The streets of Guanajuato pulsed with the creative energy of a thriving community of Mexican artists in the early 90s, an atmosphere reminiscent of decades past.
Indeed the city is the birthplace of Diego Rivera, the famous muralist, notorious womanizer and lover of painter Frida Kahlo.
It was there, in the city of many alleys, that Manuel met Norma at a gathering of artistic folk.
“It was a full moon that night, and everybody was drunk,” said Manuel Apodaca-Valdez, of the night he met his wife Norma Rosas Mayen.
“We were those kind of people,” said Apodaca-Valdez of he and Rosas Mayen, currently both assistant professors of Spanish at USI. “You know, those people who love to read and go to coffee shops: Bohemes.”
The pair were not yet acquainted on the night of the party, where guests were required to present an original work of some sort to the gathering.
It was after Apodaca-Valdez read poems he’d written that he was approached by Rosas Mayen.
She fell instantly in love with him, said Apodaca-Valdez.
The couple’s story is one of being apart and coming back together.
In the weeks and months after their meeting, the pair would become romantically involved.
The two lived together for a time, separated and reunited a year later before going together to India as a couple to study Sanskrit at Delhi University.
In 1997, upon their return to Mexico, they married before moving to the Lafayette, Ind., in 1998 for graduate studies at Purdue University.
Apodaca-Valdez spent a good deal of time researching in the Costa Chica region of the Mexican state of Oaxaca and several communities of afrodescendants in Colombia.
After completing doctoral studies in Spanish linguistics, Apodaca-Valdez in 2006 and Rosas Mayen in 2007, the two were separated once again.
Apodaca-Valdez taught at Wittenburg University in Ohio until 2009 while Rosas Mayen taught in Minnesota.
Rosas Mayen began her career at USI three years ago in 2008, teaching intermediate Spanish language classes.
The pair were reunited in the fall of 2009 when Apodaca-Valdez began teaching at USI.
Since Apodaca-Valdez’s arrival at USI, the pair have worked as a team to engage their students and reach out to Evansville’s Latino community, working with the Spanish club and Latinos Unidos, developing a service learning program for students of Spanish and helping coordinate programs such as the “Cooking and Culture” series with other campus organizations.
Together again, there seems to be no limit to what this power duo can accomplish.