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Table Of Contents Self-Help Graphics Commits to Strategic Planning Effort with Grant From CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION THE SELF-HELP GRAPHICS CRISIS: LESSONS FROM SAN DIEGO Self-Help Graphics More U.S. museums laud, display Chicano art Rosie Perez Makes Directorial Debut With Puerto Rico Documentary It is not fame or notority... An Open Letter to the National Arts Community
Self-Help Graphics Commits to Strategic Planning Effort with Grant From CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION Grant Designed to Assist Strategic Planning for East L.A. Art Center in Crisis Max Benavidez to Lead Restructuring Effort. Los Angeles, CA (August 30, 2005) – Self-Help Graphics and Art, Inc. today announced that the California Community Foundation (CCF) has provided critical support for a strategic restructuring and planning effort to restore and reopen the thirty-year-old arts center based in East Los Angeles. In addition to the grant from CCF, the Annenberg Foundation, and the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department have offered grants to support Self-Help through the planning and restructuring process. Self-Help recently closed on a temporary basis due to financial deficits and administrative inefficiencies. “We are looking forward to the planning process and the restructuring of Self-Help,” said Olivia Montes, president of the Self-Help board of directors. “This effort will involve necessary changes in day-to-day operations, management, governance, and the board itself. Our goal is to strengthen this unique and important cultural institution. We are very happy that a group of donors including CCF have provided the funds for this critical process.” The CCF grant will make it possible for Self-Help to develop a strategic plan and restructure its operations through a planning effort that will be directed by Max Benavidez, who has provided strategic planning for other organizations including the California Latino Caucus Institute for Public Policy. “The planning process will involve the board, artists, community leaders and peer organizations in a balanced and integrated way,” said Benavidez. “I look forward to working with everyone involved and I believe the process will result in a turnaround for Self-Help. Our goal is restore it to fiscal and administrative health while maintaining the organization's important service mission.” The CCF grant will be administered by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC), where Benavidez is a Resident Scholar. CSRC has an ongoing community partnership with Self-Help that has resulted in upgraded storage facilities and collections management, but also internships that supplement staff while providing students with valuable training in the arts. For more information, please contact Max Benavidez at: selfhelpboard@earthlink.net Self Help Graphics & Art Board Of Directors Sandra Pena-Sarmiento wrote an article in today's issue of La Prensa about the situations at Self Help Graphics in Los Angeles and the Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego. Please read below and visit www.saveourcentro.org for pictures of the June 28 Self Help/Community meeting. La Lucha Continua, Peace, Victor Payan ••••Images of the Self-Help meeting can be viewed at the following website: http://calacapress.com/centrowatch/selfhelp.html ••••Self-Help/Centro article below•••• THE SELF-HELP GRAPHICS CRISIS: LESSONS FROM SAN DIEGO By Sandra Pena-Sarmiento Early Rumblings The warning signs began early, slowly trickling in while I was Director of Programming for the 2004 San Diego Latino Film Festival. I had set up a deal to license the artwork of Los Angeles based artist/activist Alfredo de Batuc for the 2005 Festival. In March of 2005, while the festival was in full swing, De Batuc came down to promote his work. I showed him the local sights: the murals at Chicano Park, Chicano Perk Cafe© and Adams Avenue. We spoke of community art spaces, in particular, the situation at San Diego‘s Centro Cultural de La Raza. Five years after a new administration employed draconian measures that resulted in a rift between the Centro and the local community, the organization was largely absent from the local art scene. Both Alfredo and I had visited the site in its heyday, and we lamented its spiral downward. De Batuc spoke of the problems of many organizations throughout the nation, all started 30+ years before, and facing the challenge of maintaining their viability without choking off the vision of its participating artists. Without the artists, the centers had no creative resources to fundraise with, no stellar shows to publicize, no audience base of adoring art patrons to provide a revenue base. He began to tell me about similar problems at Self-Help Graphics that started after its founder, Sister Karen passed away. Her assistant, Tomas Benitez became the new Executive Director, even though it was not a title he had actively sought out. The role of ED at any institution in this age of budget cuts and lack of federal funding, was certainly a heavy one to bear. The Crisis Hits Home It came in the form of an email. Internationally famous photographer, Harry Gamboa, sent out a single image to a massive e-list. It showed the gates at Self-Help heavily chained and locked. He posed a simple question, "What has happened and who is affected?" I received it the day after curating an art show for San Diego native Victoria Delgadillo, a participant in one of Self-Help‘s prestigious print workshops. The parallels between the Self-Help crisis and the one at the Centro were disturbing. • Both institutions were founded 30+ years ago. • Both institutions had alienated their artistic communities. • Both institutions had shut their doors abruptly with no explanation or attempt to involve the local community in finding a solution. • Both institutions dismissed the emails and inquiries of concerned community members. • The Boards of both institutions had begun to operate in a "secretive" manner, not alerting artists or community members of their meetings, agendas or fiscal status. • Both institutions created barriers between Board members and artists. Many people in LA didn‘t even know whom the SHG Board members were or how to reach them. This was also the case in San Diego with the Centro. People in the LA art world knew I was involved in the Save Our Centro effort. I had moved back to San Diego in 2004 to program the SDLFF for the Media Arts Center San Diego, an organization whose history included it‘s own rift with the Centro. I was saddened to find that the once-vibrant art center, The Centro Cultural de la Raza, was closed and the subject of a boycott. Upon further investigation, I found that every single person I had known there, when I was a student at UCSD in the early 90‘s, had been locked out in 2000 when an Executive Director and Board that were hostile to the local community took the organization over. I reviewed many articles, written statements, videos and documents about the situation and found that a community of over 50 artists and activists had been struggling to establish dialogue with the new administration since the takeover in 2000. I found page after page of petitions, written complaints, proposals for dialogue, fundraising plans and heartfelt letters drafted by legions of SOCC members, such as Valerie Aranda, Richard Lou, David Rico, Carlos C. de Baca, Eloissa Leonna, Victor Payan, Endy Bernal and many others. These statements and queries written by Centro founders, former Board members, and curators went completely unaddressed. The size of this dispute and its resulting "disconnect" with the community had widened over the years into a chasm of distrust and frustration. I became involved and began to advise the SOCC. I alerted people outside of San Diego about the local situation and consulted with my long-time mentor Chon Noriega, the Director of UCLA‘s Chicano Studies Research Center. Noriega, along with many local artists and activists, helped draft a plan of action to resolve the Centro dispute. I fully credit this collaborative plan as a breakthrough element that led the current Centro director and Board to begin negotiations with the SOCC. Coincidentally, Centro founder Victor Ochoa filed a lawsuit against the Centro. Shortly thereafter, the Centro‘s President left the Board, its Executive Director resigned, and a long-standing SOCC petition for dialogue was acknowledged. The Coalition of Concerned Citizens for Self-Help Graphics is formed (CCCSHG) Ricardo Duffy, a world-renowned ceramic and print artist, had crossed the SOCC picket line in November 2004 for an event organized by COFAC. Ricardo and I were longtime friends, and he didn‘t understand why it was important for artists to take a public stand against the policies of any art institution. Flash forward to June 2005. Now Duffy was calling to apologize, "Until it happened to me, I couldn‘t really appreciate what you guys were going through." He asked me to join "Mental Menudo," a group he and fellow art star, Magu, were a part of. We met in a gallery at Olvera Street in downtown LA. Many people involved in the Self-Help Graphic crisis were present and wanted to hear about the SOCC. The knowledge of the SOCC struggle prepared Ricardo Duffy for his position as co-chair of the Coalition of Concerned Citizens for Self-Help Graphics (CCCSHG), the group the Self-Help artists decided to form. I sent an email out to other CCCSHG members and detailed the progress the SOCC had made in San Diego. The efforts of the SOCC served to inform the CCCSHG in how to deal with Board / Community conflicts. The CCCSHG ‘s showdown with the Self-Help Graphics Board SOCC member Victor Payan and I drove up to LA on Tuesday, June 28, to attend the CCCSHG-led community meeting with the Self-Help Board. The meeting was held at Ave 50 Studio, a gallery in Highland Park. Upon arriving, we found a group of over 200 artists, activists and community members, packed into three rooms. The entire space was rigged for sound, with loudspeakers connected to each area, so that everyone could hear what was happening. Video and still cameras were present everywhere. People held their cell phones up to the speakers so those absent could listen in. The meeting was also taped for the public record. The Board sat on folding chairs, behind a long white table. They spoke slowly and deliberately into a microphone, detailing their involvement in the current crisis, breaking down the Self-Help Graphics operating budget, and explaining the reasons why they shut down the institution without notice. Audience members behaved in an organized fashion, firing off hard-hitting questions into microphones. Chon Noriega moderated the session. With his own brand of skillful diplomacy, Noriega emphasized the need for the Board to communicate and dialogue with the community. A public statement drafted by the CCCSHG was read aloud by Linda Gamboa while Ricardo Duffy passed out copies to Board members. He informed them that a copy of the document would also be sent out by certified mail. The CCCSHG letter began politely, describing the coalition as a "group of concerned citizens." It went on to detail 15 requests, which included: Board minutes, financial stats, business plans, the ED‘s monthly reports, and a six month plan for dealing with the crisis. It inquired about the reasons why Self-Help had closed and the status of the new Executive Director search. It also required a response within 48 hours and demanded that a public statement be posted on the organization‘s website: (http://www.selfhelpgraphics.com/home.shtml) to ensure transparency. Most importantly, the letter emphasized the CCCSHG ‘s role as a pro-active group whose sole motivation in requesting the Board‘s cooperation was to assist Self-Help‘s successful transition to a new administration.
The Board responded to each of the 15 points in an open and public fashion, vowing to cooperate fully with the CCCSHG, even if meant creating a whole new Board. In addition, the community passed the hat and collected $850 to contribute to Self-Help. Everyone left the meeting feeling empowered and inspired. It appeared to be the best of all possible outcomes.
What SD can learn from LA’s Chicano art historian Shifra Goldman observed, in the 70‘s there were hundreds of community-run Latino cultural arts centers all over the nation. Today it‘s less than 10. Many of the surviving institutions, such as the Museo del Barrio in New York, The Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio, Arte Americas in Fresno, Self-Help Graphics in Los Angeles and our own Centro Cultural de La Raza in San Diego are all facing a similar crisis. It ‘s crucial that we, as a community, step back and see the commonalities in these situations. We must identify and change negative patterns in operations, while re-invigorating these institutions‘ ties to the communities they were founded to serve.
One common factor are Boards that at one point or another, appeared to have lost their vision, desire for transparency in business, and accountability to the community they were founded to serve. Boards that favor a "corporate" approach to leadership, fall prey to Enron-style mistakes, abuses and secrecy. A "public" benefit organization that regards the "privatized" interest of a Board above the needs of the community will ultimately face a crisis.
As a community, we may want to draw upon the experiences of our fellow brethren in other regions, and learn from their mistakes, so that painful histories won‘t be repeated elsewhere. Most importantly, we must learn from our own mistakes. The common solution to these dilemmas is found in reaching out to the communities that created our cultural institutions by embracing their energy and their willingness to create positive community-based solutions.
Sandra Pena-Sarmiento is a producer and arts administrator. Her website is www.pocharte.com
Self-Help Graphics I was out at Boyd Street Bar and Grill a little while back. We were talking with some people about when it was Cocola's You would go there and there would be a group of artists there hanging out regularly. It was cool and seemed like it would never end.
My first gallery RICO GALLERY was Downtown at 2nd and Los Angeles Street 1988. It was 12,000 sq. ft. an amazing place. I came here from Detroit Michigan and had gone thru a Chicano Leadership Development program there. So together with my French Canadian outsider artist husband-Jean Bastarache, we put together an amazing gallery. We didn't charge people we just worked hard and did it. We loved Chicano artists and just all of the artists in LA that we met, some were on board with the vision of all of us art people working together. Some were not. But it was cool. However things changed...
Across the street from my gallery was a building of lofts with artists in it. In 1990-91 we were all kicked out of our spaces so that the now residence developments could emerge. The critical mass of art energy dissipated into the rest of L.A.This process has been ongoing since 1991.
I moved to Santa Monica where I though I could help bridge the cultural gap between the east and west sides. Things did not turn out exactly as I planned. Its a long and very interesting story. But this is about Self Help graphics.
CHANGES This is also about when Sister Karen, Self Help Graphics, passed. I remember before she passed, I was standing next to her at an art opening in 1990 she stated. "See all of these white people here, just a few years ago none of these people would have ever gone to a Chicano art show." I believed her. Since coming to L.A. I have had to endure all kinds of weirdness.
Sister Karen knew the Latino population had a strength too. An amazing creative strength that threads thru the entire community of Latinos. This energy is strong. It is comes down to critical mass. If there is a critical mass of artistic talent a leader should emerge from this. Why have they not? I think this may have something to do with assimilation and change issues. Related to the changes in the real estate market and continuing influx of immigrants and the juxtaposition of the indigneous populations of L.A. all trying to live and breathe here in this densely populated environment.
How can we garner a leader in this environment. By being open minded and encouraging too. By nourishing our environment to produce leaders. To not bring potential leaders down. Select someone, encourage them. Help them to be a leader. I was reading Culture Clash, Richard Montoya's dialogue in the LA Weekly about the problems he was having just speaking out about the Self Help issues. Reading it reminded me of what I had to go thru when I tried to work in the political arena of the art world. It is hard to be a leader. Even if you are a genius like Montoya. Let's be encouraging of one another, please!
Finally, things have changed radically here in L.A. The artists have been moved out of Downtown mostly. The internet has happened and we have the stength of communication like this blog group, which can accelerate the flow of information. The real estate market has radically changed economic realities for many a minority in this city. There is a blending of cultures more than ever before. We are on the verge of a totally different reality in art, commerce and cultures merging. We need to help each other even more now. We need to work together supporting each other. We need to argue but in a positive open way so that we can start working towards building a stronger healthier open dialogue that will facilitate growth. Bringing each other down is not the answer. It actually brings us all down. I think that there is a leader in the Community that could bring Self Help Graphics back to life. I think they just need help to emerge. Is it you? If so come forward no matter what color or culture you are. We need to work together helping each other be strong. Even if working together is a mind thing. Lets do it. Lets together make a mental note-Work together with others, even strangers or the "other". You would be surprised what change can do. If you are positive I think it will bring positive changes. Please meditate on a positive leader that can emerge to help coordinate Self-Help Graphics so that it become a nexus for the fledgling talents that exist in East L.A. to bring creativity, beauty and intelligence to the forefront of society.
Please post the meeting date and time. Julie Rico
Maria Almeida Natividad searched a long time for her artistic identity before embracing the obvious. "All I had to do was dig deep into my heart and soul," Natividad said.
Natividad, an El Paso educator and Chicana artist whose work has been profiled in books distributed throughout the nation, eventually discovered inspiration in her heritage and culture, and the Mexican- American faces of family, friends and others.
Chicano artists like Natividad, frequently neglected in the past by mainstream museums and galleries because of their often politicized subject matter, have gained significant respect in recent years.
While the struggle for recognition continues, some experts suggest Chicano art is now starting to soar in status, the interest fueled by traveling collections and books showcasing Chicano artists. Also, more museums across the United States are exhibiting Chicano art and some galleries now specialize in the genre.
"Generally speaking, Chicana (and Chicano) art has doubled in market value in the last three years," said Gary Keller, director of the Hispanic Research Center at Arizona State University. "We have a dozen artists right now who are doing well, such as Alfredo Arreguin, Luiz Jiménez, César Martinez, Patssi Valdez and Laura Molina."
Keller published four Bilingual Press books during the past three years promoting Chicano and Chicana artists, including Natividad and others in El Paso. The Hispanic Research Center also has helped artists sell and publicize their work through the Internet and digital media.
"I don't think art people are turned off by the label Chicano art, but rather, tend to be quite interested and intrigued in it," Keller said.
The exposure has paid off for Natividad, who not only has been selling some of her work outside of El Paso but has been commissioned to paint a mural depicting El Paso's diverse culture at the new Lower Valley Branch Library. Natividad's work is featured in Keller's latest art book, "Triumph of Our Communities: Four Decades of Mexican American Art." She and others formed the Juntos Art Association in 1985 to help promote Chicano art, literature and music.
"There wasn't a whole lot of support for Chicano art," Natividad said. "The El Paso Museum of Art was rather elitist. You couldn't get your foot in the door."
Natividad credits Becky Duval Reese, who retired this summer after 15 years as museum director, with helping make the museum more inclusive and adding more Spanish-surnamed artists to the museum's collections.
"We started seeing more acceptance of Chicano art in mainstream art circles in the museum and the galleries," she said. Duval Reese is convinced more museums are collecting and showing Chicano art because of ground-breaking nationally touring shows like those that stopped in El Paso, including the 1992 CARA exhibition, the Smithsonian's Arte Latino of 2000 and Cheech Marin's 2003 collection.
"Bringing these important shows to El Paso ... is part of the museum's mission of being a strong regional museum," Duval Reese said. "It's all about education. Introducing the public to an art form they might not know or have seen before."
Artist Gaspar Enriquez of San Elizario relies on his reputation and word of mouth to sell his work. Adair Margo Gallery in El Paso represents Enriquez but his work also is visible at galleries in Santa Monica, Calif., and San Antonio and the El Paso Museum of Art, where he set up a fund in memory of his wife, Ann Enriquez, to help acquire more Chicano art. Enriquez credits Marin and other major collectors for helping expose Chicano artists and their work across the United States.
"A lot of galleries and museums out there didn't want to know we existed," Enriquez said. "With these collections, we're making our presence felt."
Enriquez is renovating an adobe building in San Elizario into studios and exhibition space that he plans to rent to artists.
"We get pigeonholed because of the subject matter or because we're Chicanos," Enriquez said. "We're all artists. But if we're accepted in the mainstream as artists, that's the magic word."
Monica Martinez, a native El Pasoan who is now an artist in Phoenix, has earned respect by constantly working, constantly trying to get her work recognized and accepted.
"Self-respect is hugely important," Martinez said. "Artists need to keep thinking, working and inserting themselves into the community. It can be a challenge ... but out of that, a self-respect arises."
Gilberto Cardenas, a major Chicano art collector and assistant provost and director of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, is convinced Duval Reese and other arts advocates like her have made a serious effort to broaden the representation of artists, including those who have not received the attention they deserve.
"Other than ignorance, today there is no reason to omit serious Latino artists and very talented emerging artists," Cardenas said.
"I am fairly optimistic that things are changing in the right direction. Fortunately, a growing number of museum directors and gallery owners recognize the merit of Latino artist.
New York, Aug 25 (EFE).- Actress and dancer Rosie Perez will make her debut as film director in a political documentary about Puerto Rico, her ancestral homeland, and the island's long and sometimes conflictive relationship with the United States.
"Yo soy boricua, pa' que tu lo sepa", which translates roughly as "I'm Puerto Rican, for your information," is scheduled to come out in theaters in June 2006, Perez told EFE.
"Researching relations between the United States and Puerto Rico over the last 20 years, I realized there were many political stories that I wanted to bring to the screen," said Perez, whose film career was the subject of a tribute Wednesday night.
The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), through its BANCinematek film program, is honoring Perez this week with screenings of the films "Do the Right Thing," by African-American director Spike Lee, and "The 24 Hour Woman," by Nancy Savoca.
Her documentary, Perez explained, tells how the 100-plus years' relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico, a U.S. commonwealth, has affected Puerto Rican culture.
"Fortunately," she added, "Moxie Firecracker Films showed interest in the project," which will be distributed beginning in June 2006 by the Independent Film Channel (IFC).
Perez and her family appear in the documentary, which was narrated by Puerto Rican-born actor Jimmy Smits and written and produced by Roger Sherman, also in charge of cinematography.
"I do it for Puerto Rico," Perez said.
In the documentary, Perez tours New York, Miami and Puerto Rico collecting stories, including that of the large number of Puerto Rican women sterilized without their knowledge, used as guinea pigs in clinical trials of birth control pills. The documentary also addresses the issue of Vieques, the Puerto Rican island where the U.S. Navy conducted military exercises, using missiles and bombs, for 60 years, until insistent protests brought the exercises to an end in 2003.
Perez, who was arrested in Manhattan in 2000 during one of those protests, said the documentary uses New York's annual Puerto Rican parade as a "symbol of pride and metaphor for what we have achieved."
It is not fame or notoriety or money that Chicano art is about. It is about a truth we have bled over and continue to bleed over to this very day ... it is about being true to us in the most honest and informed sense.
A modicum of fame and notoriety for personal or public works that pander to such acclaim may appear to deliver us from our long-standing oppression but an honest shake of the mind should alert us that we cannot stop 500 years of bleeding with Band Aid illusions. The fact that the Chicano Movement peaked and plateaued in the mid-seventies does not mean that the questions and issues raised back then have been answered and resolved.
Chicanismo cannot be so easily tucked away in a time warp. That's the easy way out. Nor should it be subsumed under such abstractions as "Latinismo." Our art and literature, if it is true to its ground, should be universal without intention. We Mexicans are as human as any other peoples of the world are. We do not need to justify our humanity in any other terms than those that are grounded in our own experience. Our human experience has unique genealogical, historical, cultural, and spiritual dimensions. Of course, such dimensions can be compared with those other human populations. But such generalizations neither satisfy the peoples or us we're compared to.
For example, by what authority do Anglos or Euro-Americans assert themselves prime determinators about what makes art and literature universal? The right of conquest. Absolute control of a society's political, social, and cultural institutions? That English is the lingua franca of the world? That being the mightiest country of the world automatically qualifies America to declare the art and literature of its "ethnic minorities" "ethnocentric," and thus totally devoid of universal meaning--a declaration I take to mean an art and literature that rings true in the most fundamental human sense?
Anglo or Euro-American authority over the art and literature of aboriginal ethnic minorities in America derives from the same ground as our so-called "ethnocentrism," from Anglo or Euro-American "ethnocentrism." That's not only ironic, it's pure unmitigated mierda.
Now, I appreciate that in the normal personal and intellectual growth of Post-Movement Chicanos, a writer or artist worth his ilk yearns to explore the Chicano experience beyond the dreams, visions, political rhetoric, and, by now, cliché images of the sixties and seventies. Growth is a common denominator of our humanity. Our growth may be slow or revolutionary. In either case, we either shrink from the uncertainty of change or leap into the unknown with existential fervor.
But one does not abandon what one does not fully understand. It's individuals who have spun their wheels and gotten nowhere, not Chicanismo. Today, Chicano art has come into question and the writers and artists that have benefited most from it have not stood up to defend it. Chicano Art and literature, literature has only sparingly been documented. Chicano writers and artists have bequeathed to the public little more than their private fiefdoms, disillusionments, and scorn for great ideas that breast-fed their art--the brown Chicano teta that breast-fed their art. Yet, artists are the first to decry art criticism. The public needs both art criticism and art history. Apparently Post-Chicano Movement artists, critics, and historians have shrunk before this formidable challenge.
The little documentation that exists serves an exclusive audience. Though its origins were inspired by, supported by, and originally connected to the revolutionary cry for empowerment in the barrios, Chicanismo has since become the plaything of the Chicano academic establishment. Chicano eggheads who once fought for us now refer to us, the barrio folk, as the "lumpen." The Movement has been caught hook, line, and sinker by the old Ivory Tower fisherman. The public needs more than artworks to appreciate. Folk don't exclusively appreciate art from the guts down. That's just for artists who "feel" that intelligence encumbers their primal urges, they consider guts as the fountainhead of pure creative energy. Even so, folk have minds and intelligence. They not only hunger to "feel" what the artist feels but want to know what makes the artist tick, to know his background, training, inspiration, passions, lifestyle, they hunger for an intelligent "universal" statement about Chicano art.
Chicano artist may be running away from what they now consider the stigma of the Chicano Movement, quietly returning to the rationalizations that guided them when they were total tapados. They hunger to be relevant in "now." And what is the current now? Latinismo? And what in the fuck is that? Can anybody define what the fuck they mean by Latinismo? What is the content of this abstraction? How can it embrace what it does not know? Can it embrace and articulate the Chicano experience? How dare it assume that it possesses the sole fundamental element that automatically binds us all as one?
Latinismo is nothing more than chic media hype. In fact, it is an experiential nonentity. A play-word who's content exists as mere illusion. I'll agree to our similarity with other so-called Latinos--but we're not the same. What I love or hate about Cuba is about individuals, music, and whatever else suits my taste. But, I love these things precisely because they are Cuban, not Latino. The same holds for my appreciation or dislike of other so-called Latinos. When I truck with a Salvadorian, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Guatemalan, or member of any Central American, South American, Caribbean, or Spanish country, I truck with as Salvadorians, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Guatemalan, not as Latinos. ¡Que viva la diferencia!
If our interest should coincide and it benefits all of us to unify to achieve a common political, social, or economic end, then--and only then, is when I believe the term "Latino" has a viable and useful place in the Chicano lexicon. Bueno, Guillermo, hasta aqui ...
Rafas c/s
An Open Letter to the National Arts Community
(This letter carries the outrage of my saliva and the fears and aspirations of my many artistic communities. Written 6 months ago, it is one of my humble attempts to contribute to our clarity and valor, in the era of the Blue Dragon). Dear colleagues:
I...Since the mid 90's, as part of the much-touted "backlash," the US political right managed to successfully demonize and defund contemporary art, labeling critical artists as "decadent," "elitist," and "un-American." As a result, the budgets of federal and state arts agencies were progressively sliced down, and soon the efforts of private foundations to pick up the slack became insufficient.
Then came "9/11"
The dramatic attacks on the US provided the Bush administration with the much-needed moral authority to implement overnight, a regime of intolerance, censorship, and paranoid nationalism. Their particular brand of religious machismo was not that different from the extremist beliefs of those they allegedly opposed. Their master discourse stated: You are either with "us"(the "good guys") or with "them"(the "evil" ones); "God Bless America!" a hundred, a thousand times, (and no one else). And artists and intellectuals suddenly found ourselves caught between two forms of fundamentalisms - not really knowing if we were perceived as part of the "us" or the "them." Remember?
In this cartography of fear, new and resurrected borders were drawn overnight dividing families, communities and nations. Brand new enemies and abysmal ethical contradictions were imposed on us, and the arts communities were no exception.
First came state-sponsored censorship: movies and art shows containing references to political violence were indefinitely postponed and a long list of innocuous songs alluding to violence and airplanes were banned from the radio. Remember our complete disbelief? Then, a high-tech form of McCarthyism came into effect with Carnivore and other digital surveillance systems, and thousands of "suspicious" Websites and virtual networks were dismantled. Finally came the public burnings of books and audio-CDs sanctioned by the theological rhetoric of our Holy Attorney General. He was embarked in a personal crusade against Satan himself. Remember?
Under this rarified climate, the corporate owned electronic and printed media engaged in a "no questions asked" policy. Wrapped in the American flag (made in China), most US journalists began to willingly perform the role of stenographers for the Pentagon. The US became the only western "democracy" in which generals and intelligence agents perform the role of news commentators. And those "liberal" anchormen, correspondents and commentators who deviated from the script were instantly fired. Remember?
In academia, conservative students began to report on their outspoken professors and their "anti-American" behavior. In some universities, conservative alumni threatened to withdraw their financial support if those outspoken professors weren't silenced. Those students and teachers who dared to organize against the supernintendo policies of the Bush administration were inundated with hate mail and death threats. Remember?
As more flags appeared, Chicano/Latino and grassroots organizations throughout the country were cowardly tagged with jingoistic statements by anonymous "patriots". In San Diego, the legendary murals of Chicano Park were defaced by white supremacists while in San Francisco, the windows and digital murals of the Galeria de la Raza were tagged with anti-immigrant and anti-gay phrases. One night, a passing car shot a bullet into the Galeria window. It felt like the 1970's in Central America.
The word "terrorist" surreptitiously expanded to signify, at first all radical Muslims, then all Arabs and Southeast Asians and finally all Arab-looking people including Latino immigrants - documented or not - and brown people with foreign accents. (Since 9/11, those US-based Latino artists, who travel abroad regularly, including myself, have been systematically detained at airport checkpoints, body searched and interrogated; and many of our art materials, props and costumes have been confiscated without an explanation or an apology. We have slowly learned to endure the post 9-11 humiliation rituals at airport security checkpoints. We are all slowly learning to live with ethnic profiling as official culture).
The drastic measurements of the Homeland Security Office, and the scary Patriot Act which turned the country into the largest neighborhood watch program ever, paired with the tightening of borders and the new immigration and travel restrictions began to affect international cultural exchange. Visas were denied or indefinitely postponed. And foreign artists from countries in Bush's ever-expanding black list were no longer allowed in the land of freedom and democracy. Remember? (Unfortunately many myopic cultural institutions from Europe, Asia and Latin America have responded by "boycotting" US artists, as if this would hurt the Bush administration at all).
Then came the expected defunding of the arts. The budget priorities of the new Republican Junta were clearly National Security, law enforcement and the military. As the attention of the country focused on a myriad of threats (some real, most mythical), a fictional "Axis of Evil" and the much-touted "weapons of mass distraction", Bush and cronies managed to surreptitiously dismantle the funding sources of all progressive communities, including the alternative and experimental art worlds.
In this ambiance of manufactured hysteria, art was sent from the back seat of the funding bus straight out the back door. The unspoken yet pervasive narrative stated: " Who needs art when we are fighting international terrorists." In California alone, the Arts Council lost 19 million dollars out of its 20 million-dollar budget. Today, California, the 5th economy of the world, holds a pitiful continental record worthy of Ripley’s Believe it or Not: the second smallest per capita budget allocated to the arts after Bolivia: 3 cents per person per year.
The fear of losing one's funding or one's job created a more insidious problem: self-censorship. Throughout academia and the art world, with a few exceptions, we were all in silence, scared of not knowing the exact placement of the new borders of tolerance: of not knowing the shape and direction of the probable repercussions of our outrage. Our European and Latin American colleagues kept asking us the same unpleasant question: How come the artists and intellectuals in the US are not speaking up and putting up a good fight? When are you guys going to break the silence? All we could do was raise our shoulders in total disbelief. "What irony," I wrote to one of my publishers late last year, "Mexico, my original homeland, is clumsily learning to live with the new dangers of freedom and democracy; while we here in the US, my new homeland, are learning to live without freedom."
II
Eventually, the Bush administration contributed to the re- politicization of art. Why? All the values and principles they chose to target were at the core of art practice including, freedom of speech, civil liberties, cultural diversity and tolerance, the right to dissent and criticize power.
Since most institutional spaces were closed to critical art, virtual space became the de facto territory of contestation. A new anonymous political arts movement began to emerge as unsigned posters, hilarious political cartoons and outrageous PhotoShop images and QuickTime movies critical of Bush and his few international collaborators circulated in virtual space. After a group of poets rejected a Faustian invitation by the First Lady to read their poetry in the White House, a huge anti-war poetry website came into fruition. For a while, it was the most visited literary website ever. By early 2003, as we approached the irrational invasion of Iraq, sectors in the intellectual community and even the pop music and the Hollywood establishment began to finally break the silence. It warmed our hearts to hear celebrities like Susan Sarandon, Harry Belafonte, Martin Sheen, Danny Glover, and even the Dixie Chicks speak their minds.
In mid February over 20 million people across the globe, demonstrated energetically against the war. Many artists, students and intellectuals who normally don't walk the political streets were there, along with myriad unlikely colleagues including housewives, senior citizens, war veterans and even apolitical citizens who had recently lost their jobs due to Bush's narrow-minded politics. Most demonstrations were peaceful and quite imaginative, in terms of their performance strategies, visual languages and poetic slogans. A window of hope seemed to temporarily open up in the smoky horizon. III Artists, arts administrators, curators, and producers are now facing many predicaments. Due to the drastic funding cuts, cultural institutions have had to trim down considerably their programs and staff, and most grassroots institutions and alternative art spaces face probable extinction within the next two years. Every week, we hear of yet another arts organization, museum department or community center that just lost its’ funding; of yet another arts administrator, or artist colleague who was just fired. Commissions and tours are being cancelled left and right. Our organization, La Pocha Nostra, alone has lost 10 large commissions since 9/11 and as of November of 2003, 70% of our budget is coming from our International touring.
The toll that the Bush era is taking on people's mental and physical health is immense. Understandably, everyone is exhausted, poor, overworked and scared shitless of the immediate future; our communities are all in disarray and we don't even have a political project at hand to envision an alternative. It is no coincidence that in the last two years personal illness, divorce, and suicide against a backdrop of social, racial and military violence have all increased exponentially. Understandably, our bodies and psyches are internalizing the pain of the larger socio-political body and the confusion of the collective psyche.
These dramatic conditions are forcing our frail arts communities to engage in serious soul searching and tough questioning: All across the US, in every art space, gallery, theater; bohemian cafe, recording and rehearsal studio, we are all expressing our perplexity and asking similar questions:
What are our new roles as artists and intellectuals in this cartography of terror? How do we restore the mirror of critical culture for society to see, once again, its own ethical reflection? Are critical artists an endangered species in the US? Do we wish to live in a country without museums, galleries, theaters, cultural centers, literary journals, film festivals and an alternative press? If America continues to follow this path and chooses to become a closed society and a cultural wasteland, will we be able to tolerate living here as complete outcasts or will we be forced to become expatriates in Europe, Canada or Mexico? What concrete actions can we realistically undertake as a sector (and not as disenfranchised individuals), to reclaim our stolen civic self and our legitimate right to create, and articulate our artistic visions? How to keep these questions alive, discuss survival strategies with our local and national communities and present our case empathetically to the press and to sympathetic members of the political class?
IV
Since 9/11, I have had this reoccurring dream. I dream of a faraway country in which artists are respected in the same way pop celebrities, military men and sportsmen are respected in our country. Artists perceive a decent salary, own their homes and cars, enjoy vacations, and have medical insurance. The media and the political class value their opinions. They perform multiple social roles as social critics and chroniclers, advisers, intercultural diplomats, community brokers, and spiritual leaders. In this sui generis society, we can actually purchase poetry books and art magazines in convenience stores. Writers, philosophers, and performance artists appear daily on national television and radio. Museums are free and every neighborhood has a cultural center. In this most unusual society, even corporations, city councils, school districts and hospitals hire artists as advisers, and animators. In this imaginary society, artists don't have to write texts like this one.
Guillermo Gomez-Pena
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