Week 9: Where are the [Xicana] Printmakers?

Linda Lucero, Lolita Lebron, 1978. Screenprint.

I loved reading this article. It was great to learn more about a variety of Xicana print makers and the different aesthetics they produced while all focusing around this similar reflection on political, social, ecological, and spiritual themes. Most of the Xicana printmakers make sense of the complex world, we, as Xicana/o's live in. There is also this similar essense in these prints that allows these Xicana womyn to create a new identity and pursue full equality as both a womyn and a Latina. These Xicana womyn printmakers produce feminist iconography, public culture, and multiculturalism which point out the differences in culture, religion, and vaules that reexamine this binary between different political views. 
As a Puerto Rican/Xicana (I like to call my self a "Puerto Ricana" or Xicana Rican")I really enjoyed learning about Lolita Lebron and Linda Lucero. It was interesting to read that Lolita Lebron was the leader of the Puerto Rico and imprisoned Puerto Rican political activists during the late 1970s and early 1980s when there was heavy activity about the liberation for the country of Puerto Rico. Lolita Lebron was depicted more than one by Linda Lucero--who was a San Francisco artist--as a "wom[y]n who was willing to sacrifice her life and liberty for Puerto Rican independence. In her screen print Lolita Lebron, the young activist's face and head are portrayed in a "three-quarter view" that is situated above part of the Puerto Rican flag. Over the flag is repetitive text that states, "VIVA PUERTO RICO LIBRE!". Directly underneath Lebron is a quote that states "Todos somos pequenos, solo la patria es grande y esta encarcelada" which translates into "All [of us] are small, only the mother country is great and it is imprisoned". Lebron became a figure of strength and sacrifice within a political struggle that many Xicana/o's believed echoed their own sense of internal colonization. I think that it is quite amazing that one of their most famous and notorious leaders was a womyn that resonated within the Xicana community. She not only had to struggle against "racism, economic discrimination, and sexism within the United States but also against patriarchal structures within the Chicano civil rights and arts movements, and within the Mexican American community as a whole". It is empowering to see a Puerto Rican womyn to stand by the side of Xicana's because as a Puerto Ricana/Xicana Rican, I feel so strong in my identity and it gives me more power and courage to embrace both my strong ethnicities.