Arts & International Affairs: Vol. 4, No. 3, Spring 2020 | Page 20

THE AESTHETICS OF A MOVEABLE BORDER
By taking Chicano Park, the "myth" of Aztlán metamorphosed to reality.
Aztlán�the southwestern United States was the ancestral land of
the Aztecs. These ancient people migrated to the Valley of Mexico and
founded an empire whose capital was Tenochitlan, now Mexico City.
By claiming Chicano Park, the descendants of the Aztecs the Chicano
Mexicano people begin a project of historical reclamation. We have returned
to Aztlán�our home.
(Anguiano N.D.).
This echoes ideas that Mexican immigrants to the United States�who in the idea of
Aztlán trace their ancestral origins to an area near Colorado Springs, Colorado�are
returnees to their ancestral homeland, not immigrants (as expressed in Mexico-born
Chicana/o leader, Alberto Baltazar Urista’s, El Plan Espirtual de Aztlan (The Spiritual
Plan of Aztlan) which was presented at the 1969 Chicano Youth Conference in Denver
Colorado (Anaya and Lomeli 1989:1 quoted in Berelowitz 2005:327).
Historical claims about Mexican-American art’s significance were also made about Lincoln
Park in El Paso, Texas, that began in 1981:
Local artist Lupe Casillas, who has painted murals for the Ysleta Independent
School District, says that the area and the history of the center,
which includes the murals, are a reflection of Mexican American history.
“This was the first place Mexican-American artists could showcase
their art,” she says. “If they tear this center and area down, it would be a
tragedy for our history.” Casillas also says that such action would send a
message that El Paso does not respect its history.
(Montes 2014)
The clearest affirmations of this in Chicano Park and Lincoln Park are murals that depict
Aztec and other pre-Columbian Gods as well as natural elements of maize cultivation.
The abovementioned mixture of indigenous time and contemporary time is continued
in this time in a different context, an art show, “100 Years of Print Making in San Antonio:
Michael Menchacha,” which showed from October 18, 2018, through January 6,
2019, at The McNay in San Antonio, Texas. At this show, the Texas Chicano artist Michael
Menchacha displayed time juxtapositions about issues such as immigration (see
Romo 2018), which were similar in aim to those in Chicano Park in their use of indigenous
and Spanish colonial imagery in a modern context to communicate contemporary
issues. Thus, though not done in a common land setting, his work re-juxtaposes time
and space. Thus, an echo of indigenous themes in Chicano Park reverberates outside of
mural spaces and installations.
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