Alurista | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Alberto Baltazar Urista Heredia August 8, 1947 Mexico City, Mexico |
| Occupation | Poet, activist |
| Nationality | American |
| Literary movement | Aztlán |
Alberto Baltazar Urista Heredia (born August 8, 1947), better known by his nom de plume Alurista, is an American poet and activist. [1] His work was influential in the Chicano Movement and is important to the field of Chicano poetry. [2]
Urista was born in Mexico City and attended primary school in Morelos. He went to the United States when he was thirteen, settling with his family in the border city of San Diego, California. He graduated from high school in 1965 and began studying business administration at Chapman University in Orange County, California. He disliked the field, however, and transferred to San Diego State University (SDSU) to study religion. He changed his major several times before earning a B.A. in psychology in 1970. He went on to earn an M.A. from SDSU in 1978, and his PhD in literature from the University of California-San Diego in 1983. [3] His doctoral thesis was on the fiction of Chicano lawyer and author Oscar Zeta Acosta. He has taught at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California, Escuela Tlatelolco in Denver, Colorado, and at the University of Texas at Austin. He has also lectured and read his poetry in venues throughout the world.
Urista's first experience writing poetry was as a student in Mexico, when he began writing love poems for his classmates as a way to earn money. He began writing poetry for publication in 1966. In 1967, he co-founded the SDSU chapter of MEChA, the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, ("Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán") and organized students in favor of the United Farm Workers grape boycott. He held several jobs, including working for the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) program, part of the Lyndon B. Johnson administration's War on Poverty.
In 1969, he attended the First National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference, hosted by Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales's Crusade for Justice, and read a poem to the attendees. The poem so moved the youth present that they adopted it as the preamble of the Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, the political manifesto of the Chicano Movement. Upon returning to San Diego, he helped to establish the Chicano Studies department at SDSU.
During the mid-1990s, he traveled and performed with the Taco Shop Poets. However, he has expressed disapproval of the new, Hip hop-influenced style of Chicano poetry. Regarding a poetry slam hosted by the Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana (MACLA), he said, "That's not Chicano poetry, [...] It's nice that they're doing it, but it's not part of the tradition of Chicano literature." [4]
As an active member of the San Diego-area Chicano Movement, Urista was instrumental in the 1970 takeover of Chicano Park and in the foundation of the Centro Cultural de la Raza, a cultural center. It was at this time that he began using the name "Alurista". The assumption of a pen name was as much for anonymity as it was for artistry. According to Urista, "My apartment was shot up by the Minutemen. I didn't want these people to be able to associate my last name with my family, so I changed it." [4] However, the name change was also a reflection of his Marxist philosophy: "The notion was to synthesize--to bring things together. So I tried to do that with my name." [4]
In the 1970s, Alurista organized the Festival Floricanto, an annual event that convened Chicano writers and critics to share and critique their work.
In addition to his own poetry, Alurista has written works of non-fiction, literary criticism, and many essays on Chicano culture and history. He is credited with popularizing the Chicano Movement-era concept of "Aztlán" and imbuing it with a spiritual dimension through his poetry. His Spanish-language writings were among the first by an American to be taken seriously by critics from hispanophone countries. In the United States, he was one of the first critically acclaimed poets to mix the Spanish and English languages.
Alurista has been married twice and has four children. He spent the years 1995 – 1998 in a "spiritual meandering", about which he said, "Being an artist is not all creativity. There are periods of self-destructiveness. You internalize things that destroy you. You end up blaming others for your pain--whatever or whoever those 'others' happen to be--which makes you a resentful person. That resentment turns inward, and you end up eating yourself up." [4] In 1998, after family problems and rumors of substance abuse, Alurista left his longtime home of San Diego for San Jose, California, attracted by its active cultural arts scene.
Spiritually, Urista identifies as both a Buddhist [4] and a Roman Catholic, as well as acknowledging indigenous practices such as the sweat lodge. Politically, he identifies himself as a "...socialist. With a definite Mayan bent to everything." [4]
Alurista identifies as both a Buddhist [4] and a Roman Catholic. He admires Catholicism for its rituals, and Buddhism for its meditative practices. He says that he also engages in Native American practices, and is "connected to [his] Father Sun and Mother Earth and [his] brothers and sisters, trees and ants and what not.. [he's] able to do things that show [him] that everything is connected, man." [4]
Alurista has received numerous awards and has made his mark in the Chicano community. He has read his poetry all over the world, from Mexico, to the United States, to Europe. He was also producer and subject of the video, "Torn in Two", which featured four Chicano poets. The video aired in 1984 and won an Emmy. Alurista's work is being collected in the "Mexican American Archives at the Benson Collection: A Guide for Users", University of Texas, Austin. He is a professor and scholar, having obtained his Ph.D. in Spanish and Latin American literature, he was awarded the Jr. MacArthur Chair in Spanish by Colorado College in 1984 for his teaching excellence. He is the cofounder of multiple academic and community organizations, such as Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan at San Diego State, Concilio for la Justicia, Centro Cultural de la Raza, and the Department of Chicano Studies at San Diego State University. His papers are held at University of Texas, Austin and at California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives.
Aztlán is the ancestral home of the Aztec peoples. The word Aztecah is the Nahuatl word for "people from Aztlán", from which was derived the word Aztec. Aztlán is mentioned in several ethnohistorical sources dating from the colonial period, and while they each cite varying lists of the different tribal groups who participated in the migration from Aztlán to central Mexico, the Mexica who later founded Mexico-Tenochtitlan are mentioned in all of the accounts.
M.E.Ch.A. is a US-based organization that seeks to promote Chicano unity and empowerment through political action.
José Montoya was a poet and an artist from Sacramento, California. He was one of the most influential Chicano bilingual poets. He has published many well-known poems in anthologies and magazines, and served as Sacramento's poet laureate.
El Plan de Santa Bárbara: A Chicano Plan for Higher Education is a 155-page document, which was written in 1969 by the Chicano Coordinating Council on Higher Education. Drafted at the University of California Santa Barbara, it is a blueprint for the inception of Chicana/o studies programs in colleges and universities throughout the US. The Chicano Coordinating Council expresses political mobilization to be dependent upon political consciousness, thus the institution of education is targeted as the platform to raise political conscious amongst Chicanos and spur higher learning to political action. The Plan proposes a curriculum in Chicano studies, the role of community control in Chicano education and the necessity of Chicano political independence. The document was a framework for educational and curriculum goals for the Chicano movements within the institution of education, while being the foundation for the Chicano student group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA).
The Plan Espiritual de Aztlán was a pro-indigenist manifesto advocating Chicano nationalism and self-determination for Mexican Americans. It was adopted by the First National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference, a March 1969 convention hosted by Rodolfo Gonzales's Crusade for Justice in Denver, Colorado.
Chicanismo emerged as the cultural consciousness behind the Chicano Movement. The central aspect of Chicanismo is the identification of Chicanos with their Indigenous American roots to create an affinity with the notion that they are native to the land rather than immigrants. Chicanismo brought a new sense of nationalism for Chicanos that extended the notion of family to all Chicano people. Barrios, or working-class neighborhoods, became the cultural hubs for the people. It created a symbolic connection to the ancestral ties of Mesoamerica and the Nahuatl language through the situating of Aztlán, the ancestral home of the Aztecs, in the southwestern United States. Chicanismo also rejected Americanization and assimilation as a form of cultural destruction of the Chicano people, fostering notions of Brown Pride. Xicanisma has been referred to as an extension of Chicanismo.
The Chicano Movement, also referred to as El Movimiento, was a social and political movement in the United States that worked to embrace a Chicano/a identity and worldview that combated structural racism, encouraged cultural revitalization, and achieved community empowerment by rejecting assimilation. Chicanos also expressed solidarity and defined their culture through the development of Chicano art during El Movimiento, and stood firm in preserving their religion.
José Antonio "Tony" Burciaga was an American Chicano artist, poet, and writer who explored issues of Chicano identity and American society.
The Centro Cultural de la Raza is a non-profit organization with the specific mission to create, preserve, promote and educate about Chicano, Mexicano, Native American and Latino art and culture. It is located in Balboa Park in San Diego, California. The cultural center supports and encourages the creative expression “of the indigenous cultures of the Americas.” It is currently a member of the American Alliance of Museums.
Chicano poetry is a subgenre of Chicano literature that stems from the cultural consciousness developed in the Chicano Movement. Chicano poetry has its roots in the reclamation of Chicana/o as an identity of empowerment rather than denigration. As a literary field, Chicano poetry emerged in the 1960s and formed its own independent literary current and voice.
Juan Felipe Herrera is an American poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist. Herrera was the 21st United States Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017. He is a major figure in the literary field of Chicano poetry.
Alfred Arteaga was a Mexican-American poet, writer, and scholar. He was noted as an important poet of the Chicano Movement, who also contributed to the foundations postcolonial and ethnic studies.
Alejandro Morales is a Mexican-American writer of fiction and poetry. He is an Emeritus Professor of Chicano and Latino Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He has published seven novels, three novellas, and one collection of poetry.
William Anthony Nericcio, aka Memo, is a Chicano literary theorist, cultural critic, American Literature scholar, and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University. Currently Director of the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences program, he is the author of the award-winning Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America,The Hurt Business: Oliver Mayer's Early Works Plus, and Homer From Salinas: John Steinbeck's Enduring Voice for the Californias. Nericcio is also a graphic designer, creating book covers, film posters, and websites, most notably for SDSU Press and Hyperbole Books, where he oversees the production of cultural studies tomes. His Text-Mex Gallery blog investigates the pathological interrogation of Mexican, Latina/o, Chicana/o, "Hispanic," Mexican-American, and Latin American stereotypes, political, and cultural issues. He is also the curator of the text-image exhibition entitled “MEXtasy,” which has been displayed at numerous institutions, including University of Michigan and South Texas College. Currently working on his follow-up book to Tex[t]-Mex, Eyegiene: Permutations of Subjectivity in the Televisual Age of Sex and Race, his most recent publication is Talking #browntv: Latinas and Latinos on the Screen, co-authored with Frederick Luis Aldama, for the Ohio State University Press.
Leroy V. Quintana is an American poet, and Vietnam Veteran.
Alma Luz Villanueva is an American poet, short story writer, and novelist.
Julian S. Garcia has been involved in Chicano literature since the late 1970s when the San Antonio arts and politics journal Caracol had its offices on West Commerce Street in San Antonio, Texas. In 1985, Garcia became one of Caracol's associate editors. He was also an Associate editor of ViAztlan, an international journal of ideas and philosophy. A deconstructionist with a penchant for Aristotelian logic and a mentor to Tejano writers, Garcia has a written articles and editorials under a nom-de-plume.
Anna Nieto-Gomez is a scholar, journalist, and author who was a central part of the early Chicana movement. She founded the feminist journal, Encuentro Femenil, in which she and other Chicana writers addressed issues affecting the Latina community, such as childcare, reproductive rights, and the feminization of poverty.
This is a Mexican American bibliography. This list consists of books, and journal articles, about Mexican Americans, Chicanos, and their history and culture. The list includes works of literature whose subject matter is significantly about Mexican Americans and the Chicano/a experience. This list does not include works by Mexican American writers which do not address the topic, such as science texts by Mexican American writers.
Chicano Youth Liberation Conference was a conference held in Denver, Colorado in March 1969. It is also called the Denver Youth Conference. This was the first large scale gathering of Chicano/a youth to discuss issues of oppression, discrimination, and injustice. Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales and the Crusade for Justice were the main organizers, and they drafted and presented "El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan" at the conference, which played a major part in the national Chicano movement.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
