The Fight for UCSB’s Las Maestras Center 

After facing a possible shutdown, students and faculty from UC Santa Barbara’s Las Maestras Center organized a petition and demonstration demanding the university save the cultural center, which has been a hub for Chicano/Chicana art and academia since 2017.

The center, tucked into a small room in South Hall across from Storke Tower, was originally founded by two legendary UCSB professors, Celia Herrera Rodríguez and Cherríe Moraga, as a dedicated space where Chicano and Indigenous students could come together. 

The two “maestras” had a unique vision for physical location where creative projects and research-based studies could blend, said Micaela Díaz-Sánchez, a Chicana and Latina Performance Studies professor.

Moraga — a highly celebrated writer who made her mark in the Chicana feminist movement — had a magical ability to get students to reconnect with their creative sides, Díaz-Sánchez explained. “Cherríe always taught theatre as a way of knowing, as a research methodology,” she said. “She had a saying: ‘You know more than you know you know.’”

Under the pair, the center became a cross-divisional haven where daydreaming artists and data-wired research students could mingle. It also became a welcome nexus for a diverse range of events focused on Latin American, feminist, and queer experiences.

“Las Maestras Center has been the space where that kind of thing can happen, thanks to Cherríe and Celia,” Díaz-Sánchez said.

But when both cofounders retired recently — Moraga two years ago and Herrera Rodriguez earlier this year — the future of the center became uncertain. Without the two leaders, students and faculty kept up its spirit but did not get much support from the university.

This made students and faculty worry that the center would succumb to the same pressures faced by other cultural spaces, such as UCSB’s MultiCultural Center and El Centro in downtown Santa Barbara, which have faced their own fights to stay open. All three locations are known for their history of social activism and student advocacy.

“There are lots of fights and struggles around space at the university,” said Chicano Studies Professor Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval. “These are spaces that don’t always obey, and these spaces are marginalized because they are seen as transgressive.”

The university recently told organizers that Las Maestras Center is “subject for termination” and asked that they return the keys by June 30. The group pushed back on the administration’s assertion that the room wasn’t being used as frequently since the departure of its two cofounders. While the space has never been institutionalized with a permanent staff or funding, they said, it has survived through a collective of community members who program events, organize seminars, and update the group’s social media accounts.

On May 26, students and faculty held a town hall meeting on campus, where people shared memories and brainstormed a plan to save the space. Graduate student John Jairo Valencia helped lead the charge by organizing a petition and letter-writing campaign. Valencia originally applied to UCSB after encouragement from professor Herrera Rodríguez, and upon joining Las Maestras, says it became like a second home.

“I see the center as a space that bridges community, campus life, research, and art-making,” Valencia said. “As a visual artist and creative writer, it nurtured my creativity, which is vital to research.”

Valencia led a series of workshops around cultural practices, such as making Día de los Muertos altars, that helped students reconnect with their heritage on a level not possible through other campus activities. These workshops inspired other grad students to branch off and organize their own events connected to research projects.

“They go out and interact with the community, and I see that process of artwork as research on the ground,” Valencia said. “Cultural work is not always seen as valuable quantifiable knowledge.”

On June 2, with the future of Las Maestras still up in the air, the group hosted a campus demonstration. Undergrads, faculty, and upperclassmen gathered outside Storke Tower to sing songs, share testimonies, and marched to make some noise outside the administrative offices at Cheadle Hall.

“We did the demonstration because we just wanted to put the message out there that there’s a whole community of folks that want the center to stay open,” Valencia said.

The group also gathered outside the office of UCSB Chancellor Dennis Assanis, putting up posters and calling on him to come out. While the chancellor did not address the group, the demonstrators received a surprise message from Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts Daina Ramey Berry, who said the university would keep the center open. 

Students and faculty celebrated the win as proof that the administration heard their message, loud and clear. But there was still a sense that the fight is not over, that there is still a long road ahead to getting the space permanently recognized and funded.

Las Maestras still relies on volunteers to keep things running, and Valencia said it is important to build a stronger foundation to prevent the center from falling under the radar again. “Now that we have space, we need leadership, we need a budget, and we need a director,” he said.

The faculty who watched students lead the movement to save Las Maestras said they are glad to know on-campus activism at UCSB is still alive and well. Professor Armbruster-Sandoval said he was proud to watch as a fly on the wall. “In less than a week, this went from the stinging defeat ‘hand me your keys’ to victory — all through this student-led movement,” he said.