Preserving the Southside: El Pueblo Neighborhood Center’s 50-year history comes alive

TUCSON – “[Archiving local history is] so valuable … because if you don't document it, you do not exist. It did not happen.”

Isabel Garcia, an organizer with Coalición de Derechos Humanos, grew up on Tucson’s Southside and spent much of her youth at El Pueblo Neighborhood Center. Her perspective reflects a broader community sentiment: El Pueblo has shaped generations, yet its history has never been formally preserved — until now.

El Pueblo is a community-built cornerstone of the Southside: a grassroots headquarters for the Chicano movement in the 70s where political organizing, community services and the arts intertwined. Since opening its doors in 1975, it has provided infrastructure for mobilization, leadership development and a sense of identity in a part of the city long underserved by public resources.

Despite that legacy, the center’s story had never been comprehensively archived.

That gap is now being filled through El Pueblo 50, a public exhibition documenting five decades of community history. 

The project is stewarded by University of Arizona professors Jacqueline Barrios from the College of Humanities and Kenny Wong from the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, who are working in collaboration with longtime Southside residents and community leaders. It is a partnership between the Sunnyside Foundation, the Seventh Congressional District of Arizona, formerly the Office of Congressman Raúl Grijalva, and the University of Arizona.

The exhibition, which opened on Nov. 8, is located at 101 W. Irvington Rd. in Building 1 and runs through Jan. 18, 2026.

In recent years, the center saw a lull in investment. That reality prompted the late Congressman Raúl Grijalva, El Pueblo’s first director, to relocate his congressional office to the campus in 2017 as a way to reinvigorate the space and restore its community role.

“That’s because we don't have many places in the Southside, particularly back then,” Garcia said. “It’s really important that a community have a community center, where you can come and have a room to have a meeting, eat or … to celebrate somebody's anniversary or birthdays,” Garcia said.

The archive documents El Pueblo’s evolution as a gathering place and organizing hub. It preserves early photographs, party snapshots and clippings from its opening fiesta. It highlights the center’s artistic legacy through historic murals, incorporates community-donated artifacts into a collage series and chronicles Southside environmental justice efforts near the Tucson International Airport Area (TIAA) Superfund site. 

Part of the exhibition includes a living memorial that includes native species honoring residents who died from groundwater contamination. An El Pueblo 50 Map charts community-identified landmarks, like parks, schools, businesses and places of worship, that tether the center to Southside life.

While the exhibition digs deeply into the past, community leaders see it as a tool to guide the future.

“There's a need for [our children and grandchildren] to understand our history, to understand our struggles, so that they can better value what they have and understand that it didn't just come by accident,” said Anna Sanchez, a lifelong Southside resident and community expert on the El Pueblo 50 team.

Artist Jessica Wolff, who grew up in the Southside and now teaches in the Sunnyside Unified School District, created a photo series titled “¡Viva El Pueblo!” Each of the nine images draws from oral and written histories of El Pueblo and references visual motifs from Chicano muralist David Tineo.

One of the stories came from the late Grijalva.

“One of the stories he shared was of when they used to give food boxes here, and how, for some people … they didn't really want to come, they didn't want to accept the help and they didn't want to make it about that. So he said, ‘How can you provide services while still making a statement?’” Wolff said, recounting her inspiration for her favorite piece of the series, also titled “¡Viva El Pueblo!”

“That's what drove him to have theater performances while people waited in line to collect their food boxes. And so … you could provide services but also still make it beautiful and meaningful and like a happy and safe space for people” Wolff added.

This local history shaped Wolf’s favorite image in the series: a reflection of how Teatro Libertad — a community theater collective active from roughly 1975 to 1986 — performed while people waited in line for food boxes, turning necessity into art and community power.

Recently sworn-in Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva, speaking at the opening ceremony, recalled seeing her first play at El Pueblo.

“Teatro Libertad did their play right here in the resource room,” she said. “This center helped spark conversations about environmental justice long before it was a national issue, when our neighborhoods were organizing for clean air, safe parks and fair treatment.”

Arizona State Representative Betty Villegas, who held her wedding reception at El Pueblo, described it as the place where she first developed her understanding of social justice.

“This is where I found out about the injustices that were happening in our world,” she said. “[My husband] was part of Teatro Libertad. They would meet here and talk not just about the next play, but about what was going on in the world,” and how it could be presented to the people.

Recently, Borderlands Theater has begun using the center again for rehearsals and poetry readings, part of an effort to reinvigorate live arts on the campus.

Further reinvestment is also coming from the City of Tucson, including the addition of new family-focused amenities and the overhaul of the grounds.

Through the Storm-to-Shade initiative, the city will replace nearly 18,000 square feet of high-water turf with Sonoran Desert landscaping, install green stormwater basins across roughly 50,000 square feet, and plant more than 90 native trees alongside desert grasses and succulents. Funded by federal dollars and voter-approved Proposition 407, the upgrades aim to bring families back to the site, expand cultural programming, and create a cooler, greener, more water-efficient campus.

Newly elected Ward Five Councilwoman Selina Barajas, who took robotics and parks and recreation classes at El Pueblo growing up, has also been a key member of the El Pueblo 50 team.

“El Pueblo Center is an awesome space to have in Ward Five, so I’m really excited to figure out how we can create more programming out of here” and fill empty office spaces with community-rooted organizations, Barajas said.

Half a century after the center’s founding, the El Pueblo 50 exhibition affirms what longtime residents have always known: their history mattered, even when no one wrote it down. Now, documented and displayed, that story becomes both a reference point and a roadmap, a reminder of how much the Southside has built, and how much it still intends to build for its people.

Alessandra De Zubeldia is a previous James B. Steele fellow in investigative business journalism who recently earned a master’s degree in investigative journalism from ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. She grew up in Guadalajara, Mexico, and has lived in Arizona for over a decade, where she centers her reporting on the voices and experiences of marginalized communities.