• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

CSRC ORAL HISTORIES SERIES NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2013 GILBERT “MAGU” LUJÁN INTERVIEWED BY KAREN MARY DAVALOS ON SEPTEMBER 17, 19, AND 22, AND OCTOBER 1 AND 8, 2007 A member of Los Four, Gilbert “Magu” Luján was one of the pioneers of the Chicano art movement. A prolific painter, muralist, and sculptor, he created works that reflect barrio life with humor but that address issues of concern to the Chicano community. He was one of the first Latino artists to establish an international career. Luján received a BA from Cal State Long Beach and taught at Fresno City College and Cal Poly Pomona. Luján, a resident of Pomona, California, died in 2011. 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: Gilbert “Magu” Luján, interview with Karen Mary Davalos, September 17, 19, and 22, and October 1 and 8, 2007, Ontario, California. CSRC Oral Histories Series, no. 4. 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 Gilbert “Magu” Luján. 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 GILBERT “MAGU” LUJÁN September 17, 2007 .......1 September 19, 2007 ......14 September 22, 2007 ......17 October 1, 2007 ........35 October 8, 2007 ........62 SEPTEMBER 17, 2007 Karen Mary Davalos: This is Karen Mary Davalos, at the home of Gilbert “Magu” Luján, and it’s September 17, 2007. I just want to start with a question about your childhood, where you grew up, where you were born. Gilbert Luján: Where should I start? KMD: Well, where were you born? GL: I was born at the San Joaquin General Hospital outside a little community called French Camp, which is a migrant farm workers’ camp—but registered as Stockton, which was a little town nearby—in 1940, Octo- ber 16. [I’m a] Libra. KMD: Birthday’s coming up. GL: Birthday’s coming up. And we stayed in Stockton for about six months, as I understood it, more or less, and then we moved back to East Los Angeles where my mother’s family was. My father was not a migrant farm worker, but he went up to Stockton because his brother, Isauro Luján, was a contractor, so he was, at that point, kind of wealthy. He had built this huge house, and he was a tall man—very commanding figure— and my father was younger. He was a younger brother kind of archetype to his older brother’s success. So he’d do other kinds of jobs, but my father also had had tuberculosis and couldn’t work, in the normal sense of the word, at least [as] Mexican labor. So anyway, we came back to East LA, and then I stayed in East Los Angeles as a kid, all through my childhood, from one year into grade school. This was all during the Second World War, which runs all the way through the late ’40s. And I can tell you that my experiences there were such that—they’re not unlike the immigrant social profile you have today. East LA at that time looked like Tijuana. We had some paved streets, they had a forty-watt bulb at every intersection, and that was the extent of the lights. I remember East LA being very dark, because at that time, it was almost rural. This was in the ’40s. KMD: What were you doing out late at night? GL: I don’t know. Taking a leak? [laughter] We lived in a shack, didn’t have— KMD: There was an outhouse? GL: There was no internal bathrooms. It was just a tin building that they had constructed over a cement slab. We had bunk beds in there. There was no water sources, and essentially it was poor. There was poverty, it was pretty clear. But as a child, I never knew poverty. I never—like most people—maybe Charlie Chap- lin’s—but he did, he was very much aware of it. I was not. KMD: You weren’t? GL: No, because everybody else around me was also impoverished, so what did I have to compare it with? Plus, as a little boy, you’re playing kick the can and chewing on the asphalt from the—I remember when they paved the streets, [there] was this extraneous asphalt that was on the side, and there was chunks of it. So little did we know it’s not good for you, but it used to—so we used to think it would make your teeth white. That’s definitely an urban myth. I don’t know if it works that way, but we had at that time diets that lacked sugar—sucrose—and we were young, and we had relatively healthy diets. We ate fresh foods. 1 CSRC ORAL HISTORIES SERIES There was very little of the processed foods that people eat regularly today. So we used to get beans and rice and all these kinds of things and cook it fresh. KMD: Now, when you say “we,” you’re living with your father? GL: It was my mother’s side of the family. We were living in the back of my grandmother’s house. And my grandfather, my maternal grandparents, were Eladio and Luciana Sanchez [Ledesma]. And at that time they were pretty clearly immigrants because they were here from being born in Mexico, and they had got here in 1926. And then there’s a lot of adventures there I could tell you about, because being a laborer, my grandfather had to hustle, and he used to collect things. And he did a lot of odd jobs, and one thing I remember as a child is going around selling orange—pails full of oranges. So we would put them in a bag. We’d sell them door-to-door. And since I was little, I was mostly just carrying the oranges while somebody else would knock on the door. And my grandfather, I remember, would basically offer some of the rotten ones at the bottom, and if it was discovered, people would complain, and he’d replace it right away. Now, as a grown person, I think that that was bad business on one hand, but it was a survival thing. So that’s an understanding of my childhood, that there was things that poverty brought to you, and trying to make it by any means possible reduced the moral value of what you were doing. Because we didn’t see it as totally dishonest altogether; it was one that’s a little more ripe than the other. So I remember thinking about that, because I also was—I must have been about four or five years old when we moved to a street—I mean, we lived on Eagle Street right near the intersection of Indiana and Eagle. And at that time, there was a market on the corner, and we used to use that to shop, and it was just a neighborhood store.

Load more

  94

Copy Link