Luis Torres' lifelong dream to chair a Chicano studies department was fulfilled at Metro State.

Luis Torres’ eyes light up like luminarias when he takes a book off the shelf in his second-floor corner office in the Rectory Building and gently opens it.

For someone who loves literature—his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. are in English literature—these books represent not just the growth of Latino literature in America, but also the growth of the field of Chicana/o studies.

Every inch of Torres’ two six-foot-tall bookshelves is taken—and these books are just a small part of the collection he has at home.

“Now the problem isn’t finding enough literature,” the associate professor of Chicana/o studies said, “it’s narrowing it down.”

When Torres attended the University of Colorado in Boulder in the early 1970s, he was one of maybe 100 Latino students. In his junior year he became the first coordinator of tutors of English for Chicano students. “I thought that it would make a difference if students were able to read Chicano poetry and essays,” Torres said, “and I began to formulate a plan to teach Chicano studies.”

By the time he graduated in 1972, he knew that he wanted to chair a Chicana/o studies department someday. But the academic field hadn’t really formed yet, so “I had to prepare myself by myself in Chicano studies,” Torres said. “And I had to broaden my education to be multi-disciplinary in nature: African American, Native American, Asian American, art, history, statistics, literature.”

Over the years, Torres’ expertise was sought to develop Chicano studies programs, and in 1995 he reached his goal, becoming the chair of the newly reinstituted Department of Chicana/o Studies at Metro State.

“I had a joint appointment teaching Chicano studies and English at the University of Southern Colorado in Pueblo. The Metro job opened in August, my first grandchild was due in November in Denver, and I was offered the position in December. It was magical: my first granddaughter and the realization of my dream,” Torres said.

For ten years, Torres was chair, before stepping down this fall. “I thought the department needed an additional perspective, plus then I’d be able to do additional work for the department,” he explains.

Under Torres’ leadership the department was the first approved to offer secondary and elementary teacher licensure in Chicana/o studies.

“We had to create this in order to teach teachers how to teach Chicano studies,” he explains.

Torres also has put in a lot of time on the Alma Project for Denver Public Schools. Using a literacy-based approach, the project provides multicultural curriculum for early childhood education through 12th grade so that teachers can teach a more inclusive and accurate curriculum.

The immigration debate
Obviously, teaching is Torres’ passion. He may have learned it from his father and other elders in Fort Lupton, Colo., where he grew up.

“My father, who was an undocumented immigrant, and others like him would take all of us children out onto a grassy area in town and lecture us without end on Mexican history and Mexican-American history,” Torres said. “I can’t lecture like they did. I remember them taking their handkerchiefs out and wiping their brows dramatically.”

As a child of an undocumented worker, Torres understands the fears, like of their families being split up, that hound today’s immigrants. And as a teacher, he says that there is something Americans should learn from Mexico. “You can’t purposefully have a large portion of uneducated, disenfranchised and poverty-stricken people and have a strong economy,” Torres explained. “These kinds of laws that single out a group hurt everybody. We, as Americans, hurt ourselves.”