Judge Says Chicano Studies Program Violates Arizona Law

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?

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

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

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

[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

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

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

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

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

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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

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

[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

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

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

[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

[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."

According Bakersfield resident Henry Rangel, "I sold the pieces cheap. Yes, I sold my birthright but I would like some credit."

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