Author Archives: Victoria Delgadillo

About Victoria Delgadillo

I'm lost, but I keep looking ahead confidently, like I know where I'm going. My best character trait is that I remember everything, my worse one is that I remember everything. Sometimes I dream that I am blue. I fear no art. My hobby is vestir santos.

Butoh of East LA

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Pictured is a Butoh dance entitled Cihuatl 15 performed by endy, at a Prayer for Juarez on Saturday, March 20.  Her endurance piece on Saturday offered time and opportunities for inquiry, contemplation and processing in response to the femicides in Juarez.  In preparation for this dance movement, she laid still on the sidewalk in front of Casa 0101, as sand was poured over her body, representing the women who had died in Ciudad Juarez and buried in shallow graves.

Butoh’s source is the Japanese avant-garde of the 1960s, a period when Japan struggled with the lingering effects of the atomic bomb detonations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended World War II. Originally called “ankoku butoh,” or “dance of darkness,” the medium created a space for the intensely grotesque and perverse on the stage. In Japan endy studied  “Sankai Juku” which means “studio by the mountain and the sea,” and implies the serenity and calm which is characteristic of the work.  She also studied and has performed with Guillermo Gomez-Peña.

Movie Screenings–All Weekend in Boyle Heights!

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“A Prayer for Juarez” has been a month long of international events raising awareness on the Femicides in Juarez, Mexico. After the slaying of three embassy workers this past weekend in Ciudad Juarez this tragic situation intensifies.  Filmmaker/Producer Dianna Perez is hosting two evenings of FREE film screenings  March 19 & March 20 at Casa 0101 Annex, 2102 1st Street, Boyle Heights. These films are rare and hard to get a hold of, and really amazing.  We invite you to join us!

Friday, March 19th, 8:00 pm
Senorita Extraviada by Lourdes Portillo
Missing Young Woman tells the story of the hundreds of kidnapped, raped and murdered young women of Juárez, Mexico. The murders first came to light in 1993 and young women continue to “disappear” to this day. The evening begins with a short film Sangre y Arena by Rigo Maldonado & Shakina Nayfack, followed by Q&A. This art film shot on location in Lote Bravo (a cotton field irrigation ditch) where 8 women were found at one time in 2001.

Saturday, March 20th, 8:00 pm
Border Echoes by Lorena Mendez Quiroga
Border Echoes-Ecos De Una Frontera, is a documentary that tells the story of the slayings of girls and women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, through the eyes of investigative reporter Diana Washington Valdez. [Save the date! Award winning El Paso Times reporter Diana Washington Valdez will present in person at Casa 0101 Annex on March 27, 8pm) The evening begins with a short performance called Cihuatl 15 by endy and a screening of Sangre y Arena.
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March 12 & 13 A Prayer for Juarez Program, 8pm to 10pm–FREE!

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All take place at Casa 0101 (a new spot– 1 block east from the old spot), 2102 1st Street, Boyle Heights.  Both days of art protest are free! Also, another opportunity to check out the Juarez protest art exhibit.

Friday, March 12, 8pm to 10pm

Writer/performer Claudia Rodriguez

Discussion with Dr. Ana Nogales on Human Trafficking

Music performance by Ramona Gonzalez & Carlos Zelaya

Music Performance by Big Joe Hurt

Saturday, March 13, 8pm to 10pm

Poets: Maestras Gloria Alvarez & Judith Terzi, Poetess of the Water

UCLA Professor & Chair of Chicano Studies Alicia Gaspar de Alba reading from her book, Desert Blood, followed by Q&A.

Writer/Poet Consuelo Flores, reading from her art activism work on Juarez, followed by Q&A

New performance by artist Vibiana Aparicio Chamberlin!

Writer/performer reina alexandra prado

New performance by Liliflor Kozmica & SPACE Intruderz!

Next week March 19 & 20, film screenings FREE! Señorita Extraviada, on March 19 & Border Echoes on March 20, 8pm to 10pm on each day

A Prayer for Juarez Art Activism Starts this Week

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Not all art is about someone creating an object in passionate solitude, unveiling it at the trendiest gallery and selling it for (what would seem to most) an excessive price. Since 2001, I have been engaged in what I call art activism. Art activism is about pointing out something that is lacking in society in a more amplified way than just one painting or sculpture in a gallery. Perhaps in Picasso’s times his one painting of Guernica created that buzz, but in post modernism, we have to step up our game.

My current project began in the summer of 2009. It is called A Prayer for Juarez. If you feel that you have known and seen works on the murders in Juarez in excess—it has been due to a handful of artists who have vowed not let this art topic disappear until something is resolved for the people of Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. It’s not a Mexican-thing, it’s a humanitarian circumstance. When we come together to resist and witness an injustice, we create a dialogue within ourselves to begin to change the world hierarchy on what is valued. We do not have to accept matters, because they are not in our immediate sight. We are the guardians of all that lives on our planet and together have the power to stop any injustices. It begins with being informed.

During the month of March 2010, we will begin this dialogue through new works and voices in this art struggle against injustice. You are invited to attend these powerful exchanges of ideas through art, performance and testimony. Each week (here on LAeastside) look for our posts on A Prayer for Juarez. All events are free, except this Friday’s play (March 5) by Dr. Ana Nogales on human trafficking called “Don’t Call Me Baby”. All events take place in Josefina’s new theater space Casa 0101 in Boyle Heights, 2102 1st Street (corner of St. Louis), except “Don’t Call Me Baby” which is 1 block west at the smaller Casa 0101 Theater. Street parking is free (imagine that, in LA)! Continue reading →

Is Villaraigosa Creating a “Police State” in LA?

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On Saturday morning I had coffee with a Los Angeles city worker, who (among other of his colleagues), is disturbed at the direction city leadership is laying out the LA Game-‘o-Life board. This week Mayor Villaraigosa said regarding the economic crisis fueled job cuts, “I don’t do this because I want to, I do this because I must.” Within this “a man must do what a man must do” blanket statement are also choices. In a city of approximately 40,000 city workers, there are 10,000 police and between 5,000 & 6,000 in the fire department, making them 40% of the city workforce. LA city workers have been appraised that Villaraigosa wants to focus on public safety first, translated means that other services in the city will suffer, but not the police forces.

Across my desk this week were dialogues about student actions being planned regarding the cuts in education, the closing of more parks in the city, the dissolution of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department (I got somewhere around 50 email petitions, which helped overturned this plan—gracias artistas!), an alarming price increase menu on traffic tickets with added rules (drivers beware!), gentrification plans to mow down more eastside historic buildings, and Pearl Art Store selling everything at 75% off (looks like they are going down).

As the students have noted in their various cries for continued funding, this city spends more on prisons and those who can imprison us, than things that can uplift us as a humanity, such as community spaces, art and education. I cringe to think what sort of summer we are headed for in LA. More negative places to be pushed into, armed monitors of humans to catch you erring, climbing prices on everything, mom and pops closing all around us, polluted city drinking water, no jobs, gas that cost more than a blood transfusion and no light at the end of the tunnel. My free-thinking art friends say “let the whole thing crash, we have survived worse.” I am starting to picture myself teaching an impromptu class to eager students on the street corner where they have been locked out of their schools.

Go directly to jail. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

To Love & Die in East L.A.

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I have been in artiste/producer-mode recently. I’m so excited about our 2nd Annual La Botanica de Amor luv-fest for Valentines Day!! Since this is just one of Leslie Saiz’ and my brilliant ideas, making its second return—we R so proud. Last year an exclamation point became “alive”—as El Random Hero proclaimed “I want to find love!” Pachuco 3000, Abel Salas and I devised a whole male date auction with prizes. It was fun, funny and fundraising for the arts—YAY–I luv it!! read more Last time we did it (La Botanica, that is) the custodian (caught up in the excitement) jumped on the auction block and was bought for a home repair visit (ahem). Pachuco says it’s because he has the gift of salesmanship—(everyone, rub his head for luck.). This year Random is behind the scenes, scoring some delicious dinners-4-dos prizes; Pachuco is lining up the prime bachelorhood (because he says, “They gotta be chulos!”); and I am firing up my tarot cards for some ‘tell-it-like-it-is’ live love advice. To Love & Die in ELA, curated by Leslie Gutierrez Saiz opens too—why?–because only the artists on the eastside can break-it-down about our crazy-love lives verbally & visually (refer to image above)—it’s a Bonnie & Clyde thang, don’t ya know? Cheyenne is baking cup cakes and (ladies!) muralist Raul Baltazar (one of the bachelors-to-be-auctioned) is getting mas chulo every minute. More poetry, more music, more sweet treats, more art, more limpias para el amor, more love advice, more chances to find your ‘otro”, mas de todo! February, 13, noon to 5pm @ SHG, 3802 Cesar Chavez Avenue, ELA AND grab lunch there with Comida y Cultura!

Pour One for Joe Reyes Nevarez

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Joe Reyes Nevarez, 98, died Monday, December 28, 2009.

Beloved father and groundbreaker, Joe Nevarez was an important figure in the Latino media community of Los Angeles.  He was the first Chicano reporter for the Los Angeles Times newspaper.  Joe’s career began at eastside’s Lincoln High School, where he was the Sports Editor of the school’s daily paper. His career at the L.A. Times began as a copy boy, when a student friend/co-writer and head copy boy at the Times, offered him a job. Joe’s official job was to paste up New York Stock Exchange quotations, but his love of the news process and hard working ethics, often found him volunteering in the financial section of the paper during his free time. He was paid $12 for a six-day week, yet felt so blessed to be working during the darkest part of the Depression.

Throughout his career Nevarez always urged the LA Times to hire Latino reporters, but his editors always told him there wasn’t anyone who was trained.

Nevarez came to the United States as a three-month-old when his mother crossed the Mexican border into El Paso in 1912. When he was older, he attended a Spanish Catholic school in Texas.  Joe didn’t speak English until he moved to Los Angeles and was enrolled into an English grammar school.  He became a U.S. citizen in 1925.  In 1942 Joe served as a typist and clerk for 3 years in the Army Air Corp, and naturally one of his duties was representing his squadron by reporting for the army base newsletter.

He and his wife, Theresa Juarez Nevarez, had three children: Margaret, Daniel and Cecilia.  Though Joe Nevarez never attended college, he made sure all three of his children went. Upon graduation his daughters entered the education field (one as a high-school counselor and the other as a teacher), his son worked at the Internal Revenue Service.

Joe Nevarez worked for The Los Angeles Times for a total of 52 years, during which time he also was a founding member of the California Chicano News Media Association. He said he was   happiest in the newsroom. “There’s nothing better than being a reporter,” Nevarez said. “There’s something new everyday.”

On January 6, 2010, a Memorial Service will be held at the St. Stephen Catholic Church for Joe Reyes Nevarez. http://www.archdiocese.la/directories/parishes/info.php?parish_id=277, followed by a burial at Resurrection Cemetery.

Here Comes the Cavalry to the Rescue disguised as Cafe con Leche!

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This morning I see a blog on Grub Street LA, extolling a subsidiary of the Coffee Table called “Cafe con Leche” as the savior of Self Help Graphics and Art in East LA.  Franchisers of some LA Coffee Table branches are also owners of the ‘formerly known as” the Self Help Graphics building at the corner of Gage & Cesar Chavez—AND entrepreneurs of Cafe con Leche du ELA.  Hmmm–this blog which is called “Cafe con Leche Could Keep Self Help Graphics in the Chips” smells like the spin that these hipster-franchise amalgamators have been shoving down our throats since last year.  Fellas, what happen to that part in the lease contract about not using  SHG’s 37 years of community involvement to promote yourselves?    Eastsiders, can you say “Coffee Table” or does it really have to be interpreted in El Castellano?  As a hardworking volunteer in the team of many artists and activists who toil every week to keep Self Help Graphics and Art vibrant and open, I look forward to those residual checks coming in to keep ELA art in ‘the chips”.  Damn, call me and save yourself a stamp, I will personally pick that check up.  By the way—brrrring, brrring, we’ve been calling you to come and fix the lights and leaky roof for a few weeks now.  Hope we don’t have to wait until the chips roll in to get that fixed.

To read the whole preposterous blog and some insightful comments click here

José Lozano: Creating art of the buffoon—the darker side of humor

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Artist José Lozano was born in Los Angeles, but early in his life lived in Ciudad Juárez, México the birthplace of his mother.   In Juárez he was exposed to the cultural icons that are now part of his artwork—bad Mexican cinema, fotonovelas, phantasm folk lore, lucha, comic books, boleros y rancheras and the flavors of the Juárez landscape. His family core returned to East LA when he was 8, where he attended public school and began to draw.   Later, through formal art training, he captured the essence that is his personal finger print as an artist. Continue reading →

Rastros y Crónicas, New Exhibit at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago

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Yes, I agree with the curator of Rastros y Crónicas , we need gender equality. As one of the artists in this exhibit, I am grateful for the latest addition of the National Museum of Mexican Art to this struggle for justice in Ciudad Juarez, now in its 16th year. However, I am not sure why this is a Mexican woman or Latina matter as portrayed by the curation of this exhibit.  Many of the artists who have been diligent with touring protest exhibits (on Juarez) throughout Mexico and here on the west coast are males.  I understand the aesthetics of exhibits–but what a powerful statement we make—when we are all united as one to speak out publicly against injustices. We cannot ask the world culture towards women to change, when we (ourselves) are not equal in our actions and everyday practices.

Rastros y Crónicas, Exhibit at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago

Opening Reception October 16, 2009, 6-8 pm
Exhibition runs through February 14, 2010

The Rubín and Paula Torres Gallery and The Kraft Gallery

Since 1993, more then 500 women have been killed
in Ciudad Juárez in the northern Mexican state of
Chihuahua. For some time now, Mexican and Mexican
American artists have been sensitive to the subject
of Women of Juarez and have worked on diverse
projects to share their perspective on this disturbing
situation.  read more