MUSED: LA 2 HOU | Oscar R. Castillo and Luis C. Garza | Documenting Protest - MUSED: LA 2 HOU

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
Welcome to our second Zoom program sponsored by
the Riverside Art Museum.

(00:20):
Today we're going to have adiscussion with Luis Garza and
Oscar Castillo.
The title of today's program isDocumenting the Movement or
Documenting Social Discord,Documenting History.
If you know anything about theChicano movement of the 60s, it
was a turbulent time.

(00:41):
At some point, it got evenviolent, not because Chicanos
wanted it to be violent, butbecause the a reaction was
violent.
The Chicano movement has beendescribed as being a
renaissance, a looking back, alooking into our history, our
culture, a rediscovery of music,a rediscovery of art, a

(01:01):
rediscovery of historicalfigures.
It was an examination of ourstatus in society.
We kind of looked around anddespite serving with distinction
in World War II, despite thecreation of LULAC and MAPA and
the GI Forum, We saw that ourposition in society was still
very tenuous.

(01:22):
We weren't allowed to live wherewe wanted to live because of
redlining, because of a covenantthat restricted certain types of
people from buying certainproperty.
We saw that the job market, thatthere was not just a ceiling,
but a concrete wall that justdid not let us go beyond a
certain point.
Chicanos were not gettingeducated.

(01:45):
The superintendent of schools inLA County in one of the famous
quotes said that educatingChicanos was worthless, was
useless, was a waste of time,energy, and resource because we
were best suited for stooplabor, meaning the only thing we
were good for was working in thefields.

(02:06):
So those were the kinds ofthings, the position that we
found ourselves in.
And when the movement started,it was a call, a call to action.
And, you know, it told artists,go out and paint, go out and
draw, you know, paint history,paint slices of life.
Poets are supposed to talk aboutstruggle.

(02:27):
Photographers are supposed todocument.
Everybody had a role from theprofessor to the student to the
comadre, everyone.
It was a call for everyone toget involved.
And tonight we have twofantastic folks who have agreed
to talk to us about theirefforts and what they were doing

(02:48):
back early in the 60s.
So I have Luis Garza and I haveOscar Castillo.
It is my belief that, you know,we don't, that who we are today
is based upon what we were whenwe were kids, what kind of
family we grew up in, what kindof experiences we have.

(03:12):
So before we get started, I wantto know a little bit about you
folks, because people may knowyour name, but people may not
know anything at all, or peoplemay know your image, but they
may not know the name that'sassociated with the image.
So I want you just really, asmuch as you feel comfortable,
Tell me a little bit aboutyourself.

(03:34):
So, Luis, I'm going to startwith you.
Where did you grow up?
What kind of home life did youhave?
Were you in a, you know,complete family unit, mom and
dad, extended families?
What was the social economiccondition of your family as
compared to the social economicconditions of your area and of
the times?

SPEAKER_00 (03:57):
Okay.

UNKNOWN (03:59):
Okay.

SPEAKER_00 (04:00):
I was born in a war zone, 537 East 139th Street
between St.
Ann's and Brook Avenue in theSouth Bronx.
My family is from Navajo, VilaMexico, and the South Texas
border areas.
And in the mid-1920s, early 20s,part of the family migrated to

(04:22):
New York City.
Both my mother's side, Valdez,and my father's side, Garza, the
brothers and sistersintermarried.
And Little Colonia wasestablished in New York in the
Lower East Side of Manhattan.
It was the opening of TheGodfather Part II when they
arrived.
And they were looking for acompañero who had sent them a

(04:45):
letter saying that there waswork.
in New York.
So they took coastal ferry outof Galveston, Texas, and along
the Gulf of Mexico, aroundFlorida, and up to New York
City.
They landed in 1922, thereaboutsis what I estimate.
And they found their way into112th Street and Lexington

(05:06):
Avenue and Little Italy.
And they approached thesuperintendent of the building,
and he told them, well, he'smoved.
He's gone.
We don't know where.
He says, but the apartment isavailable.
And if you want to to rent it,we'll take it, they said.
And it was a fifth floor, coldwater flat walk up that they
took.

(05:26):
And that began my family from,Northern Mexico, South Texas,
into the New York area.
And I was born in the SouthBronx in 1943.
I'm 77 years old, or 77 yearsyoung.
And that's a little bit of abrief with my family in terms of
their journey.

(05:47):
The family was Mexicano to thecore.
Papa didn't speak much English,apart from being able to tell
you where to go if he didn'tlike you.
And Mama was bilingual, and thefamily was Mexicano to the core.
But outside it was everythingelse.
It was Boricua, it was Italian,Irish, German, Jewish.
I became all of them by osmosisin order to survive.

(06:08):
We were the only Mexicanos inthe area.
But I never lost my sense of whoI was as a Mexicano.
And it certainly became morerefined and defined when I
arrived here in Los Angeles inthe mid-1960s.
And so I owe...
Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 (06:26):
Being from the East Coast, I now know where you get
the accent from.

SPEAKER_00 (06:31):
Yeah, it pops up more often when I'm with other
New Yorkers and the Toity Toitand Toit Street comes out in me,
you know?
So yeah, the New York attitudedefinitely sticks with me.
It's never left me, which hasbeen part of my ability to
survive.
Being a loner in New York as aMexicano, talk about being a
minority.

(06:52):
We did not have a network.
We did not have anything to fallback on.
on as most of the otherimmigrant groups in New York
had.
So it was quite distinct growingup, Mexicano.
It was surreal.
It was a Fellini, if you will.
But it was one that I was quiteproud of because it set me apart
from everybody else.

(07:13):
And as we moved fromneighborhood to neighborhood,
learning to survive amongstItalians, Irish, Jews, Poles,
and Blacks, and Boricuas, andeverybody else, you learn how to
navigate.
and that's what I've done allthe way up to the present.

SPEAKER_01 (07:29):
Oscar.
Yes.
How much do you feel comfortablechatting about your

SPEAKER_04 (07:34):
background?
Well, sure.
I've rehearsed my, I've goneover my background.
I've been thinking about it andall that.
And although yesterday Iexpressed a desire to kind of
keep that in the background, butI'll give you my spiel.
I'm originally from El Paso,Texas.
That's where I was born.

(07:55):
My grandparents came fromZacatecas on my mother's side.
And on my, no, I'm sorry, on myfather's side.
On my mother's side, as far as Ican figure, they're all from the
Texas, New Mexico area and Ieven suspect my great
grandmother was full-bloodedIsleta Indian.

(08:17):
Her last name was Pompa orPompas and apparently she was an
orphan and she was raised by thenuns at the Isleta Mission.
So and all of these things They,believe it or not, contributed
to my interest in photographybecause as a youth, I was

(08:38):
growing up in El Paso.
We were very close family.
We always lived in the closeproximity to our grandparents
and our aunts.
We practically, just abouteverybody lived on the same
block practically or withinwalking distance.
And in some cases in the samehome, same house.
So we were very extended family.
And my grandparents, all ofthem, always spoke Spanish.

(09:02):
I never heard them utter a wordin English, although they could
if they were pressed.
But my father was aprofessional.
He actually was a career officerin the Air Force.
And he always instilled in us tolearn English and speak English.

(09:23):
And my mother, up until we wereteenagers, she always talked to
us in Spanish.
So we were always a bilingualfamily.
And to this day, I love speakingSpanish, talking to people that
speak Spanish.
And I use that.
That inspires me, the music, theculture, the familia.

(09:47):
And that...
that has helped me to develop asense of community in my
photography.
And anyway, that in a nutshell.
I mean, we did live in otherplaces.
I was fortunate to live inMassachusetts, in Bermuda, in
Washington State, and eventuallyin California because my father

(10:12):
was in the Air Force, so wetraveled a little bit.
And so I was always exposed totwo cultures.
But we moved to California whenI was, My parents got divorced,
so obviously we traveleddifferent ways, but moved to
California in the early 60s.

(10:33):
And I was in high school at thetime.
I went to Belmont High School,where I played football, did the
track stuff and all that.
And then eventually went tocollege for a year, but was
drafted in the Vietnam War.
But I joined the Marine Corpsinstead being drafted, I said,

(10:54):
well, I don't want to go in theArmy.
I'm going to join the MarineCorps.
So I went into the Marine Corpsand When I was in Japan, that's
where I really got turned on tophotography.
I bought a camera.
I self-taught myself.
And even though before, when Iwas in high school, my mother
had given me a little brownie,which I started snapping

(11:14):
pictures with.
And I'll go back to my previousstatement that my mother created
an album, which I still have.
And it had images of all myfamily, my grandparents, people
I never met.
And I knew the story of thefamily.
from that album, which I stillown.
But anyway, in here you asked,well, how did I get involved

(11:39):
with La Raza newspaper?
I think, is that here or in

SPEAKER_01 (11:42):
another one?
Yeah, let's pause there.
Luis, when did you come toCalifornia and how did you get
involved in photography?
Because you're in the EastCoast.
How did you wind up in Califas?

SPEAKER_00 (11:55):
Go west, young man, go west.
After I got out of the service,I was in the United States Navy.
And as a kiddie cruiser, Ijoined when I was 17 and a half
years old.
And I served out of Norfolk,Virginia on a naval destroyer.
And that was 1960 to 63.

(12:17):
And I saw...
I saw the Navy and thediscrimination in the South
because we were based out ofNorfolk, Virginia, and we were
part of the blockade and shipsthat...
escorted the Cuban rebels fromNicaragua and some old cargo

(12:39):
ships into the Bay of Pigs.
So there's a whole other historythere, which is part of the
political evolution of mythinking.
But I wish I had picked up thecamera then.
I didn't pick up the camerauntil I came out to California
in 1965.
I got out here about a week orso before the Watts Rebellion.

(13:01):
And It was a family of PuertoRican Mexicanos who were living
in Pico Rivera, who had come outfrom New York City.
And so they put me up for alittle while, and then I split
and started making my wayaround.
I didn't know anybody, didn'thave any friends or anybody, so
I was just cruising.
Went to this college, went toLACC, and picked up a little

(13:26):
brownie camera.
I started taking photographs in1966.
I was going back and forthbetween L.A.
and New are.
You would transport taxi cabs,reconditioned taxi cabs, and
you'd drive them four or fivedays.
A bunch of us would jump in thecar and pop Benny, smoke a
couple of joints, and we'dtravel east and west.

(13:48):
And you'd drop off in LosAngeles, everybody would go
their own way.
So that's how I did it for alittle while.
So

SPEAKER_01 (13:55):
was the Brownie camera, was that the camera of
the day, or was that the amateurcamera of the day?
No,

SPEAKER_00 (14:00):
that was the beginning's of my interest in
photography.
It was short-lived, and then Ipicked up a Pentax camera, 35
millimeter, and I started justphotographing on my own with no
direction to roam, as Bob Dylanwould say.
I was a rolling stone.
So I was broke.
I was destitute.

(14:22):
I didn't have nowhere to turn,and a friend of mine from
school, who was a social worker,said, let me introduce you to a
man that may be able to help youwith a job.
That man's name was Ed Bonilla,who was the director of NAP,
Neighborhood Adult ParticipationProject, which was part of the
Great Society of Lyndon Johnson.
And it was a storefront on 18thStreet and Broadway in Lincoln

(14:44):
Heights.
And I went in to meet him, and Ihad my camera around my neck.
And he looked at me, and he wasstroking his mustache and his
goatee, and he had on shades.
He was...
He was old school Chicano fromthe barrios, but he was the
director of NAP.
And he said, so...

(15:07):
you need a job.
I said, yeah, I need a job.
He says, and you're from NewYork.
And I go, yeah, I'm from NewYork.
He goes, uh-huh, okay.
He says, you're Puerto Rican.
I go, no, I'm not Puerto Rican.
I said, well, yeah, I'm PuertoRican by osmosis.
And I'm Jewish, I'm Irish, I'mItalian.
I'm all of those things that Igrew up with in New York.
I said, but my family is fromMexico.

(15:29):
And he questioned me a littlebit more.
I was getting a little bitexasperated.
And he says, and you need a job.
I said, yeah, I need a job.
And he says, and he strokes hisgoatee and he says, a Chicano
from New York.
That's an honor.
But I had never heard the wordChicano.
Oh.

(15:50):
I mean, this is my first entree.
This is my first dance.
And so I think to myselfquickly, I said, Chicano,
Mexicano, there's no difference.
I said, yeah, I'm a Chicano fromNew York.
And he goes, you got the job.
And I go, all right, great.
What's the job?

(16:10):
He says, you're going toorganize the people.
I said, how do you do that?
He said, well, you show uptomorrow, you bring your camera
with you, and we're going tostart.
And that next day, he parachutedme right into the middle of the
whole emerging Chicano movement.
He introduced me to Father Luz,Joe Raso, Raul Ruiz, Eliseo

(16:30):
Risco, a whole bunch ofsub-people, union members, union
organizers, the whole beginningsof the Chicano movement.
Is that 66 or still 65?
That's late 66, 67.
Okay.
And so I'm on a fast track.
And...
The blowouts take place in highschools, and I begin

(16:53):
photographing.
But now I begin photographingwith

SPEAKER_01 (16:56):
a purpose.
Okay, let me pause you there.
I'm going to go back to Oscar.
Oscar, so you got the Browniecamera in 1966.
You said that you went to Japan,and that sparked your interest
in photography.
Why the little Brownie camera?

SPEAKER_04 (17:12):
Well, no, the Brownie was when I was in high
school.
That was more like anInstamatic.
I think it's a different camera,but similar.
A Brownie was a larger camera.
Instamatic was a little cassettecamera.
But when I came back from Japan,I had already gotten the bug to
take pictures and I had quite abackground already in

(17:34):
self-taught photography.
And when I came back, I workedfor the phone company for a
little while and decided to goback back to college instead of
working a real job.
And anyway, I started at ValleyCollege and I met a lot of the,
at the time it was called UMAS.
So I got involved in, you know,when you go to college, you want

(17:57):
to get in with a fraternity orsorority.
And this was the Chicano versionof a fraternity or sorority,
because it was both men andwomen.
And at the time, I got involvedwith the UMAS and they were
involved at the time withelecting Tom Bradley.

(18:20):
He was running for office.
So anyway, I got involved inpolitical, you know, events.
And I think that was in 69.
And that was actually the firsttime that I was involved in,
That was when the LAPD raidedthe Panthers headquarters in

(18:43):
South Central Los Angeles.
So a friend of mine said, comeon, let's go down.
I mean, I hadn't heard about it.
My friend had heard on the news.
She said, let's go down thereand see what's going on.
So I went down there, took somephotographs out of the window as
my friend drove the car by.
All the shooting had finished,so we just drove by and took

(19:05):
some pictures, which areactually going to be used.
It's amazing how things take along time to gel, but those
pictures are going to be used.
by a lady who works with theAfrican American Museum.
And they're doing a project onSouth Central.
They're gonna be putting thesekiosks.

(19:25):
So they're gonna be shown onthese kiosks in the street.
But anyway, beyond that, I wenton to Cal State Northridge,
which at the time was SanFernando Valley College and got
to be known because I was alwayscarrying my camera.
And I started taking a Chicanostudies and I had a dual major.

(19:48):
So I was fortunate to meet RudyAcuna, who is a well-known
historian.
And he was in the process ofwriting some books.
So he said, how would you liketo be the photographer?
I said, sure, absolutely.
So it was a paying job.
It was my first paying job as aphotographer.
And he gave me a script and Iwent out and I shot the pictures

(20:11):
and it was published and it wasused throughout the state of
California, seventh through 12thgrade in social studies.
So from then on, I went on, Itook a class in, It sounds like
I'm bragging, but this is myhistory.
I took a class and it was agroup.
We did a newspaper on campus.

(20:33):
It's called El Popo.
And the instructor was agraduate student named Frank
DeLomo, who later became asenior editor at the LA Times.
And I think the class advisorwas Raul Ruiz.
And he invited us to go visitthe La Raza newspaper to see the

(20:54):
facility.
So I said, sure, why not?
So I went down there, and theyhad a dark room, and I was
interested.
I mean, I really had theexperience doing a newspaper, so
I got involved with them.
Here

SPEAKER_01 (21:07):
with Ed Bean.

SPEAKER_04 (21:08):
I'm sorry, what, here?

SPEAKER_01 (21:09):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (21:11):
um it would have had to be uh 70 because i was there
i mean this was very fast trackbetween 69 70 it was all
happening like boom boom boomright after the other and uh
that's how i got i was there forsome of the events which were
the the moratoriums the the thecatholicos which happened i'd

(21:33):
have to check my records butit's either 69 or 70.
i was in 69 and then 70 was themoratoriums And I was not a
permanent fixture at La Raza,but I was a kind of a visiting
photographer.
I wasn't involved in the policysetting or anything.
I was just taking pictures.
And occasionally my storieswould get, not my stories, but

(21:57):
my photos would get published.
And especially the ones from themoratorium.
And then I went off and workedfor a semester.
And right after the moratorium,I went to Crystal City, Texas
and spent a semester there.
with Jose Angel Gutierrez.
I came back and published,augmented one of his articles

(22:17):
with photographs that I took atthe time.
But anyway, from then on, itjust kind of snowballed.
I kept getting, I met peoplelike Irene Blea later on in
life.
And I'm very fortunate to workclosely with a lot of scholars,
historians.
And so my work has been kind ofsnowballing and I'm getting a

(22:40):
lot of people, well, and peopleask me for my historical things.
And Although I do other things,I exhibit as an artist, but the
historical things are theevents, where the art is like
the cultural things, workingwith, I've worked with the

(23:00):
Teatro Campesino, I've workedwith musicians, I've got to meet
El Chicano and Daniel Valdez,and a lot of other people.
I was fortunate to meet andphotograph all the great, like
Corky Gonzalez, Tijerina, BertCorona, Dolores Huerta, and work

(23:25):
with people like Mayor Bradleyafter he was elected.
And so over the last 50 years,I've been a professional
photographer and worked in it inmany aspects, commercially and
historically and for fun.
Okay.
Luis.

SPEAKER_01 (23:44):
Yeah, that's real.
I think we could do a two-hourshow just on each one of you
alone.
Luis, so...
In 66, you meet Mr.
Bonilla, and he introduces youto all these folks.
Was La Raza newspaper already inexistence, or was it in its
formative stage?

SPEAKER_00 (24:04):
La Raza newspaper was in existence.
It started in September of 1967.
I come aboard a couple of issueslater.
And the lifespan of La Raza is67 to 77.
And so the...

(24:28):
The newspaper transitions into amagazine format in 1970.
So we go from a 12-pageGestetner printout, bilingual,
with the use of somephotographic work and cartoon
work and things like that.
And it's out of the basement ofthe Episcopalian Church of
Father Luce.

(24:49):
And then we transition in, well,we have to move several times.
So when Oscar comes aboard, ashe said in 1970, that's when we
had made a move, a major move,and practically a final move to
City Terrace.
And that's where we create thedarkroom.
We build it from scratch.

(25:10):
We outfit it with the latestprinters and enlargers.
And, you know, we have it allset up.
It's a professional rundarkroom, which we created.
I have learned how to do thatwith the work that I had done
with another a photographer whomentored me for about a year's
time.

(25:30):
So I learned the basics ofdarkroom work and building a
darkroom and mixing chemicalsand all of that, which is what
we were doing with each other.
We would pass on theinformation.
We would educate each other.
We would train each other.
Many of us were self-taught.
Oscar and I probably are the...
Debra Weber is another one whostuck to camera work and it

(25:56):
became part of our professionallives.
Most everybody else, you know,did it, picked it up, dropped it
for the most part and had othergigs.
But for us, it became primary.
And for me, it became pathwayinto the larger media world
because I transitioned from LaRaza in late 72, 73 into

(26:16):
documentary filmmaking.
ABC, NBC, other televisionstations.
So a pathway was set for me.
Photography created a foundationfor me and a base for me from
which to grow.
Go

SPEAKER_01 (26:33):
ahead.
Well, what was it like, though,in those early days of La Raza
meeting, you know, Eliser andJose and all those folks?
What was it like?
I mean, what was the energy orlack of energy like, you know,
joining those group of people?

SPEAKER_00 (26:46):
Well, it was formative.
It was evolving.
It was, you know, I think wewere all learning at the same
time.
And it was meeting a variety ofpeople from to the academics, to
the professionals, to writersand poets and artists of all

(27:09):
stripes who would come into theoffices, especially there at
City Terrace.
It was a hotspot for gathering.
And so It was a salon.
It was like 24-7 practicallyevery day.
And it was also the base of alot of meetings and conferences
and strategy meetings and how dowe put it together?

(27:32):
What's our next move?
And then printing and working ona magazine that is now 60 to 80
to 90 pages that goes from alocal to regional to a
hemispheric publication.
And so the scope of the magazineand the content of the magazine
expands tremendously.

(27:55):
So you're stepping into anenvironment where we're all
creating.
It's a creative process.
It's an organizational toolprimarily, but it's also a
creative process for all of us.
We have very little outlets forour talent, for our desires, for
our political and culturalaspirations.
So La Raza becomes a fountainfor that.

SPEAKER_01 (28:19):
So did you see your Did you see yourself as purely a
person who shoots film, or didyou see yourself also as an
activist, somebody who wasinvolved in organizing,
prompting, you know, those kindsof things?

SPEAKER_00 (28:34):
I saw myself as a photographer.
I was not...
At that time, I was...
not vocal.
I was not a speaker.
I was very shy.
I spoke through my photographsand my language was beginning to
become more refined as I learnedthe craft of photography.
I studied other photographersfrom Manuel Alvarez Bravo to

(28:57):
Cartier Bresson to AkiraKurosawa to any number of
cinematographers andphotographers of name, Dorothea
Lange, etc.
And I go to the museums andstudy portraiture.
I study the works of artistsfrom the past to the present to
see their composition, theirframing.

(29:19):
I taught myself the craft.
In order to dominate andunderstand the craft, which is
technological, I had tounderstand how it worked.
And so I involved myself thatway.
And that takes hold of myphotography.
As you begin to study my work,you begin to see the evolution.

(29:41):
You begin to see the evolutionof each of the photographers of
our fellow colleagues who areinvolved.
Some evolve, others don't.
Some always take out of focusshots and others take sharp
shots.
You see what I mean?
So it's a process and you haveto engage in the process.
It's a discipline that requiresconstant work.

SPEAKER_01 (30:03):
What were some of the earliest events that you
shot?
You know, Ed Bonilla gave you ajob and he said, I'm going to
send you out to, you know, workwith the people.
What were some of the earlyevents that you shot?

SPEAKER_00 (30:16):
Well, the first events was the blowouts in the
school and the walkouts and theBoard of Education and the
sit-ins and Sal Castro.
So within my files, both at UCLAand at home, are hundreds and
hundreds of photographic imagesfrom that period of time.
many of which have never beenseen before.

(30:37):
That's one.
And then you've got to remember,and I'm always amazed at how on
a weekly, on a daily basis,organizing was going on,
demonstrations were going on,whether it be educational
issues, immigration issues,police brutality issues, war
issues, any host of othersubject matter.

(30:59):
that were unfolding.
And whatever organizations tookit on or whatever combination of
organizations that bandedtogether to bring it to the
forefront, it was constant, muchlike what's going on today.
When you look at what's going ontoday, it's constant protests.
It's constant demonstrations.

(31:19):
It's constant vocal outrage tothe systemic oppression that's
going on.
Well, it was the same thing backthen for us.
Now, the civil rights movementin general was going on
throughout the country,throughout the world for that
matter.
You know, Vietnam War brought aninternational uprising, if you

(31:40):
will.
And you begin to look at it fromthat point of view.
I didn't come into thispoliticized.
I came into it with a sense ofpolitics from my childhood with
my father.
who always used to curse out thepinche gringos, metiéndose donde
no se deben de meter, you know?
And so I had a sense of it.

(32:00):
So the formulation, though, andthe sophistication of it is a
slow evolvement as I become moreand more involved and more
engaged.
And I begin to start connectingthe dots.
And photography helps do thatfor me.
So photography gives me a base.
It gives me a foundation.
Un razón de ser.
That was the era of sex, drugs,and rock and roll, and I was

(32:24):
into all of it.
And so trying to find my footingand say, okay, who am I?
What am I in this world?
What's my purpose?
What's my razón de ser?
Well, photography became that.
The Chicano movement becamethat.
I was reborn.
Fue un renacimiento para mí.
Right.

SPEAKER_01 (32:42):
Oscar.
Yes.
So in 1970, you get introducedto La Raza.
Do you cover the first two, whatI call pre-moratorium, pre-major
moratorium marches?
Did you cover any of those two?

SPEAKER_04 (32:58):
Yes, I did.
I covered the one which wasstarted at the Cinco Puntos at
the Veterans Memorial there inBoyle Heights, went down to, I
think it's called, I forget,Obregón Park.
And then the one moratorium inthe rain, I covered that one.
Okay.
And then I covered those.

(33:18):
Those were, I mean, I did thoseindependently.
And then I really didn't hook upwith La Raza people until the
moratorium.
Okay.
Did

SPEAKER_01 (33:36):
you cover that at the behest of La Raza or were
you still independent?
Which one?
The last one, the major one.

SPEAKER_04 (33:43):
Well, I always considered myself independent
because I was not official.
I don't know what the protocolwas.
I don't know if you had to getsworn in or whatever.
I say that jokingly.
But I know everybody wasvolunteer.
And I would come and go.
And they used to have staffmeetings.
And I attended a couple.

(34:04):
But I didn't really getassignments per se.
I don't know how that worked.
I always considered myself afreelancer, but I did, when I
left, I did leave my files onthat one moratorium with them.
And also the event, which wascalled the Marcha de Justicia.

(34:30):
And those images have been,safely kept for over 40 years in
a vault somewhere, but recentlywere released and were then
documented and archived at UCLA.
So then they were able to comeout to the public, which they
would come out and, you know, tosee the Day of Light.

(34:51):
But

SPEAKER_01 (34:52):
that wasn't kind of...
In preparation for the ChicanaMoratorium on August 29th, what
were the expectations?
What was the buzz of thecommunity?
What was, you know, what werepeople talking about as they
were preparing for the march?

SPEAKER_04 (35:07):
I don't think anybody expected the outcome.
I think everybody was very upand very, you know, very festive
about it.
Although it was a kind of anegative subject, you know, the
Vietnam War and protestingagainst the, you know, um
lopsided you know, death figuresand injuries to Hispanics versus

(35:34):
what we're calling Chicanosversus the non-Hispanic.
I think in Vietnam, it wasextremely high, maybe as high as
20%.
I have the, I have the, butanyway, they were hoping to, I
mean, I feel, I didn't reallyhave much contact with say the
Brown Berets or the organizers,but in general, I was in that,

(35:54):
you know, circle of people thatwere, that that were, activists
at the time.
But I think they wanted to justbasically bring this to the
forefront.
And I think one of the problemswas that the media did not cover
our point of view or the Chicanopoint of view.
And I think it exists to thisday.
I don't think there's been muchchange.

(36:16):
They do cover a kind of tokenChicano or Hispanic events, but
they ginger coat it.
And it's very, very, you know,lopsided.
I hate to compare it, althoughwhat's happening now is the

(36:37):
Black Lives Matter, butminorities are always thrown in
a bad light.
But anyway, your question was,what were the goals?
My goal was just to takepictures and document some of
the things that were happening.

SPEAKER_01 (36:56):
So where did the march, what was the starting
point of the march?

SPEAKER_04 (37:03):
The march started at a point which is on 3rd Street
in East Los Angeles, 3rd near, Ibelieve it's Dittman, which is
now they call the East LosAngeles Civic Center.
But that's also the point.
There's a park there, and thatwas a staging area.

(37:23):
And they walked east towardsAtlantic.
and then south on Atlantic toWhittier, and then west on
Whittier to Laguna Park, whichit was called then.
And I marched along with themall the way and took pictures

(37:44):
and became aware that, ofcourse, this was a standard
procedure, but there was manyplainclothes policemen.
Also, there was, you know,clothed policemen.

SPEAKER_01 (37:58):
There appeared to be a variety of different ages
involved in this march.
Did you

SPEAKER_04 (38:04):
notice that?
Right, right.
In some of the, I mean, therewas people there, there was
mothers carrying children, therewas older people, there was a
lot of college students.
They have these, you know, veryconservative people like the
Mexican-American politicalassociation, MAPA.
And so there was a lot ofsupport from people coming from

(38:26):
from as far away as Texas.
This was one of my schoolmatesat college, Abel.
I forget his last name, but hecaught him there sitting with
the poster against the war inVietnam.

SPEAKER_01 (38:39):
Yeah, our fight is in the barrio, not Vietnam.

SPEAKER_04 (38:42):
Yes.
And then this was on Atlantic.
And you can see, obviously, itsays Nixon, no, Chicano Sea, a
pass.
So there's...
This was on Atlantic Boulevard.

SPEAKER_01 (38:57):
Yeah, these look to be like 10, 11, 12 year olds.

SPEAKER_04 (39:00):
Yes, yes.
They seem to be preteens orearly teens.
And there's a lot of supportfrom the younger people.
And then this is a brown beret.
Well, I don't know if she's anactual brown beret, but she's
wearing a brown beret and abrown sash and helping carry the
banner.

(39:21):
And this was on Atlantic.
And then we have the othergroup.
This has gotten a lot of usageon book covers, a couple of book
covers and books.
But this is a, you know, lateteens to early 20s, and an older
man there on the right wearing asarape vest.
And then they got the guy with acouple guys with the bare chest,

(39:47):
and then the women in theircoplorico blouse and more
contemporary.
So I like to show the cultural,the cross-cultural within the
culture.
And there's the mom with herson, and maybe she's a grandma,
I don't know.
But there's a little boy there.
there, a girl in the back with aflag and her husband pushing

(40:08):
their baby.
This one is a lady with herchild.

SPEAKER_01 (40:17):
And you notice the UFW flag is prominent now during
this march.
I mean, there were a couple ofslides where you saw either some
handmade posters or actual redflags with UFW.
Was that symbol prominentthroughout the entire march or
was it isolated?

SPEAKER_04 (40:38):
No, I think it was prominent throughout the march
because there was a lot of crosssupport.
I mean, people not onlysupported the anti-war movement,
but they supported the farmworker movement and the rights
of the farm worker for equal payand, you know, living
conditions.
So Cesar Chavez was very, verywell supported amongst the

(41:03):
activists at the time.
So I think, you know, peoplewere doing, you know, they
were...
doing double duty.
They were supporting theanti-war movement and supporting
the farm worker movement.
So I think those two things wenthand in hand.
And then here you see a tale concures.
So people are also both addingcures, which was apparently, you

(41:29):
know, in bad with the community.
You have a youngster there withhis dad and the lady in the
back, you know, everybody very,very up.
And there's a reference to CheGuevara in the background
because there was a support forChe especially and for the

(41:52):
liberation of Cuba.
So there was a lot of– there wasmultiple things happening.
And here you have the referenceto– somebody being killed in
Vietnam, Sanchez, the name of afallen soldier over in Vietnam.

SPEAKER_01 (42:14):
Yeah, some of the bad parts about coming, you
know, fighting in Vietnam andcoming back is that there were
covenants that did not allowChicanos to be buried in white
cemeteries.
Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_04 (42:25):
I know when I was in Texas, there was a...
I think that the GI Forum cameabout because of that, because
they would not allow somebodyfrom the World War II to be
buried.
But in Crystal City, I havepictures at a Spantion Benito

(42:46):
Juarez, which was createdbecause they wouldn't allow
Hispanics to be buried in theirAnglo cemetery.
And this is after the violenceat Laguna Park.
And the line of deputies,they're clearing the street.
And after a while, I mean, theywould pretty much leave the

(43:08):
photographers alone.
But then after we publishedphotographs, I had to do some
fast running on a couple ofoccasions.
The gentleman, the deputy on theright, holding the tear gas
weapon, that's the one that shotRuben Salazar.

(43:29):
And then the one in the middleis carrying a gas generator,
which was used to spray peopleto clear the Laguna

SPEAKER_01 (43:40):
Park.
So the guy on the right is theactual guy that shot the
canister into the Silver DollarCafe that killed Ruben Salazar?
Yes,

SPEAKER_04 (43:48):
he is.
If I remember correctly, I havea closer up shot of him, but it
hasn't appeared yet in themissing negatives from the Rasa
magazine.
But this was at the Laguna Park.
And there he is again rightthere.

(44:08):
And this is right there in theadjacent street.
They were going, they wereshooting and they were going
after people right in theirfront yards and shooting pure
gas.
And as I say, at first they leftme alone.
Maybe they thought I was a pressphotographer, but later on, on

(44:30):
the 16th of September, I wasactually chased on a couple of
occasions.
by very aggressively bydeputies.
I have to make a note, kind ofapologizing for the quality of
the photograph.
Normally we would develop ourown film, but in this case,

(44:52):
somebody else developed it.
So I'm not complaining, but it'sless than, you know, less than a
quality, but it hits a lot ofgrain, but still it gets the
message across.
But when you develop film, youhave to be aware of temperatures
and agitation and all that kindof stuff.

(45:13):
And some of the people, as Luissaid, I mean, some of them were
mentored by other people andsome people took it on
themselves to process their ownfilm.
And if there was any...
any handy.
I mean, there's something thathadn't been processed.
They would, you know, they woulddo us a favor and process it,
but this one I did not process.

SPEAKER_01 (45:31):
So this appears to be the park after it was
cleared.

SPEAKER_04 (45:36):
Well, it was in the process of being cleared.
I think the main group ofmarchers are gone, and you can
see all the litter And they'restill trying to maintain the
ground that they had

SPEAKER_01 (45:51):
already cleared.
There's also reports of severalpeople being beaten up with
batons.

SPEAKER_04 (45:56):
Yes, yes, yes.
I mean, there were somevideographers there.
There's evidence of peoplebeing, I know one woman in
particular, Viviana Chamberlain,it shows a depth.
She was standing in the middleof the park and he came up
behind her and just gave her atremendous blow to the back of

(46:17):
her head and she just kind ofdropped.
But that's the kind of thingsthat were happening.

SPEAKER_01 (46:27):
Now, here is an LA Times.
And whose photos did they usefor the LA Times coverage?

SPEAKER_04 (46:35):
Well, the top two and the bottom left were by Joe
Rosso and Raul Ruiz.
They were both together in frontof the silver dollar.
The one of the deputy over hereon the bottom right, that's
mine.
And then inside they use otherpeople's.
But we didn't claim personalcredit.

(46:59):
We just gave it to the magazine.

SPEAKER_01 (47:03):
So, Luis, let's go to you.
So you were not at the ChicanoMoratorium because you were
attending to your mom.
Tell me, what did you know aboutthe planned events at the
moratorium?
And then when did you come backand what did you see as the
aftermath of that?

SPEAKER_00 (47:25):
I had left Los Angeles several days before the
moratorium.
My mother was undergoing acancer operation.
We did not know if she was goingto survive.
So it was a difficult decision,but I had to be with my mother.
So I flew back to New York toattend to my mother and see that

(47:49):
hopefully she would survive,which she did.
And she outlived the doctors,which after they gave her a week
to live or a day to live or amonth to live, and she lived
long after the doctors.
Thank you very much.

(48:24):
doing the work necessary tostart printing up images and
prepare the special editionissue that came out with the
images that Joe and Raul took ofthe silver dollar.
And those images that you saw inthe LA Times, as Oscar pointed
out, were from...
from Raul and Joe, who did notknow, here's a side note, that

(48:47):
they did not know that RubenSalazar was inside the Silver
Dollar Cafe.
They had seen the gathering ofthe sheriffs in front of the
Silver Dollar, and so they justmade their way through the
crowds and the police sheriffsto the Silver Dollar, and they
positioned themselves on eitherside of the corner and started

(49:09):
photographing, not knowing thatRuben Salazar was inside.
They did not until later on thatevening when the news came out
saying that Ruben Salazar hadbeen killed.
And that's when they looked ateach other and they said, we've
got to develop the film andrealized that they had captured
that moment.

(49:29):
And so that moment rings andresonates throughout our
community, resonates withinnational media, and goes
international.
So La Raza magazine, through Joeand Raul, capture and document a
historic moment that nobody elsecaptured.

(49:51):
And so La Raza getsinternational recognition where
nobody else was there.
No other photographers werethere that captured that
imagery.
It was just Joe and Raul, whichis ironic because that catapults
La Raza magazine into moreprominence.
And it gives validity to thework that we were doing in terms

(50:16):
of the pushback, pushback of theinformation, the information the
contents and the imagery and theeditorials and all the work that
was contained within themagazine.
So we take on an added aurawithin the CPA, the Chicano

(50:36):
Press Association, which is madeup of several hundreds of
newspapers throughout theSouthwest up into the Midwest.
And so we are predominant interms of being photographically
driven.
And as Oscar was saying, in manycases, the photographers never

(51:01):
got photographic credit.
That was just part of the way wedid things back then.
Unless you had a photo layoutthat was specific to you.
Manuel Barrera had that, I hadthat, and a couple of other
people.
Maria Marquez had that.
We tried to do sections for thephotographers to get the
recognition And the onlyrecognition that people

(51:23):
received, because it wasnon-paying, it was all
volunteer, was at the end whereyou would get credits for
participating, whether it wasjust for that publication or
whether you were thereconstantly.
It was all volunteer work.
No one got paid.
So it was a love of labor.
And people came and went.
It was a revolving door.

(51:43):
But there was a core group ofus.
And amongst the photographers,there was a core group of us,
which led to, and that's a wholeother subject that I'm sure
you're going to jump into whenwe put the La Raza exhibition
together.
So it's representative of thethe work that we did back then.
And there's a lot of what wecall staff photographers because

(52:05):
we have not been able toidentify who took the
photographs, which is part ofthe task that we're undertaking
still to this day now.
I've counted about 35,000 to40,000 images.
We at first thought it was like20,000, 25,000, but I've been
through the...
through the collection several,close to a dozen times because I

(52:28):
had to curatorially to put theexhibition together.
And so it's taken me all thistime to become familiar with
each of the photographers andtheir work.
And it's truly a deep sense ofrespect that I have for my
fellow colleagues and the workthat they have done.
So what was the atmosphere likeafter the moratorium?

(52:52):
The atmosphere was tense.
It was extremely tense.
We were under constantsurveillance.
The office got busted intoseveral times by LAPD.
You'd leave the office and you'dhave a squad car following you.
And you wouldn't know if you gothome on that.
Sometimes you'd be stopped,you'd be harassed, or you'd be

(53:14):
picked up.
And that was part of it.
Like Oscar was saying, therewere times when you...
you had to run.
And there were more than manytimes that I had to run with my
camera, jumping fences.
hiding in houses and trying toget away from police that were

(53:35):
chasing me and some of theothers.
We were identified.
They had us.
They had us pinned.
They knew who we were.
They would harass us.
They would park outside of ouroffices.
They'd come in.
We had a first name basis withmany of them.
LAPD, undercover, whatever theywere.
You always smelled them.
You always knew who they were.

(53:55):
And in fact, we used to tellthem, you know, you should give
10% to the cause.
And they would say, what cause?
They say, cause you got a jobbecause of us, that's why.
Otherwise, you'd be washingdishes down at Skid Row.
That's right.

SPEAKER_01 (54:10):
So that was the reaction of the photographers.
How did the community react tothe aftermath of the moratorium?

SPEAKER_00 (54:18):
Well, it...
You know, it's like what'shappening now.
It doesn't dampen the spirit.
You know, you just get soenraged with the response from
the powers that be in governmentand within the LAPD and within

(54:41):
the sheriff's department orwithin whatever, FBI, CIA, of
todos, you know.
I mean, we're on file.
They had us on file.
Shoot.
Outside my home, they'd beparked and they'd come up to the
house.
They'd talk to my mother aboutme.
We went through a lot ofharassment.

(55:02):
It was constant.
It never stopped.
So were there more marches andmore protests after that?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it was constant.
That's what I'm saying.
I'm truly amazed and respectfulof how the people turned out.
The more suppression that came,the more outrage that was done
and weekly, the constantdemonstrations.

(55:25):
So many, I can't even identifyany number of them.
You know, some of them stand outand many of them don't because I
just lost track of them.
But we try to photograph as manyas we could.
You know, not all of us werethere at the same time.
That's one of the things thatwe're doing with the archive is
that we look at the period oftime that the photographs

(55:47):
represent.
Who is it that...
specifically was there and whowas not there who was part of
the magazine at that time andwho was not part of the magazine
so it's a process of tracingeach of the photographers and
their history with thephotographic work that was done
so this is where you begin tonarrow it down to okay this

(56:10):
batch of photographs belongs tothis photographer we concede you
know before

SPEAKER_01 (56:16):
we talk about the January 19 um 71 uh protest
there was a question oscar umyes how are you earning a living
i mean you're a photographer isdid you have a day job

SPEAKER_04 (56:31):
Well, back in those days, I was a full-time student
from 69 to about 73.
And I was living on the GI Bill.
I was getting a stipend formilitary service, but I did have
a job in a drugstore.
I was delivering prescriptions.

(56:55):
And then I was a counselor atU.S.
at the university i was a peercounselor for a little while and
then actually i got a job withthe with the state of california
working in the because of thechicago studies major kind of
qualified me for social studiesmajor and i i was recommended

(57:17):
for a job with the state ofcalifornia for for a while uh
with the department ofunemployment And then after
that, when I left college, Iworked for a while with Jesus
Trevino at KCET as a productionassistant and worked with him
and Luis Ruiz.

(57:38):
And that's how I got to meet alot of people like the Teatro
Campesino and other politicalpeople.
But that...
after i left there i left kct iwent to work for for cal poly
pomona with vera who's in theaudience here i was there for a

(58:01):
little while at cal poly pomonaas a production assistant and
then i went on to cal state laas a as a as a production um uh
consultant but but all the timeum I had photography as a free,
I would do it freelancing.
And I never really got afull-time job as a photographer

(58:22):
until 1986.
And I worked, and that's gettingway, way, way over this side of
the auditorium, but I worked for20 years as a city photographer
for the city of Pico Rivera.
So I got to work with the cityin all capacities.
I would document all the events,all the political stuff, city

(58:44):
council meetings, And I got tomeet, it's ironic, but I got to
meet Sheriff Baca when he wassheriff at the time.
And anyway, that's anotherstory, but...
I worked there for 20 years andI retired.
And so I'm now retired and Istill do freelance work.

(59:08):
But I never, in terms of thepolitical stuff, it was all out
of my own, it was on my own.
I was never paid to do thatstuff.
It was there just out of afeeling that I needed to do
that.
So it was not like somebodysaid, here, go photograph these

(59:31):
demonstrations.
It was all on me.
So-

SPEAKER_01 (59:36):
Luis.
Yeah.
Yes, sir.
So Luis, did you have a daytimejob or did you just earn money
off your photography?

SPEAKER_00 (59:44):
No, I've never earned money off of my
photography until recently.
Actually, only over the pastdecade.
It was a love of labor for me.
beginning with La Raza magazine.
But then I segued intodocumentary filmmaking and doing

(01:00:05):
a show called Reflexiones forKABC TV.
It was a half hour show that weused to do every other week.
We would alternate with a blacktheme show called I Am Somebody.
And that was the time when thedoors were kicked open and we
were allowed in to do publicaffairs programming.

(01:00:27):
So that was my introduction intothe television media, but it
also introduced me to the lackof diversity within the
television media and the largermedia in general, to which Oscar
referred to earlier, which is sotrue to this day.
I mean, we have more coverage,we have more representation, but

(01:00:51):
nowhere near the coverage anddiversity media coverage that we
should be receiving for theportion of the population that
we represent.

SPEAKER_01 (01:01:02):
Especially since we're 49%.

SPEAKER_00 (01:01:03):
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
So you got to consider that whenI entered into 1972, mid-72,
late-72, I entered and startedthe half an hour show.
Jesus Trevino was the only otherone at KCET.
And then there was a couple ofnewscasters, Henry Alfaro and A

(01:01:25):
couple of others, their namesescaping now, who had...
more or less a sit down, youknow, two cameras set up Q&A in
studio.
I took the approach of wantingto make cinematic programs and
we'd go out and we'd shoot andwe'd create a story.

(01:01:45):
And regardless of what thesubject matter was, which
ironically for me started, myfirst show was Ricardo Chavez
Ortiz who hijacked the airplanefrom Arizona to LA.
And the very first day that Icome in to start work on this
program, Ricardo Chavez Ortizhijacks the plane, and that

(01:02:08):
becomes my first story.
John Noriega has my historicalvideo files over at UCLA.
He managed to salvage all of theprograms from Reflexiones.
There are some 30, 40 programsthat I did, along with several
other colleagues, Susan Dracho,Tony Rodriguez, David Garcia,
and a couple of other people,Andres Chavez, who's passed away

(01:02:31):
but we did a body of work forbetter or worse you know we gave
it our best shot and we did itcinematically we did it to tell
a story and often times we'dcreate theatrical stories Flores
Magón or the indigenousmovements AIM and Boricuas and

(01:02:53):
Prop 22 and any number of othersubjects that were popping up at
the time so that become afurther escalation of my work
within the media and thatintroduces me to any number of
other people within the largermedia.
That's how I come to meet MargotAlbert at Plaza de la Raza and I

(01:03:13):
begin to start working with herat Plaza de la Raza as a
cultural arts center and one ofthe first that just celebrated
its 50th anniversary.
So I become involved with Plazaand with Margot and we're doing
one hour specials, we're doingtheatrical work, we're doing any
number of projects she opens upthe door and I come in and she

(01:03:34):
throws me into producingdirecting writing and doing what
I've never done before butwhat's new I always seem to be
parachuted into these situationsyou know so you take it you run
with it and you do the best youcan

SPEAKER_01 (01:03:49):
isn't it amazing how successful one can become when
you stumble through life becausenobody has done it before.
No one has shown you how to doit.
You just happen to be at theright place at the right time.
And you work your way throughit.
You may not have the necessaryskills, but you pick them up,

(01:04:12):
you adapt, and then you goforward.
I mean, that seems to be a wholegroup of people There's a whole
group of Chicanos that if therewas a

SPEAKER_00 (01:04:22):
description of their life, that would be it.
Well, yes, absolutely.
And it certainly applies to me.
After my father died, I broughtmy mother out to California,
here to Los Angeles, and shelived with me for a while.
And she'd watch me working lateinto the middle of the night,
and she'd stop at the kitchendoor, and she'd look at me, and

(01:04:43):
she'd go...
You work so hard, but you don'tmake no money.
You should become a dentist.
They never run out of teeth.
I'd say, thank you, mom.
Thank you, mom.
And I think to myself, damn, isit too late to become a dentist?

(01:05:03):
It's too late.
It's too late.
Exactly.
Exactly.
My path was set, you know, forbetter or worse.

SPEAKER_01 (01:05:10):
So let's go back then.
So the There's a series then ofprotests and just daily outrage
at the killing of Ruben Salazarand the other two individuals
who were killed at the Chicanomoratorium.
There was a march in January of71 that you documented.

SPEAKER_00 (01:05:29):
Yes, the catalog comes out post-exhibition, which
is ironic, and I thinkserendipity.
The exhibition ended after ayear and a half run from 27 to
2019, February 10th.
And the catalog just came outlate January, February.

(01:05:50):
I haven't done to go revisionsand rewrites and all of the
things that go with putting thisthing together, which actually
turned out to be a good thingbecause it's revived the
exhibition and keeps theexhibition alive in the memory
of people.
And it has, one, And, um...

(01:06:15):
Just a couple of months ago, itwon the IPP International
Publication Book Awards in thearea of U.S.
history, which according to JohnNoriega is a first.
It's never happened for a museumcatalog to do that.
And for UCLA, it was kudos.
And recently, over the pastcouple of weeks, it's been

(01:06:38):
nominated in four categories bythe International Latino Book
Awards, another first.
It's never happened for acatalog and to have four
nominations for one book.
So it speaks to, well, it speaksto the good work that was done.

(01:07:00):
And, you know, kudos to all myfellow colleagues and all that
were involved with putting thecatalog together, from UCLA
Chicano Studies to Audrey to myfellow photographers.
this We Will Not Be Intimidatedis taken at Laguna Park January
31st 1971 Oscar was there aswell and a few of the other

(01:07:27):
photographers This image, it'searly morning.
You can see the fog in thebackground.
And there's just this line ofstudents just marching forward.
And this is just one of a seriesof images.
You've got to remember thatevery image taken, there's
before and after images thatwere taken, or at least as many

(01:07:49):
as possible.
Sometimes it's just a one up.
This is the beginnings of therenaming or the desire to rename
Laguna Park, Rubén SalazarMemorial Park.
The Teatro Campesino Calaverasare in the background, and they
have just given a presentation.
They're marching along with allthe fellows, marches towards

(01:08:15):
Laguna Park.
And again, this is just a seriesof photographs.
It's several rolls of film thatI took.
on this

SPEAKER_01 (01:08:23):
event.
Is that Daniel Valdez on theleft-hand side in the white
shirt?

SPEAKER_00 (01:08:28):
Yes, that's Daniel.
That's Daniel.
So Teatro Campesino came in, andthis is at the park itself, part
of the demonstration.
And this is...
again just a part of the seriesbut the use of the peace sign
and the very creative ways thatthe young women phrased and made

(01:09:00):
their posters and their bannersand the dedication and the
seriousness of everyone that wasthere, the commitment.
And there were thousands, therewere thousands all over the
place.
And this was la marcha por lajusticia, and this was against
police brutality that was takingplace, because they were
knocking us off.

(01:09:23):
If they got you and they tookyou to jail, you weren't sure if
you were going to come out ofjail.
There were so many quote-unquotesuicides that took place.

SPEAKER_01 (01:09:33):
What I love about this photo is the youngsters.
I mean, you know, Chicanostudents, high school students,
college students always playjust a big, gigantic role in the
movement, whether it be theblowouts or everything else.
And as I look at thisphotograph, I only see maybe
three adults, three people whoI, you know, can...

(01:09:57):
can guess are over the age of18, but everybody else seems to
be just like youngsters andstudents, man.
It's just, it's wonderful, it'sbeautiful.

SPEAKER_00 (01:10:09):
Well, this one speaks for itself.
And again, it's so applicable towhat we're going through today.
Don't make a joke of yourrights.
Right.
You know, past is present and isfuture.

(01:10:32):
The commitment that people putthemselves on the line, that
they were willing to take thebody blows, that they were
willing to fight back, that theywere willing to step up and
organize.
And this was also, this is thebeginning of, as Oscar was
pointing out to his other imageof August 29th, there's a

(01:10:54):
militarization process that'sgoing on, and you can see it.
And here you have a BAR buildingVietnam weapon, tear gas
canisters, and they're loaded.
They're ready.
And it's just all over theplace.
And they're coming after us.
They're live rounds.

(01:11:15):
There's no pellets.
There's no rubber bullets.
You know, no.

SPEAKER_01 (01:11:21):
It's amazing to me that 50 years later, we get the
same...
We get the same...
We get, you know, you ask forrights, you ask for something,
you ask for equality, you demandchange.
And the response is not, hey,let's sit down at the table and

(01:11:44):
try to work this out.
The response in 1970, 1971 is,to 2020, the response is the
same, which is overhandedresponse.
And this image can betransplanted to what's happening
in a variety of different statesin the military Humvees, the

(01:12:06):
military outfits, the militaryweapons, the AR-15s.
It seems that we haven't learnedin 50 years how to sit down at
the table and talk aboutdifferences and how to reach an
agreement about change.
It seems that we're alwaysdealing with this response right
here.
And I think that this image andeven this image just speaks to

(01:12:30):
the response that we continually

SPEAKER_00 (01:12:32):
get?
Well, it goes back further thanjust 50 years.
A colonial empire does notnegotiate with its subjects.
And much of the literature isout there.
We are subjects.
We are colonized, all right?
The pushback that we see goingon today dates back to the

(01:12:57):
foundation, the founding andexpansion of the empire.
That's just fact.
That's- Texas Rangers,California Rangers.
Absolutely, absolutely.
You're negotiating, you don'tnegotiate with the empire.
The empire doesn't negotiate.
And if you do, you negotiate ontheir terms and their terms are

(01:13:20):
brute force.
This is Gustav Montag, thekilling, the death of Gustav
Montag.
This is a series of photographs.
The brown beret there is a medicby the name of Richard Soto who
has established, he comes out ofthe Sakara area.
I don't have the information infront of me.

(01:13:42):
There's a series of shots wherethey carry the body of Gustav
Montag.
And they lay him down.
He's dying.
He's just dying.
And they're waiting for anambulance, which takes forever
to come.
And the irony of it is, when yougo to the next image of Raul

(01:14:04):
placing the flag on him, this isat the site where he gets
killed.
And Raul is placing the Mexicanflag on him symbolically to
identify him.
as Chicano, whom we thought wasChicano.
But we came to find out laterwhen the police said that he was

(01:14:27):
not Mexican-American, that hehad a Slavic name, so therefore
he must be a communist agitatorwho came to stir up the masses.
And then they recanted andpulled back that and said that,
no, he was just a Jewish kidfrom the Boyle Heights community
area who had come to observe.

(01:14:50):
And he caught a spray of shotgunpellets that ricocheted off of a
wall right next to him.
And that took him out.
But the thing about thisphotograph also is, which always
strikes me, is that if you lookat his feet, his shoes, his feet
are sticking out of the soles,both soles of his shoes.

(01:15:16):
And I said, how poor is thiskid?
He's got to be very poor that hedoesn't even have...
I remember Papa used to putcardboard in your soul when you
got holes in your shoes, youknow?
Not even cardboard.
It's just his feet are stickingout through the soles of his
shoes.
And I was placing the flag onhim.

(01:15:39):
And he was just an innocentbystander.
He came to watch.
And...
And that would happen.
You know, you never know whenyou were going to get hit.
This is downtown L.A.
And it was students that hadgathered from various colleges

(01:16:03):
and universities and they weremarching.
And this beautiful chick caughtmy eye.

SPEAKER_01 (01:16:13):
I think you date this in 72, right?

SPEAKER_00 (01:16:16):
Somewhere around there.

SPEAKER_01 (01:16:17):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And this one is actually athrowback.
This went back to 1968.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (01:16:25):
This is the March on the Board of Education.
This is the beginnings of thesittings on the Board of
Education.

SPEAKER_01 (01:16:37):
Historically, this is when Sal Castro was removed
as a teacher and there wereefforts to retain him as a
result of his being arrested forhis participation in the
blowouts along with 12 otherChicanos.
the school board released himfrom employment.

(01:16:57):
And then there were a series ofactions to try to get him back.
For example, you see the signback there that says, retain Sal
Castro Lincoln High.
So this was the march towardsthe school board of education.

SPEAKER_00 (01:17:15):
Yeah, now, if you look on the far left-hand side
of the image, you'll see thatbearded man with the dark
shades?

SPEAKER_01 (01:17:27):
Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_00 (01:17:28):
That's Ed Bonilla.

SPEAKER_01 (01:17:31):
Ah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 (01:17:32):
That's the man who flips my worldview.
He's the man who introduces me,says, bring your camera.
And then in the middle, rightbehind the American flag is
Alicia Sandoval.
I believe that's her name,Alicia Sandoval.
Oscar?
Yes, yes, that is her.
Okay, so she had a televisionprogram as well, and she was a

(01:17:54):
school teacher, and she wasextremely active.
And the man in the front withthe tie and suit is, Oscar, you
remember his name?

SPEAKER_04 (01:18:05):
Yeah, his name was Vahak Marderosian.

SPEAKER_00 (01:18:08):
Yeah, there you go.
And he was head of the EICC,Educational Issues Coordinating
Committee, which was organizingall these protests, education,
and were negotiating with theBoard of Education people, of
which Julian Nava was a memberof.
So

SPEAKER_01 (01:18:30):
real quick.
So for those of you that wantdocumentary video evidence or
information, there is a32-minute video.
put on by David Garcia calledRequiem 29.
And it deals with the inquestinto the death of Reuven
Salazar.
An inquest is just a formalinquiry to decide whether he

(01:18:52):
died by accident or whether hedied at the hands of another.
If they make a finding of diedat the hands of the other, that
normally, typically would leadto the filing of charges, sort
of like a public grand jury asopposed to a private.
And the finding of the inquestwas that Reuven did die at the
hands of another but no one wasever charged with that.

(01:19:14):
So that's one video that youfolks should look for and watch.
The other is theMexican-American civil rights
story.
And there is a one-hour segmentcalled Taking Back Our Schools.
I think Jesus Treviño wasinvolved in the overall making
of those four one-hour videos.

(01:19:35):
And it deals largely with whathappened during the blowouts and
then the trial and then thesit-ins at the school board.
You folks who are watchingtonight's program have the
benefit though of speaking totwo people who were there during
that time period and whoactually recognize these people

(01:19:56):
on a first name basis.
Anyone else you recognize inthese photos, either Oscar or
Luis?

SPEAKER_00 (01:20:04):
Right behind, I can't see his face.
I have other shots, whichunfortunately I didn't send you.
It is Father Luce, behind theyoung man next to the...
Oh, I see his collar.
Yeah, you see the collar?
That's

SPEAKER_01 (01:20:20):
Father Luce.
So Father Luis was with theChurch of the Epiphany.
How did you folks come to have arelationship with him enough to
where he allowed you folks touse the church as sort of the
headquarters for La

SPEAKER_00 (01:20:36):
Raza?
That's a birthing process thatstarts with– they had– Father
Luz had, with the EpiscopalianChurch, they had a social action
program, which was national inscope.
And Eliseo Risco, who was afield rep for the farm workers,

(01:20:58):
had come into Los Angeles to doorganizing on behalf of Cesar
Chavez, who had met Father Luz.
And so Father Luz thenintroduces Eliseo Risco, who is
of Cuban background and Cubanimmigrant who comes to the West

(01:21:20):
Coast and is working in variousdifferent areas, but
specifically with Cesar Chavezin terms of organizing.
Eliseo comes into Los Angeles.
He meets up with Father Luz, whogives him space.
And then Father Luz brings upthe idea of creating a

(01:21:45):
newspaper, magazine fororganizing.
And then he brings in RuthRobinson, who also works with
the farm workers, and they beginwith Benny Luna, who does the
artwork for the first issues ofLa Raza, and then a host of
other people that begin to comein to play, Moctezuma Esparza,

(01:22:07):
Joe Raso, et cetera.
A whole bunch of people startcoming in, and that's the
foundation, the beginnings of LaRaza newspaper.
You

SPEAKER_01 (01:22:16):
were not just limited to taking images of
Chicanos.
You and Oscar both have a bodyof work where you just go
everywhere.
This is in your home state.

SPEAKER_00 (01:22:29):
This is in my barrio, the South Bronx, and
this is in the area of 139thStreet between St.
Ann's and Brook Avenue.
I had met Young Lords who hadcome out to LA and on a number
of trips that I had made backEast, they invited me to hang
out with them.
So that's what I did, hang outwith them.

(01:22:50):
And there's several rolls offilm that I took of the Young
Lords.
So was this a gathering, ameeting, a protest or?
This was just a gathering ofYoung Lords, you know, just
getting together or, you know,just cheering on the people and
such like that.
And this is also a youngrepresentative of the Young

(01:23:11):
Lords who was selling thenewspaper called Palante.
And Huey Newton had just beenreleased from jail and they put
welcome back.
So I captured this image of thiswoman young woman who is selling
the newspapers and the backdropjust fits so appropriately to

(01:23:36):
what and who she is.
And it just...
with all the other posters andimages there.
And she just stands out with theAmerican flag with welcome back
Huey and Palante.
So you get this whole sense ofBoricua and Black Panthers and

(01:23:56):
US and all of these other thingsthat are going on because it's a
hippie shop.
It's a smoke shop, which iswhere they're selling all of
these posters.
And it's a store withsensitivity.
Homeboys.

SPEAKER_01 (01:24:12):
This is my favorite shot.
When I was at North High School,I landed in Riverside in 78 in
10th grade, and I was luckyenough to take a
Mexican-American studies classwith a professor by the name of
Richard Monguia.
And one of the school books thatthey handed out in order for us

(01:24:33):
to read, which is requiredreading, was the poem by Corky
Gonzalez, Yo Soy Joaquin.
And this photo.
This photo graces the cover ofthat.
And I've always loved thisphotograph.
I, you know, the guy with thehat reminds me of my brother
because that's how my brotherwore his hat with attitude.
It's like, don't mess with me.

SPEAKER_00 (01:24:54):
Well, this is, this is taken in the Aliso Pico
projects.
And again, it's just one of awhole series of shots because,
you know, basically I'm astreetwalker.
I'm a street photographer.
I, I, whatever I'm surroundedwith.
And I do a lot of portraiturework.

(01:25:15):
Now that I look back at my work,it's a lot of portraiture work.
And the ability to capture animage such as Cesar Chavez.
This is 1974 at the BiltmoreHotel, and it's a conference
that's going on between the UAWand the United Farm Workers.

(01:25:38):
And Cesar invited me up to thehotel room, and I'm just sitting
across the bed from him, youknow, just a couple of feet away
from him.
And so this is one, again, ofseveral rolls of film and images
that I took of him.
The irony of this is that I wascontacted by a friend at Time

(01:26:00):
Life magazine who called me outof the blue to tell me, Luis,
our photographer journalistcannot make the flight to LA and
we got to get this story onCesar.
Are you willing to cover theevent with Cesar Chavez?
We'll get clearance for you.
We can't supply you with film oranything else like that because

(01:26:21):
it's too late.
So can you?
And I said, yeah, sure.
Why not?
So, I went, I met, I introducedmyself to Cesar and his people.
They brought me in and I hungout with them for that most of
the day, capturing these images.
I sent the film off to New Yorkto Time Life and then within a

(01:26:44):
short time afterwards, theysaid, they returned everything
to me and they said, we're notrunning the story.

SPEAKER_02 (01:26:50):
So

SPEAKER_00 (01:26:52):
I said, okay, fine.
And so it remained in my archiveall of this time.
This is Rodriguez.
I forgot her first name.
This is at the January 31st.
That's Rosalía Muñoz.
And in the background on thewalkie-talkie is Esteban Torres.

(01:27:17):
Celia Luna Rodriguez, that's hername.
Celia Luna Rodriguez.
She was a major organizeragainst police brutality.
And so that's where thatphotograph was taken.
And again, there's just...
you know, half a dozen more.

SPEAKER_01 (01:27:36):
So you traveled the world.
So you weren't just a Chicanophotographer in California or a
photographer in your hometown.
You actually went other placesin the world.

SPEAKER_00 (01:27:50):
This is Budapest, Hungary, and this is El Maestro
David Alfaro Siqueiros.
And The image got printed, andactually the exhibition, Cicadas
in L.A., Censorship Defied, cameabout because of these
photographic images when peopleasked me, what the hell were you
doing in Budapest, Hungary in1971?

(01:28:13):
And so as I told them the story,they said, you've got to write
this down.
You've got to do something withit.
Out of these images came theexhibition, my first exhibition,
curated exhibition at theOrchard Museum.
But the way I got there, the wayI got there is interesting
because it comes about throughthe man who is now deceased, the

(01:28:37):
Peace Action Committee, whocomes into La Raza saying we'd
like a representative to attendthe US delegation to Budapest,
Hungary and the World PeaceConference.
And everybody else was caught upwith the Police trials and
everything else like that.
So I volunteered and I wind upin Budapest, Hungary.

(01:28:59):
And Siqueiros, when he hearsthat there's a Chicano in the
American delegation, he callsfor a meeting and he says,
Compañero, cuéntame de estemovimiento Chicano.
And he sits me down betweenhimself and his wife, Angelica,
here, Angelica Arinal, who we'resaying goodbye.
She's getting into this littleVolkswagen and she turns to me

(01:29:21):
and she says, Luis.

UNKNOWN (01:29:22):
Luis.

SPEAKER_00 (01:29:23):
Como dicen ustedes, Chicana power.
I can't believe you, Mexiqueros.
I can't believe it eitherbecause it's, again, it's fate.
It's karma.
And I truly believe that many ofthe things that I've become
involved with, there's apurpose.

(01:29:44):
There's a predestiny that Inever knew that I had.
Los dioses mandan.
Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 (01:29:55):
So, Oscar, so you saw yourself as just a
photographer.
You were paying for everythingout of pocket.
What were your target images?

SPEAKER_04 (01:30:07):
At what point?
What do you mean?

SPEAKER_01 (01:30:10):
So now the moratorium is over, you know,
there's a variety of differentthings going on.
Do you continue in that vein ofphotography, of protests in 71
and 72, or do you now branch offto other things, or is that the
time period that you go toTexas?

SPEAKER_04 (01:30:30):
No, I had already been to Crystal City.
And by the mid-70s, well, I waslooking to document a broader
part of the Hispanic or Chicanocommunity.
And so I started doing culturalevents and just people in

(01:30:54):
general.
I did many topics and themes,but as a photographer, I also
did urban scapes, study of theenvironment, the city.
And as a matter of fact, theSmithsonian has some of my

(01:31:15):
photographs where Idocumented...
urban renewal.
Some of my photographs from aseries that I was doing in the
70s, they were used in a bookwhich the Smithsonian also

(01:31:36):
sponsored.
It was based on a book calledThese Mean Streets.
And they did an exhibit at theSmithsonian and was later went
to the Museo del Barro in NewYork.
So, you know, my images have,have kind of taken on a life of
their own.
I mean, we talk about myarchives on one hand, but my

(01:31:59):
active things on the other hand.
So I got involved with thebusiness community.
I was doing stuff for, you know,to make money.
Chamber of Commerce is on that.
But I think if you're...
A lot of my images have beenused,

SPEAKER_02 (01:32:17):
for

SPEAKER_04 (01:32:19):
instance, a very well-known lecturer, Gregorio
Luc.
He and I collaborated on anexhibit, which was, we titled El
Movimiento and Beyond.
And that kind of a philosophywhere, yes, I mean, the

(01:32:40):
movimiento is important, butmyself, I need to do a little
bit more, you know, a little bitmore upscale stuff, a little bit
more positive stuff.
So I try to document cheerfulthings, you know, things that
people would say, hell yeah,that's something that reminds
me, they could remind them ofsomething they've done or

(01:33:01):
something they enjoy.
So I like to do positive things.
And I sent you some images ofcultural things.
And I worked a lot with artists,like with the Gómez Art Gallery,
with Mexicano Art Center, andhave exhibited with many
artists.
I've become friends with manyartists, like Los Four, very

(01:33:23):
well-known artists.
I became friends with a verydear lady, Josefina Quesada, who
was also studied with Siquieros.
And she came up here to work onrestoring his mural, América
Tropical.
So we became dear friends and I,you know, I have a series of
artists that I've documentedover the years and I'm, she

(01:33:49):
being one of them, but differentartists that are, you know, like
Asko and Almaraz and FrankRomero and and dancers,
musicians.
So I like to do up things, youknow, besides the negative, a

(01:34:12):
few negative things, but I liketo do upscale things.

SPEAKER_01 (01:34:15):
Well, I think that documenting everything life,
everyday life, I think isimportant.
Yeah,

SPEAKER_04 (01:34:22):
I think you shared a word with me, which I forgot.
You said something aboutanthropological something.
You called it, you gave it aname, which was kind of
interesting

SPEAKER_01 (01:34:31):
i call it it's not a pictorial ethnography is how i
call it okay

SPEAKER_00 (01:34:36):
yes absolutely absolutely let me interject just
a moment here i want to thankoscar for bringing up josefina
quesada's name she's veryimportant to the conservation
and the return to public view ofcicadas mural america tropical
The story behind her.
And again, these are the storiesthat are so important because

(01:35:00):
photographically what Oscar andI are doing and a number of
others consciously, even more sonow, is documenting a background
history of people who have neverbeen given their recognition or
their due.
within the larger circle of thecultural explorations and

(01:35:20):
developments that we've beengoing through over these years
and decades and centuries.
And Josefina was anointed,appointed by David Alzaparo
Siqueiros to go and look at themural of America Tropical and to
give him a report, a conditionreport.

(01:35:42):
because the first efforts toconserve the mural was being
done through Schiffer Goldmanand Plaza de la Raza and a host
of people from our community toconserve the mural.
And so the first efforts toconserve the mural come out of

(01:36:02):
our community.
It doesn't come out of theGetty.
It comes out of our communityand it's a long, long struggle.
So Josefina, goes back and forthand reports to Siqueiros on the
condition.
And then eventually she comes tolive here in Los Angeles, and
Oscar meets her, I meet her, andshe becomes part of the mural

(01:36:24):
movement here in Los Angeles.
And she becomes a vibrant partof the muralist movement within
our community.
She works with people fromSpark.
She works with Judy Baca, withany number of artistas in doing
mural work.
And her murals still stand indifferent parts of Los Angeles.

(01:36:49):
So It's important to note,because the conservation and the
eventual presentation of AmericaTropical at Olvera Street starts
with Josefina Quesada cominginto Los Angeles.
Y es una mujer del pueblo, heartand soul.

(01:37:09):
And you've got to give thatrecognition to those people that
have never received it.
Punto.

SPEAKER_02 (01:37:16):
Right.

SPEAKER_01 (01:37:17):
So, you know, it's...
If you believe it, it's 7.51.
And I remember when we gottogether for our first phone
chat, there was a fear that wewouldn't have enough to talk
about.
And here we are, 10 minutes till8.
And we still haven't talkedabout or shared Oscar's images

(01:37:43):
from Texas or the images of 18thStreet.
I looked at his catalog at theUCLA.
He's got Acción.
He's got Daniel Valdez.
He's got Bobby Espinosa.
I mean, Oscar's work is ondisplay.
We haven't talked about whatpublications you folks have for

(01:38:06):
sale.
We're going to get to thatbefore we end.
Somebody asked for the songsthat I played.
I played Yo Soy Chicano by LosAlvarado.
Cubo Raza by Agustin Lira andPatricia Wells Solorzano.
Brown Eyed Children of the Sun,that was Daniel Valdez off of
the Mestizo album.
I want to invite Ophelia Valdezto come and give us a chat

(01:38:29):
because this is done inconjunction with Cause Connect
and with the Riverside ArtMuseum and the Cheech.
So I'd like to invite Ophelia togive us a little chat.
Ophelia.
Welcome, nice to see you again.

SPEAKER_03 (01:38:41):
Buenas noches, thank you so much.
And to your speakers, it's anhonor.
I'm old enough to have beenaround during that time, so
it's...
Very touching, all that I'veheard this evening.
My part tonight is to remindeveryone about the Cheech,

(01:39:04):
something that I am hopeful,Luis and Oscar, that we can
convince you to bring, maybedevelop an exhibit about.
as soon as we can and bring itto the chief.
That's what it's all about.
And just to give an update, someof you already have this
information, but for those ofyou who don't, everything is

(01:39:24):
moving forward.
We have found a contractorthat's going through the city.
The final agreements have to beapproved by the city council.
And we're very hopeful that thatwill be done this fall.
Also, for those of you who knowanyone, I'm sure you do, we will

(01:39:48):
soon be recruiting for theCheech subject matter expert
curator.
We're very excited about that.
Finally, the Cheech will haveits own curator.
And we're pleased to announcethat Union Pacific has awarded
us$15,000 to go for programmingat the Cheech.

(01:40:10):
And if anybody would like tocontinue to donate at any level,
we invite you to text 44321.
and enter Cheech.
Very excited about that.
And finally, I just wanted toshow you the latest that we have
in this time of the coronavirus.

(01:40:30):
We have our own beach mask thatyou can order through the
museum,www.riversideartmuseum.org slash
the Cheech store.
And if you follow ourassemblymen, Jose Medina, who is
responsible for$10.7 millionthat came to the Cheech.

(01:40:53):
He is wearing it.
And with the bill that is sureto pass for ethnic studies, his
colleagues are also wearingthem.
So the Cheech is getting aroundeverywhere.
I invite all of you, if you haveany questions, please give us a
call, contact the museum.
And thank you again to ourspeakers.
It's been a thrill.

(01:41:14):
Thank

SPEAKER_01 (01:41:15):
you.
Thank you.
So somebody wanted to thank youfor mentioning Chicanas.
There was one that wanted toknow what's going to be the name
of the Cheech Museum.
It's going to be the CheechMarine Center for Chicano Art,
Culture, and Industry.
And people are asking if there'sgoing to be a part two to this

(01:41:36):
discussion.
I am open to that, depending onschedules.
Oscar, you have a public that isavailable for purchase.
And what is the name of thatpublication?

SPEAKER_04 (01:41:49):
Well, the publication is the Oscar
Castillo Papers and PhotographCollection.
And it's available through UCLAor on Amazon.
And it's an oral history, whichwas done by Elise Mazzadiego,

(01:42:10):
edited by Colin Kessler.
I can't think of his name rightnow.
Colin Grunkle, I'm sorry.
And through John Noriega and theChicano Studies Library.
But here's a picture of it.
And I really enjoyed workingwith the Chicano Studies

(01:42:32):
Library.
And we got five or six scholarsand my friends who wrote.
That's one of the things I likeabout my photographs is I enjoy
when they inspire people towrite and some people have
chosen some of my photographsand written about them or some

(01:42:54):
people have just written abouttheir you know their their our
friendship or what they knewabout me so it's I recommend it
and I hope you can at some pointI'd like to have it at the
Cheech for sale there at theCheech too if it's available

SPEAKER_01 (01:43:12):
I'm sorry We'll definitely work that one out.
Luis, do you have anypublications for sale, sir?

SPEAKER_00 (01:43:19):
I don't have publications for sale.

(01:43:48):
artist worker.
You contact her at Nathalie atmobiarts.com.
Nathalie.
And there you will see some ofmy work.

(01:44:10):
We're still in the process ofsilkscreening and printing my
work.
That's my next endeavor, takingthose photographic images that
you have seen and transferringthem into a silkscreen process.
An edition of 50 in black andwhite and an edition of 30 in
hand-painted colorization bymyself.

(01:44:31):
Everything is signed, everythingis identified, and the seal of
approval is on them, and it ison the highest quality
silkscreen.
The master silkscreen printer isJose Alpuche, which those of you
who know in the silkscreen worldis the master.
He comes out of silkscreen workin Mexico and through self-help

(01:44:58):
graphics.

SPEAKER_01 (01:44:59):
Nice.
I look forward to all of that.
I want everyone who's listeningto put their video on because
I'd like for Oscar and Luis tobe able to see all the folks who
are on tonight.
So I see Ophelia, I see CristinaGuadalupe Preciado, I see Moises
Castillo, Patricia Reynolds,Melissa Richardson-Banks,

(01:45:22):
Catherine Trujillo, EricaAlfaro, Yvette Reynoso, Ninfa
Delgado, Alicia Caballero, MayoYarrington, Paula Matusa, Lydia
Delgado, Rosa

SPEAKER_02 (01:45:33):
Maria

SPEAKER_01 (01:45:34):
Vasquez, Gabriela Gomez, Diana Martinez, Valerie
Found, Christina Trujillo.
Now let me go to my next screenbecause I have another screen.
This is wonderful.
I have Karen, I have Holly, Ihave Christina Preciado.
Everybody else on my secondscreen refuses to show me their

(01:45:58):
mascara, I mean their face.
Okay, Brad Darrell is on, MarthaArguello is on.
Let's see.

(01:46:37):
just because COVID has put astop to us getting together.
And we will make do with what wehave.
Chicanos have always tried tofigure out the latest technology
in order to get things working.
This is just another example.
This will never be flawless.
So if anybody wants a flawlesspresentation, then you need to

(01:46:59):
go somewhere else because itain't happening here.
But we do get by.
And as somebody puts it, we needto be very forgiving.
giving with the technical issuesI appreciate that because you
know at 57 years old I didn'tgrow up with Zoom at 77 Luis and
Oscar did not grow up with Zoomso but we do in fact make it

(01:47:22):
occur we make it happen and thisis just the second of a series
of Zoom chats we're going tohave we have one coming up
September 16th but we're goingto be talking about Soldis the
Chicanos who do Oldies and thejust the flourishment of groups
that are coming up youngsterswho are playing the music that I

(01:47:42):
was listening to when I wasgrowing up so we're going to be
doing that and then obviouslywe'll have some other chats stay
glued to the Riverside ArtMuseum Facebook page because
everything is posted those ofyou that received your invite
there are resources there thatyou could click on that if you
want to you know get moreinformation more material you

(01:48:03):
can definitely do so Oscar andLuis anything you want to say as
we fade into the background?

SPEAKER_04 (01:48:10):
Well, I'd like to say thank you to everybody for
tuning in, and especially tothose that I recognize, Vera,
Martinez, Irene Blea, Rosa MariaMarquez, I see Jose Luis Sedano
out there, and a couple otherpeople.
So thank you all, and see younext time if there is a next

(01:48:34):
time.
Thank you, thank you.
He

SPEAKER_00 (01:48:37):
showed up.
I would like to extend unabrazo, un cariño, un
agradecimiento a todos.
This is my new family.
Welcome.
I appreciate all of you.
De veramente.
Chicanismo is

SPEAKER_01 (01:48:54):
love and Chicanismo is family.
Thank

SPEAKER_04 (01:48:57):
you.
One more thing I forgot toespecially thank you, Jorge, and
to Drew and to Melissa and toall the staff at the teach for
inviting us and having us here.

SPEAKER_01 (01:49:08):
Always a heartfelt thank to the Riverside Art
Museum, iKelly, Valerie Fown,Karen Marsala, Drew, Oberjergi.
They make doing these programsso easy and they give all the
support possible.
I met Melissa Richardson Banksand she is just a toda madre.
She is on it and she put thistogether and helped all of us do

(01:49:32):
that.
So I thank you to each and everyone of you and look forward to
more programming.

SPEAKER_00 (01:49:37):
Gracias.
And as the song says, I secondthat emotion.
Okay, good night, everybody.
Adios.
Love you.
So long, Oscar.
So long,

SPEAKER_04 (01:49:56):
Louis.
So, shall we turn off the video?
Okay, I'm turning it off.

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MUSED: LA 2 HOU | Oscar R. Castillo and Luis C. Garza | Documenting Protest

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}MUSED: LA 2 HOU | Oscar R. Castillo and Luis C. Garza | Documenting Protest