Fifty years after its founding, Tucson’s El Pueblo Neighborhood Center is being celebrated as more than a community hub, it’s a symbol of Southside resilience, where generations have gathered, learned and organized for change.

The El Pueblo 50 exhibition opens Saturday, featuring archival photos, oral histories and art installations that honor the neighborhood center’s history and reimagine its role in shaping a resilient future for Tucson’s Southside. The exhibit is a collaboration between the Sunnyside Foundation, the office of Congressman Raúl Grijalva and several University of Arizona affiliates.

Opened to the public in 1975, El Pueblo Center, or “The Village,” includes several recreation centers, Pima Community College’s Adult Basic Education Learning Center and the Frank De La Cruz–El Pueblo Library.

It also houses El Rio and Clinica Amistad, as well as the Emerge “Su Futuro” office.

Newly elected Ward 5 Tucson City Councilwoman Selina Barajas has worked with the Sunnyside Foundation for several years and has a personal connection to El Pueblo.

“I used to take my folklórico class here in this multi-purpose room. I remember coming to hear Lorraine Lee speak in Spanish and English. Hearing her speak was so powerful at youth,” she said during an exhibit preview event Thursday. “I posted an article on Facebook in 2009 on how this neighborhood center was starting to deteriorate. I posted how I was studying urban planning at that time at UCLA and I hoped to return back home. I always knew that I was going to come back and reinvest in our Pueblo Center and try to uplift it.”

Years later, in 2022, Barajas began discussing the idea of archiving stories from the El Pueblo Neighborhood Center with the University of Arizona’s Jacqueline Barrios and Kenny Wong. With support from the Sunnyside Foundation, she helped write grants for reinvestment projects and created new programming for the center.

She also contributed to an exhibit display board titled “Generaciones de Cuidado/Generations of Care,” which highlights how crucial El Pueblo is as a gathering space and the legacy it carries for future generations.

“It’s a relaunch, a reactivation of the space,” Barajas said.

Barrios, a professor in the UA College of Humanities, has collaborated with the Sunnyside Foundation on similar projects, including ¡Fiesta Fotográfica! in 2023.

“We were really interested in this idea of place and the intersection of planning and investments,” Barrios said. “Selina mentioned that the Sunnyside Foundation was approaching reinvestment work here at El Pueblo, and that this could be a place where we could really build research and story exchange.”

Barrios teaches a class called “Innovation and the Human Condition: Learning How to Improve Life in the Community and Beyond.”

Last semester, her class focused on “Southside Stories of Environmental Resilience” and how the Trichloroethylene water contamination crisis impacted Tucson’s Southside from the 1940s to the present.

“I learned that so many of our students are actually from the Southside and have become invisibilized in many ways on our campus,” Barrios said. “If I'm going to teach at this campus, it should be about connecting back to these neighborhoods.”

Researching the El Pueblo project, however, was not straightforward, as much of its history cannot be found online. Barrios said the best way to uncover the center’s history was by speaking directly with community members, including Beki Quintero, who shared her story about the TCE crisis and how it sparked an environmental justice movement.

“You have to spend time with the place, and you have to find time for people,” Barrios said. “You start building that history. What we’ve been really trying to do is create a systematic way so that when people want to know about it, we can start with a timeline, look at a map and have themes that organize it.”

Wong, a lecturer in the UA College of Architecture, developed a poster titled “Entorno Construido/Built Environment,” highlighting the architecture of the community center.

“As somebody coming from the university and thinking about the built environment, the design of space, involving residents and neighbors and community members, shaping their sense of home and place is so important,” Wong said.

The exhibit also features artists working in a variety of mediums that align with the 50th anniversary celebration.

UA alumna Jessica Wolff serves as the artist-in-residence for the project. Her photographs hang in the corridor outside the office of former representative Grijalva, who once served as director of the community center and was a longtime advocate for its restoration.

“Even though I'm from Tucson, I pass by this building every day and never stepped foot in it,” Wolff said. “I came in ready to learn about the center and learn the impact it had on culture here and the arts.”

Wolff said she was inspired by the murals of David Tineo, which appear throughout the El Pueblo Center. Before beginning her work, she listened to Barrios’ interviews with community members about the center’s history.

A combination of art and oral history inspired her pieces, now displayed in the courtyard. Her favorite work is titled “Viva El Pueblo.”

“When I was first brought on, I went to one of Jacqueline’s lectures, and it was when Raúl Grijalva was sharing about the neighborhood center,” Wolff said. “One of the things he had spoken about was how they were distributing food boxes and how important it was to provide that service. Some people were hesitant for the help, so he asked Teatro Libertad to perform while people waited in line for their food boxes.”

“Viva El Pueblo” captures that moment, depicting a dancer in front of boxes of food.

“(Grijalva) said, ‘How do you provide a service while still making a statement?’ So that’s what that image speaks of,” Wolff said. “What do you look at? Not at those food boxes.”

Lizzy Guevara Golden, the exhibition designer, met Barrios while working on the Center for Creative Photography exhibit “Louis Carlos Bernal: Retrospectivita Chiquita.”

“Being able to work with the building and highlight the spaces, I think, was really important,” Golden said. “Taking from the environment, I worked with the murals to pull colors and reflect on the time that this place was built.”

Golden’s vision for the exhibit pairs those themes with the center’s midcentury design.

“Part of the exhibition’s design was having rainwater harvesting demo gardens,” Golden said. “I feel like that’s something we don’t necessarily see on the Southside. It’s about resiliency, and it’s about reinvestment.”

Golden said the believes the project captures the significance of the space.

“History matters, community stories are important, and places like this facilitate celebration,” Golden said.

Saturday’s exhibit launch celebration includes a tree dedication at 1 p.m., an open house from 2 to 5 p.m. and a reception from 5 to 9 p.m.

The exhibit will run through Jan. 18. For more information and a full schedule of the event, visit sunnysidefoundation.org/elpueblo50

“My hope is that it just sparks more storytelling, more memory sharing — all the ways in which all of us are actually really responsible for telling the story,” Barrios said.

Topacio “Topaz” Servellon is a reporter with Tucson Spotlight. Contact them at topacioserve@gmail.com.

Tucson Spotlight is a community-based newsroom that provides paid opportunities for students and rising journalists in Southern Arizona. Please consider supporting our work with a tax-deductible donation.