I'm going down there to visit my parents, so I'll try to, I haven't gone.
We moved to, these in our village were the more, the modern ones.
The old murals had mostly the copies or pictures of very well recognized things that Mexicans grew up with.
This one then has the other symbols that the community accepted as, for example, the dove.
It's recognized by, I think, all human beings as being a symbol of peace.
The way that this one is depicted is in a receptive position.
And above the eagle, which is the more aggressive, the eagle in our minds being the symbol of the power of our old country, Mexico.
And they have a different flag there, which I don't recognize.
But again, they use the same parallel of having the, I think it's an eagle as well, being receptive as opposed to in an aggressive form.
And around this time, we had just obtained authorization, or there had been obtained authorization for Vueling Benito Juarez, which was the school, the high school that the community fought for to get.
Because Harrison School, where most of the kids were going, was a dangerous place for kids.
And I wonder if some of this receptiveness and the way that the forms began to change has to do with that.
Speaking of Benito Juarez, did the decision to build Benito Juarez come out of some of the meetings at Casaslan? Yes, that's where people met to plan the strategy of how to approach the Board of Education.
There were other places that they met.
My mother's comadre was jailed as a result of protesting the Board of Education.
So I wish she were here because she could tell you stories about the whole thing.
I bet she wasn't very tough.
No, she wasn't at all.
That was the first thing that she actually did in her life that was in any way, I think, aggressive or appeared aggressive or assertive.
Can you tell us about it? Well, she had two children.
And they...how to describe her? She was so colorful.
She grew up in Texas, moved to Chicago when she married a Mexican man.
Her parents were both from Texas.
And she became involved in organizing the community as her children were growing and they were going to be going to junior high.
There was a concern that children were either...they were traumatized either from witnessing violent acts in school, from being assaulted, or just the physical place so many times they had to leave school because it was too cold or it was too hot.
And so people knew we needed a facility that was up to date and that children can go to school safely.
The two things that people there, the community organized around was education.
Again, education was to be the tool that was going to get us where of the rut we felt we were in.
So the most gentle people in those meetings became quite...they were like a different person, very focused, assertive, and presented their case while I thought, forcefully, of course.
And I saw that transformation in her.
She was not tactful, I remember that.
So that was part of the reason why she ended up in jail.
But she was very determined.
She was scared for her children.
And I understood that because a lot of us witnessed a lot of violent acts while going to school.
A lot of the children got us physically assaulted.
And sooner or later you were exposed to being approached to join a gang, rather, which was a very frightening experience.
The one that you remember because saying no was just as dangerous as saying yes.
Parents were aware of that.
So while they otherwise would have not said anything, they did go to those meetings.
The leaders in the community knew that if they wanted to discuss something else in the agenda, put something about education first.
And then maybe they'll stay around to listen about the other things.
She moved this lady.
She worked with Mrs.
Guerrero.
I don't know if you're familiar with her.
She was one of the most active and I think continues to be very active there.
And they fought off...
There was discussions, very energetic discussions about where the school was going to be, what the name of the school was going to be.
And one of the discussions that took weeks was what name we were going to give to the school.
And there was...people wanted the school to be named after Clemente because they felt that this was a hero that this generation could identify with.
That people like Benito Juarez, the generation that was going to be going to school then would not know him and therefore could not identify and relate.
Finally, Benito Juarez went out as the name.
And some of the points that people made was that this was a way for people to find out about their roots.
That if they saw this strange face, they would ask, who is this person? And that it was one way of getting these children who would grow up in basically an American culture to at least ask questions and become acquainted with the old culture.
There was that fear that the children would lose their touch or familiarity with the old culture.
And the parents wanted to preserve that.
Now, to me that was...
...groundbreaking.
I can't think of a word that would carry...
...because these were people that you at one point would describe as passive.
So that's the mural underneath the wood? I think this one, this mural, I find beautiful.
When I find something beautiful, I don't analyze it.
That's one of my pleasures I give myself.
I analyze all day long.
I don't analyze this one.
Could we come back to this one? Sure.
Any other things I have? Let me just show you one.
This is one of my...
...my preferred ones or my favorite ones.
This is Mr.
Velasquez's Barberia.
I can tell you since we moved in that was there.
Who goes there? My father went there to get his hair cut.
Most of the men at that time went there.
It was one of the first barber shops where two things happened there.
They were accepted and it was someone of their own.
Mr.
Velasquez would always have all these stories about Mexico.
People I think sometimes went there just to be able to talk about and share stories.
Stories were a form that things got passed on for us.
Again, a lot of these people in that community come from rural areas where there's no phone.
A lot of them don't know how to write or read, so it was hearing.
Their grandparents, their parents tell stories that they learned their history.
They learned their histories from...
...usually occurring in the evenings, people gathered to just tell stories in the evenings.
I think I told you about how humiliating or dehumanizing the experience was not to be able to gather in the evenings, get outside, bring your things to crochet for the women and the men would just sit around and talk and share stories about the experience of the revolution most of them had.
In their childhood, they experienced the revolution when there was redistribution of the land in Mexico.
They knew Zapata, they knew Panchavilla, they knew all of those.
They didn't learn about them in school, they just had heard about them.
A place like this, like this Barberia, was where they would continue to learn about their history and get a sense of pride.
Mr.
Velasquez, I think, was there in putting those things there.
The feeling was that it was not looked upon with favor to have all these pictures up in front.
I was amazed that they actually survived and no one took them.
But through his wife, his wife is a distant relative of Panchavilla, I think that's what he told me.
I don't know if it's true, but that's what he told me.
He might have exaggerated.
This was a local gathering place for the men where they could go and talk about their experiences.
It was sad that we didn't have one for the women like that.
Local bar, beauty shop, I guess who would they put Adelita in all of those? Sor Juana maybe or something.
Sor Juana.
Do you have any questions? Well, I think just maybe two things to sort of wrap it up.
Could you kind of repeat to us what you said about the oversized figures? We found that very interesting, about how the oversized figures kind of reflected a desire to say, well, we're something.
I told you a little bit about the general feeling in the community initially being that one of helplessness and dread and fear.
Oversized figures were the counter to this immense fear that people felt.
Oversized figures depicted some kind of protest either through the clenched fists or through a particular sign or symbol.
Where were the kinds of figures we needed, bigger than size figures, that could express the outrage at the suffering that occurred in the community? That could in a way be heard.
And that could assert again in a larger than life form that we were valuable and that what was happening was an outrage.
It was a good choice I think.
And I guess maybe the last thing is we jotted down as you were speaking earlier about police and social repression in the community.
I guess just a couple things.
Do you feel the murals reflect that, right? And do you feel that they were a good way of coping with that? I do feel that there was evidence of social depression or oppression.
They are.
I guess I take it for granted.
That's what they are.
The bigger than life figures, large.
They set what we couldn't say on an individual basis.
And they were a form in which we could break out.
Anything? Now that you spend a lot of time outside of the area where you grew up and there are a lot of Anglos around, do you talk to them very much about how they view murals and that whole experience? Do you have any idea how Anglos view them? No, and I would like to know.
Actually it would be interesting.
I just knew from some of my friends, as I said, they definitely could pick up the sense that they were afraid of some of the murals.
The ones that had the clenched fists and that, they were frightening.
So I imagine, and I don't know, again, I imagine that the effect that they produced in us was to empower us.
We were empowered by what we saw.
But at the same time that made us threatening.
And so I imagine that some people on the outside who were, lived around that community or lived during those periods that they were threatening.
I think that people now who didn't grow up in that community, Americans from any other ethnic that are not familiar, they would find them curious, maybe quaint, I don't know.
I would be curious to find out how they experienced them.
One thing that I know we wouldn't like to see or to hear is that they were ignored in some way.
Because they were not meant to be ignored.
It was a form of communicating.
I would be curious because I heard people talking about them, some but not to the detail where I'm doing kind of an interview.
I think that's going to be my next job.
Yes.
Now could I interview you after this? We're not interesting.
One last thing we've got to do, which only requires silence.
What we've got to do while we still have the microphone on you is we all have to just be quiet for about 90 seconds.
When we then edit we use that, it's called Iambience and it allows us to.
So I'll just time it off.
Typical sound.
You can breathe, we just can't talk.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
End slate for ambience, end slate reel four.
Okay.
