Okay.
We'll just leave that on, you don't have to do that.
So they start rolling, you'll see both these white things are lit.
And you want to make...
Ask you to start rolling audio tape.
Okay.
Here we go again.
You're going to get pretty used to this, aren't you? Hold it up a little higher, so...
Hold it up a little higher? Okay, go.
Do I need to read it? Yes.
Jose, interview number two, scene one, take one.
Roll one.
Roll one.
Okay, have a seat.
You're on when you're ready.
Okay, could you talk about that? Oh, about art being political, right? Okay, the reason I say that art is political is because everything that is painted has got to do with the environment, politics, or what's happening in the community.
So, like in the case of the Cicepuedes mural, it was at the time when the farm workers were going through the strikes, they were having trouble with pesticides.
The children were being treated, you know, for eating stuff that was contaminated with chemicals.
So, at that time, you know, the organization was boycotting lettuce.
They probably still are now, you know, but at that time, especially, they were boycotting lettuce and grapes.
And that was the time when the government, despite the boycott, they were buying grapes, you know.
In other words, trying to break the thing about the boycott.
So, when we were going to do the mural there, it was done in a couple of weeks, you know.
It happened that some of the farm workers were in town for a meeting.
So, they said, if you're going to paint something, why don't you paint something to support our cause, because we're going to be in the neighborhood, you know, pressing out leaflets, and it will help as part of a campaign or, you know, for propaganda purposes.
So, that was the case of that mural.
It came about because the time the things were happening and also the farm workers were in the area organizing people to boycott the products, you know, from the grapevines from California.
Jose, scene one, take two, roll one.
All art is political.
Go ahead and actually say it to Susan when Susan tells you, okay.
All art is political, beginning from even the Renaissance, because when De Vinci was doing the 16th Chapel, he was painting art to support the pope.
When the French painter, Chardon, whatever his name was, was doing art, even though it seemed like he wasn't political, you know, he would paint bread, food, it was in the middle of the French Revolution that he did that, you know, and there was people who were fighting, you know, for crumbs, you know.
And also, when he painted bread and crumbs and food, it was something that the people didn't have, you know, so even still life would be considered political.
And even now, you know, even if they paint the ocean, it's political, because what happened at this thing in Alaska, you know, the Exxon and oil companies are involved in it.
And to say that painting the ocean is not political is not understanding what art really is, you know, because there is no such thing as art for art's sake in my book.
Good, very good.
Okay.
A little higher.
Okay, Sue.
Okay, scene two, take two, roll one.
Okay, any time.
The mural at the Chicago Park District workers' room, as we call it, you know, or labor room, they call it, or the tool room, where we paint the mural, deals with the people working in the park.
So it includes women, men, black and white.
And of course, the reason it's important, because a lot of the workers participated in doing it, well, not a lot of them, but at least six or seven, you know, and the rest participated in either criticizing it or supporting it, you know.
Some liked it, some didn't, you know.
Some said that there should be more women, and some said that in the first place, they didn't have enough women working there.
In reality, they don't, you know, in landscaping, you know.
And we took, we did it during the wintertime, you know, during dinner time, in the afternoons, or whenever it was snowing hard, you know, we didn't have nothing else to do.
Well, we had a lot to do, you know, but we took time to do it anyway.
Okay, scene three, take one, roll one.
The murals in this community call for different themes, for the simple reason that, like in Chicago, there's different ethnic groups.
If you're the one in the black community, you will call for something different, let's say in a Polish community, you know.
You know, there are people who are working or members of the working class, that doesn't mean that their backgrounds are the same, you know.
So it calls for different themes, and perhaps different colors.
For instance, there was one done at McDonald's on Valmont and Poleski, which dealt with the Polish culture, and it has a lot of costumes that the Polish people wear.
It talks about Polish struggles.
In the Mexican neighborhood, there's different things, such as the struggle with the farm workers, the demonstrations against immigration.
So, of course, it calls for a different theme, like the mural, it was dealing with the farm workers and the community.
And in case of the one on 28th and Reachway, which is called We Will Stop the Storm, it deals with the community, but in the community itself, there lives different ethnic backgrounds.
There's black, there's a few Polish, and then there's a few Arabs, you know, which you don't have in some areas, but there you have them.
So, in talking with the people there, you know, the Arabs have a lot to say, you know, especially what was going on in the Middle East.
And the Mexicans have a lot to say with what's going on with the immigration.
And then, of course, the Polish have a lot to say because they claim that at one time it was an old white neighborhood, and that now it changed, you know.
So, of course, the theme there would completely be something to work with in that community.
So, in doing that, we tell them, you know, We Will Stop the Storm.
And what storm we're talking about is the storm that they mentioned, you know, like the storm in the Middle East where they're being brutalized by the Zionists, the storm here in Chicago where they're being brutalized by the immigration, or we have some quotes there by people like Bapa Bacon who had to leave the country because his life was in danger, and his life was in danger because he's a revolutionary.
So, of course, the theme completely has got to change.
It can't be the same in all the neighborhoods.
So, it shows dove that looks like a thunderbird and also might look like an eagle.
But in the background, there's a storm that the people have talked about.
And instead of going about doing a lot of figures, you know, doing a lot of pyramids or doing a lot of either Egyptian or Mexican pyramids, we use symbols, you know.
So, what we use was the storm as the problem that they are having, which would include all the people, you know.
We didn't have to put pictures of the immigration, pictures of the Zionists being up on the air of people or the immigration, brutalizing the newly arrived.
So, we use the storm as a symbol for all those things that are happening.
And also, we showed a picture of a boy and a girl, one on each side.
One of them being that the girl is stepping on a swastika, you know, which still symbolizes racism.
And in some of the neighborhoods that we go to now, there are swastikas that are pretty well left alone, meaning that maybe there's a lot of people who are sympathetic to the way some people think, you know, especially like the right wing, because they don't want blacks moving in.
So, the theme was we will stop the storm.
And the storm was the problem that these people are having, you know, and the problems that minorities and other people who don't adhere to the system have, you know.
Okay, now I am.
Go ahead.
But when you put it in, it should already be open.
Yeah, okay.
Now let me roll.
Okay.
Okay, scene four, take one, roll two.
Okay, whenever you're ready.
Okay, we're working at this factory.
National video, doing TV tubes, you know, like at that time, that was about the only factory doing TV tubes.
But we wanted to get another union in there.
So in order to get another union there, we had to do organizing, you know, get other people.
So we had this group called PGR.
We took it from the song of who was singing it, called People Get Ready.
Okay, so we called it PGR, and the paper was called People Get Ready.
So basically it was mostly in writing, like informative letter, you know, no illustrations.
So I started doing the illustrations for the People Get Ready pamphlet.
It was actually a pamphlet.
And we would discuss cartoons and this and that.
And different things happening.
We would mostly discuss what was going on in the factory and how the organizing was going along.
So it was during that time that I met this other Chicago artist who was already doing a lot of artwork, you know.
And he was, he's a very famous artist, I would say, whose name is John Weber.
And from then on, we went to Indiana.
I think it was Gary, Indiana, where they had a meeting dealing with the miners, you know.
They had gone on strike in one of the mines, I forgot where.
And they were discussing the situation there.
And we were discussing the situation in the city.
So eventually, by discussing with the miners, and which were mostly from that particular area in the south, I forgot which part of the south it was, John and me were discussing this thing with the people there.
It happened that John had got some space at the UE Hall to do a mural.
So he asked me if I would be interested in learning the technique.
So I agreed to work with him.
So we went in there, and that's when we started doing the mural.
It took us close to a year to do it because we would work and then do other stuff on the outside.
He had other stuff to do.
And plus, I was working, so I had to do it whenever I had time, you know, Saturdays, Sundays, or in the afternoons.
As it turned out, it turned out to be pretty good because we could make changes in the mural.
And we were liberated to express ourselves more politically because the people who ran the United Electrical Workers had been involved in class struggles many years ago in the 30s during the McCarthy era.
A lot of them had gotten in trouble, you know.
And a lot of them were still around.
And of course, you know, we discussed things with them.
And they agreed on certain things.
They said, let's go to the factory and do sketches of the workers as they're working, which John did.
I couldn't go that day, but John did some sketches.
But then he brought them back, and then we put some sketches on the wall.
I had some sketches that I had done.
Sort of most of the sketches about the Klan, the reactionary forces.
And at that time, it included also the things that happened in Chile because the mural was painted in 73, around 73.
So we included different things dealing with the situation in Chile.
But also the stronger points were made about the workers, you know.
And artists who paint are not necessarily, you know, from the elite.
They come also from the working class.
But not just the working class, the advanced working class, because we can't be all together because there are workers who are backward, you know.
Or they might have different kinds of politics.
So I would say there's a group of workers that even though they work, they were advanced They know about politics.
They know about art.
They know about the situations that surround them, you know.
So me and many other painters who come from the working class do this work.
We want to do it well.
And we learn from other people, you know, from the Mexican masters, the Cicado and the rest.
From the artists that are here, too, you know.
They come from Mexico, they come from Europe, or other artists who are doing mural work.
And all of them are doing political work.
None of the murals are just painted for the hell of it, you know.
All of them have to deal with specific situations.
And like we have said before, maybe some, well in the 21st century, you know, people, other people will learn from us too, and they'll say, well, at least they contributed not only to the art community, but to the working class, you know, to the working class movement.
Because working people don't just work, go to the feds and come back, you know, they do a lot of things.
They read politics, they discuss politics, you know.
In my case, I discuss politics and also do art.
Let me just do something here quick.
I'm a little tighter, so let me just move this up a tiny bit.
Maybe you have to adjust just a tiny bit down, Susan.
Okay, down? Yeah, just wait and see if the needle where the needle is.
I tried that double thing, it's really just kind of weird.
It is, it is.
Okay, scene five, take one, roll two.
Like Carlos Cortez, Ray Vasquez, and me and the other artists, and myself, we tend to say that we are mostly cultural workers, you know, because artists seem to have an aloof look to some people, you know.
They say, you're an artist, you must have a big studio, you must live in a fancy place, you know.
Or you must have some special talent, you know.
We don't see it as that, we don't see it as special talent or whatever, you know.
We see it as something we're doing not only to educate ourselves, but to educate also the community.
Like when we're painting, we're artists.
People see us, they say, that's the artist, or that's a muralist, or like the kids in the neighborhood, some people say, that's a mural man.
But in that situation, they say mural because we're close to the mural, we're doing artwork.
But if I'm at work, a lot of people don't see me, you know, as an artist, they see me as somebody doing a job, you know.
So if we have to do a clean -up job, then I'm going to say, where's the artist, or where's the mural man, they say, where's the garbage man.
So over there I'm known as a garbage man.
And if I'm close to a wall painting, I'm known as the mural man or an artist.
Depends on what kind of brush I got.
If I got a brush in my hand painting, I'm an artist, but if I'm picking up brushes we just cut, you know, from the bushes, then I'm a garbage man, there you go.
But basically, we are people who, we are cultural workers.
I mean, I would prefer that, as other artists prefer it.
But there's nothing wrong with people who want to be called artists or whatever, you know.
It's all right with me, just that I myself am more comfortable being a cultural work, like Cortez or like Marco Rayer, like many, many other artists.
Okay, scene six, take one, roll two.
Okay.
Mural painting has been around for many years.
When the, for instance, when the cavemen were doing it, then later on people would say that these people were backwards, that they were dumb, that they were like animals and this and that.
And just recently, they've been saying that they weren't as dumb as they think, you know, because they were using shading and they were using different techniques.
Some do better work than some of the artists I know.
Anyway, I believe that this type of art, as they were doing it, they were doing it for a purpose, they weren't doing it just to decorate the walls.
We are not doing it just to decorate the walls.
So I figure that along the way, you know, even into the 21st century, even if the murals do deteriorate to some extent, they will say, well, these people that were doing it, just like they were saying about the cavemen, weren't dumb.
They knew what was going on and they took politics and then they formed their own ideas.
And then even though they're not here, the mural service is something that was hurled at them so they could see it and try to figure out and try to understand the situations that were happening then.
And they will say, well, these people really meant business.
They weren't just decorators.
They were involved in politics.
They were concerned with what was going on around them, you know, what was going on in Central America.
Hopefully by that time in the future when people are looking at it, things will be different.
That the people in Central America won't have the death squads or they won't have, you know, companies like the United Fruit Company or foreign investors dictating the way they should leave, you know.
And we hope that when they look at our murals that people have documented, they will say, well, these people had the right idea, you know.
We should continue to record this prosperity or whatever they have.
Then they will continue to continue to do murals, public art, in other words, so that many people can always see it, always see it, you know.
Just as people know about the caves, they will know about our murals in the 20th century.
