Chicano Movement

Re "The Chicano Movement: More Nostalgia Than Reality," Opinion, Sept. 17: In their fervor to "melt" into the caldron of the mythical "pot," David E. Hayes- Bautista and Gregory Rodriguez dismiss the Chicano movement as a "minority movement," out of gas, in the throes of non-being. They fail to realize that the singular reason they are writing for The Times is the Chicano movement. Many persons who were involved in the Movimiento were not Chicanos: They were opportunists willing to advance their cause, careers and ambitions on the backs of individuals willing to "agitate" for social/economic/educational/political change which has borne fruit for many, including them.

Sal Castro, a veteran Los Angeles Unified School District teacher who played a central role in the 1968 "blowouts," when more than 1,000 students in predominantly Latino high schools walked out of their classrooms to protest inequalities in education, died in his sleep Monday after a long bout with cancer. He was 79. Castro died at his home in the Silver Lake district, seven months after he was found to have stage 4 thyroid cancer, said his wife, Charlotte Lerchenmuller. In March 1968, Castro was a social studies teacher at Lincoln High School near downtown when he helped instigate the protests that became a seminal event in the development of the Chicano movement.

Initial work has begun on a public broadcasting documentary series about the Chicano movement of the 1960s and '70s at the National Latino Communications Center, a Los Angeles-based organization devoted to making public television programs with Latino themes. Producers from the center, based at local public television station KCET, received a $70,000 grant for the series in March from the Rockefeller Foundation.

Sal Castro sat in his book-lined den, reduced to writing on a whiteboard to fight what could be his last political battle. Hours earlier, the "usually glib and gregarious" teacher and activist, as he describes himself, had been released from St. Vincent Medical Center with a serious illness that made it difficult for him to speak. But Castro insisted on meeting with me to express his frustration with President Obama. Since 2009, Castro has been trying to get the president, first lady or Vice President Joe Biden to come to Boyle Heights to honor the students of the Eastside walkouts of 1968.

If the Chicano Movement is not already dead, it has certainly lost enough blood to be rendered unconscious. Recent news reports have paid homage to a pioneering Mexican American journalist, Ruben Salazar, and the political resistance movement that reached its peak on the day he was killed 25 years ago. Inevitable comparisons between then and now were made, but the juxtapositions are not the least bit instructive. We California Latinos are an entirely different people today.

Deep in the hearts of Violeta Calles and Jose Luis Valenzuela lies the question of what happened to the Chicano movement. "August 29," written by Calles and directed by Valenzuela, will attempt to open the subject to audiences at the Los Angeles Theatre Center opening on Aug. 30.

Hundreds of Chicanos will gather Thursday in a "20th-Year Activist Reunion" in San Antonio, Tex., to reassess the gains of el movimiento, the Chicano movement. As we walk down Memory Lane, bidding farewell to the commercially dubbed "Decade of the Hispanic," we will ask ourselves, "As a community, are we better off now than we were 20 years ago?"

Every so often, Chon Noriega wakes up in the middle of the night and thinks, "I agreed to do what ?" Maybe he signed on to teach another UCLA graduate seminar in avant-garde cinema. Or curate an exhibition of new Chicano art. Or write a biography. Or lead a walking tour of East L.A.'s historic murals. Or co-host a segment of TCM's "Race and Hollywood: Latino Images in Film. " Or ... well, you get the drift. Noriega's list of cultural IOU's is long and - insomnia be damned - getting longer.

From cycling celebrations to protest marches to filming, street closures are a part of life in downtown L.A. But it's something altogether different this week for a section of Main Street from Arcadia Street to Cesar Chavez Avenue, where the road is being blocked to make room for a restoration effort involving one of the city's key pieces of public art, "América Tropical. " Part of an ongoing partnership between the city and the Getty, the only mural by Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros that is still in its original location will be fitted for a protective canopy, starting today.

Every so often, Chon Noriega wakes up in the middle of the night and thinks, "I agreed to do what ?" Maybe he signed on to teach another UCLA graduate seminar in avant-garde cinema. Or curate an exhibition of new Chicano art. Or write a biography. Or lead a walking tour of East L.A.'s historic murals. Or co-host a segment of TCM's "Race and Hollywood: Latino Images in Film. " Or ... well, you get the drift. Noriega's list of cultural IOU's is long and - insomnia be damned - getting longer.

From cycling celebrations to protest marches to filming, street closures are a part of life in downtown L.A. But it's something altogether different this week for a section of Main Street from Arcadia Street to Cesar Chavez Avenue, where the road is being blocked to make room for a restoration effort involving one of the city's key pieces of public art, "América Tropical. " Part of an ongoing partnership between the city and the Getty, the only mural by Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros that is still in its original location will be fitted for a protective canopy, starting today.

MANY artists would envy the kind of exposure Carolyn Castano is receiving this month. The L.A.-based painter and drawer has four large-scale creations featured in "Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement" at LACMA. And beginning Saturday, she will unveil a series of video work in a solo show at SB London in Silver Lake. Castano describes her body of work as containing elements of feminist, pop and Latino art. "I've grown up with all of these influences. But I'm not carrying a flag for any one movement," she says.

As she joined about 2,500 marchers striding through neighborhoods east of downtown Los Angeles on Saturday with placards that read, "Brown and Proud: I'm the next generation," 17-year-old Santa Monica High School senior Jennifer Galamba said, "We're here to honor heroes and a defining moment in our history."

In 1975, Rosie Castro took her baby twins, Julian and Joaquin, to a farmworkers' rally. They slept in strollers while she handed out union fliers. The boys have grown up to become two of the more recognizable faces in San Antonio. Julian is a member of the City Council, Joaquin is a state legislator, and both are seen as modern-day successors to Chicano leaders like their mother -- as comfortable in a boardroom as a barrio. They are just 30 years old.

On the roof of a single-story house, a man is yelling into a megaphone. His hair is long, his white tube socks are pulled up to his knees, and his fist is in the air. He appears to be protesting. But because this is a photograph, an image from Mario Ybarra Jr.'s "Go Tell It" series, we hear nothing, not a single slogan or plea for justice. There is no caption, no context, no clues as to where he is--just a man shouting on a roof in the midst of empty sky.

It's a disservice to Culture Clash to carry a comparison to Teatro Campesino so far that a chunk of the "Bowl of Beings" review explains Teatro's roots ("Culture Clash Dishes Out the Satire in 'A Bowl of Beings,' " June 21). Culture Clash does draw from Teatro Campesino and the Chicano movement, but Culture Clash's work reflects the influence of the Marx Brothers, MTV, rap and others. What is incisive, insightful and hilarious about Culture Clash is the way they use these influences.

I am greatly alarmed at what appears to be yet another effort to "write the Mexican-American/Chicano" out of his rightful place in the history of this city, state and county. Again, our people are "expendable." I have been involved in the Chicano movement for many years and was hanging up the gloves (due to age). But, I am ready to put them back on and take up the fight once again. We will not be "erased" from history. We cannot let you remove us from the culture and heritage of this city, state and country--we helped to make it, to give it form, to give it value.

Re "Octavio Paz, Mexico's Everyman," editorial, April 21: I first read "The Labyrinth of Solitude" when I was a student at Cal State Fullerton and chairman of MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan). This literary masterpiece changed my life forever. I'm very grateful for his love of Aztec civilization and its moral values, which still have meaning to the "Everyman in Mexico" and throughout the Southwest. Octavio Paz and his books of poetry and philosophy greatly influenced the beginning of the Chicano movement in the late '60s and '70s.