A Personal Reason for an Artist’s Crusade : Art: Francisco Letelier’s devotion to human rights stems from the killing of his father, a Chilean diplomat.

“For many artists, a particular time or event will be a starting point for art in their lives. And I’ve realized that that’s OK, so long as you jump out from that and go somewhere.”

For Francisco Letelier, that jumping-off point was one that evokes horror. The artist’s father, a Chilean ambassador to the United States during the Allende regime, was assassinated in Washington by a car bomb in 1976, after the military takeover of Chile by Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Not surprisingly then, much of Letelier’s art has dealt with human rights struggles, depicting leaders including Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X, and groups such as Nicaragua’s Sandinistas and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

In his current show at Santa Monica’s B-1 Gallery, and as part of “The Warriors’ Council,” a collaborative performance opening at Highways Performance Space tonight, Letelier continues that depiction of struggle. He also deals directly with his father’s death, and the legacy that he as an artist feels compelled to take up.

“I remembered what my father left me before he exploded, his spirit spread in all directions,” Letelier writes in “I Will Return to the Clouds,” a text-based work at B-1 that has also been adapted for use in the performance. “I remembered the mystery of the country I am from . . . the wonder of trains and telephones and many persons now dead. Killed with bullets and knives, hunger, flame itself and many poisons. Many persons, men, fathers, mothers, women, all our best destroyed with tanks, bombs, viruses buried in pits, and children like me left to keep stories alive.”

But for Letelier, 33, who just this month was able to return his father’s body to Chile for a hometown burial, the chance to “keep stories alive” does not always seem like the “extraordinary gift” he sometimes calls it.

“I don’t talk to many people about (my father’s death) because after a few years, you get sick of the burden of his legacy, and you want to get out from under it and the whole idea of being ‘the son of . . .,’ ” the artist said. “I once did a video in which I honored my father . . . and I swore that that was the last time I was going to do the story in artistic form. But when I told the story to the Warriors’ Council (writer Linda Frye Burnham, poet Michelle T. Clinton and performance artists Dan Kwong and Keith Antar Mason), they said that I had to tell it again.”

Though it has been 16 years since Orlando Letelier’s death, the diplomat’s influence is still very evident in his son’s life. The elder’s photograph is displayed proudly in Letelier’s home at Santa Monica’s 18th Street Arts Complex, right next to the artist’s own wedding picture, and a poster from the funeral is one of the few objects other than Letelier’s artwork that is mounted on the walls of his nearby studio.

Letelier returned to Chile for a year in 1983, during which time he had what he called a “very successful show” of his political work at the Chilean Institute.

“The dictatorship was still in power, but there was this cultural opening,” he remembers. “The work was very politically charged, and so (the show) was closely watched. It was like, ‘Well, look, Letelier’s son is here, and you killed his father. And now he’s an artist, and look what his art is about--it’s about things that you don’t let us talk about.’ I didn’t realize how symbolic it was, but my father had become a symbol for the whole Chilean solidarity movement, and so I received a lot of media attention.”

During his stay in Chile, Letelier also became close with much of the art community there, which he says gave him the support to realize the power of his work.

“The Chilean culture allowed me to be an artist,” said Letelier, whose mother recently moved back to her native land, and whose youngest brother has become a congressman there. “We have a lot of models for people being very political and being artists. Our greatest artists have always been people who spoke about many things. So I had the tools to be able to turn (my father’s) death into something powerful in my life.”

Letelier focuses on one of those Chilean artist-models, folk singer Victor Jara, in “This Land es tu Tierra (This Land Is Your Land),” a work at B-1 that juxtaposes images of the little-celebrated musician, who was killed by the Chilean military in 1973, with American folk singer Woody Guthrie.

“What I’m trying to do is show all the histories and cultures that exist in North and South America, to show that there are parallels between East and West, North and South,” Letelier said of the gallery exhibition, called “Many Americas.”

Indeed, Letelier touches on many cultures, paying tribute to Cambodian gang members in the Bay Area, Ecuadorean farm workers, Appalachian miners and 1800s quilt-maker Harriet Powers.

“This show is really a work in progress; it’s my trying to bring together my life experiences . . . into some kind of vision of the American continent,” continues Letelier, who was born in Santiago, yet spent most of his youth in Washington. He moved to Los Angeles in 1985, after several years in the Bay Area and his short return to Chile.

“But I never expected to stay in Los Angeles,” says Letelier, who moved here to get his master’s of fine arts at UCLA. But once he was here, art projects kept coming in, including the album cover for Jackson Browne’s “World in Motion” (the artist met Browne when the two were doing solidarity work for Nicaragua), a 1990 mural in Canoga Park called “Celebrating Diversity,” and the ceramic tile murals, “El Sol (The Sun)” and “La Luna (The Moon),” which the artist recently finished at the Wilshire/Alvarado Metro Rail station.

Now, the artist has more than his art to stay for, having settled here with wife Monica and 1 1/2-year-old son, Matias. And the projects keep coming in, too. Letelier’s works are also on view in “Uncovering Visions,” a show of quincentennial-themed banners and portable murals at Santa Monica Place Mall.

Included there is “Looters: Daryl Gates Discovers Los Angeles,” a mural that takes the typical scene of Christopher Columbus landing in the Americas and replaces the image of the explorer with the former police chief, flanked by police officers with billy clubs. Instead of the usual natives looking on from behind the bushes, Letelier’s work depicts controversial artists, including performance artists Tim Miller and Keith Antar Mason, as well as gang members engaged in signing a peace treaty.

Letelier said mall executives and merchants expressed concern about the piece, fearing it would be violent. “But it’s not violent at all,” Letelier says. “It’s just a way of letting people understand that when Columbus landed, they were coming to be looters.”

“Many Americas” at B-1 Gallery, 2730 Main St., Santa Monica, (310) 392-9625, through Dec. 13. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

“The Warriors’ Council” at Highways Performance Space, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica, (310) 453-1755, tonight through Sunday and Nov. 27-28 at 8:30 p.m. $10.