Celebrating Survival : For 25 years, San Diego’s Centro Cultural de la Raza has honored the Chicano experience. Can it continue?

After a long gestation and a tough, complicated delivery, the Centro Cultural de la Raza arrived in the proud arms of San Diego’s Chicano community. Despite numerous witnesses and participants in the process, no one agrees on the cultural center’s exact moment of arrival. It falls sometime between late 1970, when a group of Chicano artists defied eviction from the expansive, city-owned Ford Building in Balboa Park that they had been temporarily using with city permission for studios and rehearsal space, and mid-1971, when the group, formally known as Los Toltecas en Aztlan, moved into an abandoned, unfurbished concrete water tank in the park, with a signed lease from the city.

The Centro emerged from these tumultuous and contentious origins to become one of the most vibrant visual and performing arts centers in the Southwest dedicated to Chicano, Mexican and indigenous American culture.

Earlier this year the Centro began celebrating its 25th anniversary. Festivities kicked off in the spring with tributes to some of the organization’s founders. A few weeks ago, the exhibition “Plan 9 From Aztlan” opened, showcasing a young crop of Chicano artists. Next April, a capstone exhibition will feature the works of veteran Chicano and Chicana artists. And augmenting the Centro’s regular schedule of film, theater, poetry, music and dance events, will be a special series of performances by Mexican artists.

Founded in the heat of the Chicano movement--at the time of the Chicano Moratorium in Los Angeles and the opening of the Galeria de la Raza in San Francisco, among other landmark events--the founding of San Diego’s Centro Cultural represented a “capture of territory, to serve a cultural and social function,” says UCLA art historian Shifra Goldman, whose specialization is Latin American and Chicano art.

“The New Left was in a mode of protesting for change, but also for taking action to establish its claims and even symbolic territory. Chicano Park [a plot of land just south of downtown San Diego seized in 1970 by Chicanos protesting the bifurcation of the barrio by a new freeway and bridge] was a symbolic territory capture, and so was the Ford Building. They were not given. They were the result of conflict.”

Similarly, the ring of cactus planted around the Centro--in a park that is otherwise defined by its lawns and eucalyptus trees--is another symbol of recapturing territory by its indigenous inhabitants, Goldman says. Nothing, however, affirms the presence and spirit of la raza more potently or immediately than the turbulent skin of murals that wraps the 90-foot diameter building. Pre-Columbian motifs, coyotes, skulls, dancers, musicians and historical figures all intermingle beneath the unifying image of an abstracted serpent, winding its way around the top of the water tank.

Murals activate the space inside as well, especially the huge, three-dimensional fist that appears to burst through a wall near the entrance. It points the way, both literally and figuratively, to the Centro’s performance space and its visual arts gallery, and is a forceful reminder of the intimate bond between the political fervor of Chicano activism and its artistic expressions. Behind the gallery is the informally furnished office, where a full-time staff of four keeps the place buzzing.

In a recent conversation at the Centro about the organization’s evolution, mention is made frequently of its original mission statement, the anchor to which all of its programming is tethered. While the Centro’s original goals to foster cultural expression in the San Diego/Tijuana border region and respect its roots in the Chicano movement still hold, the organization’s strategies have necessarily shifted with the times. The militancy of Chicano nationalism in the late 1960s and early ‘70s propelled the Centro forward from concept to reality. In the ‘90s, however, a different kind of militancy has taken hold, this time coming from the right in the form of ultraconservatism and anti-immigrant nativism. As much as ever, the Centro is more than just an arts organization--it plays an urgent and purposeful role in raising consciousness through cultural discourse.

Larry Baza, the Centro’s executive director since 1991, speaks from experience about the Centro’s potential to empower its constituents. Born across the street from the Centro, in San Diego’s old Naval Hospital, Baza, 51, describes himself as having been pretty “whitified” in his youth. Working at the Centro dramatically reaffirmed his Chicano identity, he says.

“I’ve been very assimilated in a lot of ways, but when you work in the eye of the storm, in the house that was built upon the struggle to make it possible for people like me to make certain advances or reach certain levels of ability and education, everything becomes a part of that struggle. We can’t forget what we’re not a part of, what we’ve not had access to and how much further we have yet to go.”

That message sounds made to order for a city like San Diego, where one in five residents is foreign-born, with a high proportion coming from Mexico and Central America. These immigrants seem natural allies of Chicanos, who may have deeper roots here but are still estranged from the reins of power, and often are discriminated against and treated like outsiders. One of the Centro’s goals, Baza says, is to educate the new immigrant as much as the longtime resident about the terms of the struggle, what’s at stake economically, socially, politically and personally. This is where the empowering principles of the Chicano movement come in.

“Self-determination and a pride of heritage, of being connected more with who you are, being able to grab onto something and say, ‘This is part of me. What these people did, these Aztecs, these Indians, it has something to do with me. I can draw upon that.’ ”

The Chicano movement, and likewise the Centro, have broadened in scope over the years, adds Patricio Chavez, the organization’s visual arts curator. Social activism in the form of picketing and demonstrations continue, but there are also those in the Chicano community examining more intellectual or ideological aspects of the struggle for social change. Likewise, the public murals that initially defined much Chicano art have mostly given way to more conceptually-oriented, gallery-based work.

“A lot of people are going beyond ideas of identity, which has always been at the heart of the Chicano movement,” Chavez says. “They’re talking about power, raw power, political, economic and social power, how power is used in this country and how to nullify a lot of the regression that’s taking place.

“What one segment of the Chicano community is doing in terms of new strategies is looking at language, how language is being used and co-opted by the right--like talking in terms of the politically correct, and using the word revolution.

“What I try to do is offer a framework to look at things historically and connect them to contemporary manifestations. It’s not an accident that we find ourselves in this situation. If we can look at the root historical causes, we can begin to unmask what has been taking place for 500 years. We can look at things in terms of the long view, and we can see why things are happening the way they are.”

Recent shows taking this tack include “Counter-Colonialismo” (1991) a searing reconsideration of the so-called “conquest” of the New World, and “Deterritorialization” (spring, 1995), a look at the struggles of several different cultures to connect with their land and their history in the face of dislocation and genocide. The latter show included a Native American artist, Edgar Heap of Birds, as well as an Israeli, Gadi Gofbarg.

“Virtually every strain of human in this country and from without has been exhibited here and performed here,” Baza remarks. “They all talk about identity, position, place and class.”

That kind of inclusive attitude is not only true to those founding principles of the Chicano movement but it’s also beneficial to the survival of the Centro, says Performance Curator Eloise de Leon. Artists from a range of ethnicities have not only presented their work at the Centro, but many have been sponsored by the Centro to perform in local libraries, schools and community centers.

Such outreach efforts, she says, “will help dispel fears about what the Centro means. People are always somewhat afraid of something different from what they’ve been used to. For some, just seeing the [building’s] murals puts them off. Or associating the term Chicano or anyone who uses that for their identity--they associate that with everything from the ‘60s and become afraid. It’s a loaded term in a way. It needs to be stabilized. And one way is to show that the Centro shows artists that represent the social fabric of our community.”

Ironically, it is the association with Chicano activism and the grass-roots energy of the ‘60s and ‘70s that helps keep the Centro alive and impassioned, yet also poses obstacles to its growth and maturation.

“We were a generation of artists and administrators that were picking the fruit of previous labors,” Veronica Enrique remembers of her tenure as executive director of the Centro from 1981 to ’88. “Everything we had was thanks to the activism of a previous generation. We were trying to build on that energy, the energy of particular individuals. And each of us brought certain skills and attributes. But we were aware that what we were trying to create was an institution that lives on beyond the individuals. And at every stage, the question has come into play: How do you create an institution that is not institutionalized?”

Remaining true to the spirit of the Centro’s genesis is one thing; keeping its doors open is another, especially when the financial challenges go hand-in-hand with the social and economic issues at the heart of the struggle. Roughly half of the Centro’s $230,000 annual budget comes from government sources, funds that are in jeopardy for all nonprofit institutions. The rest of the budget comes from private foundations and ticket sales to performances. For the first time in its history, the Centro will soon be hiring a development director to seek new funding sources, but whoever fills that position will be working against the odds, Baza says, when tapping the Centro’s own constituency.

“Ours is mostly a poor community without a history of giving. So that’s problematic. It’s a matter of education. What’s more distressing is the lack of corporate support.”

What might help in that regard is an increased profile. The Centro sits apart from the numerous other cultural institutions in Balboa Park--a 1,400-acre expanse that is one of San Diego’s most popular destinations--and it is not listed on the city’s park signage. Adding insultto injury, the city also charges the Centro the highest rent of any cultural institution in the park. At $231 a month, the Centro pays nearly five times the rent of the next highest-paying institution--by contrast, the San Diego Museum of Art pays $1 a year for use of their city-owned facility in Balboa Park. A city official said it’s always been that way, and nobody’s requested a change. Baza and Chavez sigh, clearly exasperated and exhausted by the “stepchild” status of both the Centro and its community.

“The Centro was founded by artists, activists, and the activism they were involved in was the Chicano movement,” Baza says. “The movement was a civil rights one, a human rights movement that was hundreds of years in the making for people who were here when this was Mexico. It was a passionate struggle for those rights which many of us feel, 25 years later, we still haven’t attained.”

* Centro Cultural de la Raza , 2125 Park Blvd., Balboa Park’s Pepper Grove, San Diego. Admission is free. (619) 235-6135.