¿Chicano y que?

'500 Years of Chicano History' Available Free to Local (Former) Mexican American Studies Students

2012-01-30T21:42:00.000-08:00

Publishers of the book 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures, one of the books banned from the Tucson Unified School District's now dismantled Mexican American Studies classes, is offering 1,000 books to TUSD Mexican American Studies students:

SouthWest Organizing Project (SWOP) Offering Free Books for AZ Students Affected by Ethnic Studies Ban

"500 Years of Chicano History" available to students who express why ethnic studies is important in schools

"500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures", edited by Elizabeth Martinez and published by the SouthWest Organizing Project (SWOP), is included in a set of primarily Chicano and Native American books that have been banned by the Tucson Independent School District. The school district says it’s not a ban, but the books were removed from classrooms after the Mexican-American Studies program was eliminated, and teachers in that program have been instructed to not teach these books through the lens of ethnic studies. To us, this is a ban.

The SouthWest Organizing Project, in response to the current ban and the overall climate of fear and scapegoating of people of color in Arizona, is offering the book at a 50% discount to Arizona residents, and will give it for FREE to any Arizona Student who requests the book by sending a letter describing why they think the teaching of Chicano and Native American history accurately to young people is essential. Many Arizona students have already shown their disapproval of the ban, as hundreds walked out of class and marched on the Tuscon Unified School District's headquarters earlier this week.

"500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures" was produced by the Chicano Communications Center in the mid-1970s with the intent of educating young Chicanos about their true history, an education they weren’t receiving in the schools. One of the staff people at the Chicano Communications Center who worked on the book, Joaquín Luján, says the book was an important step towards preserving a culture that was under attack. He had experienced, like many in his generation, the erasing of identity—expressed through language and culture—the minute he walked into the schoolhouse.

“I walked in as Joaquín, and walked out as Jackie,” he says, “which was a very sad day for mi abuelito.”

“There was a need being expressed throughout our communities for a book that accurately represented our history as people of color in the southwest, so that our children had the tools they needed to understand themselves and the world they lived in,” Luján says.

"500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures" and the other books on Tuscon's banned list collectively demonstrate, through their content and their inclusion together, the interrelated nature of the Mexican, Chicano, and Native American communities. The ban is oppressive to all students of color, because it negates their histories, their shared experiences today, and their contributions to their communities. A ban on history and ethnic studies is, in effect, a ban on culture.

More information about "500 Years of Chicano History" is available at chicanohistory.org.

Arizona students who would like a free copy of the book should send their letters to:
SouthWest Organizing Project
211 10th Street SW
Albuquerque, NM 87102

OR

Send an Email to 500yearsofchicanohistory@gmail.com
*The offer of a free book extends to the first 1000 requests from Arizona students. SWOP may print your letter on the Chicanohistory.org website. If you do not wish to have the letter printed, please indicate that in your letter. For more information about receiving the book, call SWOP at: 505-247-8832

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Los Angeles Latino Theater Company Ordered Out of Downtown Home

2012-01-18T18:37:00.000-08:00

Article by Ryan Vaillancourt, Staff Writer for LA Downtown News.com. Photo by Gary Leonard

Photo of Jose Luis Valenzuela the executive director of the Latino Theater Company.

The Los Angeles City Council today voted to evict the Latino Theater Company and the Latino Museum of History, Art and Culture from the city-owned Los Angeles Theater Center.

The move terminates the city's lease with two tenants that have been battling since the Latino Museum sued the Latino Theater Company in 2009. The LTC responded with a countersuit last year.

Much of the discussion that led to the Tuesday decision came in closed session. The approved motion stated that both tenants failed to meet "the reasonable expectations of the City, and therefore the Council has a basis to terminate the lease."

The Latino Museum and the Latino Theater Company won a 20-year lease to operate the former bank headquarters at 514 S. Spring St. during a contentious 2006 bidding competition. The LTC has programmed the building's four theaters, while the museum has staged exhibits in the lobby and basement.

Both tenants were ordered to leave within 45 days. The city attorney's office will launch a new public bidding process to find an operator for the 1917 edifice. The city will most likely look to maintain the site's use as a theater venue, Ninth District Councilwoman Jan Perry said.

"It's most appropriate as a theater and over the past several years having the Latino Theater Company in there saved us an amount of money because we didn't have to do renovation or maintenance," Perry said. "The city did achieve its objective of extricating itself from operational aspects of running a theater."

Jose Luis Valenzuela, artistic director of the LATC, said the company is still weighing its options in terms of how to respond to the eviction.

"When they send us the [eviction] letter, they'll tell us how to comply," he said.

In June 2009, the Latino Museum sued the city and the Latino Theater Company, alleging that it has been denied its rights under the lease. It also charged that it has been erroneously billed, and suffered damages as a result.

The LTC fired back in a countersuit the following March, saying that the museum had pledged to help cover a $4 million renovation of the center, but never paid up. The parties remain in litigation.

The decision comes a week before the LTC planned to announce its 2012 season, which was slated to kick off March 19 with a production by in-house theater company The Vault.

Contact Ryan Vaillancourt at ryan@downtownnews.com.

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Remembering the Chicano arts collectives of Los Angeles' Highland Park

2012-01-14T09:30:00.000-08:00

Artist John M. Valadez, stands with his 1977 piece "Lucha Libre" at Avenue 50 Studio. His works will be among those on display at an exhibit spotlighting 1970s Chicano art collectives in Highland Park. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

By Esmeralda Bermudez, Los Angeles Times

They were bold enough to call it a revolution.

Back in the 1970s, when Chicano art was synonymous with East Los Angeles, its storied murals and its art center, Self-Help Graphics, a group of Mexican American artists decided to break away.

They headed north, seven miles, to start their own Chicano arts collective in Highland Park, an area that was still mostly white with little presence of Latino art.

"Our mission was to transform Highland Park into a super-revolutionary Chicano town," said artist Richard Duardo. "I drank the Kool-Aid. We all drank the Kool-Aid."

For about four years, the group set up an arts colony on the second floor of an old music building on North Figueroa Street. They printed an art magazine, created murals, paintings and silk-screen posters that became a part of the Chicano art movement — iconic political, social and cultural images.

Their legacy lives on in Highland Park's Avenue 50 Studio, a Chicano art gallery co-founded by Roberto Delgado, an artist involved with the movement.

Ten years ago he had the idea to showcase the story of the Chicano artists in Highland Park, and on Saturday it will finally be told.

Their work will be on display through Feb. 5 in an exhibit called "Resurrected Histories: Voices from the Chicano Arts Collectives of Highland Park." The gallery will also preview a one-hour documentary on the group, put together with grants and in partnership with KCET-TV.

"We felt this was an exciting story to uncover," said Kathy Gallegos, gallery director. "It was like an archaeological dig that let us understand who all was involved and how much they did while they were here."

The exhibit offers a look at all the Chicano art groups that sprouted in California four decades ago and how they were connected. They formed clusters in Fresno, San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles that supported one another at a time when Chicano art had no place in mainstream museums or galleries.

In Highland Park, two collectives came about in the mid-1970s. Both migrated from East L.A. in search of cheaper rent.

Mechicano Art Center, a nonprofit supported by grants to nurture art in the community, set up shop on North Figueroa, in a corner building that's now a produce market. It held exhibits, painted murals around the city and worked with local high school students.

"We were passionate about our work," said artist Sonya Fe. "The kids would come up with ideas, we'd have parties and we'd have fundraisers."

Down the street, in the old music building, Duardo and a handful of Chicano artists rented a 5,000-square-foot space for $300 a month. They called it Centro de Arte Publico, or the Center for Public Art.

Many were in their 20s and 30s, liberal college graduates with art degrees, and motivated by social injustices to express themselves through art.

They played lots of reggae, talked politics and took on a whole series of projects in the city, such as murals, picket signs for students organizing walk-outs, and posters supporting the then-revolutionary Sandinista socialist political party in Nicaragua.

To pay the bills, they did commercial work: signs for grocery stores, theaters and Realtors.

"The idea was to not depend on anyone — not grants or the government," said artist John Valadez. "We wanted to support ourselves with our own art."

Neighbors in the area never knew much about the Center for Public Art. They'd only see paintings and posters displayed on the windows of the building. Once, Carlos Almaraz, the most political of the bunch, hung a bright red flag of communist China and caused a stir on the block.

By 1980, the artists began to go their separate ways and the collective dissolved. Some married, moved away or relocated to downtown L.A., where an art scene was picking up momentum.

Many are now in the 50s and 60s, their work featured in galleries and museums across Los Angeles.

"It's good for people to know what we've done to influence art across L.A. and in the world," Delgado said. "I hope it connects us more."

esmeralda.bermudez@latimes.com

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Daniel del Solar: Latino Media Activist Passes

2012-01-13T11:10:00.001-08:00

Daniel sitting in my home in Riverside, California on August 9, 2011June 13, 1940 - January 13, 2012

Daniel del Solar, Latino media activist, documentarian, videographer, photographer, and poet died today in Oakland, California, at the age of 71, after a long, valiant battle with metastatic prostate cancer.

Daniel was born in Chile and grew up in Mexico, New York, Mill Valley and Santa Monica. After graduating from Santa Monica High he attended Harvard University. Daniel went on to a varied career in public media, from the KPFA-FM Comunicación Aztlán programming collective in the early 1970s to National Director of Training and Development at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in Washington D.C. in the mid-1970s.

As a leader in innovative multicultural public broadcast programming, he also worked with KQED-TV’s “Open Studio,” served as General Manager of KALW-FM, San Francisco, from 1985–1992, and as General Manager of WYBE-TV, Philadelphia from 1992–1995, with TV programs he produced broadcast by PBS stations in many cities, including Boston, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, and San Francisco. He was on the national board of Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting (CIPB). He also served as Development Director of the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts. His lifelong involvement with and contributions to Latino/a equality and culture include his work as co-producer of a weekly KPFA radio magazine, “Reflecciónes de la Raza,” contributions to the current KPFA weekly program “La Raza Chronicles,” and many other radio and video productions.

With leading Bay Area poets, he was a founding co-editor of Tin Tan (a now legendary San Francisco Chicano/Latino cultural magazine). Many of his photographs have appeared in books, exhibits, and online, and will be featured in an upcoming book about the stepwells of India. He was a co-producer of “Chile: Promise of Freedom,” an audio CD distributed on worldwide radio by the Freedom Archives. He often reported on events in Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, and Venezuela and was active in many Latin American social justice and solidarity movements.

Daniel comes from a prominent Chilean family that can trace their roots to the original conquistadores of Venezuela and Chile. His father was the editor of a major Santiago, Chile newspaper. His mother Luchita Hurtado currently resides in Santa Monica, California and Taos, New Mexico. Daniel's mother later married noted Austrian and Mexican surrealist painter Wolfgang Paalen and UCLA professor and artist Lee Mullican.

At high school he met his long time friend musician Ry Cooder. Danny explained to me that he introduced Cooder to traditional Cuban Music. Apparently there is a scene in the Buena Vista Social Club movie where he receives a cassette. Danny gave it to him. On one of the later CDs Daniel is mentioned and thanked.

Jesús Manuel Mena Garza notes:

I remember Daniel for being a world traveler. He was always off to places I could never afford to visit. Daniel was a fervent supporter of Fidel Castro and Hugo Morales. Though I didn't care much for leaders for life, Daniel was unashamedly a supporter. I met Daniel in the early 1970s at KPFA radio. He was a vocal advocate for public broadcasting and was saddened by the increased commercialization of public media. I am hopeful that his media collection finds a home at a university archive.

Daniel while on his many journeys always found a place to stay at my home in Southern California. We would talk about politics and technology, edit photos and videos. By the way, many years ago, Daniel and his late wife Susan Miriam Castelan married Annie and I on a cold-wintery morning in San Francisco. We wouldn't have had it any other way.

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National Association of Latino Arts & Culture (NALAC) Names Adriana Gallego Deputy Director

2012-01-10T09:31:00.001-08:00

Today the National Association of Latino Arts & Culture (NALAC) announces the hiring of Adriana Gallego as NALAC's new Deputy Director.

Gallego's hiring follows the addition of nationally recognized writer and digital media creator, TJ Gonzales as NALAC's Marketing and Outreach Associate. Also, Maria Tapia was brought on as the Executive Assistant to Executive Director Maria De Leon.

"I am pleased that Adriana will be joining NALAC as Deputy Director. She comes to NALAC with multiple years of experience at the Arizona Arts Commission developing grants programs and providing professional development services. Adriana is an alumnus of the NALAC Leadership Institute and has been involved with NALAC over many years. I am also pleased with the other new additions to the NALAC staff, TJ Gonzales and Maria Tapia. We will continue to strengthen NALAC's infrastructure over the coming months with additional staff to allow us the capacity to address the challenges facing the Latino arts community and the larger arts industry," said NALAC Executive Director, Maria Lopez de Leon.

During her tenure as Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Arizona Commission on the Arts, Gallego developed programs, grants, partnerships and services in support of arts organizations, artists, universities/schools, community groups and government agencies She served on many advisory boards and committees including the Transportation Enhancement Review Committee, the Asset Building for Artists of Color Advisory Board, the Flagstaff Cultural Partners Arts Advisory Board and the Arizona Public Art Network. As a painter, Gallego's artwork is forged from ideals about equality and understanding rooted in the Civil Rights and Feminist movements, with sensibilities born out of her upbringing alongside the United States-Mexico border. She received the Border-Ford Bi-national Painting Award and has completed several mural commissions in Arizona and California.

Commenting on her selection as NALAC's Deputy Director, Gallego said, "In my experience, NALAC's guiding principles are not only inspiring, but they are transformative in practice. I very much look forward to contributing to this trajectory in the service of cultivating a vibrant, diverse Latino arts and culture sector."

The addition of Gallego, Gonzales and Tapia in their respective positions comes as NALAC prepares for the 2012 National Conference to be held in Philadelphia, PA from October 17th to October 21st.

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How US Policies Fueled Mexico's Great Migration

2012-01-05T09:37:00.000-08:00

By David Bacon (really?) for The Nation

This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute and the Puffin Foundation. Some names of the people profiled in this article have been changed.

Roberto Ortega tried to make a living slaughtering pigs in Veracruz, Mexico. “In my town, Las Choapas, after I killed a pig, I would cut it up to sell the meat,” he recalls. But in the late 1990s, after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) opened up Mexican markets to massive pork imports from US companies like Smithfield Foods, Ortega and other small-scale butchers in Mexico were devastated by the drop in prices. “Whatever I could do to make money, I did,” Ortega explains. “But I could never make enough for us to survive.” In 1999 he came to the United States, where he again slaughtered pigs for a living. This time, though, he did it as a worker in the world’s largest pork slaughterhouse, in Tar Heel, North Carolina.

His new employer? Smithfield—the same company whose imports helped to drive small butchers like him out of business in Mexico.

David Ceja, another immigrant from Veracruz who wound up in Tar Heel, recalls, “Sometimes the price of a pig was enough to buy what we needed, but then it wasn’t. Farm prices were always going down. We couldn’t pay for electricity, so we’d just use candles. Everyone was hurting almost all the time.”

Ceja remembers that his family had ten cows, as well as pigs and chickens, when he was growing up. Even then, he still had to work, and they sometimes went hungry. “But we could give milk to people who came asking for it. There were people even worse off than us,” he recalls.

In 1999, when Ceja was 18, he left his family’s farm in Martinez de la Torre, in northern Veracruz. His parents sold four cows and two hectares of land, and came up with enough money to get him to the border. There he found a coyote who took him across for $1,200. “I didn’t really want to leave, but I felt I had to,” he remembers. “I was afraid, but our need was so great.”

He arrived in Texas, still owing for the passage. “I couldn’t find work for three months. I was desperate,” he says. He feared the consequences if he couldn’t pay, and took whatever work he could find until he finally reached North Carolina. There friends helped him get a real job at Smithfield’s Tar Heel packinghouse. “The boys I played with as a kid are all in the US,” he says. “I’d see many of them working in the plant.”

North Carolina became the number-one US destination for Veracruz’s displaced farmers. Many got jobs at Smithfield, and some, like Ortega and Ceja, helped lead the sixteen-year fight that finally brought in a union there. But they paid a high price. Asserting their rights also made them the targets of harsh immigration enforcement and a growing wave of hostility toward Mexicans in the American South.

The experience of Veracruz migrants reveals a close connection between US investment and trade deals in Mexico and the displacement and migration of its people. For nearly two decades, Smithfield has used NAFTA and the forces it unleashed to become the world’s largest packer and processor of hogs and pork. But the conditions in Veracruz that helped Smithfield make high profits plunged thousands of rural residents into poverty. Tens of thousands left Mexico, many eventually helping Smithfield’s bottom line once again by working for low wages on its US meatpacking lines. “The free trade agreement was the cause of our problems,” Ceja says.

Read the whole article in The Nation by clicking here or the header...

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Judge Says Chicano Studies Program Violates Arizona Law

2011-12-30T18:18:00.000-08:00

Article from the Latin American Herald Tribune [Click header to go to original article.]

Cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz

Less than a week before classes are set to resume after the Christmas break, the future of Tucson’s Mexican-American studies program has been cast into doubt by a judge’s finding that it violates Arizona law.

The Tucson Unified School District could lose up to $15 million in state funding annually unless it drops or substantially modifies the program.

“This decision was not a surprise for us; in a way, we expected it,” school board member Adelita Grijalva told Efe Wednesday.

The board – itself divided on the issue of Chicano studies – must now decide how to respond to Tuesday’s finding by state administrative law Judge Lewis D. Kowal.

Tucson’s program violates a new Arizona law barring ethnic studies courses that promote “the overthrow of the United States government” or “resentment toward a race or class of people,” Kowal concluded.

That law likewise excludes curricula “designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group” or that seek to “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”

The judge rendered his opinion in the form of a non-binding recommendation to the Arizona education department, which has 30 days to decide whether to pursue legal action against the TUSD if it refuses to bring its program into compliance.

State education superintendent John Huppenthal, who launched the initial challenge to the Chicano studies program, welcomed Kowal’s finding.

“I made a decision based on the totality of the information and facts gathered during my investigation – a decision that I felt was best for all students in the Tucson Unified School District. The judge’s decision confirms that it was the right decision,” Huppenthal said in a statement.

Eleven TUSD teachers filed suit in federal court to challenge the Arizona law as unconstitutional, but the case is still pending.

The attorney representing those plaintiffs, Richard M. Martinez, told Efe he was surprised that Kowal did not even address the constitutional aspect of the law.

The federal lawsuit contends the Arizona measure is discriminatory toward the Hispanic community and that it violates the right to freedom of expression.

Defenders of the Tucson program say it informs students about the history and contributions of Latinos in Arizona and the United States.

The program is more than 40 years old.

Hispanics (Chicanos) make up 61.4 percent of the TUSD’s 51,866 students.

Critics of the new say it was specifically crafted to end the TUSD’s ethnic studies programs, long a target of former Arizona education superintendent Tom Horne, now the state’s attorney general. EFE

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Houston Chicano Mural Will Be Saved, But Where?

2011-12-22T20:12:00.000-08:00

Article by Pat Hernandez for KUHF FM
Photo by Johnny Hanson of the Houston Chronicle

Maria Jimenez is a University of Houston alum. She remembers the mural when it was being painted, in the part of the center where Mexican Americans often congregated. She says at the time they numbered 400 out of a total enrollment of 29,000 students.

"The Mexican-American Youth Organization was an active organization at the time, and its members wanted to preserve the history of the Chicano movement, but also wanted to be able to designate what had become home for us. The section had become our home, given that we were probably 99-percent of us, first generation college-goers."

Gloria Rubac is a retired educator and had already graduated from college. But she was very much involved in student activism and had helped paint part of the mural.

"It was extremely important at that time, because the Chicano movement was developing, and people were learning who Chicanos were. And now we have this gorgeous piece of history that talks about the struggle, the fight, the racism that was fought."

But the mural has become the center of attention with a planned renovation of the University Center.

This is graduate Hector Chavana:

"We want to send a clear message: Number one, we don't want the mural destroyed, we want it preserved. Number two, we really don't want it moved at all, because we fell that there's a possibility it could be damaged. And number three, we want it to take a more prominent role here at the University Center and in student life in general."

University spokesman Richard Bonnin says part of a comprehensive renovation and expansion of the University Center, which was approved in a student referendum, includes preserving existing artworks, like the Chicano mural.

"Absolutely, that's one of the reasons why we hired the art conservator. We are dedicated and committed to preserving not just this piece of artwork, but all of the artwork at the University that we consider to be a significant part of our history."

He says the conservator found the mural to be painted on canvas. That will allow it to be removed, cleaned, restored and mounted. Whether it remains at its current location...

"That is still being reviewed. We want to put it in a very prominent area. This particular location as of now, is badly in disrepair."

He says the mural could find a new home in another part of the campus, or it could remain in its present location once the renovation is done.

A renowned piece of Chicano art painted on a wall at the University of Houston will be preserved. But whether it remains at the present location is not known.
The mural created in 1973 by the Mexican-American Youth Organization is located on a wall in the basement of the University Center.

Field Notes From the Revolution: Activists Occupy California’s Imperial Valley

2011-11-10T09:49:00.000-08:00

Mike Davis for the Nation [Click header to go to the Nation.)

My car radio reports an Arctic blizzard on Wall Street, but Main Street in El Centro is comfortably baking in ninety-degree autumn heat. In California’s Imperial Valley, where federally subsidized Colorado River water has irrigated the profits of Anglo latifundistas for more than a century, and where farmworkers too often die of sunstroke and dehydration on 120-degree days in August, this is fine weather for protest.

Forty or fifty Valley residents are marching down Main, past recently boarded-up storefronts and extinct family businesses, stopping in front of several banks and a McDonald’s to chant “No more, no more, no more oppression. The 99 percent is fed up with all the exploitation.”

The protest wears two hats—Occupy El Centro and Occupy Imperial County—but both initiatives have now fused into a single emerging network of activists. (Their audacious name in Spanish, which I prefer, is Toma el Valle, or “Take the Valley.”)

After some lusty renditions of El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido(“Best chant ever,” an eighth-grader tells me), the marchers rally under a picnic canopy at Adams Park, where a serape-draped Day of the Dead altar has been erected in memory of the “American Dream.”

There are sprays of marigolds, painted papier-mâché skulls, a portrait of a santo (Cesar Chavez), corn husks, pumpkin seeds,pan de muertos, small American flags, amulets, a plaque with the names of local war dead and a copy of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Leaning on the altar is a large placard: “99%.”

But it could also have read “32%”—the official unemployment rate in Imperial County at the beginning of September. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, El Centro and its neighboring towns lead the nation’s metropolitan areas in joblessness.

Likewise, local per capital incomes are today nearly 10 percent less than twenty years ago. Half-finished subdivisions—targeted for sale to extreme long-distance commuters who work in San Diego—are becoming dusty ghost towns, and even the local cemetery is rumored to be in foreclosure.

Statistically, in other words, the sueño Americano in the Imperial Valley is almost without a heartbeat. And the outside world is eager to rub salt in the wound.

One yuppie lifestyle site, for example, recently voted El Centro the “worst city” in the United States, while William Vollman, the Forrest Gump of US literary journalism, has depicted Imperial County as the heart of border darkness, if not Hell itself, in an immense, sprawling, solipsistic book. His Imperial is 1,344 pages long; my edition of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, 1,296 pages.

After the rally, while organizers are dismantling the altar, I talk to several protesters about outside images of the Valley. One teenager thinks I’m pulling his leg when I describe Vollman’s magnum opus: “About El Centro, for real? Why? This is just an ordinary place.”

An older Latino man acknowledges the Valley’s brutal and extraordinary anti-union past, but also demands respect for its rich cultural core of family life, outdoor recreation and Mexican heritage. “If our kids leave,” he emphasizes, “it’s not because they hate the desert, but because there are no decent jobs.”

Water Transfer and Death Winds

Later, over apple pie and nachos at a nearby Denny’s, I have a chance to interview six of the occupationistas. I’m particularly interested in how they connect the broader themes of greed and inequality to their local situation.

I dub Imperial the most “reactionary” county in California. Susan Massey, a retired schoolteacher from nearby Holtville and a longtime peace activist, is skeptical.

“Poorest perhaps,” she says, but she points to the incremental enfranchisement (80 percent of the population is now Latino) that has ended the long era of overt farm fascism, when shouting anti-plutocratic slogans on Main Street would have resulted in a jail cell or even a lynching. Electorally, Imperial is now a reliable national Democratic stronghold (represented in Congress by liberal Bob Filner), even if voters still overwhelming reject gay marriage.

But everyone at the table agrees that the scale of the Valley’s unemployment problem far exceeds the meager resources available to local government. And as in southern Louisiana, jobs and environment are inextricably linked as the region approaches a dangerous tipping point.

Anita Nicklen, a migrant rights advocate and mother of two of the younger protesters, explains the links in a potentially fatal chain. “Farmers are under tremendous pressure to fallow land and sell their water entitlements to San Diego’s suburbs. Fewer crops means fewer farm workers and fewer dollars circulating in our local economy. There is also less runoff from irrigation into the rapidly shrinking Salton Sea. Fish die, migratory birds leave, tourists stay home. As the sea dries up, its toxic contents are exposed to the wind.”

(A scientist friend of mine later suggests a recipe for making the muck at the bottom of the sea: “Add alkali salts, deadly pesticides and carcinogenic industrial residues to vast quantities of fertilizer and sewage. Let it dry. Then let it blow. Roll up your car windows and quickly drive as far away as possible.”)

The peril is not theoretical. Los Angeles is currently spending hundreds of millions of dollars to restore parts of Owens Lake, whose water supply was diverted into the LA Aqueduct in 1913, to mitigate the alkali dust storms that for years have created acute respiratory problems in high-desert communities.

But the death of the Salton Sea, an extraordinary reservoir of sinister chemicals, would be like opening Pandora’s box, a creeping Chernobyl of respiratory illness and cancer. Partial depopulation of the Imperial and d valleys might follow.

To prevent such an apocalypse, Sacramento proposed a $9 billion restoration plan for the sea, but authority for the appropriation was blocked in court in 2009, and the plan now faces the triage of the state debt crisis. Meanwhile, climate change and a long drought in the Colorado Basin have reinforced political pressures to allow much larger water transfers from the Imperial Valley to the coast.

NAFTA Doesn’t Trickle Down

I change my line of inquiry. “OK, agriculture will likely decline, but what about the border economy?”

The Imperial Valley stands astride two major NAFTA transport corridors, and its Siamese twin in Mexico, the Mexicali Valley, is rapidly industrializing and diversifying.

El Centro has a population of 43,000; Mexicali, about 1 million. Across the border fence is a forest of foreign logos atop bustling maquiladoras: Sanyo, Kenworth, Allied Signal, Goldstar, Nestlé and so on. And an ambitious new industrial park, the “Silicon Border,” is fishing in Asia to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to North America.

Surely Mexicali’s dynamism must invigorate the Imperial Valley as well?
But no one at Denny’s can think of a single new manufacturing plant that free trade has added to the county (there apparently isn’t any). On the other hand, everyone has a horror story about the economic and personal impacts of the post-9/11 border.

Anita, who volunteers for Angeles sin Fronteras, a shelter for deported migrants in Mexicali, talks about cumulative fatigue of purgatorial two-hour-average waits in the northbound lanes to enter California. The delays, she points out, have killed off much of the cross-border retail trade that once nurtured Imperial Valley’s malls, markets and department stores. (Indeed, I discovered a 2007 study by the California Department of Transportation that estimates the Operation Gatekeeper–like delays have cost Imperial County several thousand jobs and tens of millions of dollars in sales tax receipts.)

The supposed benefits of NAFTA, in other words, haven’t trickled down to the Valley. Otherwise, how can you have the nation’s highest unemployment within spitting distance of one of the continent’s busiest trade corridors?

And the vigorous interventions by Mexico’s state and federal governments to keep Mexicali booming contrasts with the benign neglect of the Imperial Valley’s job crisis by both Sacramento and Washington.

Mobilize to Organize

I went to El Centro thinking that I might find a simple meme of the Wall Street protest: a copycat action, unlikely to grow in the hostile climate of Imperial County.

What I discovered, in fact, was a desert flower brought to blossom by a combination of long cultivation (local activist tradition), lots of sunlight (dialogue via social media) and, equally important, the existence of a local greenhouse (a physical space for meeting and interaction).

(I apologize to Occupy El Centro for not being able to interview more of its instigators, as well as for any errors in my interpretation of events.)

First, having a history: some of the older activists—Anita and Susan, for example—are veterans of the 2003 antiwar movement. Although never very large, the Imperial Valley Peace Coalition was a foundation for episodic actions and informal meetings and film viewings. It was also a political nursery where curious teenagers, like Camden Aguilera (now 24) from the town of Imperial, took their first steps in dissent.

The peace network recently roared back into existence when Wind Zero, a mysterious San Diego company headed by an ex-Navy SEAL, obtained permission from Imperial County supervisors to build a huge private military-training complex near the desert hamlet of Ocotillo. The plan is almost a carbon copy of Blackwater’s notorious attempt several years ago to construct a Goldfinger-like base in the eastern San Diego community of Potrero.

Blackwater (now Xe) was eventually defeated in San Diego by a unique grassroots coalition of conservative back-country residents and peace activists; and now People Against Wind Zero, supported by Occupy El Centro, is building a similar alliance.

Second, the importance of having a place: in the current global protests, physical fora and public space have re-established their centrality to rebellion. In the case of the Valley, Camden and Anita both stress the key role of the Center for Religious Science in El Centro, a meditation-focused spiritual center that provides performance space for actors, musicians and poets, and encourages meetings on issues of peace and environmental justice. Camden says the center enables creative countercultures and an alternative realm of ideas to exist in the Valley.

Although activists in the Coachella Valley (a northern extension of the Salton Sink) recently attempted to occupy Palm Desert’s Civic Center Park—nine were arrested—the Imperial Valley movement is conserving its forces for outreach. As Anita eloquently put it, “We must go from mobilize to organize.”

The prime movers of the El Centro demonstration bring together an impressive agenda of 99% issues, including migrant rights (Anita), anti–Wind Zero (Susan), feminism (Camden) and veterans’ rights (John Hernandez of Brawley).

Occupy El Centro provides a framework both for concentrating forces, as against Wind Zero, and for nurturing new solidarities on both sides of the steel wall that now separates the two Californias.

“Because the Imperial Valley is on the border,” Camden, said, she looks forward to “opportunities to take part in not only local or national activism, but global activism as well.” Anita hopes in particular that they can link with similar groups in Mexicali and begin to build an “Occupy the Border” dimension.

Finally, there is the virtual community aspect of the Occupy movement that enables participation in spite of geographical distance. Thanks to Facebook, for example, the Valley’s college diaspora, including recent UC Santa Cruz graduate Jessica Yocupicio, was able to play an integral role in planning the protest.

According to Susan, “a young man, Sky Ainsworth, ignited the process with an online call for action. When very few people responded, Jessica approached Anita, whom she knew from anti–Wind Zero organizing, and she contacted Camden and John Hernandez to start the planning dialogue. Other young people read the blogs and joined in.”

At the end of the day, however, occupying El Centro was an exercise in old-fashioned grit. As Susan explains: “I wanted to add that I was moved by the tremendous effort that the young organizers of the rally put forth. None of them have cars and get to work or school by public transportation. In Imperial Valley, buses are so few and far between it means spending two to three hours to go somewhere that is twenty minutes away by car. They are also very dedicated to helping friends and family with problems, so it was amazing that they could bring this off.”

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CSUN professor paints her way through male-dominated art industry

2011-11-08T18:26:00.000-08:00

By Christopher Ho for the CSUN Sundial

Growing up as a self-identified Chicana, Yreina Cervantez had little inclination that her childhood circumstances would eventually lead her into the Chicana/o movement and her position in the Chicana/o studies department at California State University, Northridge.

“Art is a powerful tool for transformation,” said Cervantez who immersed herself in the growing arts community. She said the collective spirit at Self Help Graphics was very dynamic and became a creative hotbed for artists during beginning of civil rights in the Chicana/o Movement.

It can be hard to find one’s identity in a male dominated movement, that is why she values her close solidarity with fellow female chicana artists, said Cervantez. These friendships also help to influence her work.

“Women have not been very visible in today’s art,” she said. “And if they have, they are portrayed very stereotypical. These pieces talk about the dignities of women and their strengths, while reclaiming a sense of empowerment and agency.”

That being said, Cervantez certainly wants to make clear that, the symbolism in her art is not a reaction but a thoughtful response.

Cervantez spent six years at Self Help Graphics, a non-profit in LA that supports community art. Self Help was more than just a company; it provided a platform for artists to support Chicana/o art, especially when there was little support in 1979, according to Cervantez.

Cervantez is a community worker and a painter in academia. Her work is currently being exhibited at the Fowler Museum in UCLA as a special show entitled “Mapping Another LA: The Chicano Art Movement.”

The exhibit began Oct.16 and continues until Feb. 26. “Mapping Another LA” is part of a larger project “Pacific Standard Time” that showcases Californian art from 1940s to 1980s. Cervantez’s work also has a reoccurring appearance at the Latino Museum located in the heart of downtown L.A.

When asked about showcasing her work, Cervantez offered humble gratification. Displaying one’s work is the goal as a working artist, Cervantez said.

“My work has been shown for over 30 years, but it’s always gratifying, definitely a sense of affirmation,” she said.

Cervantez is a third-generation Mexican who spent her childhood in the American Midwest and Mount Palomar in mostly rural areas culturally polarized. When her family moved to Orange County, the conservative attitude, according to Cervantez, influenced her to become part of the Chicana/o movement.

She credits her mother as an original inspiration of her painting career, as she was creative and artistic even though her mother was not necessarily an artist. Nonetheless her mother’s inspiration was absorbed by osmosis, helping propel a natural talent in Cervantez whether it was painting or drawing.

Cervantez paints in all mediums, but fine tuned her watercolor skills during her upbringing. “In high school, my art started to develop and so did my consciousness,” she said.

With her heart and skills in art, she went to college and received her undergraduate degree in the medium.

“I wanted to put my education to use; my education is not just in academia but also in the community,” said Cervantez.

Her first job as a resident artist involved working with local youth under the Social and Public Arts Resource Center in the murals department. To Cervantez it was a form of social justice, a way to serve the community through art.

Although the arts may sometimes be seen as a spontaneous event, the Chicana artist infuses research into her thoughtful responses during her creative process.

“Meso-American mythology inspires a lot of my work, by drawing from the past to apply to the contemporary,” she said.

Cervantez said she envisions her pieces a certain way, being an organic process though unanticipated things can happen. She enjoys the twist and turns “because the creative process is a combination of intellectual and visceral responses,” she said.

Art is not just a personal experience that resonates individually, but an opportunity to inspire change, which is why Cervantez decided to teach at a college level. It is a perfect opportunity to impact younger students at a more meaningful comprehensive and influential way, Cervantez said.

Cervantez said there is a lot of activism now in today’s younger generations, especially during the social unrest. And she feels responsible in teaching students a comprehensive and informed look at activism through Chicana/o art. Even if that means taking on the continual challenge between balancing painting and teaching.

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Visual language of Malaquias Montoya

2011-10-17T16:39:00.000-07:00

[To see more photos by Sandy Thomas click the header]

By Trina Drotar for the Sacramento Press

It was standing room-only for the people who came to hear Malaquías Montoya speak about art, life, protest and language Wednesday evening at the Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento. The crowd spilled out the door onto 19th Street and included UC Davis students, CCAS members, artists and activists.

An electricity filled the room as voices rose and fell. Current and former students proclaimed they are all fans of Montoya.

Curator served as the evening’s host, leading the audience in a welcome applause before speaking about Montoya, under whom he had studied.

Montoya stepped up, without a microphone, and asked, “Why do we do the things that we do daily?”

He answered that question through sharing stories from his life. Montoya’s stories resonated with the audience, who sometimes laughed, sometimes remained silent, and always listened.

The artist begins to surface

Montoya recalled reading about Dick, Jane and Spot in elementary school readers, and he said the stories and their lives made no sense to him.

“The dog in my neighborhood didn’t look like Spot,” he said.

While that elicited some laughter from the group, when he spoke about being placed in a special class, the audience became quiet. Montoya spoke about labels placed on children, sometimes because of their names, accents, or clothes. His mother said the class would be best because he would receive attention.

“All we did was use glue, scissors, paper, and once a week the teacher wrote on the blackboard. The rest of the time, we’d draw or color,” Montoya said.

In that class, Montoya’s “artistic self began to surface.”

“I realized that I was someone people looked to. I gained pride, self-esteem.”

Earth, crepe paper, inner tubes, and tires

In the early ’60s, Montoya began working with silkscreen, cutting stencils and doing design. He recalls asking his mother about the family home and where, if they had no money, she found the money to transform the home with stencils, decals and paint.

“My mother married at 13, and when my father was working, she’d play. She went to the arroyos, scraped layers of earth, collected berries and brought back some white rock. From these, she’d create (paints) and gesso. She’d collect all of the crepe paper from celebrations, bring it home and put it in water. The crepe paper bleeds, and she’d use that to tint the earth colors.”

The decals and stencils were created from inner tubes from which Montoya’s mother cut designs and placed on thick cardboard.

“She made little printing blocks,” he said.

She cut apart old tires, dipped those in paint and printed on the walls.

“We’re born creative. We’re little geniuses,” Montoya said, adding that outside influences try to take that away from us.

A new way of learning

Two years after beginning work with a printer, Montoya enrolled in a commercial art class and found the education more positive than his earlier college experience. He already knew a great deal about silkscreen printing, and he knew that the professor had not given students all the information available, so Montoya supplemented the instructions.

“The students were excited. The teacher was angry,” he said.

Montoya was told he was not good as a writer and that he was not good at drawing. He was referred to Professor Joseph Zirker at San Jose City College, who told Montoya there was nothing wrong with his drawing. Zirker became Montoya’s mentor and friend, and Montoya recalls that Zirker was compassionate and sensitive, traits Montoya had applied to artists in his early years.

Montoya continually dropped his English classes when the first assignments were handed out. He enrolled in what was then termed “bonehead English” and was told that his work was fine.

“I’d buy new pencils, binders, a dictionary. I thought they would make a difference,” Montoya said.

He pursued self-hypnosis

“I am going to do it,” is what he said.

Montoya would not simply try. Determined to succeed, he wrote his paper, turned it in, then waited. He wanted a grade, wanted to read the comments, wanted not to fold the paper and put it in his pocket. On the day the papers were returned, Montoya’s was read (aloud) by the teacher.

“It was the beginning of a different way of learning. We all have different ways of learning.”

Montoya entered UC Berkeley in 1968, against Zirker’s recommendation, who feared the university would change Montoya’s work.

“I found school very difficult,” he said. “The type of work I did – didn’t call it Chicano, political – was of cotton pickers who looked Mexicano. Some called it outdated, archaic. I visited studios of the professors. One was drawing squares of color in the manner of Rothko.”

That type of drawing did not offer the means to express what Montoya wanted to say.

Toward a Mexican identity collectively

Montoya spoke about José Clemente Orozco, a Mexican socialist painter; Diego Rivera, known for his murals focusing on history and humanity’s future; and David Alfaro Siqueiros, a social realist painter whose works were about redefining Mexico.

“(These works) gave Mexico a new face, pushed the revolution that had happened,” he said. “(The artists) worked collectively to give us a Mexican identity. Collectives were geared toward workers to develop a strong working class. Younger artists wanted to be more individualistic.”

CIA as curator

The U.S. Information Agency, the CIA and multinational corporations were interested in the changes in mid-twentieth century Mexico.

“Rockefeller and others went to Mexico to change the artwork,” Montoya said.

Jose Luis Cuevas was invited to show his art in New York, which caused a rumble in Mexico, Montoya said.

“The U.S. wanted to push the school of muralism back,” said Montoya.

The murals of Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros raised the consciousness of the Mexican people, and that meant it was difficult to make business deals in Mexico.

In this way, art becomes a commodity, and artists create in order to sell their product.

“Art is a language for people to feel and understand,” he said. “When that is taken away, you lose.”

Chicano art today, validation, and memory

A question-and-answer session followed Montoya’s lecture.

To a question posed about Chicano art today, Montoya responded that there is much “so-called Chicano art,” that the corporations have bought into it, but the Chicano artists have lost their edge and have become good grant writers.

“For a lot of people, it’s even worse today than back then. We believe it.”

When asked if there is organizing to do, Montoya said, “It has to be done. Artists have to remember.”

Montoya spoke about the piece that attracted the attention of many attendees, “Memories,” created with two other pieces in 1992 on the quincentennial of the arrival of Columbus to this continent. The three-piece set denounces the atrocities committed against the indigenous people by Columbus and invading Europeans.

“It talks about how many died,” Montoya said.

He read the words printed across the top: “My memory will retain what is worthwhile. My memory knows more, about me than I do; it doesn’t lose what deserves to be saved,” from Eduardo Galeano, a Uruguayan journalist and novelist.

“What is it like to not be validated for your work?” another attendee asked. “Where do you seek your validation from?”

Montoya told a story of walking into a class one day and seeing his name written across the board. The teacher brought him to the board and, erasing the letters of his name from back to front until only three letters remained, asked “What if we call you Mal?”

His validation came from Zirker, and it came from César Chávez, and it came from the Chicano movement, out of which came newspapers.

“We were reading about ourselves. That validated our own bilingualism. It was power. I was validated by my community. We wanted to stop the war in Vietnam. It’s hard to instill in students today because of the diversions,” Montoya said, referring to iPod earbuds and shopping malls.

“They are allowed to wear raggedy clothes, to shave their heads, in a sense of freedom, instead of looking at what’s around (them),” he said.

The audience remained throughout the entire lecture.

“That is just what I needed to hear,” said Jen Cimaglio, Sacramento artist and activist, “I have work to do.”

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AirTalk's Chicano ArtTalk and Pacific Standard Time Exhibit

2011-10-17T16:33:00.000-07:00

This month, as part of the ambitious celebration of SoCal art that is "Pacific Standard Time," KPCC and AirTalk with Larry Mantle will divine our inner curator. We are excited to announce a one-night Chicano art exhibit with the artists themselves and their works in the Crawford Family Forum.

Trailblazers of the Chicano art movement, Patssi Valdez and the artist known as Gronk, will reveal the roots of this vibrant and distinct school. The next generation will be represented by Sonia Romero and Enrique Castrejon. We will trace their history in LA's art scene -- a history that began with struggle.

The early days of the modern American art movement were once described as "racist, aloof, pretentious and elitist" by Armando Vazquez. In his essay, "Reflection on the Chicano Art Movimiento," Vasquez said it wouldn't be until the 1950s and 60s that Chicanos, Jews, Blacks, Native Americans and women would penetrate the monolith known as 'American art and culture.' Los Angeles was a focal point of that fundamental shift. The birth of Chicano art coincided with the birth of LA as a center for contemporary art and artistic innovation distinct to Southern California. To see what separates this class of creative expression from the rest, come to the Crawford Family Forum on Wednesday, October 19th.

6:00pm - Doors Open
6:30pm - Program

Admission is FREE, but RSVP's are required. Click header for more RSVP info.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011
6:30 p.m. - 8 p.m.
The Crawford Family Forum
474 South Raymond Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91105

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Jesús Garza: Summer 2011 Oil Paintings

2011-10-14T12:37:00.001-07:00

I have placed on my wall the first of four oil paintings I completed this Summer. In a few months I will coat them with the appropriate varnish. They are not completely dry yet.

The first iPhone photo is of the painting on my wall and the second is a closeup detail. Feel free to send me your comments. I will start my Fall and Winter phase of painting in a few days.

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'Art Along the Hyphen' in Los Angeles

2011-10-13T17:54:00.000-07:00

At the Autry in Griffith Park

Under the umbrella project "L.A. Xicano," the new exhibition "Art Along the Hyphen: The Mexican-American Generation" is one of five interrelated exhibitions organized by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, the Autry, the Fowler Museum at UCLA and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Presented as part of the Pacific Standard Time initiative, the exhibition brings together 100 rarely seen paintings and sculptures from 1945 to 1965 by artists Hernando Villa (1881-1952), Alberto Valdés (1918-98), Domingo Ulloa (1919-97), Roberto Chavez (1932- ), Dora de Larios (1933- ) and Eduardo Carrillo (1937-97).

Opens Friday, October 14, 2011

http://www.theautry.org.
The Autry in Griffith Park
4700 Western Heritage Way
Los Angeles, CA 90027-1462
T: 323.667.2000
F: 323.660.5721

Jesús Garza's Chicano Photographer show (1970-1975) continues for 30 more days

2011-10-05T21:12:00.001-07:00

[Photo of César Estrada Chávez by Jesús Garza. Click image to view and/or download larger version. Suitable for printing.]

Chicano Photographer, an exhibition by Riverside, California documentary photographer Jesús Manuel Mena Garza opened at the San Bernardino County Museum (SBCM) Schuilling Gallery, March 26, 2011. The exhibition continues to November 6.

The photographs were captured from 1970 to 1975. During this period, Garza took intimate photographs of Chicano icons César E. Chávez, Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzáles and others. The photographs provide a retrospective glimpse from the unique perspective of the photojournalist and activist. The SBCM exhibition lists thirty-one select images from the photographer’s Imágenes Xicano Archive, a portion of which has already been exhibited on both coasts.

University of Redlands Professor Dr. Ann Marie Leimer adds, “During the past decades, Garza has extensively published and exhibited several documentary photographic series. The Chicano Photographer series explores important aspects of the American experience, historic events and cultural practices often marginalized by the dominant culture.” Photographs from the series have already been published in journals and books. Dr. Leimer recently completed a book on the photographic series. The exhibition is perfect for students 5 to 95. Please feel free to contact the museum or artist for more information.

San Bernardino County Museum
Schuilling Gallery
2024 Orange Tree Lane
Redlands CA 92374
Voice (909) 307-2669 ext. 227 Fax (909) 307-0689
www.sbcountymuseum.org

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The International Accordion Festival’s battle against shrinking funds and ignorant lawmakers

2011-10-05T14:18:00.000-07:00

By Enrique Lopetegui for San Antonio Current Magazine

Photo by Rene Miranda

The financial crisis affects everyone, but non-profits are particularly susceptible — especially arts non-profits.

“If you’re going to get rid of something, why are we getting rid of art instead of football?” former San Antonio First Lady Linda Hardberger told me in 2008. “I don’t understand. If we’re going to start naming frills … [football] costs a lot of money. But nobody wants to cut football, and everybody wants to cut arts.”

Go tell it to Gwen Rivera, director of the International Accordion Festival, celebrating its 11th edition this weekend at La Villita. The eclectic festival, arguably the best music festival in the city, if not the whole state, routinely attracts some of the best masters of the instrument in genres ranging from Argentina’s chamamé and Bulgarian wedding band music to Louisiana’s Cajun zydeco and, of course, our own conjunto music. The free festival only receives a small percentage of grants and foundational support, and relies on community donations and a percentage of vendor sales. The event has an annual budget of $150,000, but last year’s $35,000 NEA grant was slightly reduced for this edition.

“This year the festival received a grant for $30,000, which we appreciate because arts funding was cut across the board,” Rivera told the Current. “In this economic climate we are still hopeful as is any non-profit, but we still need the help of our most valued resource: our community. Last year we collected donations at the festival, which really helped us going into 2011, and we are hoping that our fans will do the same to help take us into 2012 — especially if we want to continue to offer this amazing free event.”

But the festival has more than the economic crisis to struggle against — they’ve also got to contend with U.S. Congressman Jeff Flake of Arizona. In May, Representative Flake grilled Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts, as to why the NEA should give funds to certain groups that, according to the congressman, are “a bit tough to justify.” Out of a long list, the congressman specifically singled out two groups: the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the International Accordion Festival.

“Those kind of grants lend themselves to ridicule,” the Flake told Landesman during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing.

Landesman held his own, saying that “the marketplace shouldn’t be the sole determinant of what is allowed to flourish.” He got help from Representative José Serrano (D-NY), who said Flake “will be getting hate mail from Polish folk musicians,” before adding that “even during difficult budget times, we have to protect, preserve and grow the arts.”

“Perhaps [Rep. Flake is] one of those people who think the accordion is too ‘working class’ to be celebrated,” said Catherine Ragland, this year’s festival curator, and a world authority on anything accordion-related. “If he had read the grant, he would have learned that the festival is not just about a bunch of people playing the accordion, drinking beer, and having a good time, though I don’t see anything wrong with that. The event is about promoting diversity, reaching out and across communities, and learning about different musical and cultural traditions around the world and within our own community.”

If you’ve never been to the festival, go to its website and see for yourself — these aren’t just party bands, but serious musicians who are masters in their genres.

Besides the Current’s picks (see sidebar), don’t miss Buille, a folk group that rarely plays in the U.S. In a country used to seeing Irish-American groups (nothing wrong with that), this is the real stuff.

“We are really very lucky to have them,” Ragland said. “This was quite a coup.” Buille has a distinctively Northern Irish style mixed with jazz and East European fusions, and it represent the festival goers’ only opportunity to hear and learn about the concertina, a free-reed type of small accordion.

This year’s cajun/zydeco representatives are among the best in the festival’s history: Grammy-nominated Pine Leaf Boys and Cedric Watson are young, contemporary artists who nevertheless understand and reach to the Creole and French roots of the genre. And the list goes on. La Villita is the place to be this weekend.

On a final note, Tejano music fans like to repeat there are Tejano fans all over the nation, especially in Arizona. If that is a fact (and it is a fact), when they find themselves at the polling booth they should remember who this guy Flake is — he’ll be running for the Senate. •

11th Annual International Accordion Festival

Free
Oct 7-9
6:30pm-10:30pm Fri
Noon-10pm Sat and Sun
La Villita

internationalaccordionfestival.org

Workshops and demonstrations
Noon-5:30pm Sat and Sun
Juarez Plaza Stage

Acoustic performances, open mics, and jams
Noon-5:30pm Sat and Sun
Bolivar Hall

Email Enrique Lopetegui

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An LA Chicano artist's best friend: Chon Noriega

2011-09-30T21:06:00.000-07:00

[Photo is the cover of the October 2011 issue of Artforum Magazine]

Having lived in SoCal for several years now, I have gained a respect for UCLA professor Chon Noriega. Along with his minions, he has done an incredible job of promoting Southern California Chicano artists. Here are a few examples:

1) Helped gain exhibitions at major galleries including LACMA, the Autry, UCLA and the Getty (at the biggies not just the small barrio galleries)

2) Coordinated or created compelling articles and books on local artists (quite a few... not just a couple)

3) Promoted artists in important publications like the SF Chronicle, LA Times, Artforum, NY Times, etc. (he is a promoter)

4) Held panels and events that highlighted Chicano artists (rarely a Northern California Chicano or Chicana in sight)

5) Apparently, promoted the work of Chicano artists to international galleries and publications (Mexico, Europe, Asia... nice)

Chon's Los Angeles artistic and academic collaboration is groundbreaking. In San Jose, San Francisco, Berkeley, Austin, etc., Chicanos are typically relegated to smaller galleries even though their work is just as good if not better than their peers in Southern California. These communities don't have a hard-working academic like Chon making waves and news.

Typically scholars are sequestered in their ivory tower writing books and participating on the occasional panel. These tired academics are the norm, but Chon has broken out of this paradigm. This is great for LA artists and definitely bad news for other communities who lack an articulate and passionate person who is promoting Chicano and Chicana art "con ganas". Makes me wish I was born in Los Angeles... almost.

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Mex/LA” Exhibits Modern Chicano Art

2011-09-28T19:26:00.000-07:00

Article from the Occidental College Weekly

Southern California's Getty Center-sponsored Pacific Standard Time initiative, a collaboration between more than 60 art institutions across Southern California, celebrates the growth of Los Angeles' art scene and its establishment as a center of artistic innovation between 1945 and 1980.

The project officially starts October 1, but several participating institutions have opened their doors early, including the Museum of Latin American Art, located in the East Village Arts district of Long Beach.

The Museum of Latin American Art unveiled "MEX/LA: ‘Mexican' Modernism(s) in Los Angeles, 1930-1985," on Sept. 18, an exhibit that examines the complex relationship between Mexican culture and the Los Angeles melting pot through modern, avant-garde artwork.

On display until Jan. 29, 2012, much of the work displayed showcases the interaction between pop culture, modernist traditions and traditional Mexican folk art.

"The exhibition, in a way, is like the city of Los Angeles itself," the curator Ruben Ortiz-Torres said.

"Like a modern collage, it is a fragmented juxtaposition of simultaneous clashing and contesting representations and misrepresentations that do not quite integrate but talk to each other and together form awhole."

Saturated with allusions to political and social issues, the exhibit does more than merely showcase significant pieces of art produced throughout this particular time period.

Ortiz-Torres selected pieces from an incredibly vast selection of artists, varying from filmmakers to photographers to experimental artists.

Numerous pieces are on display, for example, by Graciela Iturbide, a Mexican-born photographer who is best known for her images of the daily lives of Mexican-Americans in East Los Angeles.

Her photograph "Cholas, White Fence, East LA" (1986) captures four young women flashing gang signs while posing beneath a mural of former President of Mexico Benito Juarez, infamous revolutionary general PanchoVilla and Mexican Revolution figurehead Emiliano Zapata.

David Alfaro Siquerios' mural "Mitin en la calle" (Street Meeting) documents a trade union militant addressing a multiracial audience, making more overt social commentary.

Harry Gamboa Jr., one of the founders of the Chicano performance art collective, ASCO, is also featured in the exhibit as well as the influential photographer Edward Weston, a Southern Californian who lived and created his most powerful work in Mexico. Weston's famous portrait of Mexican painter Jose Clemente Orozco is featured at the exhibit and reflects the relationship between Mexican and American artists during this time period.

Martin Ramirez' work of collages and drawings, which directly evinces pop culture's intersection with high art forms, deals with Mexican folk traditions in a way influenced by twentieth-century modernism.

A large selection of Disney sketch artists is on display as well. In the ultimate portrayal of low/high art, however, the 1944 Disney film "The Three Cabelleros" plays among pieces by Weston and Siquerios.

Despite the cohesive execution and diverse selection of art, the exhibit lacks an adequate appraisal of the audience's knowledge of the history behind the pieces on display.

The brief timeline of Latino history in L.A. outside the entrance to the building provides some context, but in retrospect, it would have been beneficial to have a more extensive knowledge of the Chicano experience inL.A. throughout the twentieth century in order to appreciate the complexity and multidimensional quality of the exhibit.

Many images reference specific incidents in Mexican history, without adequate explanation on the placard.

Consequently, the importance of the artwork might be lost on those who are uninformed about Los Angeles and Mexico's tumultuous history.

For example, multiple pieces pay homage to the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943, when violence erupted between white sailors stationed in Los Angeles and Mexican youths.

Without sufficient background, much of the meaning is lost on the viewer.

If "MEX/LA" is any indication of the Pacific Standard Time exhibits to come, though, Los Angeles art enthusiasts can expect increasingly vibrant and important cultural milestones.

The works of "MEX/LA" portray the chaotic periods of Los Angeles' past through the lens of social, political and racial analysis.

The art displayed is not only aesthetically interesting, but also culturally relevant, a theme to be continued throughout the remainder of the Pacific Standard Time initiative.

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Scholar Shifra Goldman, 85, dies

2011-09-13T14:16:00.000-07:00

By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez of KPCC

A preeminent scholar of Chicano and Latin American art, Shifra Goldman, died on Sunday from complications of Alzheimer's disease.

Goldman was approaching middle age when she enrolled at UCLA to earn her doctorate in art history. In the early 1970s she was one of the first academics to write seriously about the growing work of Chicano artists in L.A. and other parts of the southwest.

Television director and filmmaker Jesus Salvador Treviño said Goldman took him to Olvera Street in the late 1960s and showed him a whitewashed 1932 mural by renowned Mexican artist Siqueiros.

"She was very much involved in Mexican-American art and in Mexican art," Treviño says. "She was one of the pioneers that was giving it credence and that was giving in respectability at a time when few people even acknowledged its existence.

The Getty tapped into Goldman’s research; it's building an interactive viewing area next to the mural and on the museum's website.

Treviño says Goldman was a mentor to many artists and critics. Artists came to expect her brutally honest criticism of their work at gallery openings.

Shifra Goldman was 85 years old when she died.

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1970s L.A. Chicano Conceptual Art Group Gets its Due

2011-09-08T12:30:00.000-07:00

[Click header to go to original article. Click photo to enlarge. Photo courtesy of LACMA.]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez for KCET SoCal Focus

I'm worried. The internet is not a history book and if the book is dead, maybe so will be the exploits of ASCO. For the time being there's hope. I got my hands on a copy of the exhibition catalogue, "ASCO: Elite of the Obscure, A Retrospective, 1972-1987." The show is currently on display at the L.A. County Museum of Art.

My fingertips gorge as they read the raised, printed images on the cover: an old razor blade, Patssi Valdez's piercing eyes inside two lips. I thumb through some of the 432 pages like a deck of cards -- the house always wins -- and there on pages 258 and 259, a two-page spread of a photograph depicting that which has become legendary in the Latino art world: the 1972 graffiti spray painting of a wall outside LACMA. The placazo heard around the Chicano world. The four ASCO founding members are represented: Harry Gamboa Jr., Gronk, Willie Herron with their spray painted tags, and Patssi Valdez standing behind the chest-high wall white wall, looking to her left, at someone or something coming, maybe in the distance of time.

As Marcel Duchamp signed a urinal and made it art, the four artists signed LACMA and turned it into the largest piece of Chicano art. It was a response to a curator having told one of the members that Chicanos didn't belong in the museum's galleries. ASCO outdid Duchamp.

I was out of town last Wednesday so I couldn't sip the wine and chew the cheese at LACMA's opening for the show. I emailed a few people to hear how it went and to hear about how the exhibit deals with the lesser known members of the group. I've written about ASCO here and there. A few weeks ago The New York Times published a lengthy article about ASCO's current show. It was meant to bring New Yorkers and non-Chicanos up to date. The article hit all the points well known in these parts: the LACMA graffiti, the founders all met at Garfield High School, the first happenings as marriage of civil rights politics and conceptual art, and in one long sentence near the end of the article a reference to a sizeable group of collaborators and the group's implosion due to longstanding rivalries and grudges.

Who were these collaborators? What did they do? Why couldn't everyone get along? The last time I'd heard anything significant on the topic was four years ago from then-L.A. Weekly reporter Daniel Hernandez. His lengthy piece caused some former ASCO members to spit at the very mention of his name.

Hernandez's article reported the fissures that have turned into San Andreas-sized faults between the four founding members of the group and the more numerous ASCO collaborators who joined to various degrees later. Their calzones are in a twist over credit, who deserves it and for what. Some of the artists who joined ASCO later or contributed serious work to the group feel that the founding members have erased their participation in essays and other documentary writing. Some of the founding members believe the collaborators were part of a junior varsity ASCO.

Hernandez's article may read as gossip and soap opera but on my re-reading of it four years later I find that he plays it down the middle much more than I remembered. He went out and talked to as many people as possible to get a broader picture of the story.

So, how does this LACMA art show reconcile any of the fissures? It seems like the only time all the ASCO members and collaborators will be on the same page is being on the same pages of the exhibition catalogue. The curators of the exhibition, Rita Gonzalez and C. Ondine Chavoya, told me by email that giving the collaborators credit was an important part of their curatorial work.

"The core members Valdez, Gamboa, Gronk, Herrón, and quite frequently Humberto Sandoval and Diane Gamboa, were present over the fifteen years of Asco's activity while others might have been intensely involved for two or three years (Marisela Norte, Sean Carrillo, Daniel Villarreal, Consuelo Flores, Maria Elena Gaitán, Barbara Carrasco, etc, etc). There are many artists and performers who also developed their work in conversation with Asco, such as Jerry Dreva, Louis Jacinto, Teddy Sandoval, and Ricardo Valverde. We were well aware that we could not produce the definitive or comprehensive account of the extent of all contributions to Asco by these various participants. That, we hope, is for future scholarship and through exhibitions and stagings of Asco's scripted performances."

Several members won't talk about it, to me at least. "I do not discuss anything to do with the entity called asco," is what accomplished artist and UC Irvine professor Daniel Joseph Martinez emailed me.

Diane Gamboa, sister of ASCO founder Harry Gamboa Jr., isn't happy with the current show.

"It is obvious that the macho con game in manipulating history continues. I was a significant member of Asco from 1980 to 1987, not just one of the many collaborators or groupies. The popular elite Chicano Art Culture of 2011 and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art selected to shun the Chicana / female involvement, voice and creative expression within the Asco period. Is this part of the dumbing down of society in general or is it simply sleazy?" is what Gamboa emailed me.

The catalogue is chock full of photos, oral histories, and academic evaluations of the paintings, performances, music, and happenings staged by the group over a decade and a half.

Since its founding, most of what young Chicanos knew about ASCO was piecemeal through a few group show art catalogues, second hand accounts, and a lot of myths about the East L.A. group that rocked the L.A. art house for 15 years.

Poet Consuelo Flores participated in ASCO movies and performances. She said lots of people came up to her at the LACMA opening surprised that she'd been in the group.

"Many of the artists who weren't necessarily featured in the show - or historically for that matter - are actually very well known in their own right and within their specific community - I count myself among them. The fact that a general public may not know of their participation in this group has more to do with the way the group has been promoted than it has to do with the specific work of these individuals. I understand the limitations the curators had with trying to present the entire work of this group. Would I have done it differently - yes, but I also have a vested interest in the way it would have been presented. Each person who was at some point part of ASCO served the group at that specific point in time. And for better or for worse, we each took something from that experience as well. The fact that everyone - except the original four - was less featured is because of the way the group was marketed. Perception is reality and the perception continues to be that despite what work was done by other important artists as part of ASCO, the original four were going to be the focus because that was who ASCO was," Flores told me by email.

On page 324 in the catalogue Joey Terrill's fake magazine cover screams "Homeboy Beautiful" and "Homo-Homeboys!" around the picture of a dark haired, dark mustachioed, young Latino man. It's just one of several queer collaborations that are part of the ASCO story. By email Terrill told me he saw the exhibition on opening night and liked it a lot.

the curators have done a great job in presenting as comprehensive an overview of the work generated by ASCO especially given the ephemeral and conceptual strategies that they employed which resist not just categorization but the accumulation of "art objects" usually showcased in museums. I believe the show does a pretty good job in putting their output in the context of the times both culturally and politically. I was also pleased to be present as LACMA the institution recognized the contribution of ASCO as the homegrown art phenom that it was. For years LA seemed to turn a blind eye to the creative output in their own backyard even as ASCO members (and "Chicano art" in general) received more investigation and review in other countries and cities.

The rap is that European museums and curators have been more interested in the merits of Chicano art from the get go.

Gonzalez tells me this isn't the final telling of the ASCO story. Wow. Really? What other hometown museum will put this much work and resources (Williams College of Art co-organized the show) to an exhaustive showing of the group? The contemporary art museum on Bunker Hill that will soon be exhibiting the black and white photos of Weegee's years in Los Angeles?

"We are really lucky that the Asco retrospective is happening in tandem with Pacific Standard Time. Asco and the work of their peers in Chicano art, performance art, and conceptual art, will be included in the shows at the Fowler (by the curatorial team at UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center), the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Orange County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Latin American Art. Although ours might be the largest, none of the curators working with this material could ever represent the long ranging and complex history that is Asco or Chicano art history, for that matter. Looking at the exhibition walls, Ondine and I see there are so many other curatorial approaches that one could formulate out of the art works on the checklist--so many different approaches."

That's the beauty of laying it all out in black and white and with a nice cover. In the following decades the catalogue of the ASCO retrospective may reach the hands of someone with Gonzalez's sky's-the-limit attitude. After all, as the story goes, it was only 40 years ago that a LACMA curator told two young Chicanos that art by people like them didn't belong in the museum.

Poet and Journalist Adolfo Guzman-Lopez writes his column Movie Miento every week on KCET's SoCal Focus blog. It is a poetic exploration of Los Angeles history, Latino culture and the overall sense of place, darting across LA's physical and psychic borders.

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Bakersfield conservative exhibits his Chicano poster collection

2011-09-02T11:01:00.000-07:00

[Click header to go to original article]

By Jennifer Self, Bakersfield Californian jself@bakersfield.com

This poster, a protest against Sun-Maid, is part of an exhibit at Metro Galleries to be unveiled Friday. Collector Craig Neville jokes that he thinks it might be illegal to display the poster in Fresno County.

Somewhere, Cesar Chavez is either laughing or weeping.

But the contradiction doesn't seem as blatant after a conversation with the affable collector Craig Neville, owner of Henley's Photo in downtown Bakersfield.

It seems Neville, who for years worked as a labor contractor, takes the verynarrow middle ground on what has been a bitter and protracted struggle between workers and growers.

"My political views -- I'm not strong that way,"he said over the phone Monday.

"To me, the past is the past, and we all respect each other's opinions, and I think there are beautiful pieces there that mean something to someone, and I think it's time people have access to them."

Neville means what he says about access:The 60-odd pieces he's been collecting over the last few years have been in storage until now. But Metro Galleries president Don Martin got wind of the art and persuaded Neville to display a few of the pieces at the gallery during First Friday tomorrow evening.

"I've been researching the artists and the groups that created these posters and prints for the past few weeks," Martin said. "Most were done at the height of the farm-labor movement and many of them are part of the fabric of the history of this community.

"I'm not trying to make a political statement by showing these but rather encouraging the viewer to remember or learn about this era."

The subject matter of Neville's collection -- mostly posters and drawings -- ranges from religious iconography to Chicano pride to anti-grower sloganeering to stirring calls to action directed at field workers.

Depending on one's political inclinations, some of the more provocative pieces could be dismissed as flame-throwing propaganda, created to mobilize public support for boycotts and other union action. But tying the art together into a cohesive collection are the overarching themes of social justice, empowerment and cultural identity.

Neville estimates that most of the pieces were created in the 1960s and '70s. He acquired many from a friend, whom he described as "being in the movement," though he declined to give the man's name out of respect for his privacy. Neville said much of the work bears the stamp of a Los Angeles art gallery, which he believes is a sign of its authenticity. For information on the other pieces, he consulted the reference guide "Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation."

"What they do is various people get together and analyze, review and kind of maintain the history of the Chicano movement as it pertains to the '60s and '70s," said Neville, who noted that his collection contains works by noted Mexican-American artists Salvador Roberto Torres and Jose Montoya.

The most current image, a poster made from a 2004 San Francisco billboard, depicts then-President George W. Bush with the word "LIAR" scrawled under the portrait (no hard feelings:Neville points out he voted for Bush).

But his favorite piece is probably the least political of all: a poster that features a little girl in a sweet watermelon-print summer dress.

"It would break my heart (to sell it) and, again, I don't know if I'm parting with it all," said Neville, who as of earlier this week hadn't quite settled on which, if any, of the pieces will be offered for sale.

"The big thing Friday night is putting it out there. I want to share this."

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Conservative student to fight discipline by Fresno State

2011-09-02T10:48:00.000-07:00

[Click image to enlarge. Click header to go to original article.]

By Heather Somerville, The Fresno Bee

Neil O'Brien arrived at Fresno State in fall 2010, and before the semester was over he had spearheaded a conservative movement aimed at driving out illegal-immigrant students and challenging what he calls radical ideas espoused by Fresno State administrators.

Now he has gone a step further. After Fresno State took disciplinary action against him for allegedly threatening two faculty members in the Chicano and Latin American Studies Department, O'Brien hired a lawyer.

And not just any lawyer -- Brian Leighton, a Clovis attorney who won a major case against the CIA in 2009 and has gained a reputation for challenging federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Claiming the college has squashed O'Brien's First Amendment rights, Leighton said he is eager to go up against Fresno State. "I don't like what Fresno State is doing," Leighton said.

O'Brien will face administrators at a judiciary hearing Sept. 13. If he and Leighton don't like the outcome, they're prepared to go to court.

O'Brien's judiciary mess started with a poem printed last May in La Voz de Aztlan, an ethnic student publication distributed with the college newspaper. O'Brien took issue with language in the student-written poem, most notably the term "white savage."

O'Brien said he wanted to know why the poem was published in a student-supported newspaper. So last May, armed with a video camera, he headed to the offices of Chicano and Latin American Studies Chair Victor Torres and teacher Maria-Aparecida Lopes to demand answers. Torres is one of the newspaper advisers.

His unannounced visit rattled the teachers, who alerted campus authorities.

In Torres' formal complaint, he wrote that O'Brien was "belligerent and loud" and that he felt threatened by O'Brien's "hostile and angry attitude" and "unwillingness to leave my office."

In a separate complaint, Lopes said she felt "threatened and vulnerable."

In a written statement, Torres said he isn't involved in newspaper editing, but that all short stories and poems "are protected by the same right that Mr. O'Brien uses to shield his own publications -- the freedom of speech and expression."

O'Brien, 28, has a website that challenges illegal immigrants and the "radical liberalism" at Fresno State.

College officials have charged O'Brien with violating the student code of conduct. He calls the accusations lies and refuses to accept the school's settlement that requires him to stay 100 feet from the Chicano and Latin American Studies department and faculty. He will contest the charges at the judiciary hearing.

Carolyn Coon, assistant vice president for student affairs and dean of students, is handling the case. Federal law prevents her from speaking about O'Brien, but she said it's rare for a student to take a case this far. The school holds at most one judiciary hearing per year, and many years there are none. The hearings, Coon said, take a lot of time and resources.

In her 10 years on the job, Coon said no student has taken a disciplinary case to court.

Leighton said he would try to solve the case out of court, but he could file charges against Fresno State for violating O'Brien's freedom of speech and right to a speedy trial. Leighton is protesting college rules that prohibit him from attending the hearing.

"I don't know a bigger due process violation than that," he said.

O'Brien said being barred from the Chicano and Latin American Studies could delay his graduation. But O'Brien is a recreation administration major, and while classes in Chicano and Latin American Studies could satisfy his general education requirements, they are not required for his major.

Contact: HSOMERVILLE@FRESNOBEE.COM OR (559) 441-6412

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Asco: A Hollywood Love Affair

2011-08-30T22:22:00.000-07:00

By Jesús Manuel Mena Garza

[Click photo to enlarge. Click header to go to LACMA website.]

Asco, four Chicana/o artists from Los Angeles have been described as radical performance artists. Today, they are touted as revolutionary conceptual artists and their popularity is at a fever pitch.

An exhibition titled "Asco: Elite of the Obscure, a Retrospective, 1972-1987" opens to the public on Sept. 4 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Southern California Chicana/o glitterati are sure to be in attendance at the "super grande" opening on August 31.

Like all things local, Los Angelinos adore "Los Four." Along with the upcoming exhibition they are being feted as heroes by regional academia. From outsiders tagging museum walls in 1972 to being placed on a pedestal inside the museum in 2011, it has been a forty year journey for artists Harry Gamboa Jr., Willie Herrón, Patssi Valdez and Gronk.

The question I ask today is why a group like Asco flourished in Los Angeles and not in Northern California? Artists in the Bay Area painted incredible murals, posters and works on canvas but only in Southern California did Chicanos and Chicanas combine theater and art into performance art in the early seventies.

I remember there being a distinct separation in the Bay Area of those who were on stage and those who painted, printed or photographed. To combine the two genres required a force of personality or in the case of Los Four, the effect of Hollywood.

I have noticed that Hollywood holds a certain power over Southern Californians. Many here achingly desire to be part of the performance culture. Asco was “cast” by this phenomenon. It was an insular trend, not replicated outside of Tinsel Town, and not valued as much too.

The South is proud of their homegrown products. When I travel to other parts of the country, Chicanos and Chicanas also venerate their artists. Be it San Antonio, Albuquerque or Denver, they all have a parochial attitude toward their creative class.

Growing up in the Bay Area I too developed an intense sense of place. As a point of pride, I can proclaim that no artist from the South presented works on paper as politically intuitive and compelling as Northerner, Malaquias Montoya. No SoCal Chicano muralist created finer works than those on San Francisco walls. José Antonio Burciaga exalted the jalapeño to new heights in his poetry and made us proud of our spicy culture. Yes, there is culture up north... too.

Theater groups were manifest in the Bay Area. In fact, Northern California is the home of Chicano Theater and Teatro Campesino. Some of those weaned by Bay Area theater moved and infused Southern California teatro, making it more professional and relevant to the Chicano cause.

Lowriding may have been popular on Whittier Boulevard but it took three San José State Students; Sonny Madrid, Antonio Perales and Larry Gonzalez to quantify it. They explored the nuances of our car culture and delivered it to the world in Lowrider Magazine. That distinct manifestation has even found a home in Japan.

In the end, each community has their heroes. Today, LA has Asco. These four artists had the guts to get in front of the camera and perform. They are unique to the City of Angels and part of the early 70s Chicano avant-garde.

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Tucson MEChA comes under scrutiny

2011-08-29T12:46:00.000-07:00

Back in the early seventies while a student at San Jose State University, I was a member of MEChA. Today, this proud organization has come under attack. I found the article below written by Loretta Hunnicut of the Tuscon Citizen as yet another example of xenophobia coming out of Arizona.

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TUSD’s schools have MEChA chapters and not even the district’s Superintendent knows if they are sanctioned by the district. If you don’t know what MEChA is, you are among hundreds of thousands of Tucsonans, including this author, who didn’t know and didn’t care.

The group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán came under scrutiny as a result of the Tucson Unified School District’s appeal of the finding by Superintendent of Public Instruction (SOPI) that TUSD’s Mexican American Studies classes violate state law. In violation of state law, the classes are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group, promote resentment towards a race or class of people, and advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.

Not until the district’s superintendent testified at the hearing as to an email he received from Assistant Superintendent Dr. Lupita Cavazos-Garcia was much attention paid to the TUSD group in and out of the district. In the email, Dr. Garcia expressed her concerns regarding MEChA’s efforts to recruit students for an “occupied peoples” conference at which Palestinian and TUSD students would be sharing their experiences living in “occupied” territories.

Dr. Garcia wrote that at the time of Pedicone’s hiring she had expressed to him, “my deep concern” about MEChA at TUSD. She pointed out the organization’s “anti-Semitic tone and tenor on our campuses.” She went on to state that the some of the district’s students have little emotional support and “our Raza students are ripe for this kind of influence.” MEChA was originally founded for college students and is found on many college campuses, however it is only found in four high schools in the country; two in Arizona, one in New Mexico, and one in California.

Concerns arose about the conference in the district when word went out that Homeland Security would be in attendance. Some of the more responsible adults in the district questioned the wisdom of allowing TUSD students to be put in a situation in which they might innocently come under scrutiny, suspicion, or harm.

In the past MEChA has been linked to the anti-Semitic website/publication, La Voz de Aztlan which the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified as a hate group. According to Dr. Rudolpho Acuna, who is the subject of interviews with principles of La Voz de Aztlan and author of Occupied America, he has disavowed any connections to that group. There is some evidence that MEChA has also disavowed that organization, however others very familiar with the organization claim that La Voz de Aztlan is a conduit for information for MEChA members.

Local Raza propagandist the Three Sonorans, otherwise known as David Abie Morales, writes that some of Tucson most prominent leaders were formerly members of MEChA. He list among them controversial Congressman Raul Grijalva, who was instrumental in the Mexican American/Raza Studies class development when he was on the TUSD Governing Board. His daughter is Adelita Grijalva, who currently sits on the TUSD Governing Board. City Council member Regina Romero, who finds herself in a very close primary this year against local Tucson businessman and anti-Grijalva establishment democrat Jose Flores, and her highly controversial husband Ruben Reyes, who is a staff member of the elder Grijalva’s congressional staff, among others. It is unknown whether vocal supporter, County Supervisor Richard Elias was ever a member of MEChA, due to the fact that the private schools he attended as a young student did not offer MEChA on their campuses.

So, who is MEChA? In their own words, from their website…..

“Essentially, we are a Chicana and Chicano student movement directly linked to Aztlán. As Chicanas and Chicanos of Aztlán, we are a nationalist movement of Indigenous Gente that lay claim to the land that is ours by birthright. As a nationalist movement we seek to free our people from the exploitation of an oppressive society that occupies our land. Thus, the principle of nationalism serves to preserve the cultural traditions of La Familia de La Raza and promotes our identity as a Chicana/Chicano Gente.”

“In March of 1969, at Denver, Colorado the Crusade for Justice organized the first National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference that drafted the basic premises for the Chicana/Chicano Movement in El Plan de Aztlán.”

“The following month, in April of 1969, over 100 Chicanas/Chicanos came together at University of California, Santa Barbara to formulate a plan for higher education: El Plan de Santa Barbara. With this document they were successful in the development of two very important contributions to the Chicano Movement: Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA) and Chicano Studies.”

“The adoption of the name Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan signaled a new level of political consciousness among student activists. It was the final stage in the transformation of what had been loosely organized, local student groups, into a single structure and a unified student movement.”

“Adamant rejection of the label “Mexican-American” meant rejection of the assimilation and accommodationist melting pot ideology that had guided earlier generations of activists. Chicanismo involves a crucial distinction in a political consciousness between a Mexican-American (Hispanic) and a Chicana/o mentality. El Plan de Santa Barbara speaks to such issues of identity politics by asserting:

“The Mexican-American (Hispanic) is a person who lacks respect for his/her cultural and ethnic heritage. Unsure of her/himself, she/he seeks assimilation as a way out of her/his “degraded” social status. Consequently, she/he remains politically ineffective. In contrast, Chicanismo reflects self-respect and pride on one’s ethnic and cultural background. Thus, the Chicana/o acts with confidence and with a range of alternatives in the political world. She/he is capable of developing an effective ideology through action” (El Plan de Santa Barbara).

“MEChA played an important role in the creation and implementation of Chicana/o Studies and support services programs on campus. Chicana/o Studies programs would be a relevant alternative to established curricula. Most important, the Chicana/o Studies program would be the foundation of MEChA’s political power base. Today many Chicana/os Studies Programs would have difficulty operating if it were not for the enthusiasm and dedication of Mechistas to Chicana/o Studies.”

“We, as Mechistas, see the process of Chicanismo as evolutionary. We recognize that no one is born politically Chicana or Chicano. Chicanismo results from a decision based on a political consciousness for our Raza, to dedicate oneself to building a Chicana/Chicano Nation. Chicanismo is a concept that integrates self-awareness with cultural identity, a necessary step in developing political consciousness. Therefore the term Chicano is grounded in a philosophy, not a nationality. Chicanismo does not exclude anyone, rather it includes those who acknowledge and work toward the betterment of La Raza.”

“Chicanismo involves a personal decision to reject assimilation and work towards the preservation of our cultural heritage. Recognizing that all people are potential Chicanas and Chicanos, we encourage those interested in developing a total commitment to our movement for self-determination for the people of Aztlán to join Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán.”

“Finally, as Mechistas, we vow to work for the liberation of Aztlán, leading to socioeconomic and political justice for our Gente. MEChA then, is more than a name; it is a spirit of unity by comadrismo/carnalismo, and a resolution to undertake a struggle for liberation! Tierra y Libertad!”

MEChA chapters are at Tucson High School and Pueblo High School. The following is a list of chapters:

Alta Califas Norte

California State University, Chico
California State University, Sacramento
California State University, Sonoma
Chabot College
San Jose State University
Santa Rosa Junior College
Stanford University
University of California, Berkeley

Alta Califas Sur

California Polytechnic University, Pomona
California State University, Fullerton
California State Univeristy, Los Angeles
California State University, Northridge
California State University, San Marcos
Central de Los Angeles County
Central de San Diego
Cerritos College
Chapman University
Cypress College
La Jolla High School
Mt. San Antonio College (Mt. SAC)
Pasadena City College
Rio Hondo College
San Diego State University
Santa Ana College
University of California, Irvine
University of Southern California
Sur Calpulli Montañas de Norte

Colorado College
University of Colorado, Boulder
University of Colorado, Denver
Centro Aztlan

Arizona State University
Central Arizona College
Northern Arizona University
Pueblo High School
Rio Grande High School
Tucson High School
University of Arizona
University of New Mexico
University of Texas, El Paso
Centro Califas

Bakersfield College
California State University, Hayward
California State University, Monterey Bay
Modesto Junior College
Sequoia College
University of California, Santa Barbara
West Hills College, Kings County
Este

Brown University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Georgetown University
Pennsylvania State University
University of Pennsylvania
Vassar College
Yale University
Massachusetts Institue of Technology (LUChA)
Mitlampa Cihuatlampa

Eastern Washington University
Seattle University
University of Washington
MidWest

St. Cloud State University
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
University of Illinois, Chicago (MeSA)
Pacific NorthWest

Oregon State University
Pasco High School
Portland University
University of Oregon
Western Oregon University
SouthEast Tejaztlan

University of Texas, Austin
University of Houston
University of Texas, Pan American

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Artist collective, host art show in Imperial Valley

2011-08-25T10:21:00.000-07:00

[Image: "Love is War" by Richard Jasso is one of the 52 pieces that will be on display at the Borderline Disorder art show. Click to enlarge.]

Article courtesy of Chelcey Adami of the Imperial Valley Press

Three artists from California's Imperial Valley have joined in an effort to bring more art to the Southern California area through the Imperial Valley Artist Collective.

The group was organized this summer and will have the grand opening of the group show, titled Borderline Disorder, tonight.

It will be from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Imperial Valley College Art Gallery and will remain on display until Sept. 9.

The exhibit features 52 art pieces by 52 artists from all over the world and includes video, photo, paintings and drawings.

Artists showing include Imperial Valley College art professors Tom Gilbertson and Carol Hagerty as well as Chicano artist Daniel Marquez.

Elizabeth M. Lopez of El Centro, along with Minerva Torres-Guzman and Alfredo Guzman, both of Holtville, went to Imperial Valley College together and then graduated from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles in 2007.

When they returned to the Valley after graduation, they felt that most art activities were occurring in Mexicali. The three decided to start the collective to encourage artist collaboration and make art more accessible to the community, Torres-Guzman said.

E-mail: imperialvalleyartistcollective@gmail.com or visit the group’s Facebook page for more information.

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Stuart Ashman appointed head of Museum of Latin American Art

2011-08-25T09:17:00.000-07:00

The Museum of Latin American Art of Long Beach, CA said that it has appointed Stuart Ashman as its new president and chief executive officer. His tenure is set to begin on Sept. 6.

Ashman assumes the museum's top post following the abrupt departure of Richard P. Townsend in January. Townsend had served as president of the museum for a little less than two years before announcing his resignation. Prior to Townsend, the position had been vacant for more than a year.

The museum received an endowment of $25 million in 2009 from the estate of its late founder, Dr. Robert Gumbiner.

Ashman has served as director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of New Mexico. He was also founding director of the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art in Santa Fe. Ashman served as cabinet secretary for the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs for more than seven years.

In the past year, Ashman served as an advisor for the U.S. Peace Corps, working on arts-related programs in a number of Latin American countries.

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Asco Returns Triumphant to LACMA

2011-08-24T13:22:00.000-07:00

Max Benavidez, Huffington Post [Click header to go to original story]

When "Asco: Elite of the Obscure" opens Sept. 4 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), we will witness the closing of a 40-year-old cultural loop. During the exhibition, a famous Asco (pronounced "oss-ko") image will be seen all around L.A., as Bank of America, one of the show's sponsors, will utilize one of the art group's most compelling works, the 1974 "Instant Mural," on its ATM screens. This is an interesting juxtaposition and demonstrates how the mainstream has caught up with the Asco sensibility of simulated appropriation and hip transgression and also how commerce, art and the burgeoning Latino market are intersecting in new and innovative ways.

The LACMA show, which is part of the huge Getty-sponsored Pacific Standard Time (PST) series of exhibitions, is a great opportunity to formally applaud the genius of Harry Gamboa, Jr., Gronk, Pattsi Valdez and Willie Herrón, III, the founding members of Asco, for their groundbreaking body of work. "Asco" means "disgust" or "revulsion" in Spanish, and they called themselves that because their work evoked nausea in so many people. (The show's title, "Elite of the Obscure," came from Gamboa, who also coined other memorable terms, such as "urban exiles," "phantom culture" and "orphans of modernism" to refer to Asco and metropolitan Chicanos in general.)

What makes "Instant Mural" so potent is that it verges on being a photorealistic painting, but it's not. It was a spontaneously staged street event with a timeless cinematic quality that commented on the proliferation and content of Chicano murals, as well as the closed-off art world. Gronk, in a flowing, burgundy coat, is taping a dramatically posed Valdez in red bolero jacket, blue-jean shorts and black velvet high heels to a creamy, orange wall and doing it as quickly as possible, as if their lives depended on the speed of the act. It gives the image an ephemeral quality that illustrates how Asco mixed street art with performance art to create a new, expressive hybrid form of high and low: postmodern punk art. As Gronk said said about the piece, "I think one of the important things about our activities was the idea that we didn't ask for permission to do any of the work."

Aesthetic spontaneity and a cool desperado posture: that's the essence of Asco's work and its legacy. And, now, in a remarkable twist of fate, its work will be viewed on the ATM screens of one of the world's largest financial institutions.

It all began 40 years ago, deep in an East L.A. barrio, where four teenagers sitting around in a garage formed Asco. While it sounds like something out of Silicon Valley lore, it actually parallels other art movements, such as surrealism and Dada, that started in times of desperation and disillusionment. It was a time of war (Vietnam), and much of East L.A. was nearly in a state of police occupation.

The members of Asco were bored by the same old same old art they saw all around them, so they set out to execute their own unique artistic vision. They made "No Movies," which really aren't movies at all, and took the idea of the protest mural to its logical conclusion with the "Instant Mural" and the "Walking Mural." They also created daring street performances that recoded and satirized mainstream and Chicano cultures, as in "First Supper (After a Major Riot)." In the process they made history.

For the first time in American art history, a Chicano art group was working at the edge of art's boundaries, creating new paradigms, and turning both modern art and Chicano art inside out. Interestingly, and this is what makes the return trip to LACMA a historical event, Asco was working in a critical void and was virtually ignored by the mainstream art world that heralded so many other national and international artists who were working in similar veins. This was a classic case of Freud's "distortion of a text." The text, in this case, is the record of American art, and Asco and the meaning of its work was suppressed and annulled, partly through denial and partly through simple neglect and ignorance. In many ways, this circling back to LACMA is a triumph for the collective.

Beyond the kudos and acknowledgment, we also have to keep in mind that history's nightmare not only repeats itself but, as Voltaire said, "history consists of a series of accumulated imaginative inventions," and this show is a 21st-century imaginative invention. The truth is that the art world, like Asco, is tired of the same old same old.

The Asco circle of disruption closes quite neatly since their most famous intervention occurred in 1972 at LACMA, almost 40 years ago.

Here's what happened. They went to the big, public-funded museum, LACMA, to see if they could show a curator their art. The curator said something like this: "No, you people aren't fine artists, you're gang bangers and folk artists."

That enraged Asco so much that they sought an appropriate response, and very early one morning, they spray-painted their names on the museum and took a picture. If they were thought of as taggers, then there was no reason not to brand the whole museum as their work of art. They called it "Spray Paint LACMA." It was the most audacious piece of conceptual art ever affiliated with LACMA. It also established Asco as a truly avant-garde, conceptual art group, along the lines of other legendary collectives like Fluxus, Archigram, Guerrilla Girls and others.

During its heyday, which ran from about 1971 to 1987, Asco was a truly underground phenomenon, and the group displayed a rare sensibility. They were constantly innovating in a media vacuum on the streets of East L.A. At the same time, they also reworked contemporary urban identities for young Latinos, and, above all, they documented everything.

One of Asco's most subversive interventions was the "No Movie." These were images that the group circulated by mail in a series of satirical press kits and production stills. Hollywood barely acknowledged Chicanos and other Latinos during the height of Asco's creativity. To Asco's credit, it did something about it. It commented on this big-screen invisibility through the "No Movie" concept.

The "No Movies" imagery was enigmatic and alluring. Asco also created evocative titles, such as "A La Mode" and "No Tip," that referred to nonexistent films while constructing themselves as film stars in the process. The "No Movie" photos simultaneously denied and affirmed the viability of an alternative cinema, and in their surrealistic, often campy theatricality, they reclaimed a violent and alienating urban environment as the stage for subversive glamour. By producing "No Movies," Asco essentially countered the Hollywood film industry's negation of Latinos by emotionally compressing rage, distress and scathing commentary (that still rings true) into their imagery.

So, take a trip to LACMA and catch the work of these now-classic provocateurs, because, as the Walrus in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" said, "the time has come, my friends..." for Asco.

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Friends Gather in Pomona to Celebrate Chicano Artist Gilbert "Magu" Lujan

2011-08-16T20:08:00.000-07:00

[Click here to see more photos of Magu at 462 Dave's Blog. Click image to enlarge.]

David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

Gilbert Lujan was his name, but he went by his nickname, Magu, acquired in childhood because he always squinted to look at anything, just like the nearsighted cartoon character Mr. Magoo.

Magu was a pioneering Chicano muralist, sculptor and painter who spent a decade in the Pomona Arts Colony. He died of cancer July 24 at age 70.

If he'd been in downtown Pomona on Saturday, he wouldn't have had to peer too intently to see how many people cared about him.

A retrospective show at the dA Center for the Arts had a steady stream of visitors from its mid-afternoon opening into the evening.

Parked outside the 252 S. Main St. storefront was a 1950 Chevy customized by Magu that drew admirers. Inside were dozens of paintings, prints and sculptures, not to mention an art-covered refrigerator.

Friends greeted each other. People lined up for watermelon, chips, salsa and pan dulce prepared by Magu's ex-wife, Mardi. Some sat for video interviews to share memories of Magu.

"It's a big reunion. Family and friends," said Oto o Lujan, one of Magu's sons, who took me out to the sidewalk to talk to escape the heat of the crowded gallery.

He called the gathering "a huge extended family" of people his father had known.

In that extended family, I might have qualified as a third cousin twice-removed. Naiche Lujan, another son, remembered me, and vice versa.

In 2004, I had visited Magu and Naiche in the loft they shared in downtown Pomona.

The space, on West Second Street at Parcels Street, was a former machine shop with a rollup door. Not exactly deluxe accommodations, but well-suited for an artist.

It was crowded with beatup furniture and an upright piano. A 1954 Chevy pickup was parked inside too. Finished and in-process paintings were everywhere.

Magu had moved east circa 1999, lured by Pomona art collector Frank Garcia, who touted the nascent community of artists (and no doubt the cheap rent).

"People ask why I live in Pomona. I say: `Parking,"' Magu told me jokingly that day.

Magu was not an artist of means, despite his reputation. He had co-founded the art collective Los Four, which had curated a groundbreaking exhibit of Chicano art at the starchy L.A. County Museum of Art in 1974.

In 1990, Magu was chosen to design the Hollywood and Vine subway station.

"The moment he was asked to do it, because Hollywood and Vine is such a crossroads, he knew he had to do something special," Naiche told me Saturday.

Magu worked with the architect to incorporate such touches as movie reels in the ceiling, support pillars styled as palm trees, a theater-style marquee on the exterior and hand-painted wall tiles.

Benches resemble lowrider cars, a Magu passion, and the floor sports a path of yellow tiles to street level. "The Wizard of Oz" was one of Magu's favorite movies.

The exhibit at the dA includes photos of the subway station under construction and some of Magu's designs for it.

"It was the biggest project he ever did," Naiche said.

Despite all that, by 2004, when I met him, Magu had given up half of his 3,000-square-foot space to economize.

Still, his arrival, and presence, helped the Arts Colony gain traction.

"He was the first big-name artist who lived down here, someone who was known nationally," said George Cuttress, who had an influential gallery next to the dA and hosted weekly potlucks for artists.

Magu liked a free flow of conversation with fellow artists on art and politics, calling the sessions "Mental Menudo."

He had a master's in fine arts degree and was a real intellectual, Cuttress said. But his art wasn't highbrow.

He employed cartoons, TV icons, altars, cars, cacti, burritos, peppers, Aztecs, feathered headdresses, pyramids and coyotes as motifs in a folk-art style with bright colors.

He called the world of his imagination "Magulandia," its landscapes, towns and characters representing his take on the mythical Mexican homeland of Aztlan.

"It was a place he could express all his art ideas," Naiche said.

In our interview, Magu said humor was his secret ingredient.

"I think humor softens people's view of my culture," Magu said.

In our conversation he frequently joked and smiled. In my piece about him, though, I felt compelled to mention in passing that he complained a lot - a polite way of saying that for perhaps a quarter of our time together, he was griping about his rent, the lack of appreciation for artists and other matters.

Next time I saw him, he said he had liked my piece except for that one phrase, complaining that he didn't complain a lot.

The next and final time I ran into him, in a Thai restaurant in Pomona around 2008, he said he had further reflected and had changed his mind.

He had been griping too much, probably out of frustration, he admitted. Saying he had adjusted his attitude, he thanked me.

(Memo to the world: It might take years, but you'll eventually conclude I was right about everything. I promise not to gloat.)

By then Magu had relocated to Ontario. He wasn't there long, soon moving back to La Puente, not far from where he'd grown up, and where he died.

"It was like coming home and being in familiar surroundings again," Naiche said.

The show at the dA was arranged in late spring as a way to sell some of Magu's art and raise money for his medical bills, according to Chris Toovey, the arts center's president.

"Sadly, it's become more of a memorial exhibit and retrospective," Toovey told me.

No art could be sold that weekend because of legal issues involving the estate, Toovey said. Potential buyers' names were placed on an interest list.

The show, titled "Cruisin' Magulandia," continues through Aug. 27. That day will be a bookend of sorts for the show, with live music by Oto o's band, Conjunto Los Pochos, and by Eloy Torrez, a musician and painter who is known for the Anthony Quinn mural in downtown L.A.

Saturday, though, was the opening reception. Renewing acquaintances and admiring Magu's art - while avoiding jostling fellow art lovers - were the order of the day.

"My father had such a wide reach - across social, financial and cultural strata," Naiche said as people milled around us. "This is almost his final piece of art, this vortex of people."

David Allen Email david.allen@inlandnewspapers.com, call 909-483-9339.

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Chicano Photographer Exhibition Continues at San Bernardino County Museum

2011-08-16T14:43:00.000-07:00

Chicano Photographer, an exhibition by Riverside, California documentary photographer Jesús Manuel Mena Garza is available for public viewing at the San Bernardino County Museum (SBCM) Schuilling Gallery. The show continues to November 6, 2011.

Please call (909) 307-2669 x227 or email kplimley@sbcm.sbcounty.gov for more information.

Laura Romo is new director of UCSB Chicano Studies Institute

2011-08-08T21:28:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Edhat SB

Laura Romo, associate professor of education at UC Santa Barbara, is the new director of the campus's Chicano Studies Institute. She replaces Carl Gutiérrez-Jones, professor of English at UCSB, who held the position for the past six years.

Romo received her Ph.D. in psychology from UCLA, and joined the UCSB faculty in 2003. A leading researcher in the areas of adolescent development, parent-adolescent communication, and informal health education, she has been working with community agencies in Santa Barbara, including Girls, Inc. and La Casa de la Raza, to develop and implement family-based sex education programs for low-income, mostly immigrant, Mexican-origin mothers and daughters.

"The mother-daughter relationship is a protective factor against sexual risk behavior for adolescents," Romo said. "In the workshops, we address cultural barriers to open communication about topics such as puberty and anatomy." To date, her work has focused on younger adolescents, ages 11 to 13, but she is now conducting a study with older adolescents, ages 13 to 16, and their mothers. "The new workshops also focus on the prevention of dating violence, in addition to sexual health, contraception, and HIV transmission," she explained.

"The Chicano Studies Institute is delighted that Professor Romo accepted the position of director," said Maria Herrera-Sobek, associate vice chancellor for diversity, equity, and academic policy. "Her grant writing skills are exceptional, and she has demonstrated an ability to translate these skills into mentoring and guiding our faculty members and graduate students. Professor Romo is the recipient of several major grants, and already has been working with graduate students at the Chicano Studies Institute."

Romo, who has served as associate director of the Chicano Studies Institute and as director of the UC Linguistics Minority Research Institute, has identified three main goals for the Chicano Studies Institute that are consistent with its overall mission. First, she hopes to form interdisciplinary groups of faculty members who will collaborate on developing extramural grants related to research on Latino populations. "Bringing together experts from different disciplines within the humanities and social sciences is important because today's most pressing research and societal questions are often best addressed by scholars with different backgrounds and training," she noted.

Romo also plans to develop a training program that will directly assist graduate students in writing grant proposals for funding to support their research. "We'll also develop an undergraduate program that will provide students with training in Latino research under the mentorship of faculty members," she said.

Consistent with her own research interests, Romo plans to create opportunities to involve undergraduate students in community health efforts. Latinos are among several populations in low-income communities who suffer from a variety of health problems, according to Romo, and she is currently developing an undergraduate course that will allow students to see firsthand the health issues that exist in Latino communities. As part of the course requirements, students will complete a set number of service hours with a community-based health agency. "This type of experience may serve to increase the number of Latino students who pursue careers in the health sciences," she said.

Established in 1969 at the Center for Chicano Studies, the Chicano Studies Institute is an organized research unit that facilitates interdisciplinary research regarding the Chicano/Latino experience in California and the United States.

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MACLA: The Black Eyed Peas Peapod Foundation and Adobe Foundation Unveil New Academy for San Jose Youth

2011-08-08T11:30:00.000-07:00

[Click image to enlarge]

Music and Multimedia Academy Fosters Community Involvement and Digital Literacy Among Young People

The Black Eyed Peas Peapod Foundation and the Adobe Foundation today announced a new Peapod Adobe Youth Voices music and multimedia academy for youth in San Jose, Calif. The new academy expands on the network of existing academies in New York, Los Angeles, Oakland and Redwood City, Calif. Through their Peapod Adobe Youth Voices Academies, the two foundations provide professional-grade and curriculum technologies for art, dance, music and video production to underserved youth, helping to cultivate confidence, creativity and self-expression.

Located at 510 South First Street, the academy will be housed in a facility operated by Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana (MACLA), an organization promoting visual, literary and performance art as a vehicle for civic dialogue and social equity. The collaboration between The Black Eyed Peas Peapod Foundation, Adobe Youth Voices (the signature program of the Adobe Foundation) and MACLA will focus on empowering youth to find their voice and become agents of social change in addition to learning important digital literacy skills. Beginning Sept. 2011, programs and services will be offered for youth ages 13-18. An estimated 300 youth are expected to participate in the academy annually.

Six-time Grammy Award-winning recording artists The Black Eyed Peas -- will.i.am, apl.de.ap, Taboo and Fergie -- will join Adobe Foundation officials in unveiling the new San Jose academy at a private ceremony on Aug. 6. The Peapod Foundation was established in 2007 to help provide music and arts education as a means to serve underserved youth throughout the world.

"We are very excited to be part of the growing network of Peapod Adobe Youth Voices Academies," said Anjee Helstrup-Alvarez, executive director, MACLA. "The collaboration with the Peapod Foundation and Adobe Foundation will provide invaluable support to our mission of engaging youth through visual, literary and performance arts programs to initiate civic dialogue on important topical issues and encourage transformation in our communities."

"Every day we are inspired by the immense talent we see in young people," said will.i.am. "The Peapod Adobe Youth Voices Academies provide these youth with opportunities to advance their artistic and academic skills and channel their creative energy in ways we can only imagine. We are proud to help them make their voices heard."

"These youth are at a crucial point in their lives -- at the intersection of self discovery and recognizing their potential," said Miguel Salinas, senior manager, Adobe Youth Voices. "Our partnership with the Peapod Foundation has enabled us to help these youth realize what's important to them while arming them with the essential means to become positive and productive members of society."

Adobe Youth Voices Summit 2011

The announcement of the San Jose academy coincides with the second international Adobe Youth Voices Summit, a four-day digital immersion experience bringing together approximately 90 Adobe Youth Voices youth and educators from 16 countries to explore, create and develop new skills in technology, storytelling, collaboration and making media for social change. While at Santa Clara University on Aug. 2--6, attendees will engage with Adobe employee volunteers, industry professionals and media artists through a variety of hands-on workshops to build digital technology skills and get an inside look at careers in digital technology and media.

Summit highlights include: an opening keynote by Laura Ling, a journalist for Current TV, the politics and youth-oriented channel founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore; and a special appearance by The Black Eyed Peas to kick off Adobe Youth Voices Live!, a closing ceremony and private event celebrating youth work produced at the Summit.

About MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana

MACLA is an inclusive contemporary arts space grounded in the Chicano/Latino experience that incubates new visual, literary and performance art in order to engage people in civic dialogue and community transformation. Founded in 1989 as the result of a broad community mobilization in the City of San Jose and nationwide on behalf of multicultural arts, MACLA has evolved into a well respected arts organization known for our commitment to artistic excellence and civic dialogue. Located in downtown San Jose, more than 30,000 people participate in the 50 programs MACLA produces annually. Our four core program tracts include: visual arts; performance and literary arts; youth arts education; and community development through the arts. In 2010, MACLA was honored to be the only San Jose organization to be named by Philanthropedia as one of the 21 most effective arts and culture organizations in the greater San Francisco Bay Area.

About The Black Eyed Peas Peapod Foundation

The Black Eyed Peas Peapod Foundation encourages social change by uniting people, especially children, through the universal language of music. In 2008, the foundation opened the first Peapod Music & Arts Academy, a state-of-the-art music and educational center and recording facility serving foster care youth and other at-risk teens, at the Watts/Willowbrook Boys and Girls Club. The Peapod Foundation has since launched similar programs in Oakland, Redwood City, New York City and most recently San Jose. The Peapod Foundation was established as a Charitable Service Fund administered by the Entertainment Industry Foundation. For more information, visit www.thepeapodfoundation.com .

About Adobe Youth Voices

Adobe Youth Voices is the Adobe Foundation's global philanthropic initiative that empowers youth from underserved communities with digital media skills so they can comment on their world, share their ideas and take action on issues that are important to them. By harnessing the energy and insight of youth 13-19 years old, Adobe Youth Voices aims to inspire a dialogue for change in their communities. The program engages youth to express themselves through documentary videos, photography, print media, radio diaries, animation, Web communications and other media. Since 2006, the Adobe Youth Voices global network has grown to more than 700 sites, and grantees and organizations in 45 countries, while engaging more than 76,000 youth and 4,000 educators in schools and out-of-school programs. For more information, visit www.youthvoices.adobe.com .

About the Adobe Foundation

The Adobe Foundation is a 501(c)(3) private foundation created and funded by Adobe Systems Incorporated to leverage human, technological and financial resources to drive social change and community improvements.

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Obama's Bad Bargain

2011-08-04T10:17:00.000-07:00

[Click image to enlarge. Click header to go to original article.]

William Greider, The Nation

The most distressing outcome of the deficit hysteria gripping Washington may be what Barack Obama has revealed about himself. It was disconcerting to watch the president slip-slide so easily into voicing the fallacious economic arguments of the right. It was shocking when he betrayed core principles of the Democratic Party, portraying himself as high-minded and brave because he defied his loyal constituents. Supporters may hope this rightward shift was only a matter of political tactics, but I think Obama has at last revealed his sincere convictions. If he wins a second term, he will be free to strike a truly rotten “grand bargain” with Republicans—“pragmatic” compromises that will destroy the crown jewels of democratic reform.

The president has done grievous damage to the most vulnerable by trying to fight the GOP on its ground—accepting the premise that deficits and debt should be a national priority. He made the choice more than a year ago to push aside the real problem—the vast loss and suffering generated by a failing economy.

As a conservative reformer, Obama embraced a bizarre notion of “balance.” The budget cuts he first proposed would have punished the middle class and vulnerable three times with a big stick, shrinking Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits while hitting the wealthy only once with a modest tax increase. When Democrats complained that this wasn’t fair, Obama adjusted the “shared sacrifice” to a dollar-for-dollar ratio. Take a dollar from working stiffs who need these programs, take a dollar from the superrich who don’t need a tax break. How fair is that?

Obama’s facile arithmetic essentially scrapped the Democratic Party’s longstanding commitment to progressive taxation and universal social protections. The claim that cutting Social Security benefits will “strengthen” the system is erroneous. In fact, Obama has already undermined the soundness of Social Security by partially suspending the FICA payroll tax for workers—depriving the system of revenue it needs for long-term solvency.

The mendacity has a more fundamental dimension. Obama helped conservatives concoct the debt crisis on false premises, promoting a claim that Social Security and other entitlement programs were somehow to blame while gliding over the real causes and culprits. Social Security has never contributed a dime to the federal deficits (actually, the government borrows the trust fund’s huge surpluses to offset its red ink).

This mean-spirited political twist amounts to blaming the victims. There should be no mystery about what caused the $14 trillion debt: large deficits began in 1981, with Ronald Reagan’s fanciful “supply side” tax-cutting. Federal debt was then around $1 trillion. By 2007 it had reached $9 trillion, thanks to George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy and his two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus the massive subsidy for Big Pharma in Medicare drug benefits. The 2008 financial collapse and deep recession generated most of the remainder, as tax revenues fell drastically. Obama’s pump-priming stimulus added to the debt too, but a relatively small portion.

Whatever supposed solutions Congress eventually enacts, the misleading quality of the debt crisis should become widely understood once the action is completed. The debt and deficits will probably keep expanding, because the economy will remain stagnant or worse, with near 10 percent unemployment and falling incomes, and that is fundamentally what drives deficits higher. It should become obvious that deficit reduction did nothing to revive economic growth or to create jobs. In fact, cutting federal spending may make things worse, because it withdraws demand from the economy at the very moment when demand for goods and services is woefully inadequate.

At some point, then, the president will have to change his tune. Instead of mimicking the penny pinchers, Obama will have to say something about the nation’s real problem—the sick economy and the terrible consequences facing millions of families. But it’s not clear he will have much to say beyond small-bore suggestions and the usual pep talks. If he does a sudden about-face and proposes big ideas for job creation, will anyone believe him?

The White House evidently thinks it’s good politics for 2012 to dismiss the left and court wobbly independents. Obama no doubt assumes faithful Democrats have nowhere else to go. It’s true that very few will wish to oppose him next year, given the fearful possibility of right-wing crazies running the country. On the other hand, people who adhere to the core Democratic values Obama has abandoned need a strategy for stronger resistance. That would not mean running away from Obama but running at him—challenging his leadership of the party, mobilizing dissident voices and voters, pushing Congressional Democrats to embrace a progressive agenda in competition with Obama’s.

To be blunt, progressives have to pick a fight with their own party. They have to launch the hard work of reconnecting with ordinary citizens, listening and learning, defining new politics from the ground up. People in a rebellious mood should also prepare for the possibility that it may already be too late, that the Democratic Party’s gradual move uptown is too advanced to reverse. In that event, people will have to locate a new home—a new force in politics that speaks for them.

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MALCS Summer Institute

2011-08-03T09:59:00.000-07:00

Opening today, August 3, 2011 - the 2011 Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social Summer Institute, Against Fear and Terror: Una Nueva Conciencia Sin Fronteras. The institute is being held August 3-6, 2011 on campus at Cal State Los Angeles.

Featured speakers include, Angela Sanbrano, Angelica Salas, Azalea Ryckman Vasquez, Dora Olivia Magana, Rossana Perez, Carolina Rivera, Anita Tijerina Revilla, J. Frank Galarte and others. There will also be arts presentations.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Address: MALCS Conference, c/o Department of Chicano Studies
King Hall C 4069
5151 State University Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90032

Email: malcscsula2011@gmail.com
Phone: (323) 343- 2190
National website: www.malcs.org

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Texas Tech professor Connie Cortez wins prize for biography

2011-07-29T15:58:00.000-07:00

“Carmen Lomas Garza,” Texas Tech professor Constance Cortez’s biography of a Chicana artist with Texas ties, was a first place winner in the category of Best Arts Book (English) at the 2011 International Latino Book Awards.

Cortez, an associate professor in Tech’s School of Art, wrote the book as part of the “A Ver: Revisioning Art History” series conducted by UCLA’s Chicano Art Research Center.

Cortez has written and edited four books. She is writing an encyclopedia entry that looks at the interface between Chicano/Chicana literature and art, and an article for a Mexican journal on Chicana muralists.

Cortez also has taught courses in Colonial Art of Mexico and Peru, 19th and 20th century Mexican Art and Contemporary Chicana Art.

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Cruisin’ Magulandia

2011-07-24T19:55:00.000-07:00

[Click image to enlarge]

A Benefit for the Preservation of a Legacy
August 13 –30, 2011
252 South Main Street, Pomona, CA 91767

Opening Reception: Saturday August 13, 2011 at 3:00–10:00 p.m.
Closing Reception: Saturday August 27, 2011 at 6:00–10:00 p.m.

The dA CENTER FOR THE ARTS is honored to host a benefit art exhibition for one of the most influential figures in the Chicano Art movement, Gilbert “Magu” Luján who recently passed away. The exhibition will open to the public during Pomona’s Second Saturday Art Walk on August 13. Items will be offered at many price levels, so everyone can “take home a Magu.” Please join us in celebrating and preserving his legacy.

We cordially invite collectors to attend a special preview reception on Friday August 12, 2011 at 7:00-9:00 p.m. to get early access to some of Magu’s never before shown original artworks. Enjoy wine and hors d’oeuvres to the mellow music of Maria Elena Gaitan aka “Chola con Cello.” Reserve your tickets now.

Come back on August 27 for an afternoon of music in celebration of an amazing man and his expansive collection of work. The closing reception will feature musical performances by Conjunto Los Pochos, singer/songwriter/artist Eloy Torrez and more!

All proceeds from the events will go to support the preservation of Gilbert “Magu” Luján’s artistic legacy.

Any donations toward the benefit exhibition are tax deductible through the dA CENTER FOR THE ARTS, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. For more information, please contact: Marcella Swett at (909) 397-9716.

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Graffiti Talk

2011-07-20T19:42:00.000-07:00

[Vintage photo. Click image to enlarge]

In celebration of urban art and music, on Thursday, July 21, famed L.A. graffiti artist Chaz Bojórquez will host an art talk at the Geffen Contemporary. Starting at 6:30 p.m., Bojórquez will lead an exhibition walkthrough of “Art in the Streets.” His work, which combines East L.A. Chicano graffiti and Asian calligraphy and is featured in the exhibit, will be up for discussion in Little Tokyo.

“As one of the artists that has long been part of the street art scene in Los Angeles, he seemed like an obvious choice to provide a historical perspective,” said Aandrea Stang, senior education program manager at the museum.

The event is free and open to the public. Reservations are not required.

The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA is at 152 N. Central Ave., (213) 621-1745 , or moca.org

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Summer Institute of Arts and Languages

2011-07-01T10:42:00.000-07:00

this summer in San Jose, California.

Click on image to enlarge.

El Teatro Campesino presents "Popol Vuh"

2011-06-30T15:25:00.000-07:00

Three World-Premiere - Plays Adapted from Mayan Creation Stories

Centuries in the making, the summer's most exciting epic is not available in cinemas and must be experienced live.

El Teatro Campesino presents a unique live theater experience with an original three-part adaptation of "Popol Vuh," the sacred creation book of the Quiche Maya. This cycle of three World-Premiere plays bring to life the major narrative portions of the Mayan text in colorful spectacles of pageantry, puppets, original music, and costumed characters-staged with the style, humor, and flair that El Teatro Campesino has become known for worldwide in its 46-year history of inspiring social action and cultivating cultural celebration.

The first two shows in the cycle will be presented in July and August as FREE family-friendly shows outdoors in historic San Juan Bautista. The third part will be presented in September as a ticketed performance in the in the ETC Playhouse. Adventurous theatergoers can experience the entire three-part "Popol Vuh" cycle daily in back to back presentations over the course of Labor Day Week-end on September 3rd, 4th, and 5th.

The first part of the Popol Vuh cycle will be "Heart of Heaven." This tale of the creation of the world comes to life with large-scale puppetry, captivating masks, colorful pageantry, and dance as the Creator Gods make their attempts to create a being who will worship and revere them. The animals can't speak, the mud people can't walk, and the wood people have no hearts. The Creators must race the impending first dawn to find the right formula for humanity. "Heart of Heaven" will be performed trilingually in Spanish, English, and Quiche-the ancient Mayan language that embodies the oral tradition that has kept this story alive for centuries."Heart of Heaven" is a family-friendly show and will and be performed for free at the San Juan Soccer Field at 100 Nyland Drive in San Juan Bautista on July 23, 24, 30, 31 at 4pm, and Labor Day week-end, September 3, 4, 5 at 12pm.

Next up, ETC will present the second part of the "Popol Vuh" in a new production of "The Story of Seven Macaw." In the days between this world and the last, the arrogant Seven Macaw adorns himself with glimmering jewels and jade and claims to be a golden god and the light of the sun itself. His worshippers believe him too-until the creators of the world send the clever Hero Twins to humble Seven Macaw and show people the true way of reverence. "The Story of Seven Macaw" features lively original music, stunning costumes and scenery, humor, dance and a simple message that all can take to heart. Appropriate for all ages, "The Story of Seven Macaw" will be performed for free at the San Juan Soccer Field at 100 Nyland Drive in San Juan Bautista on Aug. 6, 7, 13, 14, at 4pm and Labor Day week-end, September 3, 4, 5 at 4pm.

In late summer, El Teatro Campesino presents the third and final installment of the "Popol Vuh" cycle with "The Magic Twins "which will be performed indoors at the ETC Playhouse. Set in contemporary times, darker and more provocative than the first two stories of the "Popol Vuh," "The Magic Twins" follows the tale of modern twin brothers, One Hun and Ix Swift as they journey into their subconscious and travel into a parallel ancestral Mayan existence. There, the twins must confront themselves and enter the underworld of Xibalba, where the dark lords of the realm oblige them to play a metaphorical ball game, with which they gain personal retribution and redemption. This contemporary adaptation of the Quiche Mayan myth will challenge and immerse audiences into a sensory, hybrid theatrical experience through the use of innovative puppetry, stirring soundscapes, and mesmerizing lighting by a team of award winning designers.

Note: "The Magic Twins" will not be suitable for children."The Magic Twins" will run as a ticketed performance at the ETC Playhouse at 705 Fourth Street in San Juan Bautista from Sept. 1 through the 5 at 8pm for labor Day week-end, and continuing September 8th through September 25th with performances Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm, and Sundays 2pm. Ticket prices for "The Magic Twins" range from $12-20. Tickets are available online at www.elteatrocampesino.com or by calling the ETC Box Office (831)623-2444.

A team of talented and vibrant writers, performers, designers, puppeteers, choreographers and musicians are hard at work crafting what promises to be a spectacle of cosmic proportions. ETC's core creative and performing teams will be joined by a series of guest artists who specialize in puppet-making, costume, sound, and scenic design for an unprecedented and amazing theatrical treat that is not to be missed.

San Juan Bautista, the "City of History" and home of El Teatro Campesino for forty years, is the perfect place to experience this cosmic pageant. The picturesque village has a colorful history all its' own-as Native American settlement, Mission-town, old west stagecoach stop, and climactic setting of Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1959 suspense film "Vertigo." Today, visitors can come and soak in all the vestiges of the town's history by strolling the streets, shopping for antiques and treasures, and enjoying a meal at one of the town's excellent restaurants, providing a perfect opportunity to "come for the play and stay for the day."

Don't worry about 2012-El Teatro Campesino's adaptation of "Popol Vuh" invites you to instead celebrate the Mayan vision of the beginning of the world.

The development of "Popol Vuh" is made possible by a grant from the James Irvine Foundation with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council.

More information is available at www.elteatrocampesino.com
High resolution photos and video trailers, are available at http://www.elteatrocampesino.com/News/sevenmacaw.html

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Arizona's Next Scandal? Tea Party State Official Says Ethnic Studies Violates Ban

2011-06-20T23:00:00.000-07:00

[Click on header to check out the rest of the story at the Huffington Post website.]

Arizona could have a new Ethnic Studies scandal on its hands, though not with the students or teachers.

Nearly one year ago, extremist Tea Party state senator John Huppenthal ran for Arizona's superintendent of education post with an inflammatory campaign to "stop la raza" and terminate Tucson's acclaimed Ethnic Studies/Mexican American Studies (MAS) Program.

At one of the most Orwellian press conferences in recent memory, Huppenthal kept his political campaign promise on Wednesday, June 15, at the Arizona Department of Education in Phoenix, declaring the Ethnic Studies/MAS Program to be out of compliance with the state's controversial ban. Huppenthal introduced a long-awaited and costly audit as proof that the MAS Program promoted resentment towards a race, was designed primarily for a particular ethnic race, and advocated ethnic solidarity. Within a few minutes, Huppenthal and his associate superintendent hastily exited the press conference for other engagements.

Just one glitch: On closer review, the audit -- which admittedly visited only 37% of the classes in the affected Tucson schools for a single 30-minute inspection -- contradicts most of Huppenthal's illusive claims and ultimately finds the MAS Program to be in compliance.

Not that the facts appear to bother the Tea Party politician, a featured speaker at Tea Party rallies that have catcalled President Obama as a "Communist" and "Nazi," or echoed Huppenthal's rants on the Senate floor that undocumented immigrants "nuclear-bombed" parts of Arizona's neighborhoods.

"This decision is not about politics, it is about education," Huppenthal read nervously from a printed statement. He proclaimed his "responsibility to uphold the law and a professional imperative to ensure every student has access to an excellent education."

In truth, the audit questions Huppenthal's own judgment: According to the audit, students in the MAS high school program "graduate in the very least at a rate of 5 percent more than their counterparts in 2005, and at the most, a rate of 11 percent more in 2010." The audit added:MASD programs are designed to improve student achievement based on the audit team's finding of valuable course descriptions aligned with state standards, commendable curricular unit and lesson plan design, engaging instruction practices, and collective inquiry strategies through Approved State Standards.

[Click on header to check out the rest of the story at the Huffington Post website.]

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Latina Students Land Gallery Row Exhibit for Their Interpretation of Historic Olvera Street

2011-06-16T09:36:00.000-07:00

This month Cobá will open its headquarters to expose Art Walk attendees to a photography collection from students involved in Las Fotos Project, a non-profit, community-based program that seeks to empower Latina youth through photography. The collection of photographs is from “Nuestra Placita Olvera,” a project in which the young women captured the culture and life of the city’s historic landmark, Olvera Street, by documenting its annual celebrations.

Headquartered in the heart of the arts district in downtown Los Angeles, Cobá wanted to respect the culture of the neighborhood and thus transformed their office into a gallery featuring the work of various accomplished, local artists. Last month, Cobá featured the work of Yolanda Gonzalez, whose bold use of color and texture reflects her family’s long heritage of artists. In April, José Ramirez’s sociopolitical paintings, rich with images of Chicano culture, were a hit.

The Las Fotos Project encourages young women to express their individuality and creativity and hone their artistic talents with photography training, mentoring and field projects. On display will be the work of Valerie Beltran, age 16, Julie Cabral, age 18, Civil Hernandez, age 16, Jessenia Pineda, age 14, and Yoali Sayago, age 17. According to Las Fotos Project founder Eric V. Ibarra, “The students took a photojournalistic approach to this project by documenting historical celebrations that may be forever changed in the future. Their ability to create this beautiful installation full of color, culture, and life was very inspirational to the Las Fotos Project community and we are all very proud that their hard work and amazing accomplishments will be shared with such a large audience.”

Cobá CEO, Arnulfo Ventura stated, “Art Walk is a great venue and opportunity for these students to display their best work and I know how much this means to them.” Later adding, “Orozco’s murals in Guadalajara made an impact on me as a child and today, I see Yolanda (Gonzalez) and José (Ramirez) as some of the greats of our time. Arts have a rich history in the Latino culture and I’m just glad we’re able to provide a forum to keep celebrating these fabulous artists.”

The event takes place the evening of Thursday, June 9 during the general hours of Art Walk. Cobá, the first ready-to-drink all-natural aguas frescas company, will be providing samples of their authentic aguas frescas sweetened with organic agave.To learn more about Cobá and its work with local artists, please go to www.drinkcoba.com. For more information about Las Fotos Project, visit lasfotosproject.org.

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Blood Daughters: A Romilia Chacón Novel

2011-06-11T19:52:00.000-07:00

A Novel by Marcos M. Villatoro

A child dies on the border between California and Mexico. This is nothing new: immigrants die crossing the border all the time, escaping from poverty and violence in Latin America. They bake in the desert. But this death is different. Someone has taken body parts from the child.

FBI Agent Romilia Chacón, a Salvadoran American, follows this case into a world that swallows her with its horror, a world that exists alongside ours, where children are bought and sold like cattle and shipped to men all across the country. The dealers in this blackest of markets have no moral barometer, only the lust for cash. And one among them has taken murder to a level beyond serial killing.

Romilia comes to this case already broken: the man she loved and yet had to hunt—drug runner Tekún Umán, a regular on the FBI’s Most Wanted List—is gone. Romilia has two friends, her partner Nancy Pearl—who lives a double life between the Feds and the cartels—and a bottle of booze. Romilia’s mother is on her back to get sober; her son drifts further away. And the killer is taking away pieces of Romilia’s life, day by day.

Blood Daughters: A Romilia Chacón Novel

A Novel by Marcos M. Villatoro

ISBN: 978-1-59709-426-9

5.5 x 8.5; Tradepaper

232 pages

Price: US $21.95

Scheduled Release: October 1, 2011

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Los Lobos in LA... otra vez!

2011-05-31T17:00:00.000-07:00

Many moons ago, 40 years to be exact, two high school buddies started writing songs after classes. David Hidalgo and Louie Pérez would later become the front men of the L.A. Chicano rock band Los Lobos. On Saturday, June 4, at 8 p.m., they will play their favorite tunes, and be joined by some guests, in a program called Stories & Songs.

The acoustic concert will raise funds for About Productions’ theater work Evangeline, The Queen of Make-Believe (named after a Los Lobos hit and incorporating many of the band’s songs) and its programs for at-risk youth. At 514 S. Spring St., (626) 396-0920 or aboutpd.org.

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HOY SPACE: Sonia Romero's Inner Landscape

2011-05-18T11:59:00.000-07:00

HOY SPACE: Sonia Romero's Inner Landscape

Gallery 4
May 20 to August 19, 2011

Vincent Price Art Museum is delighted to present a solo show by Los Angeles-based artist Sonia Romero to inaugurate its new project gallery called the HOY SPACE. In Spanish, Hoy means “today” or “nowadays,” and fittingly the HOY SPACE features contemporary artists whose practice extends across media and who address current and active contemporary topics. The HOY SPACE offers emerging artists their first museum show, and for mid-career artists, a chance to make new work that may not fit in other contexts or venues.

Ms. Romero’s installation Inner Landscape is a mixture of painting, block printing, felt sculptures, and paper cuts that are intelligently unified both formally and conceptually. Romero began as a painter, and then in college at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), she majored in printmaking thereby exploring every printing process she could: etching, lithography, silkscreen and block printing. Rather than treat each medium as a distinct and separate creation, or as an end in itself, her work reflects a bold mixing of painting with print; a juxtaposition that has become decidedly her own.

Romero’s imagery is certainly recognizable: whimsical, quirky – and even at times – playful, the artist’s approach reduces elements down to their essentials without a sense of preciousness. The innocence of her drawing belies the complexity of her subject matter. Romero is a keen investigator: her work asks questions and explores social issues. However, there is no polemical stance or finger pointing.

The three large piles we see upon entering Inner Landscape are seemingly benign, arranged like haystacks; from left to right, we recognize bison skulls, kernels of corn, and bright, white eggs, piled up to about 9 feet each. Each of these piles is directly inspired by the artist’s keen interest in the historical and contemporary relationship of people with food. The bison skulls reference American perceptions toward nature and wildlife during the founding of this country; the corn kernels pay homage to a commodity that in its superabundance has become one of the most ubiquitous; and the egg pile to an almost half billion salmonella-related egg recall that occurred in 2010.

A long-time fascination with the politics of consumption has led Romero to create what she calls “gorgeous manifestations of abundance.” Void of darkness, gloominess or judgment, in each element of her installation, Romero invites us to consider imagining our own inner landscape, and seeks to engage us with our own personal stories that may resonate with the ones she has shared with us.

Sonia Romero is a Los Angeles native, and maintains a studio in Highland Park. She received her BFA from RISD in 2002. This is her first solo museum exhibition. She has had solo shows at The Folk Tree, Los Angeles, CA and Avenue 50 Studio, Los Angeles, CA, in addition to many group exhibitions across the United States. She is also well known for her public-art-commissioned projects for the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA), Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Please visit the artist’s website:www.SoniaRomero.net for more information.

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Santa Monica College hosts activism through art

2011-05-17T16:57:00.000-07:00

Photo by Jeff Cote of the SMC Corsair

On Thursday, May 5, an event at Santa Monica College called "Movimiento" served as a focal point for others to see how art is incorporated into messages of activism.

The info session took place at the Pete and Susan Barrett Gallery of the Performing Arts Center, where Los Angeles based artists, activists, and organizers came together to discuss stories of successes and setbacks achieved in the convergence of activism and art.

A few of them have been inspired by student activism, confronting issues such as the Dream Act, concerning undocumented students struggling to find a place.

Bianca Hernandez, one of the first speakers, is President of SMC's Association of Latin American Students. Hernandez presented snapshots of ALAS's actions conducted on campus throughout the past couple years. She stressed the importance of political awareness, and how as a group, they try to fight what's right for them.

ALAS have also taken action in events such as the "March to End the Stereotypes," and more recently, they took part in the "March in March," a student protest fighting against tuition increases by going to Sacramento in March. Hernandez noted how they have incorporated the art of dance into their activities on campus.

Todos Somos Arizona is a collective of different community members, educators, activists, and artists who use different mediums of art and activism mixed together. Patricia Torres, a UCLA student in the Ph.D. department, and organizer with a couple of collectives in Los Angeles, said that they discuss the colonization of their communities and other concerns that they're seeing right now, such as SB 1070 and the attacks on ethnic studies.

According to Torres, INCITE! LA is an organization of radical feminists of color,committed to stopping interpersonal violence, domestic abuse, and police brutality within their communities. INCITE! LA also opposes SB 1070, Arizona's bill that allows criminalization or imprisonment of immigrants.

INCITE! held a major act of demonstration last May, in which 14 members chained themselves into a circle in front of the Downtown Los Angeles detention center, which caused it to close down for about six hours. "We saw it almost as a work of public art where we were actually stopping the everyday runnings of this detention torture place," Torres explained.

Artist Rodrigo Marti was one of the organizers of the info session. His art project that was installed in the room was called "Non-Resident Alien." He said the project will hopefully be the start of what will turn into different ways of working with the student groups he has been meeting and learning from.

Another artist named Felicia Montes had her artwork on display as part of the "Otis College of Art and Design 2011 Graduate Public Practice Degree Exhibition."

"Art is a tool for education, empowerment, and transformation," Montes said.

The special guest for the evening's event was Carlos Montes, an activist during the Chicano Movement of the 1960s. Montes spoke of his memories of the past, and said, "What art is about is creating controversy. It's for making movement in your community."

Article courtesy of the Corsair of SMC.

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'Miradas' reveals how Mexican artists confronted modernity after Revolution

2011-05-03T11:28:00.000-07:00

By Steve Bennett
sbennett@express-news.net

San Antonio's Witte Museum marked the centennial of the Mexican Revolution last year with its multifaceted exhibition “1910: A Revolution Across Borders.” Now the venerable institution examines the artistic legacy of that earth-shattering rip in society's fabric with a seismic summer show that traces the development of Mexican art over the past 80 years in some 100 works.

“Miradas: Mexican Art From the Bank of America Collection” features paintings, prints and photography by 32 artists, including Diego Rivera, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Graciela Iturbide and Rufino Tamayo, as well as contemporary artists such as Alejandro Colunga, Judithe Hernandez and Luis Jiménez.

“The ‘Revolution' show was very gritty,” says Marise McDermott, Witte president. “It really captured the violence of those times. This one explores the explosion of art across the U.S.-Mexico border.”

According to Cesáreo Moreno, chief curator and visual director at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, a furor of post-Revolution nationalism fueled the engines of creativity as Mexican artists rediscovered their country's past and peered ahead into its future.

“At the close of the war, an era of peace was ushered in gradually, with a different political order, a strong sense of nationalism — known as Mexicanidad (Mexican-ness) — and newfound social goals,” says Moreno, organizer of “Miradas,” a touring show culled from one of the country's strongest corporate collections. “Artists sought to develop an artistic language that could convey their sense of modernity in an increasingly industrialized world.”

Among the outlets of expression was a cultural movement known as Indigenismo (Indigenism or Indianism), Moreno says, pointing to “Miradas” paintings by Jean Charlot, a Zapotec mestizo born in Paris in 1898, and Guatemala native Carlos Mérida's series of lithographs reimagining the creation myths of the Popol Vuh.

“Artists and writers who participated in this movement explored their national heritage and proudly included in their work aspects of ancient Mesoamerican culture,” he says.

The Mexican mural movement emerged from the Revolution as well, and Los Tres Grandes (The Three Giants) — Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros — became Mexico's artistic ambassadors, global beacons who championed indigenous culture and the rights of the common man, even as they adopted and adapted international avant garde theories and methods.

Although a meditative suite of later (1968) Siqueiros lithographs dealing with family (“Mother and Child”) and community (“Village Dance”) is included here, visitors will find only one work by Rivera, who, as Witte curator of collections Amy Fulkerson points out, has a long history with the museum.

“The Witte was the first venue in San Antonio to exhibit Rivera, in 1927, so it's a nice connection to our history,” Fulkerson says.

Rivera's 1932 lithograph “The Teacher — The Fruits of School,” which looks like a pencil drawing at first glance, is a sensual work that “employs the classicizing style of Italian Renaissance fresco alongside the smooth elongated forms favored by the Cubists,” Moreno writes in exhibition materials. “His symbolic image valorizes popular education and implies it is planting the seeds of the nation's future.”

Photography occupies a longstanding and important niche in the history of Mexican art, and no exhibition chronicling the 20th century would be complete without Manuel Alvarez Bravo, the influential photographer whose work is such an important window on the world, as well as being a bridge from the past to the present.

The images here, which span the years from 1927 to 1972, capture a sense of Mexican daily life that only Alvarez Bravo could, with his unique vision. His '30s portrait of Frida Kahlo is absolutely majestic.

The most striking photographs in “Miradas,” however, are by Graciela Iturbide, born in 1942, who apprenticed with Alvarez Bravo — and perhaps has surpassed the master. Iturbide's lens found one of Mexico's most iconic images, which she titled “Mujer angel (Angel Woman),” depicting a young woman navigating the Sonora Desert, presumably heading north, with a boom box in her hand. It compresses so much political information into a single image.

The Chicano movement is epitomized in the work of Judithe Hernandez. The pioneering artist is represented here by a strong 2008 pastel on paper work from her Manos de sangre series.

“Red Hand, Bloody Hand, Hand of Oppression” encompasses nine small facial portraits of women in a grid format, as if they are caged or jailed. Bloody handprints are splashed on eyes, mouths, cheeks or necks, reflecting the artist's concern about the abuse of women. It's difficult not to think of the hundreds mysteriously murdered along the border when contemplating Hernandez's disturbing piece.

Many other works are worth discussing in “Miradas”: “There truly is something for everyone in ‘Miradas,'” Fulkerson says.

Can't miss works include a suite of prints by Luis Jiménez (check out “Bronco I”; nobody captured equine fury like Jiménez); the surreal folk narrative paintings of Alejandro Colunga, leader of the Nueva Mexicanidad movement; the “Rodeo Drive” series of Cibachrome prints dealing with rampant consumerism and the inequity of wealth by Los Angeles artist Anthony Hernandez; the symbolic paintings of self-taught artist Raymundo Andrade, who holds degrees in medicine and history, a fact that obviously influences his allegorical work; and Ricardo Rendon's large multimedia installation “Trabajo Diario (Daily Work),” which takes up two walls and features 31 consecutive front pages of the tabloid periodical La Jornada from August 2007.

“Miradas” visitors can't fail to linger over Javier Chavira's “El guerrero (Warrior),” which dominates the entry foyer to the exhibition, and in many ways embodies the dominant themes of the show: Chavira is a young Mexican American artist educated in the Midwest who draws on traditional Mexican sources of imagery, including indigenous sculpture, the Catholic Church and native folk art.

“In addition to producing drawings and paintings,” Moreno says, “Chavira has executed murals on schools and other buildings. ‘The Warrior,' with its architectonically rendered, monumentally proportioned head of an indigenous male, is reminiscent of Chavira's murals.”

In Spanish, the word mirada usually refers to a quick glimpse, but in the case of “Miradas,” it also can evoke a longer look, a deep, captivating gaze.

“Miradas” runs through Aug. 21 at the Witte Museum, 3801 Broadway in San Antonio, Tejas.

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Pasadena NACCS Conference Photos

2011-04-04T11:56:00.000-07:00

Sample photographs taken during the 2011 NACCS conference in Pasadena, California. It was great to see so many Chicana and Chicano Studies academics and artists in one venue. Please click the photos to enlarge. All photos are by Jesus Garza.

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Art and Activism

2011-03-27T23:02:00.000-07:00

Muralist guest speaker at UT-Pan American highlights cultural understanding

As a teenager California in the 1960s and 1970s, Yreina D. Cervantez found her voice as an artist as the streets of Los Angeles were filled with the voices of activists and protesters from around the world.

"My work is really about the reclamation of identity and transformation," she said. "… reclaiming one's history and understanding one's history and therefore understanding your identity, transforming and transcending."

Now a professor of Chicana and Chicano art at California State University, Northridge, Cervantez's collection of painting, drawings, prints and mural work reflect 30 years of community art and activism. Raised in California, she entered young adulthood during the Chicano Rights Movement, the Civil Rights Movement and the resistance to the Vietnam War.

"I was very young and I [came] into my political conscience at that historical movement, and so it really formed a lot of my experiences," she said. "Through my education I was able to go to the university and be exposed to a lot of different ideas."

While still an undergrad at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Cervantez traveled to Nicaragua to show her support for refugees affected by the country's civil war in the 1980s painted a mural to there with other students and supporters. After graduating, she became active in community art as a teacher and noted mural painter with the grassroots non-profits Self Help Graphics and the Social and Public Art Resources Center, which provide free art classes in East LA and promote mural preservation.

"Most of my life has been dedicated to issues that are related to community and to creating positive change in communities," Cervantez said, mentioning a program in which she taught art to young women and mothers involved in gangs. "That was rewarding because there were women who didn't necessarily have access to opportunities but who were very intelligent, very creative. Sometimes it's just the access to education or opportunity that really creates circumstances."

While Cervantez said that her style and artistic approach have changed over three decades, her work is connected by the common thread of Chicana and Native American spirituality, feminism and the blending of the personal and political. She cites the incorporation of alto historia as an important part of her self-portraiture, a concept coined by Valley writer Gloria Zanzaldua as the practice of Chicana artists including elements that represent their communities into their self-portraits.

"The Chicana and Chicano Movement didn't happen in a vacuum, and neither does Chicana and Chicano art," she said. "It was all a process of being inspired by the Chicano Movement, my education and my experiences that formed my consciousness, and also working in the community with the Latino community and Central America community as well."

Her work "Mujer de Mucha Enagua, Pa' Ti Xicana" showcases Cervantez's use of symbolism, feminism, and indigenous influences. The title translates to "woman with a lot of petty coat," a saying in Mexico that inspired to create the screen-print depicting a Mexican revolutionary woman Zapatista, Mexican poet Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz and cotemporary poet Rosario Castellano.

"I thought that was really beautiful because … we don't really have anything that comparable to, excuse me for being blunt, but you have things like, ‘He's got a lot of balls,'" she explained. "Una mujer de mucha enagua, a woman with a lot of petty coat is comparable to the idea of a person with a lot of strength, a person that is empowered, and I thought that that was a beautiful metaphor, and that piece is dealing with history…"

Cervantez will be on campus to discuss her work as part of FESTIBA in a March 28 lecture in the library. Her "Selected Works in Paper" exhibition will be on display through April 30.

"[It's] an opportunity to have discourse on Chicana and Chicano art and aesthetic because we don't really have that opportunity many times…," she said. "Until things really change significantly for communities of color, particularly Latino and especially immigrant communities, there are always issues to address in the work."

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LATINOPIA.COM: New Latino Website Premiers

2011-03-23T17:20:00.000-07:00

[Click header to go to website. Click photo to enlarge.]

Music, recipes, poetry, art, cinema, theater and history make up the rich cornucopia of Latino culture showcased on www.Latinopia.com a new website set for launch March 19, 2011.

The brainchild of veteran Los Angeles television director and documentary filmmaker Jesús Salvador Treviño, the video-driven website is designed as a one-stop web destination for all things Latino.

“As U.S. Latinos enter the digital age, we need a website that can offer videos about all aspects of our history culture and life,” explains Jesús Treviño, whose television credits include programs like Law and Order-Criminal Intent, The Unit, Criminal Minds and Resurrection Blvd and who shot and edited much of the video footage on Latinopia.com.

“We’re starting with five-minute videos in seven subject areas--interviews, music performances, short films, theater plays and authors reading from their works,” Trevino explains. “We are excited that top Latino writers, artists and musicians from around the U.S. have seen the value of Latinopia.com and are enthusiastically sharing their time, stories and creativity.

A click on Latinopia’s Art section will take the visitor to video profiles of Chicano, Puerto Rican and Cuban American artists, painters and muralists such as Gilbert “Magu” Lujan, Ester Hernández, Frank Romero, Yolanda López, César Martínez, Rupert García, José Montoya, Gronk, Judy Baca, Carmen Lomas Garza, Zarco Guerrero as well as print interviews and special features.

The Literature section features a timeline on the emergence of Chicano, Puerto Rican and Cuban-American literature in the United States in addition to listings of Latino books. Video interviews include such important Latino writers such as Rudolfo Anaya, Pat Mora, Dagoberto Gilb, Judith Ortíz Cofer, Alberto Rios, Denise Chavez and Luis J. Rodríguez. Dramatic re-enactments and additional footage bring their works to life.

The website’s Theater section includes video interviews with Chicano, Puerto Rican and Cuban American playwrights, actors and stage directors and groups like Culture Clash as well as excerpts from plays written performed and directed by Latinos in New York, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco; among them Crystal City 1969, Gaytino, Regeneración, and The Silver Dollar.

Interviews with leading Chicano, Puerto Rican and Cuban musicians are an attraction in the Music section: Los Lobos, Little Joe and La Familia, Flaco Jimenez all discuss their art. There are also performances by such groups as Mitote, Los Pochos, La Santa Cecilia, Olmeca.

In Cinema and Television many of the nation’s leading Latino actresses and actors discuss their work and making their way in Hollywood: Hector Elizondo, Lupe Ontiveros, Jimmy Smits, Edward James Olmos, America Ferrera, Evelina Fernandez and are among those to be featured. Behind the camera talent will also be featured such as writer/producer Dennis Leoni (Resurrection Blvd), Director of Photography Rey Villalobos (Nine to Five, Urban Cowboy) and Director Leon Ichaso (El Cantante).

A visit to the History page will reveal videos of important historical events in Chicano and Latino life along with event timelines, biographies and documents. It includes profiles of important Chicano, Puerto Rican and Cuban American leaders and historical figures such as Jose Marti, Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.

Latinopia Food offers Latinopia’s recommendations on the best places in major cities in the United States to eat Mexican and Latino food along with “how-to” videos on making great Mexican food--enchiladas, guacamole, Spanish rice, salsa-- as well as Puerto Rican and Cuban American cuisine.

“We are launching modestly with a few dozen videos,“ Jesús Treviño explains, “but we add new videos each week and will grow the site into more than hundred videos by the end of the first year. Seeing is believing. Check us out at www.Latinopia.com ”

“Once we establish an audience of regular visitors, we plan to expand beyond short videos into original webisodes and longer form dramas geared to the Latino public. The potential is as rich and limitless as is the life and culture of America’s 47 million Latinos.”

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¿Chicano y que?

'500 Years of Chicano History' Available Free to Local (Former) Mexican American Studies Students

Los Angeles Latino Theater Company Ordered Out of Downtown Home

Remembering the Chicano arts collectives of Los Angeles' Highland Park

Daniel del Solar: Latino Media Activist Passes

National Association of Latino Arts & Culture (NALAC) Names Adriana Gallego Deputy Director

How US Policies Fueled Mexico's Great Migration

Judge Says Chicano Studies Program Violates Arizona Law

Houston Chicano Mural Will Be Saved, But Where?

Field Notes From the Revolution: Activists Occupy California’s Imperial Valley

CSUN professor paints her way through male-dominated art industry

Visual language of Malaquias Montoya

AirTalk's Chicano ArtTalk and Pacific Standard Time Exhibit

Jesús Garza: Summer 2011 Oil Paintings

'Art Along the Hyphen' in Los Angeles

Jesús Garza's Chicano Photographer show (1970-1975) continues for 30 more days

The International Accordion Festival’s battle against shrinking funds and ignorant lawmakers

11th Annual International Accordion Festival

An LA Chicano artist's best friend: Chon Noriega

Mex/LA” Exhibits Modern Chicano Art

Scholar Shifra Goldman, 85, dies

1970s L.A. Chicano Conceptual Art Group Gets its Due

Bakersfield conservative exhibits his Chicano poster collection

Conservative student to fight discipline by Fresno State

Asco: A Hollywood Love Affair

Tucson MEChA comes under scrutiny

Artist collective, host art show in Imperial Valley

Stuart Ashman appointed head of Museum of Latin American Art

Asco Returns Triumphant to LACMA

Friends Gather in Pomona to Celebrate Chicano Artist Gilbert "Magu" Lujan

Chicano Photographer Exhibition Continues at San Bernardino County Museum

Laura Romo is new director of UCSB Chicano Studies Institute

MACLA: The Black Eyed Peas Peapod Foundation and Adobe Foundation Unveil New Academy for San Jose Youth

Obama's Bad Bargain

MALCS Summer Institute

Texas Tech professor Connie Cortez wins prize for biography

Cruisin’ Magulandia

Graffiti Talk

Summer Institute of Arts and Languages

El Teatro Campesino presents "Popol Vuh"

Arizona's Next Scandal? Tea Party State Official Says Ethnic Studies Violates Ban

Latina Students Land Gallery Row Exhibit for Their Interpretation of Historic Olvera Street

Blood Daughters: A Romilia Chacón Novel

Los Lobos in LA... otra vez!

HOY SPACE: Sonia Romero's Inner Landscape

Santa Monica College hosts activism through art

'Miradas' reveals how Mexican artists confronted modernity after Revolution

By Steve Bennettsbennett@express-news.net

Pasadena NACCS Conference Photos

Art and Activism

Muralist guest speaker at UT-Pan American highlights cultural understanding

LATINOPIA.COM: New Latino Website Premiers

By Steve Bennett
sbennett@express-news.net