CULTURAL POLITICS : The Labyrinth of the North : Mexican artists transplanted to L.A. wrestle with identity and their connection to a related, yet distinct, Chicano community

In describing himself and his fellow countrymen, Mexican poet Octavio Paz once observed that they are all the sons and daughters of bitches. The Spaniard raped the Indian, he said, and the Mexican was conceived.

This involuntary and brutal beginning has haunted all Mexicans for 500 years. Wherever they live, whatever their social class, they are metaphorical bastards in search of an identity.

For Chicanos--people of Mexican descent born and bred in the United States--the layers of alienation become thicker still. Separated in time, culture and often language from what the books call their mother country, they are the ultimate outcasts--cut off from their roots, trying to survive in what constantly remains unfamiliar territory. For them, racial and cultural duality are the very substance and curse of life.

No wonder, then, that from the perspective of Chicanos, it would seem that Mexicans have one major, decided advantage. They have a sense of truly belonging somewhere. They are part of a national whole. For them, the label Mexican does not have multiple meanings. It can exist without pejorative connotations. It can be, if they wish, simply a way to signify national origin.

Against this backdrop of awkward kinship, Los Angeles will play host beginning Oct. 6 to “Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries” at the L.A. County Museum of Art. It is a massive exhibition, to be sure, but beneath its celebratory surface, there will swirl a lively debate surrounding the question of Mexican identity. Among the issues inevitably raised by such a show is a labyrinth of questions about the relationship between Mexicans and Chicanos.

Within that maze of identity and culture, there is also bound to be tense comparison between the art of Mexican-born artists and that of Chicanos. And as a further distillation of that esoteric discourse, there is likely to be discussion about the influence that our local Eastside avant-garde has or has not had on the Spanish-surnamed immigrant artists who often live and work anywhere but east of the L.A. River.

By its very nature, Chicano art is not Mexican art. Born out of social unrest in the ‘60s, it initially existed as a canvas game board on which to play “Search for Identity,” and it aimed to flamboyantly critique mainstream culture. In recent years, that has been less the case. With the first glimmerings of gallery acceptance and financial success, many Chicano artists have begun to abandon traditional imagery. However, by virtue of their continuing membership in this city’s ethnic underclass, Chicano artists typically work with themes of alienation and idealized mythic grandeur.

Such imagery has little to do with the sensibility of artists born and raised in Mexico. It is true that some of them originally relocated to Los Angeles after economic trauma hit Mexico in the early 1980s. But even more of them came because they grew up perceiving the City of Angels to be a Mexican construct. There is a sense of proprietary right of way that comes across when they speak about living and working in L.A. As one such artist, Roberto Gil de Montes, observes, “I certainly have nothing against Chicanos. After all, we gave birth to them. They come from what we are.”

But like many other Mexican-born artists now living in the city, Gil de Montes doesn’t see Chicano culture or art as pivotal to his own visual aesthetic. He has been here since 1965 and has always lived around and with Chicanos. As a result, he can vividly remember the cultural explosion that came with the ‘60s and early ‘70s. He can speak in detail about the 1970 Chicano Moratorium, about the riots and ethnic anger that followed the anti-war rally and about the earliest emergence of a Chicano visual language.

“But what I mostly saw,” he recalls, “was that Chicanos wanted to be Americans. They wanted to fit in. They wanted to speak English. They didn’t want to be like me.” And as if to cover his bases, he adds that “when they did try to be like me, it seemed ridiculous. So how could I identify with them? They were trying to become what I already was.”

Ironically, the paintings in his new show, set to open at the Jan Baum Gallery on Oct. 18, will incorporate graffiti. (He also has a show of paintings, “Ni Aqui Ni Alla,” at Barnsdall Art Park’s Junior Arts Center Gallery, through Oct. 27).

“But that is not my way of trying to identify with Chicanos,” he explains. “First and foremost, before I am a Mexican, I am an artist. And graffiti has started to fascinate me. Driving from my home in Echo Park, to my studio downtown, I go past a mural and graffiti in the Temple Street area. I’ve never seen anything like it. The graffiti is fantastic. I found myself getting into it. Before I knew it, I was putting the symbols into my work.”

Paz Cohen, a Mexican-born artist living in Beverly Hills, relates a fairly similar experience. The biggest difference involves her sense of economic class. Gil de Montes grew up, as he describes it, “pretty poor.” Cohen did not, and the reality of Mexican-American poverty hit her right between the eyes when she arrived in Los Angeles.

“When I first came,” she says, “I was told that Mexicans were categorized as low-class. So I was ashamed of being Mexican. And I denied it at the beginning. For the first time in my life, I had to confront the racist thing in this society. I was so intimidated by the racism that I spoke only English. It took me a while to realize who and what I was.”

Like Gil de Montes and many other artists from Mexico, she has a hard time relating to the issues and concerns that preoccupy Chicano painters and other artists. Her work consists largely of multimedia installations and assemblages reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp’s Dadaist constructions.

“I am influenced by society in the largest sense of the word,” she argues. “I couldn’t follow anyone. I don’t know how. In my work I show how we are all being destroyed by our machines. We are all losing our humanity. That’s a universal. I deal with the contradiction between human beauty and mechanical ugliness.”

For his part, conceptual artist Agustin Gonzalez-Garza believes that people everywhere are united by a greater common culture. It isn’t so much that he identifies with Chicano art or the questions that it asks, but rather his belief that “the capitalist consumer culture unites us.” As he sees it, “we all buy the same things, we all see the same ads. We are all exposed to the same desires. Media penetrates everyone. It goes way beyond a border, far beyond any particular ethnic culture. It’s the source of values that we all share, whether we like it or not. So the issue of the border is a non-issue for me. My God, through the media, borders are made meaningless.”

In his work, Gonzalez-Garza tries to expose how all people are dominated by a culture. By examining the ways in which Catholic mythology penetrated Mexican culture, he hopes to show “how cultures form devotional systems of unbelievable complexity and how such systems in turn meld with others, resulting in bizarre mutations.” To his way of thinking, “contemporary Mexico is the result of layers and layers of cultural mutations: from the Aztec totalitarian pyramidal theocracy to the North American consumer culture. Mexico is many Mexicos.”

But evidently, for Gonzalez-Garza, none of them intersect with Chicano L.A., because he emphatically states that he is “not interested in having an association with Chicano culture.”

“It’s very important for me that people know that I am Mexican and making art. Period,” he says. “My work is not involved with Chicano issues or themes. The whole notion of identity and the preoccupation with it is very Mexican--not Chicano. And although I don’t see Chicanos as terribly different from me in that sense, I do see that they have another layer or identity to deal with. That separates them from me in a significant way.”

Gonzalez-Garza, whose work is part of an exhibition of nine Mexican artists opening today at the Art Center College of Design, lives in Pasadena. He says: “I have never felt discrimination here. But I know about prejudice. Mexico City is a place of great, great discrimination. Darker complexions raise eyebrows. There is a deep discrimination against women. The Aztecs themselves were massive discriminators.”

So he finds that while “L.A. makes you hyper-aware of your pre-Hispanic roots, Mexico City makes you hyper-aware of your European roots.” It’s just trading one set of insecurities for another. “We have all lost a sense of our true roots,” he says.

Unlike Gonzalez-Garza and Cohen, Jose Luis Valenzuela, theater director and head of the Latino Lab at Los Angeles Theatre Center, sees Chicanos as central to his vision. “I’m Chicano in the way I look at things,” he says. “I’m Mexican from Mexico. I understand that very clearly. But I came here in the early 1970s because of the Chicano movement. I heard about it and had to come. Chicanos are Americans. And I think the most interesting art being created in America today is the Chicano art.”

Valenzuela, who lives in East Los Angeles, recently directed Culture Clash’s “Bowl of Beings” at LATC and its adaptation for PBS’ “Great Performances.” He is also writing a play on interracial relationships. Immersed on a daily basis in the culture and lifestyle of L.A. Latinos, he thinks Chicanos have “a deeper perspective on the world because they understand two worlds, two cultures. People always talk about magical realism, but it’s the Chicano who is the true and perfect magical realist. It comes from being able to mix two different cultures and create a new culture.”

He says those Mexicans who reject Chicano culture are simply “practicing classic Mexican middle-class arrogance.” Being Chicano, Valenzuela believes, “is an issue of sensibility. Chicano culture is more open than Mexican culture because it’s so fluid. Chicano culture, for me, is constantly moving forward and transforming itself.”

Francisco Martinez, the artistic director of the Francisco Martinez Dancetheatre, has been in Los Angeles since 1980. His company, which combines classical ballet and modern dance, is celebrating its 10th anniversary by performing two concerts at Occidental College in early October.

“Although I was born in Monterrey, Mexico, my family comes from a long line of shepherds in a small town called Ojo de Agua in Nuevo Leon,” Martinez says. “My influences come from my physical environment. I’ve lived in Arizona and Texas. I’m probably the only Latino in Los Angeles dealing with ballet. And I find that when people come to see us perform, they expect Mexican steps. But there’s nothing like that in my work. I don’t do folklorico .

“And I don’t do social dance of any kind,” he explains. “I find that social dance is too angry, too negative, too violent. I am not interested in making social comments with my work. I am interested in classical ballet.”

Perhaps because Martinez wasn’t around when the Chicano movement was in flower, he doesn’t feel that it has influenced his work. “I’m aware of it, and I’m very supportive of what it aimed to accomplish. So I try to bring this high art of ballet to my people. I teach at Plaza de la Raza in East L.A., and three of my students have already received dance scholarships. One day I expect them to be in my company. I am able to do that for my people.”

Photographer Alejandro Rosas came to Los Angeles in the early 1980s and has been here ever since. He looks at his work and reflects that “there is an influence” from Chicano culture and art.

“I have tried to see what the Chicano experience is about,” he says. “I have wanted to enter that world and see it not as a Mexican outsider but as a Mexican insider. My work comes out of that effort. I don’t see Chicano art as one style. Leo Limon, Daniel Martinez and Harry Gamboa are all Chicano artists, but they each do work that is unique. I understand that being Chicano is an ethnic experience, a lot like being black. But it’s also a concept and an essence.”

Rosas, now of Venice, received a 1991 grant from the L.A. Department of Cultural Affairs to produce a book photo-documenting 40 of L.A.’s most prominent Latino artists. He sees a basic connection between himself and local Mexicans, but that connection is not his primary reason for staying here.

“This city is where the First and Third worlds meet,” he says. “That has to be taken into account. The technology available here is incredible. There’s nothing like it in Mexico. And that’s why I stay.”

Rosas also thinks that it is U.S. art technology that keeps a lot of Chicano artists here. “Third World artists from here would be crazy to go to Mexico to work because their resources would be so significantly reduced. Here they get the chance to use First World technology to convey the cultural issues that are important to them. That’s what makes the Latino artist in L.A. very sophisticated. The art they create is important, and it has to be recognized.”

But life in L.A. has given rise to issues that Rosas never had to deal with in Mexico. “In Mexico I never thought I was Mexican,” he says. “I just was. Coming here and facing racism has made me more conscious of who I am, especially my Indian roots. Racism was a big discovery for me. Sometimes when I show up for an appointment, people think I’m there to make a delivery. That is an experience that never comes to Mexican artists in Mexico.”

For better or worse, Los Angeles is a Mexican place. Mexican in the broadest and most general sense of the term. Of Mexico, transformed by Chicanos. Amid the concrete urban sprawl that has been built on the backs of poor, brown laborers, there is a mythic L.A. It’s the idea of Mission California with Spanish landed gentry. In truth, of course, the myth has never existed. But it forms the subconscious essence of this place.

So like it or not, every L.A. artist with ties to Mexico must struggle to find a comfortable position within that mythic terrain. If they come from Mexico, and have economic status to insulate them from the crudest reflections of local racism, they can fight the significance of their ethnic identity. They can deny that it matters. They can close their eyes and carry on, making work that has as much in common with Manhattan or Berlin painters as it does with the deserts of the Southwest.

But they can never escape what others see them to be. Their accent hints at it, and their names confirm the initial suspicion. They are Mexican. In the City of Angels that’s a loaded identity.