Self-Help Graphics on Dia de los Muertos
by Guest Writer on October 7th, 2009
Written by J.V. Gatewood, PhD
Self Help Graphics & Art
On November 2, 2008 I was one of hundreds who gathered in the parking lot of Self Help Graphics to celebrate Dia de los Muertos, an annual festival held in honor of the dearly departed, those loved ones who have passed beyond the sight of the living but whose presence remains for those who remember them. It was my first Day of the Dead celebration, a remarkable thing when you consider that I actually grew up in this city. Perhaps it’s not so remarkable when you take into account that I was – but am no longer – a Westsider, for whom Los Angeles began and ended in the city of Santa Monica (and perhaps Westwood) until I was in my mid-twenties.
As I stood there on that warm November afternoon and took in the sight of men, women and children painted in calavera masks, each as happy as the next, I couldn’t help but wonder what I had missed all these years. How much had the event changed since a group of artists affiliated with Self Help began to gather at the Evergreen Cemetery in 1972 and marched in procession to the community arts organization where a raucous community party took place? How did Self Help remember the souls of the dead when Sister Karen, radical Franciscan nun and founding director of Self Help, was still alive — chain smoking, no doubt — as she oversaw the action as it unfolded around her?
I also couldn’t help but wonder what this event would be like if and when Self Help no longer occupied its iconic mosaic building located on the corners of Gage and Cesar Chavez Avenues, a serious possibility given an uncertain future marked the loss of a historic lease that enabled the arts organization to live rent-free under the Sisters of St. Francis. I suspect I was not alone in this last thought; in fact, as I walked around the parking lot that evening, it was all people could seem to talk about. What would happen if Self Help were no longer here to serve those who claimed the organization as their own?
Although gentrification is not a new phenomenon to East Los Angeles, the last two decades have witnessed some startling changes that bring both possibility and peril for the more than 124,000 residents of this unincorporated part of the city of Los Angeles. The city’s expansion of the MTA Gold Line into the district over the last few years has brought the promise of new opportunities for many who plan commercial development along the transportation corridor; it is also taking a toll on existing businesses and organizations that play a major role in the social cohesion of East L.A.’s Latino community.
Self Help Graphics has not been immune from any of these changes. In July 2008 the organization learned the Sisters of St. Francis had transferred the property to the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles; they in turn sold it to a commercial developer who had a very specific vision of what he thought the neighborhood should look like in the years to come. Although Self Help’s board – of which I am a member – managed to enter into a lease with the building’s new owner, Self Help’s future at its historic location remains murky at best.
An organization of Self Help’s stature, not just its position as the nation’s premier Chicano arts organizations, but a premier organization of any standard that has been instrumental in empowering the youth of its community, deserves something better as it looks to its future. Self Help and its educational programs have given rise to the careers of such notable artists as Gronk, Pattsi Valdez, Diane Gamboa, Richard Durado, Leo Limón, and Malaquías Montoya among a long line of notable Chicana/o talents; the building has played host over the last twenty years to birth of the Chicano punk scene; and the organization remains a testament to power of the movement for Chicano self awareness and political action.
Without articulating it as such, Self Help Graphics is one of East Los Angeles’s most valuable “third spaces,” those places between work and home where the community comes to socialize with friends and acquaintances, participate in cultural activities of all kinds (including – but not limited to – the production of graphic art), and engage in activities that promote neighborhood cohesion. Self Help was – and to a certain extent remains – a space shared by immigrants and their second-generation children.
As my mind turns back to Dia de los Muertos, I think too of an event that is uniquely Southern Californian in its production and homage to the traditions of the immigrant generation who first settled the area from Mexico in the early twentieth century. The beautiful altars with photos of deceased family members pay tribute to the struggles endured by immigrant parents and grandparents while reminding family members of the continuity from generation to generation.
Shortly before my first Dia de los Muertos, I can recall friend and fellow SHG board member, Consuelo Flores, talking to me about the significance of the event. There are three deaths that we must experience before we are actually dead, Consuelo said. The first death occurs when you take your last breath on this earth. The second, when your body is put into the ground for all eternity. The third and final death occurs, at last, when there is nobody left to remember your presence on this earth. This, Consuelo told me, was the most tragic death of all, the kind of death that brought with it a finality from which there was no coming back. As afternoon turned to evening at Self Help Graphics, I couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn’t also a fourth death, the kind that comes with the loss of a beloved community organization. I’ve lost places – mostly in the form of independent bookstores – that I have loved with my whole heart, and I suspect it is the fear of losing another that drives my own participation with Self Help.
With 2009’s Dia de los Muertos celebration in the offing, I can say with all confidence that things are looking up for us and that our board, its president Stephen Saiz, and Self Help’s new executive director Evonne Gallardo are moving forward to ensure that Self Help remains a viable part of the L.A. community for years to come.
September 15- October 15 is Latino Heritage Month. Learn more about the stories of Latino Heritage in Preservation.
J.V. Gatewood, PhD is on the faculty of Antioch University Los Angeles where he directs the Urban Community and Environment concentration in the BA program. He is currently working on a book about independent bookstores in Northern California.
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