WORT 89.9FM Madison

Latinx Art and Protest: An Evening with Lalo Alcaraz and Tatiana Reinoza

Acclaimed editorial cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz and Notre Dame art historian Tatiana Reinoza, whose research and writing focus on contemporary Latinx art, join Tony and Eli on the Thursday 8 O'Clock Buzz just in time for tonight's panel on Latinx art and political protest on the UW Campus. Alcaraz, an award-winning nationally-syndicated editorial cartoonist and the creator of the syndicated daily comic strip, “La Cucaracha”, has shared his art online for 20 years, and also hosts a weekly radio show "Pocho" on KPFK, Southern California's listener-sponsored radio station, and one of the Pacifica Radio Foundation's five networks. Tatiana Reinoza, Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Notre Dame, is an art historian whose research and writing focus on contemporary Latinx art. Tonight’s panel, featuring Alcaraz and Reinoza, explores the positive effect that Chicanx and Latinx artistic expressions can have on prevailing stereotypes. Their dialogue on the intersection of politics and visual art is part of the UW Latine Heritage Month talk. RSVP here for a Zoom option. Photo courtesy of Maria Fuentes on Unsplash.

Broadcast on:: 26 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: other

Joining me live in the studio, I'm very pleased to have Lalo Okaras and Tatiana Reynosa. Tatiana is a professor of art history. Latinx art at Notre Dame. Congratulations. Doctor, I should call you, we gotta call you Doc. Thank you so much for having me. Well, okay. And Lalo's a long time Chicano cartoonist is over. How many? Over 20 something years. 200 years. Yeah, remember the first one. They're in town here with the Chicano and Latino Studies Program. I was gonna say department. Sorry, man. I know it's it's controversial. Hello everybody from the program out there listening. They're not they're not awake yet. They get joined in crowd here tonight at the LVM theater. I mean the LVM Museum right on campus at 6 p.m. they're gonna be putting on a program in a discussion of Latinx art and protests. So good morning and thanks for coming. Good morning Tony. Well, I don't I don't know what to start away. I was thinking of questions. I my first question was like how do we explain Latinos for Trump but maybe we can talk about that. I don't know. Let's talk a little bit about the program tonight and what it's gonna be about. Tatiana? Absolutely. So I'm gonna be talking about my book that I published last year. It's called Reclaiming the Americas, Latinx art and the politics of territory and it's a book where I'm tracing the history of Latino printmaking in the United States thinking in particular about the role of workshops and what they did for these communities from the 19th and 70s onward and it's you know every Hispanic Heritage Month people talk about like it's the first time they've heard about Latino art and it drives me crazy because Latinx artists have been in this country for like hundreds of years and have been making this work and in particular printmaking is such a popular form of art. It's accessible, it's a distributable and there's so many great collections around the country and there are important curators who have worked really hard to establish those collections like Carman Ramos, Chrita Gonzales, Teina Caragol and I just am glad to be here and I want more people to know about these artists. Right and the artists not only are from what we think either the East Coast or West Coast but there's a great Midwestern artist and I think a lot of people that have been involved in a political movement not only in Madison but throughout the country I mean they're very familiar with the IWW woodcut prints of Carlos Cortez who I actually have some of his prints at home that he's signed because he came to Madison so he's yeah it's deep so you will obviously be featuring some of his stuff. No doubt all right that's the presentation tonight. Lalo you're a cartoonist. What are you doing here? I don't know who I thought it was housekeeping wake me up this morning. Oh wait you thought you had to come over here and clean and clean this. A long time cartoonist people have I'm sure on social media and also other print have seen your work. Can you talk about you know your career you're being a cartoonist and sure and in terms of what is Chicano cartooning is there is that? Yeah what is it? I consider myself a fine artist and cartoonism my main cartoon thing is I have a daily comic strip called La Cucaracha and you can go out to gocomics.com/la Cucaracha and get it in your inbox for free every day but it does run in some newspapers specifically LA Times and San Diego Union Tribune and then papers throughout the country used to be better for newspaper cartoonists you know. They used to be better for newspapers. They used to be papers and so I also do editorial cartoons that's like I think my favorite thing to do. I'm a political cartoonist and that's how I started in in cartoony is just being angry and wanting to draw about what's happening in the news and so it's been interesting to you know cope with a lot lack of newspapers I've been sharing my stuff for free online for 20 years maybe since there was you know since my space and AOL days and and and so that's how I kind of try to keep relevant and in people's brains by doing that but yeah but yeah I I'm concerned myself with Chicano artists through and through all right but what about the politics of being a Chicano artist Chicano X and and this for both of you Tatiana also I mean is there something inherently if I'm gonna do Latinx art or whatever of course it's just the politics is part of that maybe maybe not right I mean either I'm sure there are Latino Latinx artists who like to just paint sunsets or whatever but I think there are Sunday painters and in every kind of racer class okay that you look but both for Chicano X artists and Latinx artists in the United States there is a politics to their work I mean a lot of it involves talking about our identity talking about our racialization in the United States right what it's like to grow up poor and what are the socioeconomic conditions in which you live and a lot of the artists that I study who began making work in the 1960s they were farm workers or they were the children of farm workers so that labor struggle was very much a part of their identity and they make work about that right they talk about that and I think that still carries through to today yes some of the issues have changed but we're still fighting a lot of the same fights and as people demonstrate and especially Chicano and Latino people demonstrate I mean art is a very big part of the demonstrations if you see the the marches that Boces de la Frontera puts on they have a whole division army I want to say of artists who like here's what we're gonna do we're gonna make these beautiful butterflies we're gonna make these beautiful banderas and you know what I mean I mean it's just I kind of want to feel that it's kind of inherent absolutely I'm gonna be talking tonight about an Ecuadorian American artist Andra Fernandez who went to school here at UW Madison she got her MFA in print making and artists books and she talks a lot about what it's like to to be on the border and to be undocumented and the kind of plight of invisibility around that because these cities they need undocumented labor right but they don't want to see these people they they don't want to acknowledge them and they certainly don't want to give them rights so again it's it's much larger than it you know Latinx art I feel like encompasses so many groups of the Latino diaspora is in the United States all right I have a question yeah is is it a diaspora if you're from here and I don't and I don't mean Madison sorry I know the Vaca's are from here but like in in I'm in the way you can't talk bad about the controls and that was Mexico all right and I always like I don't think that Chicano's are a diaspora what do you think about that yeah I think that's a really good point I mean the all right I made a good point of 8 a.m. Keep on keep on interviewing I'm just gonna sit here a while I always say the border across does right right and 1848 it is such a an important year kind of a cataclysmic year really for their identity and there's a piece that I'll talk about tonight by Louis the foot Gonzalez that refers specifically to that moment so you're right Chicanos are not a diaspora in the same way that Ecuadoran Americans are or Salvadoran Americans that's where I'm from but I think our struggles are similar and our roots are similar in terms of our ancestral histories right in our heritage and I feel like I wouldn't be the person that I am the scholar that I am if I hadn't studied and learned from so many Chicano artists when I was coming up in I was an art studio major in college and I worked with Royal Chicano Air Force artists in Sacramento and that was so important to my formation and to my politicization and I feel like the field has grown obviously because we're much more diverse as a Latino community it's very heterogeneous but you know it's funny though that you mentioned the Royal Chicano Air Force because they also had a division or an Air Force in Chicago also is how I met initially Carlos Cortez he was part of that when they came up here and did that I think I met Carlos Cortez 25 years ago or so when I was in my division called the Chicano Secret Service which was my comedy group wait don't you tell everybody about the secret Chicano army that nobody's supposed to know about Eli I might be afraid my ears are always plugged here man I wasn't anything I think they're in Cincinnati good from Cincinnati but I just came from we we went to the DNC in Chicago okay and my host took me to go get some menudo medicinal menudo if you know what I mean oh and so it's it's legal no we went to thank God and we went to a little village we drove through with Pilsen and there's beautiful murals there that where I was blown away by you're talking about Midwest Chicano art man was there and it was there's beautiful and the menudo was wow yes they made the murals a lot more enjoyable I should know I mean they're beautiful everywhere and of course Chicano Park in San Diego and every what about the role of muralism in Latino art I mean we know that you know there's a long history in Mexico but in El Salvador and other places too what so in the 1960s that was the premier art form that that really began the whole Chicano art movement and in the Southwest it was murals and the reason that murals are so important it was a way to create these identitarian politics right to stake a claim also in in terms of public space to let people know this is our neighborhood right and this is what our communities about and that slowly started to change around the 1970s when other mediums began to also become important like printmaking for example but murals are incredibly important and I want to give a shout out to my colleague Jason Ruiz at the University of Notre Dame because he worked on a digital humanities project to actually document all the Pilsen murals that Lalo was just talking about and there's a beautiful website where you can go and and look at the photos and learn about the artists and there are so many books waiting to be written about this subject I finally got to get a little bit of artwork on a Chicano Park mural that was a mural I think about what was it Machistas and so and artists and so there was a you know Royal Chicano Air Force was on it represented and whatever and so my Chicano Secret Service logo was on I got to paint it and tweak it and I that was the first it was just last year I think and it was a I grew up in San Diego with artists from Chicano Park Victor Victor Ochoa David Avelos were to my my mentors they're still around doing art and but these guys taught me how you know it's it's Chicano art it you can mix art and politics and for me it was a little just a little jump to editorial cartooning political cartooning it's all the same to me and we're talking about the old marches the old marches for me were in the 90s and that's where pre-internet my I have my first viral art piece which was during the proposition 187 marches in California anti-immigrant law granddaddy of what's happening right now exactly that's where people would Xerox my image me grandma's they would Xerox it they would redraw it they would blow it up and and march with it and it was like mind-blowing to see and now I can send free PDFs to people and they could print out my stuff and they do just ask for a photo so I can put it on my Facebook and Bragg you know when I'm speaking with Allah Allah al-Karaz he's a Chicano cartoonist long time and also Dr. Tatiana Reynosa who's a professor of art history at Notre Dame they will both be presenting tonight talking about this is that what Chicano are there we'll make a good team here yeah this is very I'm very interested to go see this talk tonight I am - but I got what do you got you go I got to play music oh I got a play at 5 30 so but I don't know we'll see how long it goes let's talk about it when you started doing cartooning 20 years ago I mean what were your themes then and and have things changed how are they changed I've got worse I used to draw I mean I've been drawing much longer than that I used to draw in the wound I was very painful for my mother you know we got over that the things have not changed it's sad I'll I was the cartoonist in college at San Diego State which is interesting because I was in Mecha student group and then I had the job to draw editorial cartoons every day in the student paper called the daily Aztec which is kind of cool and well that that was a name also of the team right San Diego State that's where the they're the Aztec we had an strange reason yeah we had an amazing you know school paper very robust and I was at a toy cartoon so I would be in the Mecha office and my friends would be like hey you should draw about this or you should draw about that and one time and so it was like my first kind of community feedback loop you know that I had one time we tried to get Cesar Chavez hired to come speak paid to get to speak at our campus and it resulted in an editorial cartoon of the riot that we had in the student council because they they refused to invite him to invite him and and these these young students that were on the student council were actual sons and daughters of growers it was a super interesting dynamic they're from the Central Valley California agricultural and they were like well you know my my parents are growers and I'm making up a Central California accent my parents are growers and we hate Cesar Chavez and I'm a vote no you know and it's I chronicle this in in one of my cartoons it was very interesting kind of you know I had a very it was a very privileged environment for me and that's where I learned to love hate mail and and that brings us that that brings us to Latinos for Trump yeah I have theory I think they ate a radioactive burrito all right and then they got instead of superpowers they got super stupid well we'll see how that goes I'm sorry and real quick the the the issues of not change it's I drew about violence on the border constantly in San Diego and we're we have the same situation now you just change the dates of my cartoons and it's very you know life is a circle sometimes yes it does unfortunately in a bad circle well I want to thank both you guys for for coming on the show and this is over I'm sad this is I know sorry we got another guess come tonight at six o'clock that's right what museum the elvium elvium it's beautiful it's a beautiful situation right there on campus the new building it's took over the old Mecha offices they knocked down our building because they didn't want to leave any trace that happened to San Diego state they put a Chick-fil-A over we didn't get that we got we actually got a new music department there so it's not too bad oh but anyway thank you so much and again the programs tonight at six p.m. at elvium theater you're gonna want to check this out it's part of a whole month of activities that Chicano Latino Studies program is putting on thank you very much and thanks for bringing them down everyone hey want to give you a my she said weather poster I love that thank you so much if you can only see it on the radio and I want to give a shout out I'm gonna sign it right now I'm gonna give shout out to my radio station kpfk in Los Angeles 98.7 FM the Pocho hour of powers my show it's on Fridays at three o'clock Pacific really people can go online and check it out tomorrow what's that again kpfk.org is the Pocho hour of power we've been on for 20 years all right hey that's why you can't shut me up on this mic oh sorry yeah great thank you so much for being down here today