In this extra of the Rama Blueprints podcast commentary, we hear from Metzi Henriquez, who currently works as a therapist for the San Francisco Department of Public Health. She comments on the RAMA Blueprints series and shares with us her knowledge and approach working in community mental health services.

In this extra of the Rama Blueprints podcast commentary, we

hear from Met Henriquez, who currently works as a therapist for the San

Francisco Department of Public Health.

She comments on the series and shares with us her knowledge and approach

working in community mental health.

Good afternoon.

Welcome to the Rama Blueprints Podcast.

I'm your host, Socorro Gamboa.

We are speaking today with Metzi Henriquez.

Metzi.

Thank you for being here with us.

Tell us a little bit about where were you born and raised?

Thank you for having me, Socorro I'm blessed and humbled to

be here, and asked for my opinion and my story, but yes, my name is Metzi

Henriquez and I come from El Salvador.

Proudly born in El Salvador and raised in the Mission District.

I was a child immigrant who immigrated here because of the civil War in

Central America in El Salvador.

And I arrived in San Francisco right on 23rd and York in November of 1982.

I was raised in the Mission District, gentrified out about seven

times and ended up in Ingleside.

I went to all SFUSD and to St.

Peter's, which is right in the heart of the Mission District.

What are you doing right now for work?

I am a mental health practitioner and I am working currently in Department

of Public Health San Francisco with children, youth and families at

Southeast Child Family Therapy Center.

So I'm serving kids between the ages of five to 18 and their families.

I'm a therapist.

I ended up choosing this field of work because of the community and because

of the teachings that I learned while being part of the Mission District

community and the Youth Empowerment movement and the solidarity movement that

my family was very much involved in as an immigrant and as a refugee of war.

And one of the things that really led me to want to do this work is in

what RAP calls alternative, right?

The Real Alternative program.

I think the key word in what RAP is, is alternative, right?

Is that we know that this world of Western psychology has been around so

much that we're learning it, but it hasn't quite worked for our community.

And I think that it's safe to say that.

And starting I think in the 1970s with the movement of ethnic

studies and people like Dr.

Concha Saucedo and many others that began to actually say,"

we have ways to heal ourselves.

And they call them Alternatives."

But really they've been around for longer than the western psychology movement has.

Learning to work in the way that I learned while I was working at CARECEN's Second

Chance tattoo removal program, learning just how to organize as a young person in

the Mission district and learning how to organize as an immigrant for solidarity

movement as a child and as a young person has really given me a lens to be

able to work with my people, which is the community of the Mission District.

And I think that because I am part of the community and I am healing

together with my community, I think that's what we should be talking about

is how we are healing each other.

You talked about being a young leader, right?

And in the sixties, and the early seventies, EMUNYO and RAP focused

a lot on developing young people.

Do you see any parallels in how the youth leadership movement of back then

contributed to your own development?

I do.

And I think completely, and I think one of the things that struck me

the most is the story of how RAP originated, How those young people on

the corner were asked, what do you need?

What do you feel?

And what would you like?

That is the key to healing.

The first thing that we want to heal is to feel seen, heard and acknowledged.

And that's exactly what happened on that street corner, on that magical day.

Two is that we want to feel connected.

And this is something that as families, whether you're an immigrant, first

generation, second generation, third generation, we have been taken

away from our lands and lost that connection with nature and the ground

under us, and tradition and culture.

And once you tell somebody that their culture is worthy, you're are gonna

have healing right there off the boat.

The biggest problem in mental health is racism, and that affects

us and our communities deeply.

And the first thing that I think we need to tackle is that feeling of

connectedness, connected as a community, connected with your services and connected

with whatever's gonna move you forward.

And that's what RAP did.

It made me feel connected.

Even though I was not a student of RAP, all my friends were.

And so when I started to do the work, I was familiar with the people that were

working with my friends at the time when they needed help, and so I had

heard these stories of how social workers helped my friends, and I was familiar

with what worked for them and how they felt heard and how they were validated

and normalized, and these are all things that are called clinical interventions,

but they're not clinical at all.

They're ancient.

They're part of our traditions.

We connect with each other.

We love each other.

And we are the other you.

Tu eres mi otra yo.

And we're interconnected like that.

Even though we are not, most of us as immigrant families are not in the

land that we're supposed to live our lives in, we feel connected through

people and through these teachings.

Thank you for that.

I appreciate your words.

S one of the things that, came out of that movement that Jim Queen developed

were the principles of self-determination.

So one of the principles is love and serve the people.

The second one is youth for self-determination, and the

third one is dignity and respect.

What comes to mind when I mention those first three?

How would you say that those principles impacted your work, your life?

Honestly, it makes me emotional because the friends that I did have at

RAP, all felt really valued like that.

They knew why they were there working for community, and it was all about

love, and it was about loving community and loving yourself and that was

what moved you and nothing else.

What was a key moment in your life that moved you to

get involved in social activism?

Yes.

I've always felt a little bit outcasted because I was an immigrant, because

I came from El Salvador and most of my friends were Latinos born here.

So they had the advantage of already knowing their language, their parents knew

the language, their parents knew the ways.

and my family didn't quite at that time.

But what I did have was the political education that my family gave me because

of the endurance that we had in the war.

And we were brought here because there was a solidarity movement

that was transnational, Mm-hmm.

. So when I came here, we were already connected to the solidarity movement,

and I was very much raised and educated by men that had been exiled

from El Salvador and Nicaragua.

And so those teachings very much stayed with me so much that I had

to go to Sunday school to learn political education forever.

And so that at the same time it built me, it outcasted me from what

was going on in the community, And maybe probably why I didn't get in

trouble and I went towards education.

I remember my first day at CARECEN as a case manager.

I sat down with the rest of the staff who were pretty much RAP graduates.

and We checked each other.

They told me I was privileged because I had education, and I told them they were

privileged because they were born here and they didn't have to experience a war.

And that marriage of thoughts really catered to what was happening in the

nineties, Because they were educated in a whole different way than I was, but

we were being taught the same thing.

And so we could put all of that forward in case management skills,

in services to the community.

And one of the things that was happening in the nineties was mano

dura in El Salvador, in Guatemala.

And all of these young men that had experienced violence in the

same way that I did, but for longer periods of time, and that came here

traumatized, And in order for protection would join gangs to feel connect.

And those were the tattoos that we were removing at the time.

And so that exchange between myself and my colegas at the time meant the

world to me because we could understand each other in two different ways,

but with the same education because the mission was teaching all about

solidarity movement at the same time.

That's the memory that I remember is sitting with them and having this

exchange where I felt heard and I was completely hearing them as well.

So I have another question.

La cultura cura, what does la cultura cura mean to you and how

do you utilize this practice?

. Metzi: I think there's nothing

you come from, and who you are, and growing pride from that.

And like I said before, racism is the biggest mental

health issue that has hit us.

And so anything that is about my culture when I'm told that it's beautiful

and I'm validated for it, heals me.

And one of the things that I personally heal with is the energies of nature.

The four energies, air, water, ground, and fire.

And within our culturas, we are taught to respect those four energies and also

hold them as part of us and cater to them.

And so that is what I heal with, is using that, whether it's an altar,

whether it's a person, that gives me that fire or that replenishes

me with that water or all of that.

That's constantly what I'm envisioning in my mind for my own healing.

And in order to learn that, you have to learn that that's part of our culture.

So, my cultura, mi cura

Well, I wanna thank you Metzi, and are there any final thoughts that you

would like to leave with the listeners?

I wanna say thank you.

I wanna say thank you to everybody and all of the originators that moved this

movement forward in the seventies, eighties, and even before that, you

all have really set the stage to grow a really beautiful garden that

I've been blessed to be part of.

And I hope you all feel that.

So I just feel a deep gratitude for all of you who helped heal back

then and continue to help heal now?

Well, we've been speaking with Metzi Henriquez.

Gracias Metzi for your work and have a blessed day.

The extras of Rama Blueprints Podcast are intended to help the listener

with the deeper understanding of the people, events, and places

that created the Mission District and the series as a whole.

Thank you for listening to this extra.

And remember to listen is to heal.