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Build it and they will come

Why it's our job to build a Hispanic cultural center in Arizona

Overheard amid the blur of faces at a recent First Friday Art Walk:

Black woman to Anglo companion: "This is a mellow vibe. When I moved here from San Francisco, thought I'd miss the art scene, but this holds its own. This one's still young. It'll grow.  Easier to get around here, actually. This is a horizontal city. Flat, flat, flat. Don't see many folks like me here tonight, though. Or too many Latinos, either. WhereÕs the Latino cultural scene in Phoenix?"

"I dunno. Sometimes the Mexican restaurants have mariachis. ThatÕs pretty cool. Mike told me a live place to see the Latino culture is at the swap meet somewhere on Buckeye, on the west side, I think. Said on the weekends they got dances and Tex Mex music and stuff like that. Really authentic."

I came to the Valley in 1970. A eight-inch stab scar carved on my rib cage during a gang fight was my ticket to Phoenix. Another inch deeper and the blade would have collapsed my lung and killed me. After that, my parents relocated to Phoenix the family they had started in south L.A.

During the next decade, I was again on the streets, but this time for the cause of Latino arte y cultura. I and others I ran with were proudly calling ourselves Chicanos. We were painters, sculptors, writers, actors, photographers, musicians, and dancers. We had grown up through the tumultuous times of the anti Vietnam War protests. Union leader Cesar Chavez, born near Yuma, was organizing farmworkers in California and Arizona. California and Arizona artists assisted in that struggle by creating posters, teatro, and music that spoke eloquently of the movimento for civil rights. Young Arizona artists like El Zarco Guerrero, Dina Lopez, Martin Moreno, and Louis Carlos Bernal used art to teach our community about our rich history.

Because existing art galleries and museum refused to exhibit Chicano art and artists, we held street art exhibitions and started our own galleries in Arizona barrios.  By the 1980s, we had organized Latino art groups such as Ariztlan, a statewide, multi-discipline arts organization; Xicanindio, a group of Chicano and Native American artists based on Mesa; and MARS, or Movimiento Artistico del Rio Salado. I founded TOPO literary magazine and created Ariztlan Arts magazine. It was an era of great creativity that reshaped the art and cultural scene in Arizona.

Today is another, sadder story. MARS and Ariztlan are memories. Dina Lopez, director of Xicanindio for two decades, is leaving that post. The nonprofit struggles to survive amid City of Mesa budget cutbacks. Still, many of the young artists who were members of these organizations went on to become professional artists, educators, and businesspeople.

Yet there exists no one, centralized, community-based Latino cultural center in metro Phoenix, the fifth largest U.S. city. A city with a Hispanic population estimated at about 33 percent and growing fast. However, no single group has stepped up to spearhead an organized, cohesive strategy to establish a permanent Latino cultural center.

Until now. For the past year and a half, artist Marco Albarran, I, and others have met to plan for a home for La Calaca Cultural Center, a organization of multi-ethnic coalition of artists. We have met quietly with art advocates and educators, with mainstream art organizations, and with representatives of foundations and universities in the state. We have encountered enthusiastic reactions. The organizing committee's first goals are to create a board of
directors, then strategic and business plans that will result in a physical cultural center that will be financially sustainable and entrepreneurial. Most important, the center's mission will be to benefit ALL Arizonans, not just Latino artists. 

The Calaca Advisory Committee recognizes now is the crucial time. The City of Phoenix is investing billions of dollars to revitalize. Administrators have forged innovative partnerships with universities, corporations, scientists, and developers. Other cities are doing the same. When all the deals are done, this crucial window of opportunity for a cultural center may pass forever.

We estimate that the process could take 10 years, and up to $25 million dollars, but we must start somewhere. There may be temporary spaces leading to the permanent site.  It will take committed partnerships. The March edition of Latino Perspectives will announce the roster of prominent arts advocates and community leaders who are forming the founding board for the Calaca Cultural Center capital fundraising campaign.We believe that in the not too distant future when someone asks, "Where's the Latino cultural scene in Phoenix?", they will be directed to a building complex every bit as big and beautiful as the new Mesa Arts Center.