Between 2016 and 2017, Beach Flats gardeners shared their stories. They talked about their relationships with the garden, immigration, work, families, and much more. The gardeners interviewed are Emilio Martinez Casteñeda, Alejandro Zamora, Jose Lucas Escobar, Federico Garcia, Angelina, Cesar, and Dario Escobar.
Angelina 2
Angelina, Beach Flats Community Gardener
“We share the little that we have. We harvest what we like. The garden also unites cultures.”
Oral histories
Video clips
Audio clips
Don Domingo interview with danielsan, originally published by the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
Cesar
Cesar, Beach Flats Community Gardener
“For me, it’s very meaningful, because when I’m in the garden it’s as if I’m in Mexico. Everything we plant here, we grew there.”
Angelina 1
Angelina, Beach Flats Community Gardener
“We are privileged, as Latinos, as a community, to have this garden. It’s wonderful and I’d like to conserve it for many years.”
Alejandro
Alejandro, Beach Flats Community Gardener
“[My father] told me ‘What good people, they have the culture from there from Mexico. How beautiful that they aren’t forgetting their homelands, even though they are far away they are continuing with the customs and ideas of farming like this.’ I told him ‘you should see when it’s all under cultivation, it’s like a little piece of Mexico right here.’”
Angelina 2
Angelina, Beach Flats Community Gardener
“We share the little that we have. We harvest what we like. The garden also unites cultures.”
Lucas
Lucas, Beach Flats Community Gardener
“[I garden here] to not lose the traditions of my country. Because I see many who have come here now that don’t even know what corn is.”
Angelina 3
Angelina, Beach Flats Community Gardener
“We’re going to pass it on to our children so that they can do it…my daughters don’t have to ask me how a bean sprouts…or where corn comes from, because they already know.”
Michelle Glowa, Monika Egerer, and Vicki Jones collected these video oral histories at the Beach Flats Community Garden in Santa Cruz, CA.
