Photographer Focuses on Central America : People at War--Not Always a Pretty Picture

No one ever said Carlos Ugalde’s pictures were pretty or his politics uncontroversial.

When the Alhambra resident, a professor at Glendale Community College, exhibited his photos of Central American war victims at Los Angeles City Hall in October, an incensed Councilman Ernani Bernardi called the photos “disgusting” and lobbied unsuccessfully to shut the exhibit down.

Then, after Ugalde appeared on Glendale Mayor Larry Zarian’s radio talk show last month to debate U. S. intervention in Latin America, a sputtering Zarian called his ideas “the most vicious anti-American propaganda that I’ve heard.”

Ugalde, a self-taught photographer fluent in Spanish and English who teaches Latin American history and Chicano studies, is unruffled by the strong reactions.

“It’s a typical response by North Americans who can’t accept any critical analysis of U.S. foreign policy,” he said.

Ugalde was born 42 years ago in the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi and moved to San Diego at age 6. He stayed there until he finished junior college in 1965, then enrolled at UCLA, where he got a bachelor’s degree in history.

Ugalde traces his social awakening to his childhood, when his father, a scrap-metal yard worker and avid reader of literature and poetry, was killed in an industrial accident.

He was only 7, Ugalde said, but he never forgot the generosity of friends and neighbors, both Anglo and Latino, who rallied to the family’s side with offers of help.

In college, Ugalde said, he became a radical as a result of his involvement in protests against the Vietnam War and with several inspiring English and philosophy teachers.

Ugalde said he opted for teaching as the best way to reach people. He moved to Alhambra in 1979 so he could be close to California State University, Los Angeles, where he got a master’s degree in Chicano and Latin American studies.

In 1980, after several teaching stints at Cerritos City College and East Los Angeles College, Ugalde was offered a position at Glendale Community College.

Since 1967, Ugalde has traveled throughout Mexico and Central America

photographing political murals and scenes of revolution, torture and street life.

He said his early travels were motivated by desire to understand the complexities of Central America and to help him teach others about the region.

“I have attempted to capture these moments in these people’s lives,” he said. “It is the human condition that I reach out and give the viewer.”

Ugalde said he has worked as a free-lance foreign correspondent for radio station KPFK-FM, filing reports on the war in Nicaragua. Some have questioned his objectivity, considering his strong pro-Sandinista stance, but he justifies his position, saying, “I feel it is my duty to educate the public.”

Last week, an exhibit of 93 Ugalde photos, shot mostly between 1977 and 1986, went on exhibition at the Los Angeles Photography Center at 412 Park View St. South, near MacArthur Park.

No Censorship

The center is run by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Department Director Glenna Avila said that although “there are some very strong images,” including some of those that enraged Bernardi, she does not believe “they should be censored just because they’re difficult to look at.”

Avila said the photography building, which is in the city’s largest Central American community, is “really interested in showing what is actually going on” in Latin America.

The show, which runs through Feb. 1, has drawn only positive response, she said.

Alternately haunting and brutal, Ugalde’s shots range from wizened Indian women in a Guatemalan marketplace to the silhouette of an armed Sandinista soldier in Nicaragua at twilight.

Some show the juxtaposition of politics and religion in Latin American life. For example, one photo captures a whitewashed room whose walls are bare except for two paintings: Jesus Christ and Che Guevara, the Argentine-born revolutionary who was killed in 1967.

Grisly Images

Some are grisly: A woman wrapped in a body bag lying in an open coffin, mothers crying over dead children, a schoolchild’s primitive drawing of U.S. helicopters dropping bombs on a farm village.

What spurs the most controversy, however, are the captions that Ugalde writes.

The dead woman in the coffin is listed as a torture victim of the Nicaraguan contras , the anti-Sandinista forces now receiving U.S. aid. The caption for a funeral scene reads “Mother mourns for son killed by contras , Reagan’s army.” President Reagan has strongly supported the contras as a way of unseating the Sandinistas.

Are Ugalde’s photos an unfair depiction? No, he said.

“As a human being, I have a responsibility to document the reality down there, to show the results of U. S. foreign policy,” Ugalde said.

Human Obligations

For him, that includes attributing the atrocities and death depicted in his photos to “Reagan’s contras .”

“They wanted me to title the photos ‘Victims of War,’ ” Ugalde said. “But I was the only one who was there when those people were killed. I know who killed them. I have an obligation as a human being to tell what I know.”

Ugalde is quick to remind people that not all of his photos depict death and warfare.

“I also have uplifting pictures that display a lot of hope,” he said. “Photos show daily life in Nicaragua. Yes, there’s a war going on, but there’s other things, too.”

Ugalde said he has been to Central and South America several dozen times since 1967 and has rarely encountered any problem with authorities. He said that if authorities tell him not to take pictures, he complies, and none of his film or equipment has been confiscated.

Obsession With Politics

Ugalde acknowledges that he is obsessed with Central and South American politics.

“I would have no qualms about exchanging my camera for a weapon to defend the sovereignity of Nicaragua,” Ugalde said.

In fact, he said he stood guard at a Sandinista camp where he was taking pictures in 1984 because there were contra troops nearby.

In the academic world, Ugalde’s political fervor has won him respect.

Drake Hawkins, chairman of Glendale College’s social sciences department, said Ugalde is a controversial figure on campus and that some students and faculty members have accused him of being “un-American.”

‘Exchange of Ideas’

However, “we believe very deeply in the exchange of ideas and that students should hear controversial views,” Hawkins said.

“In the ‘80s, it’s rare to have his kind of passionate moral commitment. . . . It’s very valuable . . . for students to be exposed to his political views,” Hawkins added.

Ugalde also acts as adviser to the college’s Assn. of Latin American Students, which brings speakers to campus to talk about the strife in Central and South America.

“I’ve seen students change, become more critical, ask questions and not just accept what they hear on the radio or see on TV,” Ugalde said of his students.

“I find that very encouraging.”

Staff writer Larry Altman contributed to this story.