Annotations for Dates: 1980s

[Singing, natual sounds] The Chicano Human Rights Council was formed in the 1980s to address the human rights violations in the southwest. The council teaches Chicanos how to document abuses that affect their community. The testimony they hear in Brownsville will be presented at international forums, such as the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. (Singing) For Latino USA, with Lucy Edwards, I'm Lily Rodulfo. (Singing)

I've always lived in Miami. And that's been a discussion in Miami for the last 30 years. I can guarantee you of that. But the thing is, I think primarily, that now you see people that have not been in the United States for 30 years or 25 years, people who came in 1980 from Cuba, people who came in the 80s, people who have recently arrived, and they feel a much deeper connection to Cuba in the sense of, I have a mother that lives in Cuba, or I have a sister that lives in Cuba and that I keep in contact with on a regular basis. And a lot of those people are the ones that are saying, "I want to be able to know that my relatives in Cuba are okay. I don't agree with the system over there. I don't like the system, but I don't want to punish the people who live there that are my relatives."

[Transition--Afro-Cuban jazz]

Latin jazz great Mario Bauzá died July 11 of cancer in his Manhattan home, just blocks from where I live. Mario Bauzá, an integral part of New York's Latin jazz scene, was 82 years old.

I remember this great musician sitting on a milk crate outside a bodega, surrounded by friends, drinking coffee, and enjoying the simple things of life. You would've never known it by seeing him that this small, tender, smiley man had totally revolutionized American music.

In the 1940s, he influenced popular music by innovating a new musical style which mixed popular Afro-Cuban rhythms with American jazz.

Emilio San Pedro prepared this remembrance of Latin jazz legend Mario Bauzá.

[Afro-Cuban jazz]

Mario Bauzá was first exposed to American jazz in 1926, when he visited New York. In 1930, anxious to become a part of that scene, Bauzá left his native Havana for New York, frustrated that in Cuba, Afro-Cuban music was considered merely the music of the streets, not the music of the sophisticated nightclubs, country clubs, and hotels of pre-revolutionary Havana.

Had to happen outside of Cuba before the Cuban people convinced themself what they had, themself over there. They didn't pay no attention to that. When I got big in United States, Cuba begin to move into that line of music.

[Afro-Cuban jazz]

In the 1930s, Bauzá performed with some of New York's best-known jazz musicians, like Chick Webb and Cab Calloway. In fact, in those days, Bauzá was responsible for introducing singer Ella Fitzgerald to Chick Webb, thus helping to launch her career. It was also Bauzá who gave Dizzy Gillespie his first break, with the Cab Calloway Orchestra.

During their time touring and working with Cab Calloway, Mario Bauzá and Dizzy Gillespie, along with the Afro-Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo, played around with Afro-Cuban rhythm and jazz arrangements and created something entirely new: Afro-Cuban jazz.

[Machito--Sopa de pichon]

In the early 1940s, Mario Bauzá formed the legendary band Machito and his Afro-Cubans, along with his brother-in-law, Francisco Perez, who was called Machito. Bauzá was the musical director of the band, and he composed and arranged some of the group's most memorable songs.

[Machito--Sopa de pichon]

The sensation caused by Machito and his Afro-Cubans and by other Latin musicians in the 1940s made New York the focal point of a vibrant Latin music scene.

It's the scene of the Mambo kings you know, and that's why a lot of people will say Mambo is not Cuban music or it's not Mexican music. Mambo is New York music.

Enrique Fernandez writes about Latin music for the Village Voice.

It was here that this kind of music became very hot, that it really galvanized a lot of people, that had really attracted a lot of musicians from different genres that wanted to jam with it, and that created those great encounters between Latin music practitioners and jazz practitioners, particularly Black American jazz practitioners, that brought all this stuff together that later on, generated salsa and it generated Latin jazz and a lot of other things.

[Machito--Si si no no]

Groups like Machito and his Afro-Cubans were responsible for sparking a Latin dance craze in the United States, from New York to Hollywood. Mario Bauzá's sister-in-law, Graciela Pérez, began singing with Bauzá's orchestra in 1943.

Pero jurate que la música de esta…[transition to English dub] The music made by Machito's orchestra created such a revolution that you could say people began to enjoy because dance schools sprang up to teach the mamba and the guaguanco and all that [transition back to original audio]…el guaguanco todo todo.

Graciela and Mario left Machito's band in 1976 to form their own group, Mario Bauzá and his Afro-Cuban jazz Orchestra. Achieving recognition came slowly for the new band as general audiences lost interest in the traditional Afro-Cuban jazz sounds.

But in the late 1980s, Bauzá's music experienced a resurgence in popularity. His orchestra played to packed houses in the United States, Canada, and Europe. And in the last two years, Bauzá still active and passionate about his music, recorded three albums worth of material.

Meringue, meringue from San Domingo. Cumbia's cumbia from Colombia. Afro-Cuban is Cuban. That's why I've got to keep a bunch of these Afro-Cuban rhythms. Danzón Cubano, la danza Cubano, el bolero Cubano, el cha-cha-cha Cubano, el mambo es Cubano, guaguanco Cubano, la Colombia es Cubana.So I've got to call it Afro-Cuban, yeah.

In a 1991 interview, I spoke with Mario Bauzá about his extraordinary musical output.

You've brought out these great musicians, you've helped create or created Afro-Cuban jazz, brought Latin music and Latins to Broadway.

That's it.

And you're 80 years old.

Yes.

Many people at 80 years old are sitting by the pool or in the rocking chair and whatever. You don't look like it.

You know me. It ain't going to be like that.

What else could you do at this point, what more?

I don't know. I ain't through, I ain't through. I just wanted my music to be elevated. That's why I want to record this suite now. I want to see the word, music is music. You tell me what kind of music. I like any kind of music that we're playing. And that's what I tried to do, present my music different way. Some people might don't like this, don't like that, but when they hear that, they have a right to choose for. That's what I want them to do.

[Mario Bauza--Carnegie Hall 100]

Mario Bauzá worked steadily until his death. He recently released a compact disc on the German record label Messidor called My Time is Now.

For "Latino USA," I'm Emilio San Pedro.

[Mario Bauza--Carnegie Hall 100]

Pope John Paul II made his first visit to the United States since 1987. The pontiff along with 170,000 Catholics from around the world came to celebrate World Youth Day. A commemoration of Catholicism and religious worship. American Catholic clergy are hoping that as a result of the fanfare, traditionally Catholic Latino communities will renew their interest in the church. But as Ancel Martinez reports from Denver, many Catholic parishes are confronted with apathy and a church parishioners feel is sometimes too conservative.

[Church Bells]

One parish that wants to avoid the image of state Catholicism in apathy among Catholics is our Lady of Guadalupe. It's Adobe and Brick colonial style church and courtyard is just across the railroad tracks from Denver’s sleek office buildings. The pastor just ended a three-week fast to protest gangs that dominate summer street life around here. Our Lady Guadalupe is housing, hundreds of pilgrims celebrating World Youth Day. Church Deacon Alfonso Sandoval says for Mexican Americans it should be a time for reflection.

If anything, like I say, part of their culture is their faith in going to church. I think that the presence of the Holy Father is going to be significant for the youth in the sense that they were starting to drift away, not attending mass and not attending sacraments wasn't important for them, it just was not a priority. There's a lot of other priorities going on in their lives, but with this visit, I think it'll help a lot of them just take stock of what their faith's really all about.

The Pope chose Denver as the biannual World Youth Day site because it's a relatively young city and its Hispanic population represents the fastest growing segment of the church in America. But the nearly all Anglo national conference of Catholic bishops only grasped in the 1980s how important Latinos are to the survival of the American church. Father Lorenzo Ruiz works these streets reaching out to Chicanos and Latin American immigrants.

This is an area where the American church, the Anglo-American church and the Hispanic church met. The American church took over this area and again, they were not sensitized or aware of the church already existing here, totally unaware of the fact that there was a church here and people with a different culture and different values and a different way of expressing wonderful and beautiful Catholicism.

When Mexican Americans were ignored, that's when the separations began with the traditional Catholic Church, such as the new Mexican set known as the Penitentes decades ago. And even today, evangelical churches are making inroads to a once all Catholic culture.

[Church music and signing]

The Church of Christ Elam holds thrice weekly services in the basement of the circa 1900s Methodist church in the center of Denver's Latino neighborhood. Furnishings are minimal, fold up chairs, linoleum floor, and a small stage, several teenagers sing, a few dozen followers wave their hands and clutch Bibles, Pastor Manuel Alvarez, explains Catholicism simply isn't spiritual enough for many, so they seek other faiths.

They found something that is not a religious but a new experience with God when they can talk to God and have a relationship with God, not with religious or not with that organization, but a special relationship with Jesus Christ.

The Vatican is now paying special attention to Latinos in the United States because in part of their support of conservative issues like the ban on women serving as priest and opposition to artificial birth control and abortion, but there are even schisms among Latinos. Sister Irene Muñoz works for the Denver Catholic Archdiocese Hispanic outreach program.

I know women are speaking out and saying we want a fuller role in the church in many ways, and I truly see that. I truly believe that women are called to do more than perhaps what we're doing. And I know there are many of our sisters, my sisters that are called even more into become ordained priest and they were saying, look at us, listen to us.

The challenges facing the church in its quest to resolve these issues as well as retain Catholic Hispanics will remain long after the excitement of the pope's visit to Colorado in this continent subsides. For Latino USA I'm Ancel Martinez in Denver.

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.

The study's authors say downsizing of government programs during the 80s along with a lack of higher educational achievement by Latinos are among the factors which contribute to a decline in their economic situation. Perhaps the biggest factor, however, has to do with the restructuring of the US economy, from manufacturing to a greater focus on the service sector. Again, Raul Hinojosa.

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?