Viewing page 80 of 90

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

figure. Like a hippie, he was an outsider, a rebel. The Pachuco became a Romanticized figure." (9) Group members sought to give a face to the culturally excluded. They also utilized Pop and Surrealist forms, devices, and strategies to subvert stereotypes. The group went by the name Los Pintores de Aztlán beginning in September of 1970, (10) before changing its name to Los Pintores de la Nueva Raza in 1971. Although Tlacuilo is sometimes listed as a group name utilized prior to Con Safo, it was apparently a name utilized for an annual exhibition. (11)

From the start, the organization's emphasis was on making art, with less interest in bringing art to the people (in the form of murals, posters, or performance), instructing children how to paint, or engaging in direct political action than the California Chicano groups. These issues were raised in discussions with community activists and groups such as the Brown Berets, who sometimes addressed meetings. Cantú advocated a higher degree of political engagement, but found himself in an increasingly isolated position. Alamazán and Esquivel recall that they feared losing their jobs if the group became associated with the most radical organizations. In any case, group members wanted to be artists above all. According to Reyes, there was a "split" concerning the fundamental nature of the organization: Cantú said that we should put out brushes down, take up arms, and initiate the armed revolution....Cantú held that the role if the artist was obsolete." Cantú replies: if I ever said that, it was a cabula [a jest]. I have never owned a gun." Cantú, who enjoyed tweaking his more conservative colleagues, apparently did make such a statement, because Almazán recalls being [his] stupefied upon hearing those words. Cantú counters that "maybe they didn't want me because I brought in barrio artists. Everyone [else] wanted to be an academician, to be in the universities." His desire to broaden the scope of the organization was not shared by other members.

Con Safo
At the time Con Safo began in 1971, Reyes was a student of Mel Casas, who was the chairman of the Art department at San Antonio College. Reyes approached Casas and either invited him to join his group of to start a new one. (12) Reyes says that El Grupo, Los Pintores de Atzlán, Los Pintores de la Nueva Raza, and Con Safo constituted a continuous entity which successfully utilized these different names. By this account, Casas was invited to join a functioning group. (13) Casas, on the other hand, says he thought that Con Safo's predecessor was defunct or inoperative, and he assumed that they were forming a new group. In any case, the six founding members of El Group remained active throughout all reorganizations, up to the Con Safo period. (14)

Casas proposed the name Con Safo, served as president of the group, and was responsible for the bulk of the writings associated with it. Reyes moved to Michigan in 1972, where he pursued his MFA degree. Reyes, who resigned from the group while he was in Michigan, did not return to San Antonio until January 1975. (15) The period during which Reyes and Casas were both actively involved in the group was a particularly fecund one, which Esquivel characterizes as "electrifying." As Esquivel pits it "Felipe and Mel were the generals...the rest of us were just foot soldiers." Esquivel believes that the group dynamic was diminished when Reyes left for Michigan:"Felipe was the one driving the wagon, without his presence here, the group lacked the spark of enthusiasm that only Felipe could provide. Mel was effective as an intellectual, but the group was just not the same without Felipe."

The designation Con Safo, which is derived from Pachuco slang, was adopted on December 19, 1971, and was utilized until the group ceased to dfunction as a formal entity. (16) C/S, the abbreviated form of Con Safo, is commonly utilized as a warning to guard graffiti and murals from defacement. In this context, Con Safo means "the same to you" or "forbidden to touch." (17) Casas wrote the Brown Paper Report, a statement presented to the group December 19, 1971; it gave more than twenty definitions for Con Safo, perhaps the most important of which was "to be free from danger." (18) Reyes notes that "con safe" was the barrio equivalent of King's X: "it was a way of exempting yourself....in our hands it became synonymous with artistic license. It had the advantage of being understood by all, and, at the same time, it was culturally specific."

Casas holds that the group sought to "create new ideas so that we could take control of our own destiny. We wanted equal opportunity for ourselves as artists. That was my main frame of reference: to bring our artists into the mainstream. We made demands, created controversy, and got shows in the city and elsewhere....Con Safo was a great success. It was the mortar that held people together, people who had common experiences and the need to assert their ideas." Casas maintains that in San Antonio their efforts were met with "more surprise and astonishment than hostility," for the art establishment had not foreseen that the status quo

(1) All united quotes and statements derive
from interviews conducted between September
and December, 1999. I have also drawn heavily
on documents and notes in the possession of
José Esquivel. When I began researching this
topic, there was no public archive on Con Safo
in San Antonio. Dennis G. Medina, the new
Special Collections Librarian at UTSA, has
begun a Con Safo collection, and welcomes any
documents (originals or photocopies) relating to the group.

(2) The single most visible and comprehensive
showcase for Chicano art was the traveling exhi
bition which opened in UCLA's Wight Art Gallery
in 1990. It highlighted three Chicano groups, all
based in California: Asco, Los Four, and The
Royal Chicano Air Force. The catalogue remains
a primary reference on Chicano art. See Richard Griswold del Castillo, Teresa McKenna, and Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano, eds., Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965-1985 (Los Angeles: UCLA, 1991).


But, while the group created considerable
controversy and received substantial press
coverage, it rarely registered on the primary
scholarly radar.

(3) Cantú maintains that he has been creating
Chicano art since the 1950s.

(4) The program showed San Antonio celebrating its two-hundred fiftieth anniversary, then
noted that "A quarter of San Antonio's Mexican-
Americans, one hundred thousand people, are
hungry all the time.

The following dialogue was transcribed at
the Museum of Television and Radio in New
York City.
Ploch: Well, why are they [children] not get-
ting enough food? Because the father won't
work. And I mean won't work! If they won't work,
do you expect the taxpayer to raise all the kids?

Culhane: Are the children . . . able to learn
properly in school?

Ploch: Well, what do you mean learn proper-
ly in school? Do you really need school....other than, say, an eighth-grade education? That's where--another thing people keep talking about- education, college education. It's not necessary.

Culhane: And what do you do about the children who are not getting enough to eat?

Ploch: Well, I don't know about them, because that's really the problem of the father....But you'll always have that condition....because some men just ain't worth a dime....

(5) 1967 is normally given as the founding date,
though an undated flyer from c. 1970 (the group
name is Pintores de Aztlán) cites 1968: Also
Hunger in America and the first group show
were presented in 1968. Esquivel says both
dates have validity, depending upon whether or
not informal discussions held in late 1967 are
viewed as the origin of the group.

(6) I call these as the six founding members. All
were from the San Antonio barrio and attended
either Lanier or Technical Vocational High
School. Reyes, Almazán, Cantú, and Esquivel
met with me on December 12, 1999, and resolved the major contradictions that had arisen during the course of individual interviews.

(7) This statement contradicts Jacinto Quirarte's characterization that the group "...did not even begin with a clear Chicano identity"(Exhibitions of Chicano Art: 1965 to the Present, in Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965-1985, p. 167).