Return to Chicano Park

 

Chicano Park is one of those places that looms in the imagination of our community. It is located in Barrio Logan in San Diego, next to the Interstate 5 freeway, and it represents a site of struggle and an act of self-affirmation for the Chicano community.

Barrio Logan has historically been home to a large community of Mexican origin. It is a poor community, crisscrossed by overhead freeways. Not having grown up in this area, and only having visited this place three times in the past twenty years, I have no qualms about stating that I feel a sense of proprietorship. Symbols belong to those who can assign meaning to them, and this place seems very familiar to me, even if it is unlike any other park I have seen. It bears a faint resemblance to a temple, one with many columns that hold up the overpasses above the site and cast it in a faint gloom shot through with beams of sunlight. It similarly occupies a reverential place in our community imagination.

 

The neighborhood is not unlike many similar neighborhoods I have known while growing up. It is an urban neighborhood, one with corner strip malls that sell “Fish Tacos for $1”, with bus stops and bounded by residential housing that seems geared towards lower-income households. It did seem to have little traffic during the Saturday in which I visited, and apart from the enclosed basketball court or the modest swings, lacked the features of other parks like the community pool. The most startling aspect of this place is, of course, the presence of so many dynamic and colorful murals.

The saga behind Chicano Park is one that is not unusual for our community. Back in the 60s and early 70s there was a process of community awakening, one that was inspired by the civil rights struggles of this period as well as by the movements, both national as well as international, for self-affirmation. It was a heady time, one that I wish I had seen first hand, and it was evident in a cultural ferment that would shortly see the publication of many of the seminal works of Chicano literature. It was also a period of repression, and this site was originally slated to be the site of a police station that would keep watch over the surrounding community.

The plan to build this police station seemed like an affront to many community leaders in this area, and it gave rise to an act of defiance. On April 22, 1970, the site was occupied for several days by activists, and the community rallied to support them and prevent the construction of this station. It was an inspiring fight, one that was chronicled in songs and testimonies and in the institutional legacy of a struggle that served as an inspiration for the community.  This action eventually accomplished its aims, and the site was converted into a public park, with groups of artists undertaking to fill it with murals and elaborate it as a place for self-affirmation.

 

I remember hearing about this park as a young man in the late 80s. I could remember no similar event in my town, no student walkouts such as those that took place in 1968 in Los Angeles, no commemoration of the death of a journalist such as Rubén Salazar, no establishment of a pioneering civil rights organization such as the Crusade for Justice by Rudolfo “Corky” Gonzales in 1965, among others. My formative years took place in the 70s and 80s. But despite this, I was aware of these events and these figures. They were invested with the light of an earlier era, associated as they were with the work of pioneers, even if, by the time of my early upbringing, we were transitioning into a more institutionalized phase in which dramatic calls for action seemed to be lacking. It was no longer the 60s, after all.

Muralism holds a special place in Chicano identity. It embodies the ethos of public art that is meant to be accessible and available, one that is furthermore meant to elaborate a language of symbolic liberation. This visual language, as well as spatial distribution and the intent to enshrine these movements of emancipation and thereby educate the public, was heavily influenced by the work of “Los Tres”, the Mexican triumvirate of Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siquieros and José Clemente Orozco. It was a language of resistance, and by placing these icons and these narratives in historical formation on public walls, a public act of affirmation.

I am struck by the pantheon of figures that occupy these murals. One finds portraits of humble mestizo faces, farm landscapes, Mexican national symbols such as the eagle and the snake as well as the Virgen de Guadalupe, representations of pre-Hispanic iconography (temples, indigenous sculptures) as well as figures, and symbolic and abstract figures that allude to narratives of struggle, of dismemberment (the border and the loss of the northern Mexican lands is seen in this way) and of cohesion and fertility, among others. Many figures recur over and over, such as the portraits of César Chávez who seems to be elevated to a state of sainthood, never really gesticulating wildly but instead portrayed as a humble figure, the Chicano Gandhi. We also have representations of struggle, recapitulating painful historical episodes that continue to pulse with a sharp and bitter pain that hasn’t receded after all these centuries.

 

Without undertaking to analyze all the murals that are found at this location, which are all too many, I thought I would concentrate on a panoramic mural that is one of the earliest to be painted. Chicano Park is still accreting murals, with new ones being added, and I saw them even on walls of establishments and houses that are not within the park per se. There is even a cutout figure of César Chávez, flanked by two children, a block away that seems to be oddly out of place because it is located not in the center but, precisely, on the margin, next to an off ramp.

There is a bust of Benito Juarez at on the outskirts of the park as well. The statue that occupies the center is one of Emiliano Zapata, who is considered perhaps the purest icon of revolutionary struggle associated with the Mexican Revolution.

The panoramic mural that I saw was painted in 1972, and it is entitled “Viva la Raza: La Logan C/5”. It was restored recently in 2012, and it illustrates much of the ideology of Chicano muralism.

For one thing, it depicts a narrative of oppression and resistance. The oppression takes familiar forms, from that represented by the conquerors and the accompanying priests who did much to destroy the fabric of indigenous life, as much as by denunciations of exploitative conditions in agricultural fields of the Southwest and the struggles of urban youth in the face of police repression. This historical narrative is very common, and represents a more general outlook, one that establishes ties between communities throughout the region. It makes me wonder how effective it would be to the establishment of a regional sense of identity if these murals concentrated on local instances of repression. These might prove to be just as energizing, as has been confirmed by the way in which the figures of Joseph Arpaio, he controversial sheriff of Maricopa county in Arizona, and the governor of that state, Jan Brewer, have already been incorporated in murals, the anti-heroes.

 

There is also a depiction of a pantheon of distinguished revolutionary figures. These range from revered Mexican icons such as Benito Juárez, the great liberal president of the mid nineteenth century, to Fidel Castro. I found it noteworthy that a figure such as Father Hidalgo, who issued the first call for independence in Mexico, recedes into the background, as does Francisco Madero, who challenged Porfirio Díaz and captured the national imagination, having been the focus of all the messianic hope of the marginalized classes of Mexico about one hundred years ago. There is no scarcity of martyrs in Mexican history, but for Chicanos, at least for those artists who painted this work, Benito Juárez continues to hold a special place, and it is striking to me the likeness he shares, not necessarily in terms of physical resemblance, but in terms of the dignified pose of humility and quiet power. I wonder if the artists ever really stopped to reflect on the true repercussions of Juárez’s political program, and the idea that nineteenth century Liberalism, with its support for individualism , meant for the destruction of a communal form of Indian identity, and for the accompanying aggregation of public lands into private estates. I suppose that what resonates with them is the symbolism of a full-blooded Indian as President, something that resonates with its suggestion of revindication. The Indian occupies such a place in this symbolic language.

 

Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa also figure in the pantheon of revolutionary figures. Of the two, the former is perhaps the more ideologically pure. He is the one who formulated a plan, after all, that incorporated the hopes of his community and the association between their claim for representation and their need to find the means to sustain themselves. “Tierra y Libertad!”, he proclaimed, in contrast with the view of a Pancho Villa, the bandit from Durango turned revolutionary who won popular acclaim for his audacity and his fight against Huerta, but who didn’t embody any similar ideological purity. He did invade the United States, however, briefly occupying Columbus, New Mexico, on March 9, 1916, killing several soldiers and residents then escaping afterward.

We find many community figures that are arraying in an arc above the historical scenes that are depicted. They are all labeled, and they range from the afore-mentioned “Corky” Gonzales to Bert Corona and Reyes Tijerina. These are figures that emerged from the Chicano community, but we find them arrayed next to Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. The juxtaposition couldn’t be clearer. They are all revolutionaries, and they are part of a historical process. While not as common as they used to be in the past, we still find sacred figure of Che in the Chicano imaginary, soon to be joined, I suspect, by Hugo Chávez, the late president of Venezuela.

 

I am struck by this juxtaposition with relation to a conception found in a book published recently by the Mexican historian Enrique Krauze. The title is “Redentores: Ideas y Poder en America Latina”, and it provides short sketches of important Latin American intellectuals as well as political figures. What strikes me is the conception of the role of “redeemers” for these figures, one that at the same time can be applied to the figures portrayed in this Chicano mural. Latin America can be viewed, in this conception, as part of a community that is receptive to the “redeemer”, a role that is claimed by intellectuals who enjoy a special status as interpreters and critics of society. In this book, many of the essays have to do with literary figures, from Martí to Vargas Llosa to García Márquez. Is this necessarily the case in the Chicano community?

I don’t see a corresponding role for intellectuals in this mural. This could be due to the fact that Chicano intellectuals were still too reliant on Mexican and Latin American figures, and I remember very vividly the revered role assigned to figures such as José Vasconcelos (the originator of the concept of the “Cosmic Race”) and José Martí (especially his famous essay, “Nuestra América”). As a community, we were still awaiting the publication of important works such as Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands, even if by the late 60s we had seen the arrival of Luiz Váldez. The consecrated artistic figures in this mural all come from the visual arts, figures such as the three muralists or Frida Kahlo, however. We find Che, yes, but not Gabo. Fidel, yes, but not Martí.

As noted above, this particular mural, as many others do in the Chicano mural movement, also references the episode of the conquest of the Americas. Over five hundred years later, it continues to engage the Chicano imagination as much as it does the Mexican one. One need hardly add that this is due to the fact that it is easy to draw the comparison to similar processes of domination in evidence in the modern world. Globalization is perhaps the latest manifestation of a conquest that has never really ended, and I wonder how the Occupy Wall Street movement is being depicted in contemporary works, as well as the phenomenon of foreclosure, the health care crisis and other issues that affect Chicanos, perhaps more so than exploitation in the fields.

This mural is the product of a particular period. It is noteworthy that the experience of urban Chicanos is depicted, most notably in the reference to the clashes with the San Diego police department, but the farmworker continues to figure prominently. This mural, as well as so many of the murals located on the columns and walls of this park, and perhaps the medium of muralism itself, still resonates for people of the older generation (and I guess I would reluctantly have to include myself in that generation, if not in the first generation), but I question how these works are received by the young nowadays.

This is not to suggest that the young have transcended the struggles that defined the first generations, or that they have become apolitical. They haven’t on both counts.  We must recognize, however, that the community is continuing to evolve. As subsequent generations move out to the suburbs (this is happening in San Diego and throughout the nation), and as these generations lose their connection with the language and with their agricultural or working-class background that characterized their immigrant parents, and as they continue to intermarry and are influenced by the mediums most popular nowadays, such as Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, we will continue to witness the splintering of identity into infinite and ever more personalized communities, something that is part of the modern era in which collective narratives are seemingly become transformed. Yes, there exists the possibility for new communities evolving, for a new transnational awareness, but the cohesiveness of Chicano identity as it pertained to the past, with the nostalgic idealization of the pageant of immigration and the notion of an exalted return to an originary space (Aztlán), will become more of a historical notion. Perhaps that is one of the operative principles behind Chicano Park. It is nostalgia that is preserved in these murals of the past.

Communities evolve and change, of course. Maybe these murals, painted as they are on columns that support the highways that loom overhead, are also in essence support structures, meant to stabilize and prop up what is nonetheless changing around it. The highways head east and west, north and south, and are always congested with people who cocoon themselves, wishing as they do always to arrive at a new destination. Chicano identity is also in movement, and it would be fascinating to see how the next generations, especially in an age when it is anticipated that future immigration from Mexico will decline as that country transforms itself and undergoes a dramatic reduction in birth rates, will change when the traditional sectors who have contributed so much to the Mexican-American community, the rural Mexican poor, no longer figure as prominently as they did in the past.

Each generation needs to evolve a relevant language for expression, do they not? Are communities to be defined in terms of generations now, and not in terms of ethnic identity? I know class has not been transcended, but will it continue to be muted in the modern era, seemingly given credence to Republican affirmations that it just doesn't have a role to play in the United States? And is Cyber-Identity, which holds such a powerful place in our imagination, in the age of the Internet, ultimately a minefield, endlessly mutable or ephemeral? Quién sabe.

 

OGRomero © 2013
(Copyrighted by OGRomero, 2013)