Maria Varela

Biography:

In 1962, Maria Varela joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and as a result has worked in and land-based fights and with Hispanic groups of the rural southwest. Maria was one of only two Latinas who joined SNCC, where she worked for five years starting in Selma, Alabama in 1962. Growing up Hispanic in the United States, Maria grew up in a highly racist society. She was arrested and jailed several times in Mississippi as a result of her work with SNCC. By 1968 the focus of the civil rights movement was shifting. Maria Varela moved to northern New Mexico to work with families in rural communities who had lived there for generations under land grants from Spain and then Mexico, before this area became part of the United States.

Inspired by civil rights movements in the South, land-grant activists in northern New Mexico turned to civil disobedience in the late 1960s to protest the earlier appropriation of land by newcomers, after New Mexico became part of the United States. Maria worked for Alianza Federal de Los Pueblos in 1968. She directed a new agricultural cooperative (1969-1975), and then co-founded and directed a health clinic (1975-1979). Around this time, she began talking with community members about a bigger project that would combine their traditional pastoral skills and culture with modern marketing methods. This vision slowly took shape, building on the experience, track record, and trust developed through the agricultural cooperative and the clinic. The project was Ganados del Valle (Livestock of the Valley). Maria was a founding member of this new project, as well as a major fundraiser (1981-1992), a program director (1992-96), the executive director (1996-97), and, currently, a board member and advisor.

Content of Video:

Maria Varela, one of the few Latina SNCC women, started her national organizing work with the National Student Association (NSA), before being invited by Casey Hayden to work for SNCC. She ventured first into Selma, Alabama, and often was responsible for recruiting black students to come to the South. She also organized locals, whom she maintains taught her way more than she ever taught them.

Link to Video: