Evangelina Michel Genera, known to family and friends as Nina, was born in El Paso, Texas and moved to Sacramento at the age of 12, when her father’s work transferred him. She was recruited to UC Berkeley in the Fall quarter of 1969, following the tumultuous period in American history known as the Third World Strike. As a result of the agreement reached by the University and the TWLF student protestors who preceded her that Fall, not only did the agreement include the development of an Ethnic Studies Department, but, additionally, opened up the floodgates of the University to diversify its student body by accepting 400 new ‘minority’ students (100 slots for each ethnic group), including financial aid through the Educational Opportunity Program. Nina came to Berkeley by way of Sacramento City College and UC Davis, where Francisco Hernandez, a TWLFer, was recruiting Chicano students in the summer of 69, mostly from the Sacramento Valley and participants in the MiniCorps Summer Program, to fill those slots. Nina’s parents were of Mexican descent. Her father worked for Southern Pacific as a railroad worker, and her mom was a domestic worker who took her 4 kids out to the tomato fields every summer to make money for school
clothes. Her father being a traditionalist, would not let Nina leave home without being married. Nina and Fernando Genera, her boyfriend at the time, married quickly, so they could both transfer to Berkeley. At first, Nina thought she was the only one whose parents were so strict, but when they moved to the married student housing at Albany Village, they encountered other Chicano newlyweds who had to do the same, in order to become Cal students.
Coming to Berkeley was a life changing transformation for Nina. The TWLFers embraced the new students and as a united front, continued to ensure that the Third World College would become a reality. The first professors/lecturers of the Ethnic Studies Department were either graduate students or ‘minority’ staff members who were already working at the University in other departments, some of them with degrees, from the various student services departments. Professors had to assemble their own course readers from more appropriate articles, since published works from their own ethnic scholars were scarce.
The struggles between the University and the Ethnic Studies Programs never ceased, but as students grateful for the courageous TWLFers, who put their lives on the line, most of the newbies continued in the struggle. Additionally, in that academic year, ‘69-70, there was no shortage of protests, all centered around social justice and liberation issues. The Vietnam War was raging (Genera co-authored Chicanos and the War with Lea Ybarra, developed Chicano Draft Help, counseled draftees, and performed in Chicana Teatro), the US bombed Cambodia (protests closed the University, Genera attended International Indo-Chinese Women’s Conference in Vancouver), the United Farmworkers were fighting for their human rights, (many of the Third World students came from these agricultural valleys and protested at valley farms), and the fight for prisoners rights was brewing (inception of the Chicano Studies Vacaville Project where Chicano Studies courses were taught to inmates). Nina remembers that her education in her senior year at Berkeley was literally a University Without Walls because students closed down the University in the Spring quarter, 1970, over the bombing of Cambodia. Progressive professors continued holding classes off campus, teaching students how to engage in civil disobedience. Nina acknowledges, “this was the birth of my peaceful form of political protests, which I engaged in for the rest of my academic and professional life, and the engagement of camaraderie, a lifetime of comadrazga, with Lea, Maria, Clementina, Estella, Myrtha Chabran (department chair and professor ‘71-73) and Velia Garcia, especially since we all became educators.”
Nina remembers Velia fondly. “She was the first professional Chicana role model I had ever encountered. She was the first lecturer who taught Chicanos and the Criminal Justice System and I became the Teacher Assistant for her class once I was in graduate school, and then she asked me to become the first Chicano Studies Advisor.” Estella Quintanilla adds that Garcia was the only woman assisting the men in the development of the Ethnic Studies Department during its early years.
Although the handful of Chicano students who graduated in the Spring of 1970 were unable to cross the stage because of the University closure, Nina continued to graduate school in Sociology (Lea Ybarra and Nina Genera were the first Chicana graduate students to be accepted into their PhD program.) Working as the Chicano Studies Advisor gave Nina a new perspective and she decided to simultaneously work on a Masters in Counseling at CSU Hayward. After receiving both Masters in Sociology and Counseling (1973), Nina spent the next 34 years working as a college counselor and professor, her last 31 years at Ohlone College in Fremont, and in advocacy in her local community. In 1993, Nina completed her doctorate degree in International and Multicultural Education at University of San Francisco.
Nina says, “All the education I got at Berkeley was outside the walls of a classroom. My fellow comrades in all the struggles and protests, gave me the confidence and tools to engage in a lifetime of advocacy for the poor, disenfranchised and young students who mirrored my beginnings. Had it not been for the infamous TWLFers, MASCeros and MEChistAs, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. Most of us who were at Berkeley in the last years of the ’60’s and early ’70’s, went on to work in East Oakland and were responsible for starting many of the Chicano agencies that are still in existence.
I’ve always tried to instill empathy, love of friendships, and caring for the vulnerable to my students, my sons and now my 3 grandchildren. And incidentally, the shotgun wedding has lasted 52 years.”
To quote Mayan Tribal Elders, “We have only one Sun to shine upon us equally, one air that we breathe and gives us life, one water that we drink and becomes blood in our veins and we all live on Mother Earth. She feeds us, she holds us. Brothers and Sisters of all colors, together united in meditation to make conscious to those in power, no more war, no more contaminating bombs, no more death. Together we can make a difference.”
And that we have.
In Lak’ech Ala K’in.”
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