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R HISPANIC CULTURAL CENTER

[[image]] MARIA BRITO [[\image]]
[[caption]] Mother and Child, 1996, a 30 3/4-inch by 39 1/2-inch oil on wood by Maria Brito of Miami, Fla., was on display opening weekend at the Hispanic Cultural Center. [[\caption]]

to have a greater respect for the diversity of cultures and the diversity of our own basic humanity.

"Every form of visual art that is being created in the U.S. has very active and important contributors from Hispanic communities," he says. Connors' background includes cu-rating the CARA exhibit in the early 1990s, one of the first exhibits of Chicano art shown in the mainstream museum. "I love the way that an artist can make us see the world around us in entirely different ways, in an entirely new way, and I think that that's what good art is about, allowing us to see the world around us in a new way."

The La Luz exhibit will remain open until May 2001. Some images are based in politics, social action and social activism, while others address questions of identity, religion, family, home and tradition. Humor also plays its part. One of the pieces is a simple, but funny, video of a dad going out to eat in a fast-food restaurant. Another is difficult humor pointing to corruption in Latin America. 

Closer to home is Barelas Over the Years, developed by Carlos Vasquez of the center's Research and Literacy Arts Program. Barelas has always been an intersection of trade and culture as part of the Santa Fe Trail, connecting St. Louis and Chihuahua. A series of more than 800 photographs explores the continued impact of the last century on the local community. Sepia, black-and-white and color photos trace daily life, the acequias and tools of subsistence agriculture. We see a tapestry of change—the addition of the roundhouse for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, the paving of streets, the building of bridges and, up to the present, the recent neighborhood facade renewal project.

The exhibit, like the pieces of a puzzle, slowly comes together to reveal the unfolding history of Barelas. "Many of these photographs were contributed by the community, but we don't know who or what all of them are," Vázquez says. "This is an interactive exhibit in more ways than one. First, we ask the community to help us identify the photographs we don't know about. We put up this one photograph at the Barelas coffeehouse and another at the Red Bull Café, and we have gotten incredible results. People were able to identify who each of these people were except for one little girl." The exhibit includes a "virtual reality" display and areas where people can view photos and respond to them. "Eventually we will have compiled a very complete history of this area."

Wayfarers through time have worn, and worn out, all sorts of shoes crossing and crisscrossing each other's trails on foot and on horseback. Now that the Camino Real has a stop on the information superhighway, you don't need shoes at all. And in spite of "virtual reality," the dust is still rising around us, carretas, cousins and all.

For more information contact www.nhccnm.org and www.hcfoundation.org.

Micaela Seidel is a native New Mexican from Albuquerque. She began contributing to New Mexico Magazine in 1979 and is working on a graduate degree at the University of New Mexico in American Studies.

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