Chicano Arts Pioneer Takes On Globalization and War: Malaquias Montoya’s Show at Centro Cultural (San Diego, CA) Looks Forward and Back

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN

http://zengersmag.blogspot.com/

Pioneering Chicano artist Malaquias Montoya is still doing political art. That comes through loud and clear from the title of his show, “Globalization and War: The Aftermath,” through March 4 at the Centro Cultural de la Raza, 2004 Park Boulevard in Balboa Park, San Diego, CA. But when he appeared for the opening reception January 22 and was invited to speak for 45 minutes, he talked as much about the past — the heady days of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s when Hispanics first started calling themselves Chicanos and the Chicano art movement that gave rise to the Centro Cultural was getting under way — as about Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and the other modern-day inspirations for the art he was showing.

Montoya’s art blends a brutal toughness and a desperate compassion in dealing directly with political themes — torture as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy (plus the denials that we engage in torture — one piece uses the actual words of someone accused of torturing detainees at Abu Ghraib who said “we’re just softening them up for interrogation”), the growing gap between rich and poor in the U.S. itself and the brutality and viciousness with which Americans, especially the military, throw their weight around the world and demand other countries bend to their will. Among the influences he cited were Mexican muralists José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siquieros (two of the three great painters of the Mexican revolution who were called Los Tres Grandes — the third was Diego Rivera), along with newer artists Elizabeth Catlett and Kathe Kollwitz.

One name he didn’t mention as an influence, but whose stylistic footprints were obvious in Montoya’s work, was Ben Shahn, who in the 1930’s and 1940’s pioneered a style of political art relying on bold, often deliberately ugly imagery, rendered in stark monochromes. The monochrome pieces in Montoya’s show especially resemble Shahn’s work, and he acknowledged the influence when he took audience questions. “Ben Shahn is someone I’ve always admired,” said Montoya, who studied him towards the end of his career in the 1960’s and read his 1960 art book, The Shape of Content.

Montoya was introduced by the pioneering Chicano poet Alurista, who paid tribute to the RCAF — “Radical Chicano Artists’ Front” — a group of radical Chicano artists which started in Sacramento and San Francisco, and which Montoya helped organize. In 1970 Alurista and some of his fellow activists staged the takeover of the small strip of land under the freeway in Barrio Logan that is today known as Chicano Park. He was also instrumental in starting the Centro Cultural. In his introduction, Alurista recalled that the inspiration for the Chicano Park takeover came from, of all sources, the California Highway Patrol.

“They wanted to put a station in the middle of the barrio, where Chicano Park is now,” Alurista recalled. “We took over Chicano Park, but had it not been for the RCAF and Los Elas Dunstas of Los Angeles, Chicano Park would not be what it is today.” He paid tribute not only to Montoya but to Victor Ochoa and Mario Torero, local San Diego artists who were part of the original Chicano movement and helped paint the famous murals on the pillars holding up the freeways over Chicano Park. At first the authorities wanted to whitewash the murals; today San Diego regularly promotes them as a tourist attraction.

“I was here many years ago in the 1970’s and met several people, including Victor Ochoa and Alurista,” Montoya recalled. Though he was committed to the RCAF because his brother held the title of “general” in it, Montoya explained, his principal affiliation back then was with an Oakland-based group called MALAF. The initials stood for “Mexican-American Liberation Art Front,” Montoya said, but when he pronounced them it sounded like the Spanish words “mala jefe” — “bad chief.” According to Montoya, most of the members of MALAF had grown up as farmworkers but had moved to the urban barrios and had ultimately put themselves through college.

Montoya said MALAF organized one major exhibition, called “A New Symbol for La Nueva Raza,” but its major influence was through the long dialogues and rap sessions its members had with each other. “We would talk about ourselves, how we grew up, how we weren’t allowed to speak Spanish, and how we hated ourselves for looking ‘different’,” Montoya recalled. “But in this fellowship we talked and found the humor in our situation.” He recalled that MALAF’s members weren’t immune to their own internal racism; one member was “castigated for looking ‘too Indian,’” he said.

“We were proud of who we were, the food we ate, our work in the fields and how our parents contributed to the wealth of the country,” Montoya said. “We started to take pride in who we were. We were looking for something we could use as a symbol, and [we took it from] Miguel Gomez, a young man with a brown beret and a bomber jacket, someone who a few years before that we would have called ‘cabrón Indio.’ He had a face that looked like it could have been the subject of a Mayan sculpture. We looked at him and he became the symbol. All five of us in MALAF went and did portraits of him for ‘A New Symbol for La Nueva Raza.’ It was a successful show.”

Today Montoya teaches at the University of California at Davis, near Sacramento. It’s a career he fell into almost by accident. “In 1970, when I started teaching at UC Berkeley, I had no idea I’d end up teaching,” he acknowledged. He had come to Oakland from San José in 1968 and found that his reputation and some of his work had preceded him when he started organizing on the Berkeley campus in support of the boycott against grapes called by César Chávez and the United Farm Workers union. Berkeley hired him, he recalled, “because they wanted to develop a Chicano arts program,” and he launched an oral history project in which he interviewed Chicano and Latino artists not only in the Southwestern U.S. but in Mexico as well.

Alas, Montoya said in response to a question from the audience, many of the tapes of his interviews and the slides he shot of the artists’ works disappeared into the maw of academe. “Professor Juan Martinez was an historian who got interested in art and wanted to do a book about it, and ended up with the tapes and the slides,” Montoya recalled. “Some of the tapes and slides were eventually returned, but others were lost, and I had to write the people I’d interviewed that the material had been taken out of my hands. Fortunately, no one sued.” Montoya said that one of the people he interviewed, Nino Padilla, had just returned from Viet Nam and had done a series called The People of Viet Nam in Black and White, which he recalled as “very powerful work,” but he hasn’t heard of it since and doesn’t know what happened to it.

One audience member asked Montoya how he felt about UC Berkeley, where he started his academic career and which still has a reputation as a progressive institution, hiring John Yoo from the George W. Bush administration as a law professor. Yoo’s memos to Bush, outlining a theory of executive power that basically said that during a time of war the President is above the law and can order virtually anything, including torture, that he feels is needed to save the country or win the war, made his name a flash point for the controversy over the harsh interrogation methods used at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. “I know about him,” said Montoya, “but I look at my work as a collaboration with the people of the community and people who influenced me. I pretty much work in my studio alone. That’s what gives me solitude and allows me to think beyond what I hear in the news.”

Not that Montoya is — or would ever want to be — an ivory-tower artist living and working in lordly isolation from political and social movements and events. “We live in a society that on a daily basis for the things we will commit later, without realizing that’s the direction we are being taken in,” he said in a statement that sums up the theme of his show. “Without an understanding of the progressive side, we will participate in that training and even be involved in that slaughter. That’s how young men can join the military and do those horrible things.” Referring to the assault on Congressmember Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of Judge John Roll and five others in Tucson January 8, Montoya added, “The Right says they can’t have caused what happened in Tucson, but when you say those things often enough — when you call your political adversaries ‘enemies’ and say they should be ‘eliminated’ — crimes like that will happen.”

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Bill Maher: On the NFL

Comedian, Bil Maher comments of the NFL and Socialism?

New Rule: With the Super Bowl only a week away, Americans must realize what makes NFL football so great: socialism.

That's right, for all the F-15 flyovers and flag waving, football is our most successful sport because the NFL takes money from the rich teams and gives it to the poor teams... just like President Obama wants to do with his secret army of ACORN volunteers. Green Bay, Wisconsin has a population of 100,000. Yet this sleepy little town on the banks of the Fuck-if-I-know River has just as much of a chance of making it to the Super Bowl as the New York Jets - who next year need to just shut the hell up and play.

Now, me personally, I haven't watched a Super Bowl since 2004, when Janet Jackson's nipple popped out during half time, and that split-second glimpse of an unrestrained black titty burned my eyes and offended me as a Christian. But I get it - who doesn't love the spectacle of juiced-up millionaires giving each other brain damage on a giant flat-screen TV with a picture so realistic it feels like Ben Roethlisberger is in your living room, grabbing your sister?

It's no surprise that some 100 million Americans will watch the Super Bowl next week - that's 40 million more than go to church on Christmas - suck on that, Jesus! It's also 85 million more than watched the last game of the World Series, and in that is an economic lesson for America. Because football is built on an economic model of fairness and opportunity, and baseball is built on a model where the rich almost always win and the poor usually have no chance. The World Series is like Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. You have to be a rich bitch just to play. The Super Bowl is like Tila Tequila. Anyone can get in.

Or to put it another way, football is more like the Democratic philosophy. Democrats don't want to eliminate capitalism or competition, but they'd like it if some kids didn't have to go to a crummy school in a rotten neighborhood while others get to go to a great school and their Dad gets them into Harvard. Because when that happens "achieving the American dream" is easy for some, and just a fantasy for others.

That's why the NFL runs itself in a way that would fit nicely on Glenn Beck's chalkboard - they literally share the wealth, through salary caps and revenue sharing - TV is their biggest source of revenue, and they put all of it in a big commie pot and split it 32 ways. Because they don't want anyone to fall too far behind. That's why the team that wins the Super Bowl picks last in the next draft. Or what the Republicans would call "punishing success."

Baseball, on the other hand, is exactly like the Republicans, and I don't just mean it's incredibly boring. I mean their economic theory is every man for himself. The small market Pittsburgh Steelers go to the Super Bowl more than anybody - but the Pittsburgh Pirates? Levi Johnston has sperm that will not grow up and live long enough to see the Pirates in a World Series. Their payroll is about $40 million, and the Yankees is $206 million. They have about as much chance at getting in the playoffs as a poor black teenager from Newark has of becoming the CEO of Halliburton. That's why people stop going to Pirate games in May, because if you're not in the game, you become indifferent to the fate of the game, and maybe even get bitter - that's what's happening to the middle class in America. It's also how Marie Antoinette lost her head.

So, you kind of have to laugh - the same angry white males who hate Obama because he's "redistributing wealth" just love football, a sport that succeeds economically because it does exactly that. To them, the NFL is as American as hot dogs, Chevrolet, apple pie, and a second, giant helping of apple pie. But then again, they think they're macho because their sport is football, when honestly - is there anything gayer than wearing another man's shirt?

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NPR: New And Established Writers Redefine Chicano Literature

[Click header to go to audio feed and original NPR story. Click image to enlarge.]

Many Mexican-American writers use their work to share stories of history, identity and discrimination. Sanda Cisneros, author of The House On Mango Street, and young adult literature author David Rice explain what their stories can tell readers about Chicano life in America.

NEAL CONAN, host:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington - yes, Washington. The plane never got off the ground from the airport last night. I'd hoped to be in San Antonio today, at the studios of KSTX, Texas Public Radio, to meet poet and novelist Sandra Cisneros, who wrote about the house she grew up in: small and red, with tight steps in front and windows so small you'd think they were holding their breath. Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen, you have to push hard to get in. The house has only one washroom. Everybody has to share a bathroom, a bedroom, Mama and Papa, Carlos and Kiki, me and Nenny.

"The House on Mango Street" became a classic and made Cisneros a pioneer, perhaps the best-known female Mexican-American writer.

David Rice grew up in the Rio Grande Valley and focuses his stories on the people and towns he's known all his life. Both writers provide Chicanos an opportunity to recognize themselves in the pages of books that address the highs and lows of both belonging and not belonging.

Today, Sandra Cisneros and author David Rice. Later, the mayor of San Antonio, Julian Castro.

But first, Mexican-Americans, we want to hear from you. Where do you see your life reflected accurately? What books or movies or TV shows? Tell us. 800-989-8255 is the phone number. Email us: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.

Sandra Cisneros joins us from the studios of member station KSTX.

And nice to have you with us today.

Ms. SANDRA CISNEROS (Author, "The House on Mango Street"): Thank you for inviting me.

CONAN: And it's been almost 30 years since "The House on Mango Street." Do you think Esperanza's experience would be different now?

Ms. CISNEROS: Oh, I think the situation's gotten worse for Esperanza, I'm sorry to say.

CONAN: Worse. And how do you say that?

Ms. CISNEROS: I say that because, you know, when I wrote that book, I wrote it from someplace, a very optimistic young women in her early 20s, hoping things would get better in the United States for people of Mexican descent. But, you know, I could never dream what would happen post-9/11 and with the community being under siege as it is right now with Mexican people really being vilified at this time of American history.

CONAN: Mm-hmm. And so Esperanza, of course, means hope in Spanish. Might you have chosen a different name for your character?

Ms. CISNEROS: Yeah, I still am filled with hope. I'm 56 now, and I have a different kind of view of the world, but I'm still optimistic and filled with hope, or I wouldn't be here today.

CONAN: And you now live in San Antonio. You grew up in Chicago. Tell us a little bit about the differences between those two places.

Ms. CISNEROS: Well, you know, I grew up where you could get on a bus and hear someone speaking, you know, Russian and someone speaking Spanish and someone with a twang from the Appalachia - I mean, all these different languages and dialects going on.

And I just assumed that the whole world was very global in that sense, that, you know, communities might not get along, but they had to live with each other, like it or not.

And, you know, it's so different coming here to San Antonio, where it's predominately - the majority of people that live here have Spanish language as an inherited language. Maybe they are not that proficient, or some are. And, you know, so you see the Spanish language in more public spaces, on advertising, and you hear it in the next booth at the restaurant.

And even the people who aren't of Mexican origin know a little bit of Spanish or know quite a good deal about the culture, just from generations of living here. Because, obviously, this was Mexico before it was the United States.

CONAN: I want to ask you the same question we're asking our callers today: Are there places where - other than your own books, of course - you recognize your experience and people like you, in books and movies on TV?

Ms. CISNEROS: Are you asking me?

CONAN: Yeah.

Ms. CISNEROS: Well, I think I wrote "House" precisely because I wanted to give my truth, my version. At the time that I wrote "House," in the - around the end of the '70s and the early '80s, I was reading Chicano literature written by men. And a lot of the literature that was coming to me was written by people in the Southwest.

I didn't have the urban experience. If I read about the urban experience of Latinos, it might be the Nuyorican experience. And I felt that it was a very different world than mine, especially a different reality written by men. And I wanted to write about the woman's point of view of living in the barrio.

There seemed to be a glorification of the barrio by the men, and I felt that there was issues in the barrio that I wanted to bring to light, that I needed to bring to light - not only for my own story, but I was a high school teacher. I was a very powerless highs school teacher at an alternative high school, and the girls I was teaching, their stories resonated with me to such a degree that I had to do something so I could fall asleep at night.

And I started weaving their stories into a neighborhood I remembered from my past, and that's how "House" came about. I truly wanted to tell the stories of these young women and my point of view as a woman, too.

CONAN: Also with us from the studios of KSTX in San Antonio is David Rice, a Chicano writer and filmmaker based in Austin. He's the author of "Give the Pig a Chance" and "Crazy Loco."

Nice to have you with us today.

Mr. DAVID RICE (Author and Filmmaker): Thanks for inviting me.

CONAN: And I wanted to ask you the same question we just put to Sandra Cisneros: Are there books, movies - you're a moviemaker and a writer, too, so we'll exclude yours for just a moment - that bring the people you know to life?

Mr. RICE: When I was a kid, there was no, that I read, Mexican-American literature or Chicano literature. And so I didn't know it existed until I was 23 years old. I'm 46 now. And I was in a plane on Southwest Airlines, flying, and I read an in-flight magazine that had Rolando Smith-Hinojosa's story about a snowman down in - down in the valley in Mercedes, Texas, where I'm close to.

And so that's the first time I saw that a Mexican-American could write a story about his or her home. And the Rio Grande Valley where I'm from, head count is only 2,000 people. It's a very small town 18 miles from the border. And so it was very rural.

And when I read that story, I realized, hey, you know, I could write about my home. And my home does have validation. Where I'm from is important.

And so that's what gotten me started writing that first story, and then, of course, reading other books. I read Sandra's books. I read Duguel's(ph) books, Gary Soto, Rudolfo Anaya, a bunch of other writers.

And then I realized: Hey, anyone can write, you know, and just had to sit down and do it.

CONAN: Well, not anybody could write as well as you do. But that's another issue completely. As you talk about it, though, I know you spend time going back to the Rio Grande Valley to teach kids in high school, to work with them, about how to write and how to tell stories about their own lives.

Mr. RICE: Well, you know, to be honest, I'm bored with my stories. And I'm bored with Sandra's stories, and I'm bored with Dago's(ph) stories. I'm bored with Mexican-American literature right now.

And I think that the new writers are coming up, and we have to - and I know Sandra goes to schools, a lot of them. I go to a lot of schools. And we're - we want kids to write their stories. We want them to realize that their family's important, that their culture's important. And they're out there.

You know, they - and we go to schools and talk to these kids, they get excited. And the best thing to hear from a kid is to tell me: You know what? Your story's boring. I don't like it. And I go, really? That's great. I think that's - you know what? Let's hear your story.

And so I'm excited about these schools, you know, producing writers, and that's why I visit these schools, because I'm looking for these writers, and they're out there.

They're - we're in San Antonio, Texas, right now. They're all around us. They're all over Texas. And so while Sandra's right, we are right now having a tough time as Mexican-Americans in this country, we also have a real moment of showing that we have value - not just in our hard work, but in our storytelling.

CONAN: Sandra, would you agree?

Ms. CISNEROS: Well, I think it's a time where we're not having those opportunities to tell our story. What David is very optimistic about, but not telling you the truth that, you know, he's one, one person. I'm just one person that can go out to the schools, and the demand and requests from the schools is enormous.

There aren't enough of us published to go out. And the ones that are publishes are not getting distributed. So it's a difficult task. I feel it every day, that pull of the requests that come to me because the need is so great in the schools, especially since, recently, our Texas Board, you know, removed a lot of us from social studies. A lot of us are getting removed from textbooks. You know, and this is a community that you and I, David, we do this for free when we have time and aren't exhausted, and it never ends. So we need those other writers, but it's a difficult time.

We have a high dropout rate. We have young teens getting pregnant. You know, our communities are just hemorrhaging, and you and I are just a little Band-Aid on a corpus that is dying.

So we really need to create more writers. I try to do that at this stage in my life by working with professional writers who serve community. I do that with the Macondo Foundation. I bring together writers of all colors.

And there are so many of us who have been doing this our whole lives, because there isn't money for us to go out to the schools. There hasn't been money for a long time.

There hasn't been programs of poetry in the schools since maybe I was - you know, 25 years ago. And if it wasn't for money like the NEA, I would still be teaching in a high school writing "House on Mango Street" on Saturdays and during my vacation. If I hadn't gotten that NEA grant, I wouldn't have finished that book that now is required reading throughout universities, high schools and middle schools.

So I think that, you know, you're overly optimistic. I think it's a difficult, difficult time for publishing, period. It's difficult for writers of color. You and I do everything we can to go out to the schools. We work with younger writers.

I know you've been very, very generous. But we do it all, you know, like the Peace Corps. Nobody even knows we're doing this. The president doesn't know we're doing it, and maybe Mayor Julian doesn't know we do this. We do it on our own.

And, you know, we get a lot of good karma, but it's very difficult for us to finish our work when we're out there as the foot soldiers. So I think it's important for us to - just like me, you know, I was helped by other writers. I help the younger writers.

There were older writers that helped me. There were grants available that are extinct or are going to be shortly extinct, and we have to help that next generation because, like you said, the stories are out there, but who's going to open the doors? You and I - people who love those writers.

CONAN: David Rice, you cockeyed optimist, you.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. RICE: Well, you know - you know, look. We can go on for hours about this, and Sandra's right. Because in the State of Texas, like in Arizona, there is an outright attack to eliminate Chicano studies, you know, from universities and from classrooms. And we're not in the canon.

So when you go to a high school, teachers often have to sneak in my book to be taught and Sandra's books or Dago's books, and the teacher themselves have to make this effort to bring the book to the classroom.

So it's not sanctioned by the State of Texas, nor by the school boards. So, yes, there is...

Ms. CISNEROS: Maybe one writer here or there, but, you know...

Mr. RICE: Si, uno, dos. Yeah, one or two. For the most part...

Ms. CISNEROS: But for the most part, we're the illegal aliens of American letters.

Mr. RICE: Well, in the classroom, for sure.

Ms. CISNEROS: Yes, absolutely, especially in communities where we need to be the most, like here in the Southwest.

Mr. RICE: Yes, no, I completely agree.

CONAN: David Rice and Sandra Cisneros, both Chicano writers. They're with us from San Antonio today in the studios of KSTX, Texas Public Radio. We want to hear from Mexican-Americans in our audience. Where do you see people you know, people like you reflected in literature, in books and movies, on TV shows? Give us a call: 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org.

Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.

(Soundbite of music)

CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan. We're broadcasting today in partnership with KSTX, Texas Public Radio in San Antonio, and we're talking about the Chicano voice in the books we read, the movies and TV shows we watch, and we're talking with two people who help tell those stories.

Sandra Cisneros's books include - in addition to "The House on Mango Street" -"Loose Woman," "My Wicked, Wicked Ways," and others. David Rice is a writer and filmmaker. His books include "Give the Pig a Chance" and "Crazy Loco."

Mexican-Americans in the audience, we want to hear from you. Where do you see your life reflected accurately? Books, movies, TV? 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.

And let's go to Corina(ph), Corina with us, calling from Tucson.

CORINA (Caller): Yes, hello. I just wanted to share, it was very powerful for me to hear, to just come across this particular show. I love your show and especially a show of this subject.

Growing in Las Cruces, New Mexico, I'm 41 years old, I remember distinctly the power seeing the show "Que Pasa USA" on PBS, because for me, it was the first time I saw people who looked like me.

And mind you, they weren't speaking the same kind of Spanish or English, with the usage or the cadence that I used growing up in Las Cruces, but it was so powerful to see people like me and say, hey, you know, I could relate to that.

And it just filled me with a sense of pride that to this day, you know, it remains with me.

Now, of course, we have George Lopez, and we have so many other shows, and I think there is, there's such a dearth of our stories out there, and I'm glad that this show is being broadcast, because we do, we need to get a fire lit under all of our youth, Latinos, Chicano, Mexican-American, what you might call us, and share our stories.

CONAN: David Rice, did you grow up with "Que Pasa USA"?

Mr. RICE: I grew up with "Caros Lindas"(ph), and "Caros Lindas" was a program that was out of Keller U, PBS in Austin, Texas, and was shown in the Valley, and she's right.

When I was a kid and I saw that, when I saw a Mexican-American's brown skin on television, it really, it changed my perception, because I said, wow, we can be on TV. We can do this.

And so, you know, going back to this idea of going to schools, you know, we visit all these schools and talk to kids, and we never know. We just don't know. Sandra and I don't know, none of us know, what kid is going to take off. We just don't know. But if we don't go to those schools and put on those programs on television that show Mexican-Americans in a positive light, it won't happen.

Ms. CISNEROS: You know, I'm going to have to interject. I'm older than you and I have to say I wrote my books in a place of real powerlessness. But now that I'm in my 50s, those students come up to me now, and they say: I read your book when I was in middle school, and my counselor told me, you know, I wasn't college material; I'm finishing my degree at UCLA.

I have those young women and young men that come up to me now, and they always are with tears in their eyes. And so I cry too, because, you know, that just goes to show you the power of art. And when you make it with your corazon, and when you don't have your ego, your fixed agenda, and you just get out of the way and you do it with light and with love for other people (Spanish spoken) it always comes out good, any work that we do for others with love.

And so I know that art makes change, and those artists that don't know that, they need to go out in the community and volunteer and do some really hard work. Roll up your sleeves.

Maybe the NEAs ought to be given to people who do community work or to(ph) artists willing to community work, and maybe everybody would be happy about the arts going out because they really are an investment.

And I can tell you, I want to give a testimony and an amen, you know, that I have lived long enough and am blessed in my lifetime to see those very many young people, many, come up to me that say this book changed their life.

CONAN: Corina, thanks very much for the phone call, appreciate it.

CORINA: Thank you.

CONAN: Bye-bye. Let's go next to Guillermo, Guillermo with us from Oakland.

GUILLERMO (Caller): Yes, thank you for taking my call. I just wanted to say congratulations (technical difficulties). My teacher, when I came to this country, my teacher taught us how to learn English with your book and how to write, how to speak, also helped us to graduate.

CONAN: You're talking about "The House on Mango Street"?

GUILLERMO: Pardon me?

CONAN: You're talking about "The House on Mango Street"?

GUILLERMO: Correct. And I have to say that it encouraged me, give me more hope. It is a way that you can move forward to make your dreams come true. So it helped us (technical difficulties) graduate as a landscape architect and I start my own company. And here I am. (Spanish spoken)

Ms. CISNEROS: Bravo, bravo. That's a beautiful testimonial. I love to hear these stories.

CONAN: Guillermo, thanks very much for the call, and good luck to you.

GUILLERMO: Thank you.

CONAN: It's interesting. Sandra Cisneros, I know you've written about how, I guess unconsciously, some of the patterns of - the vocal patterns and the verbal patterns in you books replicate Spanish. I think it might be easier for people, Spanish-speaking people, to help learn them - teach them to speak English by reading your books.

Ms. CISNEROS: Yes, it's helped quite a few people. And it's also a big hit not just here in the United States but in China and in Germany and in - even in Iran. You know, so many different cultures have been reading the book, and I just think anytime we do any work that we do with our corazon, that we do with our heart, you know, we just stand back.

I'm just - had no idea it was going to have that kind of impact globally, and I'm so happy because I feel especially powerless right now at this time in history. I'm looking for my direction. David, you and I know how much work is needed out there, and we're always looking to see how can we be of service, how can we help these communities that are so polarized right now in the United States come to some place that they can hear each other?

I think art is that opportunity for communities that are frightened to come together and to be inside each other's skin.

CONAN: Let's go next to - this is - let's go next to Mario(ph), Mario with us from San Antonio.

MARIO (Caller): Hi.

CONAN: Go ahead, please.

MARIO: My name's Mario Cervantes(ph). Thank you for taking my call. Hi, Sandra. I met you. I go to Our Lady of the Lake University. And I met you I think twice or two times. I'm a dyslexic writer. I write. I've been writing since I was in middle school. And seeing George Lopez on TV has inspired me a lot because he's dyslexic, and it encouraged me to chase after my dreams.

And Cisneros's books have also encouraged me to chase after my dreams and never stop believing in myself.

CONAN: And...

Ms. CISNEROS: That's wonderful.

CONAN: That's - congratulations, Mario, and who do you read, other than the guests we've got in the studio there?

MARIO: I read other books like (unintelligible) I'm really a poem writer. So I read a lot of poems, more than books.

CONAN: Okay, all right. Thanks very much for the call. And continued good luck.

MARIO: Thank you.

CONAN: Here's an email we have from Laura(ph) in Austin: I publish Latinas Magazine, the first digital magazine made by and for young Latinas. How powerful figures like David Rice and Sandra Cisneros are to those girls, whose voice is probably least heard in the U.S.

The kids are hungry to talk about their culture. We need these forums, and we teach these kids about how to be that voice.

And I wonder, David Rice, new kinds of forums - you were talking about the difficulties of getting published earlier, are - does the Web provide new opportunities?

Mr. RICE: Well, yeah. Well, that's a good question. Well, yes, it does, of course, right. The blogs and what have you and the short-story contests, and you can have your own book online, with classmates of your school.

But, you know, the thing is to get these kids to write. You know, there was a poster some years ago with Hemingway sitting on a beach, and he's reading a book. And it says: Get caught reading.

And I always say to kids: Get caught writing. You know, start writing because, yes, you know, Sandra's right. We have limited access to publishing houses. There's a few out there, but we need more.

But these kids have to start writing. They have to start really reading and writing. And yes, they'll form their own magazines and their own blocks. Latinas Magazine, by the way, is a very good publication.

And so, yeah, but you've got to create your own format. You've got to create your own chat books. And then you begin from there. So while there might be some blockades, you know, put there on purpose or not, to keep Mexican-American kids from writing their stories, we have to keep on insisting that they write their stories, because we can then overcome the blockade.

Ms. CISNEROS: You know, David, the whole process of reading and writing, it's like, you know, when you fall in love. I always want young people to fall in love with a book, and it's so hard for the teachers. They have to teach for testing. And there isn't, like, opportunities for young people to get in contact with our books. When I was a small press book, it was a very difficult for readers to find me or to find our books.

And I think that the whole process of reading and writing, it's like falling in love. You've got to go out there where people will hang out when you want to fall in love, and you've got to go out there and hang out with the books, go to the library.

And, you know, you have to also feel comfortable about picking up a book and finding one where you see yourself. That's why it's so important for us to support the up-and-coming writers so that we can have a variety of stories and voices.

You're right, I can't tell everybody's story. You don't tell my story, I don't tell yours. We need other writers publishing alongside with us. And young people need to see themselves in the story, imagine that they can speak and tell a story that is acceptable because most of them feel as if they are not articulate, that the lives they're leading aren't interesting, that they are not valuable.

And what I found when I was working with high school dropouts is that they were great oral storytellers but they were intimidated by the page. And it's about people like you and me that go into those schools and transfer that energy of speaking a tale and getting it on paper and giving them permission to tell it the way they talk it.

CONAN: Let's go next to Andrea, Andrea with us from Davis, California.

ANDREA (Caller): Hi. The only person that I feel I still connect with is the work of America Ferrera. She is a movie producer and, of course, did "Ugly Betty."

CONAN: Mm-hmm.

ANDREA: Literature-wise, I grew up reading Sandra Cisneros. I - my dad is from Mexico and he raised me to connect with that culture of mine through Chicano literature. But since I've been in my 20s, I don't feel that connection anymore to literature. I don't feel my stories. I don't see the people that I recognize or my story even as someone who's grown up in primarily a white culture in Illinois. My story isn't out there, but I still can reach back through the work of Sandra and Rudolfo Anaya and connect through that.

CONAN: Is there - are they places you go to look for those stories? Or - you know, obviously, we expect, to some degree, the media to bring them to us, but we can be proactive as well.

ANDREA: I've tried every once in a while. But I keep seeing the same - there's a lot of, you know, border literature that I find. But as someone who didn't live there, I grew up around South Dakota and Minnesota. That's not something that I know very well. So I don't see - most Chicano literature kind of steps around that. I haven't seen a really - a growth in the past decade that I've been trying to connect with that literature. I just haven't been able to find it.

CONAN: Well, David Rice says...

Ms. CISNEROS: Okay, the books are there, but it's a matter of the distribution. A lot of the writers like Belinda Acosta, who comes from Lincoln, Nebraska, of all places, the Chicano writers from the Midwest have anthologies. But they're usually efforts that are created by the writers themselves, and that's always an issue of distribution.

ANDREA: Yeah. Well, I look forward to looking for that.

CONAN: Thanks very...

Ms. CISNEROS: Well, I'll try to mention it on my Web page.

CONAN: Okay.

ANDREA: Wonderful. I'll look it up. Thank you very much.

CONAN: Andrea, thanks very much for the phone call. This is an email from Nicole in San Antonio. I am not Mexican-American. I am Arab-American. And I want to stress the importance of writers like Sandra Cisneros in paving the way for other brown writers. The Mexican community, in general, has paved the way for other minorities in the United States. So another testimonial there.

Sandra Cisneros is our guest. She's a Chicano writer based in San Antonio. The books include "The House on Mango Street," "Caramelo," "Hairs/Pelitos," "Loose Woman," "My Wicked, Wicked Ways" and others. David Rice, he's based in Austin, Texas now, author of "Give the Pig a Chance" and "Crazy Loco." They're both with us at KSTX in San Antonio.

You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

And let's go next to Gene(ph). Gene with us from Fresno.

GENE (Caller): Hello, everyone. I love your work. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. My question to you as an educator and as a Chicano is what particular works do you read right now who are actually - fiction or non-fiction who are addressing the idea of all the discrimination that's going on towards Hispanics in the United States?

CONAN: David Rice, I wonder if you'd start with that.

Mr. RICE: There's a really good short story by Langston Hughes who's African-American. And he wrote a story called "One Friday Morning." It's really, really pretty powerful, and it's about a young woman who wins an art contest. And she's not sure whether she won it because she's an artist or because she has -because she's black. So that story really, to me, you know, really jumps out at telling kids that, you know, you can win no matter what your skin color is. And whenever that story - and I taught high school for a while. And I had 35 stories that I would use, and that was one of them. And then Gary Soto's story, "Being Mean," was another one that I used.

But because you got to start - when you work with kids, you just can't throw stories at them. There has to be a certain way of difficulty, like start with this story, then this story, then you build up and you build up and you build up.

And so Langston Hughes' "One Friday Morning" is, you know, a three-page story but really touched a lot of issues and - to me, that story can be used in almost any classroom. And then from there, you jump on to Chicano lit or whatever else. But I like the story a lot.

GENE: Yeah. One particular comment: I noticed that several of the works that I'm using in some of my classes are from Japanese-Americans who experienced, you know, the discrimination in the 1940s when they were imprisoned in the United States and their families. So I think much of the same thing is going on in this country right now, when we have whole families who are being taken back to Mexico and their children are being left here. And that's incredibly unfortunate and, you know, horrific. But if I could hear Sandra's response.

Ms. CISNEROS: Well, there is lots of writers that I like. I'm been rereading stories of Christopher Isherwood, "The Berlin Stories," because to me what he's writing about reminds me too much what's happening in the United States because we're in a state of fear. Communities are in a state of fear. And rereading "The Berlin Stories" is haunting for me because I hope we're not going to go in the direction that Germany went to in the '30s.

So I read lots of people globally. I am in love with many, many different kinds of writers. I have a Web page where I name the writers that I'm looking at. And sometimes, they're Chicano writers and sometimes they're not, because I think it's a global issue that we're talking about. So we're looking for writers globally that are also writing about similar situations.

I'm very fond of the work of San Antonio writer John Phillip Santos. Denise Chavez has also written beautiful books about the experiences in New Mexico. Julia Alvarez, who's a Dominicana, Juan Felipe Herrera, the poet. And I'm a big, big fan of the writing of Louis Rodriguez from East L.A. And he writes extraordinarily beautiful stories about situations of the Mexicans that are -is very current. There are just so many.

And, unfortunately, most people don't find it at their bookstore. And unless you know the title, you don't know when you go online where to look for these writers. So I think it's important for David and myself, you know, to put those lists on our Web page so that we can say, these are the writers we recommend and help your independent bookstore by ordering it from your local independents so they don't go under. They're the ones that supported me when I was a chapbook writer in a small press. And they're the ones I want to support now.

CONAN: We'll end with this email from Linda(ph) in San Antonio. Mexican-American female, where I saw myself on TV and sums up my experience, the best mirror of my life from the film, "Selena," where Edward J. Olmos, who plays the father, is driving the bus and speaking with Selena. He says, in paraphrase, it's hard to be a Mexican-American. You have to be more Mexican than the Mexicans in Mexico, and more American than the Americans. It's exhausting.

So we'll end with that. Sandra Cisneros, thank you so much for your time to day.

Ms. CISNEROS: Thank you.

CONAN: Sandra Cisneros joined us from KSTX in San Antonio. And thanks as well to David Rice, who was also there. David, appreciate your time today.

Mr. RICE: Thank you, Neal.

Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.

Copyright © 2011 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.

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Save Ethnic Studies, Inc.

Dear Colleagues and Supporters:

On January 1, 2011, HB 2281 became effective in Arizona, a law passed in April 2010 that attacks La Raza Studies. The law's supporters claim that we are unpatriotic and unAmerican, a statement that we take great exception to. Books such as Occupied America and Pedagogy of the Oppressed are cited as proof of their opinions. At present the future looks grim. The Board of Education that was supposed to defend the program has bailed out. The teachers of Raza Studies have filed a suit defending the right of the program to teach the history of our people.

We feel that if the xenophobes are successful, the entire area of Ethnic Studies is threatened. It enables similar attacks on programs outside of Arizona and sanctions censorship. We feel that we must stand together and are appealing to you for support. It takes money to mount a legal challenge. The pool of available money is small in the Tucson area. It is a poor community and the hundreds of thousands of dollars that this suit will take is beyond our means.

The discovery process alone will run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is the political core of the case that will show the motivation of the framers of this legislation and point to who is financing this libelous campaign.

Please take time to view

1- http://vimeo.com/15062646 (Precious Knowledge Trailer)
2- http://www.saveethnicstudies.org/index.shtml (Tucson campaign)
3- http://www.saveethnicstudies.org/news.shtml
4- http://www.saveethnicstudies.org/meet_us.shtml

Would you please help by sending a donation? You can also help arrange fundraisers in your area. We need transportation costs and would greatly appreciate honorariums. Concerts and the like featuring local artists, musicians and poets are a fantastic way of getting people together.

Please go online to donate and for more information:

http://www.saveethnicstudies.org/save_ethnic_studies.shtml.
Deyanina Nevarez is the point person. You can reach her at (520) 975-1485 or via email at info@saveethnicstudies.org.

Make payable to: Save Ethnic Studies Defense Fund Mail to:

Save Ethnic Studies
307 S. Convent Ave
Tucson, AZ 85701

Or donate by Credit Card: http://www.saveethnicstudies.org/donate.shtml
Venceremos,

Save Ethnic Studies Defense Committee

Save Ethnic Studies is filed with the Arizona Corporation Commission as a non-profit corporation. We are seeking recognition of exemption from the IRS under section 501 (c) 4. Contributions to Save Ethnic Studies are non-tax deductible as a charitable contribution. Please contact your tax advisor for further information. Printed In-House Labor Donated.

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Renowned Latino Performance Artist Harry Gamboa Jr. to Appear at Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Smithsonian Latino Center and the Smithsonian American Art Museum will present renowned Latino performance artist Harry Gamboa Jr. in “Erased: Limits and Borders” Jan. 27 at 7 p.m. in the museum’s McEvoy Auditorium. The program will include a Q-and A period, moderated by Dr. E. Carmen Ramos, curator of Latino art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and will be followed by a book signing with Gamboa in the museum’s G Street Lobby. Two of Gamboa’s works, Urban Exile: Collected Writings of Harry Gamboa Jr. (University Of Minnesota Press, 1998) and Fallen (CreateSpace, 2010), will be available for purchase at the museum store, which will remain open until 8:30 p.m. This program is free and open to the public.

Gamboa will reflect on the social and personal conditions of Chicanos during the second half of the 20th century that led to the development of Asco as an art collective and response to various urban stimuli. He will continue by incorporating the use of visual language in conjunction with social cues, stylized forms of prose and dramatic scripting to generate/dispel myths in the barrio and beyond. Gamboa will explore and discuss the use of live stage performances, mail art and printed text as well as his role as artist who has informed others that Chicano cultural attributes are not dependent on mainstream Hollywood negative stereotypes. The program will include a PowerPoint presentation with many images that Gamboa has produced from 1972 to 2010 related to his work.

Since 1972, Gamboa has been actively creating works in various media/forms that document and interpret the contemporary urban Chicano experience. He is probably best known for his work with the East Los Angeles-based performance group that he co-founded called Asco (Spanish for nausea). Asco performed regularly in the street/public art scene from 1972 to 1987 staging a number of events that underscored the potentially explosive social and racial conditions in LA and helped to place these issues in a larger international context.

Gamboa’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; Musée Nicéphore Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saone, France; Museo de Arte de Zapopan in Guadalajara, México; and the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland among others. His work has also been featured in publications, including La Opinión, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Art Review (London), The Christian Science Monitor, Actuel (Paris), Reforma (Mexico City) and The Village Voice. He is a member of the faculty at California Institute of the Arts, School of Art, Program in Photography and Media. He also lectures for Chicano/a Studies Department at California State University, Northridge. For more information visit http://harrygamboajr.com.

The Smithsonian Latino Center is the division of the Smithsonian Institution that ensures that Latino contributions to art, science and the humanities are highlighted, understood and advanced through the development and support of public programs, scholarly research, museum collections and educational opportunities at the Smithsonian Institution and its affiliated organizations across the United States and internationally. Website: http://latino.si.edu

The Smithsonian American Art Museum celebrates the vision and creativity of Americans with artworks in all media spanning more than three centuries. The museum’s pioneering collection includes more than 500 works by Latino artists collected during the past 30 years. It is located at Eighth and F streets N.W. Museum hours are 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily, except Dec. 25. Admission is free. Follow the museum on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, ArtBabble, iTunes and YouTube. Museum information (recorded): (202) 633-7970. Smithsonian Information: (202) 633-1000;

CONTACT:
Media Only:

Danny López (202) 633-0804; lopezd@si.edu
Mandy Young, American Art (202) 633-8529; youngak@si.edu
Sitio web para los medios: http://newsdesk.si.edu

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The context of Cuba's crisis

By Saul Landau and Nelson P. Valdés

On December 18, 2010, Cuban President Raúl Castro warned Cubans: the nation faced a crisis. The disastrous condition of Cuba's economy no longer allowed the state any maneuvering room to walk the dangerous “precipice” of inefficiency, low productivity and corruption. Without reforms, Cuba would sink -- and with it the effort of every generation seeking a free Cuba since the first native revolt against Spanish colonial rule.

Cubans understood that since 1959 the Revolution, with all its faults, had safeguarded the nation's independence – national sovereignty. From 1492 (Columbus' landing) through December 1958, foreign powers had decided the fate of Cubans.

By the early 19 th century a " Cuban " had emerged -- not a Spaniard on a faraway island or an enslaved African, but a hybrid product of three centuries of colonialism who sought self-determination -- like the American colonial population in 1776.

When Batista and his generals fled, a U.S.-backed coup effort among Colonels failed to materialize despite all the plots behind the scenes led by the U.S. government. The rebels then established the modern Cuban nation, which quickly became a real and until then almost unimaginable challenge to U.S. domination.

This unstated truth, understood in Havana and Washington, put the countries on a collision course. Washington refused to cede control; the Revolution rejected U.S. authority. Since 1898, the U.S. had treated Cuba as an appendage of its economy. U.S. companies owned Cuba's largest sugar mills, its best land, the phone and utility companies, the mines and much else. The Cuban government, like those of its neighbors in the “U.S. backyard,” had automatically obeyed Washington's policy dictates.

Revolutionary defiance, reducing rent by 50 percent and passing an agrarian reform law, without asking permission, got attention in Washington. The words “dictatorship” and “communist” began appearing routinely in government-spun news reports.

The island of 6 million people with sugar as its cash crop lacked both material and human resources needed to secure real independence. Washington understood this. Some U.S. officials, wrote E. W. Kenworthy, “believe the Castro Government must go ‘through the wringer' before it will see the need for United States aid and agree to the stabilization measures which will make it possible to get aid.” (“Cuba's Problems Pose Tests for U.S. Policy,” NY Times , April 26, 1959)

When Cuban leaders either ignored or ridiculed Washington ' s warnings, President Eisenhower, in March 1960, authorized a CIA covert operation to overthrow the Cuban government -- ending in the April 1961 Bay of Pigs “fiasco.” In October 1960, however, in response to Cuba's nationalization of U.S. property -- an escalating confrontation of Cuba acting and Washington punishing – Ike imposed an embargo on Cuba.

But even in April 1960, the State Department had issued its punishment guideline: “[E]very possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. ... a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of the government.” (Office of the Historian, Bureau Of Public Affairs, U.S. Department Of State; John P. Glennon, et al., eds., Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume VI, Cuba -Washington D.C.: GPO, 1991, 885.)

Havana responded by doing the unthinkable: In 1961, Cuba allied itself with the Soviet bloc. To secure independence, Cuban leaders became reliant on Soviet assistance.

In 1991, the Soviet demise left Cubans – finally -- with total political “independence” and no outside material support with which to maintain their nation. The embargo took on heightened dimensions.

In 1959, revolutionaries in their 20s and 30s did not predict the ferocity of U.S. punishment, nor grasp that their sin of disobedience reached beyond the dictates of U.S. power, and to the core of a global system. Washington was the informal world capital.

In that role, Washington relentlessly attacked Cuba -- even after it ceased to exercise Hemispheric hegemony. The control mantra still seeps through the walls of national security offices and by osmosis enters the bureaucrats' brains: “We permit no insubordination.” Cubans had to pay for the resistance of their leaders. Washington's lesson: Resistance is futile.

Last month Raúl Castro informed Cubans of the need for drastic reforms. The revolution had trained, educated and made healthy the Cuban population. But, Raúl admitted, the state no longer can meet some basic needs Cubans had assumed as human rights (entitlements). One million people, he announced, would lose jobs; social programs reduced or eliminated.

Cubans' non-productivity -- lax work ethics, bureaucratic inefficiency, and absence of initiative – had become compounded by corruption. The U.S. embargo leads to shortages and encourages bureaucratic misdeeds. A bureaucrat enhances his income by “solving ” the very “obstacles” the same bureaucrat helped create.

After 51-plus years, Washington's punishment appeared to force Cuba into accepting a shock doctrine, but without all the regressive social costs most Third World countries have paid. In 1980, a Jamaican remarked after Prime Minister Manley submitted to the

International Monetary Fund's punishing austerity measures: “We've been IMF'd. ”

The Cuban revolution again enters unscripted territory. Reformers, however, count on deep resources -- a public with social consciousness absorbed through decades of education and experience.

World geo-political changes, however, offer Cuban leaders some advantages: China, Brazil and some European Union states have become potential counters to U.S. hardliners. With breathing space Cubans might still avoid the worst consequences of Washington's obsolete 50 year old shock doctrine.

----------------

Saul Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow whose film WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP premiered at the Havana Film Festival. Nelson Valdés is Professor Emeritus, University of New Mexico.

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