Olivia Cadaval (1943–2025)

Olivia Cadaval died on April 8, 2025 at the age of eighty-two.

As a mentor, scholar, and community activist, Olivia was committed to collaborative reciprocal research and public-sector folklore. She also championed “community scholars”—those who are not necessarily academics but are experts on their own communities.

Born and raised in Mexico City, Olivia’s interest in people and culture began during her childhood. She came to the United States in 1961 to study at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois and moved to the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area in 1968. In the 1970s and ’80s, when the Latino community in the D.C. area began to assert its presence, she was at the vanguard of documenting its history and creating spaces for people to tell their stories.

Olivia was introduced to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and the discipline of folklore in 1976, when she was hired as a cultural liaison for the Festival’s bicentennial program. She became a curator at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage after completing her PhD in American studies and folklife in 1988. In the 1990s, she was also part of a group of Latino staff members at the Smithsonian who came together to demand broader representation in leadership and programming and greater access to resources.

After retiring from the Smithsonian in 2017, Olivia remained active. In addition to continuing to mentor many students and younger curators, oral historians, artists, and folklorists, she also kept developing and consulting on community-based programs. She joined the American Folklore Society in 1979, received the Américo Paredes Prize from the Society in 2012, and was elected to AFS Fellows in 2018. She was also co-curator of Notable Folklorists of Color, an AFS online exhibition which was first organized in 2019.

Read more about Olivia’s life and legacy on Smithsonian Folklife and about how she is remembered by her colleague Betty Belanus on Round Barn Press.

Watch this video to learn how Olivia got her PhD and pushed for greater Latino presence at the Smithsonian in her own voice: https://latino.si.edu/exhibitions/presente/foro-5-16