This Date in UCSF History: Latinos are Central to U.S. History

Originally published in Synapse on October 9, 2008.

Members of the UCSF community gathered in an auditorium last week, chowed down on free burritos — a meal of distinctly Mexican American flavor — and were gradually immersed in a free American history lesson of distinctly Mexican beginnings. 

The lesson was delivered by UCLA professor David E. Hayes-Bautista as part of National Hispanic Heritage month. Attendees experienced a presentation that was vibrantly colored with photographs, newspaper clippings and Hayes-Bautista’s own dynamic personality. 

Hayes-Bautista, who is Director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the UCLA School of Medicine, is passionate about the unequivocally intertwined nature of Mexican and Californian history. 

With slide after slide, Hayes-Bautista underscored that the view of Mexicans as foreign and recent immigrants to California is simply and historically unfounded. 

“In the American West, Spanish is not a foreign language,” he said. “That’s it.” 

Hayes-Bautista is also not a foreigner to UCSF, having earned both his master’s and PhD in Medical Sociology here in the ’70s. 

During his time here, he wrote the constitution for the student group, Chicanos/Latinos in Health Education. His lecture began with the American Revolution and spanned past the Gold Rush to modern-day California. 

Bautista told his 240-year story based upon the eight waves of immigration from Mexico and the evolution of Cinco de Mayo, which despite common misconceptions, is a distinctly American holiday.

“Each generation molds it to their own,” Hayes-Bautista said as he scrolled past pictures of brightly colored fiestas and parades. 

Among them was a photo of teenagers wearing t-shirts depicting revolutionary leaders who have become symbolic pop icons. 

“Zapata, Che Guevara — they had nothing to do with Cinco de Mayo,” he exclaimed before adopting the voice of an entire generation. “It’s our holiday. We are going to do it how we want to do it.” 

Hayes-Bautista included sprinklings of medical history, displaying an image of the very first medical license issued in California in 1799. It was written in Spanish. He moved on to speak of the Latino 49ers who also came to seek their fortune during the Gold Rush, but who have since seemingly vanished from U.S. history books. 

Old advertisements for medical clinics dating from that time were written in Spanish and listed the familiar streets of San Francisco: Pacific, Stockton, Jackson. 

A bilingual community had been continuously thriving in the city, laying the foundations for modern Latin American culture. From there, he tackled the World Wars. 

“You’ve all heard of Rosie the Riveter,” Hayes-Bautista said. “I’d like to introduce you to Rosita the Riveter.” 

He gestured to a sepia photo of Latina women standing near a steam engine, alluding to the empirical role they also played on the American home front at this time. 

Hayes-Bautista concluded with pictures from a recent graduation ceremony for the Chicanos/Latinos for Community Medicine, a UCLA student group for which he serves as an adviser. 

“All of these students are children of the eighth wave (of Mexican immigration), for Pete’s sake,” he said. “They are going to take this on into the future, and I feel very optimistic about what they are going to do.”

The UCLA professor re-emphasized to the crowd about the inaccurate notions associating Mexicans with illegal immigration. Immigration to the United States was an even playing ground in the 1800s before documentation became a requirement. 

“As long as you didn’t have a communicable disease, you were in,” he said. “You didn’t need a visa, passport, nada. 

“You wouldn’t know it from the political diatribe... It’s like a boogeyman out there shouting, ‘Immigrants! Immigrants! They’re coming!’”

Hayes-Bautista flailed his arms in emphasis. 

“But they came. They had kids.” 

As the floor opened up for questions, a student asked about how this tale of California’s deeply Mexican roots could be conveyed to the current generation of young people who would be tomorrow’s leaders. 

Among laughter, Hayes-Bautista declared, “That’s the kind of question you begin to answer at 10 p.m. with a bottle of wine.” 

And then seriously, he added, “Just know yourself. Be yourself.”

“Know your history!” a voice from the audience shouted. 

To which Hayes-Bautista agreed, emphatically, “Absolutely.”