Santos, Vladimir De Jesus

Hello my name is Vladimir De Jesus Santos and I am a Chican@ Studies/History double major/ Film minor. I am primarily a Filmmaker, although I have been also been an active Illustrator and Musician for the past decade, apart from being a scholar. I've been actively creating all sorts of absurdities since a young age. One of my recent satirical endeavors is my YouTube channel, ImportedTV where we provide social commentary on the experience of 1st generation Latin Americans with immigrant parents. I would also consider myself a serious filmmaker as I'm currently documenting first person accounts of the Civil War in El Salvador that took place from the mid 1970's to the late 1980's. I've completed the first piece in this series, titled Aqui Estoy, and I am looking to my education here at UCLA to further my path as a Latino documentary filmmaker.

In the essay, "Out of the House, the Halo, and the Whore's Mask: The Mirror of Malinchisimo", Gaspar de Alba discusses the importance of acknowledging gender as it relates to class and race in progressive social causes, such as feminism. This is especially complicated when we consider the Third World Feminism that arose out of the critique of "White Feminism" and how many Chicana's chose art to express their issues not only with male privilege in art spaces but also amongst women themselves that hail from various races and classes. The question that came to mind after reading this piece is; how do ethnic and sexual identities change the prevailing oppressive patriarchal system that we live in, especially within spaces of artistic expression? If "Chicana lesbian feminist, whose theoretical writings have most impacted the field of Chicana/o Studies, exhort us to push the gender question further", does that mean that the art that comes from this perspective is the most effective way to challenge the existing gender, class, sexuality, and race norms?