-
5. Gender, Indigenism, and Chicana Muralists
- University of Texas Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
The Gendering of Murals and Nationalism The chosen medium for the politically engaged Chicana/o artist in the 1970s was undoubtedly the public mural.1 Indeed, the public mural was deeply saturated with a powerful history of politicization as well as a profoundconnectiontoindigenousartistictraditions .Butmuralsalsopossessed a gendered history that historically and discursively relegated women to the margins and subsequently rendered them completely invisible, thus mirroring the dynamics of the Chicano Movement itself.2 Chicano writers and activists from the 1970s, such as Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales and the leaders of the militant group the Brown Berets, regarded the participation of women within el movimiento as supportive and secondary to that of the men. The Chicana/o arts renaissance that emerged on the coattails of the movement would re-create the gendered hierarchies that existed within the ranks of Chicana/o activist circles. Just as many male Chicano militants constructed the very notion of empowerment along masculinist lines, the Chicano mural , with its public character and its connections to the Mexican School, was strictly defined as a male art form. During the early to mid-1970s, not only did Chicana mural work go largely unrecognized, but the presence of Chicanas in the iconographic programs of these public works was omitted, sexualized , or circumscribed. The Indigenist aesthetic that defined much of Chicana/o decolonized consciousness was also strongly male identified. The radical and nationalist languageoffoundationalChicanotextssuchasAlurista’s“ElPlanEspiritual de Aztlán”—drafted in 1969 at the Chicano Liberation Youth Conference in Denver attended mostly by Chicanos from California—bolstered an Indigenism defined by manhood: Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come and who struggle against the foreigner “gabacho ” who exploits our riches and destroys our culture. . . . Before the world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in the C H A P T E R F I V E Gender, Indigenism, and Chicana Muralists G E N D E R , I N D I G E N I S M , A N D C H I C A N A M U R A L I S T S 177 bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlán.3 The unambiguous connection between the male-identified concept of brotherhood (or carnalismo, as it is referred to in other contexts) and the “bronze continent” (i.e., Aztlán or the indigenous Americas) articulated in “El Plan” allowed little or no room for the expressions of woman-centered subjectivities. Chicano identity, as initially defined by el movimiento, was static, finite, and clearly delineated along masculinist lines. As writers like Ana Nieto Gómez, Cherríe Moraga, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, and others tell us, Chicanas were expected to play a pivotal role in the creation of Chicano cultural nationalism, but this participation needed to happen on the sidelines of this project. While the men fashioned themselves as the intellectual architects of this new consciousness, the women were to stand by their side and assist them in this task. Many Chicano radicals and Chicana loyalists4 saw any articulation of difference within this nationalist paradigm as an attempt at divisiveness and ideological treason. Given the subordination of their positions within el movimiento, most Chicana feminists saw no other alternative but to construct their own discursive and physical spaces. In the visual program of the Chicana/o arts movement, iconography that alluded to women’s experiences or, worse, feminist concerns would inevitably decenter Chicano nationalist aesthetics by mere virtue of its content. The Indigenist imagery that so eloquently spoke of decolonization in community murals illustrated utopian indigenous realms largely decreed by a patriarchal order. But in spite of the blatant exclusion of women within this nationalist aesthetic, many Chicanas who came of age as artists during the early phases of the Chicano Movement were not necessarily compelled to work independently of their male peers. In fact, Judy Baca and Patssi Valdez, for example, initially forged many alliances with male Chicano artists as part of the general desire of these cultural producers to create community among Chicana/o artists. During her early years as a community artist, Baca recalls that her initial artistic associations occurred primarily with male artists who were doing murals at the time, like Manuel Cruz and Leonardo Castellanos,5 director of the Mechicano Art Center, one of the earliest Chicano cultural centers founded in Los Angeles. Given that the majority of the women associated with Chicano artistic...