Chicano History / Historia Chicana

“Chicano History, painted with Sergio Hernández, Ramses Noriega, and Saul Solache, is one of the earliest Chicano murals… Chicano History‘s imagery grew out of political chaos of the times. The mural expresses the pride and determination of Chicanos, who are seeking self-expression and who, for the first time, are defining who they are in their own terms and for their own reasons. When originally painted the mural provoked considerable response, due to the graphic cannibalism depicted, but Carrillo’s section was on the left-hand side of the mural and presented- more in keeping with his proclivities- a Southwest landscape of Aztlán, the spiritual homeland of the Chicano people. Chicano History combines this politically infused Southwest scene with images representing Mexican and Chicano struggles for independence from colonialism, and against the government corruption and ‘the emasculating spirit that the Spanish conquest brought which indicts the Catholic Church.’ The Mural also shows the ‘Mexican armed revolution with two monumental figures representing the warrior and the family as the central focus of our people’ as well as ‘the spirit of the social revolution exposing the various issues of the times.”

– Tim Drescher, from the Crocker Catalogue for “Testament of the Spirit”

Images courtesy of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center