History with heart Watsonville’s Filipino community celebrates launch of historical archive
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Courtesy of the Fallorina family
APRIL 15, 2022 | PAJARO VALLEY MAGAZINE
By JOHANNA MILLER
HISTORY SNAPSHOT Mariano Fallorina Jr.
( from left) and brother Dan with their father, Mariano Fallorina Sr. at the San Andreas Road labor camp in September 1958. This photo is one of many featured in Watsonville is in the Heart’s 2022 calendar.
undreds of visitors flocked to the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH) on April 9 to celebrate the launch of a new digital history archive. The Watsonville is in the Heart (WIITH) Digital Archive aims to preserve the histories and contributions of Filipino-Americans in the Pajaro Valley. Kickstarted by the work of the Tobera Project in 2019, the creation of the archive was led by UC Santa Cruz (UCSC) grad students Christina Ayson Plank, Meleia Simon-Reynolds and a team of undergraduates. So far, the ever-growing archive includes 689 objects from 12 family collections, with oral histories, photographs, artifacts, family heirlooms, newspaper articles and more.
