Review of Guisela Latorre, Walls of Empowerment: Chicana/o Indigenist Murals of California.

WALLS OF EMPOWERMENT: CHICANA/o INDIGENIST MURALS OF CALIFORNIA. By Guisela Latorre. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008. 292 pages. Hardcover $60.00, paperback $27.95. One of the most fascinating works in Chicana/o studies published in recent years, Guisela Latorre’s first book makes a groundbreaking contribution to the study of Chicana/o public art and cultural history. The product of nearly a decade of fieldwork conducted in San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—the epicenters of Chicana/o muralism—Walls of Empowerment examines numerous murals as well as graffiti, digital artworks, and performances. The volume includes sixteen pages of full-color illustrations, which constitute an important visual archive. Far from simply engaging in hermeneutic readings of artifacts, Latorre also considers how social and historical circumstances, and the ideas and modus operandi of the Chicana/o artists, shaped the finished products. She is particularly concerned with the contributions of female muralists, whose innovative works have enriched Chicana/o aesthetics. Moreover, “because of the transcendental and unstable qualities of Chicana/o Indigenist aesthetics and identities” (28), Latorre includes several artworks by non-Chicana/os that exhibit indigenist themes. In this way she challenges monolithic notions of identity, valorizes cross-ethnic alliances, and draws attention to the impact that Chicana/o culture and iconography have had on artists of other ethnic backgrounds. Latorre argues that Chicana/o community muralism “is best understood through the theoretical, discursive, and pragmatic lens of autonomous indigenous expressions” (29). She shows that the public mural, a privileged locus for the elaboration of an indigenist iconography, has allowed Chicana/os to creatively “assert agency from the margins” (2). She envisions Chicana/o indigenism—which she defines as “the act of consciously adopting an indigenous identity . . . for a political or strategic purpose” (2)—as a model that may enable marginalized communities to empower themselves through subversive and decolonized self-representation strategies. In fact, as the book’s title suggests, Chicana/o indigenist murals represent creative sites of empowerment, compelling examples of art at the service of social justice and community development. Conceding that Chicana/o indigenist Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies V36-1_16Milazzo.indd 241 36:1 Spring 2011 © University of California Regents 241 12/21/10 10:40 AM Milazzo aesthetics are positioned somewhere between indigenism and indigeneity— the latter defined as “organic expressions that emerge from the indigenous communities themselves” (3)—the author carefully navigates the complex terrain of indigenous identity politics by comparing Chicana/o and Mexican indigenism and by briefly touching upon Native American critiques of Chicana/o indigenist practices. Latorre draws parallels between the Chicana/o experience and the realities of “other indigenous people of the Americas” (23). For instance, she claims that the demands that Chicana/os placed on the U.S. educational system “mirrored those initiated by other indigenous groups in the Americas” (23); that the Chicano movement resembled “other indigenous movements” (67); and that the creation process that informed the murals of Estrada Court, a housing project in East Los Angeles, was “similar to the ways in which cultural production often functions among historically disenfranchised indigenous communities in the Americas” (148). Yet comparisons in which specific indigenous groups are named remain puzzlingly scarce in the work. Latorre also asserts that Walls of Empowerment brings together scholarship on mural art and “the various writings and treaties on indigenous agency and resistance throughout the Americas” (29), but she cites few primary documents created by indigenous peoples or their spokespersons. Subcomandante Marcos is one of the most notable voices omitted in the work. Instead of following a rigid chronological framework, Latorre structures her book thematically, an approach that does justice to the vitality of Chicana/o mural activity. She begins by examining the relationship between Chicana/o and Mexican muralist productions and demonstrates that, notwithstanding the recurrence of visual quotations, Chicana/o public artworks both continue and disrupt the Mexican mural tradition. The second chapter looks at early indigenist murals. These were shaped by the nationalist concerns of the Chicana/o movement, such as the desire to construct autonomous cultural and epistemological spaces grounded in a counterhegemonic indigenist sensibility. The third chapter engages the contested relationship between Chicana/o muralism and graffiti, an art form that is frequently stigmatized as being merely the expression of gang culture. Latorre valorizes graffiti by arguing that they display various parallels with Mesoamerican glyphs, and she shows that many Chicana/o artworks actually problematize the mural versus graffiti dichotomy. In the fourth chapter the author analyzes the phenomenon of Chicana/o mural environments, spaces where several murals share a 242 V36-1_16Milazzo.indd 242 12/21/10 10:40 AM Latorre’s Walls of Empowerment common site and constitute a collective artistic project; a notable example is Chicano Park in San Diego. Latorre asserts that such mural environments have allowed Chicanos to “reconquer” spaces denied to them through colonization. The fifth chapter focuses on gender and on the artistic productions of Chicanas, who have challenged the male-centered Chicano nationalist canon and have made original contributions to the mural tradition. This chapter engages some of the most spectacular murals featured in the book, such as Maestrapeace, a collaboration by seven female artists, and Juana Alicia’s La Llorona’s Sacred Waters, both located in San Francisco’s Mission District. In the sixth and final chapter Latorre explores the presence of postmodern aesthetics in indigenist murals by examining digital artworks and street performances, and she gives voice to artists who contest both indigenist aesthetics and muralism, such as the performance art collective Asco from East Los Angeles. Latorre argues that “there is no one mural Indigenist aesthetic but rather a multiplicity of complementary, overlapping, and contesting aesthetics” (31, emphasis in original). Walls of Empowerment reveals the richness and complexity of Chicana/o muralism in California. By privileging artworks that are rooted in community social justice concerns and by including creative expressions, such as graffiti, that remain contested, the author challenges the marginal position that public art in general, and Chicana/o public art in particular, continue to occupy within the fields of art history and criticism. Latorre not only demonstrates that Chicana/o mural productions deserve thorough scholarly attention because of their formal artistic value but also makes evident that they can be powerful vehicles for social change, alternative education, and collective empowerment. For historically marginalized groups, public walls provide a canvas for self-expression and self-representation. Murals can offer access to alternative epistemologies and counterideologies; they can perform significant didactic functions—in fact, they can teach a community its own history; they can be instruments of social critique; they can foster the re-education of violent youths through their participation in the process of creation; they can promote cooperation by means of collective artistic projects; and they can contribute to the general well-being of a community through the beautification of its neighborhood. Readers who have enjoyed Laura E. Pérez’s Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities (Duke University Press, 2007), the first booklength study dedicated exclusively to Chicana visual and performance art, will likely also appreciate Latorre’s book. Walls of Empowerment represents a valuable resource for scholars and students interested in Chicana/o art, 243 V36-1_16Milazzo.indd 243 12/21/10 10:40 AM Milazzo history, sociology, and literature. The work contributes to an understanding of the historical and sociological processes that have shaped Chicana/o aesthetics through the incorporation of artists’ testimonies and through accounts of the decades that saw the bourgeoning of Chicana/o muralist activity in California, particularly the 1960s through the 1980s. It demonstrates that the history of Chicana/o muralism cannot be properly understood without taking into account the “process of community building and preservation” (6) that informs these artistic productions. Chicana/o mural activity speaks volumes about the history of oppression, resistance, and remarkable creativity that characterizes the Mexican American urban experience. Finally, Walls of Empowerment will inspire artists and scholars interested in art at the service of community empowerment across ethnic and racial boundaries. The challenges facing socially engaged muralists and graffiti artists, which include “increasingly repressive city politics” (243) that jeopardize the very survival of their artistic endeavors, are not confined to Chicana/os alone. Other artists of color are also prevented from giving voice to the concerns of communities that often face oppressive conditions of poverty and racism. Despite the transformative power of artistic creativity, the U.S. mural scene continues to suffer from lack of funding and incentives. If we add to this the threat of vandalism, the general decay of the inner cities, and the dearth of funds devoted to restoration projects, soon we might refer to Walls of Empowerment for the documentation of a vanishing art form. Let us hope that this will not be the case and that Latorre’s timely work will lead the way toward a greater valorization of community artworks, Chicana/o or otherwise, among academics and policy makers alike. Marzia Milazzo, University of California, Santa Barbara 244 V36-1_16Milazzo.indd 244 12/21/10 10:40 AM