CSPF’s third Hidden Stories Series conference, Folding Back the Layers of California’s Latino/a History: The Stories Beneath the Stories, is taking place on October 2 and 3 in Los Angeles ... just in time for Hispanic Heritage Month! Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15 through October 15.

The 2013 Hidden Stories conference will explore Latino history in the context of California’s state parks. This conference seeks to go beyond existing interpretation of historical Latino figures to look at “the stories beneath the stories,” or going beyond what is commonly known in order to uncover how these figures shaped our history, influenced our society, and left permanent, although unrecognized, impressions on our state. Find out more info…

SNEAK PEEK: The Gold Rush

One Hidden Stories presenter, Tomás Summers Sandoval, Ph.D., works as a professor of Chicana/o Studies and History at Pomona College in Claremont. He posed the following sneak peek question:

Did you know that in the 19th century, Latin Americans from nations other than Mexico were the majority of the Spanish-speaking population of San Francisco? And, what first drew Latin American migrants to San Francisco?

Mercedes Melendez Wright
San Francisco, 1890s
Native of El Salvador, married to American Capt. John T. Wright
Photo courtesy of Pamela Wright Lloyd[/caption] During and following California’s gold rush in 1848, many Central Americans and South Americans, principally Peruvians, Bolivians, and Chileans, flocked to San Francisco by boat. San Francisco was the gateway to the gold fields. Many people from South America’s Andean countries had been mining for generations under the watchful eye of the Spanish. They arrived to not only work the gold fields, but also to provide services as mining experts. Others arrived as sea-going and land-based merchants to take advantage of the wild and bustling economy in the city and the Sierra Nevada. Find out more about this and other topics at our Hidden Stories Conference. Conference and ticket information can be found here.