Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this essay, writer Ramón Díaz Sánchez presents his ideas (divided into ten sections) on the black race, their current place in the arts after the Great War, their low place in society due to the legacy of slavery, and the Western prejudices [...]

In this text, Carlos Solari (alias “Don Quijote”) discusses articles on Peruvian painter Sabogal that appeared in the most important Buenos Aires-based newspapers (three of them in particular). The article in La Prensa speaks of the “modern [...]

In this document, Tim Drescher and Rupert Garcia consider the conditions that influenced the proliferation of mural production by Chicano artists after the start of the Chicano Movement in the late 1960s. It details various thematic and aesthetic [...]

Written by César Augusto Martínez, one of the most active members of the Chicano art movement of the 1970s, “Arte Chicano” discusses the implications of the term “Chicano” (in Part One) and the status of Chicano art in the mainstream art [...]

In “Individualismo y nacionalidad,” Argentine journalist and writer Ricardo Rojas deconstructs the terms “race” and “nationality.” Rojas argues that a person can adopt a new race or nationality, replacing that of their native country. [...]

The prologue to Forjando patria: pro nacionalismo, published in 1916 by leading Mexican anthropologist and archaeologist Manuel Gamio, compares the forging of metal out of an amalgam of bronze and steel to the ideal societal intermixing of Mexicans [...]

In this essay—that appeared in the leaflet for the exhibition En la Trama personal [In the Personal Web] that was presented at the Alonso Garcés Gallery in Bogotá in June-July 2004—the art critic Carmen María Jaramillo discusses the latest [...]

In nostalgic tone, “La melancolía de la raza indígena” (1929) by Colombian intellectual Armando Solano advocates a return to “pure customs” and “the national.” This was a response to the excessive growth of the United States after World [...]

This document is an essay by Amalia Mesa-Bains in which she explores the history of indigenismo, an embrace of one’s indigenous heritage, and the integral role it has had in helping to develop a sense of personal and collective identity within the [...]

This document by Tomás Ybarra-Frausto is concerned with the practice of altar-making as a spiritual and cultural endeavor that blends influences from European, African, and indigenous American sources. Typically characterized as a kind of “folk [...]

This excerpt from the first chapter of José Vasconcelos’s 1925 book, La raza cósmica, outlines his vision for what he calls “the cosmic race”: a comprehensive, final stage of humanity that would envelope all races in order to build a new [...]

This document contains Bibiana Suaréz's responses to four of the eighteen questions posed to artists by the organizers of The Puerto Rican Equation, an exhibition marking the occasion of the 1898 invasion of Puerto Rico by the United States. Suarez [...]

In this lecture at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Puerto Rican-born artist Bibiana Suarez presents an overview of her work and considers the role of race and ethnicity in her art. She begins the lecture by explaining her ethnic background and [...]

In this panel presentation at the 1992 Women's Caucus for Arts, artist Bibiana Suarez spoke about how her images reflect her reality as a Puerto Rican living in the United States who feels caught between two cultures and who insistently searches for [...]

From a social scientific perspective, Julio César Salas rejects deterministic explanations regarding the alleged failure of Latin American countries, either due to their Torrid Zone locations or for their mixture of races. The author opposes such [...]

In this essay, Arturo Lindsay documents the confluence of Post-modernism in the U.S. and the mestizaje [racial and cultural intermingling] of Latinos in order to create a “Latino aesthetic”—one that is grounded in syncretic spiritual beliefs. [...]

In this article, San Antonio, Texas, artist César Augusto Martínez writes about Chicano art and the struggle for legitimacy and its acceptance, particularly within the academic community. Martínez argues that Chicano art resists clear stylistic [...]

In this essay, art historian and curator Sybil Venegas discusses the social and economic conditions that led to the public emergence of Chicana artists in the 1970s. According to Venegas, by the 1970s Chicanas had developed both the economic means, [...]

Artist and activist David Avalos wrote this catalogue essay for his solo exhibition in New York at the Intar Gallery. There, Avalos provides a historical context by way of examples of American literature to explain the concept of the exhibition: the [...]

In this article, Antonio Zavala offers a brief history of Movimiento Artístico Chicano (MARCH), highlighting the works of two of its members, the visual artist Carlos Cortéz and the poet Carlos Cumpián, as well as some of the organization’s [...]

Brazilian literary critic and essayist Afrânio Coutinho wrote this article in the late- 1960s. His article states since inception that to him the term “Latin American,” is at odds with the historical, social, cultural, literary, and artistic [...]

In this text, Martí Casanovas responds to a letter by Franz Tamayo considering the question of what direction the development of Indio-American culture should take. Distinguishing his philosophy from Tamayo’s, Casanovas explains that he believes [...]

In this essay, José Martí declares the independence and character of a united front of American republics in the face of United States expansionism. He does this by declaring Latin America’s difference from the cultures and intellectual [...]

In this Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) thesis, Salvador Torres presents the theoretical foundation for his project that traces the development of the United Farm Workers’ Huelga (Strike) banner through a series of six paintings and six drawings. [...]

In his essay, Victor Zamudio-Taylor addresses the historic loss of cultural memory imposed on mestizos (mixed race people) by the dominant culture throughout the Americas since the time of the conquest by the Spanish and Portuguese. The loss of [...]

This essay by Rupert Garcia was included in a special issue of the journal Chismearte that was dedicated to Chicano-Latino “popular art.” In this essay, Garcia challenges the everyday usage of the term “popular art,” as well as its use by [...]

In this essay the historian Augusto Mijares criticizes the positivist theory that blames the caudillismo [leadership of ‘caudillos’ or local strongmen] trend spawned by the wars of independence on the particular idiosyncrasy of our Latin American [...]

This essay is a brief curatorial statement by San Francisco artist and guest curator, Ralph Maradiaga on the value of art as a means of recording history. Using the history of the world according to the Aztecs as a backdrop, Maradiaga discusses the [...]

When interviewed for his participation in the first exhibition of Los Contemporáneos group, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano replied: “We are not a group but rather four independent painters,” the common denominator among them being “work and honesty [...]

In this essay, Rafael Montañez Ortiz, a United States-born artist of Puerto Rican descent, argues that Eurocentrism, patriarchy, and racism have deprecated the art and culture of peoples from the Americas, Asia, and Africa. He notes that the legacy [...]

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 [...]

In this essay, Shifra M. Goldman discusses Chicano art in the United States from a social art historical perspective. According to her the first phase of the Chicano art movement (1965–1980s) was characterized by a quest for self-identity, which [...]

In this statement—addressed to the Task Force on Hispanic-American Arts of the National Endowment for the Arts—the group Nuestras Artes describes the inequitable context in Michigan for Latinos and Latino culture (the authors use the term Raza [...]

The artist Nora Chapa Mendoza talks about issues of race and culture in the United States as they shaped her life and career as a Chicano artist. She describes her activities opening galleries, beginning in the early 1970s, in Pontiac and later in [...]

This text describes the founding of the Raza Art and Media Collective in 1975 and declares its six main goals, all aimed at cultivating art and education among Spanish-speaking people in Michigan. These included: 1) to provide education and [...]

In this document, Ana L. Cardona, a Chicago-based artist, argues for a national and ethnic art based on the experiences of Chicano and Puerto Rican communities in the United States and counters the idea of the universality of art. The "raza art" [...]

This essay, which was published in Madrid in 1925, discusses the concept of the “fifth race” in the Americas, the “melting pot” result of the blending or miscegenation of every race in the world (without distinction) to create a new [...]

In “Las pretendidas razas inferiores de México,” published in El Universal in 1921, Mexican anthropologist Manuel Gamio responds to a previous article published in the same periodical by Francisco Bulnes, a Mexican intellectual and the Secretary [...]

“Las razas inferiores son funestas en el trabajo libre,” published in the periodical El Universal in 1921, was written by Francisco Bulnes, a Mexican intellectual and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs under President Porfirio Díaz. In the article [...]

“Las razas indígenas mexicanas y sus estadistas ante el problema de la existencia de la Patria,” was written in 1921 by Francisco Bulnes, a Mexican intellectual and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs under President Porfirio Díaz. In the article [...]

The author sets out the "mission," "in the times that run by," that the [Latin] American people "get to work," since it is no longer possible to continue to "enjoy…nature’s exuberance" or the "efforts of other people and races." In this sense, [...]