story by Laurie McLaughlin / image by Jeanine Hill
Pulled from her spectacular collection of traditional Mexican dress, a compilation she’s amassed over the last 25 years, Genevieve Barrios Southgate shares with her audience a rebozo, a shawl-like garment, which has long been a symbol of womanhood in Mexico.
“Some see it as an image of historic oppression, and others wear them proudly today,” says Barrios Southgate. “Garments like this were originally introduced by Catholic missionaries to cover the bare-breasted indigenous women, part of an effort to impose European ways.”
This lesson in Mexican heritage is just one of the colorful anecdotes Barrios Southgate shares in her many presentations at schools and to community organizations comprising audiences of all ages. Her aim is to promote tolerance by illuminating Mexico’s storied heritage.
Barrios Southgate made her very first presentation after her eldest son came home from school with tales of kids slinging “Mexican” around like a dirty word. She asked to share ongoing cultural lessons about Mexican food and simple Spanish phrases with his class. The popularity of her presentations spread, and she created a part-time profession out of it. Her engagements became more frequent, and this passion for sharing her own culture melded nicely with her full-time job at Santa Ana’s Bowers Museum, where she created programs about the world’s cultures for children.
“I came to a point in my career where I needed more knowledge and the
validity that a college degree would afford me,” she says. She went back to school and earned a bachelor’s in ethnic studies with an emphasis in Chicano studies from Cal State Fullerton in 1994.
For her efforts in sharing her love of her own heritage and promoting acceptance of all cultures, Barrios Southgate has been named the Orange County Hispanic Woman of the Year twice and was the first Latina in Orange County awarded the Citizens of Distinction award by the local NAACP.
“I am Latina,” she says, and of that first visit to her son’s class, “It was my
mission to repeat the word ‘Mexican’ and relate it to something fun and beautiful.”
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