Oral History Collaborations

In this interview recorded via Zoom, Dioscoro "Roy" Respino Recio Jr. speaks with Toby Baylon and Nicholas Nasser, two members of the Watsonville is in the Heart project team. Recio details his experience growing up in Watsonville in the late 1960s and 1970s. In particular, he discusses his experience growing up with a disability in a low-income, working class neighborhood of Watsonville known as Mesa Village. He also discusses his father's immigration history from the Philippines to the United States to pursue work as an agricultural laborer. Recio details his mother's experience as a mixed-race Filipina who grew up in an orphanage. He also details his work as a community organizer in San Francisco working for the Manilatown Heritage Foundation, San Francisco Veterans Equity Center, and the Displaced Airport Screener program. Recio explains how his trajectory led him to founding The Tobera Project and establishing the Watsonville is in the Heart research project with the University of California, Santa Cruz.