Annotations for Dates: 1970s

It's been viewed by thousands of people in Los Angeles, Denver, Albuquerque, El Paso, Washington DC, and the Bronx in New York. Now the art exhibit known as the CARA show opens at its last venue of it's two year run in San Antonio. The exhibit examines the Chicano art movement of the 60s and 70s, through a wide range of multimedia, including posters, holograms, and altars. Latino USA's Maria Martin prepared this report.

Politicians, activists, and journalists came together in Washington, D.C., to examine how well the media has covered Latino civil-rights issues. It was made clear there exists a unique link between social activism and the coverage of minorities. Many veteran Latino journalists, such as ABC's correspondent John Quiñones, say the activism of the '60s and '70s paved the way for them in the media.

Since it first opened in Los Angeles in September of 1991. The art exhibit known as CARA, the acronym for Chicano Art Resistance and Affirmation has traveled throughout the country to Denver, Albuquerque, El Paso, San Francisco, the Bronx, and Washington DC, bringing art inspired by the Chicano political and social movements of the 60s and 70s to audiences that had sometimes not even heard of the word Chicano. The CARA exhibits last stop was at the San Antonio Museum of Art. Museum patrons on this last afternoon of the CARA exhibit seemed to appear a little bit more intently than usual at this collection of 130 works by 90 Chicano artists from across the country. San Antonio artist David Zamora Casas was among those getting a last glimpse of the landmark art exhibit.

It has opened up the link that we have with our collective past. It has made it okay to and cool to be Chicano again.

Spanish teacher Barbara Merrill came from Devine, Texas. She says the works in the CARA show help her to better understand her mostly Mexican-American students.

There’s so much of the heritage and seeing it through the eyes of the Mexican American. The quote over there, the A Chicano is a Mexican American through non-Anglo eyes, speaks very much to me through this exhibit.

Combining art, politics and history. These diverse works, posters, murals, and multimedia together defined a distinct Chicano aesthetic.

What that meant some 15 years ago is that Chicano artists began to look inward at their own experience to look at their own traditions.

Art historian Dr. Jacinto Quirarte curated the exhibit in San Antonio.

Things that the Chicanos themselves had experienced rather than leapfrogging over to Mexico and looking at things indirectly. By the mid-70s Chicano artists began to really know who they were and by the 80s they were really well onto their own.

In three years of touring the Chicano Art, Resistance, and Affirmation exhibit has brought this distinctive artistic style to the attention of the mainstream art world, but perhaps its most lasting impact has been on audiences who had seldom before seen themselves reflected on museum walls.

We worked the fields in the summer and on weekends during the school year, whatever crop was seasoned. So uh-

30 year old beautician, Sally Ortiz came to see the exhibit twice in San Antonio before it closed. The familiar images she says like that of the Virgin of Guadalupe and of farm worker life and struggle touched a deep cord of memory.

The lettuce and the grapes and the pesticides. I remember my mother talking about the pesticides and of course I was very young and I never understood, but she used to always say, ‘que era muy venenoso.’ Just looking at everything. Just, it's like looking into my past all over again.

And for others too young or not around during the heyday of the Chicano movement, the CARA show proved an education.

Looking at the photos of all the rallies that they had, I found my mother in one of them and it just made me feel really proud that my parents had never really told me about it. But then they started telling me about all this stuff, makes me really proud that people were so alive back then and it just makes me want to be more alive now with the movement because it is still going on.

In San Antonio, as well as the other cities where CARA was exhibited, the show brought in more Latinos than had ever visited those institutions previously. The challenge now say many observers is to keep them coming.

Before the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power, jazz music flowed freely from this country to Cuba and back. That musical cross-pollination has been more difficult in recent years, though. However, Cuban jazz pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba made history this summer when he was permitted to play in the United States for the very first time. Alfredo Cruz reports.

[Recordando a Tschaikowsky--Gonzalo Rubalcaba]

During the first half of this century, Cuban music was a very popular source of entertainment in the United States. The Mambo y cha-cha-cha, and other rhythms dominated radio waves and dance halls across the country. Cuban music was being heard here, and jazz over there. But in 1959, following the Cuban Revolution, all cultural and political connections between the two countries were cut. And in Cuba, jazz became a Yankee imperialist activity. Playing or listening to jazz was done in an underground clandestine manner. Since then, things have changed. For one, the Havana International Jazz Festival, now in its 14th year, has attracted world-class musicians and helped raise the social and political acceptance of jazz in Cuba. But as pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba says, it wasn't easy.

Bueno, principio en los años sesenta, y parte de los setentas…[transition to English dub] In the early '60s and through part of the '70s, it was very difficult getting people to understand the importance of supporting jazz and the increasing number of young Cuban musicians heading in this direction. Today, however, there can not be, and there isn't any misunderstanding or political manipulation of jazz or Cuban jazz musician [transition to original audio] …interpretación por parte de los musico Cuba.

[Mi Gran Pasion--Gonzalo Rubalcaba]

At 30 years of age, Gonzalo Rubalcaba is considered one of Cuba's premier pianists. His father played with the orchestra of Cha-cha-cha inventor Enrique Jorrín, and later became one of Cuba's most popular band leaders. Gonzalo himself played with the legendary Orquesta Aragón while still a teenager, but it is through his solo playing that Gonzalo has made his mark in Cuba and around the world. Because of political differences, however, the United States audience remained out of reach to Cuban jazz and musicians like Rubalcaba.

[Simbunt Ye Contracova--Gonzalo Rubalcaba]

Bueno Estados Unidos debió ser uno de los primeros escenario…[transition to English dub] The United States should have been one of the first places for me to play. But since 1989, there's been a mystique and anticipation surrounding my not being allowed to enter this country. Very simply put, it's been a politically motivated maneuver to not grant me a performance visa, and has nothing to do with artistic or musical considerations. But now, my first appearance in this country, I think signals that we are entering a new era. But that doesn't mean I haven't had any contact with American musicians, because I've played with many in Cuba and in festivals around the world [transition to original audio]…contacto con músicos Norte Americanos.

American bassist Charlie Haden met and played with Gonzalo Rubalcaba in Switzerland at the 1989 Montreux International Jazz Festival and brought him to the attention of Blue Note Records. Haden, along with Blue Note executives and Lincoln Center in New York City, negotiated with the US State Department to grant the young pianist a performance visa. And finally, in what seems to have been a political icebreaker last May 14th, Gonzalo Rubalcaba made his US debut performance before a sold-out audience at Lincoln Center.

[No name (Live at Lincoln Center)--Gonzalo Rubalcaba]

Nueva dirección, del viento, el aire lleva…[transition to English dub] There's been a change of wind, politically speaking, a relaxation of attitudes and perceptions that are now opening the doors to dialogue in an effort to eliminate tensions. And it seems to me that this is a common goal of both Cuba and the United States. Even though we still can't really speak of this in practical terms, but ideally, this could be the beginning of normalizing relations between the two countries [transition to original audio]…esto podría ser un pequeño parte de eso, un comienzo.

[Unknow Track--Gonzalo Rubalcaba]

Many artists in both countries do agree that a relaxation of political policy between Cuba and the United States would be a positive development. And Rubalcaba's US debut has generated a renewed optimism within the cultural community, even though the visa he was issued allowed him to play only one concert, and on the condition that he would not be paid. Recently, Gonzalo Rubalcaba's recording, entitled Suite 4 y 20, was released in this country on the Blue Note record label. For Latino USA, I'm Alfredo Cruz in Newark, New Jersey.

[Simbunt Ye Contracova--Gonzalo Rubalcaba]

30 years was different, was crowded you couldn't even... We used to open at five in the morning by six o'clock was people waiting outside the N 20. The bus used to be crowded. Everything, it's nothing, was different. Everybody was concerned.

In the 1970s, tenants at La Marqueta organized to run the marketplace and later several developers took over all without success. La Marqueta became the site of building code violations and neglect as small vendors retired or moved elsewhere and there was no one left to take their place. A year and a half ago, the city finally took charge again. Through the Economic Development Corporation. [Natural sounds of neighborhood] The city is fixing the one remaining building hoping to welcome new tenants by October. There's now a task force working on choosing a new developer to boost La Marqueta to a new future. The city is committed $5 million to the project and the task force is hoping for state and federal money in addition. East Harlem City council member Adam Clayton Powell IV envisions La Marqueta as a tourist attraction and an affordable neighborhood shopping center.

For over 400 years since New Mexico was settled by Spain in the 16th century, Hispanic folk artists in that state have created wooden statues called Santos, representing figures of Catholic saints. They've also made retablos, images of the saints painted on wooden panels. The practitioners of these carving arts or santeros were exclusively men until the last 20 years or so, but today, women are some of the best-known santeros and their contribution is the focus of an exhibit at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Catalina Reyes reports.

Just a short while ago, the Census Bureau issued a report saying Hispanics are disproportionately represented among the nation’s poor and make up a large part of the working poor. This finding came as no surprise to a group of sociologists and political scientists who studied Latinos in the American labor market. According to economist Raul Hinojosa Ojeda, one of the authors of the study, Latinos in a changing US economy, the study's most important finding was the dramatic downturn in economic opportunity for Latinos beginning after the mid 1970s.

Whereas the gap in earnings was closing throughout the most of the post-war era until about the mid 1970s, that gap has been increasing very rapidly. And in fact, that gap is very large part of the explanation of the increasing inequality in the United States.

Well, one of the themes that runs through most of your music is the idea of Chicano pride and it's really especially apparent on your most recent CD called Movimiento Music. But at some point, Dr. Loco, don't you feel like, for example, let's take “El Picket Sign”. I mean it sounded kind of predictable, kind of a throwback to the seventies or eighties, real stayed, predictable, even like rhetorical kind of political music. I mean, at what point do you continue to talk, let's say, in music that is considered panfletaria, [Background--music--Chicano world] really propagandistic, and on the other hand really wanting to do something that is communicating something else on a cultural level?