“This has been a work of a lifetime,” Raquel Lopez shares with me about making changes in her life. “It kicked my butt but has taught me the most about career and community.”
For about 15 years, Raquel has been the director of La Caza De La Raza, the East Montecito Street center founded in 1971 to provide a center for empowering Santa Barbara’s Latino community. In recent years, the organization became entangled in financial and real estate turmoil, and its future remains clouded in concern, as has been extensively documented in this newspaper.
But this article is a celebration of Raquel Lopez as an individual, for she’s a wonderful, passionate, and articulate human being. “How do you continue programming while you’re in bankruptcy?” she asks me rhetorically. “How do you keep a smile when people are talking badly about you?”