Its is not fame or notority...

by Ralph F. Lopez-Urbina, a.k.a. Rafas. c/s

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 my 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