JOHNNY GONZALEZ, with IRMA NÚÑEZ INTERVIEWED by KAREN MARY DAVALOS on OCTOBER 28, NOVEMBER 4, 11, and 18, and DECEMBER 17 and 20, 2007
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CSRC ORAL HISTORIES SERIES NO. 7, NOVEMBER 2013 JOHNNY GONZALEZ, with IRMA NÚÑEZ INTERVIEWED BY KAREN MARY DAVALOS ON OCTOBER 28, NOVEMBER 4, 11, AND 18, AND DECEMBER 17 AND 20, 2007 Artist and businessman Johnny/Don Juan Gonzalez is recognized as one of the founders of the Chicano Mural Movement in East Los Angeles. He co-founded the Goez Art Studios and Gallery in 1969. His mural designs include those for Story of Our Struggle and The Birth of Our Art. A resident of Los Angeles, Gonzalez is a partner in Don Juan Productions, Advertising, and Artistic Services. Educator Irma Núñez has taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District and has been involved in citywide adult education programs. She is the recipient of the CALCO Excellence in Teaching Award from the California Council for Adult Education. She is a partner in Don Juan Productions, Advertising, and Artistic Services. 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: Johnny Gonzalez, with Irma Núñez, interview with Karen Mary Davalos, October 28, November 4, 11, and 18, and December 17 and 20, 2007, Los Angeles, California. CSRC Oral Histories Series, no. 7. Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press, 2013. CSRC Oral Histories Series © 2013 Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Interview © 2007 Johnny Gonzalez and Irma Núñez. 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 JOHNNY GONZALEZ AND IRMA NÚÑEZ October 28, 2007 ........1 November 4, 2007 .......34 November 11, 2007 ......90 November 18, 2007 .....143 December 17, 2007 .....236 December 20, 2007 .....285 OCTOBER 28, 2007 Karen Davalos: Thank you for taking the time to be here this weekend. I just want to start, Johnny, with some really basic questions about when and where you were born. Johnny Gonzalez: I was born in 1943. June 20 of 1943, in Aguascalientes, Mexico, the birthplace and hometown of José Guadalupe Posada, which I’m very proud of, which I had no knowledge about for many, many years. And this has so much to do with the fact that I had so little knowledge on my culture. And my dad was Juan Gonzalez, he was a carpenter. And my mother Guadalupe Duarte Gonzalez, who was actually born in Arizona and at the age of seven went to Mexico, and then got married there. I’m the third of six siblings: the first was my brother Joe Gonzalez, the second was Rebecca Gonzalez, I was the third, Imelda Gonzalez was fourth—we were all born in Aguascalientes, and my younger sister, Ali- cia, was born here in the United States after we came here. So I came here at the age of four years old. And then we have a younger brother who’s about fifty years old, who was also born here in the United States. KD: Do you have any sense of why the family came? I mean, you’re awfully young, but maybe the told the story later? JG: Yeah. They came because my dad’s—my dad was actually self-employed, he had a cabinet shop, cabinet- making shop, and they robbed them, completely. Everything, they stole everything. I think all they left was a chisel that he found in the sawdust when he went back in. So there was no way of making any more money. And since my mother was a citizen of the United States, and my brother, Joe, the oldest, was also a citizen, because at that time, anybody born of a citizen outside the country, before the ’40s, was automati- cally a citizen. So my brother was automatically a citizen. My mother had a cousin here in—it was called Pio Pico, a little community between Montebello and Pico Rivera. So they decided first to move to Juárez, and then from there, my mom came over. They worked—actually, my mom worked a little while in Juárez, she used to come over the border and clean house for a lady, and so the lady, the family, was actually very nice people, and they actually helped her— the fact that she was already American, they sort of helped in setting up things so that she could be able to come over here. So she came over here with Joe, my brother. Joe was eight years old. And my mom decided to come over here and start fixing papers for the four of us which lived with my dad: my older sister, my two sisters, and myself. So she spent like six months working here, odd jobs, and suffering a lot, trying to get things going. And she was living with a cousin in Pio Pico. And in order to get my dad over here, she had to find a job for him first. So she found a job in construction for him. So that’s how he finally managed to come over here with the three of us. KD: Is that in ’47 then? JG: That was in ’49. KD: Oh, okay. So much after the war. 1 CSRC ORAL HISTORIES SERIES JG: Yeah, it was in ’49. Well, let’s see it could have been maybe ’48, because I was [five] years old. And so when we moved to Pio Pico, it turns out that Pio Pico was like a little ranch town, they had no paved streets, and of course there was no lawns or anything like that, that was totally unknown about at that time. But it was a little community which was maybe three blocks by two blocks long, just a little tiny area, and it was located right by Rosemead—Rosemead was a gigantic street for us—to me, I was a little kid, I was [five] years old, and it was so scary to go by Rosemead, because cars moved fast over there. And then we were separated from, I guess, other areas of Montebello because there was a river, a river went through there. But it was a lot of fun for us, being kids, living right by the river. And then there were orchards that—it just seemed like a long long distance, maybe a couple of miles or something, to get to Whittier Boulevard, and that’s where my mom struggled very much, because she got a job working in a sewing shop, downtown LA, so she had to walk, on her own, all across the orchards to get a bus on Whittier Boulevard. And that was a very difficult thing for her, [especially at night]. So she had to take like three buses to go all the way downtown, and then come back, [many times at night,] all the way being over there. Irma Núñez: How long was she alone before your dad came— JG: It was like six, seven months, somewhere around there. And her boss was very nice, Jewish owner of the sewing factory, but she used to mention, she spent a lot of time crying while she was working on her sew- ing, because she went so many months without seeing any of us, and he used to comfort her a lot.