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CSRC ORAL HISTORIES SERIES NO. 11, DECEMBER 2013 MARGARET GARCIA INTERVIEWED BY KAREN MARY DAVALOS ON AUGUST 27 AND SEPTEMBER 10, 12, 19, AND 24, 2008 Margaret Garcia’s work has been exhibited in group shows throughout Southern California and in Texas and Mexico, and she has produced a number of murals in the Los Angeles area. The recipient of a California Arts Council grant, Garcia also teaches and lectures throughout the region on art in different cultures. She is a graduate of California State University, Northridge, and the University of Southern California, where she received a master of fine arts. Garcia is a resident of Los Angeles. Karen Mary Davalos is chair and professor of Chicana/o studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Her research interests encompass representational practices, including art exhibition and collection; vernacular performance; spirituality; feminist scholarship and epistemologies; and oral history. Among her publications are Yolanda M. López (UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press, 2008); “The Mexican Museum of San Francisco: A Brief History with an Interpretive Analysis,” in The Mexican Museum of San Francisco Papers, 1971–2006 (UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press, 2010); and Exhibiting Mestizaje: Mexican (American) Museums in the Diaspora (University of New Mexico Press, 2001). This interview was conducted as part of the L.A. Xicano project. Preferred citation: Margaret Garcia, interview with Karen Davalos, August 27 and September 10, 12, 19, and 24, 2008, Los Angeles, California. CSRC Oral Histories Series no. 11. Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press, 2013. CSRC Oral Histories Series © 2013 Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Interview © 2008 Margaret Garcia. Do not reproduce without permission. THE CSRC ORAL HISTORIES SERIES The CSRC Oral Histories Series publishes the life narratives of prominent Chicano and Latino figures. The life narratives have been recorded and transcribed, and the interviewer and interviewee have reviewed and corrected the transcriptions prior to publication. These oral histories are often undertaken as part of a larger research project and in tandem with archival collections and library holdings. CSRC ORAL HISTORY SERIES PROJECTS L.A. Xicano documents the history of Chicana/o art in Los Angeles with a focus on artists, collectives, and art organizations. The project resulted in new museum and library exhibitions, public programs, archival collections, and scholarly publications. These efforts were part of the Getty Foundation initiative Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A., 1945–1980. The project received support from Getty Foundation, Annenberg Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and California Community Foundation. Related support includes funding from Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, AltaMed Health Services Corporation, Entravision Communications Corporation, Walt Disney Company, and individual donors. A Ver: Revisioning Art History stems from the conviction that individual artists and their coherent bodies of work are the foundation for a meaningful and diverse art history. This book series explores the cultural, aesthetic, and historical contributions of Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, and other U.S. Latino artists. The A Ver project is made possible through the generous support of Getty Foundation, Ford Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Joan Mitchell Foundation, JPMorgan Chase Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation. The LGBT and Mujeres Initiative seeks to increase archival and oral history holdings that document the Chicano/Latino presence in LGBT and women’s histories, the role of women and LGBT people in Chicano/ Latino histories, and the importance of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity in “mainstream” scholarly research and archival institutions. The project receives generous support from the Ford Foundation and individual donors. ARTISTS INTERVIEWED FOR THE L.A. XICANO PROJECT Judy Baca Charles “Chaz” Bojórquez David Botello Barbara Carrasco Leonard Castellanos Roberto “Tito” Delgado Richard Duardo Margaret Garcia Johnny Gonzalez Judithe Hernández Leo Limón Gilbert “Magu” Luján Monica Palacios John Valadez Linda Vallejo INTERVIEW WITH MARGARET GARCIA August 27, 2008 .........1 September 10, 2008 ......27 September 12, 2008 ......58 September 19, 2008 ......89 September 24, 2008 .....121 AUGUST 27, 2008 Karen Davalos: Here we go. This is Karen Davalos with Margaret Garcia on August 27, 2008, and this is for the [CSRC Oral Histories Series]. And we are here in Highland Park at Margaret’s studio. I’ll just start with your grandmother. Margaret Garcia: Right. KD: Because I know she is important to you. So why don’t you tell me about your grandmother? MG: My grandmother was born May 26—no, 25, in 1906, and she was born in El Paso, Texas, and she was the eldest of twenty-four children. My great-grandmother had had five sets of twins. [My grandmother] went to a private school over there until they moved here. My great-grandfather was a cobbler, and at the age of thirteen she was raped and molested by my grandfather, who was a Yaqui Indian. My grandmother was [of] Tarahumara descent, and he was thirty and she was thirteen. And because he had taken her virginity back then, you know, people were very Catholic. “You’ve taken her, you’ve used her, she no longer has value because she is not marriage material, she is not a virgin anymore so you have to marry her.” And they forced her to marry him. And she had—she had three boys from him. And she had a fourth pregnancy over here in Lincoln Park, because they were living in Los Angeles by that time. And my—my dad was a baby, he was a toddler, he was learning how to walk, and she was afraid he was going to fall into the lake chasing the ducks. And she said to my grandfather, “Agara, Fernando, se va a caller.” Go get him. He’s going to fall in the water. “Ah, tu agarralo.” And so she jumped up, and when she jumped up she fell on her belly. She was eight months pregnant and she lost the baby. I have the death certificate somewhere, and it hap- pened here in Lincoln Park. And I guess they had a fight over it. I don’t know what happened, but I know that my grandfather took off for, like, six months and left her with no means of support. So she found a widower who had nine children who took her in. And [my grandfather returned]. After six months he showed up and says, “I want my wife and kids back.” And my great-grandmother was, “Well, he’s your husband, and you are married by the church,” and all this other stuff. So my great-grandmother was trying to convince my grandmother to return to her husband, and my grandmother was, like, “I don’t want to be with that man. He’s cruel and he’s mean and he forces himself on me when I don’t want to have sex with him. And I don’t want him and I don’t want to be with him.” And she [my great-grandmother] says, “Well, look you guys are fighting. Why don’t you just leave the kids here and you guys can sort it out. And then you can get the kids tomorrow.” Well, when she went back to get the kids, she [my great-grandmother] had turned the kids over to my—to my grandfather. My father and his two brothers. And my grandfather said, “If you want to see your kids again, then you’ll come back and live with me.” And she said, “No, I refuse to do it.” So he took the kids to Mexico. And he went to Mexico, and my Uncle Gregory died in Tijuana. There was a flooding in Tijuana. Tijuana was flooded back then. There were big floods that year that he left, and there was also this sort of move- ment to repatriate Mexicans to Mexico. And my grandfather kind of hopped on board that, and he took off. My grandmother did not see my father again. He was in diapers when he left, and she didn’t see him 1 CSRC ORAL HISTORIES SERIES until he was fifteen. And what she did was, she put an ad in the newspaper and they found him. And my father came back. And my—my grandfather was a very, very harsh man. He was Yaqui and Apache Indian, and they lived in [Sonora, near Obregón]. I think it’s the Vamparo, Sonora. And he would leave the boys—my father and his brother—alone to fend for themselves. They would shine shoes and beg for change on the streets. And he forced this living on his sons rather than return them to their mother. And so my father was always— grew up being told that his mother didn’t love him, that she was a whore and a tramp and all this other stuff. So my grandmother found him when he was like fifteen, and there was a whole transition that hap- pened because she was still with the man that she, you know, the widower that she took up with. And so my uncle, his brother, stayed in Mexicali, and my father came here. And at one point they both came across the [border]. But my grandmother wanted to know who I was, and so she felt—I think she felt robbed. She had two other children. She had Sylvia and she had Charlie, and she even had a daughter that she adopted. She adopted a girl. And she died of tuberculosis here at the county general [hospital] in the communicable diseases ward, and her name is on my birth certificate, which is another story. But grandma felt very con- nected to me.

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