“My grandmother, and my grandfather participated in that strike on the Ojinaga side of the family. When they were arrested and placed in jail. My grandmother was in the jail, and she was running a tin cup along the bars saying ‘We want the formula. We want the formula,’ because a woman who was the wife of one of the organizers was also put into jail with her baby. And so the women and the babies were in jail, and the women inside the jail were protesting to receive that milk. The movie is called The Salt of the Earth.”
– Richard Torres

Santa Rita was a small mining town in Southwestern New Mexico, just fifteen miles Northeast of Silver City. The town is now completely gone, swallowed by the expanding Chino Mine, one of the largest copper mines in the world. Not a single building or structure remains from the former town.

According to Huggard and Humble, [1] the town was first established as a Spanish Settlement in 1804, known as Santa Rita del Cobre. At this time, the ore was extracted using underground mining, a method of extracting minerals from beneath the Earth’s surface which involved digging tunnels and shafts to reach the ore body. Huggard and Humble write: “from 1910, when Chino Copper Company began the pit, until 1970, when its successor the Kennecott Copper Corporation removed the last of Santa Rita homes, a distinctive community thrived” (1). By the 1930s, new technologies lined the pockets of company executives, and the mine transitioned from underground mining to pit mining, a method of extracting minerals by digging a large pit to reach the ore body. Pit mining is typically used for minerals that are found near the surface, such as iron ore, limestone, and sand. As the mine began rapidly extracting more copper it also began eating away at the land around Santa Rita and piling the tailings [2] up high around the nearby landscape like a mountain.

The town experienced a series of relocations in the 1940s and 50s when surveys found large ore deposits under the town. However in 1960, Kennecott Copper Corporation, the mining company, issued a removal notice for the entire town: “all houses must be cleared” [3] (Chinorama). According to the US Census, the population of Santa Rita in 1940 was 2,948 people, and by 1970 the town no longer existed. Kennecott either removed or demolished all buildings, including the Santa Rita Catholic Church, which they buried under the mining tailings. Today, mounds of tailings heap up toward the sky, eclipsing the mountains in the skyline. There is a lookout point on the side of the highway that allows travelers to look down into the massive pit, but there is no trace of a town. While the pit is a landmark for travelers and even a tourist destination, many young people in Grant County, New Mexico, do not even realize a town existed there.

American history is etched with forgotten towns like Santa Rita, fading with the wash of progress, yet the import of their stories, influence, and impact of such places remain. The preservation of these lost histories is essential to understanding our present and potential future, and for this reason, the utmost care must be taken in collecting and preserving them. The purpose of this chapter is to outline the theoretical framework for a larger digital project, Into Space Film-book: Public Memory in New Mexico’s Central Mining District. This is a digital project is a website that houses a series of short documentary films that combine reenactments and archival materials. It also contains the complete oral history interviews. The goal of the project is to explore the history of Santa Rita and how the town’s memory has been preserved. I will first provide an abbreviated history of Santa Rita, New Mexico to establish the historical and political context for this project. Next, I will present Santa Rita as a case study for intersectional collective memory. Finally, I will explain how the tenants of rhetorical feminism guides this overall project.

The Salt of the Earth

Those who have seen the 1954 movie, Salt of the Earth, might know a bit about the history of Santa Rita, New Mexico, a town nestled in the rugged landscapes of Grant County that served as the backdrop for the groundbreaking movie. The film is canonical in Mexican-American and Chicano studies, and it has left an indelible mark on American cinema and labor history. While set in a fictional Zinctown, USA, the film tells a true story about the Empire Zinc Mine Strikes, The Mine Mill and Smelter Union, Local 890, and the laborers who fought the unfair working conditions imposed by the mining company. When I first began my research on Santa Rita, Frances Gonzales, a local to the area and a community liaison for this project, told me “you cannot separate the story of Santa Rita from Salt of the Earth. Santa Rita is the Salt of the Earth” (Personal Encounter). Frances’ father, Chimino, was born in Santa Rita, and he worked in the mines until he retired. Chimino has passed away, but he is revered as one of the “Old Timers” of Santa Rita. He embodied the values of organized labor exhibited in Salt of the Earth, and he raised his children in the union hall that birthed the Salt of the Earth. In the words of my participant, Richard, “The Union Local 890 came into being after a huge strike in Vanadium, which is now known as the strike that changed Santa Rita.” I began interviewing participants to collect the story of Santa Rita, contextualizing it in labor history and the strike that transformed Santa Rita.

The Empire Zinc Mine strikes, sometimes called the Salt of the Earth Strikes, were a series of labor strikes that occurred in the late 1940s and early 1950s in the Central Mining district of New Mexico, and specifically at the Empire Zinc Company’s mine. In her book, On Strike and on Film, Ellen Baker notes how these strikes were notable for their significance in the history of labor rights and the labor movement in the United States, particularly in the mining industry and among Mexican-American workers [4]. In the years leading up to the strikes, the working conditions in the Empire Zinc Company’s mine were harsh, and the wages were low. The majority of the workers were Mexican Americans, and they faced discrimination and unequal treatment compared to their white counterparts. Notably, the wives of the striking miners played a crucial role in supporting the strike after an indictment prevented the miners from holding the strike lines (Baker; Guerra). The women organized the Ladies Auxiliary 290 and actively picketed in the place of the miners, drawing national attention to the strike. They were run over by strike breakers, gassed, and jailed with babies in their arms (Baker). The strike eventually led to a settlement in 1952 which resulted in wage increases and improvements in working conditions. More importantly, the strikes changed the political climate of Grant County, as Mexican American women began registering their fellow citizens to vote and organizing to gain political power outside of the mine (Baker; Guerra). Moreover, the strike drew significant national attention to issues of labor rights as well as the intersections of gender and racial discrimination.

However, a lot of the traction in Grant County was stifled by a fear of communism throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The strikes took place during the Red Scare, and the Mine Mill and Smelter Workers Union refused to have their members sign affidavits that they were not members of the communist party (Baker). It’s important to note that while the Mine Mill and Smelter Workers Union had leftist associations, not all of its members—likely not even a majority— were members of the Communist Party, an enduringly common misconception. The union was a diverse organization with a range of political beliefs among its membership. In this way, they were able to recruit and advocate for a broad range of constituents. However, its progressive stance and advocacy for workers’ rights during a politically charged era led to its association with communism and left-wing politics in the United States.

Likewise, Salt [5] was banned in the United States for 11 years because of its political content and suspected ties to communism. Conversations about the strikes and the movie fell into a fearful intentional silence, a silence that still concerns the locals of Grant County. People were afraid of being associated with the film because of accusations of communism. As a consequence, most of the locals who acted in Salt did not see the film until the 25th anniversary (Salt of the Earth Recovery Project).

Salt was a collaborative film created to accurately portray the experiences of the Empire Zinc Mine strikers. During the height of McCarthyism, blacklisted members of the “Hollywood Ten” wrote, directed, and produced the film as an act of defiance against the punishment they had already received. Local union members served on the film’s staff and provided feedback on the script to ensure it reflected their perspective. They also served on a committee so that when they voted on decisions about the film, the members of the union whose story was being told could always outvote the film company (Bieberman). Facing difficulty in hiring actors because of their association with Communism, only five professional actors were hired. Four blacklisted actors played some of the Anglo roles, while famous Mexican actor Rosaura Revueltas was cast as the lead. The rest of the roles were acted by local miners and their families, recruited from the Local 890 union hall. Stephen J Mack and Barbara A Moss’ 1983 documentary, A Crime to Fit the Punishment, tells the story of how Paul Jarrico produced Salt during this politically tumultuous era. During an interview for the documentary, Jarrico says “the miners became actors, reliving their own determination to stand up to the company bosses” (2:25). Furthermore, in his book about the making of Salt, the director of the film notes that he feels “only the Chicano people of New Mexico could play such a role; the dual struggle of being neither Mexican nor fully accepted as American brought them a dual strength” (Bieberman 62). Through this excerpt, it is clear that Salt of the Earth gave the people of Grant County agency in telling their story, despite being a work of fiction. Bieberman understood how having the local community members portray themselves in the film helped to capture the weight of discrimination and the power of solidarity.

Today, Salt is an important film, not only for the locals of Grant County, but for Mexican-American, Chicano, and Women’s Studies.Salt is often taught in ethnic studies as a pivotal work of art that explores themes of labor rights, social justice, and the oppression of Mexican American women. The film also serves as a tool for understanding the historical struggles and contributions of Mexican American workers in the United States. It celebrates how local miners were able to overcome discrimination and patriarchal gender roles through community activism and organizing. Salt also offers viewers insights into the complications of race, gender, and class.

While the film does a great job portraying the experiences of miners in Grant County during the 50’s, there are a lot of limitations in the film’s ability to comprehensively memorialize a locale. For example, the film only portrays one mine, when in actuality there were several. The film also conflates multiple mining communities into one town. Furthermore, the blacklisting of the film stalled the distribution of the film’s message for many years to come. Since the creation of Salt other important events—namely the eviction of entire communities—has irrevocably changed the public memory of the area. The union that sparked so much change in Grant County was disbanded in 2015, and the towns portrayed in the film, Hannover, Santa Rita and Fierro, no longer exist.

Despite attempts to document the history of Grant County, such documentation is problematic and incomplete. In 1993, a Chicano Studies class at New Mexico Western University conducted an oral history project about Santa Rita. The goal of the project was to use the oral histories to create a mural about the town. I am told that the project never came to fruition because of a lack of grant money. In the case of Salt, the town’s history has been fictionalized, rendered to a film reel that was blacklisted and barred from being screened for 11 years. With the union gone, the town demolished, and few Santa Ritians [6] left to tell their stories, how will the town and their legacy be remembered?

While the loss of the town is a tragedy in itself, a loss of knowledge as it pertains to Santa Rita left a gap in local history, labor history, and Chicano and Women’s Studies. Many great things happened in Santa Rita that are important to remember: the strikes in and around Santa Rita not only changed the living and working conditions in Grant County, but also shifted the balance of political power—women, as well as Mexican American and indigenous people were elected to public office. Union workers actively registered community members to vote, further gaining political traction throughout the 1950s and 1960s. As a result of the successes with the strikes, the Local 890 sent several union organizers to Arizona to train other branches of the Mine-Mill union in organizing (Guerra). The Ladies Auxiliary 290 also changed the union landscape across the United States. Baker explains the uptick in women’s organizing after the Empire Zinc Mine Strikes. Between the Empire Zinc Mine Strikes and the 1980s Phelps Dodge Strikes in Arizona, women seemed to become more politically emboldened, moving beyond domestic roles in organizing, and even taking leadership roles within the male-led union (Baker 110-111). With the loss of Santa Rita and a loss of the union, Grant County risks losing important knowledge about the historical contributions of a minoritized community, including how to organize effectively and instances of communal political action.

When Frances told me “Salt of the Earth is Santa Rita,” I believe what she means is the people of Santa Rita and the surrounding mining community went to great lengths to share the message of solidarity conveyed in the film. As the ending of the film notes, this spirit of solidarity across race and gender is “something they could never take away” (1:29:58). Despite attempts to erase or silence the miners and their families, they would never lose the knowledge and experience from the Empire Zinc Mine Strikes. Thus, it is important to contextualize this as an instance where a small minority-majority community stood their ground against a large, profitable mining corporation and succeeded, if only momentarily.

Santa Rita, A Case Study

Santa Ritians have worked hard to memorialize and document their relationship to one another and to their locale. Today, the central mining district is marked by several significant plaques and memorials, each commemorating different aspects of its history and the struggles of its people. A few plaques are erected throughout the mining district, with one commemorating the bridge where the Ladies Auxiliary 290 held the strike lines during Empire Zinc Mine Strikes. The Santa Rita Shrine at the intersection of highways 152 and 356 memorializes a demolished town and provides a space for locals to connect with the patron saint of miners, Saint Rita. The Bataan Memorial Park and National Veterans Cemetery in the nearby town of Santa Clara are places to remember the Grant County miners who served in World War II and Vietnam. There’s also the Kneeling Nun, a rock formation and prominent landmark that still towers over the pit where the town of Santa Rita once stood. Each of these is a physical reminder that commemorates the historic town of Santa Rita and the culture of the particular community. However, the efforts of Santa Ritians to memorialize the town is not limited to physical objects. The community has held several reunions and created a correspondence group to mail each other letters and connect on Facebook. As my research participant MaryAnn Sedillo explains in an interview, “It no longer exists, but we exist. That’s the connection. The town doesn’t exist, but we exist. And our relationships have always stayed fresh, even though you might not see [each other] for a long time. They remain fresh” (Interview with MaryAnn Sedillo). Despite a complete loss of space, the citizens of Santa Rita maintain strong communal ties through their shared sense of home.

Santa Rita, New Mexico, serves as a compelling case study for exploring the dynamics of collective memory due to its unique historical trajectory and the loss of its physical space. The disappearance of Santa Rita as a result of the expanding copper mine highlights the profound impact of industrial forces on communities and landscapes. By examining how the citizens of Santa Rita maintain their sense of community and preserve their collective memory despite the loss of a physical gathering space, this case study sheds light on the resilience of marginalized groups and their resistance to oppressive forces. Additionally, Santa Rita’s association with the groundbreaking film, Salt of the Earth, and its significance in Mexican American, Chicano, and Women’s studies provides an additional layer of complexity to the role of film in creating public memory.

Inspired by the resilience of Santa Ritians, Into Space Film-book: Public Memory in New Mexico’s Central Mining District is an oral history case study investigating how groups of people maintain a sense of community despite the loss of home. Through a series of short documentary films, this project combines reenactment, archival materials, and oral histories to explore the history of Santa Rita and the ways in which the town’s memory is preserved. Into Space Film-book will explore their connection to the land, their connection with one another, and their complicated connection to the mining company. By weaving together these narratives, the project seeks to provide a nuanced understanding of how the shared sense of home persists and evolves within the community. The project explores the following research questions:

How do Santa Ritians use memory to resist forces of erasure, displacement, public forgetting?
How do Santa Ritians persist through a loss of material space or home?
What collaborative rhetorical practices help the community construct a collective memory?

Rhetorical Feminism and Project Values

I’ve chosen a rhetorical feminist framework because it centers marginalized voices and experiences, and it is particularly dominant in the case of Santa Rita. As Sally Miller Gearhart asserts, the field of rhetoric has historically focused on the art of persuasion and coercion (53-60). In contrast, rhetorical feminism embraces emotion and personal narrative, placing emphasis on collaborative, reciprocal relationships between the researcher and participants. According to Royster and Kirsch’s foundational text, Feminist Rhetorical Practices: New Horizons for Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies, rhetorical feminism is a “robust interdisciplinary framework” that marks a methodological shift in the field of rhetoric, one that is “breaking through the persistently elite, male-centered boundaries of disciplinary habits [and] re-forming that terrain to create a much more open and expanded view of rhetorical performance, accomplishments, and rhetorical possibilities” (29). Thus, the rhetorical feminist framework allows for the analysis of the lived experiences of Santa Ritians across their varied positionalities, rendering their collective efforts to memorialize the town more visible.

Furthermore, Royster and Kirsch cite Cheryl Glenn as one of the pioneers of rhetorical feminism. Glenn further defines rhetorical feminism as a critical approach to research and writing that seeks to empower marginalized communities by granting them rhetorical recognition and appreciation that takes into consideration their place, culture, ethnicity, class, ability, movements, and orientations throughout time (Glenn, “Rhetorical Feminism,” 2). In my research, I employ a rhetorical feminist methodology to illuminate the perspectives of the Santa Rita Community. In her article, “The Language of Rhetorical Feminism, Anchored in Hope,” Cheryl Glenn elucidates the following tenants of rhetorical feminism:

Anchored in (1) hope, rhetorical feminism offers ways to (2) disidentify with hegemonic rhetoric; (3) be responsible to marginalized people even if we ourselves are marginalized; (4) establish dialogue and collaboration; (5) emphasize understanding; (6) accept vernaculars, emotions, and personal experiences; and (7) use and respect alternative rhetorical practices. Tapping these seven features, rhetorical feminism promotes cross-boundary dialogues and coalitions. (336)

In the following sections, I define each of these anchor features and demonstrate how my research methods fit within this rhetorical feminist approach, starting with grounding my work in hope.

Anchored in Hope

While my perspective of hope is different from Glenn’s, Into Space: Film-book project is nonetheless grounded in a framework of hope. Glenn defines hope in opposition to despair. However, they say, “we are taking that leap of faith that is hope and working hard toward the future” (336). As I mention in the introduction, things in Grant County also do not currently look good. The Local 890 which helped earn the citizens of Grant County so much agency is now gone, Santa Rita is gone. The Chino Mine, now owned by Freeport, is still expanding the mine, and many of the elders who organized regular reunions for Santa Ritians have passed away. However, I want to point out how Glenn posits that hope is a reaction to oppression and pain. Conversing with my participants, I noted how they did not speak about the future in ominous tones. Instead, they discussed the joys of their successes, the strength of their relationships to endure long periods apart, as well as the ethics their mentors instilled in them from a young age.

Departing from Glenn’s belief that hope is a response to despair, this project is built on the premise that hope is a result of collaboratively built solidarity and agency. In her book, All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks discusses the nature of love, its connection to freedom and justice, and how love can be a foundation for hope. hooks says, “I know I survived and thrived despite the pain of childhood precisely because there were loving individuals among our extended family who nurtured me and gave me a sense of hope and possibility” (131). hooks goes on to say that kindness, tenderness, and concern are the forces that foster hope. For this reason, the project does not focus on pain as a source of resistance and resilience. I believe that hope is innate in communities. As Tuck and Yang note, I also believe that qualitative researchers should refuse to extract pain from stories of marginalized people for their own purposes. Instead, researchers should focus on building relationships with marginalized communities and working with them to create knowledge that is meaningful and useful to the community. As such, my research questions focus on intervention, persistence, and collaboration, and the video chapters curated in the film-book invite viewers to resist despair and apathy, and instead to engage with the world through a lens of hope and possibility.

Disidentifying with Hegemonic Rhetoric

Before I can delineate how the film-book disidentifies with hegemonic rhetoric, its essential to define the two fundamental terms: disidentify and hegemony. Antonio Gramsci defines hegemony as the way that “the dominant social group maintains its power and influence over subordinate groups” (Notebook 12). He argues that hegemony is established through social hierarchies of power, which are maintained by a division of labor in which those who have been most socialized by institutions of the state—politicians, lawyers, and academics—play a key role (Notebook 12). Furthermore, the concept of “disidentification” was popularized by the Latinx scholar and cultural theorist José Esteban Muñoz. Muñoz introduced this concept in his influential book titled Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Muñoz defines disidentification as a mode of resisting the dominant ideology:

one that opts to assimilate within such a structure nor strictly opposes it; rather, disidentification is a strategy that works on and against dominant ideology. Instead of buckling under the pressure of dominant ideology (identification, assimilation) or attempting to break free of its inescapable sphere (counter-identification, utopianism), this ‘working on and against’ is a strategy that tries to transform a cultural logic from within, always laboring to enact permanent structural change while at the same time valuing the importance of local everyday struggles of resistance. (11-12)

With both of these definitions in mind, I understand disidentifying with hegemony as a method of resistance and which subverts the expectations of dominant power structures such as the mining company, the red-baiting rhetoric that fueled 1950s American politics, and even the University systems. Unlike other resistance methods Muñoz lists, disidentification seeks to make change from within existing systems rather than through outright opposition or assimilation.

Shifting focus back to the film-book, disidentifying with hegemonic rhetoric requires me to be aware of my own socialization by the academy and the ways in which becoming an academic comes with certain expectations. As a first generation college student, queer scholar, and community-engaged scholar, my commitment to public scholarship collides with the expectations of scholarly publications. The text-based introductory chapter of this film-book, in some ways, is a performance which reinforces hegemony. Through it, I create my intellectual lineage as a scholar by citing those who came before me. I take what I have learned from collecting oral histories, and turn them into tangible scholarship for our field that may serve as proof of my value for a future tenure portfolio. However, in creating this project, I also am aware of the ways in which I disidentify from the academy. From the inception of this project, I have grappled with creating a composition that would benefit Santa Ritians as an audience and also grant me the qualifications to earn my PhD. I know that the institution expects a long-form, text-based collection of research with a literature review, research methods section, and conclusions that somehow contribute knowledge to my field.

In my attempt to subvert dominant expectations, I submit a hybrid project—one that requires me to comply with the requirements of a traditional dissertation. It is equally an attempt to “push everything up as we go” (Salt of the Earth). I hope to model the kind of work other feminist scholars might pursue. The scholarly and lengthy, yet is also accessible in multiple modes to a non-academic audience. Certainly, it would be more streamlined to present a dissertation because the practice and form of this genre is built in place by the academy. However, my hope is that this multimedia project both showcases the knowledge of Santa Ritians and makes contributions to our field’s scholarship surrounding collaborative rhetorical practices and public memory.

Caring for Marginalized People and Communities

Throughout this project, I will be drawing on the works of Black Feminist and Chicana Feminist scholars to employ intersectional feminism (Crenshaw) that recognizes how people can experience multiple forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia, and linguistic discrimination. An intersectional approach helps me identify the ways in which these groups of Santa Ritians have been marginalized and oppressed, and also understand the different strategies they use for resisting oppression.

As a rhetorical feminist project, Into Space: Film-book highlights the everyday rhetorical practices of the counterpublic (Royster and Kirsch)—the men and women of Santa Rita who often held little political or economic power. In Feminist Rhetorical Practices: New Horizons for Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies, Royster and Kirsch explain how traditional paradigms often focus on the people and institutions in power. Their work explains how historical patterns of exclusivity have led to a skewed understanding of the world that favors Western culture, whiteness, wealth, and men, and they also argue that more attention needs to be paid to the counterpublic, the experiences of women, marginalized groups, and people from non-Western cultures (Royster and Kirsch). I have deliberately selected participants from this counterpublic. They include Mexican Americans, Mescalero Apache peoples, miners who worked harsh jobs, women who might not have been miners but were active supporters, and the family members of Santa Ritians. Royster and Kirsch define the counterpublic as “arenas that draw from social and political networks that have not been shaped or controlled by power elites” (30). This definition is somewhat problematic because as noted in Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement, there is “no scholarly perch outside of the social dynamics of racial [and gendered] power from which merely to observe or analyze” (Crenshaw, Gotanda, and Peller 14). This is to say that all arenas of life are (in some arenas more than others), shaped by power elites. However, this project intentionally elevates the stories of marginalized and multiply-marginalized people that challenge the dominant narrative (Martinez). The methods I employ in the project are an attempt to create a space where participants can discuss their experiences, challenge dominant narratives of the town, and to develop alternative ways of memorializing and commemorating.

I believe the tenets of feminist rhetorical practices provide tools that are helpful for elevating these stories. Embracing a feminist lens enables me to delve into the intricate power dynamics, gendered experiences, and intersectionality of identities within the historical and cultural context of Santa Rita. In designing the study, the project also uses exclusively qualitative data derived from oral history interviews and archival accounts of Santa Rita which helps to facilitate a nuanced understanding of the complex social, cultural, and political dynamics at play in the town. In positioning my work as rhetorical feminist scholarship, it is important to privilege the voices of people who are historically marginalized.

Establishing Dialogue and Collaboration

Collaboration is at the heart of filmmaking, and my research participants from the Santa Rita community have played a pivotal role in shaping this film-book. They contributed by helping draft interview questions, verifying images in the films, and offering feedback on website design and consent forms. Most importantly, they entrusted me with their oral histories and connected me with potential new participants. This project owes its existence to the assistance of the Grant County locals, with special thanks to Richard Torres and Frances Gonzales for their support in participant recruitment and valuable guidance. Terry Humble also made significant contributions by aiding in the creation of interview questions and providing additional historical documents. Their collective dedication and involvement have been indispensable.

This project required me to employ and develop relational literacies in order to collaborate with the Santa Ritian community. The term relational literacies demonstrates that building relationships is not just about what is said to one another, but also about the skills and understandings required to navigate relationships effectively. In the article “Relational Literacies and their Coalitional Possibilities,” Adela C. Licona and Karma R. Chávez demonstrate how the process of film production and editing is a means to unlock the potential for forging coalitions among disparate groups. Their video production exemplifies a dynamic where rhetors emerge as “communicating bodies across generational contexts engaged in relationship(s) and (attempted) reciprocal exchanges” (98). Considering my role as a White academic in my thirties from the Midwest, it is evident that the life experiences of my research participants differ significantly from my own. My participants grew up in a rural mining community in Southwestern New Mexico, and many of them are in their seventies and older. Nevertheless, the act of filmmaking serves as a conduit through which we actively engage in relationships and endeavor to convey ideas spanning racial, generational, cultural, and experiential divides. In parallel, while I seek to disseminate their knowledge and experiences within the context of Santa Rita, my participants are also contributing to the realization of this scholarly project.

Licona and Chávez further expound upon the transformative impact of relational literacies, not only in reshaping the roles of researchers and participants but also in shaping the perceptions of the audience. One of the primary objectives of this project is to distill the myriad distinct voices into cohesive narrative constructs. In many instances, this entails disrupting linear storytelling. Licona and Chávez remark, “These effects call us to imagine how dispersals of generational wisdom, lived histories, love, light, and life might interact in the world and to what effects” (99). This is also true for the voice actors involved in reenacting archival stories within the film-book who also partake in the process of narrative reconstruction. The voice actors in the film-book are all local volunteers—mostly actors from Tucson—and they also gain insight into diverse perspectives through reenacting the stories of Santa Ritians from different racial/cultural backgrounds and generations. The scripts were distributed allowing actors to self-select narratives outside their own identity. Actors chose roles spanning racial, gender, and generational lines different from their own.

The collaborative filmmaking process exemplifies the potential of relational literacies to build connections across differences. As Licona and Chávez describe, the roles of researcher, participant, and audience are reshaped through reciprocal engagement. Despite disparate backgrounds, we form a temporary coalition unified in conveying Santa Rita’s diverse lived experiences. While I aim to synthesize threads into a cohesive story, the mediums of film and role-playing inherently allow multiple truths to coexist. Our distinct voices intersect to construct a complex, nuanced collective memory.

Emphasizing Understanding

It’s hard to define what it means to approach work from a position of understanding. Cheryl Glenn defines understanding by what it is not. She says, “an emphasis on understanding rather than persuasion underpins much of rhetorical feminism” (340). While Aristotle defined rhetoric as “the art of persuasion,” the primary goal of Into Space: Film-book is not to persuade audiences to take up my arguments. Instead, I invite audiences to witness the accounts of the participants.

As a white scholar researching in a community of color, it is particularly important to reflect on the role of my whiteness in the act of understanding. White the scope of scholarship that examines whiteness within rhetorical research is limited, Krista Ratcliffe writes about whiteness and rhetorical research. In her book, Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender and Whiteness. Ratcliffe defines understanding as standing under:

To clarify this process of understanding, rhetorical listeners might best invert the term understanding and define it as standing under, that is, consciously standing under discourses that surround us and others. While consciously acknowledging all our particular—and very fluid—standpoints. Standing under discourses means letting discourses wash over, through, and around us and then letting them lie there to inform our politics and ethics. (28)

The filming and coding interviews, for me, was a process of letting the discourses wash over me. Playing the audio as I transcribed them, coded them, and then sorted the clips into select reels allowed me to hear the words of the participants for more than how they answered the research questions. I was often left with questions: what does she mean when she says she doesn’t carry a chip on her shoulder? What does it mean when she says “in my day we were not Hispanic, we were all called Mexicans? Understanding means accounting for listening for historical and cultural differences in lived experience.

Given my position as a white academic who is also outsider to the community, I recognize the importance of rhetorical listening. Rhetorical listening is a tenet of feminist rhetorical methodologies because it is a way of listening that is open, respectful, and non-judgmental. It is a way of listening that is attentive to the speaker’s words, but also to the speaker’s body language, tone of voice, and other nonverbal cues. Rhetorical listening is also a way of listening that is aware of the context in which the speaker is speaking.

The concept of rhetorical listening was first introduced by Krista Ratcliff who defines rhetorical listening as “a trope for interpretive invention and more specifically as a code of cross-cultural conduct.” Through adopting a stance of openness, rhetorical listening allows for interpretation and understanding in relation to individuals, texts, and cultures (Ratcliff 17). It allows the researcher to attempt to understand the participant’s perspective, even if it is different from their own. As one example of rhetorical listening, I had a few Santa Ritians that were interested in talking to me about their experiences in Santa Rita, but did not want to participate in the project. I was worried about whether or not I would have time to talk to these individuals during my research trips. Often, my interviews took 4-5 hours, and my research trips were always tightly scheduled. Knowing they did not want to film the interview, I left my camera in the car when I went to the Santa Ritian’s house, so they did not feel pressured to interview. Instead, I sat on a couch as they handed me newspaper clippings and photographs of their fathers. I learned about how their grandfather was killed in a mining accident, and their father had moved the family to California to live and work during one of the strikes. By taking the time to sit with non-participant Santa Ritians, I got to know more about the hostilities in the community toward those who speak out against the mine. The mining company is still at the center of the local economy, and it provides local grants to the community. Many of my participants fear retaliation from the mining company, even in their retirements.

Recognizing the divergence and complexity of diverse viewpoints, Walton, More, and Jones advocate for intersectional listening. In their book Technical Communication After the Social Justice Turn : Building Coalitions for Action, Walton, More, and Jones define intersectional listening as “a way of listening that centers and acknowledges a multiplicity of marginalized perspectives and identities without expecting them to align or coincide” (74). In my research on the experiences of female miners in the Central Mining District, I have found that intersectional listening is essential for understanding the full picture. For example, one Santa Ritians talked to me about the discrimination and sexual harassment she had faced as a female miner. By adopting a stance of openness, I was able to learn about the specific ways in which she was discriminated against, such as being locked out of the women’s restroom and being subjected to unwanted sexual advances. I was also able to understand how her multiple identities as a Chicana, a woman in a male-dominated career, and a mother who lived on a tight income, compounded the discrimination she faced. Intersectional listening has helped me to understand the climate of the Central Mining District in a more holistic way. I have come to see how the experiences of female miners are shaped by their multiple identities, and how these experiences are often invisible to those who do not share these identities. I am grateful for the opportunity to use intersectional listening in my research, and I believe that it is a valuable tool for understanding the experiences of marginalized groups.

Accepting Vernaculars, Emotions, and Personal Experiences

In Theories of Rhetorical Feminism, Glenn discusses how rhetorical feminism brings about changes in traditional rhetorical practices, particularly in the context of argumentation. She emphasizes the need to balance emotion and personal experience with logic and reason, as well as the importance of appreciating alternative means of communication (50). Though her ideas resonate with me, other scholars have more clearly defined how to value vernaculars, emotions, and lived experience in research.

Peter Elbow is one such scholar. In Vernacular Eloquence: What Speech Can Bring to Writing, Elbow discusses the value of vernacular language and everyday speech in writing and rhetoric. He argues that embracing the vernacular can make writing more engaging and relatable. Elbow defines vernacular eloquence noting that the insistence on correct academic language “muffles” and “clogs” important thoughts that would otherwise be more clear and interesting when said in a person’s mother tongue. Beyond arguing for the value of a vernacular, Elbow suggests that sometimes speech is more powerful than writing. He writes: “On top of everything speaking conveys brute presence. We tend to recognize people immediately by their voices—often over a bad phone connection or when they have a cold—even after many years. ‘Voice prints’ are evidently as reliable for identification as fingerprints. And our speaking often communications how we’re feeling” (68, original emphasis). In this book, Elbow argues that a voice serves not only as a means of communication but also as a way to convey one’s presence, identity, and emotional state. By incorporating not only vernacular, but also voice, the audience becomes intimate with the participants, familiar with their vocal patterns, and capable of discerning how they are feeling. As I explain in later chapters, filmed oral histories also have a unique capacity to not only capture the stories, accents, and dialects of a person. They also create the opportunity for an audience to “bear witness” to the stories.

Moreover, Into Space: Film-book relies on the lived experiences of the participants to carry the narratives. Particularly, as a white scholar from the rural Midwest, I recognize the limitations of my ability to speak on the intersections of race, class, and gender in a Southwestern mining community. As bell hooks points out, it is not because I cannot know these realities, but the people who live there “know them differently” (Teaching to Transgress, 90). As hooks explains, lived experience brings with it a mixture of experiential and analytical ways of knowing that “cannot be acquired through books or even distanced observation and a study of a particular reality. To [hooks] this privileged standpoint does not emerge from ‘authority of experience,’ but rather from the passion of experience, the passion of remembrance” (90). hooks explains that this profound understanding, often considered a privileged standpoint, doesn’t arise solely from being an expert on the subject, as one might think. Instead, it emerges from the intense emotional connection and personal engagement with that subject. In particular, she emphasizes the importance of memory. It is worth noting that I position myself as the writer, producer, and editor of this film-book, but I try to position the participants as the experts on the subject. This project relies heavily on the memories, lived experiences, and emotions of the participants, and their voices are highlighted throughout the project.

Many scholars, including those mentioned earlier, emphasize the importance of vernaculars, emotion, and lived experience. What I admire in Glenn’s scholarship is her recognition that these concepts are interconnected rather than isolated. In Glenn’s work, she acknowledges the intricate interplay between everyday language, emotions, and personal experiences in research and scholarship. Into Space: Film-book achieves this interplay by incorporating interviews, personal narratives, and real-life events that evoke a wide range of emotions, such as joy, sorrow, anger, empathy, and more. Viewers can witness emotional responses from individuals who have lived through these experiences, making the stories more relatable and hopefully more impactful. These interviews provide firsthand accounts of events, emotions, and personal perspectives, allowing viewers to connect with and gain insight into lived experiences.

Paying Attention to the Ethic Self

Finally, I have dedicated considerable effort to uphold ethical standards and engage in self-reflective processes while crafting this project. In accordance with the insights of Royster and Kirsch, who stress the significance of “paying attention to the ethical self” (18), I have been meticulous in my ethical considerations. Specifically:

The texts I am citing – I have conscientiously chosen to cite a diverse array of scholars, with a particular emphasis on the contributions of women of color. This commitment reflects my dedication to inclusivity and a broad scholarly perspective.
The texts I am producing – Throughout the development of this project, my goal has been to create chapters that prioritize the voices, experiences, and actions of the community under study. I have aimed to elevate their narratives above my own, ensuring that their stories are the focal point.
The opportunities to reflect on my own positionality – I have maintained a consistent practice of self-reflection to examine my own positionality in this project. These reflections have enabled me to delve into my thoughts and emotions regarding participant interactions. Moreover, I have embraced a stance of rhetorical listening, actively engaging with feedback from draft readers, especially concerning my position and perspective.

In alignment with Royster and Kirsch’s insights, I have tried to attend to the many ethical dimensions of this project. I discuss them in more detail in chapters 3 and 4. As well, I continuously engaged in self-reflection through my field notes, with a commitment to ethical scholarship and inclusivity.

Conclusion

While grounded in academic research and theory, the creation of the Into Space: Film-book holds a central focus on the Santa Rita community. Its purpose is to acknowledge and honor the commemorative practices of Santa Ritians while fostering a sense of community. The primary audience of this project comprises the Santa Rita community and their families. Each video chapter presents a narrative that celebrates the community’s resilience in the face of losing their home. Although these videos convey research findings, their primary intent is to tell the story of Santa Rita in a way that evokes the senses of the audience rather than to be overly scholarly. As a result, the “chapters” are designed to be both independent compositions and integral parts of a larger manuscript, allowing for flexible and engaging consumption.

End Notes

[1] Terry Humble is known as the local historian of the Central Mining District. He co-authored this book and gives local mine tours of the area. He is also a participant in this project, as he grew up in Santa Rita.

[2] Tailings are the materials left over after the process of separating the ore. Tailings can be a major environmental hazard, as they can contain toxic chemicals and heavy metals that can pollute water supplies and cause health problems.

[3] Several participants have collections of the Chinorama magazine. I found this copy of Chinorama in the Santa Rita Archives at the Silver City library.

[4] The term “Mexican American” is employed in this project to encompass a diverse group of individuals with varying life experiences and historical backgrounds. While some participants’ families immigrated from Mexico to the United States, others have deep roots in Santa Rita dating back to when New Mexico was part of Mexico. Throughout the short documentaries, participants may use different terms to self-identify, such as “Hispanic,” “Mexican,” “Chicano,” or “Mexican American.” It is important to note that by utilizing the term “Mexican American,” I do not intend to oversimplify or disregard the significant distinctions within this community. Rather, I aim to provide a broad and inclusive descriptor that acknowledges the complexity and diversity of experiences and identities within this group.

[5] For the remainder of this book, I will be abbreviating Salt of the Earth, as Salt. This allows me to distinguish the movie from the Empire Zinc Mine Strikes, which later become known as the Salt of the Earth Strikes.

[6] The people of Santa Rita refer to themselves as Santa Ritians. For the scope of this project, I am extending the term to include not only people who lived in Santa Rita, but those who worked in the town, or whose family lived/worked in the town.

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