protesting to Klotsche’s absence at a community 
meeting, asserting their occupation as a direct response to disrespect and disinterest. This 
connection between administrative absence and occupation is an interesting rhetorical strategy 
that simultaneously legitimizes their tactics and calls attention to institutional buffoonery. The 
flyer is also written in English and Spanish, indicating the varied languages within Latino 
community in addition to their attempt to garner support from non-Spanish speaking allies. 
 
 
 
After the Latino occupation of Chancellor Klotsche’s office, UWM acquiesced to the creation of a 
Spanish Speaking Outreach Institute. This document is the official proposal and “commitment” 
of the institute, outlining ten guiding principles. This record is drastically different from the flyer in 
several ways. First, this record does not make a direct call to any community. It mentions the 
“Spanish speaking community,” but later refers to the issues of “non-English speaking” students 
as if they are interchangeable. Second, the rhetorical strategies suggest that the creator of the 
record, the Council for the Education of Latin Americans (CELA), was interested in “solv[ing] the 
problems of the Spanish speaking community,” rather than rectifying the institutional inequality 
related to these problems. The document explicitly details the disappointingly low number of 
Latino students that UWM was willing to support through the institute, indicating tokenization 
rather than inclusivity. Lastly, this document is only written in English, suggesting that its 
intended audience was not the Spanish speaking people it was supposedly addressing, but the 
English speaking CELA and UWM administration. 
 
 
           Jesus Salas and Roberto Hernandez celebrate the creation of the Spanish 
           Speaking Outreach Institute / Jesus Salas y Roberto Hernandez celebran la  
           creación del Instituto para la educación de hispanohablantes 
 
UWM’s Latino Activism archive details the community activism and rhetorical power used to 
create the Spanish Speaking Outreach Institute. Milwaukee’s Latino activists and the community 
that supported them are directly responsible for the resources and connections available to 
contemporary Latino students. While some of these historical documents indicate a deliberate 
disregard for a multilingual community, the UWM archive has done some work to alleviate this. 
The metadata for the records, which is necessary for searching, browsing, and researching, is 
available in both English and Spanish. It’s important that these records are available in multiple 
languages since they directly pertain to the Spanish speaking community. The Archive  also 
follows Library of Congress subject terms which are typically limiting and outdated. The 
collection subject terms include "Hispanic Americans," which we've discussed several times in 
class as homogenizing and eurocentric. Aside from these criticisms, the UWM Archive is a great 
place to dive into the rich history of Latino activism on campus.  
 
-JA