Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this 1986 essay, art historian Marcos Sanchez-Tranquilino discusses Mexican poet Octavio Paz’s (mis)representation of 1940s Mexican-American subculture, including the zoot suits worn by Chicano people. The writer states that in his book [...]

In this text, Guillermo Gómez-Peña declares the new dominant U.S. culture “border culture,” and assesses how Latino culture has infiltrated U.S. culture writ large. U.S. culture has, he argues, become fundamentally multicultural, and the “ [...]

Peter Marzio reflects on the experience of organizing and presenting the exhibition Hispanic Art in the United States: Thirty Contemporary Painters from his perspective as the director of the organizing museum. Marzio tells us he wants to make “ [...]

In this text, art historian and activist Victor Alejandro Sorell ponders on arguments for designating Chicano people a nation: the history of the twelfth-century Aztec homeland Aztlán, —located in the U.S. Southwest,— included; the seizure of [...]

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 essay, Shifra Goldman defines Chicano art as the expression of the historical conditions of what she calls the “double-mestizaje” [double-intermingling] of Chicano experience. Beginning with a consideration of the unresolved question of [...]

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 [...]

Art historian Jacinto Quirarte lays a framework for discussing an artwork or body of work by examining the tradition to which it belongs and the reasons for which (and for whom) it was created. Summarizing the conclusions of the 1979 Symposium on the [...]

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 feature on the Cuban-American artist Paul Sierra, Jeff Huebner writes the artist’s biography, his recent ascent in the mainstream art world, and the attendant conflicts that arose in relationship to his status as a Latino artist. Huebner [...]

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. [...]

In this essay, art critic Lucy Lippard acknowledges that the Taller Boricua artists collective contributed to diversifying the New York art milieu in the 1970s and 1980s by engaging in political actions and creating works that explored issues of [...]

This essay by Chicano artist Rupert Garcia explores the use of the term “the other” in order to define and separate minority groups within mainstream Western culture and how this is reflected in art. The catalyst for this discussion is an exhibit [...]

This document is a resolution directed to the Michigan Council for the Arts to establish a minority task force with the purpose of studying issues related to minority artists and arts in minority communities, as well as with the purpose of earmarking [...]