University of Texas at El Paso DigitalCommons@UTEP Open Access Theses & Dissertations 2016-01-01 Art, Culture Making, and Representation as Resistance in the Life of Manuel Gregorio Acosta Susannah Aquilina University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Aquilina, Susannah, "Art, Culture Making, and Representation as Resistance in the Life of Manuel Gregorio Acosta" (2016). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 801. https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd/801 This is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UTEP. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UTEP. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ART, CULTURE MAKING, AND REPRESENTATION AS RESISTANCE IN THE LIFE OF MANUEL GREGORIO ACOSTA SUSANNAH ESTELLE AQUILINA Doctoral Program in Borderlands History APPROVED: Ernesto Chávez, Ph.D., Chair Michael Topp, Ph.D. Yolanda Chávez Leyva, Ph.D. Melissa Warak, Ph.D. Charles Ambler, Ph.D. Dean of the Graduate School Copyright © by Susannah Estelle Aquilina 2016 This dissertation is dedicated to Stone, Mila, Silver and all of you young ones who give us hope. ART, CULTURE MAKING, AND REPRESENTATION AS RESISTANCE IN THE LIFE OF MANUEL GREGORIO ACOSTA by SUSANNAH ESTELLE AQUILINA, B.A., M.A. DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at El Paso in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO May 2016 Acknowledgements I am indebted with gratitude to Dr. Ernesto Chávez, my dissertation chair and mentor whose unrelenting guidance, empathy, and encouragement saw me through a very difficult program. Dr. Chávez’s steadfast commitment to equity and opportunity for all of his students impressed upon me greatly and shaped how I see myself as a scholar and an educator in a profound way. Thank you, Dr. Chávez for your genius and your support in all that we do! Of course I must thank my committee Drs. Yolanda Chávez Leyva, Michael Topp, and Melissa Warak for your invaluable expertise and insightful dialogue on my work. Thank you for taking the time to read and engage my study of Acosta’s life. After the long slog of the dissertation, I thought I was done with this project, burnt out from research and writing. But the comments provided by each of my committee members at the defense reignited my passion for this project and renewed my hope for turning it into a book someday by reminding me of what made me fall in love with this biography and story of El Paso in the first place. Thank you to my dear parents, Tim and Rosie, for everything under the sun. You are the two best parents any person could ever ask for! Thank you to my dear sweet Maddie for being my best friend and to Dan, Mila, and Merle for being in our family. I am eternally grateful for my beloved tíos Marc and Dolores for being the most wonderful Godparents in the world and standing behind me through all of this hard work. And of course I must also thank my grandmother, Maria Luisa, for teaching me how to be strong, work hard, and put love into everything I do. And of course thank you, Justin Stone for your companionship. Your brilliance and kindness have been my succor in this arduous work. I am so grateful for your presence on this journey. v Abstract This dissertation is a biography of Manuel Gregorio Acosta, an iconic Mexican American painter in the twentieth-century U.S.-Mexico borderlands. By gathering oral histories and examining Acosta’s art, my study emphasizes his importance to the cultural changes of El Paso in the post WWII era. Acosta’s biography yields a salient story about Mexican life in the U.S. Southwest and how Chicano/as contributed to American society. By exploring Acosta’s expression of identity and tying his life to the broader border community that he represented, this study seeks to link his individual narrative with a more general comprehension of race, class, and sexuality. Art provided Acosta the agency to navigate the complex world of multiple marginalities addressed in this biography. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... v Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... vii A Note on Terminology ................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 2 Chapter One ................................................................................................................................... 27 Chapter Two .................................................................................................................................. 53 Chapter Three ................................................................................................................................ 79 Chapter Four ................................................................................................................................ 108 Chapter Five ................................................................................................................................ 134 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 157 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 171 Vita… .......................................................................................................................................... 184 vii A Note on Terminology As this study deals with socially constructed identities, it is necessary to explain the various choices I make in describing them. Mexicans, as a mestizo/as, have always problematized racial categorization. Add centuries of multiple waves of colonization and terminology becomes even trickier. Manuel Acosta defied the boundaries usually highlighted to distinguish immigrant from native born in Mexican American history. He came to the U.S. as an infant and eventually earned his citizenship through his military service in World War II. His work aligned with the Chicano/a political struggle for equality and in this study I argue that the cultural changes that he helped manifest on the U.S.-Mexico border in the twentieth-century even contributed to fomentation of the movimiento. Acosta’s work emphasized the people of the borderlands as singular, not characterized by nationalist distinctions. Therefore he is best described in this study as a Mexican-origin person, as an individual deriving from Mexico and being strongly oriented around Mexican culture despite growing up in the United States. As an eventual citizen he is also described here as a Mexican American, especially in the context of his experiences as a member of the Mexican American Generation.1 I also use the word Chicano while referring to Acosta as it ties him to a particular pro-Mexican ethos that was taking shape in the twentieth-century borderlands during his adult years. While I sometimes use these terms interchangeably for the sake of variety in word choice, my use of each when discussing Acosta is intentional and depends on the context. I seek not to muddy the distinction and nuances between each but to highlight the ways in which he encompassed all three categories. His life and career were focused on overcoming the 1 Mario García Mexican Americans: Leadership, Ideology, and Identity, 1930-1960 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 13-15. 1 barriers dividing us while celebrating Mexican culture and humanizing Mexican-origin people. I therefore hope to use these terms in ways that reflect these complex and salient realities. 2 Introduction Every friend of Manuel Gregorio Acosta has stories about him, almost each one jovial and lighthearted. Tom Diamond, the 1989 Democratic Party Chairman of El Paso, reminiscing upon Acosta’s generosity and support of the party in an article written in the wake of his death, recalled having seen “Manny” at a Western art show. The artist was wearing an expensive sports-coat that still had the price tags and the size labels on it. When asked why, Acosta said it was because he was planning on returning the jacket the next day.2 This is how Acosta performed a humorous and self-deprecating playfulness. He mocked status and prestige and reveled in the humble life of Chicano/as on the border. His humor and creativity were ongoing forces shaping how he performed his life. Known for his celebrations, his joie de vivre, and most significantly his prolific and singular career as an artist, Acosta played a significant role in the cultural life of his borderlands city in twentieth-century El Paso. His relationship with his community and his art became central to his work as a culture maker on the U.S.-Mexico border. Manuel Gregorio Acosta was the foremost Chicano painter living and working in El Paso throughout