Our Mission

The Mexican Heritage Center seeks to place Chicano and Mexican American history in its rightful place, as a foundational people and culture that have made significant contributions to California’s central San Joaquin Valley.

 

Goals

· To gather, archive and share the histories and documentation of our indigenous and Spanish roots, the Chicano movement and the wider Mexican and Mexican American experience in the central San Joaquin Valley.

· To establish a permanent special collections library of the Central Valley’s Mexican history, that will be accessible to researchers, academics, students and the general public.

· To collectmaterial expressions of history through interviews, photographs, documents, and publications and to archive the collections through both physical and electronic means.

· To foster relationships with area colleges and universities, involving student docents and assistants in the Center’s mission to provide educational materials to the public.

· To train student and community scholars in the process of collecting, documenting and archiving oral histories and other relevant materials.

· To provide a space and storage for Center interviews, and other interview data bases that may already exist in the community.

· To disseminate the Center’s collections and research through exhibits, publications, and cultural activities.