In their multimedia project, por vida // for life, UC Berkeley Geography and Conservation Studies senior Jacqueline Canchola-Martinez documents the lived experiences of Latinx communities facing environmental injustice in the Central Valley. The College of Natural Resources Travel Grant, a LIFT Arts Development Grant, and the Brian Gialketsis SERQueer Scholarship helped make the project possible.
Canchola-Martinez noted that the funding is special in recognizing art as a research tool, since it is still relatively new to most disciplines. Funding has supported Canchola-Martinez’s travel back to the Central Valley where they grew up, purchasing their own camera and sound recording equipment for the first time. Their multimedia senior honors project will include a sequence of photographs, edited field recordings and an essay presented on a website they designed.
Berkeley Social Sciences spoke with Canchola-Martinez about the project’s creation, their goals, and how the grants are supporting their project. This interview has been edited for clarity.
Please tell us more about your background and what led you to UC Berkeley.
Jacqueline Canchola-Martinez: I was born and raised in the San Joaquin Valley of California between the towns of Visalia and Tulare. In high school, I became more attuned to racial and environmental issues around me, especially those related to agriculture, labor and immigration. I came to college interested in environmental justice, which I felt I could explore well at UC Berkeley. I started off as an Environmental Science major, but found my way to the Conservation & Resource Studies and Geography programs by the end of my first year.
What inspired you to create this project?
Jacqueline Canchola-Martinez: I would point to the work of both of my academic mentors. I took two classes called Visual Geographies and Geographic Film Production with Geography Lecturer Joel Wanek, which apart from technical skills in photography and film, taught me about how to tune in to and make art about landscapes. That felt exciting.
I also was happy when Geography Professor Tianna Bruno joined the geography department in my junior year. I remember going to her job talk in Spring 2023 and her approach to racial ecologies really resonated. She was highlighting practices of care and “quiet” resistance to environmental injustices by Black communities in Texas, which is where she’s from. I was interested in how both of these approaches could be combined in a Central Valley context. With inspiration and valuable feedback from both of these mentors, I’ve spent the school year working on this project.
What was your reaction to receiving funding for this project?
Jacqueline Canchola-Martinez: I am very thankful for the funding and interest this project has received. Using art as a research tool is still relatively new to most disciplines, so it's always a hope it will be understood. Definitely the LIFT grant from the Arts Research Center is an honor since it's the inaugural cohort and the other recipients are all very talented artists and scholars, and mostly M.F.A’s and Ph.D’s.
It also feels full circle since one of the reasons I came to Berkeley was because of the sheer amount of opportunities in environmental studies, which I think is reflected in the travel support from the College of Natural Resources and the generosity of the Student Environmental Resource Center's scholarship programs. These have helped me fund my travel back to the Central Valley, as well as purchase my own camera and sound recording equipment for the first time.
Can you tell me more about the project’s title?
Jacqueline Canchola-Martinez: I chose the name, “por vida,” which in English is “for life,” because it represents the intention of this project in just a couple of words: to honor Latinx life, care, survival and joy in the Valley. It felt most natural in this Spanish-English hybrid (I speak a lot of Spanglish) but it’s also an insistence on a name that speaks to the communities I am documenting, rather than exclusively English-speaking academics.
What does the process of the project look like?
Jacqueline Canchola-Martinez: There are the artistic parts of the project, sound and photography, which look like going into the field and documenting places of interest in and around Tulare County. I’m interested in spots that let me in on the landscape’s history, the ecology and Latinx spaces of recreation/work/pleasure/refuge.
So much of this artistic process is also speaking and listening to the people (mostly strangers) I meet along the way, and in a couple of cases, the friends and family I’ve chosen to interview. I’ve gone home many weekends by train, and once with a crew, to do this. Another aspect of my work has been reading theory and history, which I really value in terms of seeing where my work fits in and what connections I can make. For example, there’s a lot to learn from Black geographic thought (Latinx geographies have definitely followed their lead as a discipline). And then finally, I’ve been writing a bit to synthesize everything. My paper is a hybrid somewhere between a research paper and an extended artist statement.
What do you hope por vida // for life's impact will be?
Jacqueline Canchola-Martinez: As a piece of research work, I hope this will bring more attention to the lived experiences of Latin American immigrants and their families in the Central Valley, particularly in a way that emphasizes their ability to shape the spaces they inhabit rather than just the harm they face from environmental injustice.
Artistically, I hope one thing this can bring is what one of my teachers, Geography Lecturer Diana Negrín refers to as “dignified visibility.” You could say it’s a way of representing people in a way that emphasizes their agency, done with care and intention. So far, I’ve been happy with the way the work is being received in the field, which is what matters to me the most I think. There’s just a sense of pride that seems to surface for folks — be it my dad, the group of Delano grape workers I met recently, or the salvadoreña restaurant owner I spoke with in Pixley, Calif. They’re taken aback at first to be the muse of the project, but then are very open and generous with sharing their stories. That’s really special.
