The Saturnino Noriega papers were donated to the Chicano Studies Research Center in 2018 by Noriega and his son Chon Noriega who was the director of the CSRC from 2002 – 2021. The Noriega collection includes hundreds of family photos, genealogical findings, business and family correspondence, Noriega’s day books and journals, Noriega’s poetry and journalism writing, as well as other ephemera and monographs.

Noriega comes from a large family with a long history in the southwest/New Mexico. He grew up in Alamogordo, New Mexico in a largely Mexican-American community. The collection contains many files on Noriega’s family history as well as the history of Alamogordo including his own reporting in Alamogordo in the early 2000s. The collection provides information on Noriega’s life which was closely tied to Chicano communities in New Mexico but also in Miami and Chicago where he lived for many years. The bulk of the files in the collection range from 1950 – 2018.

One sub-series in the collection is dedicated to files from Noriega’s daughter Renee (Reni) Celeste who passed in 2004. This sub-series consists of years of correspondence between her and her father whom she was very close to as well as her writings on film and art and her dissertation from the University of Rochester in Visual and Cultural Studies in 2003. Two of these boxes have been designated for Reni’s children Martin and Anna Forstrom.

The collection is divided into the series Business (sub series: Journalism, Norcom, Political Campaign, Public Relations), Personal (sub series: Correspondence, Genealogy, General, Noriega, Renee (Reni) Celeste, and School) Writings (sub series: Daniel Escobedo, Novels & Short Stories, Poetry, and Related Materials), and Other (sub series: Audiovisual Materials, Ephemera, and Monographs)