Protejiendo Nuestras Raíces: Un Proyecto de Salma Anguiano

A documentary film screening featuring anonymous migrant workers in the Walla Walla Valley.
Saturday, May 7 at 4:30pm at the Gesa Power House Theatre

Growing up in a migrant working community Salma Anguiana often saw many injustices and unsafe working conditions faced by people in her community. During her first year of college, Anguiana embarked on a journey to advocate for the community she grew up in. She formed Protejiendo Nuestras Raices, and began advocacy efforts to address the unsafe working conditions that people like her parents faced in the workplace. Through this effort she also hoped to create spaces for people in our communities to speak their truths. For so long, she saw people around her stay quiet due to fear. She wanted to end the cycle and bring light to the atrocities that occur in the workplace, in our own backyards.

Anguiano began collecting stories of farmworkers during the COVID-19 Pandemic. It was oftentimes difficult to bring these stories—including many from undocumented workers—to a wider audience. Anguiano and her collaborators navigated these challenges by making the narrators in the film completely anonymous.  As Anguiano states:

The people who often live in the shadows, people like my parents. People who have names, stories, feelings, and emotions. People who are often silenced or discouraged from speaking, were the people who I sought to elevate. Today I hope that their voices are projected in this space, the way they have asked for it, anonymously. The film is for my parents, for the latinx community, and for the migrant and undocumented folk across the globe. I hope you all feel empowered.

The event is cosponsored by the Walla Walla Immigrant Rights Association (WWIRC), the Colectivo de Arte Social, The Listeners Project: Queremos Escucharte, the Whitman College and Northwest Archives, the Associated Students of Whitman College, Project Pericles, and Hernandez Immigration Law, LLC.