This site contains a sample of oral history interviews collected by the @UPRM Oral History Laboratory (OHL), an oral history research center based at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. The OHL is dedicated to collecting, disseminating and preserving the stories of members of the Puerto Rican community as they have gone through a variety of situations that affect the archipelago.
By resituating community members as agentic protagonists through the act of telling their own stories, OHL contributes to the (re)shaping of historical narratives by presenting perspectives and experiences that often escape the record. official. Additionally, the oral histories collected by the OHL constitute valuable community-sourced data for researchers in a variety of disciplines, including STEM fields, and serve as excellent resources for more informed development of public policies and initiatives that impact different population groups.
The creation of the OHL was achieved through a multidisciplinary project titledListening to Puerto Rico: The promise of oral history on campus and beyond, an initiative that was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.