CSRC Newsletter - September 2013

In August, Bea Kozera (born Beatrice Renteria)—Jack Kerouac’s real-life inspiration for “Terry, the Mexican girl” in his novel On the Road (1957)—died at the age of 92. As the Los Angeles Times reported, “Without their encounter, On the Road may not have been published. The book was rejected for six years until the Paris Review published the excerpt ‘The Mexican Girl’ in 1955.”

 

Oftentimes, correcting the historical record does not have to do with adding missing content but rather with correcting a near-sighted focus on one group. The Beat Generation is often seen as upending the American status quo: the Beats versus the elites, as Manuel Luis Martinez notes in an essay written for Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies. Martinez offers a different conclusion: “This view elides the possibility that the action of both these Anglo groups was a reaction to other historical events and trends, ones very much effected by women, African Americans, and Mexican Americans.”

 

Indeed, what are we to make of the fact that On the Road, the quintessentially “American” novel, bookends its upending of convention with two “Mexican” encounters: a Chicana fellow traveler in California and a road trip into Mexico? Perhaps we start by disidentifying with the novel’s narrator. Go along for the ride—enjoy it, in fact—but just realize with whom you are traveling and how their trip began, and orient yourself to the mental map they are using to get to the “basic primitive” of their true selves. When Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty reach the U.S.-Mexico border, they find what they already know: “Just across the street Mexico began. We looked with wonder. To our amazement, it looked exactly like Mexico.” To the narrator, Terry also represented his idea of Mexico—not America, or even California. It is with such vision that Kerouac borrows from non-white culture in order to find himself, his generation, and America. Of course, the arts create by borrowing, and every national art form has the ironic pedigree of foreign sources. But even that is not the whole story. Borrowing is just one point in a larger cultural arena involving many voices and peoples, not all of whom are “foreign.” There is a dialogue waiting to happen here, and it behooves us to disidentify with a narrator committed to monologue. If Kerouac thought “There was nowhere to go but everywhere,” José Montoya captures the return to somewhere in his poem “El Louie” (1969). Listen to him read the poem, and hear the “beat” of a different voice in American art and letters.

 

Chon A. Noriega

Director and Professor

 

Exhibition features artists celebrated at CSRC

The CSRC eagerly anticipates the opening of Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in October. Many of the seventy-two artists and artists’ groups featured in the exhibition have been or will soon be the focus of, or have contributed to, CSRC publications, exhibitions, and/or special collections. These include: Carlos Almaraz, Asco, Margarita Cabrera, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Melesio “Mel” Casas, Oscar Castillo, Roberto Chavez, Carmen Lomas Garza, Ken Gonzales-Day, Gronk, Ester Hernandez, Judithe Hernández, Carmen Herrera, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Delilah Montoya, Malaquias Montoya, Raphael Montañez Ortiz, Pepón Osorio, Freddy Rodríguez, Frank Romero, John M. Valadez, and Alberto Valdés. The exhibition will present more than ninety works of art across all media by Latino artists active since the mid-twentieth century and will be drawn entirely from the museum’s permanent collection. Our America runs October 25, 2013 through March 2, 2014 and is scheduled to tour the U.S. after it closes in D.C. For more information and to see a slideshow of selected works, visit the museum’s website.

 

Early registration now available for LAN! conference

Several public and scholarly programs have been organized in conjunction with Our America, a major exhibition of Latino art at the Smithsonian. Among these is the biennial conference Latino Art Now! (LAN!), organized by the Inter-University Program for Latino Research (IUPLR), the leading national forum for artists, scholars, and collectors in the field of Latino art. Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director, is on the planning committee for the conference, which will take place November 7–9 in Washington, D.C. Registration is free but space is limited, so attendees are encouraged to register early here.

 

Ruiz develops nursing program

Maria Elena Ruiz, CSRC associate director for 2010-12, has developed a new “International Experience” program at the UCLA School of Nursing that is designed to teach graduate students about public health care systems in Latin American countries and to become involved globally as universal health messengers. On August 29 second-year clinical nurse students left for a ten-day visit to Oaxaca, Mexico. At the end of the visit the students will complete a scholarly paper or project pertaining to their experience. A visit to Cuba will take place in December. For more information about the program, contact Maria Elena Ruiz at mruiz@sonnet.ucla.edu.

 

CSRC scholar releases book on immigration debate

Alvaro Huerta, CSRC visiting scholar for 2011-12, has published a book based on the research he did while at the CSRC. Reframing the Latino Immigration Debate: Towards a Humanistic Paradigm (San Diego State University Press, 2013) consists of short nonfiction essays on issues connected to Latina/o immigration. Topics include key policies and programs, such as “Operation Wetback” and the Bracero Program, and recent immigration debates in Arizona and the U.S. Congress. The book includes a foreword by Juan Gómez-Quiñones, UCLA professor of history and former CSRC director, and photos by acclaimed photojournalist Antonio Turok. The CSRC will host a book-signing event with Huerta and Gómez-Quiñones on Wednesday, October 9, 3:00 ̵ 5:00 p.m., in the CSRC Library. More information to come.

 

Telles appointed to airport commission

The CSRC congratulates Cynthia Telles on her new appointment by L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti to the city's airport commission. Telles is director of the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute Spanish Speaking Psychosocial Clinic at the David Geffen School of Medicine, former vice president of the city's ethics commission, and current member of the CSRC Director's Advisory Board. CSRC faculty associate Fernando M. Torres-Gil is an outgoing member of the commission.

 

New webinar on Latino economic security

On July 30 the leaders of the Latinos & Economic Security project (LES) presented recent research findings via a webinar that is now online. It includes a video recording of the presentations as well as a PowerPoint. LES is a collaboration of the UCLA Center for Policy Research on Aging, the USC Davis School of Gerontology, and the CSRC. The findings and commentary in the video are presented by Max Benavidez, chief communications consultant for LES; Kate Wilber, professor at the USC Davis School of Gerontology; Zach Gassoumis, researcher at the USC Davis School of Gerontology; and Chon A. Noriega, professor and director of the CSRC. The CSRC has been a partner in LES for eight years. Funding for the project was provided in part from the Ford Foundation.

 

Report compares status of Latino and Asian baby boomers

Latinos and Economic Security (LES), a research unit at the UCLA Center for Policy Research on Aging, released an infographic on July 24 that shows current findings in the U.S. naturalization rate of Latinos and Asians since 1980. The researchers conclude, "Naturalization, the process by which immigrants become U.S. citizens, has been linked to both civic engagement and economic security. Insofar as these are benefits to both the individual and larger society, it is important to put policies in place that encourage naturalization for Latino immigrants at a rate close to or at that of Asian immigrants." The infographic can be viewed on the CSRC website as a PDF. For more information, visit the LES website.

 

Asco exhibition to include CSRC materials

The CSRC Library is pleased to be a lender to the exhibition Asco: No Movies, opening this fall at the Nottingham Contemporary art center in Nottingham, England. The exhibition runs October 13, 2013 through January 5, 2014. CSRC director Chon A. Noriega will give a keynote address at a related conference at the center on November 14–15. For more information about the exhibition and conference, visit the Nottingham Contemporary website.

 

CSRC lends documents to exhibition on health

The David J. Sencer CDC Museum, located at the Center for Disease Control headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, will host the exhibition Health Is a Human Right: Race and Place in America, September 28, 2013–January 17, 2014. The exhibition looks back through history at how minority groups have experienced health problems and care, and at efforts to reduce and eliminate health disparities. The CSRC Library contributed materials from the Edward R. Roybal Papers as well as the library’s serial collections, including an issue of La Raza from 1972. To learn more about the exhibition, visit the museum’s website.

 

Alurista poem reprinted in new anthology

A new poetry anthology from Arte Público Press includes the poem “Tarde sobria” by Alurista. The poem was originally published in the famed Chicano poet's groundbreaking book Floricanto en Aztlán published by the CSRC Press in 1971. A new edition was released in 2012. Looking Out, Looking In: An Anthology of Latino Poetry includes the work of more than eighty Latino poets and focuses on poetry from Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, Puerto Ricans and Dominican Americans. The anthology was compiled by William Luis, Gertrude Conaway Professor of Spanish at Vanderbilt University and the editor of the Afro-Hispanic Review.

 

De la Loza named 2013 CCF Getty Fellow

Sandra de la Loza, whose solo show Mural Remix at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was organized by the CSRC as part of its L.A. Xicano project, has been named a 2013 CCF Getty Fellow by the California Community Foundation. In addition to the Mid-Career Artist grant she received from the CCF, de la Loza is also the recipient of a 2013 Artist-in-Residence grant from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. To learn more about the artist and CCF's Fellowships for Visual Artists, click here.

 

CSRC participates in groundbreaking curatorial program

This summer, the CSRC and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) announced a nationwide search for a National Fellowship Coordinator of the Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship Program. The program is structured as a five-year pilot program, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and designed to create a more diverse curatorial field by engaging young scholars of varied backgrounds and perspectives. The participating museums are LACMA; the Art Institute of Chicago; the High Museum, Atlanta; the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The project is overseen by CSRC director Chon A. Noriega and LACMA deputy director Nancy Thomas.

 

Cyclona collection showcased in OCMA exhibition

The CSRC has lent items from “The Fire of Life: The Robert Legorreta–Cyclona Collection, 1962–2002” to this year’s Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) California-Pacific Triennial. Legorreta is one of thirty-two artists featured in this exhibition devoted to contemporary art from the Pacific Rim. The artists are from fifteen countries that border the Pacific Ocean, placing artists working in California within a Pacific Rim context and highlighting the international exchange of images and ideas. The exhibition runs until November 17. For more information about the exhibition, visit OCMA. For more information about the “Fire of Life” collection, visit the Online Archive of California (OAC). A companion book to the Legorreta collection was published by the CSRC in 2009. It can be found here.

 

Director co-authors article on Latino archives

Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director, and Tracy B. Grimm from the Purdue University Libraries co-authored the article “Documenting Regional Latino Arts and Culture: Case Studies for a Collaborative, Community-Oriented Approach,” which has been published in the latest issue of American Archivist (vol. 76, no. 1). Grimm and Noriega present two related initiatives developed to identify and preserve the documentary heritage of the Latino experience. The essay outlines operational practices related to identification of collections in private hands, outreach, trust, and long-term relationships. To preview and purchase the article, go to the Society of American Archivists website.

 

New videos on CSRC YouTube

During spring quarter of 2013, the CSRC video-recorded interviews with authors whose work was studied in Spanish 155/CS 191, “Chicana and Chicano Narrative.” Héctor Calderón, professor of Spanish and Portuguese, interviewed Marco Acosta (son of Oscar Zeta Acosta), Lucha Corpi, Demetria Martinez, and John Rechy during class sessions. The videos are now available on CSRC YouTube.

 

Also on online are videos of several CSRC public programs that took place during spring quarter: book talks featuring We Became Mexican American: How Our Immigrant Family Survived to Pursue the American Dream by Carlos B. Gil and A Boy, a Burrito, and a Cookie: From Janitor to Executive by Richard Montañez; the exhibition reception for Chican@s (re)Imagining Zapata, curated by Julia Fernandez; the SACNAS fortieth anniversary kick-off and official opening of the SACNAS Archive at CSRC; the symposium “Lat/emo: A Symposium on Music, Markets, and Latinidad,” featuring an acoustic performance by Jose Maldonado of Sweet and Tender Hooligans; and the panel discussion, exhibition, and celebration “Mujeres in the Movement for Chicana/o Studies at UCLA.”

 

McNair scholar spends summer at CSRC

Alejandra Amezcua, a McNair undergraduate scholar at DePaul University in Chicago, performed a research internship at the CSRC this summer. Amezcua worked on the Raphael Montañez Ortiz collection and used CSRC resources to develop a conference paper on Chicanas in El Teatro Campesino.

 

Welcome, CSRC visiting scholars!

We are pleased to welcome three of the CSRC visiting scholars for the coming year. Jacqueline Hidalgo is assistant professor of Latina/o studies and religion at Williams College. She will be conducting archival research that will contribute to the completion of her book manuscript “Scriptures and (No) Place: Aztlán, the New Jerusalem, and Utopian Imaginations of California.” Maurice Magana is the CSRC’s Institute of American Cultures (IAC) Post-Doctoral Researcher for 2013-14. He recently completed his doctoral degree in cultural anthropology at the University of Oregon. His research looks at the intersectionality of hip-hop, the Latino diaspora, and social movements. Atsuko Niitsu is a doctoral student at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, pursuing her degree in Latin American studies. Her work focuses on art in the public sphere, particularly in public spaces. During her time at the CSRC she will be interviewing Chicano muralists and conducting participant observation through activities at Chicano community art centers.

 

“Mapping Another L.A.: The Chicano Art Movement”

Robb Hernandez, professor of English at UC Riverside, reviewed the L.A. Xicano exhibition Mapping Another L.A.: The Chicano Art Movement.

Museum and Curatorial Studies Review, Summer 2013 (PDF)

 

Haro profiled in Montebello Life

Carlos M. Haro, CSRC assistant director emeritus and organizer of the annual CSRC Latina/o Education Summit, was profiled in Montebello Life Magazine for his role in the Montebello-Ashiya Sister Cities Association. Haro currently serves as president of the association, which was established in 1961 to facilitate month-long residential exchanges between high school students in Montebello Hills and Ashiya, Japan.

Montebello Life Magazine, Summer 2013

 

“Meet Ramiro Gomez, the Street Artist Exposing the Invisible”

Remezcla profiled street artist Ramiro Gomez and mentioned his exhibition at the CSRC last spring.

Remezcla, July 25, 2013 (PDF)

 

“California's Triumphant Triennial”

Hyperallergic reviewed the OCMA Triennial. The review includes a photograph of Robert Legorreta’s installation of record albums, which are on loan from the Legorreta collection at the CSRC.

Hyperallergic, July 11, 2013 (PDF)

 

“Highlights from UCLA’s Collections: The Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings”

The Sounding Board blog featured the Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings, a digital archival project of the Arhoolie Foundation, the UCLA Digital Library, and the CSRC.

Ethnomusicology Review, Sounding Board (blog), June 28, 2013 (PDF)

 

“Mexican-American Music Gets New Life with Colorado Digital Collection”

Thousands of recordings that have been donated to the Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings.

The Denver Post, June 28, 2013 (PDF)

 

“Mexican-American Boy's National Anthem Sparks Racist Comments”

CSRC director Chon A. Noriega was quoted in a CNN story concerning the uproar that ensued after an eleven-year-old Mexican American sang the national anthem before the third game of the NBA finals in San Antonio, Texas.

CNN.com, June 13, 2013 (PDF)

 

“Searching for Efraín Gutiérrez—An Interview with Chon Noriega”

In advance of its June 12 screening of Efraín Gutiérrez's Chicano Love Is Forever, the Northwest Chicago Film Society interviewed CSRC director Chon A. Noriega about the Chicano filmmaker, the film, and the film's restoration by the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

Northwest Chicago Film Society (blog), June 11, 2013 (PDF)

 

“Toward an Empirical Analysis of Hate Speech in Commercial Talk Radio”

Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director, and Francisco Javier Iribarren, CSRC assistant director, co-authored this journal article featuring findings from the CSRC Hate Speech in the Media project.

Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy, Volume 25, 2012-2013

 

“Not So Fast, Charlie Sheen”

On his blog on Huffington Post, CSRC director Chon A. Noriega challenged Charlie Sheen to obey the rules when it comes to reverting to the actor’s “Hispanic” name.

Huffington Post, June 7, 2013

UCLA Newsroom announcement, June 11, 2013 (PDF)

 

UCLA Today highlights CSRC book awards

An announcement about the ten awards received by the CSRC at the fifteen annual International Latino Book Awards.

UCLA Today, June 6, 2013 (PDF)

Also in La Bloga, June 3, 2013 (PDF)

 

“The Hidden Treasure of UCLA: You”

The UCLA student paper La Gente featured a story on the CSRC Library. The PDF includes Spanish and English versions of the story.

La Gente, Spring 2013 (PDF)

 

Recently, media attention has again been given to Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation, and Race (Russell Sage Foundation, 2009) by sociologists Vilma Ortiz and Edward Telles, which was based on research conducted at the CSRC:

“Guaranteeing That Hispanics Won't Assimilate”

The American Thinker, June 14, 2013 (PDF)

“The Great Assimilation Debate”

The New York Times, June 12, 2013 (PDF)

“Sweden's Problem is Not Islam, It's Multiculturalism”

Assyrian International News Agency (reprint from National Review Online), June 4, 2013 (PDF)

 

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

 

Education Summit tickets now on sale!

This year’s Eighth Annual Latina/o Education Summit will take place Friday, October 4, 11:30 a.m.–6:30 p.m., at the UCLA Faculty Center. This year’s summit will address the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Fisher v. Texas and the national implications for Chicanos and Latinos and higher education. The summit will be hosted by Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director. Rachel F. Moran, dean and Michael J. Connell Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law, will be the keynote speaker. Seating is limited; pre-registration by September 21 is required. Tickets are $30 and include lunch. To register and view the conference program, click here.

 

All CSRC events are free unless otherwise noted. For more information, visit the Events page on the CSRC website.

 

New collections in process

The CSRC is proud to announce the addition of two archival collections to its holdings: the Ernesto Chávez Collection of Chicano Movement FBI Records, and the La Raza Newspaper and Magazine Records. The former is a collection donated by Ernesto Chávez, associate professor of Chicana/o studies at the University of Texas, El Paso. Chávez collected FBI investigative files through the Freedom of Information Act while researching the Chicano Movement for ¡Mi Raza Primero! (My People First!): Nationalism, Identity, and Insurgency in the Chicano Movement in Los Angeles, 1966–1978 (University of California Press, 2002). These records include materials on the Brown Berets, the Chicano Moratorium, CASA, and La Raza Unida Party.

 

The records associated with La Raza include close to 20,000 negatives of photographs that were shot between 1967 and 1977, as well as ephemeral items. This valuable resource documents the experiences of the Chicano community and the Chicano civil rights movement, with a particular emphasis on Los Angeles. We would like to thank the La Raza photographic staff for coordinating this acquisition. The CSRC will be working closely with our donors to preserve the images through digitization and making them widely available on the UCLA Digital Library.

 

To learn more about these collections please email your queries to CSRC librarian Lizette Guerra at lguerra@chicano.ucla.edu.

 

Getty intern assists oral history project

The CSRC participated in the Getty Multicultural Undergraduate Internship program. Internships are structured around current and ongoing CSRC archival projects. This year the CSRC Library welcomed Jessica Baden, a recent graduate from Loyola Marymount University, where she majored in history and Chicana/o studies. Jessica provided support to the CSRC librarian in addition to assisting with the CSRC Oral History Recovery Project. This project includes an inventory of the CSRC oral history collections as well as the creation of a searchable document with holdings information. The CSRC thanks her for her work and wishes her the very best in her academic and professional pursuits.

 

Librarian to help teach workshops

On September 6 and 7, CSRC librarian Lizette Guerra will participate in a series of workshops titled “Preserving Local Latino History” at the Cesar E. Chavez branch of the Salinas Public Library. Joining her will be Latino Digital Archive Group (LDAG) partners Norma Corral, retired UCLA reference librarian; Romelia Salinas, head of Access Services at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library at Cal State L.A.; Kathryn Blackmer Reyes, director of the Cultural Heritage Center at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library at San Jose State University, and Richard Chabran, adjunct professor at the University of Arizona Knowledge River Institute. LDAG has organized these workshops in partnership with the Salinas Public Library to address the gaps that exist across the nation in current archival holdings of Latino cultural heritage materials. Participants will include community organizations as well as local families, and the workshops will be designed to engage participants in a conversation regarding the importance of documenting and preserving local Latino history. Participants will learn basic archival principles on how to collect, organize, store, and digitize their own materials. Attendees are invited to bring their own photographs to the workshop, where they will be digitized and added to a new photographic collection at the Salinas Public Library that highlights the town’s Latino history. This is the first in a series of workshops that are part of a larger effort to build a national Latino digital archive. For more information, visit the Latino Digital Archive Group’s blog.

 

For more information on these projects, or other volunteer and intern opportunities contact the librarian, Lizette Guerra, at lguerra@chicano.ucla.edu.

 

New issue of Aztlán

Subscribe now to receive the latest issue of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies. This issue features essays on the dramatization of Chicano/a “status panic” in the popular arts; the influence of “necessary theater” on the Royal Chicano Air Force; camp and rasquache sensibilities in works by Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Lourdes Portillo; and Toribio Romo González, patron saint of immigrants. The dossier section, guest curated by Jaime R. Águila, examines politics in Arizona following the passage of SB 1070, known as the “anti-immigrant law,” in 2010. The artist’s communiqué highlights the work of Los Angeles artist Ramon Ramirez. In an interview with José L. S. Gámez, Ramirez reflects on learning and living through his work. A subscription to Aztlán includes two issues a year plus unlimited online access to every issue every published.

 

Getty intern helps with A Ver series

The CSRC Press participated in the Getty Multicultural Undergraduate Internship program this summer. Intern Paulina Lara helped with the preparation of the art program and bibliography for upcoming volumes in the A Ver: Revisioning Art History series. Lara will continue her undergraduate education at the University of California, San Diego, this fall. The CSRC thanks her for her assistance and wishes her well.