Award-winners hope to inspire students

The MacArturos – well, some of them – are coming to Cal State Monterey Bay.

Each year since 1981, the MacArthur Foundation has given no-strings-attached grants to individuals who show exceptional merit and promise of continued creative work. The recipients come from all fields. The awards have become known as “genius grants.”

Latino awardees banded together as the MacArturos, with the goal of supporting each other’s activist efforts and sharing their work with la comunidad, according to the website of writer Sandra Cisneros, who organized the first meeting in San Antonio in 1997.

The group originally came together as a reunion, to inspire Latino youth. Over the years, meetings have been held in San Jose, Los Angeles, Toledo and Chicago.

Ten Latino MacArthur Fellows will visit CSUMB on Jan. 26. In a roundtable format at the World Theater, they will provide insight into their influences, inspirations and practices.

Dr. Amalia Mesa-Bains, a retired faculty member at CSUMB and a 1992 MacArthur Fellow, invited the group to campus.

“For some time, I have wanted to have the MacArturos come here because I know they will be inspirational for our students – the majority of whom are the first in their family to attend college, and more than a third of whom are Latino,” Dr. Mesa-Bains said.

“I think they are engaging for all students, but serve as special role models for our Latino students.”

The free event will start at 6 p.m. in the World Theater on Sixth Avenue near A Street. The public is invited.

The group will participate in a public event in Salinas before heading to campus. The next day, they will travel to San Francisco for events in the Mission District.

Attendees:

• Amalia Mesa-Bains, artist, educator, cultural rights advocate and professor emerita at CSUMB

• Baldemar Velasquez, farm worker organizer and labor leader

• Camilo Vergara, documentary photographer

• Ruth Behar, cultural anthropologist

• Eva Harris, molecular biologist focused on diseases in Central and South America

• Guillermo Gomez-Pena, performance artist and writer

• Hugo Morales, public media leader, migrant rights advocate, executive director of Radio Bilingue, and member of the California State University Board of Trustees

• Joan Abrahamson, community development leader and director of the Jefferson Institute

• Mauricio Miller, social services innovator

• Natalia Almada, filmmaker

Learn more about the MacArthur Fellows

Photos, top to bottom: Amalia Mesa-Bains, Ruth Behar, Camilo Vergara, Hugo Morales