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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OR

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

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Los Angeles Latino Theater Company Ordered Out of Downtown Home

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contact Ryan Vaillancourt at ryan@downtownnews.com.

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Remembering the Chicano arts collectives of Los Angeles' Highland Park

By Esmeralda Bermudez, Los Angeles Times

They were bold enough to call it a revolution.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

esmeralda.bermudez@latimes.com

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Daniel del Solar: Latino Media Activist Passes

Daniel at Congressman Honda's Washington D.C. office
June 13, 1940 - January 13, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Jesús Manuel Mena Garza notes: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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How US Policies Fueled Mexico's Great Migration

By David Bacon (really?) for The Nation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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