Elías, Richard

Archive Tucson is the oral history project of Special Collections at the University of Arizona Libraries. This interview is with Richard Elías, who passed away on March 28th, 2020. Libraries' oral historian Aengus Anderson had always wanted to record Elías' oral history, but as he was relatively young and in the midst of an eventful career, it seemed too soon for a retrospective. This interview was recorded for Anderson's podcast Tucsonense and, while it is not a traditional oral history, it is interesting and contains a fair amount of oral history, so we are taking the liberty of putting it here. Specifically, the interview covers:

• A discussion of history and historiography.

• Elías family history.

• The story of El Tucsonense newspaper.

• Role of local news in creating community.

• Urban development and change.

• How we relate to the environment.

• The essence of place.

A word of context: the interview begins with Anderson, a white Tucsonan who doesn't speak Spanish, wondering if it would be ethical to use the name “Tucsonense” for a podcast about the essence of place, while Richard's family ran the Spanish-language newspaper El Tucsonense for many decades.

The interview was recorded at Richard Elías' office at the Pima County Board of Supervisors on January 29th, 2016.