About the Event
For our spring event, the MVHA is pleased to partner with the Before Silicon Valley project, a San Jose State University Library initiative focused on chronicling the history of Mexican American cannery and agricultural workers in Santa Clara Valley from the 1920s through 1960s. The Before Silicon Valley team has invited Professor Gregorio Mora-Torres to join us on May 7 at the historic Adobe Building where he will share a talk on the history of Mexican American Civil Rights in Santa Clara Valley. This event is also being held in partnership with our friends at the Los Altos History Museum.
In addition to Dr. Mora-Torres’s talk, MVHA Past President Nick Perry will share a brief overview on the history of Mountain View’s early 20th century Mexican-American neighborhoods: Castro City and the Washington-Jackson neighborhood. Light refreshments will be provided. We expect a good crowd for this one, so be sure to reserve your seat today. We hope to see you there!
About Our Guest Speaker
Professor Gregorio Mora-Torres was born in Michoacan, Mexico, and raised in the Santa Clara Valley. As a youth, he and his siblings worked in agriculture—picking fruit and vegetables in the fields and later working in local canneries during high school and college. When Mora-Torres first went to college in 1972, his goal was to study civil engineering, but he soon discovered a greater talent for history. He graduated from Santa Clara University in 1976 and then went to the University of California, Irvine to pursue a MA and Ph.D. degrees in Latin American history, emphasizing Mexican history. In 1989, Dr. Mora-Torres started working as a lecturer at San Jose State University in the Mexican American Studies Department and stayed until his retirement in fall 2020. In addition to teaching, Dr. Mora-Torres has done extensive research and writing on Northern Mexico and Chicano history. He is now an Emeritus Faculty at San Jose State and a founding board member of the La Raza Historical Society of Santa Clara Valley.
About the Adobe Building
The Great Depression-era Adobe Building was Mountain View’s first community center. In 1934, government work-welfare laborers used adobe bricks made on-site to construct the building’s walls, giving the building its name in the process. The Adobe has seen many diverse community uses over the years. During World War II, it served as a serviceman’s club and hospitality house for veterans. In the 1940s and 1950s it hosted weekly dances for local youth and was known as the “Eagle Shack,” named after the mascot of Mountain View High School on Castro Street. Over the decades the building has hosted countless club meetings, classes, weddings, dances, and parties. In the 1990s, the MVHA led efforts to save the Adobe Building from demolition. It was seismically retrofitted and restored in 2001 and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The MVHA hosts most of its quarterly membership meetings at the Adobe Building.
