Using Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s notion of Alter-Native Cultures as a loose framework, this panel looks at how Chican@s perform, uncover, and (re)write the narrative of Los Angeles. The presentations on this panel demonstrate... [ view full abstract ]
Using Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s notion of Alter-Native Cultures as a loose framework, this panel looks at how Chican@s perform, uncover, and (re)write the narrative of Los Angeles. The presentations on this panel demonstrate that Chicanism@ in Los Angeles is not merely a subculture, but an Alter-Native culture that works against being erased, excluded, and marginalized by “mainstream” culture across Greater Los Angeles.
Denise M. Sandoval’s paper, “Bajito y Suavecito/Cruising through the City of Angels: Lowrider Culture and Creating Community in Los Angeles from the 1960s through the 1970s,” uses oral histories with Chicano and Black lowriders to examine the cultural interconnections in the 1960s to the 1970s through car culture. The politics of bajito y suavecito has been the mantra that has defined this cultural space and it is more than just car aesthetics. Sandoval explores how, by using their cars as canvases for creative expression within the urban landscape, lowrider owners document the rich and vibrant social and cultural history of Los Angeles. In this way, the use of cars and boulevards is a tactic to create “community-enabling space”.
Emma Cordova’s presentation, “Rasquache or Die!: Chican@/Latin@ Punks Presente!,” explores the implications of being a punk for Chican@s/ Latin@s who are already at the margin. Exploring these complex identities, unearthed stories of misogyny and homophobia as patriarchy has seeped through an allegedly anti-status quo scene. However, there is hope as Chican@/Latin@ punks continue to build community locally and transnationally. Through the gaze of punks active since the 90’s and the newcomers, Cordova examines the development of consciousness, yet the reproduction of systems of oppression.
Eddy Alvarez Jr’s paper, “Choreographing the Queer City: Performing Community and Self in the Immigrant Rights Protests of 2006 in Los Angeles,” discusses how queer activists at the 2006 immigrant rights marches in LA, “reterritorialized” the city streets, charting alternative, urban cartographies and enacting “performances of memory.” As Keta “Marie” Miranda argues, “Watching and participating, relating between spectators and participants, provide a structure for producing community identity.” Alvarez argues that through these performances, protesters used their bodies, voices and memories while choreographing “community identity.”
Trevor Boffone’s presentation, “Queer Eastside Latinidad: Coming Out, Brown & Out in Boyle Heights,” examines the Brown & Out Theater Festival and LGBTQ performance activism in Boyle Heights. Boffone argues that Brown & Out recovers queer Latinidad in such a way that forges a sociopolitical performance space where queer Latin@ bodies become the locus of how alternative alternative identities can be (re)claimed. In this way, this presentation views queer Latin@ bodies as critical frameworks for how identity is shaped, remixed, and performed in order to hint toward the future of the Eastside.
In sum, this panel offers a glimpse into Chican@ alter-Native cultures in Los Angeles by foregrounding four case studies that illustrate how Chican@s and Latin@s fit within the fabric of Greater Los Angeles from the 1960s to the present.
