Arlette Jacomé [00:01:54] There was just a lot around immigration and there was a lot around Central American migration and like the way Central Americans were being described in the public that really came to the forefront. And so I think it was very much perfect timing.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:02:13] Cal students with roots in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Costa Rica wanted a closer study of their cultural backgrounds. For them, their specific stories often got lost in broader conversations about Latinos and even immigration in the U.S. And establishing a Central American Studies Department at UC Berkeley was one answer to that.
Lesly Reyes Reyes [00:02:42] Being Central American, we’re always seen as less than, just because our countries aren’t known as much. Being Salvadoran, everyone always assumed that, oh, you’re either affiliated with gang violence or they just assume a lot about the Civil War.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:02:59] Today, the students fighting for a Central American Studies Department at UC Berkeley.
Mel Velasquez [00:03:18] According to the Census, the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metropolitan area has a population of around 145,000 immigrants from Central America. So that’s also like not including like first gens like me who were born here, but our parents are from Central America.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:03:43] Mel Velasquez is the production intern for The Bay.
Mel Velasquez [00:03:48] Here in California, there’s a large population of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants. They make up a majority of the Latine community, which is natural, there are more people in Mexico than in Central America. But what these other sources I’ve talked to and other people I’ve talk to have spoken about is just how a lot of the conversations are very Mexico-centric. It’s very like common for people to just be like, oh yeah, okay, so you’re Latino, so, you’re Mexican. That’s something I’ve gotten like my entire life. I actually didn’t even know I was Central American until like kindergarten. I always thought I was Mexican because other kids would be like yeah. And I was like, yeah, that makes sense.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:04:39] Yeah, but like, as you were saying, there’s many people from these countries have their own histories. And for, I guess, people who don’t know what are some big moments that led Central Americans to come here to the Bay Area.
Mel Velasquez [00:04:53] The second half of the 20th century, there were the civil wars in Central America, which led a lot of folks from these countries to flee here, into the Mission District in particular. In Honduras, there was the presidential coup in 2009 that also led a lot of people here. And also the civil wars that happened from around like the 60s to the 90s. They were Cold War fears from the United States that like, oh, we’re gonna have communist regime like in our backyard.
Ronald Reagan [00:05:34] Central America is America. It’s at our doorstep, and it’s become the stage for a bold attempt by the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Nicaragua to install communism by force throughout the hemisphere.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:05:52] Well, I know you met someone whose family is from Central America to talk about some of these just sort of shared histories that you’re talking about. Tell me about Arlette Jacomé. Who is she and what’s her background?
Mel Velasquez [00:06:07] I spoke with Arlette Jacomé and she was a student at UC Berkeley from around 2012 to 2017 and she’s Guatemalan.
Arlette Jacomé [00:06:19] Specifically tried to take Spanish classes and Latin American studies classes.
Mel Velasquez [00:06:24] I wanted to talk to Arlette because she was the co-founder of CAFE, which is Central Americans for Empowerment.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:34] How does Arlette describe her first years at Cal?
Mel Velasquez [00:06:38] So she felt like she was really alone.
Arlette Jacomé [00:06:42] I could spot Central Americans pretty easily and I was like you’re gonna be my friend but in terms of like structure or like organizationally or systemically speaking I was lonely.
Mel Velasquez [00:06:54] She was a first gen college student and she was looking for a group to be a part of that reflected her identity.
Arlette Jacomé [00:07:04] But I always wanted more. I always want more Central American community. And in my heart of hearts, since probably freshman year, I was like, if we had a Central American group, I would join and I wish I could do that.
Mel Velasquez [00:07:17] And there’s like other clubs, Latine affinity groups like MECHA, which is like a nationwide organization. And then there’s smaller clubs here and there that have specific needs for Latino students, but that she didn’t really identify with. And so she wanted to start CAFE, which is Central Americans for Empowerment.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:07:42] I mean, this is 2016, 2017. What is the context around this time and what was happening in the news around immigration in particular as Arlette and other students were forming CAFE?
Mel Velasquez [00:07:56] Yeah, so around this time was the first Trump administration. So this was the beginning of the anti-immigration rhetoric about building a border wall and a lot of racist comments about Mexicans in general and also, like, Central Americans lumped in there as well. So, there was a lot of Central Americans coming into the United States during this time as well and more specifically the Honduran caravans that were coming here. And they were at the San Diego-Tijuana border, the U.S.-Mexico border.
CNN reporter [00:08:42] I want to show you exactly what’s happening behind me. You can see on this side, there are quite a few of people from the caravan that has arrived here to the US-Mexico border. They sort of have.
Mel Velasquez [00:08:55] So the cafe wasn’t built around that, those issues specifically, but it just happened to be that this was the political climate that CAFE was started in.
Arlette Jacomé [00:09:06] At the time, the media was just disparaging Central Americans and the caravans. There weren’t a lot of spaces for Central Americans in general to really like talk about that in a way that was like personal. Cause for us, it’s personal, right?
Mel Velasquez [00:09:25] They did a lot of direct aid for the Honduran caravan at the border. Some students collected like clothes and money and toiletries and things that anybody can need. They went down south to Tijuana and they were talking to the women of the caravan and just giving them grooming services and helping them just feel normal, feel like a person. Another big goal of theirs was to create a Central American Studies Department. It doesn’t exist at Berkeley. Actually, no university in the Bay Area has a Central American Studies department. They have classes, but the first program for Central American Studies was created at Cal State Northridge. In the beginning, it was just like an idea. It was a dream. They didn’t actually think like when they were there that it would happen because… It’s a long process to create a department at a university. Other ethnicities and races have their own departments as well. And they have like the faculty and staff to educate other folks about things like Chicanx studies, and which is a very popular and nationwide program and that a lot of different universities have. So these students are like, okay, well, this exists somewhere. It exists at Cal State Northridge. Why can’t we have it over here? They want academics to teach Central American history, which is what they feel is very intertwined with U.S. History. The folks I talked to, they told me that they didn’t learn any of this when they were in school, and they were very interested in it.
Arlette Jacomé [00:11:25] Central American studies is more than just students who are Central American, who wanna identify within this higher ed space. It’s about understanding a history that is very American because the U.S. Has done so much with their imperialistic endeavors that has impacted Central Americans to where we’re here and now we have this interconnected history.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:11:52] Coming up, how CAFE students today are trying to move the needle on a Central American Studies Department. Stay with us.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:13:09] So CAFE started around the beginning of President Trump’s first term. It’s now 2025. How has it grown? Or changed?
Mel Velasquez [00:13:18] So it’s definitely gone through some ebbs and flows throughout the years, and especially during COVID. But now, in 2025, there’s more students who are active in organizing around a Central American Studies department.
Lesly Reyes Reyes [00:13:35] We’re fighting for a department that’s just very important to us, but then also to the community.
Mel Velasquez [00:13:43] I talked to Lesly Reyes Reyes. She’s going to be a sophomore at Berkeley. She’s a pre-med major. She was really ambitious right at orientation.
Lesly Reyes Reyes [00:13:55] And I see that they posted, oh, we’re having a board application. So I was like, should I just go for it? I was, like, I might regret if I don’t. So I went ahead and like applied for board.
Mel Velasquez [00:14:06] Now, she is working on a class about Central American migration and identity.
Lesly Reyes Reyes [00:14:14] We’re going to start with a timeline from the 1930s all the way to the present. And then later on, we’re focusing on identifying the different murals that are related to Central American diaspora in the Mission District.
Mel Velasquez [00:14:27] There’s this thing at Berkeley called DeCal. So it’s basically a student-led class and there’s a faculty advisor, but it’s everything that a traditional class has, a syllabus, coursework, readings, lectures, and you can get units for them. She already made the syllabus. Now she’s working on the lectures and the homework and the readings. And so she told me that she wants this. Class to like encourage people of all backgrounds to join, not just Central American students.
Lesly Reyes Reyes [00:15:05] Someone that’s not Central American. I would just want them to feel more educated and kind of feel like, not pity that’s definitely not something I want someone to feel not pity for us, but kind of more like whoa like you guys are strong like you did that and like y’all are still fighting for your identities here in like the US
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:15:29] Why is doing this an important piece of the puzzle to eventually establishing a Central American Studies Department?
Mel Velasquez [00:15:38] I talked to Professor Enrique Lima. He is a continuing lecturer at Berkeley and he teaches two of the Central American classes at Berkeley. He was telling me that the university cares about enrollment.
Enrique Lima [00:15:55] My main concern for them was the university cares about numbers. The university is at some level an institution that cares about money.
Mel Velasquez [00:16:08] And if the students can prove that they have the numbers in this class, so if they’re consistent with teaching the DeCal, maybe if that has demand, there can be another one, and hopefully it’ll snowball into something like that.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:16:28] What does Professor Lima think about CAFE’s goal of establishing a Central American Studies Department?
Mel Velasquez [00:16:37] Yeah, he’s excited about the idea, but he’s also a little skeptical about it as well.
Enrique Lima [00:16:45] It’s a lot of work. It’s not just where would it be housed, all the staff that would it would require.
Mel Velasquez [00:16:53] It’s really hard being a college student, first of all, and then a lot of them being first gen college students and also having to support their parents and their family.
Enrique Lima [00:17:05] It would require immense planning. So it would be a multi-year process, I would imagine, even after the approval.
Mel Velasquez [00:17:13] The new class he started teaching this past semester, he told me that it took a lot to just even make one class that’s like approved by the university. And from start to finish, it took over a year for him to get the syllabus approved and the coursework approved. So he’s like, this is not gonna happen for a few years at least.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:17:40] And not to mention students graduating and moving on. And are people like Lesly feeling hopeful that they can actually make this happen?
Mel Velasquez [00:17:51] Lesly told me that she’s just really passionate about Central American history.
Lesly Reyes Reyes [00:17:57] For me as a student that’s teaching the class, I hope to feel like I did something more. We’re all like planting our seed to hopefully get the fruit, which is the Central American Studies Department.
Mel Velasquez [00:18:09] There’s no exact timeline for like, this department could be created. It’s more about proving to the university that there is a demand for a program and a department.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:18:27] Well, Mel, this all started back in 2017, but what do the students you talk with say about how they’re thinking about the importance of CAFE and even the Central American Studies Department in this particular moment that we’re in now?
Mel Velasquez [00:18:44] The students that I spoke to and the former students as well, were telling me that it’s important to know the context, especially right now with the ICE raids that are happening. It’s important for people to be educated around why Central Americans are immigrating here anyways. The students I spoke too were telling me that there are conditions in Central America that are, they’re there because the United States had influence in it in a way, so that led them to immigrating over here so they could flee violence. They could flee political repression. So they want people to know that there’s a reason why Central Americans are here. And there’s also a reason why we should protect them.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:19:38] Yeah, I mean, what’s your takeaway from your reporting, Mel? I know this came from a very personal place for you, and now that you’ve finished all your reporting. I mean what, what are you walking away with?
Mel Velasquez [00:19:51] Um, I’m feeling very proud of my community, actually. I hope that people can also see that we’re beyond just immigration and drug violence and crime that’s happening. Even here in the Bay Area, that rhetoric has been going on for a long time, especially when it comes to drug trafficking. We’re more than that.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:20:23] Well, Mel Velasquez, The Bay’s intern, thank you so much for joining me.
Mel Velasquez [00:20:28] It’s always a pleasure, Ericka.
