An image of Davis Dam. Located within Pyramid Canyon between Arizona and Nevada, Davis Dam was constructed on the Colorado River 67 miles downstream from Hoover Dam. Due to the Mexican Treaty of 1944, the United States was required to construct Davis Dam for regulation of water to be delivered to Mexico.
Oral history interview with Sandra Gray conducted by Elsa Lopez and Barbara Tabach on December 13, 2019 for the Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada Oral History Project. In this interview, Dr. Gray discusses her family history, and describes how her parents are immigrants from Durango, Mexico and moved from East Los Angeles, California to East Las Vegas, Nevada in 1991. After getting her bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) she started a behavioral health agency that provided rehabilitative mental health services to children primarily in the foster care system. She went on to earn a master's degree in mental health counseling, a master's in psychology, and a doctoral degree in clinical psychology. She is the founder of Empower LV, which strives for equitable access to sports and tutoring. Dr. Sandra Gray is also the owner and operator of Innovation Behavioral Health Solutions, LLC.
Oral history interview with Adela Montes De Oca conducted by Laurents Banuelos-Benitez on December 06, 2018 for the Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada Oral History Project. Adela Montes De Oca discusses her early life in Mexico and describes her childhood as a happy and festive one. As an adult, Montes De Oca aspired to be a teacher, but could not due to financial hardship. She shares how this affected her life and influenced her career choice, instead becoming a social worker. Montes De Oca recalls what she learned after spending twenty years working with children in Mexican orphanages. In 2003, Montes De Oca decided to move to Las Vegas, Nevada to join her family who had immigrated years prior. She discusses her immigration and her new career in Las Vegas. She shares her views on the importance of unions and her experiences working with the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 as an event organizer and union manager.
Interviewed by Barbara Tabach. Born in Mexico, Francisco was a child when his father received permission to immigrate to the US with his younger children. Upon graduating from high school in California, he moved to Las Vegas where one of his sisters lived. It was 1994 and jobs were plentiful; he would find his way through several positions. Then in early 2000 he was hired to be a dishwasher, on the graveyard, at the recently opened Paris Hotel. It was a Culinary Union job; by 2002 he was a shop steward and finding better positions at Paris. He continues to work at the Paris Hotel as a fry cook. In 2008, he was a citizen and proudly voted in his first presidential election.
Horacio Lopez was born on January 12, 1938, in Cordova, New Mexico to Elias and Cordelia Lopez. Lopez describes his hometown as self-sufficient and self-reliant and that his family grew their own food and raised livestock. His father only received a second-grade education and worked as a miner.
The success of "El Mundo," the largest Spanish-language weekly newspaper in Las Vegas, is indicative of the tremendous increase in the Hispanic population. El Mundo was started in 1980 by Eddie Escobedo, a Las Vegas born in Torreon, Mexico. Escobedo served at Nellis Air Base during the 1950's and decided to make Las Vegas his home. Escobedo is assisted above by his son, Eddie Jr.