{{Short description|American photographer and teacher}} {{Use mdy dates|date=June 2022}} '''Maria Varela''' (born January 1940) is a Mexican-American civil rights photographer, community organizer, a writer, and a teacher. She has been actively involved in Civil Rights movements, advocating rights for indigenous communities and protects cultural heritage within African-American, Native-American, and Mexican-American in rural communities. She created and supported several non-profits organizations to help many minority groups, especially Native-American and Mexican-American. She won a MacArthur Fellowship in 1990 for her endeavor to help with the Native-American communities in northern New Mexico, southern Colorado, and northeastern Arizona to develop economic opportunities and preserve their human rights.
==Early life and education== Maria Varela was born in Pennsylvania and lived in many different places in her younger days, but spent most of her time in the upper Midwest.<ref name="University Press of Mississippi">{{Cite book |last1=Bond |first1=Julian |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt24htrq |title=This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement |last2=Carson |first2=Clayborne |last3=Herron |first3=Matt |last4=Cobb |first4=Charles E. |date=2011 |publisher=University Press of Mississippi |jstor=j.ctt24htrq |isbn=978-1-61703-171-7}}</ref> Raised Catholic by her Mexican father and Irish mother, she grew up in a rigorous Catholic environment.<ref name="University Press of Mississippi"/> She went to the St. Louis Academy for Girls in Chicago,<ref>{{cite web |url= https://news.wttw.com/2017/03/21/activist-turned-photographer-sharpens-focus-social-movements|title= Activist-Turned-Photographer Sharpens Focus on Social Movements|last= Miller|first= Maya|date= March 21, 2017|website= WTTW|publisher= |access-date= November 10, 2022|quote=}}</ref> and then to Alverno College.<ref name="University Press of Mississippi"/> In college, she joined the national Young Christian Students (YCS) program where she was given the position to travel the country to encourage young students to support Civil Rights Movements.
In 1963, Varela went deep in the south to support the Civil Rights Movements where she began working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Alabama and Mississippi.<ref name="University Press of Mississippi"/> She later graduated from University of Massachusetts.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.units.miamioh.edu/anthropology/node/274 | title=Department of Anthropology | College of Arts & Science - Miami University }}</ref>
She married Lorenzo Zuniga Jr.<ref name="people">{{cite news |last1=Chu |first1=Dan |date=January 14, 1991 |title=Macarthur Grant Winner Maria Varela Shepherds a Rural New Mexico Community Toward Economic Rebirth |work=People |url=http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20114225,00.html |access-date=22 October 2014}}</ref> She now lives in Albuquerque.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Contreras|first1=Russell|title=Latinos inspired by 1963 march to push for rights|url=http://bigstory.ap.org/article/1963-march-inspired-latinos-civil-rights-fight|access-date=22 October 2014|work=AP|date=Aug 27, 2013}}</ref>
== Career == From a young age, Maria Varela has been actively involved in various civil rights movements and organizations, from the Young Christian Student (YCS) program to Latinx Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which sets a foundation for her later work in the Civil Rights movement and in helping Native-American and Mexican-American communities<ref name=":3">{{Cite web |last=Chasteen |first=Abigail |title=UGA lecture: Latina photographer recounts experiences during 1960s civil rights movement |url=https://www.redandblack.com/uganews/uga-lecture-latina-photographer-recounts-experiences-during-1960s-civil-rights-movement/article_5da30c4e-2c9d-11e8-9651-af7d34ba61fd.html |access-date=2022-06-02 |website=The Red and Black |date=March 21, 2018 |language=en}}</ref> She helped organize rural development<ref>{{Cite web |title=Take Stock: Maria Varela |url=http://www.takestockphotos.com/pages/varela.php |access-date=2022-06-16 |website=www.takestockphotos.com}}</ref> and find Tierra Wools co-op.<ref name="people" /> She was also photographer for Black Star (photo agency) that works to include African-American representations for voters education, capturing critical moments in the Civil Rights Movement.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Many Paths to Freedom: Looking Back, Looking Ahead at the Long Civil Rights Movement -- bios (The American Folklife Center, Library of Congress) |url=https://www.loc.gov/folklife/civilrights/events/bios.html |access-date=2022-06-16 |website=www.loc.gov}}</ref>
She was also a visiting professor at Colorado College,<ref name="University Press of Mississippi" /> and was adjunct professor at University of New Mexico.<ref name="SargentLusk1991">{{cite book |author1=Frederic O. Sargent |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bwWL3DmQxyIC&pg=PR12 |title=Rural Environmental Planning for Sustainable Communities |author2=Paul Lusk |author3=Jose Rivera |author4=Maria Varela |date=1 October 1991 |publisher=Island Press |isbn=978-1-61091-319-5 |pages=12–}}</ref>
=== Civil rights movement === Since college, Maria Varela has been actively involved in the civil rights movement. She believed in what is called “the great leader” theory: in order to have a powerful social movement, the movement needs a powerful leader.<ref name=":3" /> She not only supported the people she believed to be great leaders in supporting the Civil rights movement, but she also functioned as a critical figure behind the camera to capture impactful moments in the Civil rights movement.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |title=Maria Varela {{!}} Black Culture Connection Explorer |url=https://www.pbs.org/black-culture/explore/civil-rights-movement-photography/maria-varela/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170310210531/http://www.pbs.org/black-culture/explore/civil-rights-movement-photography/maria-varela/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=March 10, 2017 |access-date=2022-06-09 |website=Maria Varela {{!}} Black Culture Connection Explorer {{!}} PBS}}</ref>
Varela recognized the urgent issue of how the images provided for voter education materials excluded African American community and lacked diversity in racial representation.<ref name=":0" /> Thus, her works focused on documenting the significant steps made by African American leaders and captured the progression and evolvement of the Civil Rights Movement.
=== Literacy works === Maria Varela's literacy work is one of the most under-recognized and under-studied literacies in the U.S.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last=Dimmick |first=Michael |date=2020-12-18 |title=Maria Varela's Flickering Light: Literacy, Filmstrips, and the Work of Adult Literacy Education in the Civil Rights Movement |url=https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/communityliteracy/vol14/iss2/4 |journal=Community Literacy Journal |volume=14 |issue=2 |doi=10.25148/14.2.009036 |s2cid=234666495 |issn=1555-9734|doi-access=free }}</ref> However, her multimodal works, collaboratively produced by Varela and the African American community, make the important argument about community activism, which is crucial and novel but seldom discussed.<ref name=":1" /> Her work plays a critical role in those communities developing a new ethos of place: an imagined and embodied relationship between local and national communities that offers a new identity and sense of participatory agency.<ref name=":1" />
=== Rural communities === In 1968, Maria Varela was invited to start agricultural cooperatives and a community health clinic in northern New Mexico. New Mexico.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |title=Maria Varela |url=https://www.macfound.org/fellows/class-of-1990/maria-varela |access-date=2022-06-09 |website=www.macfound.org |language=en}}</ref> Since then, she has been working with indigenous leaders to help them develop economic opportunities and protect cultural heritage within African-American, Native-American, and Mexican-American rural communities.<ref name=":2" /> Varela co-founded Ganados del Valle in 1981, a nonprofit, economic development corporation that primarily helps Latinos and Native-American communities in northern New Mexico, southern Colorado, and northeastern Arizona to preserve their pastoral cultures, lands, and water rights. She helped created a wool-growers cooperative that included a weaving and spinning enterprise, training in small business development, and cultural reaffirmation.<ref name=":2" /> She spent years trying to create and enable nonprofit organizations and viable enterprises to build upon and add to existing local resources, and was awarded with an MacArthur Award in 1990.<ref name=":2" />
==More works== *{{cite book|author1=Frederic O. Sargent|author2=Paul Lusk|author3=Jose Rivera|author4=Maria Varela|title=Rural Environmental Planning for Sustainable Communities|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bwWL3DmQxyIC&pg=PR12|date=1 October 1991|publisher=Island Press|isbn=978-1-61091-319-5|pages=12–}} *Maria Varela (9 August 2019). ''“Time to Get Ready,''” ''Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC.'' Urbana: University of Illinois Press. pp. 552–572. *Maria Varela (21 October 2021). Video of Photo Exhibit: RESISTANCE THROUGH MY LEN. Toward Common Causehttps.<nowiki>https://towardcommoncause.org/calendar/macarturos-platicas/</nowiki>
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== *[https://web.archive.org/web/20090105035844/http://word.world-citizenship.org/wp-archive/2520 World Citizenship] *{{cite web | title=Maria Varela | website=MacArthur Foundation | date=14 December 2023 | url=https://www.macfound.org/fellows/class-of-1990/maria-varela | access-date=22 December 2023}} *[https://www.wholecommunities.org/pdf/alumni/peace_or_pacification.pdf Peace or pacification] wholecommunities.org *[http://sait.usc.edu/spectrum/events_details.asp?EventID=747 Events]usc.edu {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120526062604/http://sait.usc.edu/spectrum/events_details.asp?EventID=747 |date=May 26, 2012 }}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Varela, Maria}} Category:1940 births Category:Community organizing Category:Alverno College alumni Category:University of Massachusetts Amherst alumni Category:Colorado College faculty Category:MacArthur Fellows Category:Living people Category:University of New Mexico faculty Category:Fellows of the American Physical Society Category:Mass media people from Albuquerque, New Mexico Category:Writers from Albuquerque, New Mexico Category:Academics from Albuquerque, New Mexico Category:Mass media people from Chicago Category:Photographers from Chicago Category:Activists from Chicago Category:Activists from New Mexico Category:Educators from Chicago Category:Writers from Chicago Category:Academics from Chicago