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CSRC Newsletter - April 2018

Volume 16, Number 8

Director’s Message

In March 1968, some 20,000 students in Eastside L.A. high schools walked out of their classes to protest unequal education for students of Mexican descent. It was the largest such student protest in U.S. history. Fifty years later, the walkouts returned in full force as the political voice for minors when students nationwide protested governmental inaction and silence in the face of the increasing number of mass shootings at public schools. A second walkout is planned for April 20, the anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting. The National School Walkout website frames its mission by contrasting policies for weapons and voting: “America is the only country in the world where so many people are killed by guns, and yet our leaders do nothing about it. In many states it’s more difficult to register to vote than it is to buy a rifle. Apparently to some politicians, a vote is scarier than a gun.” The focus of these protests has been the assault rifle, in particular semi-automatic rifles based on the AR-15, a weapon initially developed for the military. Needless to say, there has been a lot of debate and name-calling by the adults, but the students’ point remains clear: the rate of mass shootings has tripled since 2011 and, as each shooting more closely follows the previous one, politicians remain steadfast in expressing their sympathies while declaring that now is the not the time for politics. But if you are a politician, politics is your 24/7 job. Therefore, we must take these retorts as essentially political and as statements aimed at fundraisers more than constituents, who largely support gun control.

Exactly what are the facts? In the United States, there are an estimated 3.75 million AR-15-style rifles among the civilian population, according to one source. How many assault rifles does the US military have? While it’s easy to find out what weapons are in the US arsenal, it’s more difficult to get a precise number for any given weapon. Let’s assume every member of the military is given an assault rifle: that would total 1.43 million assault rifles. Even assuming the US military has an equal number of assault rifles in reserve, the civilian population still has the military outgunned by nearly one million assault rifles. Clearly, the civilian population represents a growth market for makers of assault rifles, since the number of military personnel is unlikely to grow year to year. The profits are shared with elected officials in the form of campaign donations. And the mass shootings at schools and elsewhere increase. Here’s the rub: assault rifles make up just one percent of the firearms in the country.

Chon A. Noriega
Director and Professor
 

News

La Raza documentary to premiere April 3 on KCET
La Raza, a documentary produced for the series Artbound on KCET, a public broadcasting network, will premiere Tuesday, April 3, at 9:00 p.m. The film extensively utilizes images from two special collections at the CSRC: La Raza Photograph Collection and La Raza Newspaper and Magazine Records. Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director, and Luis Garza and Amy Scott, curators of the exhibition La Raza at the Autry Museum of the American West, are among those interviewed for the film. La Raza will air in Los Angeles through Sunday, April 7, and will be available to view online following its airdates. For more information and to watch the trailer, click here.
 
Villaseñor Black moderates mural panel
On March 10, as part of public programming for the exhibition Testament of the Spirit: Paintings by Eduardo Carrillo, the Pasadena Museum of California Art hosted the discussion “From Walls of Empowerment to Screens of Engagement: The Progression of Murals.” The moderator was Charlene Villaseñor Black, CSRC associate director and professor of art history and Chicana/o studies, and the panelists were muralists Yreina Cervántez, Barbara Carrasco, and Kristy Sandoval, and Kaelyn Rodríguez, a digital murals scholar and UCLA Chicana/o studies doctoral student. The exhibition includes Chicano History, a mural painted by Carrillo, Ramses Noriega, Saul Solache, and Sergio Hernandez for the CSRC’s founding in 1969. The exhibition closes June 3. It will be on view at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento from June 24 through October 7.
 
Loza participates in MESTO event at music school
“MESTO Orchestra: Arab and Latino Music at UCLA,” a concert on March 17 at Schoenberg Hall, featured Steve Loza, professor and chair of the Department of Ethnomusicology at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and CSRC faculty associate, in two roles. Loza and the Department of Ethnomusicology commissioned Canciones del Barrio, a piece for voice and string quartet by Thomas Pasatieri with lyrics by José Montoya. The second work, which includes a reading of the Chicano poet’s “La Yarda de la Escuelita,” featured Loza on trumpet. This work was composed by Nabil Azzam, a Department of Ethnomusicology alum and conductor of MESTO (Multi-Ethnic Star Orchestra), a Los Angeles–based ensemble. MESTO was established to combine the traditions of ethnic musical genres with Western classical music traditions. The concert was a production of the UCLA Center for Latino Arts in conjunction with the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, Department of Ethnomusicology, and the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies.
 
New Chicana/o studies PhD cohort visits CSRC
On March 14, CSRC director Chon A. Noriega, CSRC associate director and Aztlán editor Charlene Villasenor Black, and CSRC senior officer Rebecca Epstein welcomed students admitted to the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies PhD program. Eight students were offered admission to the program, beginning this fall.  The students visited the CSRC Library and were introduced to the many services and opportunities the CSRC offers for academic and professional growth. We look forward to working with these graduate students in the years ahead.
 
UCLA represented at walkouts event at Warner Bros.
On March 20, Carlos Haro, CSRC assistant director emeritus, participated in a panel discussion at Warner Bros. Studios about the 1968 student walkouts. Also on the panel were Moctesuma Esparza, filmmaker and UCLA alum; David García, assistant professor of education at the UCLA Graduate School for Education and Information Studies, and Paula Crisostomo, a celebrated leader of the protests. The discussion followed a screening of the 2006 feature film Walkout, which was produced by Esparza. On display were posters created for the CSRC conference on March 10 and 11 that commemorated the walkouts. The event was organized by UNIDOS@WB, a business resource group oriented toward Latina/o community building, career development, and inclusion at the studio.
 
López illustration reproduced for article
Simone Clunie, a master’s student in library science at Florida State University, has published the article “The Representation of Goddess Imagery in Feminist Art” in the anthology Vibrant Voices: Women, Myth and the Arts, Volume II: Proceedings of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology, edited by Sid Reger and Marna Hauk (Goddess Ink, 2018). Clunie’s essay includes an image of Nuestra Madre by artist Yolanda López, which was reproduced courtesy of the CSRC.
 
Aguilar exhibition travels to Miami
The Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA exhibition Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell, curated by Sybil Venegas and organized by the Vincent Price Art Museum in collaboration with the CSRC, has traveled to the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University in Miami. The exhibition opened March 3 and will close May 27 (see In the News, below). For more information, visit the museum’s website. The exhibition catalog was published by CSRC Press and is distributed by University of Washington Press.
 
¡Murales Rebeldes! travels to San Francisco

The Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA exhibition ¡Murales Rebeldes! L.A. Chicana/o Murals under Siege, will be on view at the California Historical Society in San Francisco from April 7 through September 16. The exhibition, which tells the stories of eight local murals, includes materials on loan from the CSRC. The murals were created by Barbara Carrasco, Yreina D. Cervántez and Alma López, Roberto Chavez, Ernesto de la Loza, Willie F. Herrón III, Sergio O'Cadiz Moctezuma, and East Los Streetscapers. The exhibition was organized by the California Historical Society and LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes.

Casos de Justicia to show in Boyle Heights

Casos de Justicia: The Los Angeles Street Vendor Movement, an exhibition curated by LeighAnna Hidalgo, a doctoral student in Chicana/o studies at UCLA, will be on view at Espacio 1839 the weekend of April 8. The gallery is located at 1839 E. 1st St. in Boyle Heights. For more information, visit the gallery’s Facebook page. The exhibition, which was on view in February in the CSRC Library, was created with support from grants from the UCLA Institute of American Cultures and the Tamar Diana Wilson Fund, which is administered by the CSRC.

Valverde retrospective to show in Mexico City

The exhibition Ricardo Valverde: Experimental Sights, 1971–1996, curated by CSRC visiting scholar Cecilia Fajardo-Hill for the Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM) in 2014, will be on display at Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City from April 19 through July 15. According to Espie Valverde, the artist’s widow, Centro de la Imagen was among the artist’s favorite institutions dedicated to photography. The exhibition at Centro de la Imagen will feature five videos and more than 140 photographs. For more information, visit the museum’s website. The original exhibition was part of an ongoing partnership between the CSRC and VPAM. A PDF of the exhibition catalog, produced by CSRC Press, is available for download from the CSRC website. The award-winning monograph Ricardo Valverde, by Ramón García, was published by CSRC Press and is distributed by University of Minnesota Press.

¡Joaquin Avila, presente!

The CSRC mourns the passing of Joaquin G. Avila, who died March 9. Avila, an expert on minority voting rights and a MacArthur Fellow, crafted the 2001 California Voting Rights Act. In 2003–4 he was a visiting scholar at the CSRC and a visiting professor at the law school. During that time he published the CSRC policy brief Political Apartheid in California: Consequences of Excluding a Growing Noncitizen Population. The report made it into the hands of conservative commentator Lou Dobbs, who derided it on the air, prompting his listeners to make angry calls and send hate mail to the CSRC in the form of dozens of e-mail messages and faxes. (CSRC director Chon A. Noriega’s op-ed about this experience, which was published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, is reprinted here.) We honor Avila’s brilliance and his lifelong advocacy for the civil rights of people of color, and we express our condolences to his family and friends.

¡Francisco García-Ayvens, presente!

The CSRC mourns the passing of Francisco García-Ayvens, who died February 12. García-Ayvens was a deeply respected Chicana/o studies librarian. He worked at the CSRC during the 1970s and early 2000s. He also worked at UC Berkeley and at Cal State University campuses in Fullerton and Dominguez Hills. Among his many publications were invaluable reference guides for Chicano studies, including the Chicano Periodical Index (1981; with Richard Chabrán), the Chicano Anthology Index (1990), and Ethnic Orange County: An Ethnic Resources Directory (1987). The CSRC honors his commitment to Chicano studies librarianship and his assistance to and mentorship of countless students and scholars along the way.

CSRC in the News

“Artist Laura Aguilar Finds Peace in Her Work at the Frost Art Museum”
A feature on the exhibition Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell, which recently opened at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum in Miami.

Miami New Times, March 27, 2018 (PDF)

“How to Altar the World: Amalia Mesa-Bains’s Art Shifts the Way We See Art History”
A profile of artist Amalia Mesa-Bains, whose work was included in the CSRC-organized exhibition Home—So Different, So Appealing, was featured in ArtNews. The article included a reference to the controversial exhibition Revelaciones/Revelations: Hispanic Art of Evanescence at Cornell University in 1993, which included the work of Mesa-Bains and Home artist Daniel Joseph Martinez and was curated by CSRC director Chon A. Noriega.

ArtNews, March 27, 2018 (PDF)

“Photographers Harry Gamboa Jr. and Luis Garza on Pushing Back against 'Bad Hombre' Chicano Stereotypes”
Harry Gamboa Jr. and Luis Garza took part in a Q&A about cultural representations of Chicanos and Chicanas.  Each photographer is featured in a current exhibition at the Autry Museum of the American West. In his comments about Harry Gamboa Jr.: Chicano Male Unbonded, Gamboa mentioned CSRC director Chon A. Noriega, whose portrait is included in the exhibition. Garza’s work is included in the Autry exhibition La Raza, which he co-curated and which was produced in collaboration with the CSRC.

Los Angeles Times, March 23, 2018 (PDF)

“Archive: Echo of 1968 in Student Walkouts”
An image from the CSRC’s La Raza Photograph Collection that shows participants in a 1968 student walkout at Roosevelt High School was published in Newsday with a reprint of a letter that appeared in the news magazine on March 7, 1968. The author of the letter, student Jeffrey Schechtman, states the need for youth to play a role in the political process.

Newsday, March 15, 2018 (PDF)

“3 Film Series to Catch in NYC This Weekend”
A screening of Efraín Gutiérrez’s 1976 feature film Please, Don’t Bury Me Alive! was featured in a roundup of special screening events in New York City. The film was restored by the CSRC in partnership with the UCLA Film and Television Archive and inducted in 2014 into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress,

New York Times, March 15, 2018 (PDF)

“1968 LA School Walkout Protesters See Link to Parkland Teens”
Images from the CSRC’s La Raza Photograph Collection were used in an Associated Press article discussing similarities between the Eastside student walkouts of 1968 and the recent activism of teens in Parkland, Florida. 

Associated Press, March 12, 2018 (PDF)

“East L.A. Chicano Student Walkouts: 50 Years Later”
The two-day conference “Seeking Educational Justice: The 1968 Chicana/o Student Walkouts Made History,” organized by the CSRC, was highlighted in a UCLA Newsroom story discussing the fiftieth anniversary of the student-led movement. 

UCLA Newsroom, March 09, 2018 (PDF)

“Commemorating the 1968 East LA Walkouts with Films, Art, and More”
A preview of the two-day conference “Seeking Educational Justice: The 1968 Chicana/o Student Walkouts Made History,” organized by the CSRC, was highlighted in Hyperallergic. The preview included an image from the CSRC’s La Raza Photograph Collection.

Hyperallergic, March 05, 2018 (PDF)

“The Walkout—How a Student Movement in 1968 Changed Schools Forever (Part 1 of 3)”
Images from the CSRC’s La Raza Photograph Collection were used in a three-part series on the Eastside student walkouts of 1968. The series commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the walkouts by examining the historical context and inspiration behind the students’ demands. 

United Way: Greater Los Angeles, February 26, 2018 (PDF)

“Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA: Traveling Exhibitions”
ArtNexus highlighted Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell, organized by the Vincent Price Art Museum in collaboration with the CSRC, as one of the Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA exhibitions that are traveling to new venues. The show opened on March 3 at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University; additional venues are to be confirmed. 

ArtNexus, February 09, 2018 (PDF)

All “In the News” articles are available in PDF format on the CSRC website.

Events

Evangeline, the Queen of Make-Believe
Performances through Sunday, April 8
Plaza de La Raza, 3540 North Mission Road, Los Angeles, CA 90031

To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the 1968 Eastside student walkouts, About . . . Productions presents the Evangeline Initiative, a series of youth-oriented programs that include a restaging of the critically acclaimed production Evangeline, the Queen of Make-Believe. It is the first Eastside staging of this musical about an Eastside high school graduate who is a devoted daughter by day and a West Hollywood go-go dancer by night. The show will run through April 8 at Plaza de la Raza in Lincoln Heights. Evangeline incorporates a Grammy Award–winning songbook by Louie Pérez and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos. Gaby Moreno, a Guatemalan-born L.A.-based singer-songwriter, will perform in the title role. For tickets, click here. The Evangeline Initiative is co-sponsored by the CSRC.

Panel: “2017-18 UCLA Visiting Speaker Series on Digital Archiving: Legal and Ethical Issues”
Friday, April 6, 1:00–4:00 p.m.
Jan Popper Theater, Schoenberg Music Building
Livestream available here

The fourth session in a series, this event addresses legal and ethical issues pertaining to digital archiving. Featured speakers include representatives from Washington State University, Munich Intellectual Property Law Center, the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, the United States Library of Congress, and the Prelinger Archives. A roundtable discussion and refreshments will follow the presentations. This event is organized by the UCLA Digital Archiving Collective, a cross-campus organization with members from the Department of Information Studies; Department of Communication Studies; Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media; Center for Digital Humanities; Film and Television Archive; Ethnomusicology Archive; Library and Digital Library Program; Music Library; Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies; Asian American Studies Center; American Indian Studies Center; and the CSRC.

Research Presentation: “Caregiving in Oaxaca: Social Perspectives on Aging and Dementia"
Thursday, April 26, 3:00–4:30 p.m.
CSRC Library—144 Haines Hall

Jonathan Yahalom, clinical psychologist and a CSRC visiting scholar for 2017-18, will share findings from his extensive study of family caregiving for elders with dementia in rural Oaxaca, Mexico. Yahalom, who conducted his research in the Zapotec language, will explore how aging, dementia, and caregiving are associated with macro-level social changes in Oaxaca, including those related to social cohesion and local stigmas about illness. The presentation will address themes pertaining to clinical psychology, medical anthropology, and contemporary research in Mexico.

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

Library exhibition extended: The 1968 Walkouts: Selections from UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Collections

This exhibition of photographs, newspapers, and ephemera pertaining to the historic Eastside student walkouts of 1968 draws from six CSRC archival collections: Sal Castro Papers, La Raza Newspaper and Magazine Records, La Raza Photograph Collection, Chicano Newspaper Collection, Oscar Castillo Papers, and Oscar Castillo Photograph Collection. The exhibition is divided into four thematic components: photographs by Devra Weber of the walkouts at Roosevelt High School; the East Los Angeles 13; the sit-in at the LAUSD boardroom; and the struggle to reinstate Sal Castro as an LAUSD educator. The exhibition opened March 10, as part of the CSRC’s weekend-long program commemorating the walkouts, and is installed in the CSRC library, vitrines, conference room, and hallways. It will remain on view through August 3 and is open for viewing during library hours. The exhibition is curated by Carlos Manuel Haro and Bryant Partida, with assistance from Oscar Castillo and Johnny Ramirez, and support from the Tamar Diana Wilson Fund and Carlos M. Haro Scholarship Fund. For more information, click here.

Summit Tahoma High School students visit CSRC

On March 15, forty-five students along with three parents and a guidance counselor from Summit Tahoma High School visited the CSRC Library. CSRC librarian Xaviera Flores welcomed the group and gave a presentation to them on the history of the CSRC and its resources for research. Summit Tahoma is a public charter school in San Jose.

Allan Hancock College students visit CSRC

On March 20, approximately forty students from Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria visited the CSRC Library. In addition to meeting with the CSRC librarian, the students heard from and spoke with several third-year undergraduate students who had transferred to UCLA from community colleges. The visit was part of an ongoing program coordinated by UCLA’s Center for Community College Partnerships.

Materials from America en la Mira archive on view at El Museo Jumex

The exhibition Memorias del subdesarrollo: El giro descolonial en el arte de América Latina, 1960–1985 (Memories of Underdevelopment: Art and the Decolonial Turn in Latin America, 1960-1985) is on display at El Museo Jumex in Mexico City through September 9. Curated by Julieta González, the show features 127 digitized works from America en la Mira, a touring exhibition that visited UCLA in 1980. Approximately seventy-five percent of the works in America en la Mira is now archived at the CSRC. For more information on this collection, see the finding aid on the Online Archive of California here.

To schedule a tour of the CSRC Library, contact CSRC librarian Xaviera Flores at xflores@chicano.ucla.edu or fill out the form on the CSRC Library Services page.

CSRC Press

New education anthology released

The Chicana/o Education Pipeline: History, Institutional Critique, and Resistance explores the relationships between Chicana/o students, families, and communities and the various school settings that comprise the education pipeline, from kindergarten classrooms through postsecondary programs and postgraduate experiences. The essays, which appeared in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies between 1970 and 2015, present a historical overview that spans the 1880s to the present. The editors, Michaela J. L. Mares-Tamayo and Daniel G. Solórzano, selected the essays for their potential to spark discussions about Chicana/o experiences and resilience in US schools.

The anthology is divided into three parts: Chicana/o Educational History, K-12 Education, and Postsecondary Education. Each part begins with an introduction by Mares-Tamayo and Solórzano and concludes with a list of selected resources. The Chicana/o Education Pipeline reveals how educational institutions have operated in contradictory ways for Chicana/o students: they have depressed and marginalized as well as emancipated and empowered them.

Visit the CSRC Press website to view the table of contents. The Chicana/o Education Pipeline may be ordered from the distributor, University of Washington Press.

Opportunities

2018 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. In addition to contributing to the CSRC’s mission to provide information resources on Chicano history and culture, the intern—who must be enrolled in an undergraduate program—will gain career-relevant archival experience. Duties may include but are not limited to:

  • Arranging and describing art and artist collections.
  • Digitizing cultural heritage materials
  • Assisting with creating online exhibitions with our digital archive partners
  • Describing and preserving digital objects
  • Creating finding aids using Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS) and Encoded Archival Description (EAD)

Applicants should submit a resume and cover letter to Xaviera Flores, CSRC Archivist and Librarian, at xflores@chicano.ucla.edu. Application deadline: April 27 at 5:00 p.m. For more details about the MUI program, visit the Getty website.