Judy Baca: La Memoria De Nuestra Tierra

Judy Baca's artwork has consistently challenged dominant narratives of history that tend to erase  Chicanx and Indigenous peoples. The mural above, entitled, La Memoria de Nuestra Tierra (1996), shows the complex stories that are stored in the very land we occupy today. The title of the piece prompts us to think about the land we stand on and the changes it had overgone over the past 500 years and the way the earth has been hurt since contact. There are elements of both Indigenous peoples from mexico and the united states in the mural; the Indigenous "earth godess" is depicted with Maya or Nahua regela and then at the center of the painting there is a Kiva (Hopi ceremony).  This demonstrates our shared history now and then, filled with colonial violence but also Indigenous Resistence.

According to Baca the earth godess is shown in "three poses, asleep, awakening and militant". Beneath the earth godess we also see a crowd of people ready to fight. To me this represents a vision of a political and decolonial reawakening, one where Indigenous peoples are at the front lines of regaining their lands.The earth remembers what has been done and so do the people. I think in many ways this piece is a refelction of a brutal history but also a call to action for revoultion.