La Pilita Oral Histories
Three-year old Margaret Astorga Romero and her mother at their home on Wood Street in Barrio Viejo, Tucson; ca. 1942. Wood Street was located where the Tucson Convention Center now stands
Collection area: Arizona and Southwest
Collection dates: 1913 to 2015 bulk 2009 to 2010
This collection comprises three oral histories recorded on compact audiocassette with Tucson, Arizona residents Joe Alvarez, Margaret Astorga Romero, and Robert Madero. In addition to the audiocassette recordings, each oral history file includes a printed transcript and personal photographs donated by the respective narrator, copies of the questionnaire used in conducting the oral history interview, and access compact disc copies of Joe Alvarez and Robert Madero’s oral histories.
There is also a folder pertaining to Tucson elementary school teacher L. Marguerite Collier, who taught at Carrillo Elementary School in El Hoyo Barrio, and founded the school’s well-known Las Posadas procession in the late 1930s. Alvarez, Madero and Astorga Romero were all students at Carrillo and participated in Las Posadas. The folder contains a photograph of Ms. Collier at Tumacacori Mission and related correspondence.
The La Pilita Museum oral histories comprise three oral histories recorded on compact audiocassette with residents of Tucson’s Barrio Viejo. The oral history narrators are Joe Alvarez, Margaret Astorga Romero, and Robert Madero. The narrators discuss their experiences growing up and living in Barrio Viejo. These interviews were conducted in 2009 by Joan Daniels and Carol Cribbet-Bell, directors of the La Pilita Museum, which closed in 2015. The museum was dedicated to documenting the communities and history of Tucson barrios.
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