Review of "The Republic of East L.A."

The world stood still for that moment. The whole thing could’ve ended with my brains splattered all over the place. But no matter how scared I was, I wasn’t going down begging or crying or nothing. If he was going to get me, I was going to be looking him straight in the eye, defiant, angry, and stone cold crazy. (p. 157)

 

The community of East Los Angeles, popularly known as East L.A., looms large in the Chicano imagination. Whether or not we grew up in an urban environment, in the palm-lined streets of a state such as California that shimmers with the promise of illusions and hopes to be fulfilled, it represents the emblematic barrio that encapsulates so much of our ideals of community and cultural fulfillment. I didn’t grow up in East L.A., but I feel immediately at home when I visit, as do many other Chicanos who hail from places as far away as the Fruitvale barrio in Oakland or Pilsen in Chicago.

It is of course a compelling matter to analyze the nature of this automatic attachment. It does not represent the quintessential suburban experience, for it is a densely-packed, working class area far from the glamour of Beverly Hills, the industrial base of the City of Commerce or the touristy feel of Venice or Hollywood. It may be densely-populated, but it has also a feeling of space, and a small-town atmosphere even though the population must exceed several hundred thousand. And it is the heart and soul of Mexican identity in the Southland, for it is populated primarily by Mexicans and Chicanos, and the businesses, social life and cultural ambiance is filtered in a pervasive mix of Spanglish.

One can almost refer to it as a self-enclosed entity, like the Mexican barrios throughout the United States, but on a grander scale, with a history that reaches back to the first years of the 20^th century. Because it is enclosed it has a protective feel, and it has served as our metaphorical Ellis Island for Mexicans, serving as a secure base from which to seek out their American dreams. Many of these immigrants have settled in the area and raised their children, and thus we have generations who have grown up as lifelong residents of East L.A., harboring as they do a strong attachment to neighborhoods and streets that have been the site of much of Mexican-American civic life, as well as the neighborhoods from whence emerged many national Chicano political and cultural leaders.

In his collection of short stories called “The Republic of East L.A.”, the community comes to life in stories that, while frequently grounded in difficult circumstances, reflect an overall quality of endurance as well as a dogged faith in achieving a small measure of acceptance and peace. It is this search for home that is perhaps one of the most familiar and enduring motifs in Chicano literature, a home that assumes many forms. It nurtures many of these dreams, while at the same time reminding us of the cycle of disappointment and displacement, all shared by neighbors whose stories seem more compelling precisely because they are so familiar.

Such is the case with these stories. There is nothing extraordinary about these situations, and they revolve around situations where families are under extraordinary pressures. We have children who are growing under the care of a drug-addled single mom (in the story Las Chicas Chuecas), and other families that are torn apart by economic pressures, by factories and mills that close (Boom, Bot, Boom), and throughout it all, by personal demons that have to do with the intersection between shimmering dreams and the everyday detritus that they leave behind.

Except for occasional stories that highlight the influence of economic pressures, in an economy that has been unsettled by the postwar loss of a manufacturing base and its replacement by part-time and piece-rate work (creating a version of what I could term are Chicano Ronin, those with skills who lose any institutional protection and are forced to hire themselves out as in the case of the two construction workers in Mechanics), we see that many of these characters suffer from a form of innocence that is slowly worn down by their circumstances. They struggle to come to terms with failed hopes, with the spectacle of a hard-working father who succumbs to cancer, or to the failed hopes of children such as Rudy, who falls victim to a familiar scourge (Shadows). Dreams glimmer just out of reach, while the characters become wizened and try to hold on to something that is stable, even if smaller than the scope that had been envisioned.

I was struck particularly by two characters. One of these is Noemi, the 16 year old with the gangster sister who tries to navigate through high school while also parenting a mother who seems unable to resist her drug cravings. She would seem to be perfect for recruitment to the gang life, and it would seem to be a natural step to take for someone lacking any other form of stability, but she resists, and retreats into her own fantasy world. She dreams of trolls and knights, underlining a mindset that in many ways captures a yearning for autonomy and control that is being acted out in destructive fashion by her sister Olivia. The chicas chuecas are, indeed, twisted, and they fight their own battles, going out on their own expeditions and besieging fortresses and engaging in ritual combat, but this parallelism only serves to demonstrate the distance between the two conceptions. It seems that the fundamental impulse is there, but no one will rescue her, not even her sister. She will have to rescue herself.

The other was the Enrique in the story “Mechanics” (the title can’t fail to echo the title of the longstanding series by Chicano author Javier Hernandez from the seminal comic book titled “Love and Rockets”), a journeyman millwright who, like the industrial base of the country, finds himself losing his family in a slowly progressive process of divestment. There is a slow and lethargic pace to this story, and yet, it seems telegraphed from the beginning, a loss that leaves him bewildered and unable to come to terms with a transformation that has taken place before his eyes. The old dream of lifetime jobs in a mill, with substantial benefits and a reasonable income, disappears quickly, but lingers like an after-image, blinding him to the dynamics of a relationship that also fails to evolve. He is slowly divested of his family and dignity, until he reaches a new plateau that feels like a release, a form of acceptance. This is much the way it must feel to move from adolescence to middle age, a process that can seem to be one of similar divestment from the old certitudes, appalling but also, ultimately, necessary.

Other stories reflect issues that concern Chicano communities, such as those that have to do with the ability to identify with newcomers, without falling prey to a destructive nativism that may be grounded on legality and economic fears, but that somehow seems to represent too much of a destructive break with the past. And, there is the humorous story titled “Miss East L.A.”, which chronicles the case of a beauty pageant winner who has been murdered, but is compelling more for the back story of a man who was destined to be a factory worker and managed to break free to become a writer, than for the unconvincing film noir ambiance or the resolution of a mystery that is grounded in no real plot twists. But perhaps, that was the point of the story, to explore the dynamics of style, while relaying in a rather subversive way the real story, the gritty decision that accompanies that transfiguration and delivery of the factory worker.

Come to think of it, all the stories have this impetus, this moment where circumstances that would ordinarily have provoked a crushing sense of anguish and defeat, lead instead to new beginnings. What is in evidence is the appeal to a sense of endurance in the face of calamity. The characters are most free when they break out of these roles, and whether threatened by an angry trucker wielding a weapon (chain-link lover), or a young forty year old grandmother seeing her daughter fall prey to a dependent and shiftless man who offers no real encouragement or support (sometimes you dance with a watermelon), we find characters coming to terms and refusing to give up their dreams entirely.

There may be a persistence of illusion, but there is also the recognition that dignity is achieved precisely through the human imperative of dreaming. These characters don’t lose their capacity to dream, they merely shift their objectives and engage their creative powers to come up with new dreams. This may be why so many of these stories end with scenarios that seem to promise new beginnings.

That may be what makes the community of East L.A. so perdurable as well. The people who inhabit it have suffered from harsh discrimination, and have suffered displacement, and continue to suffer from neglect from the city authorities, but throughout it all, it has preserved a certain character, a will to survive and hold on to its own rituals. It has been battered as well, but it continues to stand, even while subsequent generations leave it and migrate to the suburbs. It represents a connection with something that reminds one that community is much more a matter of will than an accident of location.

OGRomero © 2013
(Copyrighted by OGRomero, 2013)

Celebrating Words Festival (and resisting the banning of books)

Montag, you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going, a long time back. I said nothing. I’m one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when none would listen to the ‘guilty’, but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself. And when finally they set the structure to burn the books, using the firemen, I grunted a few times and subsided, for there were no others grunting or yelling with me, by then. Now it’s too late.       (Fahrenheit 451, p. 82)

 
Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore is a community space and retail outlet that serves the people of northeast Los Angeles. The Chicano poet and author Luis Rodríguez was essential in helping to establish as well as lead this cultural initiative, one intended to serve a community that has few other cultural resources. As such t continues to be the nucleus of a vibrant enterprise, helping to support and promote literacy among underserved communities as well as sponsoring cultural festivals and community forums. They also provide valuable support for new authors who address issues of relevance to multicultural communities. It is the type of institution that I would imagine struggles financially from year to year, but I assume that it is not primarily a for-profit venture. I am glad that we have enterprises such as this one.

 

Tucked as it is in the community of Sylmar, in the sprawling San Fernando valley, I am reminded very much of my own community in the Riverside area. Both regions are bound to Los Angeles by the powerful economic and cultural weight of the megalopolis, and both are saturated by media from the big city. Yet despite this the San Fernando Valley also maintains much of a small-town atmosphere, based as this is on the survival of strong local traditions and histories. Riverside was very much an agricultural community, while Sylmar and the San Fernando Valley in was a center of small manufacturing. Both were also more economically accessible to working class immigrant and minority communities, and they continue to be even though Los Angeles itself has also undergone a tremendous transformation and has seen "white flight" to other areas. The city of Sylmar is nestled amidst looming brown hills, and it feels as if it is located a world away from Los Angeles, separated as it is by these physical and cultural divide. As with my community in Riverside County, it is also infernally hot during the summers.
 


 

 

As part of its' agenda of ongoing activities Tia Chucha’s sponsors an event known as the Celebrating Words Festival. This year it took place on May 18 at LA Mission College, a local two-year institution. The focus this year was centered on the battles taking place in Arizona, a new “culture-war” (to borrow the term that was popularized by conservative pundit Pat Buchannan) that continues to be waged by cultural conservatives against more socially liberal and progressive groups. As such, it is part of an impulse by groups such as the Republican Party to stoke fear among the national community, erecting straw-men that will build outrage and therefore energize their base groups. One of their targets has been undocumented immigrants, and local politicians in Arizona have built a national platform by demonizing them and by using overblown rhetoric.

 

Prominent among these figures are the governor of the state, Jan Brewer, and the sheriff of Maricopa County, Joseph Arpaio. Their advocacy, in conjunction with that of other politicians and groups in the state, has led to the passage of controversial bills such as the Arizona SB 1070, one that sought to implement new procedures to target suspected undocumented immigrants by engaging in what the Justice Department has determined just today (May 24) is a form of racial profiling. It has also lead Sheriff Arpaio to engage in creative tactics that serve more to create publicity for himself rather than to facilitate effective law enforcement. (Tactics such as requiring inmates to wear pink prison outfits, or at their worst, streamlining the procedures for deportation of suspected illegal immigrants.) The governor has followed course, and in a series of actions, has resisted such actions at President Obama's presidential order that Dream-act students (undocumented young people who have resided in the United States for several years) be allowed to register to gain special protected status from deportation.

 

The other side of this equation, of course, involves the effort to modify the public school curriculum in an effort to reshape curricula that was deemed contrary to the promotion of national unity, understood by these cultural groups as "Western Civilization", associated as it is with their conservative political agenda. This resulted, then, in an effort that had been ongoing for several years, one which sought to eliminate a wide range of Ethnic Studies programs. As asserted by then state superintendent of public instruction Tom Horne, these programs, which had been shown to address student needs for a more culturally-inconclusive curriculum that brought attention to a diverse range of issues and experiences, were deemed divisive and subversive. These ethnic studies programs had helped to improve student retention levels, in addition to teaching needed critical thinking skills for communities that were at risk. They included programs in Chicano, Native-American, Asian-American and African-American studies, but also gender studies, to name a few. Not only were these programs to be eliminated from the public school curricula (but not from university programs), but the works associated with these programs, encompassing such fundamental authors Rudy Acuña, Sherman Alexie, Howard Zinn and even Shakespeare (his work The Tempest appears on this list). To be clear, these books aren’t “banned”, they simply are not allowed in classrooms in the Tucson Unified School District of Arizona. Scholar Caroline Gerado, a participant at the conference, testified to having seen how books that must have cost the districts hundreds of thousands of dollars were removed wholesale from schools and discarded in dumpsters.

 

Like the legal statutes that were passed and defended by Arizona political figures, this educational policy was and is being resisted. It has served to energize a new wave of resistance for what may take the form of a new generational struggle, and it is being resisted by instructors who have committed to teaching these materials on sites away from public schools. (Giving rise to what we may humorously describe as "librotraficantes", as noted in Megan Feldman's article from 2012, located here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/19/arizona-ethnic-studies-ban-s-unintended-result-underground-libraries.html) In the meantime it brings up earnest soul-searching, especially in light of the fact that the politicians that trumpet these programs continue to enjoy large support from the electorate, with Sheriff Joseph Arpaio having been recently reelected. What is motivating these actions and how are they related to demographic trends? Why the effort to ban literature in order to enshrine what can only be viewed as a political program? What role do socially conservative groups such as the loosely-defined "Tea Party" movement play in these efforts, espousing as they do an agenda that is anti-regulatory as well as more extreme when it comes to border enforcement and the curtailing of civil liberties? On a more limited basis, is it the corollary to a new effort being waged to impose standardization in our public school systems? What are the fundamental psychological, political, economic and social impulses at play?

 

These were some of the questions that were addressed at today’s conference held in conjunction with the Celebrating Words festival sponsored by Tia Chucha’s. It is part of an attempt to understand not only the rationale behind these efforts, but to propose ways in which they can be resisted by culturally-conscious individuals who are aware of the threats that this form of censorship implies. (It is a form of censorship, after all, to compile a list of "subversive" texts to be eliminated from public school.) It is not only a battle similar to that waged in the 60s and 70s when the literary canon was being expanded to include new authors, works and new multicultural perspectives, but to one that is increasingly tied to new debates regarding the decline of the middle classes and the fundamental changes in our economy, as well as to new demographic pressures alluded to above. It is also a battle that is related to civil rights struggles as they pertain to other communities such as the anti-DOMA federal statues and the rights that are being sought by Gay, Lesbian and Transgender communities.

 

Moderating the panel was Professor Cintli Rodriguez, who teaches at the University of Tucson in Arizona and who has seen first-hand not only the efforts to impose these new policies, but who has been active in resisting them. The panel also included several scholars and authors, including Luis Rodriguez, Frank Mundo, Caroline Gerado, Rudy Acuña and Melinda Palacio. (Not pictured: Caroline Gerado)
 

 

(Prof. Cintli Rodriguez, Moderator)

(Luis Rodriguez, Author, Founder of Tia Chucha's)

 

(Melinda Palacio, Author)

(Prof. Rudy Acuña)

 

(Prof. Frank Mundo)

 

It was and is a subject that is very much at the forefront of concern for minority communities. The sponsors could well have dedicated several sessions to this topic, but given the time constraints, we could only touch on a few aspects of this multi-faceted problem. The moderator, Prof. Cintli Rodriguez, chose to open this one-hour discussion with the question: Why do these politicians and ideologues make such an earnest appeal to Western Civilization? Is it not an attempt to impose an us-against-them dichotomy?


The whole idea of preparing a list of banned books is one that would seem to be incompatible with the humanist values of Western Civilization, values that were forged in the crucible of struggle and revolution, as noted by Frank Mundo. (The latter wrote an article in an anthology published under the title Ban This!) I would add that many of these values are part of a process that dates back centuries, a movement that has witnessed the conjunction of rationality and tolerance, with a consequent expansion of the notion of citizenry, with all the responsibilities and rights accorded. If from ancient classical culture we inherited the notion of polis, the city-state with a citizenry and with a limited form of representative democracy, we also inherited the notion of the barbarian, a dichotomy that seems to play to the idea of affirming certain hierarchies. What seems to be at stake is the idea of who belongs to the official firmament of this nation, and who is allowed to define what is a citizen and what values are to be defended and upheld.
 

We continue to see the portrayal of “others” whose values, despite the ostensible relativism of Enlightenment philosophes such as Rene Montaigne, could continue to appeal to a vocabulary of caricature and vilification when applied to those with whom we disagree. (We see this more than ever in our current corrosive political climate.) The appeal to “rationalism” was one that used to serve as the basis for moderation, but nowadays, this “rationalism” is in no fundamental way different from other coercive ideological techniques and has become part of an institutional mechanism that is bent on preserving itself and defending the interests of those who are best able to take advantage of these institutions, even at the sake of imperiling the notion of democracy (that which is in the public interest). I am talking, of course, of changes such as those evident in our economy, in the way in which great divides are becoming apparent, and in which corporate interest intersect with those of other narrow interests to divide this country. 
 

Prof. Cintli Rodriguez shared with us his conception of this new dichotomy, one that he applies uniquely to the circumstances that relate to Hispanic immigration. While others offered their interpretation that economic institutions are becoming more and more unequal and coercive, with the continued loss of our traditional manufacturing base and the growing influence of what may be termed “corporate” culture (the expansion of power held by elites who dominate large economic units), a few brought up the way in which we seem to be engaged in a new generational transformation. It is true, minority communities have grown tremendously in the last few decades while the middle class has been shrinking. Arizona’s Hispanic population currently amounts to approximately one third of the total, and the forecasts for growth indicate that this state will soon join the ranks of other states such as California, New Mexico, and Texas as those having "majority-minority" populations.
 

To reiterate, Texas as well as California are both termed as “Majority Minority” states. This means that the Anglo-American portion of the population (yes, I know, the term "Anglo" can be misleading since it tends to suggest ancestry exclusive to Great Britain and specifically England, but it is a term commonly used to designate European ancestry in these regions), as self-identified in the US Census, forms less than 50% of the state population. Other states in the Southwest are rapidly heading in that direction as well. Whether this will factor into a fundamental political realignment remains to be seen. It may mean that a perennial “red” state (one that traditionally is known for social and economic conservatism and routinely votes for Republican candidates) such as Texas may eventually become a “blue” state, but this is a transformation that is still in the works. I am much less optimistic that this will happen, because not only do movements and ideologies have a way of metamorphosing to form new coalitions, but minority communities should not be perceived as being monolithic in their political proclivities. I have read studies that indicate that the Hispanic community may very much be receptive to a socially-conservative agenda, if only the Republican Party would stop demonizing them.
 

But what struck me was the idea developed by Prof. Rodriguez that had to do with overturning the basis of what we have termed as “nativism” on the part of conservative sectors who feel imperiled by immigrants and by the changes that are being wrought to the social fabric. There is the suggestion, after all, that there is a “native” culture, that which was created through generations of assimilation of European immigrants, that is under siege, and one hears it expressed in the phrase that is popular among members of the Tea Party: “I don’t recognize my country anymore”. This idea of nativism, of course, has never been as settled as they would like to believe, and it was always a point of contention among the many groups who came to coexist in this country. We may think, for example, of the way each succeeding wave of immigrants was greeted by those that had preceded them, of how the newcomers were deemed fundamentally “alien”, and of how groups such as the Irish as well as Eastern European Jews, to name a few examples, met with hostility as well as active discrimination. And yet, these groups have all left their marks, through a period of struggle in which they and many other groups sought to storm the bastions of power that were closed to them.
 

The idea of nativism takes a curious term if we approach it, of course, not only from a historical perspective (who came first, who displaced which group), but also, from the idea of indigenous identity. This is, of course, a complex question, especially as it pertains to Latin Americans who by and large are mestizos, but who represent a diverse and heterogeneous amalgamation of different cultures. The “indigenous”, as developed by Prof. Rodriguez, is the idea of a community that is tied specifically to Indian (native) cultures, those that are themselves isolated in their countries of origin and denigrated throughout the continent. It is unfortunate but true that indigenous country is officially celebrated in national myths but unofficially denigrated in almost all countries of this continent, ranging from North to South America. And yet these communities and their values have survived, and we may see them as alternatives that help to explain not only why we see the movement of peoples throughout the world, by why these movements represent alternatives for new communal and civic identity that are precisely transnational, factors that may help to explain why they are so resisted by conservative sectors in the United States.
 
 
The “indigenous” are those who have a different perspective of time, who suffer overwhelmingly from elevated rates of poverty, who have been marginalized and excluded for hundreds of years, and who have seen themselves displaced economically, socially and politically. (Prof. Rodriguez is of course drawing a parallel with the experiences of communities in the United States, such as the Chicano community, elaborating a new language of self-definition.) And yet the cultural ethos of these communities has survived, and what he proposes is a new idea of nativism, one that is grounded on more sustainable economic, political and cultural practices that are predicated, fundamentally, on a new communitarian ideal. It shouldn't be an "us" against "them" dichotomy, and what he proposed to do was overturn the notion of what is native, to address head-on the cry of politically conservative sectors who rail against foreigners, who see a continual threat from the south, who don't wish to recognize other community voices that wish to organize even as they themselves organize in their own movements.
 

It is more hopeful way in which to direct this discussion regarding the banning of books and the segregation of communities that is ostensibly based on the desire to assimilate them to an "official" ideology. The economy is becoming more and more predatory, and we see a shrinking of the middle classes, as well as fewer and fewer opportunities for the working classes and more resistance to recognizing their social and community goals, but the whole notion of conservative agitation is one that is predicated on divisiveness and confrontation. The author Luis Rodriguez noted this as well, commenting as he did on the way this culture of disenfranchisement has led to social pathologies that are exported to the rest of the world, as has happened, for example, with the export of gang culture from the United States to the countries of Central America. These divisions are predicated on fear, but they also continue to stoke this misapprehension and feeling of dread, of values that are supposedly under attack, misdirecting attention from the real processes at work in our societies, and the way in which the post-industrial economy and the globalist mindset of transnational capitalism erodes the practice of democracy. 
 
 
While hard-working Mixtecos and Zapotecos and Triquis and other representatives of Indian cultures from the south are harassed and detained, forcefully consumed by the penal culture of the United States that is exported to the rest of the world, we see that their passage is in a very real way motivated by new economic realities, by the transformation of a worldwide economy that is predicated precisely on the circulation of labor. The stable and millennial lifestyle and ethos of these traditional cultures is under real threat in a way that is not recognized by anti-immigrant groups in the United States such as the Minutemen who don't see further than their own border, and who don't acknowledge the way in which multinational companies create the conditions for these migrations, absorbing workers and transforming them into a subclass. The socially conservative groups behind initiatives such as the banning of ethnic studies programs thus are waging a futile battle, because they are addressing not the causes of any perceived problems (the growth of subclasses of marginalized and exploited peoples who they see as having "values" different than their own), but only the symptoms of a more predatory economy that is precisely predicated on their message of anti-regulation, pro-business values. It is a classic case of the left hand unable to see what the right hand is doing.

 

(Danza Temachtia Quetzalcoatl)

 

With regards to the scope of a policy of creating lists of banned books, the panelists talked of a chilling effect. It isn’t that the more venerable works will become unavailable; they won’t. Students will still have access through other venues to books such as Louis Rodriguez’s book Always Running, or to Shakespeare’s The Tempest, or to Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street. What happens, however, is that new authors will find themselves in a climate that is less receptive to their works, because they will not benefit from networks of distribution and promotion that previous authors have enjoyed.  Author Melinda Palacio shared an example of this while discussing the reception of her novel Ocotillo Dreams. Before the statute banning ethnic studies curricula, she related how she had been receiving numerous inquiries about her works, as well as invitations to present them in various universities as well as book stores. Now, she was no longer fielding these inquiries, and instead, found a certain reluctance and well as hesitation on the part of book store proprietors who were now concerned about how her work would play in the altered cultural dynamic of conservative agitation against multiculturalism. A culture that sanctions the creation of a list of banned books is one that has submitted to the tool of fear, and is thus consequently robbed of a certain amount of dynamism, a certain capacity to question and debate new perspectives.

 

It is a frightening concept, and before attending this debate, I had considered the question of subversive literature and the role that is plays in marginalizing and controlling public discourse. It may be that, as occurred with Alexander Solzynitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, there will arise a culture of Samizdat literature (or librotraficantes, using the term alluded to above), where banned books are circulated underground. This will, of course, ironically bolster the value of these books, investing them with a degree of symbolic power that, as with the case with the literature that circulated in the former Eastern Bloc countries, proved counterproductive to the agents that sought to implement the ban. But it is also the case that this impulse is one that is grounded on what can be viewed as a mirage. The impulse to ban books is of course inherently counterproductive, but it is also a part of a tactical scheme that is manipulative, for these restrictions reinforce the perception of dichotomies that will continue to operate well into the future. While in ordinary life we may well come to recognize certain communalities, and to realize that our economic institutions are becoming more inherently unequal and oppressive, to draw attention to these “culture wars” is to create battles that sidetrack us from these fundamental questions of how the system of capitalism is fundamentally broken. If working class Anglo-Americans can’t reach common ground with working class Chicanos or working class African Americans, because other indexes of division are magnified or fundamentally manufactured, then the real basis for any common struggle predicated on mutual recognition and joint action remains an elusive concept.

 

Banning ethnic studies and creating these ridiculous lists of banned books all in the name of safeguarding a national consensus that seems increasingly imperiled by “others” (“I don’t recognize my country anymore”) only serves to make the possibility of achieving true consciousness about the real dimensions that much harder to attain. The fear of ethnic struggles is, of course, part of a wider struggle. It still amounts to a familiar battle between the haves and the have-nots. One that is being hotly contested not only in Arizona but worldwide, and which was effectively wielded as part of the discourse of fear and security as part of a “War on Terrorism” by the prior Republican administration, institutionalized as a destructive foreign policy and as a surviving public surveillance initiative that is breathtaking in its scope because it is so intrusive.

 

The stories will not disappear. If they don’t come out in books, they will be preserved in oral narratives, in songs, or in so many of our other cultural manifestations. The solution, of course, as shared with us by Prof. Rodriguez as he related to us the way in which protestors have been challenging these statutes in the many districts in Arizona, and as emphasized as well by Prof. Acuña who related to us his experiences with attempts to delegitimize his work and to classify it as unsuitable or suspect (he used to publish children’s books before a directive circulated that claimed that his works were unsuitable for that group, prompting him to switch to writing academic texts in 1970), is to stop being afraid. They can't arrest all of us, can they?

 

 

(Volunteers and Coordinators of the Festival)

 

(Volunteers and Coordinators of the Festival)

 

OGRomero © 2013
(Copyrighted by OGRomero, 2013)

LIST OF 'BANNED' BOOKS FOR THE TUCSON UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT

(Page 1)

 

 

 

(Page 2)

 

 

Portrait of small town (beginning of a story)

Sometimes, when he

 

Dust and Transfiguration (A Visit with Eloy Torrez)

Dust and Transfiguration (A Visit with Eloy Torrez)

 

 

Spirituality takes many forms. At the deepest level, rather than relate it to a specific theology or dogma, I can’t help but separate it from an institutional basis and view it instead as a search for coherence and meaning. It is encompassing and organic, because it is not part of the whole, it is precisely a sense of wholeness. I’m not sure if there is something that other writers from a more skeptical bent would call a “God Gene”, but I think that on a deep level we are programed to look for patterns and to make associations, to stitch together, as it were, a tapestry of the world we encounter. Perhaps it is also an aesthetic notion, a comforting sense of beauty that underlies the world and allows us to engage our storytelling faculty.

 

It is thus that I can perhaps tie my spirituality to the pathways that my life has taken. Having taken what I perceive to be many mistaken turns, and filled with regret as I am, I still draw comfort from a feeling of spirituality, one that interprets these explorations as precisely those that I needed to make in order to encompass a greater whole. These considerations came to the fore during my conversation today with artist Eloy Torrez.
 

Eloy is a Chicano artist who works within the general style that can be characterized as realist. He has painted several famous murals throughout Los Angeles, works that have achieved iconic status. Perhaps the most famous is the mural that depicts actor Anthony Quinn with arms upraised, a gesture that can’t help but be perceived as enigmatic. Is it an embrace, a gesture of reconciliation, a recapitulation of a celebratory dance such as that which conferred so much fame to him in his role as Zorba the Greek, or a crucifiction? We can’t help but infuse it with all manner of symbolic meaning, and the fact that it is located in a nondescript corner of downtown Los Angeles, away from the main avenues, and advertising as it does a retail establishment that was a mainstay of East LA, means that it is also in a way a private and secluded domain, a destination for pilgrims. The dreams it portrays are larger than life, speaking of grandeur and dignity and uplift, and this can’t help but be considered another instance of spirituality at play.

 

But Eloy has also created paintings that are smaller in scale, more intimate in tone and style, and ones that can characterized as more personal journeys. I haven’t viewed the full range of works by the artist, but was able to visit his studio and view a selection, and I was frequently struck by the way in which multiple figures, even in gatherings with many other individuals present, seem so isolated, each dramatizing their own private spectacle. It is at times as if they are ghosts, each invisible to the other, for are ghosts not the symbolic representation of unresolved conflicts, of traumas that have yet to be purged, or symbols of transcendence? The ghost is both of this world and not of this world.

 

The allusion to ghosts is no accident. Despite the fact that the western mythology and, in particular, of that variant associated with Los Angeles in which past identities can be transcended and image rules supreme, is viewed as part of an apparatus whereby newcomers can aspire to be purged of their inner demons. It is the place where people give up the ghost, so to speak, in order to be symbolically reborn, and assume a new identity. The overpowering sunlight bleaches away our darker demons, or at least temporarily submerges them, all in the interest of the dream that obsesses so many of us, this conjunction of economic refugees and aspiring middle classes, those who would seek to escape the stifling realities of social and ideological systems that seem so much more constraining. The West and, California in particular, is a religion in and of itself.

 

I was struck by the comment made by Eloy about his great interest in the “Dark Ages”. This is the appellation that has been given, traditionally, to the Middle Ages in Europe, and which was formulated by the philosophes as a way to dismiss an entire epoch in favor of their own cultural project, that of the Enlightenment. It is an age that is taken to commence with the sacking of Rome and end with the beginning of the Renaissance in 14^th or 15^thcentury Italy, and as Eloy expressed to me, as a child he used to take this appellation literally. This was influenced by his upbringing in the traditional brand of Catholicism that is a mainstay among Latinos, one that is characterized by a heavy emphasis on literalism.

 

The “Dark Ages”, in Eloy’s imagination, were an age in which, perhaps, the bright rays of the sun were somehow blocked out and, instead, the people of that age lived in a perpetual twilight. What a far cry from the Los Angeles of the 20^th century! I could imagine it almost as a type of purgatory, but one that, of course, has nothing to do with the experience of the people during that period, for it was a conceit, but one that fit in neatly into Catholic theology from the point of view of a child. It is also, of course, a relative term, for those of us who were able to study the splendors of other civilizations, and in a European context, the dream that was Moorish Spain.

 

Nonetheless, I am struck by this title, and by the way in which we could perhaps relate it to the portraits of the people in his works. Eloy  was kind enough to pull out several panels of a large work that he has completed, and that gives us a panorama of Los Angeles in the modern age. In this work there is a sense of turmoil and of disjuncture, for the elements of which this work is made up reveal fascinating contrasts, alluding as they do to different social layers and to what we can almost call a carnival atmosphere, another ritual in which revelers assume whimsical identities and roles in eternal narratives.

 

For one thing, it is notable that so many of the individuals in this work seem to inhabit private realms.  Rarely do the people seem to acknowledge each other, while they seem fully cognizant of the voyeurs or the ghosts, so to speak, who inhabit this terrain, by which I am referring to the viewers. It is as if we were immersed in this private landscape, viewing them in static poses, capturing them whether they are looking at us or not. A few are looking off to the side, and others are just as compelling for their own private ecstasies, those that clench their eyes tightly closed, in the way that we all seem to inhabit a more ghostly realm, with people who take little note of their surroundings as they walk along the streets texting intently, paying no attention to the ghosts who surround them.

 

I return over and over to the idea of ecstasy, and how so often it seems to involve a private experience, where even sex is merely a mechanical prelude. How else to read the pose of the young man who sways backward, a pose that is so reminiscent of that of Anthony Quinn in the famous Victor Clothing mural, almost as if he had been dizzied by the swirling patterns at his feet? Is he mourning, is he drunk, is he speechless, and is he destined inevitably to fall?

 

 

This is not the case with all of Eloy’s paintings, but what is evident to me is how lonely many of these figures are. They are contorted, they seem to lean over, to squirm, and at times, to balance precariously, as does the young woman of his panoramic series of panels does, in his vintage scene of Los Angeles as envisioned as a private festival. Nero is fiddling (or playing the flute, the accordion and the guitar) while Rome (or in this case, the Hollywood hills) is burning.

 

 

There is an element of humor nonetheless evident in his work, but it is the feeling that is pervaded at times by the foreboding that I associate with the image of the Dark Ages, and of social conflicts that were unresolved, conflicts that erupt over and over in our modern age, and the fires, of course, resonate for me as a former Angelino with the experience of having living through the Rodney King riots of 1992, those momentous few days of civil despair when it seems as if our city was coming apart at the seams. We all carry around our ghosts, but how can we identify and exorcise them? The private vocabulary that I saw being elaborated is one that resides in recurring motifs that point to a hidden rhythm, to a music that we all seem to hear, even if different for each and every one of us. The poses and expressions and symbolic language, with the juxtaposition of revelry and intoxication as well as lonely and crouching figures, can be considered, in an essential way, as metaphors of distance, of space telescoped into images of loneliness, rendered all the more dramatic for being situated in urban social settings filled as they are with people.

 

As a way of illustrating this, I could make reference to the concept of personal space. During our meeting today, the three of us ventured out to a local pizza place to enjoy a meal. It was a crowded restaurant, filled with bohemian types who have increasingly reclaimed downtown Los Angeles and are in the process of transforming once again the social landscape. This area abounds in murals, but old warehouses as well as historic buildings, and I was struck by all the historical layers in evidence, all within a few short blocks of the gleaming skyscapers (the modern day glass cathedrals) of the city center. We couldn’t find a place to sit down, and we opted instead to take our food to Eloy’s studio, missing out as we did on the spectacle of people watching.

 

Well, as we were preparing to leave, my friend Roberto approached a table that was occupied by two young women enjoying their pizza slices and extended his arm over their plates, pointing to the container of oregano and asking if they could pass it over to him, for he needed to pour some into his napkin to take back with him to the studio. The two women were quite gracious, but I couldn’t help but feel horrified at this intrusion, reflecting as I did that we have quite different conceptions of private space, and that not only had he interrupted them, but he also reached around them and over their food as he took his share of spices. I was outraged, and this prompted Eloy to reflect, in the age of modern technology where we are constantly bombarded by invisible electromagnetic signals so necessary for cellphone and WiFi coverage, the very thought of private space is a problematic concept. Perhaps I am old-fashioned in that way. Privacy is no longer a matter of proximity, it is a state of mind, and despite the way in which people broadcast their most inane observations on mediums such as Twitter, we are all, perhaps, lonelier than we have ever been.

 

I was struck by these observations, and couldn’t help but apply them to the themes that were reflected in several of his works that we were subsequently to review in his studio. In one work we have a scene with two individuals, both naked, a man and a woman, lying on different sides of the same bed in what would seem to be a pose of postcoital despair. They possibly may or may not have been able to consummate a sexual act, but their poses reveal a certain element of despair, two people curled up separately, gazing at us directly, imploring us possibly to arbitrate a dispute. Eloy titled this work, “She said, He said”.

 

And in another project that he described to me, he elaborated on the theme of the bridge, referring as he did to his recent experiences in Venice, Italy (and not Venice, California!), where he had spent a few months and where he was noting how people had no qualms about venturing out and sharing a close space, almost rubbing against each other as they passed in different directions, but studiously refusing to interact with each other, despite all the jostling. It was another instance of ghosts who float by one another, impervious to contact, deeply esconced in their own interiority.

 

For some reason, the idea of the bridge couldn’t help but connect with me on another level, for I couldn’t help but relate it to the experience of migration, with the idea of crowds of people who traverse other ghostly realms such as the searingly hot deserts that separate Mexico and the United States, or other passageways. It is part of the overall myth that we all share, the idea of the private journey, and the hope for deliverance on the other end. Our passageways are much more physically taxing, for we aren’t talking about tourists walking across a bridge in an old European society, but of a transition between worlds, having to surmount immense obstacles. I couldn’t help thinking of my migrant forebearers, and we all have such forebearers, no matter how settled we may consider ourselves.

 

As I spoke to Eloy about his upbringing in New Mexico and the path he took as a child to Barstow, that dry city in the eastern deserts of California, and reflected on the journeys of so many other groups who came to this region, I couldn’t help think of the pilgrims who undertake long and painful journeys to visit sites of religious significance, the peregrinos who crawl on their knees to visit the Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City, wearing crowns of thorns, or those who made pilgrimages of a different sort, to the fields of central and northern California, suffering as well the impalement of thorns as they groomed the virgin fruit of the agricultural fields. One day, one day, I will have to sing the song of the Mexican Ulises, men such as my grandfather, the bracero who came to pluck the golden apples (and plums and oranges and lemons) of the vast agricultural fields of California, men who were stealthy and stoic but who nonetheless pined desperately for the voyage of return.

 

Thus, I couldn’t avoid considerations of movement as I talked to Eloy and considered his works that were characterized by private spaces. I think that our immigrant forebearers had a deep spirituality that became all the more essential because they led lives of primitive asceticism, out in those hot fields, with abusive managers and exploitative conditions that were portrayed so convincingly in works such as Tomás Rivera’s novel Y no se lo tragó la tierra. But it was a literal journey that forms the springboard for our metaphorical search, the search of their descendants, Chicanos such as myself who are continuing a journey that hasn’t been completed. I’m not sure if these reflections can be compared with the private apotheosis of individuals who are portrayed in the works of Eloy Torres, or if it is part of a social movement and consciousness.

 

And yet there is something within me that resists this apotheosis. There is something that insists that it is not about reaching a destination, because concluding such a journey would somehow lead to a paucity of spirit. Perhaps that is how I can explain what I think obsesses Eloy and myself, for we have both traversed different roads, he having begun his journey in the small pueblitos of New Mexico, me in the small and nondescript rural community of Corona, California, but both of us having been seemingly chased (or drawn?) by our inner ghosts. Two Chicano Hamlets, impelled by the ghosts of our forefathers to redeem them.

 

The symbol of the road is one that has richly contributed to our ideological landscape, and to the illusion that we have, perhaps, that we are as coherent both as individuals or as communities as we would like to believe. Am I the same person I was thirty years ago? In some ways yes, but in other ways, of course not. I think I have left parts of myself wherever I have been, sloughing off bits and pieces, but I have also picked up others. And I perceive in this a source of turmoil and conflict as well as wonder. The struggle lies in continuing to try to resolve these questions.

 

There is no black and white, no absolute dichotomies, “Dark Age” and no “Day in the Sun”, no this-side-of-the-bridge and that-side-of-the-bridge. It is all grey, like the dust devils sweeping across the desert in the afternoon light.

 

 

 

OGRomero (c) 2013

Copyright OGRomero, 2013

 

 

 

Of Duality, Repression and Hidden Morality:

 

Of Duality, Repression and Hidden Morality: