la virgencita

Professor Alicia de Gaspar Alba's lecture on the Chican@ Art Resistance and Affirmation (CARA) exhibit was eye-opening in several ways. First off, with the knowledge gained through her essay "Out of the House," I knew that the exhibit itself was a big deal and could be deemed progressive, but the reduced role of the Chicana artists left a sour and familiar taste in my mouth. Reading the essay was my first time learning about the exclusionary atmosphere of Chicano art, but I definitely was not surprised. Patriarchy, misogyny, and the reinforcement of gender norms has been an unfortunate part of the Chica@ community from the very beginning of the reclamation of the word and the inception of the movement, and it even seeped into our art. The placement of the "Feminist Visions" section of the exhibit between the homage to the past and the look to the future only reinforced the Chicana's role as furthering the race through giving birth. This is a horribly narrow, transmisogynist, and ultimately suffocating view of the Chicana. The objectives of the exhibit as education for and communication with the community and art as a form of consciousness building are well-meaning and very important for the growth and enrichment of our community, but the exclusion of half of our gente ultimately undermines these objectives. Despite these seemingly inescapable issues, the Chicana contribution to the exhibit was extremely powerful and important. The criticism of our roles being reduced to mother or revolutionary supporter or "fulana" was evident in a lot of the work, and despite our representation being horribly reduced, they still began to pave the road for future Chicanas in art. 


It goes without saying that La Virgen plays a pivotal role in the hearts of many Mexican@s and Chican@s. Whether or not there should be different interpretations of her has always been a heated debate, one that I have personally had with myself. It is interesting to me that as I get older, La Virgen has become progressively more important to me. I went to Catholic school my whole life, and grew up with a grandmother who was always been a very adamant Catholic. My parents themselves are not religious, but I always felt a special connection to La Virgen. My affection for and faith in her even survived my angsty agnostic phase in high school. I condemned the Church (still do) and denounced any affinity to God and Jesus, but you know I still wore that bracelet with La Virgen around my wrist. She is definitely omnipresent; throughout every major trauma or hardship in my life my mind has always wandered back to her. I am in full support of questioning her story and interpreting her image in different ways because ultimately it is damaging to put a figure on such a rigid pedestal. Questioning and reinterpreting makes her more accessible and possibly more relatable. I am in full support of feminist interpretations of her image; finding her image in the image of every day women is a powerful thing because I think it reinforces the notion that we all have a little bit of La Virgen in us. I genuinely believe that we all have some type of divine tendency in us, and that our ability to love and support comes out when artists interpret La Virgen as an every day woman. It's important to humanize her as well. Yolanda Lopez's piece in which she gives La Virgen legs is so important to me because it effectively reminds the viewer not to put her on a pedestal, and that she cannot be held responsible to take on the world's troubles standing still with her head down. As I grow older, I find that my dependency on her has grown, especially in times when I find I need strength. Her image is extremely comforting to me, and I put most, if not all, my faith in her. I'm not one to attend mass so much these days, but when I do decide to pray, I always conversate with La Virgen.