UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press – förlag

The Art of Healing Latinos collects the wisdom of health professionals who have particular expertise in treating Latino patients. Their knowledge comes from many years of service in fields that range from pediatrics to geriatrics, oncology to psychology. Uniquely qualified to bridge the gap between the world of American medicine and the traditions of Latino culture, these physicians, researchers, administrators, and activists offer insight and advice to all who provide, or aspire to provide, health services to the Latino community.

In Paths to Discovery a group of extraordinary Chicanas trace how their interest in math and science at a young age developed into a passion fed by talent and determination. Today they are teaching at major universities, setting public and institutional policy, and pursuing groundbreaking research. These testimonios—personal stories—will encourage young Chicanas to enter the fields of mathematics, science, and engineering and to create futures in classrooms, boardrooms, and laboratories across the nation.

The Fire of Life, the collection of performance artist Robert Legorreta, is a fascinating and eclectic archive. Correspondence, artwork, photographs, and other materials document Legorreta’s artistic career and trace the development of the East L.A. arts scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The collection contains more than a thousand LPs, gathered primarily for the Latino imagery on their covers, and toys, coupons, and ads, that show how Latino themes have been used to promote consumer products.

Ruben C. Cordova traces the history of Con Safo, one of the earliest and most significant of the Chicano art groups, from 1968, when it formed as El Grupo, to the mid-1970s, when Con Safo gradually disbanded. Founded by Felipe Reyes, the original group was made up of six San Antonio artists. The fluxuating membership over the decade of the group's existence included Mel Casas, Jose Esquivel, Rudy Treviño, and Roberto Ríos. Although the structure of the original group changed, its mission did not: Con Safo defined possibilities for Chicano art at a time when Chicano culture was largely invisible.Cordova’s painstaking research, which included extensive archival work and interviews with group members and activists, resolves many of the contradictions and fills in many of the gaps that exist in earlier accounts of the group. Con Safo: The Chicano Art Group and the Politics of South Texas is an important resource for anyone interested in Chicano art and Chicano history. The book concludes with reproductions of original documents related to the group, including Casas’s “Brown Paper Report."

The Mexican Museum of San Francisco was founded in 1975 by artist Peter Rodriguez to "foster the exhibition, conservation, and dissemination of Mexican and Chicano art and culture for all peoples." Its holdings include some 14,000 objects with a historical range extending from pre-conquest Mexico to contemporary Mexican American and Latino communities in the United States.The Chicano Studies Research Center’s collection includes a broad selection of the museum's administrative papers and related materials. Karen Mary Davalos draws on these documents to trace the origins of the museum and explore how its mission has been shaped by its visionary artist-founder, local art collectors and patrons, Mexican art and culture, and the Chicano movement. A detailed finding aid and a selected bibliography complete the volume.

PepÓn Osorio is an internationally recognized artist whose richly detailed installations challenge the stereotypes and misconceptions that shape our view of social institutions and human relationships. Osorio’s colorful, often riotous installations are constructed from found objects and things that he customizes or creates. With a wry sense of humor, he probes sober topics, including prison life, domestic violence, AIDS, and poverty.Osorio’s collaborative site-based works develop from his immersion into a community-residents of urban ethnic neighborhoods, employees who provide social services, children in foster care-and the discussions that result. As he addresses difficult themes such as race and gender, death and survival, and alienation and belonging, Osorio asks his audience to reconsider their assumptions and biases. In this book, Jennifer A. GonzÁlez shows that although Osorio draws on his Puerto Rican background and the immigrant experience for inspiration, his artistic statements bridge geographical barriers and class divides. Osorio’s installations have been exhibited internationally, and his work is represented at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico in San Juan, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and other major museums. He has received numerous awards, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1999.

Since the late 1960s, photographer Oscar Castillo has documented the Chicano community in Los Angeles and South Texas, from major political events to cultural practices to the work of muralists and painters. His photographs explore major themes (social movement, cultural heritage, urban environment, and everyday barrio life) and approaches (photojournalism, portraiture, art photography). The Oscar Castillo Photograph Collection includes over 3,000 images by the photographer that are available through an online digital archive at UCLA.Colin Gunckel brings together essays by scholars and artists who consider the social, political, historical, and aesthetic dimensions of Castillo's work. An illustrated section features selections from the digital archive. The book includes illustrations from the digital archive, a detailed finding aid for the Oscar Castillo Papers, a small collection of correspondence and other documents housed at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, and a collection-level description of the digital archive. A selected bibliography completes the volume.This book is made possible in part with support from The Getty Foundation.Honorable Mention, Best Reference Book - English from the 2012 International Latino Book Awards

Established in 1992 by Los Angeles's Center Theatre Group, the Latino Theatre Initiative sought to diversify audiences by diversifying theatrical programming. Until 2005, when it was suspended, the program resulted in the production of eleven new main-stage plays at the Mark Taper Forum. It was also key in the development of new and emerging Latino artists, the production of second-stage works, and the incorporation of community-based events into theater programming.Chantal Rodriguez draws on the extensive Latino Theatre Initiative/Center Theatre Group Papers, 1980-2005, housed at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, in this first extended historical account of the program. Rodriguez evaluates the initiative's successes and shortcomings and examines the roles played by its leaders and its significant roster of artists. A finding aid for the collection and a selected bibliography round out the volume.

Oral history has been employed for decades by anthropologists, historians, and sociologists to collect data about lived experience. This volume explores how oral history, using video recordings and storytelling as well as interviews, can be used for a number of purposes in communities of color. The authors discuss oral histories that are intended not only to record the culture and history of understudied communities; they also address other goals, such as increasing student interaction with diverse communities and developing effective health interventions.Oral History and Communities of Color presents five essays, each of which considers a different racial/ethnic community: Asian American, American Indian, Latino, African American, and Muslim. Interviews with two scholars who integrate oral history into their research touch on oral history's theoretical foundation in cultural anthropology, particular considerations for collecting oral histories in specific communities, and the importance of including the narrator's personal story.

L.A. Xicano accompanies four interrelated exhibitions that explore the diverse artistic contributions of Mexican American and Chicano artists to American art and to Los Angeles's artistic development since 1945. The volume's six illustrated essays examine the life and works of dozens of artists and photographers. The authors consider the context of their turbulent history, particularly the development of the Chicano Movement.The L.A. Xicano project was organized by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center in collaboration with the Autry National Center, the Fowler Museum at UCLA, and the Los Angeles County Museum of ArtL.A. Xicano accompanies four interrelated exhibitions that explore the diverse artistic contributions of Mexican American and Chicano artists to American art and to Los Angeles's artistic development since 1945. The volume's six illustrated essays examine the life and works of dozens of artists and photographers. The authors consider the context of their turbulent history, particularly the development of the Chicano Movement. The L.A. Xicano project was organized by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center in collaboration with the Autry National Center, the Fowler Museum at UCLA, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.Best Arts Book - English from the 2012 International Latino Book Awards

Visual and performance artist Sandra de la Loza presents a wry commentary on the Chicano history of Los Angeles in this field guide to Downtown and East Los Angeles. Using the format of the photographic essay, she documents the exploits of the Pocho Research Society, an organization dedicated to commemorating sites in Los Angeles that are of importance to the Chicano community but that have been erased by urban development or neglect. Through the unauthorized acts of commemoration, the Pocho Research Society calls our attention to their absence from official narratives.The field guide also offers playful tours of the murals at Estrada Courts and the Fort No Moore Secret Museum, founded by the Pocho Research Society to preserve the history of the Fort Moore Pioneer Memorial (a history that includes accounts of the Lizard People, who lived in catacombs far beneath the monument).By drawing attention to these invisible monuments and lost histories, de la Loza asks her readers to consider the broader question of what constitutes a community's history.

With these one hundred poems Alurista created a highly original poetics that upset the literary conventions of the era. Floricanto en Aztlán was published in 1971, a time of Chicano activism and the search for a Chicano identity. Using Aztlán, the mythical homeland of the Aztecs, as a unifying metaphor and employing indigenous symbols to describe barrio life, the poet inspired his readers, cultivating pride in their cultural past. The poems blend English, Spanish, and pre-Columbian languages to explore themes of alienation and exploitation in a decidedly Chicano voice.This new edition of Floricanto en Aztlán, Alurista's first book of poetry, includes a new preface by the poet and a new foreword that considers the lasting influence of this important work.

The Strachwitz Frontera Collection is the largest repository of commercially produced Mexican and Mexican American vernacular recordings in existence. More than 40,000 recordings, all produced during the first half of the 20th century, have been digitized and are available to researchers and the general public online. Although border music is the focus of the collection, it also includes notable recordings of other Latin forms, including salsa, mambo, sones, and rancheras.Agustin Gurza explores the Frontera Collection, discussing genre, themes, and some of the thousands of performers whose recordings are archived. He considers the cultural significance of the recordings, notably what the lyrics reveal about relationships between not only Anglos and Mexicans but also Mexican nationals and other immigrant and ethnic groups. Jonathan Clark focuses on recordings by mariachi ensembles. Topical lists of recordings and a guide to the collection with suggestions for searching the online files complete the volume.

Robert Hernandez traces the history and assesses the impact of VIVA! Lesbian and Gay Latino Artists, a nonprofit artists' coalition founded in 1987 in the Silverlake community of Los Angeles. Their aim was to increase the representation of lesbian Latina and gay Latino artists in the LA art scene. VIVA! sponsored exhibitions, theatrical performances, and educational outreach. It worked closely with other gay and lesbian organizations in Los Angeles, using arts-based projects to address cultural and sociopolitcal issues that were of concern to their community and the AIDS crisis in particuar. The first organization of its kind in Los Angeles, VIVA! offered a stage and a voice for artists who had been routinely marginalized.The VIVA! collection of papers is housed at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. It includes administrative papers, photographs, artwork, VIVA! publications, and documents related to the organization's exhibitions, performances, educational projects, and other events.

At his untimely death in 1998, photographer Ricardo Valverde (b. 1946) had for almost three decades documented the various communities and social spaces of Los Angeles. Though he began this lifelong pursuit while still in college, capturing the streets of his South Central neighborhood and the urban landscape of downtown Los Angeles, it wasn’t until the Watts Riots of 1965 that Valverde and his work became deeply political. But if his work became more political, it did so within an aesthetic that grew ever more critical of the tropes and institutions of documentary art.Featuring more than one hundred illustrations, this book-in the landmark A Ver: Revisioning Art History series-records the unfolding of Valverde’s vision, from his first photographs of L.A. streets as repositories of the city’s social history, to his socially and politically acute portraiture, to his surrealist-inflected mixed-media work late in his career, to his role in the formation of the community-based arts groups Self-Help Graphics & Art, Ojos, and Chicano Art Collectors Anonymous. RamÓn GarcÍa’s essay offers a clear framework for understanding Valverde’s art and life, along with a sense of the personal and social politics and history that influenced both so thoroughly.

This second edition of Self Help Graphics & Art brings the original edition up to date, adding breadth and depth to the history of the historic East L. A. arts center. Self Help Graphics has been a national model for community-based art making and art-based community making since its founding in the early 1970s. Known for its groundbreaking printmaking and art education programs, Self Help Graphics has empowered local artists and taught the world about the vibrancy of Chicano/Latino art.A comprehensive guide to the Self Help Graphics & Art archives at the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA), University of California, Santa Barbara, and an expanded bibliography complete the volume. Contributors include Michael Amescua, Yreina Cervantes, Karen Mary Davalos, Armando Durón, Evonne Gallardo, Colin Gunckel, Kristen Guzmán, Leo Limón, Chon A. Noriega, Peter Toval, Linda Vallejo, and Mari Cárdenas Yáñez.

Pioneering art historian Shifra Goldman brought the study of Chicana/o and contemporary Latin American art to the notice of art history. She was determined to correct the stereotypes that had distorted the critical reception of Chicana/o and Latina/o art since the 1950s. This collection of essays, edited and introduced by Charlene Villaseñor Black, not only represents her groundbreaking scholarship but also reflects her political activism. In these writings Goldman considers important theoretical issues, including how the Chicano movement influenced and was influenced by artists in the Southwest and Mexico and how different artistic visions clashed and interacted. She also investigates the careers of major Chicana/o artists, discusses specific series of artworks, and analyzes exhibitions, beginning with the historic Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, which opened in Los Angeles in 1990 and then traveled cross-country, closing in Washington, DC, in 1993. Many of the illustrations have not been widely reproduced, adding to the importance of this collection.

Behind the fascinating public artist’s practice of collaborationJudith F. Baca is best known for the Great Wall of Los Angeles (1976–83), a vibrant 2,740-foot mural in Los Angeles that presents an alternative history of California-one that focuses on the contributions of marginalized and underrepresented communities. The mural is emblematic of Baca’s pioneering approach to creating public art, a process in which members of the community are essential contributors to the conception and realization of the work.Anna Indych-LÓpez explores Baca’s oeuvre, from early murals painted with local gang members in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles to more recently commissioned works. She looks in depth at the Great Wall and considers the artist’s ongoing work with the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, California, a nonprofit group founded by Baca in 1976. Throughout, Indych-LÓpez assesses what she calls Baca’s “public art of contestation” and discusses how ideas of collaboration and authorship and issues of race, class, and gender have influenced and sustained Baca’s art practice.

Behind the fascinating public artist’s practice of collaborationJudith F. Baca is best known for the Great Wall of Los Angeles (1976–83), a vibrant 2,740-foot mural in Los Angeles that presents an alternative history of California-one that focuses on the contributions of marginalized and underrepresented communities. The mural is emblematic of Baca’s pioneering approach to creating public art, a process in which members of the community are essential contributors to the conception and realization of the work.Anna Indych-LÓpez explores Baca’s oeuvre, from early murals painted with local gang members in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles to more recently commissioned works. She looks in depth at the Great Wall and considers the artist’s ongoing work with the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, California, a nonprofit group founded by Baca in 1976. Throughout, Indych-LÓpez assesses what she calls Baca’s “public art of contestation” and discusses how ideas of collaboration and authorship and issues of race, class, and gender have influenced and sustained Baca’s art practice.

Winner of the 2018 American Book Award, sponsored by the Before Columbus Foundation1st Place, Best Cover Illustration, 2017 International Latino Book AwardsSpeculative fiction—encompassing both science fiction and fantasy—has emerged as a dynamic field within Chicana/o and Latina/o studies, producing new critical vocabularies and approaches to topics that include colonialism and modernity, immigration and globalization, race and gender. As the first collection engaging Chicana/o and Latina/o speculative cultural production, Altermundos: Latin@ Speculative Literature, Film, and Popular Culture provides a comprehensive alternative to the view of speculative fiction as a largely white, male, Eurocentric, and heteronormative genre. It features original essays from more than twenty-five scholars as well as interviews, manifestos, short fiction, and new works from Chicana/o and Latina/o artists.

1st Place, Best Cover Design, 2018 International Latino Book Awards1st Place, Best Cover Photo, 2018 International Latino Book Awards2nd Place, Best Latino-Focused Book Design, 2018 International Latino Book Awards2nd Place, Best Interior Design, 2018 International Latino Book AwardsHonorable Mention, Best Use of Photos Inside the Book, 2018, International Latino Book AwardsHome — signaling a dwelling, residence or place of origin — embodies one of the most basic concepts for understanding an individual or group within a larger physical and social environment. Yet home has been a little noted, although prevalent, feature in art since the 1950s, a period in which artists challenged the traditional “object” of the visual arts through the use of material and media culture, new forms, and performative actions and processes. This volume explores works by diverse U.S. Latino and Latin American artists whose engagement with the concept of “home” provides the basis for an alternative narrative of post-war art. Their work brings together an impressive array of formal languages, conceptual strategies, and art historical references with the varied social concerns characterizing both the postwar period in the Americas and an emerging global economy impacting day-to-day life.The artists featured in this volume engage home as both concept and artifact. This can be seen in the use of building fragments or excisions (Gordon Matta-Clark, Gabriel de la Mora, and Leyla Cárdenas), household furniture (Raphael Montañez Ortiz, Beatriz González, Doris Salcedo, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Guillermo Kuitca), and personal possessions (Carmen Argote, María Teresa Hincapié, Camilo Ontiveros), and also in the use of coca leaves as a material base of the American Dream and its economic exchange with Colombia (Miguel Angel Rojas). Within more representational work, home is the re-creation of fraught domiciles (Abraham Cruzvillegas, Pepón Osorio, Daniel J. Martinez), a collage of spaces, styles, and materials (Antonio Berni, Andrés Asturias, Jorge Pedro Nuñez, Miguel Angel Ríos, Juan Sanchez), and a juxtaposition of bodies and place (Laura Aguilar, Myrna Báez, Johanna Calle, Perla de León, Ramiro Gomez, Jessica Kairé, Vincent Valdez). In more conceptual work, home is all these things reduced to form—a floor plan (Luis Camnitzer, León Ferrari, María Elena González, Guillermo Kuitca), a catalog of objects (Antonio Martorell, Hincapié), or a housing development plan (Livia Corona Benjamin, Martinez). In the end, home is a journey without arrival (Allora y Calzadilla, Luis Cruz Azaceta, Christina Fernandez, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Julio César Morales, Teresa Serrano). Home—So Different, So Appealing reveals the departures and confluences that continue to shape US Latino and Latin American art and expands our appreciation of these artists and their work.

Winner of the 2021 ALAA-Thoma Foundation Exhibition Catalogue AwardGold Medal Recipient, U.S. History, 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards1st Place, Best Arts Book, 2020 International Latino Book Awards1st Place, Best Academic-Themed Book, 2020 International Latino Book Awards1st Place, Best Cover Photo, 2020 International Latino Book AwardsHonorable Mention, Victor Villaseñor Best Latino Focused Nonfiction Book Award – English, 2020 International Latino Book AwardsLa Raza, launched in 1967 in the basement of an Eastside LA church, was conceived as a tool for community-based organizing during the early days of the Chicano movement. The all-volunteer staff of the newspaper—and the magazine that followed—informed readers and exhorted them to action through images and articles that showcased protests and demonstrations and documented pervasive social inequity and police abuse. La Raza’s photographers played a critical role as artists, journalists, and activists, creating an unparalleled record of the determination, resilience, and achievements of the Chicano community during a period of profound social change.This catalog presents photographs from the La Raza exhibition at the Autry Museum of the American West and the more than 25,000 images in the La Raza Photograph Collection at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. The essays offer not only scholarly assessments of the role of Chicanx photographers in social movements and art history but also personal perspectives from La Raza photographers.

Honorable Mention, Best Academic-Themed Book, 2020 International Latino Book AwardsThis anthology explores the relationships between Chicana/o students, families, and communities and the various school settings that comprise the education pipeline, from Kindergarten classrooms through postsecondary programs and postgraduate experiences. The essays, which appeared in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies between 1970 and 2015, present a historical overview that spans the 1880s to the present. It brings together the work of scholars who have elucidated Chicana/o education, and the resulting collection simultaneously historicizes current education research and bolsters our understanding of Chicanas/os’ multifaceted relationship to schooling in the United States. Among the topics considered are bilingual education and cultural relevance, teacher expectations and student achievement, racism and sexism in postsecondary education, the Chicano movement and the high school walkouts, anti–ethnic studies legislation, school finance and governance, and Jotería identity. Together, the essays reveal how educational institutions have operated in contradictory ways for Chicana/o students: they have depressed and marginalized as well as emancipated and empowered them. The Chicana/o Education Pipeline presents the story of the struggle and perseverance of Chicana/o students, families, and communities as they have fought for a more equitable education.

Honorable Mention, Best Arts Book, 2019 International Latino Book AwardsHonorable Mention, Best Cover Design, 2019 International Latino Book AwardsThis collection explores Chicano, Mexican, and Cuban musical forms and styles and their transformation in the United States. Employing musical, historical, and sociocultural analyses, Loza addresses issues such as marginality, identity, intercultural conflict and aesthetics, reinterpretation, postnationalism, and mestizaje—the mixing of race and culture—in the production and reception of Chicano/Latino music. Barrio Harmonics opens with a comprehensive overview that begins with music in the US Southwest in the seventeenth century and ends with the Grammy Awards for Latin American music in the first decade of the twenty-first century. In the following chapters, Loza discusses artists whose music ranges from sones, rancheros, and corridos to Latin jazz, R & B, and rock and roll. Among those he considers in depth are Pancho Sánchez, Lalo Guerrero, Tito Puente, and Los Lobos. He also surveys the contributions of scores of other individuals and groups who have shaped the current contour of Chicano/Latino music. Other topics include the music industry and the impact of globalization, the African diaspora, and Latin American music in Japan. In addition, Loza offers a candid assessment of intellectual capitalism and the void of nonwestern voices in contemporary scholarship.

Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell surveys the career of Laura Aguilar, a Chicana photographer who is most widely known for black-and-white nude self-portraits that are frank and self-assertive, yet deeply sensitive and poetic. In photographs that are frequently political as well as personal, Aguilar offers candid portrayals of herself, her friends and family, and her Chicano/Latino and LBGT communities. Ten essays trace the development of Aguilar’s work over three decades, exploring her photography in terms of its social, historical, and art historical contexts.This catalog accompanies Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell, a retrospective at the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College. The exhibition is a collaboration between the museum and the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, which houses the Laura Aguilar Collection of the artist’s papers and photographs.

1st Place, Best Academic-Themed Book, 2019 International Latino Book Award2nd Place, Best Latino Focused Nonfiction - English, 2019 International Latino Book AwardThis set of essays explores the ongoing cultural and political connections between Chicana/o and Mexican history. Edited and introduced by Héctor Calderón, The Aztlán Mexican Studies Reader, 1974–2016 presents thirteen previously published essays together with three essays written specifically for this collection, making a rigorous case for the contributions of Chicana/o studies to the transnational study of Mexico. The first essay, by Tomás Almaguer, which was also the first to be published, sets the stage with a historical overview that relates how the Chicano movement was rooted in the soil of conquest and colonialism in Mexico. Subsequent essays discuss a range of topics that stress interconnections between Chicana/os and Mexicans: transborder issues such as immigration and labor; Chicana/o and Mexican fiction; femicide and racism in Mexico and their reverberations on both sides of the border; and the development of Mexican art forms—including muralism, cinema, and music—in Mexico and the United States.

A generously illustrated account of the life and work of the prominent Chicano artist, educator, and activistJosÉ Montoya (1932–2013) was a leading figure in bilingual and bicultural expression drawn from barrio life as a defining feature of U.S. culture. As an artist, poet, and musician, he produced iconic works depicting pachuco and pachuca culture based on his own experiences as a youth after World War II. These include the poem “El Louie” as well as thousands of political posters and masterful sketches. Montoya cofounded the art collective Royal Chicano Air Force and helped organize for the United Farm Workers. An influential educator, he established the Barrio Art Program in the early 1970s, and taught at California State University, Sacramento.Author Ella Maria Diaz examines a remarkable career that traversed decades, languages, media, and genres. This book is illustrated with reproductions of Montoya’s art from rarely seen archival slides and documents, as well as from private collections and the Montoya estate. Through oral histories and archival research, Diaz proposes a new model for the study of Latina/o/x artists who reject the boundaries between visual art, poetry, music, education, and community activism.This book is distributed for the Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA.