The Promise of the Jaguar: Indigeneity in Contemporary Chicana/o Graphic Art Jenell Navarro, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo Much of the artwork produced by Latino Graphic Art.” Overall, two Chicanas/os from the 1960s forward Indigenous themes emerge in this often stages significant elements of selection of artwork that cannot be indigeneity as a resurgent message and ignored: the centrality of the jaguar and meaning crucial to their represen- the prominence of women as powerful tations. While Chicanas/os have transmitters of culture. positively asserted their Indigenous Furthermore, in focusing on these identities at least since the 1960s, others themes, I contend the thread of have attempted to minimize or Indigenous survival in Chicana/o mythologize this reality resulting in contemporary art operates as a visual what many scholars have articulated as and creative de-linking from the logic the de-Indigenization of Chicanas/os and rhetoric of civility that has been (Forbes 1973; Bonfil Batalla 1996; Cintli historically utilized as a physical and Rodríguez 2014). Nonetheless, psychological strategy of colonization. Chicana/o art has maintained These prints disavow the settler state Indigenous narratives and history as a and even challenge Native nation’s kind of visual archive that asserts both insistence on blood quantum in order the spiritual and cultural force of for community members to be claiming Chicana/o indigeneity. And, acknowledged as Indigenous. I detail while the 1960s often presented an how these artists invest in Indigenous essentialist Aztec form of Indigenous alliance building across the Americas by identity, many Chicanas/os by the late privileging organic cultural and political 1970s and early 1980s were illustrating a formations and local cultural practices diversity of Indigenous identities. The rather than blood quantum alone for art examined here was part of the membership in Indigenous commun- “Indigenous Peoples of the Americas: ities. This framework intervenes in the Roots, Resistance, and Resurgence” settler state’s logic of containment since exhibit. This exhibit was held at the that logic heavily relies on blood University of California, Santa Barbara quantum and federal recognition from February to June of 2015 in the policies as a method of local control. main library. The artwork of this exhibit Again, while many Native nations still provides a powerful sampling of the map their genealogical citizenry visual and narrative evidence that through this same vein, countless other graphic prints can constitute a Indigenous peoples in the Americas methodology for collective cultural affirm their indigeneity through culture, memory and identity. For the purposes land, and lifeways. For example, during of this essay, I examine four graphic the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and prints from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s 1970s a large part of the Chicana/o in the section of the exhibit titled community came to consciousness “Indigeneity in Contemporary Chicano/ around the assertions of self- 24 Navarro determination and indigenism (Vargas rootedness and futurity are not staged 2010:3) and the subsequent develop- as dichotomous or linear but organic ment of Chicana/o art was shaped and fractal. around these key themes (Vargas:93). For these Chicanas/os, recuperating Locating Decolonial Aesthetics in their Indigenous (Aztec, Maya, Yaqui, Chicana/o Graphic Art etc.) identities allowed them to clearly The Transnational Decolonial Institute understand the systematic processes of (TDI+) is a group of scholars from racialization and domination in the around the world who are working to United States as American Indians define and implement decolonization in offered an analogous relationship to the various geopolitical contexts. In 2010 settler state. These politics and these scholars opened an exhibit on histories, then, are part of the premises what they termed “Decolonial for understanding the artworks Aesthetics” in Bogotá, Colombia. The examined in this essay and their reliance following year they had a “Decolonial on Chicana/o indigeneity as described Aesthetics” workshop and exhibit at within the parameters noted above. Duke University that was curated by Additionally, as Laura e. Pérez (2007) Walter Mignolo. TDI+ recently released has adeptly noted, many of the artistic a manifesto on decolonial aesthetics representations in this essay are saying these are “genealogies of re- spiritual representations. They also, existence in artistic practices” however, specifically disavow (Transnational Decolonial Institute, exploitation of land and life based on 2013). Within this framework, Mignolo decolonial ethics that do not necessarily and Vázquez argue, “aestheTics [are] an have to be rooted in a spirituality. Thus, aspect of the colonial matrix of power, I locate and theorize this art within two of the imperial structure of control that analytical frameworks: 1) a decolonial began to be put in place in the sixteenth aesthetics that centers radical critiques century with the emergence of the of colonial and neocolonial logics and Atlantic commercial circuit and the practices; and, 2) visual sovereignty, a colonization of the New World, and that term articulated and outlined by was transformed and expanded through Michelle Raheja (2010) that underscores the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- the liberatory politics of various visual turies, and up to this day” (2013). By texts. These analytics provide the contrast, decolonial aesthetics can be framework for understanding how these identified as those that radically deliver artworks embody a Chicana/o a re-existence of life and knowledge Indigenous epistemological formation against the settler state working to of the world. The analytics of decolonial dissolve the colonial matrix of power. aesthetics and visual sovereignty also Indeed, as coloniality operated to help to ascertain how these graphic arts dominate the political, economic, and present time and space distinctly knowledge bases of Indigenous life, it against the grain of the settler state; how also strategically sought control “over these artworks represent a particular our senses and perception” (Mignolo rootedness in resistance to settler and Vázquez 2013). Thus, a decolonial colonialism in general; and how they aesthetic can be understood to make assert alternate futures in which such visible “decolonial subjectivities at the rEvista, Volume 5, Issue 2 25 confluence of popular practices of re- cornerstone of Indigenous life and existence, artistic installations, decolonizing efforts towards self- theatrical and musical performances, determination. Ultimately, as Scott literature and poetry, sculpture and Richard Lyons has noted, sovereignty is other visual arts” (Mignolo and Vázquez “nothing less than our attempt to 2013). Finally, then, viewing the art survive and flourish as a people” (2000: prints in the “Indigenous Peoples of the 449). Yet, it is important to point out Americas” exhibit within a decolonial that sovereignty is not solely tied to aesthetic challenges the practice and resurrecting a past but rather to idea of art canonization because there is ensuring a present and future. To wit, no goal to establish and control a canon Lyons argues: of art within this decolonial framework. Sovereignty is the guiding story in our Rather, and quite differently, there pursuit of self-determination, the persists a hope that, just as there are general strategy by which we aim to multivalent logics of coloniality, there best recover our losses from the are also multivalent logics of ravages of colonization: our lands, our decoloniality—one of which is the languages, our cultures, our self- assertion for revolutionary artworks to respect. For indigenous people be staged as plural in both their everywhere, sovereignty is an ideal interpretations and political principle, the beacon by which we seek possibilities. the paths to agency and power and community renewal (2000:449). Visual Sovereignty in Chicana/o Thus, visualizing not only the survival of Graphic Art Indigenous peoples but the thriving Furthermore, Michelle Raheja’s work on multimodal and creative ways our visual sovereignty is another critical communities flourish assists in realizing framework for expanding a radical certain forms of sovereignty that are not liberatory politics to visual texts. While tied to the settler state or its courts of she utilizes the term to explicitly read law. In short, artworks that embody a Indigenous filmmaking, here I employ decolonial aesthetic envision various her understanding of this concept to the implementations of self-determination framing of art prints. In Reservation that are beyond those articulations of Reelism she argues that visual sovereignty that rely on the settler sovereignty extends sovereignty beyond colonial state for recognition. the juridical realm to the arts and adds: “visual sovereignty permits the flow of Victoria Ocelotl Indigenous knowledge about such key The silkscreen print Victoria Ocelotl issues as land rights, language (“Jaguar Victory”) by Yreina Cervántez acquisition, and preservation, which from 1983 details the revolutionary narrativizes local and international commitment evidenced in decolonial struggles” (Raheja 2010:194-196). While aesthetics (Figure 1). Cervántez was definitions and deployments of terms born in 1952 and raised near San Diego, like sovereignty can be quite different California close to a Native American for every Indigenous group