Alondra Flores: What was your first encounter with women’s history?

Maria Cuevas: I like to say that I came in through the back door, because I didn’t know a thing about women’s history. I grew up in a household– my mom was a single mom, she had very little education, she worked in the fields as a farm worker, and later on she did factory work.

We were pretty poor. I was the middle child, I was very quiet and shy, but I found that I was good in school and so I started to become very focused on just getting a very good education and a good job, and maybe becoming a social worker. Having a job and steady income was very important to me.

 I worked my way through Cal State LA College as a sociology major. I was also working at the same time. At that time college was low cost compared to today’s college costs and I lived just a few blocks away from Cal State LA.

 After graduation, I received a grant for two-year masters in Vocational Rehabilitation Counseling for disabled people. The promise of a Masters Degree in counseling was something I very much appreciated.

At the same time I became involved with the Chicano movement that was happening at Cal State LA.  Students at Lincoln High School, and Garfield High School were protesting by walk outs of school. This was where I lived in East LA and I joined the 1970 walkout and protest.  

This is where I got my first experience with police coming down on me, spraying at me, and me running like heck to get out of there and getting really scared about “Gee the cops really aren’t on our side”. Not that we were doing anything wrong.

I worked my way through college as quickly as possible; I just wanted to get out of there. I got married when I was twenty, and the marriage lasted for six years. The guy ended up being an alcoholic.  It was a really hard marriage for me– very disappointing and I divorced him.

Finally I earned my Master’s Degree. I had this wonderful job with the California State Department of Rehabilitation. I was twenty four years old. I had a sign on my door with my name on it, and I worked there for seven or eight years.

Then I began to fall apart, I had a mental breakdown and wondered who I am? What am I doing? Deep inside, I realized that I had denied something very important to me – music.

Playing and singing music was always a joy. By the time I was twelve years old, I had taught myself to play guitar by ear. When I’d babysit my cousins I’d take the guitar over there and all we did was sing,  I would just find songs on the radio and learn how to play the song by ear.

I had a Mexican uncle who played a lot of Mexican rancheros and Mexican folk music, and my aunt Isabelle and he would sing Spanish and Mexican songs. And so I had that experience in the back of my head, but because I was so interested in having a steady job and a steady career. At the time, I pushed down the music.

When I began having my breakdown, I was only twenty six years old. That’s when I realized that the music wanted to come out of me. And at the same time I felt broken.

 I moved to Sonoma County where my aunt and uncle and four cousins lived. I was very close to them and they had what I thought of as a Disneyland family.  In 1978, I moved in with them to heal and what came out was the music.

As I was healing, I couldn’t work. I had quit the job at the State Department. In Sonoma County I met Cristina Briano, who was Ecuadorian and played the same kind of music that I did; Joan Baez, Judy Collins, the folk music at the time. We both sang and played guitar, we’d harmonize together, and we also knew some Spanish and Latin songs from our childhood and background.

So in ‘78 or ‘79, we tried auditioning and playing at different restaurants and bars. We called ourselves DeColores and sang in English and Spanish. It’s not like we were making any money. We didn’t do it because of money.  I was unemployed  and looking for a job, and getting some jobs here and there but nothing I really liked. We were playing at a restaurant and that’s where I met Molly MacGregor  Molly  had heard about this Latina duo playing music in this place. She asked if we–Cristina and I, could perform at her first Women’s History Week Parade.

We were surprised and didn’t understand what she was asking. I had never heard of feminism, I hadn’t been into any of that stuff. I was just a poor person who had gotten a good education, who wanted to make a good living. I had experienced the discrimination of the Latino community– but now this was about women. Women were having these problems too, and now it was like “duh”. And I hadn’t recognized it. I didn’t get the subtle discrimination that was happening while I was going to school, college, and work.  

We played at this Women’s History Parade, and I became friends with Molly. Before I even met Molly and her friends that included Paula Hammett, Mary Ruthsdotter and Bette Morgan, they were baking cookies to raise gas  money to be able to take the Multicultural Women’s History Slide Show to  different parts of California. They’d get in the car, all four of them and drive to Sacramento, Santa Cruz, and San Jose. They performed like a readers’ theater! They were just amazing and so into understanding the importance of promoting women’s history. They weren’t even getting paid!

Miraculously, Molly received a grant from the US Department of Education. The grant wasn’t enough to fund all that needed to be done, but it was a beginning. Staff could be hired, curriculum could be developed and a national promotion for multicultural women’s history could begin. 

Molly knew that I had a master’s degree and she asked if I would take on a part time office job.   She, Bette, Paula, and Mary would be focusing on developing and promoting women’s history and they needed an office manager. At the time, I was  trying to go for this really good job at Sonoma State as a financial aid counselor. I would’ve been set for life, but. I didn’t get the job. So I went back to Molly saying “What is this part time job?” and “How do you do this?  I figured, I must be able to do this. I have a master’s degree. How can I not do this?

I had no idea of all the nonstop work that the job would entail. I had said yes out of humility.  I decided that for the first time in my life I’d take a risk. All aspects of what was supposed to be a part-time job changed my life.  I had always felt like I needed to be a balanced moderate person. Yet, I gave my all to this Women’s History Project. I worked my butt off to take one step at a time at how to become a non-profit, how to set up health insurance for your staff, and how to do payroll. I just took it one day at a time. And it probably came from all of the skills I got from college and taking tests, doing homework, doing papers, I started to get what the feminism thing that we’re talking about is, what the whole movement was all about.  What was supposed to be part time became more than full time. At the same time I continued to do my music with my band De Colores,

De Colores continued our music for 45 years with three CD’s. Cristina and I would always be the duo and always bring in different musicians over the years. We never made a living out of it, but we brought fun, joy, and connection whenever we played.

After the first year of getting the grant, we wrote curriculum, identified and developed women’s history resources videos and established a mail-order catalog business. We needed to constantly expand to ensure that our work could continue. Our first office was made possible by Nell Codding whose family owned Coddingtown mall in Santa Rosa. This old office was upstairs and was kind of funky. Nobody wanted to rent it, so we rented for a dollar a month.

The four of us (Bette, Mary, Molly, and me worked in our jeans and T-shirts. We were in our late 20s and early 30s with unceasing energy and the ability to work day and night. We worked to create anything that would acknowledge and promote women’s history. We were all just following Molly’s genius. She had these visions and she had lots of ideas, to change the world, and she needed us.  You know it takes a village. We were a team, we were a collective group and we were joined by generous, skilled volunteers who helped make our success possible. As our work expanded, I was in awe of having this opportunity in my young life.  I was so grateful that I was able to use all my skills to move the NWHP forward. I still remember when I said to myself “take a chance and “Let’s see what could happen over here.”

For over 18 years, I continued to work more than full-time with the Women’s History Project. I will always be grateful for all that I was able to do and learn. My work with the National Women’s History Project has never ended. It has just become more musical than mathematical. I learned what it means to be a feminist and I’m so much more aware of so many other things. I know that identity has many aspects as a woman, as a Latina, as a Democrat, as a musician and in countless ways that we chose to define ourselves. DeColores, the band I established with Cristina Briano  almost fifty years ago, retired a few years ago.

Music continues to sustain me. I continue to explore different spiritual ideas and teachings as I seek the right one for me. I still play guitar, but mostly I’m singing a capella. I have joined an amazing group of women.  We are the Threshold Choir. We sing to dying people in hospice at their bedsides. Doing this is so important in keeping my music vibrant and alive.

Flores: You mentioned that at the first parade you were asked to perform, in the parades that came after did you also play or were you more involved in planning? What was your favorite part of the parade?

Cuevas: What happened was that Molly gave me that job. And yes we planned the parades every year as part of what we were doing with the Women’s History Project. My band played every year at the parade, as well as for all kinds of non-profit functions for the Women’s History Project as well as play all over the community. We were known for being social advocates and change makers and usually we played for free. Cristian and I had full time jobs, so we never got paid. It was a love of ours and the music was always intertwined with my work at the Women’s History Project.

The first Women’s History Parade in 1978 was relatively small. When we approached the City of Santa Rosa for a parade permit for our Women’s History Parade, they had no idea what we’re talking about. Since we couldn’t get a permit for the parade, we marched on the sidewalk. We began at Santa Rosa Junior College and marched to the center of Santa Rosa, which is CourtHouse Square. 

The parade was led by the Women’s Auxiliary of the American Legion carrying the flags. They were followed by Supervisors Helen Rudee and Helen Putnam, (the only two women serving on the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors) followed by a contingent of Girl Scouts and many dozens of parade marchers.  

Molly had asked Cristina and me to show up at CourtHouse Square and perform as an introduction to the planned program. What none of us had counted on was that the parade would take only about 10 minutes to arrive at CourtHouse Square. We were just beginning to set up our music system.  Additionally, the other musicians who were supposed to be part of the program lived in Berkeley and they were very late in arriving.

Immediately, Cristiana and I, and we set up our own little sound system. I had my microphones and speakers and stuff because music was very important to me, but my  sound system was a little funky. Molly, in a state of panic, said “Start singing!” and “Keep singing, because the other performers aren’t here yet!” So we just kept singing songs over and over again in Spanish. We were new and we didn’t even know that many songs yet. We had just started our band.

Molly said, our music saved the day because the parade continued to joyfully march in time with the music around the very large raised park-like platform which encircled  Courthouse Square.  The parade procession continued for almost an hour and it grew in numbers and excitement.  Once the program began, it was a huge success. The speakers were inspiring and the finale was beyond our wildest dreams. This extraordinary event ended with the Santa Rosa Baptist choir rockin  CourtHouse Square with belting an inspiring versions of “She Has the Whole World in Her Hands.

Every year the Parade took on more significance. In March of 1979, the Brookwood Junior High School Marching Band participated with hundreds of contingents marching down the middle of Santa Rosa’s major street. In addition to very important political people like Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, who had participated in the very first parade. The City of Santa Rosa and the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors supported us.   

We could not have imagined at that time that the 20 anniversary of our work would be honored, recognized, and celebrated in Statuary Hall in our nation’s capital. I am very happy to say that after all these years that Molly MacGregor is still my best friend.