Revista Chicano-Riqueña and ArtePúblico Press: An Interview with Nicolás Kanellos

INTRODUCTION

For this special issue considering a history of early journals in the late twentieth century, for their impact on creating and promoting a field of Latina/o studies, we asked the founding editors of two of the earliest, and longest-lasting journals to share some of their thoughts about this legacy.

The following is the response of Nicolás Kanellos, founding editor of the Revista Chicano-Riqueña, established in Indiana in 1972 and promoted from the Midwest, with the first issue published in 1973. The journal relocated to Houston in 1980, and continued in extensive publication (with a name change) for 25 years.

Diálogo:

How was the journal conceived? What was the impulse? Were you working with a group of people and what were their backgrounds and strengths? What were some of the primary themes?

Nicolás Kanellos (NK):

While in high school and undergraduate college, I was a shipping clerk at a hat company in the garment district of New York City and learned how to use all classes of mail and shipping and keep accounts, all of which would be essential in securing the business part of publishing a magazine and later founding and directing a publishing house. Later during my graduate study in the Spanish & Portuguese Department at the University of Texas (UT), I worked on a literary magazine. In the late 1960s and early 1970s while in graduate school, I was involved in the Chicano Movement. I continued my activism as an ABD when I moved to Indiana University Northwest in Gary, Indiana, where my students were predominantly steel-workers living in East Chicago and Gary, which had/have large Latino populations dating from the exodus from the Mexican Revolution and the airlift of Puerto Ricans to the steel mills during World War II.

While there, I had community organizing training from the Alinsky Institute and became heavily involved in the Latino (Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Mexican Americans) civil rights movement and block organizing. In 1972, I was the first professor at IUN to teach Spanish for heritage speakers and courses in Latino literature, courses I had begun to organize while still at UT. All of these came together in developing small publications of literary works by students and community members in Forgotten on Broadway and La cadena de mi herencia.

Fig. 1.

A cover from Revista Chicano-Riqueña.

Courtesy of Nicolás Kanellos.

Based on the latter, I was awarded the remainder ($500) of a grant to start a magazine; the Latin American Studies Program in IU Bloomington gave me the money. With my students and community people, including a local artist with national connections, José González, we founded Revista Chicano-Riqueña in 1972 and came out with our first issue early in 1973, printed in the offices of a local community newspaper (The Hobart Gazette). To keep the magazine within the IU system, I recruited Professor Luis Dávila, an assistant professor down in Bloomington, to be my coeditor, especially since students from the northwest region at Bloomington were prime movers in getting us that money and contributing to the first issues.

Fig. 2.

A cover from Revista Chicano-Riqueña.

Courtesy of Nicolás Kanellos.

The idea we had was to create a place for all of those writers and artists we had met and were meeting who were involved in the movement. It was to be national in focus and representation and inclusive of all Latinos—you can read our manifesto in the first issue. What also helped was that I had founded and directed a Latino teatro made up of students and community people, and we traveled all over, participating in festivals and touring to campuses to perform; this along with my own travels in theater and literary circles around the country kept me in touch with the writers and artists and allowed me to recruit them for our magazine.

We got some very important help in launching the first issues. In 1972 and...