Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this unpublished protest statement, the Alliance for Cultural Equity (ACE) demands the cancellation of The Chicago Show, unless its organizers establish a dialogue to achieve the exhibition’s stated goal of showcasing the talent and cultural [...]

This document is an announcement issued by the Comité Provisional del Mejoramiento de Nuestra Comunidad [Temporary Committee for the Betterment of Our Community] for a public meeting on March 28, 1978, at the Rockwell Baptist Church in West Town, a [...]

In this interview, Marcos Raya expresses his belief that young artists must “get out of their mental and real ghetto, the Mexican ghetto,” in order to advance in their art. They must, he says, “be part of the whole city of Chicago and still be [...]

This press packet is a collection of twenty-nine articles from local and national publications and press releases from Chicago artists’ organizations that convey the controversy surrounding The Chicago Show. Meant as a blind-juried art exhibition, [...]

This document is the Last Will and Testament of Carlos Cortez Koyokuikatl, written on August 25, 1992, and signed and witnessed on August 1, 1994. He leaves whatever money remains to his wife/companion, Marianna Drogitis Cortez. Any personal effects [...]

This press release, issued by the Provisional Committee to Better our Community, announces a press conference on March 31, 1978, at which the East Humboldt Park Community would call for the city of Chicago to halt its plans to demolish a residential [...]

In this article, Carlos Cortéz Koyokuikatl announces an exhibition of Movimiento Artístico Chicano’s (MARCH) collection of silkscreen posters by the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF) at the MO MING Dance and Arts Center Galleries in Chicago. He [...]

This document is a 1977 calendar produced by the Movimiento Artístico Chicano (MARCH), which includes biographies and reproductions of works by twelve Chicago-area Chicano artists, one for each month. Significant dates in Chicano history are also [...]

This text recounts an exhibition that Movimiento Artístico Chicano (MARCH) which was organized around Agustín V. Casasola’s memorable photographs of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. In this article, Mary Kay Vaughan recounts the films, lectures, and [...]

This article introduces readers to Casa Aztlán, a Latino social services center and cultural organization founded in Chicago in 1970, and widely known in the Midwest for its cultural programs. It describes Casa Aztlán’s location in Chicago’s [...]

In this brief consideration of Alejandro Romero’s œuvre, author Victor A. Sorell discusses the impact of Chicago, Romero’s adopted home, on his works. Romero invokes the industrial ambience and architectural totems of this city in his pieces, [...]

In this interview David Torrez discusses his devotion to the arts of his Mexican-American heritage, his involvement in founding organizations such as the Mexican Historical Society of Saginaw, Michigan, and his many artistic projects. Among these [...]

In this text, Victor A. Sorell considers the works of the three Chicago-based, Mexican muralists Aurelio Díaz Alfaro, Marcos Raya, and Vicente Mendoza through the prism of what he characterizes as three language types—“private,” “public,” [...]

In this article, John Weber considers pioneering Chicano artist Ray Patlán’s work with teenagers creating a mural in a Latino neighborhood of Chicago during the summer of 1971. The youths were part of the Community Mural Project that, beginning in [...]

The Cuban-American artist Paul Sierra begins this lecture, delivered at the Terra Museum of Art in Chicago, by declaring that even though he has been asked to speak about the “sources of Hispanic Art,” he has decided to speak instead about [...]

In this text, John Weber, a distinguished muralist and co-founder of the Chicago Mural Group, responds to a recent article about murals in Chicago and denies that Chicago’s mural scene is unique. He fears that such a term implies that the scene is [...]

This exhibition catalog, Chicago Latino, was part of an intercultural dialogue initiated by two “socially-minded arts groups,” the 369 Gallery of Edinburgh, Scotland, and the Near Northwest Arts Council of Chicago, Illinois. The exhibition [...]

Carlos Tortolero wrote this text in response to an article by Lonnie Bunch, “Museums, Diversity, and the Will to Change” (which appeared in the July/August 2000 issue of Museum News), noting that, while Bunch’s article was well written and [...]

Carlos Tortolero, founding father and director of the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum (now the National Museum of Mexican Art), writes that mainstream museums are elitist and discriminatory institutions that either claim they have already diversified [...]

This document is a proposal for The Puerto Rican Equation, an exhibition to commemorate the 1898 invasion of Puerto Rico by the United States, and which would feature Puerto Rican artists who were born and lived in either Puerto Rico or the United [...]

This document contains Bibiana Suaréz's responses to four of the eighteen questions posed to artists by the organizers of The Puerto Rican Equation, an exhibition marking the occasion of the 1898 invasion of Puerto Rico by the United States. Suarez [...]

In this lecture given in April 1989 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago-based, Puerto Rican artist Bibiana Suarez states that the value of art is dependent on its power to reveal the artist’s innermost world, and to preserve that [...]

In this panel presentation at the 1992 Women's Caucus for Arts, artist Bibiana Suarez spoke about how her images reflect her reality as a Puerto Rican living in the United States who feels caught between two cultures and who insistently searches for [...]

In this lecture, the artist Bibiana Suarez recounts how a student's question prompted her to consider her own reasons for producing art; including the motivation of greed, which, although ostensibly negative, she considers as a motivator. Suarez [...]

In this statement, the Chicago Artists' Coalition (CAC) voices its objection to the mid-competition change of rules and procedures for selecting artists for The Chicago Show. It calls the organizers’ decision to add an invitational component to [...]

In this text, James Yood offers a scathing critique of The Chicago Show, an exhibition mounted at the Chicago Cultural Center in 1990. He describes the process by means of which this exhibition—conceived of as a juried exhibition to showcase the [...]

This newspaper article describes how residents of Chicago’s Humboldt Park community kept a 24-hour watch over the building that housed the mural Breaking the Chains (1971 by John Weber and collaborators) in order to prevent it from being razed by [...]

In this profile of the Chicago artist Marcos Raya, Jeff Huebner describes the people, places, and situations that have shaped Raya’s life and influenced his work, as well as the trajectory by which he gained national recognition. Extensively [...]

In this text, John Weber speaks about his experiences and beliefs as a political artist, and summarizes the Chicago mural movement in which he participated. First, the author gives a brief overview of Chicago mural history from the 1930s Works [...]

This is the program for the dedication of three murals in the Puerto Rican neighborhood of Humboldt Park in Chicago. The murals were painted by artists and community residents during the summer of 1971 and speak about their history and the problems [...]

Indeed, “Redefining Displacement”, an interdisciplinary and multicultural project in the visual and performance arts, explores how individuals and communities negotiate displacement through the arts. In this instance, what is at stake is the [...]

This booklet for the exhibition Confluencias: Leandro Soto and Raoul Deal contains three texts: an interview with the artists by Linda Corbin-Pardee, an essay by Gregory Jay, and a short text by Awam Amkpa entitled “The Story of Oggun.” Jay [...]

In this article, the Chicano artist and poet Koyokuikatl (Carlos Cortez) considers the revolutionary spirit of Diego Rivera’s art on the occasion of an exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Art celebrating the centennial of Rivera’s birth (1886- [...]

In this text, the Mexican writer Julio Solórzano contextualizes a lecture that the Chicago mural painter and activist John Weber gave while in Mexico and includes a brief history of Latino murals in Chicago. Solarzano explains that the mural [...]

In this text, Coral Gilbert and Ricardo Frazer interview Carlos Cortez, a Chicago artist, poet, and social activist. Cortez speaks about his parents’ radicalism and artistic involvements and the part they played in his personal development. He [...]

In this catalogue essay, Victor Alejandro Sorell considers the 36-year career (spanning 1964–2000) of the Chicano artist Carlos Cortez, praising him as the “quintessential artist-reporter,” and emphasizing his virtuosity as a master printmaker [...]

In this article, Antonio Zavala offers a brief history of Movimiento Artístico Chicano (MARCH), highlighting the works of two of its members, the visual artist Carlos Cortéz and the poet Carlos Cumpián, as well as some of the organization’s [...]

This document includes the text of the catalogue and the program of lectures and film screenings related to the exhibition, Posada: Printmaker to the Mexican People. The catalogue opens with “Corrido of the Coming of Don José Guadalupe Posada to [...]

This collection of texts, published under the “Nuestra Gente” column in two issues of Abrazo [Hug] in the fall of 1976 and the summer of 1979, is involved with events and activities organized by midwestern Latino artists and arts organizations. [...]

This essay, with accompanying inventory and maps, considers the Chicago community mural scene from 1967 through 1979, noting that the medium was employed by artists from a variety of ethnic backgrounds to “ . . . express ethnic, historical, popular [...]