Maria Ibanez Interview, September 29, 2023
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- There we go.
- All right.
- So to start, do I have permission to record this interview?
- Yes.
- Perfect.
- And could you please tell me your name?
- Maria Ibanez.
- Nice to meet you, Maria.
- Nice to meet you.
- How would you describe the
- community of Mount Pleasant today? So should I look at you or the
- camera? You can look at me.
- Okay.
- How would I describe the community
- today? Yes.
- I would say it's different.
- It's not as diverse as one would
- think.
- Yeah, it's not as many small
- business shops, not many shops that are owned by communities of
- color.
- So it's a little different.
- It's very different.
- And could you describe in a little
- detail how it was in the past? It was a lot more diverse.
- I would say that probably the entire block of Mount Pleasant,
- the three block strip.
- Majority of the business owners
- were Latino or Caribeños, whereas today it is not that.
- Very family oriented, everyone knew everyone, and it just seemed
- more connected.
- There was a lot more of a
- connection amongst all of the families and people who were here
- in the neighborhood.
- What is one of the places that
- make you feel a part of the community either in the past or
- today? Well, in the past, certainly
- Sacred Heart Church and Sacred Heart School, where I was born and
- raised and baptized, confirmed.
- Went to Sacred Heart School,
- graduated from Sacred Heart School.
- Also just the neighborhood, as far down as into Adams Morgan,
- Calorama Park.
- Also church, where I took piano
- lessons.
- And just the neighborhood, the
- zoo, the parks, Walter Pierce Park, where the Ontario Lakers
- used to play baseball in the 70s and in the 80s.
- So all of those different things.
- And would you say those are still
- the same spots that make you feel part of the community today?
- They do.
- They make me feel a part of it.
- Very nostalgic, but sometimes it makes me feel sad because those
- days, obviously, they're not here anymore and the environment has
- changed completely where the communities that existed back
- then, many of those families are gone for a variety of reasons,
- whether it's cost of living or they have passed on.
- And the community has just become unaffordable for everyone.
- Many people are priced out.
- So it's, it's, that makes me sad.
- Is there any place that you take your friends or family when they
- come and visit you or do you kind of just stay home and stay within
- the community that you created? Well, that's funny.
- So we stay home because I live in my childhood home.
- So we have a lot of memories at home.
- So we'll stay there and we reminisce about so many memories
- growing up.
- Everyone in my family has gone
- through that home and so we all have a story to tell and then
- we'll just drive around the neighborhood.
- We'll walk around the neighborhood.
- We'll go back to Sacred Heart Church and look at the building.
- We'll have recently had our Sacred Heart class reunion right before
- the pandemic started so we got to see all of our classmates from
- 1970s.
- So just being in the neighborhood
- and then you know just reminiscing different places where we grew up
- and went to and played and all those things.
- And my last question for you, how would you like Mount Pleasant to
- look in the future? I want it to be affordable.
- I want it to be affordable.
- I want it to be affordable.
- I want it to be affordable so that families of all colors can
- consider living here or moving back here.
- I would like to see more of my community engaged.
- There aren't too many families of color anymore.
- I'm among some of the last few that are left.
- All of them have gone.
- And so that's that's a big missing
- part of the community.
- It's defined as diverse but in
- reality it's not diverse.
- And if you don't mind me asking a
- follow-up, what do you think it's going to take for the community to
- get to that? Oh gosh.
- Or get back to that? Well, I think there are a lot of
- pieces of it and one of the main things has to do with being able
- to afford to live here.
- And unless that is in place, it's
- going to be hard to even start to move in that direction.
- The schools have definitely gotten better in the community, so that's
- a big plus, which is why so many people like the neighborhood.
- But we need to find ways to make it accessible to everyone.
- Is there anything that I didn't ask that you would like to touch
- on? No, it's nothing.
- I would just say that, you know, I'm Latina, I'm Afro-Latina, and I
- was part of the first wave of immigrants who came to Washington,
- D.C.
- In the 50s.
- And sometimes that community is forgotten.
- But we were here.
- We were business owners.
- We had a lot of Latino families live up and down Irving and Kenyon
- and Kilbourne and Lamont.
- And I have a lot of those events
- on film and in photos.
- So, you know, I miss that.
- I miss that and I'm not gonna get that back.
- And sometimes, like I said, I wish some of that could come back and
- sometimes, like I said, it saddens me when I look outside my own
- block, my neighborhood, and I don't see many people who I knew.
- It's almost like a stranger in my own neighborhood.
- But I love my neighborhood, right? I was born and raised here and
- it's a great place to live.
- So I just wish others could have
- that accessibility to experience that.
- Yeah.
- Well, that's all I have.
- Thank you so much for taking the time.
- I'm gonna go ahead and stop the recording.
- All right.