‘a perceived oppressive government’

IT’S NOT DIFFICULT TO FIND A MOVIE that portrays the indigenous of this land as heartless brutal savages. Be they Apache or Mayan, be it by a John Wayne movie or a Mel Gibson flick. Even a long-honored children’s game (Cowboys and Indians) continues to celebrate that same genocidal conflict. Words we use: “settlers,” “pilgrim” and “pioneer” to begin with, completely mask the truth of history—as do “Thanksgiving” and “Columbus Day.” We can look to our current law and even our modern day dialogues and find out which people are to be called “looters” and which ones we shall describe as “liberators” and there will be no doubt as to who is tagged a “gang” when they gather vs a “group.”Going back to those movies we began with, I don’t know about you…but I know growing up how the movies painted Mexicanos and Chicanos and Latinas and México and all of Latin America, as well.  And how the media very often still does.

Doing all these things is legal, usually acceptable, and in some cases, revered.

Which is why the indigenous as well as today’s Latino/a comunidad have the traditions of telling stories and histories in song as well as with art, and with no mind to what the dominant culture is singing to itself. Not that we don’t have to take care. After all, a little pride is allowed in the dominant culture. But too much solidarity or collective voice and men in body armor begin shooting rubber bullets into crowds and dropping canisters of mace on kids. That is legal, too.

What is “ILLEGAL”? (You know…aside from people migrating to areas that can economically sustain them)

Emigdio Vasquez is about as mainstream an artist as you’ll find in Orange County. His murals documenting county and Chicano history span walls at Santa Ana College and Anaheim City Hall, restaurants and liquor stores. Individual works hang in the living rooms of United States ambassadors and among the collections of universities, museums and millionaires. Vasquez—who grew up in Orange’s historic Cypress Street barrio—has been discussed in multiple art history books for, as one critic calls it, his “hard-edged, unblinking textures and an unerring eye for the seemingly commonplace detail.”

So imagine the 69-year-old’s surprise when a nephew called him with the news that the Orange Police Department was claiming his work promotes, glamorizes and inspires gang violence.
—LAW-ENFORCEMENT CLAIMS HISTORIC CHICANO MURAL IN ORANGE SENSATIONALIZES GANGS-30 YEARS LATER

Now, this is 30 full years after these murals were painted. Murals of Chicano pride and storytelling.

Orange Police Detective Joel Nigro asserted in an expert declaration included in the injunction that Vasquez glamorized his home barrio’s gang.

“Vasquez is a muralist who grew up in the Cypress Street neighborhood and portrays rebellion against a perceived oppressive government through art,” Nigro wrote. “Emigdio Vasquez has also painted several other murals reference [sic] the OVC gang and the gang lifestyle, including pieces such as ‘Vatos Locos,’ ‘Sunday Morning In OVC,’ ‘Vatos Locos de Barrio’ and ‘Cypress Street Pachucos.’”

But what truly set Nigro off was a mural titled “Tribute to the Chicano Working Class” painted on a Cypress Street duplex. It wraps around the building’s exterior with successive images of an Aztec pyramid and eagle warrior; Mexican laborers including boilermakers, miners (a tribute to Vasquez’s father), orange pickers and strawberry pickers; strikers waving a flag calling for “huelga” (strike), Cesar Chavez, a convenience store, and scenes of pachucos and homeboys in a Chevy Special Deluxe. A small vignette shows two teens next to a wooden fence that bears the image of Che Guevara.

Nigro claimed that gang members had claimed the mural as “their flag,” frequently posing for photos with the mural as a backdrop. He also criticized the inclusion of the strikers and Guevara, whom the detective wrote was “a politician, Marxist, revolutionary and guerrilla leader” whose image “became a ubiquitous symbol of rebellion worldwide.”

Aside from the entire load this is, we have that Sexy Queen’s English, again, eh? “A perceived oppressed government.” Really, I could end this whole post right there because that says it all! The law cites this “perception” as they make your art illegal. The irony is so thick you could wad it up on a paintbrush and drag it across ten criminal canvasses.

The art is not only illegal, but morphs into an actual crime when you place a body in proximity of that illegal art.

Easter Sunday. A kid from the Cypress neighborhood in Orange lounges just outside his apartment building where a huge, sprawling mural by influential Chicano artist Emigdio Vasquez is painted on the exterior walls. Bring in the sirens and the Orange PD. Minutes later, you have an arrest. The crime? The teen was standing in front of artwork that the Orange PD and DA’s office claim promotes, glamorizes and inspires gang violence.

Nice.

How does the artist feel about it?

“They never asked me shit,” Vasquez replies, when asked if [Detective Joel] Nigro ever called him to explain his art. “[Detective Nigro] is full of it that it promotes gang violence. The mural has never been a problem until now. I don’t know why now. Christ, I don’t know what to think.”

—LAW-ENFORCEMENT CLAIMS HISTORIC CHICANO MURAL IN ORANGE SENSATIONALIZES GANGS-30 YEARS LATER

I’ll not the one to tell you what to think, honored vato. But I thank you for your marking history and making your art, and giving love to la comunidad, and helping us remember what it cost for us to make it this far, and whom we owe thanks to, and what we must not forget.

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sombrero tip: TEJAZTLÁN NOTEBOOK; A Chicana Blog