Annotations for Dates: 1960s

It's been viewed by thousands of people in Los Angeles, Denver, Albuquerque, El Paso, Washington DC, and the Bronx in New York. Now the art exhibit known as the CARA show opens at its last venue of it's two year run in San Antonio. The exhibit examines the Chicano art movement of the 60s and 70s, through a wide range of multimedia, including posters, holograms, and altars. Latino USA's Maria Martin prepared this report.

The big new trombone sound he had developed revolutionized Afro-Cuban music in the 1960s. Eddie Palmieri had found the perfect combination and called his new band La Perfecta. [Background--Music--Piano] They were sensation at dance halls like the now legendary Palladium, where battle of the bands were common and Palmieri reigned supreme. His influence, however, wasn't limited just to the East Coast. A classic collaboration with California vibraphonist Cal Tjader came about when word got out that no one could go toe to toe with Palmieri's band, La Perfecta.

In the 1960s, Marga's dad, Willy Chevalier, was a comic actor who produced theater reviews known as Spanish Spectaculars, [background music] featuring salsa stars like Tito Puente and Celia Cruz, female contortionists, magicians and other acts. He put together sketches called La Familia Comica, which sometimes showcased her mom's Afro-Cuban dancing, they're pet chihuahua, and little Marga Gomez.

Latino USA commentator, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award, is based in California. In Brownsville, Texas, a group of Chicanos and elders from Indigenous populations in the US and Mexico gathered recently for what they called the 17th Encuentro of the National Chicano Human Rights Council. The group is part of a movement which began in the 60s to help Mexican Americans reconnect with their Indigenous roots. Today, the movement is taking a new turn involving Chicanos in a spiritual reawakening foretold in ancient Indian myths, which caused them to action on human rights and the environment. From Brownsville, Lillie Rodulfo and Lucy Edwards prepared this report.

Since the 1960s, the fight for fair media coverage has been an integral part of the struggle for Latino civil rights. Chicano and Puerto Rican activists fought to have their movements covered accurately and fairly by the press. Now, almost three decades later, civil rights activists and Latino reporters at the journalists' conference agreed that their goal of an unbiased media is the same. Barrie Lynn Tapia reports.

Politicians, activists, and journalists came together in Washington, D.C., to examine how well the media has covered Latino civil-rights issues. It was made clear there exists a unique link between social activism and the coverage of minorities. Many veteran Latino journalists, such as ABC's correspondent John Quiñones, say the activism of the '60s and '70s paved the way for them in the media.

Since it first opened in Los Angeles in September of 1991. The art exhibit known as CARA, the acronym for Chicano Art Resistance and Affirmation has traveled throughout the country to Denver, Albuquerque, El Paso, San Francisco, the Bronx, and Washington DC, bringing art inspired by the Chicano political and social movements of the 60s and 70s to audiences that had sometimes not even heard of the word Chicano. The CARA exhibits last stop was at the San Antonio Museum of Art. Museum patrons on this last afternoon of the CARA exhibit seemed to appear a little bit more intently than usual at this collection of 130 works by 90 Chicano artists from across the country. San Antonio artist David Zamora Casas was among those getting a last glimpse of the landmark art exhibit.

It has opened up the link that we have with our collective past. It has made it okay to and cool to be Chicano again.

Spanish teacher Barbara Merrill came from Devine, Texas. She says the works in the CARA show help her to better understand her mostly Mexican-American students.

There’s so much of the heritage and seeing it through the eyes of the Mexican American. The quote over there, the A Chicano is a Mexican American through non-Anglo eyes, speaks very much to me through this exhibit.

Combining art, politics and history. These diverse works, posters, murals, and multimedia together defined a distinct Chicano aesthetic.

What that meant some 15 years ago is that Chicano artists began to look inward at their own experience to look at their own traditions.

Art historian Dr. Jacinto Quirarte curated the exhibit in San Antonio.

Things that the Chicanos themselves had experienced rather than leapfrogging over to Mexico and looking at things indirectly. By the mid-70s Chicano artists began to really know who they were and by the 80s they were really well onto their own.

In three years of touring the Chicano Art, Resistance, and Affirmation exhibit has brought this distinctive artistic style to the attention of the mainstream art world, but perhaps its most lasting impact has been on audiences who had seldom before seen themselves reflected on museum walls.

We worked the fields in the summer and on weekends during the school year, whatever crop was seasoned. So uh-

30 year old beautician, Sally Ortiz came to see the exhibit twice in San Antonio before it closed. The familiar images she says like that of the Virgin of Guadalupe and of farm worker life and struggle touched a deep cord of memory.

The lettuce and the grapes and the pesticides. I remember my mother talking about the pesticides and of course I was very young and I never understood, but she used to always say, ‘que era muy venenoso.’ Just looking at everything. Just, it's like looking into my past all over again.

And for others too young or not around during the heyday of the Chicano movement, the CARA show proved an education.

Looking at the photos of all the rallies that they had, I found my mother in one of them and it just made me feel really proud that my parents had never really told me about it. But then they started telling me about all this stuff, makes me really proud that people were so alive back then and it just makes me want to be more alive now with the movement because it is still going on.

In San Antonio, as well as the other cities where CARA was exhibited, the show brought in more Latinos than had ever visited those institutions previously. The challenge now say many observers is to keep them coming.

For four days, recently, more than 150,000 young people gathered in Denver to see Pope John Paul II. Among them, many Latinos from across the country. Producer Betto Arcos, spoke to the young Hispanics about what was on their minds, issues ranging from the future of the Latino community to abortion, President Clinton's performance, and gays in the military.

The Hispanic community is not getting very well educated, okay? We need to push more for education.

We're working our way up, and I want to see us in power, not let everybody else walk all over us. We're going to be doing a lot of the walking, and we've got a lot to do.

President Clinton, up to this day, I feel that he takes in a lot of information from his public, from his staff, and he later he comes up with the plan out of that.

I think he's done a good job so far. I think he's the best president ever since John F Kennedy.

I'm sure he has good intentions. He can't please everybody all the time. He's looking out for the general welfare of the whole United States.

I do like the fact that he has let gays and lesbians in the army and stuff like that because I mean, that's their own private life, and nobody should get into that because it's theirs and it's personal. So I mean, we shouldn't hold that against them. Their preference is their business as long as they can do their work right. I mean, I think that's cool.

That's a tough situation. And the way it is right now there, we know that there are some gays in the military, but we don't know who they are, if they keep it quiet or ... Once you do know, I do know of one, a guy that was in my unit, and he seemed just like any other guy. So on a personal level, it's all right, but when you think about the overall picture, it's kind of an eerie feeling.

I don't know if you can say maybe the sixties, free love, everything like that was a part of it. And some of the people took that wrong as to what free love was, and they took it to the extremes with sex. And nowadays, you have a generation that holds nothing sacred.

Yeah, I believe that it's women's choice, even though in the case of rape, they should have an abortion, like incest and stuff like that. But I do believe it's women's choice.

Abortion is not a word for me. I don't believe in it.

Sex is not a game. It's not something we should play with. Responsible sex is knowing that you're going to have sex and knowing that the possibility of having a child is there and taking that responsibility if a child is in your womb.

I work in a neighborhood where the dropout rate is 75% of our high school and 75% of that, 45% of that is due to pregnancy. And I can't justify telling a kid for whatever reason, not to have abortion, not to have abortion, but I think it should be there to be addressed correctly.

Before the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power, jazz music flowed freely from this country to Cuba and back. That musical cross-pollination has been more difficult in recent years, though. However, Cuban jazz pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba made history this summer when he was permitted to play in the United States for the very first time. Alfredo Cruz reports.

[Recordando a Tschaikowsky--Gonzalo Rubalcaba]

During the first half of this century, Cuban music was a very popular source of entertainment in the United States. The Mambo y cha-cha-cha, and other rhythms dominated radio waves and dance halls across the country. Cuban music was being heard here, and jazz over there. But in 1959, following the Cuban Revolution, all cultural and political connections between the two countries were cut. And in Cuba, jazz became a Yankee imperialist activity. Playing or listening to jazz was done in an underground clandestine manner. Since then, things have changed. For one, the Havana International Jazz Festival, now in its 14th year, has attracted world-class musicians and helped raise the social and political acceptance of jazz in Cuba. But as pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba says, it wasn't easy.

Bueno, principio en los años sesenta, y parte de los setentas…[transition to English dub] In the early '60s and through part of the '70s, it was very difficult getting people to understand the importance of supporting jazz and the increasing number of young Cuban musicians heading in this direction. Today, however, there can not be, and there isn't any misunderstanding or political manipulation of jazz or Cuban jazz musician [transition to original audio] …interpretación por parte de los musico Cuba.

[Mi Gran Pasion--Gonzalo Rubalcaba]

At 30 years of age, Gonzalo Rubalcaba is considered one of Cuba's premier pianists. His father played with the orchestra of Cha-cha-cha inventor Enrique Jorrín, and later became one of Cuba's most popular band leaders. Gonzalo himself played with the legendary Orquesta Aragón while still a teenager, but it is through his solo playing that Gonzalo has made his mark in Cuba and around the world. Because of political differences, however, the United States audience remained out of reach to Cuban jazz and musicians like Rubalcaba.

[Simbunt Ye Contracova--Gonzalo Rubalcaba]

Bueno Estados Unidos debió ser uno de los primeros escenario…[transition to English dub] The United States should have been one of the first places for me to play. But since 1989, there's been a mystique and anticipation surrounding my not being allowed to enter this country. Very simply put, it's been a politically motivated maneuver to not grant me a performance visa, and has nothing to do with artistic or musical considerations. But now, my first appearance in this country, I think signals that we are entering a new era. But that doesn't mean I haven't had any contact with American musicians, because I've played with many in Cuba and in festivals around the world [transition to original audio]…contacto con músicos Norte Americanos.

American bassist Charlie Haden met and played with Gonzalo Rubalcaba in Switzerland at the 1989 Montreux International Jazz Festival and brought him to the attention of Blue Note Records. Haden, along with Blue Note executives and Lincoln Center in New York City, negotiated with the US State Department to grant the young pianist a performance visa. And finally, in what seems to have been a political icebreaker last May 14th, Gonzalo Rubalcaba made his US debut performance before a sold-out audience at Lincoln Center.

[No name (Live at Lincoln Center)--Gonzalo Rubalcaba]

Nueva dirección, del viento, el aire lleva…[transition to English dub] There's been a change of wind, politically speaking, a relaxation of attitudes and perceptions that are now opening the doors to dialogue in an effort to eliminate tensions. And it seems to me that this is a common goal of both Cuba and the United States. Even though we still can't really speak of this in practical terms, but ideally, this could be the beginning of normalizing relations between the two countries [transition to original audio]…esto podría ser un pequeño parte de eso, un comienzo.

[Unknow Track--Gonzalo Rubalcaba]

Many artists in both countries do agree that a relaxation of political policy between Cuba and the United States would be a positive development. And Rubalcaba's US debut has generated a renewed optimism within the cultural community, even though the visa he was issued allowed him to play only one concert, and on the condition that he would not be paid. Recently, Gonzalo Rubalcaba's recording, entitled Suite 4 y 20, was released in this country on the Blue Note record label. For Latino USA, I'm Alfredo Cruz in Newark, New Jersey.

[Simbunt Ye Contracova--Gonzalo Rubalcaba]

It was during the civil rights movement of the 60s says Lucero, that Hispanic men in New Mexico began to revive the dying Spanish colonial Santero tradition. About 10 years later, women artists began to emerge from behind the dominance of men in public arenas, making saints images in such a variety of media that Lucero decided to include more than bultos and retablos in the exhibit broadening the definition of santera.

The big new trombone sound he had developed revolutionized Afro-Cuban music in the 1960s. Eddie Palmeri had found the perfect combination and called his new band La Perfecta.

It is late night Denver. We have the booze thirst for one more soul search in a city packed with blue blood prosecutors and urban developers. We are after love too. In the brown buffoon stance of middle-aged Luis Montez, we follow the drowsy meditations of this ex legal age Chicano lawyer, an accidentally trip into an old homeboy's death, Rocky Ruiz. In the sparse language and short jabs of 21 chapters, we listened to Montez decipher Rocky's last days in Denver's Aztlan, the mythical land and moment of Chicano's 60s unity. Montez doesn't look back willingly. He seeks this home base by accident. In broken desks and hidden journals, he uncovers the old student walkout days, Chicano Power chance, and Red Beret rallies. Montez is more interested in finding his own life center at Lawley's Taco Shack over beans and bourbon, slouch and sport bars, or in his collapsing legal practice, he half digests the city machine.

He doles over his divorce, his abandoned kids, and Jesus, his fading father. Montez feels the grip of hooded men and the heat of racial slurs as he plays back Rocky's killing. Yet all Montez can do is whimper. He spills nostalgia and spits barrio desolation until he traces the sudden death of another companero, Tino Pacheco. Tino's death leads him to Rocky's last night and breaks open the trap door to Los Guerrilleros, a tight-knit Chicano homeboy crew of the 60s led by Rocky Ruiz. Finding Rocky requires fumbling through romance, sex, and the voices of wives and stark eye Chicanas. Montez meets Teresa Fuentes, a Chicana with multiple names and guises. By day, the only minority lawyer working for an upscale firm. By night, a silvery persona with a secret assignment in Denver that will unravel the mystery around Rocky's death. Montez is condemned to seek who killed Rocky Ruiz. Why is the crew of the old Movimiento Gang being quickly taken out in cold blood?