Voices from the Barrio: "Con Safos: Reflections of Life in the Barrio" by Maxine Borowsky Junge and Con Safos (review)

In the late 1960s at the height of the flowering Chicano movement, an empowered sense of do-it-yourself, or rasquachismo in the barrio vernacular, brought forth an array of artistic and cultural visions, celebrating and disseminating once-suppressed voices and everyday realities. Two students at California State University, Los Angeles, Ralph López Grijalva-Urbina and Arturo Flores, decided to start a Chicano-oriented magazine where none existed, called Con Safos: Reflections of Life in the Barrio. Over a four-year period from 1968 to 1972, the highly influential and raucous self-published magazine Con Safos¹ became one of the most important outlets of local Chicano literary works and social commentary.

The magazine used barrio vernacular and humor to reach readers in its region, and attracted many young artists who would go on to be emblematic of the Chicano movement generation of artists and intellectuals, such as Oscar "Zeta" Acosta, Gilbert "Magú" Luján, and Oscar Castillo. Its popularity also meant other organizations and even the FBI took interest in the magazine. In 1972, the FBI raided the offices of Con Safos and confiscated the last known edition of the magazine.

Now, Voices from the Barrio recounts the tumultuous history of the magazine, and by default the Chicano Movement in East Los Angeles, their participation in the Chicano Moratorium (against the war in Vietnam), and how it came to be in the FBI cross-hairs. Maxine Borowsky Junge, an artist and social worker with strong ties to East Los Angeles during the Chicano Movement who became close with many " Consafiados," members of the Con Safos collective, appears to be the organizing force behind the book, collecting the oral histories of the surviving original Con Safos members: Oscar Castillo, Arturo Flores, Antonio Solís Gómez, Sergio Hernández, Ralph F. López Grijalva-Urbina, and Diane Velarde Hernández. These accounts detail the magazine's history. Authorship for the book is itself testament to the idea of collectivity; a more conventional approach to publishing would have listed Borowsky Junge as editor and Con Safos authors as contributors. Instead, Con Safos members are listed as coauthors with greater input and responsibility in the final product.

In the foreword, Jesus Salvador Treviño (who has created documentaries on the Chicano Movement) best summarizes the aim of Voices from the Barrio by describing the book as the definitive history, and "a fun, contemporary [sic] journey through the creative minds of a brash group of writers and artists whose writings and artwork are as relevant today as they were in the 1970s" (iii). As such, Voices from the Barrio introduces a new generation to the significance and contributions of the short-lived Con Safos magazine and showcases the current work of many of its founders.

Overall the book is organized into thirteen chapters. The first six chapters offer a meandering assortment of oral histories, along with retrospective reflections in two chapters by Antonio Solís Gomez and Diane Velarde. These chapters establish the context of "Con Safos" and describe the founding of the magazine. Chapters seven, eight, and 12 focus on the content of Con Safos by reprinting and highlighting the magazine's most popular features, such as the comic "Arnie and Porfi." Such features also suggest the role of Con Safos as an important launching pad for a generation of Chicano artists. For example, chapter ten details the connection of famed Chicano writer, lawyer, and activist Oscar "Zeta" Acosta to Con Safos, and features creative writing inspired by Acosta. The book is rounded out with chapters of selected readings, a bilingual glossary, and a "where are they now" epilogue.

Readers will...