Rafael Cintron-Ortiz Cultural Center Records

An inventory of its records at the University of Illinois at Chicago

History of the Rafael Cintron-Ortiz Cultural Center

The Rafael Cintron-Ortiz Cultural Center (RCOCC) was established in 1976 as a permanent site for social, cultural and educational activities of relevance to the large and growing Latino student population at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle. The development of the Center was led by efforts of Latino students, Latin American Studies (LASt) faculty and Latino community groups. The center was named after late professor Rafael Cintron-Ortiz, a Puerto Rican professor who unconditionally supported the creation of the center but was slain a few months before the Center became a reality.

The Center was to provide a home-base for campus Latinos: a place where they could reaffirm and deepen progressive cultural identifications and concerns while enhancing their ability to succeed in the impersonal, bureaucratized environment of a largely non-Latino commuter university; a space where they could increase their understanding of international, national and local Latino issues, while pursuing intellectual, artistic and political interests of value to themselves and to Chicago's Latino communities. The Center has sponsored major local and statewide conferences; it has had a wide variety of film festivals, and has a reputation for helping to underwrite the expense for the most important cultural workers and artists who come to the Chicago area. The Center also hosts a tutoring program; it houses a library of Latin American and U.S. Latino resources and has a computer training center. The Center also publishes and distributes a few publications a year.

At the time of the Center's founding, the Center was a program of Latin American Studies (LASt), in UIC's College of Liberal Arts. The Center was to service LASt and Latin American Recruitment and Educational Services (LARES) students, but to also extend more generally to the total population of UIC Latino students, as well as to Chicago's Latin community. The Center received its basic funding from the Office of Academic Affairs, which pays for the Director and provides a core program budget, which is to serve as the basis for finding matching funds. The Director drives the Center program in conjunction with a Center Board including representatives of such Latino campus organizations and units as: the Association of Latino Workers, the Confederation of Latin American Students (CLAS), LARES, LASt, Unidad Latina, Union of Mexicano-Chicano Students and the Union of Puerto Rican Students. In addition, there is one representative-at-large for Latin American foreign students at UIC.

Scope and Contents

The Rafael Cintron-Ortiz Cultural Center (RCOCC) records contains material documenting the 20th Anniversary Oral History Project; various administrative records including budget material; conference and symposium material; events and programs including Brotherhood Day, Cinco de Mayo, film festivals, Dia de los Muertos and Escucha Mi Grito, various dance, theater and music recitals and concerts; flyers for events; Latin American Studies material; Latin American Recruitment and Educational Services material; information on the 1995-96 Mural Project; various Latino organizations such as the Confederation of Latin American Students (CLAS), Health Oriented Latino Association (HOLA), The Julian Samora Institute, and Mexican Students de Aztlan (Me.S.A.); political activities; publications; and speakers that have visited the Center or University.

Arrangement

The collection is physically arranged in the original order in which it was received. The inventory below has sorted the folders alphabetically.

Related Material

See also: Chancellors Central Files (Record Group 003/01/02), especially material from the Chancellors Committee on the Status of Latinos and the Latin American Recruitment and Educational Services (LARES).

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

[item description, folder, box]. Rafael Cintron-Ortiz Cultural Center Records. Record Group 011/27/02/01. University Archives. University of Illinois at Chicago

Acquisition Information

The records of the Rafael Cintron-Ortiz Cultural Center were transferred to the UIC University Archives in 2004 and accessioned as UA 2004-39.

Processing Information

This collection was processed by Maria Ritzema in 2005.

Bibliography

The preceding information was gathered from the Rafael Cintron-Ortiz Cultural Center's "A Brief History of the RCOCC", the Board of Trustees reports (Record Group 001/01), the Staff Directory (Record Group 002/02/05/00/02), and the RCOCC web site (www.uic.edu/depts/lcc/).

Detailed Description/Box and Folder Listing