Madre Rosa Dolores Rodríguez came to the Pajaro Valley in 1989 to help after the Loma Prieta earthquake, and never left. (Amaya Edwards — Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local)

Editor’s note: This story first appeared in Noticias Watsonville’s WhatsApp channel. Scroll down to watch a video report.

PAJARO >> Rosa Dolores Rodríguez, better known to her community as Madre Rosa Dolores, never forgot the words one of her many aunts told her before she died, when Rosa was 16 years old.

“You have to be what you have to be, don’t let anyone tell you no,” she recalled in a recent interview in her office at Casa de la Cultura Center in Pajaro.

But she never imagined that her mission would be to become the driving force and heart of the community of Pajaro, a town located in northern Monterey County.

There, in 1989, Mother Rosa founded Casa de la Cultura, a community center that offers free classes, health services and food. Today, her mission is for the people she serves, mostly Mexican farmworkers, to feel pride in their language and culture, and themselves.

“We can uplift the spirit of the community, the spirit of the individual — the recognition of their voice and the value of the person. And to be able to express all of that: culture, music, dance, food,” she said in Spanish. “This is a place that is open for whatever is needed.”

The youngest of 13 siblings born in Phoenix, Arizona, she grew up in the countryside. Her father, a man from Guanajuato who fought in the Mexican Revolution, and her mother, a woman from Piedras Negras, Coahuila, who always invited everyone to their home.

From an early age, she showed herself to be different from other girls her age. She played “Mexican Revolution” games with her siblings, played the saxophone and castanets, and loved bullfighting movies.

“We lived in a place where there were bulls two or three fields away,” she recalled. “Of course, we never ran with the bulls, but I loved going to see them and the horns and all that. I was little, I didn’t know, but I loved the idea of ​​’I want to be a bullfighter!’ I liked the bullfighters’ outfits.”

But her career wasn’t in the bullrings but in God’s ministry. In the late 1940s, her family moved to California to work in the fields, and from then on, she lived in different towns in the state following the harvests. She learned to drive at 14 and on weekends picked tomatoes, potatoes, almonds, apricots and cotton.

It was at her aunt’s funeral that she felt something “stir within me,” as she put it, listening to the organ music during the Mass. And then, praying before the Blessed Sacrament on Holy Thursday, she had a spiritual experience.

“It was like a calling, it was like, ‘You have to come,’ something like that, I don’t know how to explain it,” she said.

In 1966, she entered the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul and for 26 years worked in schools and hospitals in California and Missouri. But after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, she came to Pajaro Valley to help those affected in the Watsonville area.

Here, she told us, her calling took a turn when she realized there was so much to be done. She began to get involved in the community and work with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, St. Patrick’s Parish, Catholic Charities and the Community Action Board.

Then, in a small room at Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church in Pajaro, she began teaching a group of six women how to sew, and later, with their help, she began distributing food to residents.

Madre Rosa Dolores, right, speaks at a Noticias Watsonville listening session in March at Casa de la Cultura. (Kara Meyberg Guzman — Santa Cruz Local)

One day, after the 1995 Pajaro River flood, she saw a “For Rent” sign on a building at 225 Salinas Road. She called and told the owner her vision: to have a place to provide food, a free clinic, music, art and cultural classes, and “everything the community needs.” The owner agreed.

“People I knew back then helped me clean up here after the flood, and we got started,” she said.

Since then, the Casa de la Cultura has helped hundreds of families in the rural community of Pajaro, turning the 1995 flood, and more recently the devastating 2023 flood, into opportunities for growth.

“Now there’s a voice,” she said. “We’re helping the community find their voice, to express their needs. No more complaining. No more being victims, ‘Oh, poor things, they ignore us.’ They ignore us because we don’t speak up!”

Héctor Llamas, owner of Pájaro Food Center who has known her for 26 years, admires what she does for the community. 

“I think we need more women like her,” he said in Spanish. “She has always been concerned about the Pajaro community”

Llamas added, “She’s never still, she’s always looking for something more. Mainly county and state funds; she’s always looking for ways to get them for the community.”

Casa de la Cultura Center in Pajaro. (Amaya Edwards — Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local)

Mother Rosa Dolores, who has belonged to the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur since 2007, no longer dreams of being a bullfighter. But she has managed to overcome adversity and uplift the community, as great bullfighters do. 

She has two big dreams for the future: to conduct an orchestra (although she already did a mini one once with the Watsonville maestro Javier Vargas) and, most importantly, to secure a permanent home for Casa de la Cultura.

“It would be a beautiful thing for Pajaro,” she said hopefully. “But a dream that is becoming a reality is the housing project underway in Las Lomas. That is a huge, huge achievement for us, for the community.”

She asks her community to continue praying for her so that she can do what God asks her to do and that, when she is no longer here, they will continue the development of the community and their personal growth.

“Because I’ve lived here longer than I thought I would. I was only planning to be here for the duration of the earthquake and that’s it. But here I am. And it has been a great experience. And what I’ve liked is that I’ve been my own boss,” she said, laughing.

Editor Catalina Jaramillo contributed translation.

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