Since its creation in 1999, UT’s Voces Oral History Center’s mission has been to document the history of Latinos in America, and for the first time, it will make its earliest interviews available online. 

On Nov. 7, Voces began uploading previously recorded interviews of Latinos with service contributions to major wars to its YouTube channel. These recordings give families a chance to view their loved ones and the center an opportunity to share a wealth of audio-remastered stories. Founder and director Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez said the next part of the project will aim to integrate these recordings with the featured person’s written story on the Voces site. She hopes this gives readers a better understanding of who they were.

“It’s the tip of the iceberg,” Rivas-Rodriguez said. “The real body of what we have is underneath the water.”

Beneath the floating glacier lie thousands of videos stored in the Benson Latin American collection, where Voces’ audiovisual specialist and UT alumnus Jorge Vega are digging to find digital files from their early days. He said the biggest challenge isn’t the assembling or cleaning of videos, but getting access.

“Sometimes it’s just because of the age of some of these videos,” Vega said. “Finding it can be difficult, or restoring corrupted files is something we’ve had to do more recently.”

Although YouTube didn’t officially launch until 2005, Voces kept their mission of uploading the recordings in mind and distributed consent forms to solidify permission from the subject to do so. Between holding on to these slips for years and being able to utilize newer technology to enhance audio tracks, Rivas-Rodriguez said they are able to post videos more cost-effectively than when they recorded the interviews.

“It’s not free because we still need staff that will do the preliminary work,” Rivas-Rodriguez said. “But it’s a lot less expensive than it would have been 20 years ago.”

To record in the Voces’ early days, the team used external microphones, which couldn’t record audio as clearly as newer equipment can. To enhance these audio tracks, Vega utilizes an artificial intelligence enhancement tool to clear up background noise on the video. Though the tool can completely remove the environment’s additional sounds, Vega said he wants to avoid over-engineering the subject’s voice.

“When it’s digitized by our libraries here at the University … it preserves a lot of detail,” Vega said. “We keep that moving forward.”

Rivas-Rodriguez said viewing and hearing the video’s quality is essential to understanding Voces’ start.

“Our interviews now look very polished,” Rivas-Rodriguez said. “But this says something about (us) — we were a scrappy little (unit) trying to get as many interviews conducted.” 

Every Friday, Voces will upload a batch of interviews in accordance with a theme that matches the collection. Terry Gutierrez, Voces’ communications specialist and UT alumnus, works alongside Vega to advertise the collection of videos uploaded. She said she finds this reservoir incredibly valuable to ensuring these stories are not lost.

“It’s really special,” Gutierrez said. “It’s opening up a treasure chest of stories from the very beginning.”