Yolanda Lopez's In Solidarity with the Women of Central America

Over the span of Yolanda Lopez’s career her art has been on topics concerning the critique of Chicana representations, gender, race, culture, (il)legality, patriarchy and other important issues within the Chicano Movement, Mexican/Mexican-American communities, and the United States at large. What I think is very easy to dismiss when we are discussing Chicanx art, El Movimiento, and Chicanx populations, is the presence of Central American narratives and lived realities within the Chicanx population.

Lopez’s piece In Solidarity with the Women from Central America not only shows a pan-ethnic solidarity between Chicanas and Central American women, but it also shows the disruption of Mexican hegemony and Mexican nationalism, both north and south of the US-Mexico-Central America borders. It also speaks against United States imperialism in Central America. The image created by Lopez shows a woman shedding what appears to be a mask. The background of the drawing shows lace, a sign of femininity and what looks like missile bombs, representing the violence that was occurring. The border of the drawing shows flowers and rifles, again juxtaposing femininity (and possibly passivity/peace) and violence. I think the shedding of the mask reads as the woman showing her true identity, which I think it can come to represent the assumption that all Latinxs are Mexican, especially in California. It also speaks to the assertion of a Central American identity within a space where Mexican hegemony is prevalent. Lopez’s creation of this work also shows her oppositional consciousness that centers the common struggle against capitalism, imperialism, racism, sexism and so on.