In Artist’s Heart, He Rides With Zapata

The man with the mysterious name said to meet him at Super Antojitos, the Mexican restaurant on Bristol Street. He calls himself Ozomatli Mazatl and he wanted to tell me about a new brigade formed in Orange County to support the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas.

“How will I recognize you?” I asked in Spanish.

“I’ll be the one who looks like an Indian,” Ozomatli said.

I wondered if ethnicity was enough to pick him out in a Santa Ana crowd. But there was no mistaking this Indian.

Ozomatli had thick, black hair tied in a ponytail flowing down his back. His smooth skin had a bronze sheen, and he sported wispy hair on his lip and chin that aspired to pass as a mustache and goatee.

His black T-shirt boasted an image of Emiliano Zapata, the peasant revolutionary whose egalitarian ideals inspired the Chiapas uprising that startled Mexico with its surprise opening assault on Jan. 1, 1994. Underneath the picture of the rifle-toting rebel were these words in a Zorro-like handwriting: Zapata Lives!

He rolls up his sleeve, revealing the tattoo of a stylized monkey on his shoulder. That’s Ozomatli himself, a figure from the Aztec calendar that represents the arts and dance.

The mythical Ozomatli is known as a jokester, said the flesh-and-blood Ozomatli after ordering a taco. Before our lunch was over, there’d be plenty of laughs about contradictions in the life of this 26-year-old artist who has a part-time newspaper route and lives with his mother in a converted Costa Mesa garage.

“Everything for everybody, and nothing for ourselves--Todo para todos, y nada para nosotros!”

That’s the communal motto Zapatistas try to live by, said Ozomatli. In materialistic Orange County, the slogan sounds positively subversive.

“We’ve gotten lost in individualism, as they say here. In the me, me, me,” he said.

Ozomatli is unofficial spokesman for the new Santa Ana brigade of 10 men and women that sprouted from a local folkloric dance group. The ragtag regiment was organized to raise awareness of the rebel cause in southern Mexico and its connections to marginalized immigrants in the United States.

A week from Sunday, the Zapatistas are holding an international referendum asking Mexicans to state their positions on the problems facing Indian communities in Chiapas and elsewhere. Ozomatli’s brigade is inviting Mexican nationals to cast their ballots at an all-day event, complete with food and music, at 1010 Minnie St. in Santa Ana.

In January, the rebellion’s fifth anniversary, rebel representatives in Los Angeles appealed for participation from Mexicans in the United States.

Chiapas may be a world away, they argued, but the concerns of the poor don’t stop at the border. Economic inequality. Political neglect. Social intolerance. Mexicans are forced to leave home to escape those problems only to face more of the same when they get here, organizers say.

The appeal struck a chord with Ozomatli. He doesn’t think of himself as a conventional activist. But ever since he was a kid growing up near Mexico City, he’s always thought of himself as an Indian.

Ozomatli discovered his Indian past in the ancient artifacts that would turn up as commonly as pebbles in the hills near his hometown of Coacalco, outside the Mexican metropolis. He was curious about the small clay figures and the people who made them. But Indians were always discussed as people of the past.

“The way it works in Mexico, they’re all Museum Indians,” he said.

Ozomatli decided he wanted to be a living, breathing Indian.

“It always seemed like something beautiful to me,” he said. “By the time I got here, I was already Super-Indian.”

His indigenous identity didn’t go over too well at Valley High School in Santa Ana. He was told he couldn’t wear his sandals, the really cool ones from Oaxaca. Boys’ footwear had to cover their feet.

“But this is my tradition,” argued the cross-country runner.

“You’re not in Mexico anymore,” he recalls the retort from an administrator, a Latino to boot.

In Mexico, “Indian” can be a dirty word.

It’s a common put-down to call somebody a miserable, dark-skinned, barefoot Indian. And parents prize the birth of light-skinned babies: “Look how cute! He came out so fair.”

During the summers of my California childhood, I’d get very dark from playing in the sun all day. When relatives came to visit, I was forced to pull down my swim trunks to show the tan line and prove that I was born whiter than I looked.

Mexico actually has a love-hate relationship with its indigenous people. Officially, the government expresses respect for its Indian cultures and their 100 languages. Academics study them. And tourists seek out their colorful crafts--at a bargain, of course.

By the time Ozomatli graduated from high school in 1993, he had won honors as a student artist in a competition sponsored by Tiffany & Co., the exclusive jeweler. His sculpture of an Indian-inspired figure was on display at the ritzy store in South Coast Plaza.

“He’s like me, a rebel,” the young winner was quoted saying at the time.

Instead of going to college, Ozomatli took off for the Navajo reservation in Arizona. He’s also had contact with other American tribes. It was during a Lakota ceremony that a man suggested his new name.

He’s struck by the similarities among Indian peoples. They all believe in the sanctity of Mother Earth and that animals have souls like humans. And they all suffer the same discrimination, disparities and disruptions of their lifestyles.

I wondered how somebody could live an Indian life in contemporary Orange County. If I followed him around, how could I tell he’s an Indian at heart?

Ozomatli didn’t hesitate, answering in a mix of Spanish and English.

“You would say that I am, as you say here, a loser.”

I’m sorry, but I had to laugh. He said the word with such conviction, pronouncing “lou-sir” with a heavy accent. He seemed so proud of it.

And he is. Proud to have no aspirations for a career, a house or a car. Proud to sleep on the floor next to his Mom’s sofa bed, lying only on a woven mat the Indians call a petate. Proud to say he has minimized his “ties to the system.”

Ozomatli says he doesn’t need anything, really. Not even privacy.

It’s not an easy lifestyle. The simplistic existence doesn’t appeal to many modern women. Who would marry him and endure a life of sacrifice in a garage? And for fun, who would join him in San Pedro to sit in a sweat lodge, or temescal, with other Indio-philes?

“That’s why nobody wants to be an Indian anymore,” he says matter-of-factly.

“To make a living here in the states, it’s a pretty easy thing. The problem is, you have to sell your soul, and my mom doesn’t want me to do that.”

Anastasia Aguirre, our rebel’s mother, works as a caregiver for seniors. Ozomatli calls her a “hard-core Catholic and a fighter, too.” Through her parish, she’s active in a support group for the relatives of alcoholics.

In a soft voice on the phone, Sra. Aguirre told me she supports her son’s interests, but she still can’t get used to calling him Ozomatli. When she let his Christian name slip, her son lodged a loud protest in the background.

“That name means nothing to me anymore,” he grumbled later. “I told her I didn’t want to be named after no saint.”

Before we knew it, our chat had lasted three hours. The brigade was meeting the following day to paint banners for the referendum, but Ozomatli couldn’t join them in the morning.

“I’ve got my ballet class,” said Ozomatli, who takes classical dance for exercise and discipline.

His friends razz him about that, too. “What’s an Indian doing in a tutu?” they say.

People used to complain that nobody could ever reach Ozomatli. The guy didn’t have a phone or a beeper. But when he finally acquired them, it seemed weird.

“Indians don’t wear pagers,” they scoffed.

On the way out, I noticed my Indian friend was dressed in all natural materials. A heavy wool sweater, cotton parachute pants and shoes with rough leather tops sown to soles made from spare tires.

“And the most natural part, do you know what it is?” he asked.

He pulled out his goat-skin wallet, folding it open. And with a sly grin, Ozomatli flashed a Visa card.

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Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com.