Cervantes, Alejandra

Hey y'all! My name is Alejandra Cervantes and I am a senior transfer Mathematics/Computer Science student. Although I was born and raised in Yuba City, CA (home of the world's smallest mountain range!), my parents initially lived in Los Angeles when they immigrated to the United States from Mexico in the 80s, and so I feel strong ties and love for this city. I'm taking this class because, as a result of my first Chicanx Studies 10A class, I became enthralled by Chicanx artists like Judy Baca and Patssi Valdez, and am excited by the prospect of learning more about artists like them.

In her essay "It's Not the Santa in my Fe, It's About the Santa Fe in my Santa," Alma Lopez challenges the Eurocentric narrative of la Virgen de Guadalupe, a powerful and enduring symbol in Mexican/Chicanx culture, and explores the re-imagination of her in a, perhaps more honest, indigenous light. This new conception of la Virgen de Guadalupe is significant in that it reappropriates her as an act of resistance by an indigenous people who were enduring atrocities at the hand of Spanish, Roman Catholic colonists, and asserts indigenous artistic and revolutionary ability. Not only that, but Lopez leverages the cultural connotations of la Virgen as a symbol that permeates Chicanx culture in her own artwork to defy norms of sexual orientation, sexual violence, the virtuousness of virginity, and more.