Oral history interview with Heriberto C. Bolaños, 2020 June 20

This oral history interview with Heriberto C. Bolaños was conducted by Sankar Raman, Nancy Dollahite, and Juniper Yarnall-Benson on June 20, 2020, for The Immigrant Story, an organization that documents and archives the stories of immigrants and refugees in the United States. The interview was conducted using Zoom video conferencing software, but the recording held by the Oregon Historical Society Research Library consists only of the audio.

In this interview, Bolaños discusses his early life in Michoacan, Mexico, and talks about his family's farm. He shares the reasons his family immigrated to the United States in 2002 and describes his journey to Hillsboro, Oregon. He talks about his experience as an undocumented immigrant child in Hillsboro, including learning English. He also shares his experience of being assigned an Anglicized name by a teacher. He speaks about being part of a gang during middle school, and shares his reasons for getting out of it. He describes his activism during high school, including his involvement in a school walkout, and talks about how his family reacted to learning that he is bisexual. He closes the interview by discussing his career history and plans for the future.