Growing Up Latinx in Utah: A Conversation with Lee Martinez and Maria Garciaz (S5, E9)

**Brad Westwood** (0:01)
Welcome to the podcast Speak Your Piece. This is a podcast about Utah's history produced by the Utah Department of Culture and Community Engagement. I'm Brad Westwood, Senior Public Historian. My job in regards to this podcast is to make the very best, the most interesting and the most accurate history of Utah accessible to the widest audience. If there's one place, one podcast to get your Utah history fix, I hope this is the place. On today's show, we'll be focusing on the everyday life and memories of Hispanic and Latinx childhood, home life, dear family members, foodways, special holidays, and the landscapes of everyday life here in Utah.
If this is your first time listening to Speak Your Piece, I hope you'll go back and listen to the scores of other episodes and rate us too, would you? Our guests today are Maria Garciaz, Executive Director of NeighborWorks Salt Lake, a not-for-profit community development corporation established in 1977 with a mission to revitalize Salt Lake City neighborhoods. Maria's influence and contributions are many, and we'll describe it in further detail in the show notes. She has worked for the Utah Judicial Performance Evaluation Board with the Federal Reserve Bank of Salt Lake City, the Salt Lake City branch, and on Utah's Board of Juvenile Justice.
And in regards to history, she has served on the Utah Board of State History.

**Maria Garciaz** (1:26)
Hello, Brad. It's good to be here with you.

**Brad Westwood** (1:29)
My next guest is longtime activist, civic leader, and businessman Lee Martinez, who in his youth was active in the University of Utah Chicano Student Association. Lee also served and worked with Utah's first Hispanic state senator, Pete Suazo, also as director of the Hispanic Affairs in Utah government during Governor Mike Leavitt's administration, and in the office of Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson. Most recently, he was the academic advisor at the Salt Lake Community College.
Hello, sir. How are you, Lee?

**Lee Martinez** (2:05)
I'm fine. Thanks, Brad. Good to be here with you.

**Brad Westwood** (2:08)
We will be talking about these two individuals' lives here in Utah, two individuals whom I've believed have had amazing careers during very long and prosperous lives. Maria, would you describe the size of the varied Hispanic and Latinx communities here in Utah?

**Maria Garciaz** (2:28)
Well, I can tell you, I am a native of Utah, and when I was growing up, Hispanic, Mexican-American, Latino-Latina population was probably 1%.
And so we're 23% and above now. We're incredibly diverse in terms of South Central American and Mexican-American. So very diverse from when I was born and raised here.

**Brad Westwood** (2:52)
Well, I remember growing up here in Utah as well. I had many interactions with those from Mexico, but what I find so diverse and fascinating about Utah contemporary life is we have people who are American citizens as well as those who are here with us from Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba, Dominican Republic and more. There's just a fascinating and diverse communities, plural, here in Utah.
Lee, describe life here in Utah for Hispanic and Latinx communities.

**Lee Martinez** (3:32)
Well, to the best that I recall, I was born in Ogden, Utah and raised in kind of South Weber, Northern Davis County. There, the communities were mostly those from Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. Anytime you would bump into people, we would always say, where are you from? New Mexico or Southern Colorado.
And everybody was there working either in agriculture or in the mines or Hill Air Force Base, or there was a Navy base there in the Clayishville-Layton area. And that's what I recall. And then little by little, I began seeing the diversity and so Mexicans from Mexico. And then eventually, as Maria said, and as you mentioned, the population became much more diverse.

**Brad Westwood** (4:27)
One thing that fascinates me as I worked in Utah's history is just how long the history of Hispanic and Latinx life is here in Utah. It's surprising because we had other individuals coming up to work here in some respects even before they were tracked in census records.
Maria, could you tell us about your early life? I think you have had a fascinating life. Tell us about your childhood.

**Maria Garciaz** (4:54)
Well, I think what I remember most about my childhood growing up in Salt Lake City, which is primarily where I've spent even to this day. I live in the city in Salt Lake City's west side and parts of Central City is as a child, I probably went to more elementary schools than most people do. We moved a lot. We were a very transient family and we were a transient family because we were renters. So single mom with seven children. I was the middle child and every three to six months we would move and part of that had to do with as a renter. My mom had a great deal of pride in her home and so we would fix up the home. We would paint it, we would sweep the floors, we would fix the windows and the landlord would then evict us because they could evict us and raise the rent for the next family.