As You Enter Chicano Park, There Are Hundreds of Murals, Spaces, and Performative Acts That Actively Signify Meaning in the Park

Home , Chicano, Chicano Park, Royal Chicano Air Force, Victor Ochoa, Xicanx

Sightlines 2018 Carlos Francisco Jackson

34 As you enter Chicano Park, there 35 are hundreds of murals, spaces, and performative acts that actively signify meaning in the park. The park is 7.4 acres and features an estimated eighty-nine murals that adorn highway pylons, handball courts, and almost all available wall space imaginable.

These murals range from low walls that one can sit on to pylons that are more than seven stories tall. There are playgrounds, rest areas, patchy grass lawns, public restrooms, and ceremonial and perfor- mance spaces, as well as picnic tables and herb gardens where fam- ilies and the community rest, play, celebrate, sleep, and seek refuge (fig. 1). These are spaces that encourage the production of subjectivity, both visually and performatively. Signifying this park as “Chicano” was a significant act tied to the ideas formed by the Chicano movement. The park was created through a community takeover on April 20, 1970, whereby Barrio Logan community members occupied the dirt plot of land under the newly constructed Coronado Bridge (State Route 75), using their bodies to stop the bulldozers from starting construction on a Cali- fornia Highway Patrol substation. Chicano Park sits underneath the Coronado Bridge and Interstate 5 freeway interchange, which cuts directly through Barrio Logan, San Diego’s oldest Mexican American/ Latino neighborhood. The occupation and formation of Chicano Park emerged out of the context of the Chicano movement.1 As a result, the park is both historically significant to a broad national intellectual and cultural public and contemporarily relevant to the local commu- nity2 (fig. 2). The question of what the “Chicano” in “Chicano Park” signifies is complex and has no singular correct answer. But there are places within the park where one can view how various cultural workers

1. Several texts demonstrate the historic links between 2. In January 2017, in one of the last acts of the Obama the formation of Chicano Park and a broader national administration, Chicano Park was named a National Chicano movement: Eva Cockcroft, “Story of Chicano Historical Landmark and can now be read as a living Park,” Aztlan: International Journal of Chicano Studies museum to the local community and broader Chicano Research, vol. 15, no. 1 (1984): 79–103; Marilyn Mum- movement. Gary Warth, “Chicano Park Named ford, Chicano Park, 1988, VHS; and Isidro Ortiz, “¡Sí Se National Historic Landmark,” San Diego Union-Tri- Puede!: Chicana/o Activism in San Diego at Century’s bune, January 11, 2017, accessed February 5, 2018, End,” Chicano San Diego: Cultural Space and the http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/ Struggle for Justice, ed. Richard Griswold del Castillo sd-me-chicano-historic-20170111-story.html. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007), 129–157. Sightlines 2018 Carlos Francisco Jackson

36 have argued, fought, and debated for a signification that is generous, 37 generative, and oriented toward social justice. These debates center on whether “Chicano” is an enclosure or is a plastic sign open to con- tinued signification. An enclosure of “Chicano” would be to signify it as a Mexican American–specific nationalist and patriarchal subjectivity. “Chicano” as a plastic signifier is open to signification and representative of an ideality that seeks to manifest futurity. The binary I have outlined is arbitrary and simply serves as a starting point for navigating how language is formed within Chicano Park. This debate should be generative, encouraging dialectical engagement with the visual and performative culture so that one can walk through the park while asking, is “Chicano” an enclosure? Out of the enormous scope of muralism and culture visualized and performed within the park, there is one pylon in Chicano Park that contains two murals, Leyes: La Familia and Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky, that visually represent the debate over signification of the sign “Chicano.” This pylon is one of two that were assigned to the Royal Chicano Air Force, an influential Sacramento-based Chicano Art collective, to paint during the second wave of muralism that occurred Figure 1: Chicano Park Day, April, year unknown. Figure 2: Chicano Park Takeover, August 1970. 3 California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives in 1975. The pylon that holds Leyes: La Familia and Women Who Hold (CEMA 12). Photographer unknown. (CEMA 12). Photographer unknown. Up Half the Sky is approximately three stories tall, with a long, narrow shaft that crosses a geometric T-shaped structure supporting State Route 75. If you approach this pylon from the Logan Avenue parking lot, the ground will subtly shake from the noise and traffic that bears down on you from both State Route 75 and Interstate 5. You’ll first encounter a mural titled Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky, originally painted in 1975 and restored in 2012 by Celia Herrera Rodríguez, Rosalinda Montez Palacios, Irma Lerma Barbosa, Glory Galindo Sanchez, Nayeli Guzman, Veracruz Sanchez, Montserrat Granados, and Patricia Aguayo.4 Initially, the Royal Chicano Air Force leadership planned to have a group composed only of men take direction on the four potential murals that would result from the two assigned pylons. Having been denied access to representative leadership, this group of women left before their male RCAF counterparts in 1975, occupied one side of this pylon, and began their own mural. As a result of this occupation, RCAF leadership court-martialed these artists for circumventing the collective’s decision-making processes. This is well documented in Marilyn Mumford’s 1988 documentary, Chicano Park,

3. An important study of the Royal Chicano Air Force was 4. Barbara Desmangles and Antonia Perez were part of recently published. See Ella Maria Diaz, Flying Under the 1975 effort but did not participate in its 2012 res- the Radar with the Royal Chicano Air Force: Mapping toration. Gail Pérez, “Women Hold Up Half of Chicano a Chicano/a Art History (Austin: University of Texas Park,” La Prensa, June 29, 2012, accessed February 5, Press, 2017). 2018, http://laprensa-sandiego.org/featured/women- hold-up-half-of-chicano-park/. Sightlines 2018 Carlos Francisco Jackson

38 in which Jose Montoya, RCAF co-founder and early patriarch of the 39 Chicano movement, describes the reasoning for the court martial while making light of women’s critiques of patriarchy within the collective. The documentary treats Montoya’s discussion lightly, in a humorous tone. Yet when the mural was restored in 2012, the local community newspaper La Prensa did an interview with the lead artists of Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky in which they made clear the court martial was anything but humorous. Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky can be read as an occupation that mirrors the larger occupation that formed Chicano Park (figs. 3 and 4). It is an occupation that sought to create space for subjectivities and methodologies that had been excluded from full representation. The 1975 iteration of Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky foregrounded female agency. Within the T-shaped pylon structure, women crouch in the narrow space, metaphorically holding up the sky. Their arms are extended and with little effort uphold the sky, which is simultaneously the freeway. Down the pylon’s shaft, a woman holds a child who sits within a vessel that simultaneously represents a map of the Global South. Further down, the pylon’s Figure 3: Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky, in symbolic representations of Chicano indigeneity visually intersect progress, 1975. California Ethnic and Multicultural with two naked women playing flutes. Throughout the mural, water Archives (CEMA 12). Photographer unknown. is subtly represented through a solid blue background and waves Figure 4: Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky, 1975. [Mural on right.] California Ethnic and that rest at the bottom of the mural. In 2012, a majority of the original Multicultural Archives (CEMA 12). Photographer artists would return to Chicano Park to restore this mural and in doing so would activate water as a generative life force and as a precarious commodity that has been rendered inaccessible to historically marginalized communities. In 1975, the artists of Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky occupied one side of the RCAF pylon and resignified “Chicano” to “Chicana/o.” I read Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky as a visual articulation of this signifying gesture. The gesture works against enclosure of “Chicano” as an essentialist and nationalist signifier. Instead, it argues for “Chi- cano” as a plastic sign that is continually in formation. Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky accomplishes this through strategic absences. In this mural, heteropatriarchy and heteronormativity are rendered obsolete by a foregrounding of feminist agency that is transnational. Within the realm of feminist interventions of the 1960s and 1970s, Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky may slip into tropes of women as generative, productive forces. Yet within the context of Chicano Park, Sightlines 2018 Carlos Francisco Jackson

40 and specifically this pylon,Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky is a rad- 41 ical intervention that visualizes Chicana agency and representation.5 Walk around Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky and on the opposite side of its pylon. You’ll be standing before Jose Montoya’s mural Leyes: La Familia (fig. 5). This mural is composed of three figures: man, woman, and child. The man stands behind the woman, who in turn stands behind the boy. The boy stands fully exposed before the viewer, holding a book with the title “LEYES.” The man towers above the woman, his arms extended outward across the top of the T-shaped pylon. His arms are free and the pylon is his. The woman, who stands before the man, looks off to the side with her arms tightly bound to the boy, whose arms are tightly bound to his book. The book’s title, “LEYES,” translates as “laws.” For the boy, this book is his instructional manual for participation within the Chicano movement. The Chicano movement serves as the contextual atmosphere for the mural. The family represented in Leyes is not isolated. They stand as a metonym for subjectivity within the broader Chicano movement, which is represented in the background of the mural through the United Farm Workers logo. The UFW Huelga Eagle was initially a union-specific logo that emerged during the organization’s formation in 1965. Between 1965, the formative moment of the Chicano movement, and 1975, the moment in which Leyes was painted, the Huelga Figure 5: Jose Montoya, Leyes: La Familia, circa 1975. California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives Eagle was resignified from a union-specific logo to an expression that (CEMA 12). Photographer unknown. signifies the broader Chicano movement. Within Leyes, the movement is patriarchal and heteronormative, whereby entry into this subjectivity and method is learned through a careful study of its “laws.” Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky was painted first through an occupation. Leyes, coming second, became a reinscription of het- eropatriarchal nationalism. Within the context of this pylon, Leyes is a direct response to the agency represented in Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky. Within Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky, women’s arms uphold the sky, generate new life, and produce culture. Within Leyes, the woman’s arms are bound to the child. In Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky, men are absent; within Leyes, the man towers above the family occupying the pylon. On its own, Leyes follows many tropes of early Chicano muralism, but within its context on this one pylon in Chicano Park, it reads as an effort to bind feminism through a patriarchal pronouncement of Chicano nationalism.

5. Here Angie Chabram-Dernersesian’s article is one of a Us)/Chicanas—Into the Movement Script,” Cultural cohort that argues for intersectional feminist interven- Studies, eds. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and tions into Chicano–Xicanx language. Angie Chab- Paula Treichler (New York: Routledge, 1992), 81–96. ram-Dernersesian, “I Throw Punches for My Race, But I Don’t Want to Be a Man: Writing Us—Chica-nos (Girl, Sightlines 2018 Carlos Francisco Jackson

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Figure 6: Celia Herrera Rodríguez, Rosalinda Montez Palacios, Irma Lerma Barbosa, Glory Galindo San- chez, Nayeli Guzman, Veracruz Sanchez, Montserrat Figure 7: Jose Montoya, Leyes: La Familia, origi- Granados, and Patricia Aguayo, Women Who Hold nally painted in 1975, restored in 2012. [Mural on Up Half the Sky, originally painted in 1975, restored in left.] Author’s photograph. 2012. [Mural on right.] Author’s photograph.

The question of what motivated Leyes persists. Guisela Latorre, This stands in stark contrast to Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky, author of Walls of Empowerment: Chicana/o Indigenist Murals of which was significantly updated with deeper indigenous symbolism California, notes that Montoya created Leyes during a time of “grow- and visual references to the contemporary material conditions of the ing divisions within the Chicano movement as a threat to the initial community (figs. 6 and 7). ideological unity of and integrity that defined the early work in In 2012, no opportunity was taken to imbue Leyes: La Familia with Chicano Park.”6 The takeover of the pylon and the creation of Women new meaning, again reaffirming its patriarchal vision. On the opposite Who Hold Up Half the Sky are representative of a challenge to ideo- side of the pylon, Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky advances its initial logical unity for the Chicano movement. The divisions represented by intervention of “Chicana/o” visuality by molding the sign to “Xicanx.” Latorre are evidence of the long-standing debate over the meaning, Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky achieves this resignification by goals, and intentions of the Chicano movement, and can be read as destabilizing nationalist and gendered scripts for a focus on decoloniza- a struggle over which ideology, strategy, and subjectivity will create tion that is rooted in the material conditions of the community. Within generative pathways for future social-justice engagement. this single pylon, the viewer engages two drastically different signifying In 2012, Leyes: La Familia and Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky practices for Chicano subjectivity and practice. Both visions, sitting were restored as part of a $1.6 million grant to restore and maintain back to back and holding up State Route 75, are debating for control the complete integrity of the murals within Chicano Park as part of a over how the sign “Chicano” is to be signified. multi-decade effort to seismically retrofit the Coronado Bridge and The most significant change in the 2012 restoration ofWomen Interstate 5 freeway interchange. Leyes was restored in exactitude. Who Hold Up Half the Sky is the representation of water as a decolonial

6. Guisela Latorre, Walls of Empowerment: Chicana/o Indigenist Murals of California (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008), 164. Sightlines 2018 Carlos Francisco Jackson

44 ceremonial element and as a precarious commodity within the expression rests in the necessity of either updating the murals after 45 Chicano community. As in the original, women still crouch, holding they begin to deteriorate or starting anew. While Chicano murals up the sky within the narrow T-shaped space of the pylon, but now can appear as fixed visual objects, if they are outdoors and within these women are more explicitly transnational and intergenerational a community, they are in fact deteriorating from the moment of indigenous women who uphold the same sky that produces water. their creation. The 2012 restoration of Leyes as a restatement of the The water manifests as decolonial indigenous motifs, both iconic and original is an intentional act that reaffirms the mural’s visuality as an primordial. While the imagery in this mural could remain within the enclosure of Chicano subjectivity. realm of the symbolic and metaphorical, the artists ground water as The question of how artists were to consider the restoration pro- an enclosed commodity that has been rendered precarious for histor- cess is addressed in a short introductory essay to the Chicano Park ically marginalized communities. At the bottom of the mural, standing Mural Restoration Technical Manual by David Avalos, one of the early on the ground and at eye level with a passerby or viewer, a woman muralists in Chicano Park. Avalos describes discussing the resto- stands and holds a five-gallon water bottle in front of a water dispen- ration process with Guillermo Aranda, a fellow Chicano Park muralist, sary. Text along the side of the water dispensary reads, “El Agua es who shares that he’d prefer to think of the restoration process as a Sagrada. El Agua es La Vida.” (The Water is Sacred. Water is Life.) revitalization rather than a mechanical effort to replicate the original She stands in stark contrast to those at the top holding the sky. Both mural. In speaking of his discussion with Aranda, Avalos states, “His are exerting labor, but the women holding the sky exert very little dilemma, like all invited to re-create their original work, is how do effort. It is as if the sky were weightless. Yet the figure at the bottom you ‘restore’ a living memory?”8 Avalos also speaks with Salvador is clearly weighed down by the five-gallon water bottle, struggling to Roberto Torres, a key organizer of the early mural campaign, who walk forward toward the viewer, so as to persist. shares his opinion “that the park artists must consider the original Due to the divergent approaches to restoration, Women Who murals incomplete.”9 Both Torres and Aranda speak to Chicano mural- Hold Up Half the Sky can be read as an incomplete mural still in ism’s lack of permanence, identifying its incompleteness as an oppor- formation, mirroring the incomplete, ongoing signification of the tunity to make historic murals relevant to the material conditions of sign “Chicano.” The fixity and static nature ofLeyes gestures toward the community. For a mural to remain relevant, it must be updated, “Chicano” as an enclosure. This divergence highlights a larger debate imbued with the character and spirit of the changing contemporary over the role of a mural within a community context.7 Some approach context. In this regard, Avalos, Aranda, and Torres are arguing for the murals as monuments to a moment in history that should be main- mural to be activated as an agent for constructing language. tained so as to preserve memory. Others see the deterioration of the By delimiting one pylon, cutting it out of the mass of culture that mural as an opportunity to reimagine the mural with relevance to an exists within the park, one can locate the moments where debate ever-changing contemporary community context. The first approach over signification of the “Chicano” in Chicano Park exist.Women Who naturalizes meaning, while the second views meaning as a social Hold Up Half the Sky and Leyes: La Familia are speaking to each other construction. through the concrete mass that separates them. In speaking to each The generative power of these Chicano murals is in their form as other, they are simultaneously speaking to each one of the viewers a community effort that is fragile and temporally subject to deteri- who passes by to intentionally look at the murals and/or to simply oration by the natural elements and climate. The emergent period seek refuge in the park. These two murals are making visual argu- of Chicano muralism was not sponsored by the state and often ments for what the Chicano movement was, is, and can still be. Their was enacted with minimal supplies and funding, and painted with debate reminds the viewer to, at all costs, resist enclosure and see acrylic paints that frequently lacked any coatings or surface fixes. oneself as a producer of language. Through the continuing construc- As a result, the Chicano murals were easily subject to deterioration, tion of language, futures are built. making them temporal art objects. Chicano muralism’s generative

7. Here I am referencing efforts such as ¡Murales Rebel- Rebeldes! L.A. Chicana/Chicano Murals Under Siege 8. David Avalos, “Introduction,” Chicano Park Mural Res- des! L.A. Chicana/Chicano Murals Under Siege, an (Los Angeles: Angel City Press, 2017). toration Technical Manual, ed. Victor Ochoa (San Diego: exhibition and catalog that charts the deterioration and Caltrans District 11 and the Chicano Park Steering erasure of the early generation of Chicano murals. Erin Committee, 2006), 8. M. Curtis, Jessica Hough, and Guisela Latorre, ¡Murales 9. Ibid.