The San Diego Chicano Movement and the Origins of Border Art

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes how the complex and often contradictory immigration politics of the 1970s Chicano movement led to the development of Border Art in the San Diego region. Chicano leader Herman Baca insisted upon the importance of resolving the immigration debate, but cast the question in terms of a global system of inequity. Artists of the movement were forced to mediate between presenting the public with visions of a borderless world and circumscribing a Chicano “nation” within the U.S. Southwest. San Diego’s Chicano Park murals betray this tension, and several of the artists involved would go on to found the first border art collective. Freed from the entanglements of Chicano politics and the burden of nationalism, “Border Art” could focus on human rights violations and economic inequality.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Henry Martin “Scoop” Jackson served as a US Representative and Senator from Everett, WA from 1941 through 1983. The letter in question is most likely from Jackson’s unsuccessful 1972 campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

2 Along with Chicanos Ochoa and Avalos and Anglo-American Schnorr, the initial BAW/TAF members included a mix of Mexican-born, Chicano, and Anglo artists, filmmakers, and performers. Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Isaac Artenstein, Jude Eberhardt and Sara-Jo Berman rounded out the founding seven.

3 “Sin Fronteras,” as described by the Los Angeles-based organization CASA (Centro de Accíon Social Autónoma, founded 1975), proposed that “there isn’t a border between our people but rather a continuum, a social connection, a cultural connection, and economic connection between those of us on this side of an international line and others on the other side of an international line.”

4 By “third space” I am referring to David Gutiérrez’ (1999) definition: the site where ethnic Mexicans attempted to mediate the profound sense of displacement and other stresses raised by their existence as members of a marginalized minority in a region long considered their ancestral homeland.

5 Choosing to use a Spanish accent or not was a political choice by Chicano artists and activists. I have spelled all names as they were written in the original materials.

6 Baca’s analysis echoes that of dependency theorists in the 1960s and 1970s. Dependency theorists such as Raúl Prebisch argued that developed nations manipulated trade relations with developing regions to keep them in a state of permanent dependence. Although a popular theory during the height of the Chicano movement, dependency theory has long since been discredited in economic circles. For more on the controversy surrounding dependency theory, see Stephen Haber (1997) .

7 This idea is reflected in Ochoa’s own work, which consists of community- and school-based mural projects in the San Diego-Tijuana area. Murals, he claims, are a means to educate the public about a shared (if somewhat forgotten) history. Ochoa championed the communal aspects of muralism, both in the planning and execution of the artwork as well as its reception. For better or for worse, the mural becomes a pedagogical tool for the community in a way that posters, sculptures, and performance (among others forms of art) cannot.

8 Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros influenced US-based artists through their Mexican works as well as those commissioned in the United States. Post-Revolution government-sponsored Mexican muralism ostensibly aimed to legitimize the extended conflict. Although they could not travel by conventional means, works by the Tres Grandes rapidly gained popularity in the United States. During the early 1930s, socially engaged muralism was promoted throughout the United States as part of a movement towards pan-Americanism (and consequently, away from ‘European’ abstraction). Exhibitions such as the traveling “Mexican Arts” (1930–1932) and Diego Rivera’s 1931 MoMA show helped to give Mexican muralism a much broader US audience than would have seen their private commissions in person.

9 The Centro Cultural de la Raza operated without interruption until May of 2000, when San Diego Chicanos organized a strike against the institution. The Chicanos, organized as the “Save Our Centro Coalition” (SOCC), demanded greater transparency in the Centro’s dealings, as well as more open representation on the board of directors. The Centro continued to provide programming without the endorsement of Chicano leaders for seven years, after which a resolution was reached (May 8, 2007). The reasons and politics for the strike are beyond the scope of this dissertation, but more information on the subject can be found at the Centro Cultural archives at the University of California Santa Barbara.

10 Chicano artists were often constrained by their audience as well as by the Centro’s commitment to Chicanismo. In the case of the Centro’s exterior, a particular mural depicting a skeleton came under attack by the mostly-Anglo public in 1977. Skeletons are common symbols in Mexico, as seen in the imagery surrounding el Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) and in the prints of the artist Guadalupe Posada. The skeleton on the Centro mural was an attempt to recall this particular Mexican artistic tradition. The mural, located on a water tank outside the Centro, was the subject of petitions protesting “that the mural was not beautiful nor did it provide a proper influence for the young people in the area.” The skeleton was painted over that same year, the victim of a clash of symbolic codes. The full story can be found in Ramos (1977).

11 This mural program was never completed; to this day, Chicano Park ends more than a block from the water, despite occasional efforts to extend its domain to the bay.

12 Not everyone understood the symbols, however, and the swastika was heavily vandalized before being restored in 1987. “Chicano Park Mural History,” accessed June 15, 2010, http://www.chicanoparksandiego.com/murals/quetzal.html.

13 It is important to note that while San Diego Chicanos were planning the park’s mural program, the Los Angeles-based conceptual group Asco was staging a more direct critique of Chicano imagery and nationalism. Their performance pieces Stations of the Cross, Walking Mural, and Asshole Mural all took place during the years 1972–1973. See Ondine Chavoya (2000) “Orphans of Modernism: The Performance Art of Asco,” Chon Noriega (2008) “Early Asco: Your Art Disgusts Me” and Leticia Alvarado (2015), “Asco’s Asco and the Queer Affective Resonance of Abjection.”

14 Mancillas (2010).

15 Installation Gallery would later become an institution for border art serving as one of the key sites for the InSITE triennial in 1994, 1997, 2000–01, and 2005.

16 Mancillas, interview with the author.

17 See Sheren (2015) for a full analysis of End of the Line and its significance to the genre of border art, as well as a consideration of the influence of Felipe Ehrenberg and Mexican conceptualism on the performance.

18 The history of the BAW/TAF is beyond the scope of this essay and has been addressed more thoroughly in Portable Borders, as well as Ricardo Dominguez’s excellent “REMEX: NAFTA Era Performance and Conceptualism’s Prehistory,” available online http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/Borders/REMEX.pdf

19 Avalos had left the BAW/TAF in 1987 due to conflict within the group, and with Gómez-Peña in particular. His official stated reason was to spend more time with his family.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by funding from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the form of an MIT-Luce Dissertation Fellowship.