Maria Luisa Alanis Ruiz
Maria Luisa Alanis Ruiz (born 1948) is an American Chicana activist and academic in Oregon. She has been active in Chicano and Latino social justice work in the state of Oregon since the 1970s, helped found Portland's Cinco de Mayo festival, and has been a long-term volunteer for the Portland-Guadalajara Sister-City Association. Much of her academic career was spent developing Chicano and Latino Studies programming and curricula for Portland State University. Early life and education Born in 1948 in Linares, Mexico, Alanis Ruiz spent parts of her childhood living with her grandmother Maria Luisa "Lichita" in Monterrey. Raised a Catholic, her family consisted of her mother, father, Maria, four brothers, and three sisters. Her father struggled to support the family with little work in Linares; when he received United States citizenship in 1954, the family moved to Matamoros, Mexico, just across the border from Brownsville, Texas. The family lived as a trans-border family for seven years while her father worked in the United States and Alanis Ruiz learned English from a school in Brownsville while she lived in Matamoros. Alanis Ruiz was 18 years old when her father obtained legal U.S. residency for the rest of the family. They lived