Maria Varela was born on January 1st, 1940, to a Mexican father and an Irish mother. After being raised in several cities around the United States, her family decided to settle in Chicago. In the city, she attended St. Louis Academy where she learned typing, and went on to attend Alverno College in Milwaukee. It was during her time in Chicago that Varela became heavily involved in different social justice groups, specifically the Young Christian Students organization (YCS). Varela began working with the YCS in high school and through college, and after graduating she worked for the YCS’s National Staff as a field organizer in Chicago. She would travel to various programs in the country and work with the program organizers there, either working through issues they were having with students or showcasing the annual programs. This work began her professional journey with social justice and civil rights.
During her time working for YCS as a field organizer, Varela met Casey Hayden who recruited her to work at the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), as their home office needed extra help. While she was reluctant due to the danger–many people were being beaten and jailed, and some opponents to the Civil Rights Movement even burning buses–Varela took a bus to Atlanta, Georgia, and began working with SNCC. She lived in the Freedom House and was paid only $9.64 a week to work with the other 25 people on the project, who were mainly men and young boys. Varela described the SNCC project she worked on as, “a six-week program that was Black History, that was the theory of non-violence, that was the strategies of non-violence how to organize and put through training.” (12, Maria Varela's Oral History Transcript.). While many men were a part of the organization, there were few young women. One of Varela’s contributions to SNCC was to be a leader for these young women who originally did not have someone to represent them in the organization. Being a part of SNCC introduced her to many primary figures in the Civil Rights Movement, including Frank Smith and Bernard Lafayette, who asked her to move to Selma, where her expertise was needed to help Father Maurice Ouellet, the pastor of the Black Catholic Parish. (“Freedom Summer”). Just like in Georgia, the political climate was incredibly dangerous, if not even more so, and Varela was not even allowed to stay in the Freedom House. Nevertheless, she went on to complete her tasks and help represent SNCC. (12, “Maria Varela's Oral History Transcript.”).
In 1964, Tom Hayden and Paul Potter, two white men a part of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), went to McComb, Mississippi to do some investigation work. While there, the two men were brutally beaten. Pictures of the attack were published in a three-column newspaper spread. The idea that two white men being beaten would make the paper, but the many African Americans who were beaten daily, murdered, and who were missing still wasn’t published, didn’t sit right with many people. To combat this, Civil Rights leader Bob Moses decided to create the Freedom Summer Project (“Freedom Summer”) and invited Varela to work with him. Working with the SNCC in the Freedom Summer Project, Varela was able to meet people like Fannie Lou Hamer, another historical Civil Rights leader, and develop her photography skills to “shoot protests to hopefully constrain and/or document any resultant police violence.” (“Maria Varela”, SNCC). Just as in her other jobs, Varela’s work was kept secret. However, unlike her other jobs, she was caught by the police, an incident that happened after Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and many of the young men in SNCC went to be served ice cream at a parlor. The sheriff came and arrested them, and Varela had to go bail them out. After a few days, the police came to her apartment and it was then that she decided to move to Tougaloo, Mississippi, for her safety. Her work with the SNCC allowed her to work closely with many African Americans fighting for their civil rights, representing the ideas behind co-liberation. “Co-liberation means recognizing that all of our struggles are intimately connected and that we must work together to create the kind of world we know is possible. We believe that every person is worthy of dignity and respect and that within systems of oppression everyone suffers.” (“Introduction to Collective Liberation”). Varela spending a significant amount of her life dedicated to helping the African American civil rights movement truly shows the understanding that minorities must work together to combat the oppression they face.
Varela discussed how moving to the new city helped her find her love for photography, “Tougaloo, Mississippi, which is a black community right next to the college, and [we] started kind of developing ideas with organizers about materials that they wanted. And we set up a dark room.” (15, “Maria Varela's Oral History Transcript.”). While in Tougaloo, Varela worked with her colleague Bobby Fletcher for the SNCC. After seeing her passion for photography increase, he suggested that she move to New Orleans and work with Matt Heron, another famous Civil Rights Activist photographer. Under his guidance, Varela was able to travel to Delta, Northern Mississippi, Arkansas, and Northern Louisiana. Following her work with Heron, Varela began taking photos for different organizations and other civil rights leaders.
Beginning her photography career, Varela started out photographing the Okra farms and the agricultural stabilization elections. “ “On the okra coop I did two books. Um, part one and part two. And, uh, what else did I do? I did some film strips on the agriculture stabilization elections, of which all the white people controlled the money that came through for farmers and the farmers, black farmers, wanted to get on those, um, committees themselves and they were organizing to do that.” (16, “Maria Varela’s Oral History Transcript”). Following the Co-op, she was able to take photographs for multiple books, from poetry to autobiographies. Jane Stembridge’s poetry book, “I Play Flute” was illustrated with photography by Varela, as well as Charlie Cobb’s “Whole Trails” poetry book. One of her most important experiences in photographing for published books is the autobiography for Fannie Lou Hamer, “To Praise our Bridges.” Photographing such a prominent leader in the Civil Rights Movement, specifically for the SNCC, was impactful on Varela’s career as a photographer. She began working at a temp agency, where she was able to photograph other organizations such as the Brown Berets, “I have pictures of the original Berets. I have a picture somewhere. Um, of the original Berets ‘cause I know those guys…” (24, “Maria Varela's Oral History Transcript.”). She also contributed work to the El Papel Newspaper and even at the University of Massachusetts, where there was a protest over the poor treatment of the janitors on campus, “The pay, you know, differential between the anglo custodial services and the Chicano was, as you can imagine, significant. Um, and, grievances and stuff like that and wrongful terminations and things.” (24, “Maria Varela's Oral History Transcript.”). Varela’s work with African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement gave her many incredible skills and opportunities to continue to help her people struggling for their civil rights. As a Chicana, she was able to be a representation of co-liberation and use it to continuously help her people face oppression through her photography skills.
In 1967, Maria Varela moved to New Mexico and joined the Chicano movement to work with Reies Lopez Tijerina, leader of the Land Grant movement in Tierra Amarilla. In 1968, Tijerina assigned Varela to work with the Poor People’s Campaign. “So, I ended up kind of helping with all the logistics of that and I went and took all those pictures.” (28, “Maria Varela's Oral History Transcript.”). True to form, she took many photographs of the Chicano contingent who traveled from New Mexico to Washington, DC for the Poor People’s March on Washington in 1968. She also photographed key Chicano movement events in the late 1960s and played a key role in establishing the Chicano Press Association in 1968. which was modeled after the “Liberation News Service.” Many protests and other civil rights activities were not being published in any newspapers, which prompted the creation of Chicano newspapers that would contribute to their voice. “And we wanted some of our stronger images to get into those papers. There were good writers out there, you know, but, so if you had the Latin American Defense Organization’s paper in Chicago, and if they could put in an article about the janitors, you know, organizing here, I mean that’s just plus, plus, plus. So that’s what we were trying to do. It was a little bit modeled on the LNS, or Liberation News Service, but it was, like, much more political. Although they were pretty political…” (27, “Maria Varela's Oral History Transcript.”).
From 1975 to 1979 Varela served as the director of the primary health clinic, La Clinica, helping to develop northern New Mexico’s first rural birthing center. (Varelamaria). “…We were one of the first clinics to get the National Health Service Corps to come. So we could have docs that would staff it. And we were one of the first clinics to fire a National Health Service Corps doctor (laughs). That would be me. I worked through the corporativa and the clinica. I worked for the corporativa first, from about 1970. In 1975 the clinic board asked me if I would come and run the clinic… I run the clinic until I became pregnant with Sabina and, but still stayed on as a consultant for a good year after, until 1980.” (31, “Maria Varela's Oral History Transcript.”).
After the birth of her first child in 1980, Varela took after her great-uncle and bought sheep and created Tierra Woolsa Sheep Cooperative. “Well, gee, the problem for me is that if people aren’t using their agricultural land and water then their kids are gonna come along and sell ‘em to the outsiders for second homes. You know? So it seems like we have to do something about making agriculture—” this is the old co-op corporativa idea, but we were ahead of our time…movements have to be ready.”(31, “Maria Varela's Oral History Transcript.”). The Sheep Cooperative increased jobs for many women and men, with around 52 employees in a town of no more than 4,000 people. Being able to create such an enterprise without much information allowed her to learn more about agricultural needs, what it takes to keep a business thriving, and even more about sheep. “Now, it takes seven years to breed your basic flock back into the way the churro’s wool should be. You know, um, that’s— so we just worked at that. And that was a thriving business.” (31, “Maria Varela's Oral History Transcript.”). Varela’s work with the Sheep Cooperative reflects on her roots and her love for agricultural groups, and it ultimately won her a MacArthur Genius grant for her work. On August 1st, 1990, she was awarded the grant as a Community Development Leader with a focus on housing and community with economic development. (“Maria Varela.” RSS).
Maria Varela has a wide variety of accomplishments to add to her legacy as Chicana fighting for what is right, from her work helping African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement to creating a Sheep Cooperative to boost agriculture in New Mexico. She kept in contact with most of her colleagues from her time with SNCC and some people from the SDS, including Paul Potter who died around the time of her interview with Chicana Por Mi Raza. Her photography is still used today on many civil rights platforms and she is still recognized as a leader for the SNCC, showing her dedication to co-liberation.