Latino Northfield is a public humanities project that documents, preserves, and shares the stories, initiatives, and contributions of Latinx/a/o/e communities in Northfield, Minnesota. It brings together oral histories, archival materials, and community narratives to create a freely accessible digital resource for residents, educators, researchers, and future generations.

Northfield, a rural city of around 22,000 residents located 40 miles south of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Pauls, is often recognized for its colleges and vibrant civic life in southern Minnesota, but another important dimension of its history deserves greater visibility. Today, approximately 12 percent of Northfield’s residents identify as Hispanic or Latino, reflecting decades of migration, community building, entrepreneurship, cultural leadership, and civic engagement. Families from Mexico, Colombia, Central America, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, and many other parts of Latin America have helped shape the social, economic, educational, artistic, and cultural fabric of the city. Yet many of these experiences remain scattered across personal memories, community organizations, local archives, and everyday interactions rather than being documented in publicly accessible spaces.

Rather than presenting a single narrative of what it means to be Latino in Minnesota, the project embraces the diversity of experiences that coexist within the community. Latinidad in the United States is not a fixed identity but a broad constellation of languages, histories, cultures, migration experiences, generations, and traditions. The project also contributes to a broader conversation about how local history is preserved and whose voices become part of the historical record. Archives and other public memory institutions have traditionally reflected only part of a community’s experience. Community histories often survive through family photographs, neighborhood organizations, oral traditions, radio programs, churches, schools, and cultural initiatives long before they appear in official collections. By documenting these materials and experiences, Latino Northfield recognizes that community knowledge is itself an important form of historical knowledge.

For this reason, the project combines multiple kinds of sources. Visitors will find oral history interviews with community members, information about organizations and initiatives serving Latino residents, selections from archival collections at the Northfield History Center, historical materials from local Spanish-language radio programming, and documentation of cultural, educational, and civic initiatives that continue to shape community life. Together, these materials provide a richer and more nuanced picture of Latino life in Northfield across time.

The project is grounded in the principles of community-engaged learning and oral history. Our team of St. Olaf College students worked collaboratively with community members to learn from their experiences, recognizing that every participant has the authority to define which parts of their story they wished to share. Throughout the project, students also reflected on ethical questions surrounding consent, privacy, and respectful representation, understanding that preserving community narratives carries responsibilities toward the people who make those narratives possible.

At the same time, Latino Northfield serves as a learning experience for undergraduate researchers. Students developed skills in oral history methodology, archival research, community engagement, digital humanities, bilingual writing, collaborative research, and public scholarship. More importantly, they built meaningful relationships with community members. In this sense, the project demonstrates how research can become a reciprocal process in which universities not only study communities but also learn alongside them while creating resources that remain publicly accessible.

We invite you to explore these stories, learn from the people and organizations featured here, and recognize the many ways Latino communities continue to enrich the cultural landscape of Northfield and Southern Minnesota. We hope this project will continue to grow through future collaborations among students, educators, community organizations, cultural institutions, and residents.

– Prof. Américo Mendoza-Mori

Learn more about the team members, here. 

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This project is possible thanks to the support the Collaborative Undergraduate Research and Inquiry (CURI) program and the TRIO McNair Scholars Program at St. Olaf College.

We also thank the community members, organizations and people who generously offered their time shared advice, information, guidance:

Northfield Public Library, Northfield History Center, Neighborhoods United / Barrios Unidos, Svoboda Center for Civic Engagement, Digital Scholarship Center (DiSCO), The Taylor Center, Department of Romance Languages

Norma Charlton, Prof. Jill Dietz, Erin Eltonga, Prof. Louis Epstein, Erika Gómez, Vladimir Garrido-Biagetti, Claudia González-George, Prof. Rehanna Kheshgi, Angelica Linder, Prof. Kristina Medina-Vilariño, Alyssa Melby, Melissa Melgar, Kathy Ness, Prof. Amanda Randall, Prof. Mariana Reyes-Pagán, Prof. Jonathan O’Conner, Magaly Ortiz-Arend, Ezra Plemons, Mar Valdecantos, Alexis Valeriano, Christine Whear.