Lue Anguiano Interview Summary

Virginia Espino’s interview of Lupe Anguiano covers the latter’s work fighting against segregation, police brutality, gang violence, and other pertinent issues during the 1960’s. As the interview begins, both women appear to be comfortable and ready to engage in conversation with one another. There were no hesitations or awkward beginnings. It was clear that the interviewer and the narrator had established mutual trust and developed their own unique rapport during the previous four sessions. Espino ensured that the session would be informative by not asking any poor or leading questions. Instead, she inquired about events that elicited a narrative response. Most of Anguiano’s testimony relied on her perceptions, interpretations, and judgments of events like the Watts Riots, the War on Poverty, etc. Although it was clear that the women had developeded a relationship based on mutual respect, the listener is left wondering if the dynamics of the relationship would have been different if the narrator did not have Anguiano’s education and leadership skills. How could Espino effectively communicate and build this same trust with a different kind of narrator? Espino would perhaps have to go to extra measures to ensure she and the interviewer could establish shared authority. Perhaps the most intriguing part of the interview (aside from its content) was the interviewer’s ability to successfully balance the historian’s and the narrator’s shared authority. At the beginning of the interview

It highlights the importance of capturing hidden stories which enrich the historian’s understanding of a past event. It has the ability to view the Latinx Civil Rights Movement not just through the eyes of major organizations but through the experiences of individuals who worked for or interacted with them. This interview encapsulates how oral history is essentially the champion of people’s