Maria Varela

In 1963, Varela went deep in the south to support the Civil Rights Movements where she began working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Alabama and Mississippi. She later graduated from University of Massachusetts.

In 1962, Maria Varela was invited to start agricultural cooperatives and community health clinics in New Mexico. Since then, she has been working with indigenous leaders to help them develop economic opportunities and protect cultural heritage within African-American, Native-American, and Mexican-American rural communities. Varela co-founded Ganados del Valle in 1981, a nonprofit, economic development corporation that dedicates to predominantly help Hispanic and Native-American communities in northern New Mexico, southern Colorado, and northeastern Arizona to preserve their pastoral cultures, lands, and water rights. She helped created a wool-growers cooperative that included a weaving and spinning enterprise, training in small business development, and cultural reaffirmation. She spent years trying to create and enable nonprofit organizations and viable enterprises to build upon and add to existing local resources, and was awarded was an MacArthur Award in 1990.

Maria Varela (born January 1940) is a Mexican-American civil rights photographer, community organizer, a writer, and a teacher. She has been actively involved in Civil Rights movements, advocating rights for indigenous communities and protects cultural heritage within African-American, Native-American, and Mexican-American in rural communities. She created and supported several non-profits organizations to help many minority groups, especially Native-American and Mexican-American. She won a MacArthur Fellowship in 1990 for her endeavor to help with the Native-American communities in northern New Mexico, southern Colorado, and northeastern Arizona to develop economic opportunities and preserve their human rights.