The History of the Union La Bolivarense

One of the three main priorities of the Community Project Opportunities Assessment conducted in 2018, included increasing community unity. This was most often expressed in the form of a having a community space that was owned and administered by the community. While this option is still a community goal, another idea for increased community unity was celebrating a shared community identify in the form of documenting La Bolivarense’s history. 

A group of students answered a call by Nido de Vida to help capture and document the oral history of La Bolivarense in the late summer of 2019. While at the start, we weren’t certain of the details of the project we did know that we wanted to focus the project on the original settlers of La Bolivarense while sharing their stories in a way that would prove accessible to members of the community.

The project began with a meeting with a local history buff and friend of Nido de Vida. She was able to provide a list of preliminary names of the founders of La Bolivarense who she suggested we connect with to begin. With the list, the interns began the interviewing process, and through meeting these first interviewees acquired a few more names to add to the list. Ultimately, the interns were able to conduct thorough interviews with nine of the orginal founders mentioned. There were a few more, but for varying circumstances, they were not interviewed. The hope is that with future history projects, we will be able to record their stories as well.

The final product, the above video, was debuted to community members with six of the original founds present.

Thank you, Madel Leal, Avery “Nicole” Sandstrum, and Arjun Thakkar for your weeks of interviews, and your commitment to hours of organizing and editing. We know it wasn’t always easy, and we are deeply appreciative of your contribution to Nido de Vida and La Bolivarense with the film, The History of La Bolivarense.