C. Chavez head aims to enrich community
Calderon brings vitality, optimism to novel position
By Nancy Hsu
Thirty years ago, Hector Calderon was a student at UCLA, walking
the same halls and sitting in the same classrooms he teaches in
today. He met his wife of 20 years on campus, and his daughter
became a Bruin this year.
As the newly appointed chair of the controversial Cesar Chavez
Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction in Chicana and Chicano
Studies, Calderon frequently dwells on his own working class
background and strives to create a center that arms students with
knowledge about culture and identity while preparing them for life
after school.
Calderon graduated in 1968 with degree in business
administration, but his real love had always been literature. Like
many students, he was torn between what he loved and what was
practical.
"Coming from a working class background into a university, you
have to be practical about your objectives," Calderon said. "My
parents never had beyond a 6th and 7th grade education. I was going
to be an accountant, make money and support myself. Literature did
not offer me any way, once I got out of the university, to have a
stable job and make money."
To pay his way through school, Calderon participated in the work
study program. As a work study student he helped create
bibliographies for the folklore and mythology department.
"Through folklore, I became involved again in literature," he
said, smiling. "I never did earn a penny from my business degree,"
he chuckled.
Calderon said he decided to teach. He got his master’s degree in
1972 in Spanish from California State University, Los Angeles and
went on to Yale to get his doctorate in Latin American literature
in 1981.
Calderon was plucked from the UCLA Department of Spanish and
Portuguese in November. He has been teaching Chicano and Mexican
American literature since 1991. In literature, he has found stories
that relate to his own cultural experience, Calderon said.
He hopes to bring the literature that has been such an
influential part of his life to students. He sees the center as an
opportunity to do so.
"Those stories that I grew up with as a child that were
considered silly superstitions, gossip, ghost stories, things that,
in the hands of a gifted writer, become meaningful," Calderon said.
"Seeing these writers, my own working class tradition, and seeing
how it was very much related to my culture, I was just immediately
drawn to that culture. Many students who come here have no
knowledge of their culture."
The center was created in June 1993 following a two week-long
hunger strike by students and community leaders who argued that the
existing interdepartmental program did not meet the needs of
students.
Calderon was selected in a campus-wide search by a committee of
faculty and staff who felt he was the best person for the position,
said Scott Waugh, dean of social sciences.
"He’s a first-rate guy," Waugh said. "He’s got the support of
the faculty, he’s been engaged in Chicano studies both here and at
Yale, he has the confidence of the faculty. He’s a good teacher and
just the kind of guy we were looking for."
Students active in the center’s development said even since
Calderon’s appointment and the hiring of three assistant
professors, a counselor and an administrative assistant are all
positive steps in the center’s formation, they are still
skeptical.
"I think we’re taking small steps and I hope we continue to
create a center students worked so hard for," said Max Espinoza,
MEChA’s educational coordinator. "Students have had very little
voice. They allow us to speak, but the things we say and suggest
doesn’t seem to mean anything."
With this tension between students and administrators as the
backdrop for his one-year tenure as chair, Calderon said he hopes
students will come to him with their concerns.
"I understand," Calderon said. "If there’s any feeling of being
lost, sure, I felt that. Of being a foreigner in your own land, I
certainly felt that. Racism, I felt that. Not seeing your culture
represented. All those things."
Calderon said students wishing to participate in the center’s
creation can find him between meetings and his Introduction to
Chicano Literature class, in Kinsey Hall 67. Come prepared to work
because it takes a lot to get a new department off the ground, he
said.
Since Calderon took charge of the center, he works at the center
from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
He meets weekly with the center’s new faculty and staff,
students and community members to develop a better curriculum,
discuss the hiring of three full time professors and procure
donations from community organizations.
At the end of the day, Calderon said he’s "pretty exhausted,"
but the thought that he’s part of a center that was created in
conjunction with students is thrilling.
"I feel excited," he said. "I feel optimistic. I’ve been here
for four years and I’ve never seen so many different groups come
together as I have seen come together for the Chavez Center."