Born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, senior University of Memphis student Pablo Avila spent much of his youth helping impoverished communities.
After graduating high school, he continued this path moving to Mexico serving different neighborhoods by building houses and community centers and working in rehab centers and orphanages.
“Doing this work opened my eyes and my love and passion for culture, people and communities,” he said. “So, it made me look into anthropology programs, which is now my major, because it studies exactly that.”
His brother lived in Memphis at the time, so Avila made the big move to America, enrolling at the UofM.
As an immigrant, Avila wanted to give a voice to the local Latino immigrant community in the city to counter negative narratives. It’s what spurred his idea for an oral history project to interview other Latinos who immigrated to Memphis and to showcase the impact they’ve had in the city.
Last year, Avila was elected to the National Humanities Center (NHC) Leadership Council, one of 34 students selected from a national application pool and has been invited to present his final oral history project to the NHC’s faculty fellows, board of directors and council members.
He began conducting the work his junior year interviewing individuals like UofM alumna Angela Trillo (’14), founder of the Amigo Community Center of America and the transformative power that centers like these have had in the communities they serve.
“Having gone through this journey myself, this project was very close to my heart,” Avila said. “I wanted to highlight the stories of the people that I had interviewed from a previous project and bring forward their voices to show that each immigration story looks different and to change the narrative that I felt like described us.”
Supported by the Benjamin L. Hooks Library’s 901Voices program, Avila’s project can be accessed on Dig Memphis, the digital archives of the Memphis Public Libraries.
Avila said he’s thankful for the opportunity’s mentors like Department of English Professor Dr. Donal Harris have provided to allow a project of this scope to be possible.
“Pablo is more than a great student; he’s an example of the real-world impact that humanities research can have on our city,” said Harris, director of the Marcus W. Orr Center for the Humanities. “He took ideas from his coursework about the social forces that shape a city’s history and future growth, and he worked with two local organizations to document how and why different individuals chose to make Memphis their home. His oral histories will be a resource for future generations of researchers, which is wonderful. But because they occurred through the Humanities Leadership Council, they also show people from outside of Memphis that UofM students are doing top-notch work.”
