In the 1970s, East Los Angeles was placed under excessive police control that bordered on militant occupation. It was under these strained conditions that Patssi Valdez, the feminist Latinx painter, was born and raised. Surrounded by the police brutality, poor education system, and racism that plagued the Latinx community, Valdez began making art with her […]
Read MoreDuring the Cold War, the U.S. government partnered with the Catholic church to extract some 14,000 children from Cuba through a covert program called, “Operation Peter Pan.” That is how Ana Mendieta—the prolific artist—born in La Habana, ended up in Iowa in 1961, at 12 years old. Mendieta spent her first weeks in America between […]
Read MoreSusan La Flesche was only eight years old when she first witnessed someone die. La Flesche was born on the Omaha reservation in 1865, where as a child, she watched an elderly Native woman fall ill. A messenger was sent for a white agency doctor four times, but he never came. The sick woman died […]
Read MoreOne of early California’s wealthiest self-made entrepreneurs was a Black woman nicknamed Biddy. She was also a key figure in the making of the city of Los Angeles. As a midwife, she delivered hundreds of babies using the herbal remedies her grandmother taught her. She saved her money and bought land, put commercial real estate […]
Read MoreWe spoke to Bomba Estereo’s Simon Mejia ahead of the band’s performance at the 2019 Tropicalia music festival in Los Angeles county. Bomba Estereo, a Colombian band founded in 2005, has enjoyed over a decade of international and viral success with their fusion of electronic and traditional sounds. We spoke with one half of the […]
Read MoreThe American Western and its cowboy is a myth. In the classic, Hollywood Western—and in the literature it was based on—a white cowboy protagonist surrounded by untamed wilderness and unhinged outlaws saves the day. The genre seemed to embody all the notions that our young country idealized; freedom, the self-determination of men and the promise […]
Read More