Thursday, December 5, 2013

Recognition of Tenayuca



I ultimately settled on wheatpaste over a mural or a traditional painting on canvas for several reasons.  First of all, my goal is not to further confine Tenayuca to the past, but bring her and her work forward to be recognized in the present.  The two works commemorating her that I discussed in this post- the monument and the children's book- while they are important, still confine her to the past.  They instead celebrate her life, calling her achievements victories without recognition that the same issues she fought continue today on a large scale. 

By placing Tenayuca in the public eye among a modern art form, I hope to create a parallel between the work in her past and the work that is being done by activists today. I will not block out a section for her figure among the graffiti in the background, as one would do in a mural, but paste her figure directly onto the painting so she is imposed over the background rather than separated from it by a barrier that I create.

The location and medium that I have chosen hold significance not only in their availability to the public, but also in the history of graffiti and street art.  Both of these forms, particularly graffiti, are inseparable form themes of poverty, unemployment, and capitalism. Aerosol graffiti was born in New York City in the late 70's/ early 80's. In many ways, graffiti was a creative response to a repressive and neglected environment.  In a city where young people saw their neighborhoods left to deteriorate, the response was to reclaim public space through art. 

This deterioration and neglect is directly linked to Tenayuca's work through capitalism. Capitalism is a powerful force in modern society, a force which ate up public space in New York City and beyond, and a system which, in its modern form, thrives off of unemployment and exploited labor. When there is a pool of unemployed labor sitting in the inner city, a minimum wage worker has very little bargaining power because his or her employer sees that person as disposable. Tenayuca was dealing with this very situation: exploited labor.

With all this in mind, I ultimately hope to continue this project on my own time, expanding it and making its message more and more relevant to modern society.  Soon in the future, I plan to go back to the graffiti wall with not one but a whole series of images of Tenayuca, each with a different sign relating to modern labor struggles.  The examples are numerous.  Even just over the last year, my own university has seen backlash against its plans to privatize university services that would result in job loss for many custodial and food service workers.  More recently, fast food employees have been protesting or going on strike across the country. Debates over minimum wage increases rage on, and Walmart hosts a food drive for the employees who they pay too little to afford enough for Thanksgiving.

Tenayuca's work is still highly relevant. 

Wheatpaste Final!

Thanks to the great weather this afternoon, I finally got to go put up my wheatpaste.

I chose this spot on the wall since no one had a nice new piece there. It isn't very visible from the street, so not many people do serious work there.



Since printing the image in one large piece would be too expensive at the print shops nearby, I had to print the image on 12 separate pieces of paper and assemble them myself.

Here is the final image, before I painted text on the sign. I almost didn't paint the rest of the text on since I liked the minimalistic call to action.


Here is the image with the rest of the text.

Just as I finished putting it up, a few people came by and asked about her, so I gladly explained who she was. It's good to see that people are already curious about her!

Due to time constraints, I only pasted one image of Tenayuca instead of a series, but I plan to continue this project after this course has ended. I will probably end up simplifying her image into either a stencil or a more simple black and white wheatpaste, but retain the red lettering on the sign.  My next plan is to do a series of 3, perhaps more, each with a different sign that highlights current labor issues.


Wheatpaste

Due to time constraints, I've settled on creating an image in Photoshop and wheatpasting it up. Following Hanaa el Degham's example, I will also be bringing charcoal and a little paint with me to see about doing a mixed media piece.

Here is my current design:

The background is white, but my plan is to cut her out and wheatpaste her directly onto the wall. More words will be filled in below her sign so it reads "Huelga! No trabajen por 6¢!" which in English translates to "Strike! We will not work for 6¢!" 

The sign that I will paint is based on the ones held by these workers.

 This refers to the wage cuts that caused the pecan shellers to strike. As Tenayuca noted in her interview, payment for 1lb of shelled pecan halves was lowered from 7¢ to 6¢, reducing an already atrociously low salary.

In my research, I found previous art honoring Emma Tenayuca. In December 2011, a state marker commemorating Tenayuca's achievements was dedicated in San Antonio.  The article discusses a little about Tenayuca's history and activism, applauding her for leading "a movement that fought deplorable working conditions, discrimination and unfair wages on behalf of the city's working poor.”  It also mentions a children's book that was written about Tenayuca called "No Es Justo" which conveys her strong moral sense of justice1.

Sources:
1. Elaine Ayala, "Marker to Honor Labor Leader," San Antonio Express (San Antonio, Tx), Dec. 12, 2011, http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Marker-to-honor-labor-leader-2416153.php#next.

Image Credit:
Emma Tenayuca, "Living History: Emma Tenayuca Tells Her Story," Texas Observer, Oct. 28, 1983, 15.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

The Pecan Sheller's Strike

San Antonio was the center of the pecan shelling industry in Texas.  Half of Texas's pecan grew near the city, whose large labor force made it the obvious choice for pecan shelling factories to be built in.  The factories rid themselves of machinery and instead turned to the cheap labor of the working poor of San Antonio.

The Pecan Shellers' Strike took place on January 31, 1938 when pecan shellers walked off the job and began a 3 month strike to protest a decrease in already pitiful wages.  However, it was not just lower wages that prompted the strike, but also the dreadful conditions inside the factory. Lighting and ventilation were poor and indoor toilets non-existent.  The results of this were not just worker dissatisfaction, but also rampant disease.  Poor ventilation in a room filled with dust from shelling pecans led to San Antonio having a very high rate of tuberculosis. The strike gained the support of about 12,000 workers.

Emma Tenayuca volunteered herself to organize the strike, which was led by Donald Henderson1. As Tenayuca notes in her Texas Observer article, she experienced difficulties with the leadership, particularly the CIO, which wanted her removed from organizing the strike due to her affiliation with the Communist party2.  The whole strike was believed by some, including the San Antonio chief of police, to be a "red plot" by the Communists.  The dispute was eventually settled when the shelling plant agreed to pay the workers 7-8 cents per hour rather than 6.  This wage was further increased when federal minimum wage was established at 25 cents 3.

However, this did not solve Tenayuca's problems of affiliation with the Communist Party.  As the continued her work, she became more and more despised by San Antonio's anti-immigrant forces.  In 1939, she planned a Communist Party meeting to be held in the Municipal Auditorium.  In a fit of rage, a mob of 5,000 people attacked the auditorium, and Tenayuca had to flee to safety.  Tenayuca began to receive death threats and could no longer find work. Eventually, for the sake of her mental health and economic stability, she left San Antonio for California, and only returned 20 years later as a teacher4.

Sources:
1. Richard Croxdale, "Pecan-Shellers' Strike," Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/oep01), accessed December 1, 2013. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
2.Emma Tenayuca, "Living History: Emma Tenayuca Tells Her Story," Texas Observer, Oct. 28, 1983, 10.
3.Croxdale, "Strike."
4.University of Texas in San Antonio, "Texans One and All- Emma Tenayuca," YouTube video, 8:11, Dec. 10, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxr2RaTeYuA.

Institute for Texan Cultures

UT San Antonio has some really wonderful resources via their Institute for Texan Cultures collection. I've already found an interview with Emma Tenayuca ca. 1987-88.  Here is the interview for anyone who might be interested in watching it.

Emma Tenayuca in front of a jail cell, San Antonio, 1937.


The interview was a fascinating way to gain insight into Tenayuca as a person and hear her personal experiences, as well as get a glimpse of her no-nonsense personality. In the interview, Tenayuca emphasizes the profound poverty she witnessed during the Great Depression, telling the interviewer several times that she didn't feel he truly understood the kind of destitution she witnessed, then going back to reemphasize with another story.

She also described the work conditions, noting multiple failed strikes from the laundry workers, cement workers, and others.  Pay was terrible, and even work such as delicate embroidery saw no more than $1.25 per dozen articles of baby clothing. Pecan shelling, she noted was temporary seasonal work with dismal pay.  The strikes occurred when pay for one pound of shelled pecan halves was reduced from 7¢ to 6¢. When asked about her personal or philosophical reasons for leading the strikes, she emphatically answered "food!"

A bit of a comical side note, but I thought it worth mentioning that about 30 minutes in, the interviewer tried to lighten things up by throwing a pecan shell joke into his question. Emma Tenayuca was not remotely amused1.

Screencapture from the interview

Tenayuca's attitude, although serious, is very telling of the situation in which the grew up.  From an early age, she was exposed to politics, as her father used to take her to rallies2. She describes the position her race put her in as she grew up as an observer of racism, immigrant harassment, and the negligent "attitude of the establishment" that led her to activism3.  As she grew older, the became involved with labor organizers and activist leaders, later becoming involved herself with these groups4.  It was this involvement that led her to her famous Pecan Shellers Strike.

Near the end of her life, Tenayuca suffered from Alzheimer's disease.  Fortunately, her story is preserved through formats such as the interview above and books in which she had a personal hand.  One such book is Martha Cotera's book over the labor movement, on which she consulted Tenayuca5.

Sources:

1. Emma Tenayuca, interviewed by Louis R. Torres, José Angel Gutiérrez Papers at UTSA Digital Collections, 1988. http://digital.utsa.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15125coll9/id/3292.
2. Emma Tenayuca, "Living History: Emma Tenayuca Tells Her Story," Texas Observer, Oct. 28, 1983, 8.
3. Tenayuca, "History," 8-9.
4. Tenayuca, "History," 9.
5. David Uhler, "Labor activist called city's heroine - Tenayuca is praised at funeral for her passion and courage,"San Antonio Express, July 28, 1999, http://docs.newsbank.com.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu.

Photo Credit:

1. "Emma Tenayuca Standing Inside Jail," Zinn Education Project, 1937, http://zinnedproject.org/materials/thats-not-fair-no-es-justo/.

Tenayuca as a Feminist

The importance of Tenayuca as a female activist cannot be overlooked. The role of an activist and organizer is incredibly difficult regardless of gender, but the task becomes all the more difficult when the person attempting to organize is a woman. It is much more common now to see women assume leadership roles (although sexism is still a powerful force against progress) but Emma Tenayuca’s ability to organize so effectively and gain such powerful support as a woman in the 1930’s is truly admirable. This drew her to me over other male activist and radicals studied over the semester. Despite her position as a Latina and a female, Tenayuca was such a powerful leader that she was widely seen as dangerous by anti-immigration and anti-union forces. Tenayuca ended up leaving Texas over concerns for her safety and economic stability due to the hatred she faced from these oppositional groups 2.

Reflecting upon her life, the chaplain at her funeral remembered that “at a time when society gave great privilege to the male voice and subjugated the female voice,” Emma Tenayuca spoke out and was listened to 1. During the Pecan Sheller's Strike, Tenayuca organized and worked with groups that had quite a large number of female leadership positions. The Comisíon Pro-Conferencia (2/3 women leaders) and the Strike Committee (2/3 women leaders) had female majorities, and the strikers and union themselves were mostly made up of women 3






1. Gloria Ramfrez, "Emma Tenayuca," La Voz de Esperanza, September 1999, 2.
2. Roberto R. Calderón and Emilio Zamora, "Manuela Solis Sager and Emma Tenayuca: A Tribute," in La Voz de Esperanza, edited by Gloria Ramírez, September 1999, 6. 
3. Calderón, "Tenayuca," 6.

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Planning Continued

I found a short article by Claire Stokoe that covers about 100 years of propaganda posters and protest art. Here are a couple that caught my attention.


Strakhov Braslavskij




El Lissitzky

In working on a paper for another class, I came across the work of Egyptian graffiti artist Hanaa El Degham, whose expressive style and combination of charcoal and paint is unlike anything I have ever seen in graffiti. 

"Pyramid of Crisis"

"Pyramid of Crisis" detail


"Pyramid of Crisis" detail

Obviously the styles are very different, but I would really like to capture more of the fluidity and slightly desperate nature of El Degham's work.  This mural was inspired by a news story she saw that contrasted long lines for gas to fill women's cooking gas canisters contrasted with no line at all at the polls. This took place during parliamentary elections and to El Degham displayed not only the issues of gender in Egypt, but also of a state that was not meeting the needs of its people1.

Both of these themes ties in closely with Tenayuca's work, and a move away from the state-mandated propaganda would be more reflective of her life and radicalism.

I also have a couple of color palettes worked out. Since the wall in the back will of course be very colorful, I want to work with a lot of dark colors and just overlay a figure over the background. 

1.

2.


I initially planned to whitewash an area and paint a full detailed background, but I've decided that if my goal is to bring Tenayuca into modern life, I should instead transpose her figure onto what already exists.



Sources:
1. Gröndahl, Mia. Revolution Graffiti: Street Art of the New Egypt. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2012, 55.

Image Credit:
Hanaa El Degham. "Pyramid of Crisis." Painting. 2012. Suzee in the City. http://suzeeinthecity.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/street-art-on-mohamed-mahmoud-photos/ (Accessed Nov. 30, 2013).

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Mural Planning

As I research, I am planning the mural I will create. I plan to paint at Austin's only legal graffiti wall, Castle Hill (HOPE Outdoor Gallery.) I have heard rumors from local graffiti writers that the site is being torn down and developed into expensive apartments in January, but I sincerely hope this is not true. Despite its reputation as a city that fosters creativity, Austin is surprisingly lacking in public art spaces such as this.

Due to Emme Tenayuca's affiliation with the communist party, I began my research by looking at Soviet propaganda posters. The powerful visuals and colors of Soviet posters have always fascinated me, and I wanted to create a mural in a similar style, emulating the movement and action suggested in them. In focusing on older posters, I also hope to reflect Emma Tenayuca's period of activism, particularly the 30's Pecan Sheller's Strike.







From here, I explored other posters from Emma Tenayuca's activism period. Both of these are from around the time of WWII.





I feel that I have pretty poor results so far. Coming up with a mural design in the middle of exams and final papers is tough.



studies of poster line work and composition






I am debating between a very simple image that focuses on the figure of Tenayuca herself or an image that attempts to incorporate some of her work and vision into the piece. Either way, I want to suggest the prominence of the jail cell in her early work, since I feel that her bravery and sense of humor about her imprisonment is a key piece of her character. 


Emma Tenayuca in front of her jail cell in San Antonio. Image credit: Briscoe Center for American History, UT Austin.






Emma Tenayuca's Relevance to Modern Life

Over the next few days, I will post about how Emma Tenayuca's activism is still relevant to us today, as well as demonstrate the connected nature of her areas of work. The more I research Tenayuca, the more connections I make between her activism and current events.  The issues she worked on are far from solved, and some have arguably grown into worse problems despite the effort she and others put into fighting them. Emma Tenayuca's life and work are still highly relevant, and burying her in the confined of history without making these connections is a serious detriment to progress.


Emma Tenayuca, age 21, with the Pecan Shellers Strike

Nearly every issue Emma Tenayuca addressed during her life continues to this day. Latinos, both recent immigrants and native citizens, are alienated or rejected by normative society. Although the situation has changed for many, Tenayuca’s description of Latinos as a “conquered people” still holds true in many ways 1. The land grabs that removed ancestral lands from Mexican residents in the United States have not been reversed, and this modern day form of conquering continues with unjust deportations and racially targeted laws such as Arizona’s SB 1070 2.

This process of conquering demonstrates ongoing white domination in an era where we as American citizens brush the thought of colonialism aside as a thing of the past.  Although the United States may no longer be taking lands by force (as we and other Western nations have already taken nearly all that there was to take), cultural colonialism of non-whites continues in full force as our national ideology encourages homogeneity.  In Emma Tenayuca’s past, homogeneity in Texas was enforced through techniques such as the exclusion of Mexican voters through restrictive voting laws and poll taxes 3. Political exclusion continues today with Texas’ recent redistricting and voter ID laws.


Emma Tenayuca in front of San Antonio City Hall, 1938


Tenayuca’s work with unions and labor reform are particularly striking to think about at this time of year not only because it is the beginning of the holiday consumer craze, but also because of the nationwide workers’ protests against their treatment during Black Friday. Tenayuca worked for livable wages and fought against the abuse of low wage laborers.  Decades later, the same issues persist.




1. Emma Tenayuca, “The Mexican Question,” in La Voz de Esperanza, ed. Antonio Casteñeda, September 1999, 13.
2. Tenayuca, “Question,” 14.
3. Tenayuca, “Question,” 14.

Image Credits
Image 1 and 2: Institute of Texan Cultures, reproduced by San Antonio Express in article "Marker to Honor Labor Leader."

Monday, November 25, 2013

Statement of Intent

On March 5th, 1960, photographer Alberto Korda snapped his iconic photograph of Che Guevara for a Cuban newspaper, never knowing the capitalist power it would one day wield1.  Today, one sees images of Che Guevara everywhere- on t-shirts, dorm room posters, even underwear- despite the fact that virtually none of those wearing his image have any notion of his politics or actions.  The same is true for other radical Latinos and Latinas. Drug lord Pablo Escobar even has an entire clothing line dedicated to him.  The radical Latinos and Latinas who make it into popular culture and onto shirts all seem to be associated with revolution or violence of some form, giving them a "Hollywood" aspect that makes them provocative and edgy. This of course sells to teens and others who desire to be perceived as rebellious, though not too rebellious for fear of being ostracized. The t-shirt lends all of the rebellion that they desire. Emma Tenayuca was doubtless a rebellious figure, so why is it that she never made an entry into popular culture?

Labor reform is far from glamourous in the eyes of modern society. This form of rebellion might even mean you are a communist, which Emma Tenayuca happened to be.  Despite the lack of the "Hollywood" element in Tenayuca's life, I find her a fascinating figure, and one who has unfortunately been neglected in history.

To pay tribute to her life and work, I plan to paint a mural of Emma Tenayuca memorializing her activism in San Antonio. This blog will serve as a log of the research I do in preparation for the mural, as well as the preparation I do for the design of the mural. My purpose in creating this mural is double. First, I want to pay homage to someone who I consider an inspirational and sadly forgotten historical figure. Second, I would like this mural to serve as public education as it is an effort to bring her actions back into the public eye.

Over the next week or so, I will examine Tenayuca's life and activism through the lens of this project, covering the issues she worked on and their relevancy today, why she interested me, and how I have incorporated all these elements of her life into my mural.



1. Chevolution. Directed by Lopez, Luis and Trisha Ziff. 2008. Los Angeles, CA: Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2010. DVD.