Arivaca Oral History Project
The intention of this project is to use oral history and photographic portraiture to document the ways in which the community members of the rural town of Arivaca, Arizona have adapted to the restrictions imposed by the COVID pandemic.
About the Artist
Magda Mankel is a practicing anthropologist and trained ethnographer with a doctoral degree in anthropology. Most recently Magda lived in Arivaca as she instructed a historical archaeological field school in Ruby; the ghost town located just south of Arizona. Magda has also worked with a public health team based at John Hopkins University to gather stories about COVID-19. Magda is a southern Arizona native, born in Nogales, Arizona to a mother who migrated to the U.S. through clandestine means and a Mexican-American father whose family arrived in Arizona in the late 1800s to work in the mines.
