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CSRC Newsletter - April 2015

Volume 13, Number 7

Director’s Message

Yesterday we celebrated César Chávez Day. This month we'll celebrate Dolores Huerta's eighty-fifth birthday. To say that Dolores continues the civil rights and labor movement that she and Chávez helped launched fifty years ago is to understate the facts. Dolores is tireless in her leadership, mentoring, and advocacy, but she is not an unapproachable icon of social justice. She is, rather, a deeply humane and socially committed person. I have had the pleasure of meeting her numerous times over the years. We first met shortly after I became director of the CSRC. She was then a UC Regent, filling out another's term. In that brief opportunity—only six months—she made diversity a priority and addressed issues of equity for community college transfer students. Dolores has dedicated her life to fighting the good fight, but fighting is not the end, in and of itself. That would be dancing. Indeed, I have been on the dance floor when she has put her fellow dancers to shame. So, help her continue her necessary work and celebrate her birthday in the way she most loves: by taking part in or supporting the Dolores Huerta 85th Birthday Dance-a-Thon. You won’t be able to keep up with her, but you can try! 

Chon A. Noriega
Director and Professor
 

News

Spotlight on Archival Research
UCLA alumnae research CSRC collections for mariachi exhibition
UCLA graduates Mary Alfaro and Julia Fernandez are curatorial consultants for an upcoming exhibition titled Corazon de la Comunidad: Mariachi in Los Angeles. The exhibition, which will open in May at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes in downtown Los Angeles, will examine how mariachi music and the musicians themselves have become symbols of Mexican and Mexican American identity and culture. Audiences will be invited to explore the history of mariachi in Los Angeles: what it means to the Mexican American community, and what it means to the viewer. In preparation for the exhibition, Alfaro and Fernandez conducted research at the CSRC and selected for inclusion photographs from the La Raza Photograph Collection, albums from the Robert Legorreta “Cyclona” Collection, and cancionero books from the Anthony Beltramo Collection.
 
Alfaro received her B.A. in music education in 2009 and her M.A. in Latin American studies in 2014; Fernandez received her B.A. in art history in 2013 and is pursuing a Ph.D. in art history, theory and criticism at UC San Diego. Alfaro is a mariachi musician; during her undergraduate years she helped revive the UCLA mariachi group and as a graduate student was involved with Mariachi de Uclatlán. Fernandez was the first student to curate a CSRC Library exhibition, Chican@s (re)Imagining Zapata, which examined the iconography of Emiliano Zapata in prints, posters, and newspapers produced from the 1940s through 2011. All of the works were selected from CSRC collections.  
 
CSRC wins NEH grant for archival project
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded a $200,000 grant to the CSRC to help the center arrange, describe, and digitize seven archival collections of newspapers, magazines, personal papers, correspondence, photographs, and other materials as part of a three-year project titled “Providing Access to Mexican American Social History in Los Angeles, 1960s and 1970s.” The seven collections are La Raza Newspaper and Magazine Records, Sal Castro Papers, Moctesuma Esparza Papers, Luis Garza Papers, Rosalio Muñoz Papers, David Sanchez Papers, and Esteban Torres Papers.
 
The grant is the largest of eleven made to institutions in Southern California. Nationwide, the NEH distributed a total of $22.8 million to 232 humanities projects in this second round of awards for the current fiscal year. The official press release from the NEH can be found here. For media coverage on the CSRC award, see In the News, below.
 
IAC vice provost discusses racism on college campuses
In the wake of a widely reported incident of racist behavior by members of a University of Oklahoma fraternity, Belinda Tucker, vice provost of the UCLA Institute of American Cultures, was interviewed on KPCC’s program Take Two. Tucker discussed racism and intolerance on college campuses and how to combat them. The show aired March 11 and can be heard here.
 
Haro gives lecture at Chicano Youth Leadership Conference
CSRC assistant director emeritus and Latino Education Project coordinator Carlos M. Haro spoke at this year’s Chicano Youth Leadership Conference (CYLC) at Camp Hess Kramer in Malibu, March 6–8. Haro was joined by Nadine Bermudez, a professor of Chicana/o studies at East Los Angeles College. Haro and Bermudez talked about the 1947 Mendez v. Westminster school desegregation case. Their presentation underscored the fact that community mobilization in the 1940s against the segregation of Mexican students is part of long history of community action for justice, equity and fairness. The conference was founded in 1963 by the late education leader Sal Castro to encourage Chicana/o and other minority students in LAUSD high schools to demand educational equality. The recent donation of the Sal Castro Collection to the CSRC expands the center’s archival materials on Castro, the 1968 Blowouts, and the CYLC.
 
Haro interviewed for Sal Castro documentary
Carlos M. Haro was interviewed by student leaders of VOICE (Victory Over Ignorance through Culture and Education), a small learning community on the campus of Lincoln High School in East Los Angeles, on March 20. These students are creating a documentary about Sal Castro and the 1968 Chicana/o student walkouts. In preparation for Haro’s visit, they viewed an interview of Castro conducted by Haro in 2004. Haro is a CSRC assistant director emeritus and the coordinator of CSRC’s Latino Education Project.
 
CSRC cosponsors Working Group on Transnational Immigrant Youth Movement
The CSRC is cosponsoring a working group funded by the Inter-University Program for Latino Research (IUPLR) that will support and analyze the process of network building and organizing among transnational youth activists. Leisy Abrego, assistant professor of Chicana and Chicano studies at UCLA, is one six researchers that will study how a group of transnational youth activists are preparing for “De Aquí y de Allá,” a conference to be held in Mexico City in July 2015. Abrego and her colleagues will determine how the activists created an agenda, developed a regional network, and launched a multiyear organizing process. The conference and subsequent publications (a report and journal article) will contribute to the field of migration, specifically to literature on transnational advocacy and youth activism. In addition to the CSRC, the sponsors of the working group are the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago, and the UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies.
 
New videos on CSRC YouTube
 
  • Author Rolando Hinojosa in Conversation with UCLA Professor Héctor Calderón (February 10, 2015) (video). The acclaimed Texas writer visited Calderón’s winter quarter seminar (Chicana/o Studies M247/Spanish 247). Rolando Hinojosa is the Ellen Clayton Garwood Centennial Professor in English at the University of Texas, Austin.
  • Author Ron Arias in Conversation with UCLA Professor Héctor Calderón. (January 29, 2015) (video). The author of The Road to Tamazunchale (Bilingual Press, 1987), among other works, visited Calderón’s winter quarter class (Spanish 155).

CSRC in the News

“Institutional Memory”
Leobardo Estrada, associate professor of urban planning and CSRC faculty associate, was featured in a story in UCLA Magazine about the campus experiences of longtime UCLA professors.
UCLA Magazine, April 1, 2015 (PDF)
 
“NEH Funds LACMA Show on Sri Lanka, Ken Burns Film on Vietnam War”
The Los Angeles Times announced this year’s NEH grant winners, including the CSRC, which received the largest grant awarded to a Southern California institution.
Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2015 (PDF)
 
“Chicano Studies Research Center Gets $200,000 NEH Grant”
UCLA Newsroom posted a feature story on the Faculty Bulletin Board announcing the CSRC’s receipt of an NEH grant for a three-year archival project that focuses on Mexican Americans in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s.
UCLA Newsroom, March 25, 2015 (PDF)
 
“Los Tigres del Norte Are Making Gay Norteño History”
CSRC director Chon A. Noriega was interviewed for a story about Los Tigres del Norte, the San Jose–based norteño group, and the cultural significance of one of the band’s new songs, “Era Diferente,” about a lesbian teenager who falls in love with her best friend.
The Advocate, March 21, 2015 (PDF)
 
“How Mexico Learned to Polka”
In celebration of Flaco Jimenez’s seventy-sixth birthday, Chris Strachwitz, founder of Arhoolie Records and the Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings (online at UCLA), was interviewed regarding the German influence on Mexican and Mexican American music. The story can be heard here.
NPR Morning Edition, March 11, 2015 (PDF)
 
Alex Ortega Named NPR “Source of the Week”
CSRC associate director Alex Ortega, professor of health policy and psychiatry and biobehavioral science, was named “Source of the Week” by National Public Radio.
Source of the Week (Twitter feed), March 9, 2015 (PDF)
 

Events

Screening: Rebel: Loreta Velazquez, Civil War Soldier and Spy
Thursday, April 2, 5:00–7:30 p.m.
CSRC Library–144 Haines Hall
The story of Loreta Velazquez is one of the Civil War’s most gripping tales. Velazquez, who disguised herself as a man and joined the Confederate army, described her adventures as a soldier and a spy in a memoire written a decade after the war ended. The book presented an account of the war that fell far outside official narratives, and it was quickly challenged as a fantasy. Whether her story is mainly fact or mainly fiction, Velazquez was an extraordinary woman who broke social, gender, and ethnic boundaries. Please join us at the CSRC for a UCLA premiere screening of this award-winning documentary about a woman, a myth, and the politics of national memory. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with María Agui Carter, who wrote, directed, and produced the film, and Maylei Blackwell, associate professor of Chicana/o studies and gender studies at UCLA. A reception will follow the screening and Q&A. This event is organized by the CSRC and cosponsored by the UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies, the UCLA Division of Humanities, the UCLA Latin American Institute, the UCLA Department of Gender Studies, and Melnitz Movies.
 
Panel: Oral History and the Chicano Movement
Wednesday, April 8, 3:00–5:00 p.m.
CSRC Library–144 Haines Hall
In celebration of his forthcoming publication, The Chicano Generation: Testimonios of the Movement (UC Press, 2015), Mario García, professor of Chicana and Chicano studies at UC Santa Barbara, will join other Chicana/o studies scholars in a roundtable discussion of the intersections of memory and testimony in the writing of history. Although the history of the Chicano movement is now well documented, far less is known about its impact on individuals—the micro-dimensions of the movimiento. Panelists will talk about the role of oral history and consider how, why, and for whom the history of the Chicano movement is developed. Joining García will be Ernesto Chávez, associate professor of history at UT El Paso and the IAC CSRC visiting researcher for 2014-15, and Virginia Espino, program coordinator for Latina and Latino history at the UCLA Center for Oral History Research. Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director, will serve as moderator.
 
Exhibition reception: Young Workers Rising
Thursday, April 9, 12:00–2:00 p.m.
CSRC Library–144 Haines Hall
Join us for a reception marking the opening of Young Workers Rising: Demonstrating a Movement for Better Wages, a CSRC library exhibition curated by senior undergraduate student Alfredo Alvarez. For more information about the exhibition see Library, below.
 
Conference: Labor, Entertainment, and Sports: An Intersectional and Interdisciplinary Inquiry
Friday–Saturday, April 17–18
Crowne Plaza Beverly Hills Hotel, 1150 S. Beverly Dr., Los Angeles, 90035
The UCLA Institute for Research and Employment presents the conference “Labor, Entertainment, and Sports: An Intersectional and Interdisciplinary Inquiry.” The objective of the conference is to help build intellectual bridges between scholars who are taking critical and intersectional approaches to labor, organized labor, and industry professionals and practitioners. For more information visit the IRLE website. The CSRC is a cosponsor of this event.
 
UCLA Forum to Reclaim Diversity
Thursday, April 23, 3:00–8:00 p.m. 
UCLA Pauley Pavilion
This forum is a response to recent racist and sexist incidents at UCLA and their underlying causes. These problems cut across community lines and campus spaces, requiring creative and contextual solutions. The event will give concerned students, staff, faculty, and alumni opportunities in a workshop setting to collaborate in generating meaningful solutions. For more information about faculty, staff, or alumni participation, contact Grace Hong at gracehongucla@gmail.com; for student, staff, or alumni participation, contact Kareem Elzein at kareemelzein@gmail.com. The event is organized by the UCLA Coalition Against Structural Inequality (CASI) and cosponsored by the CSRC.
 
Panel: When Crime Fiction Matters: A Transborder Dialogue with Lucha Corpi, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, and Patricia Valladares
Wednesday, April 29, 2:00–5:00 p.m.
CSRC Library–144 Haines Hall
In the last twenty years, noir feminist narratives have had a steady ascent into the Latin American and U.S. Latina/o literary scene. Chicana writers Lucha Corpi, born in Veracruz, México, and Alicia Gaspar de Alba, from El Paso, are a part of a small group of U.S. Latina writers who have contributed to the noir-crime fiction genre. Mexico City-native Patricia Valladares, whose debut novel Tan frío como el infierno (2014) picks up the literary conversation on social, political, and economic issues currently confronted by twenty-first century women from Mexico City to Palestine. Each writer in her own way combines activism with art. This panel will bring these three noir feminist authors together for the first time for a transborder dialogue to reflect on the origins and the impact of their written work and their binational activism in an era where noir-crime fiction provides an everyday mirror to nota roja realities lived by women in Mexico and the United States. Co-curated by Sandra Ruiz, visiting lecturer in Chicana/o studies and Spanish & Portuguese, and Héctor Calderón, professor in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese. This event is cosponsored by the UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies, the Department of Spanish & Portuguese, the Center for the Study of Women, and the CSRC.
 
Screening: Selected clips from Please, Don’t Bury Me Alive! with director Efraín Gutiérrez in conversation with CSRC director Chon A. Noriega
Thursday, April 30, 12:00–1:30 p.m.
Vincent Price Art Museum, East Los Angeles College, 1301 Avenida Cesar Chavez, Monterey Park, 91754
The CSRC, in collaboration with the Chicano Studies Department at East Los Angeles College and Vincent Price Art Museum, presents a discussion of Please, Don’t Bury Me Alive!/Por Favor, No Me Entierren Vivo!, considered the first Chicano feature film. The film was recently inducted into the Library of Congress National Film Registry. Meet the filmmaker, Efraín Gutiérrez, who will speak about the film with CSRC director Chon A. Noriega, who in the late 1990s recovered the film and had it restored and preserved. The discussion will feature film clips and a Q&A.
 
All CSRC events are free and do not require an RSVP unless otherwise noted. Programs are subject to change. For the most current information, visit the Events page on the CSRC website.
 

CSRC Library

New library exhibition: Young Workers Rising
Young Workers Rising: Demonstrating a Movement for Better Wages, the new exhibition at the CSRC Library, features photographs that focus on labor organizing among young workers in Los Angeles’s retail and fast-food industries. Through workers’ associations such as “Fight for $15” and “Our Walmart,” they are demanding higher wages and better working conditions. The exhibition captures the growth of this social movement through photographs of demonstrations and arrests as well as posters that reflect previous generations’ worker activism. Also represented in the show are memes that have served as a powerful tool of communication.
 
Young Workers Rising is curated by senior undergraduate student Alfredo Alvarez, a political science major with a concentration in American politics and a minor in labor and workplace studies. Paul Von Blum, senior lecturer in African American studies and communication studies, is Alvarez’s faculty mentor for this exhibition. Alvarez transferred to UCLA from South Western Community College in Chula Vista, California. The exhibition is free and open to the public during regular library hours, Monday–Friday, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. An opening reception will take place Thursday, April 9, 12:00–2:00 p.m. See Events, above.
 
To learn more about CSRC collections and projects, please email your queries to the CSRC librarian, Lizette Guerra, at lguerra@chicano.ucla.edu.
 

CSRC Press

New collection of Goldman essays
Shifra M. Goldman was a groundbreaking art historian who pioneered the study of Chicano art. This illustrated collection of her essays, Tradition and Transformation: Chicana/o Art from the 1970s through the 1990s, represents not only Goldman’s influential scholarship on Chicana/o art but also her archival efforts and political activism. Charlene Villaseñor Black, who edited the collection and wrote the introduction, notes that the essays are “outstanding examples of social art history, as Goldman demonstrates the entwined connections between art and politics and how social art history can engage with postmodernism, multiculturalism, feminism, and transnationalism” (from the Introduction). The book, which is scheduled for release in late April, may be ordered through the distributor, the University of Washington Press.
 
Register for online access to Aztlán
Current subscribers to Aztlán may now register for online access to the journal through ingentaconnect.com. If you have problems accessing your account or questions about your subscription, please contact support@chicano.ucla.edu. 
 

Opportunities

Getty Multicultural Undergraduate Internship: Preservation and Research
 
This paid summer internship at the CSRC is structured around current and ongoing CSRC projects in the arts. Aside from contributing to the CSRC’s mission to provide information resources on Chicano history and culture, the intern will gain career-relevant archival experience.
 
Duties may include but are not limited to:
  • Arranging and describing image-heavy collections
  • Upload digitized photographs and arts images onto the UCLA Digital Library
  • Attaching metadata to digital objects using Encoded Archival Description (EAD), create finding aids for collections
Applicants should submit a résumé and cover letter to Lizette Guerra, CSRC librarian, at lguerra@chicano.ucla.edu. Applications are due Friday, April 24, 5:00 p.m. For more details about the MUI program, visit the Getty website.
 
IAC Research Grant Program in Ethnic Studies
The Institute of American Cultures invites applications from UCLA faculty, staff, graduate students, and IAC Visiting Scholars/Researchers for support of research on African Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans, and Chicana/os during the 2015-16 fiscal year. The Institute also invites proposals on interethnic relations that will increase collaboration between the centers and/or between the centers and other campus units.
 
The Research Grant Program is on a reimbursement basis only. Ordinarily, faculty projects will be funded for no more than $10,000 and graduate student projects for no more than $7,000. Funds for the purchase of permanent equipment will be provided only under exceptional circumstances. Conference travel, whether the applicant is presenting or attending, is ineligible.
 
Eligibility
UCLA faculty, staff, graduate students, and IAC Visiting Scholars/Researchers.
 
Grant Period
July 1, 2015, through May 31, 2016.

Deadline
Applications must be received by April 20, 11:59 p.m. Awards will be announced in mid-June.
 
 
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45 for 45!
The 2014-15 academic year marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the CSRC. If you value our work, please consider giving a tax-deductible donation of $45. To give $45 for our 45th, click here. Any amount is welcome. Thank you for your support.