Copyright © 1998 Collage de las Américas, Inc.

All rights reserved. The author and photographers retain rights to their works. Published by Collage, 1520 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago, IL 60622. Printed in the United States of America.

The materials exhibited in Sueños de los pueblos are the result of any number of buying trips funded by COLLAGE DE LAS AMERICAS.

The pictures accompanying the exhibit and the smaller collection appearing with these notes include two centerfold closeups of Ocumicho artisans taken by Beto Cholico, the local photographer of Tanganzícuaro, Michoacán, a halfway juncture town between Zamora and Ocumicho itself. Beto has taken countless photos of the people and artisans of his area; he has worked with Colegio de Michoacán investigators, and in this case, with Dr. Guillermo Fernández Ruíz, physician, anthropologist, guide and "photo-ethnographer," who represented both LACASA CHICAGO and COLLAGE in the development of this project.

The on-site photos are by the writer of these notes, Marc Zimmerman, Professor of Latin American Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago (and Director of MARCH’s LACASA project). Meanwhile the core LACASA exhibit display photos are by veteran Chicago Latina photographer (and COLLAGE gallery curator) Diana Solís.

Esther and Samuel Soler did much to prepare the exhibit installations, with Samuel as the primary designer of the Spanish Caribbean Display. As buyer and intellectual trouble-maker, Zimmerman had much to do with the overall concept and especially the South and Central American, as well as the Mexican, dimensions of the exhibit. Esther Soler was the overall coordinator, along with Collage gallery curator Diana Solís.

Special thanks to Bill Goldman for orienting the work of Collage buyers, as well as to José Luis Gotay and Chicago’s Ruíz Belvis Center for leading us to the Puerto Rican silkscreens on exhibit. Thanks to the Rodolfo Morales Foundation and the Arte de Oaxaca Gallery for the silkscreens they provided on consignment. Gamaliel Ramírez gave us permission to use his COLLAGE-purchased collage, Mí Borínquen, as our exhibit centerpiece, promotional and cover-photo image.

Thanks also to the Great Cities Institute and the Latin American Studies Program of the U. of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), as well as to Professors Mary Kay Vaughan and Gail Mummert of UIC and the Colegio de Michoacán respectively for helping arrange and underwrite Marc Zimmerman’s presentational-research trip that made the Mexican, and especially the Michoacán, dimensions of this exhibition possible. Thanks above all to Esther Soler and COLLAGE for prime project funding.

Sueños de los pueblos/ Village Dreams and Dreamers portrays Latin American worlds from the Southern Cone to U.S. Latino barrios. But seven places are featured above all: Ayacucho, Peru, with its ceramic portrayal of village life; La Palma, El Salvador, with its idyllic red-and-white-painted wood and ceramic self-representations; Oaxaca, Mexico, represented in the dream-centered silk screens and two water colors placed along the east wall, as well as in a section of the handicraft installations; Ocumicho, Michoacán, made famous by Latin American cultural theorist Néstor García Canclini and heavily represented in our Michoacán section; the towns of Tlaquepaque and Santa Cruz de las Huertas, Jalisco, sites of an endangered but continuing folk art tradition; and the island of Puerto Rico, the key Spanish Caribbean country represented on the south and west walls, through the silk screens and the preponderance of the handicraft on display.

Guatemalan masks, Conquest ceremonial dolls and the great ambiguous figure of Maximón (is he the Indian patch worked and deformed by the Conquest, or the superficially Europeanized indigenous trickster who somehow retains his Mayan identity?); then indigenous town life represented in figurines over a huipil landscape; then, from El Salvador, painted wooden pieces from La Palma and "little surprises" from still another town. In the idyllic Salvadoran wooden pieces, inspired by Catalan-born Fernando Llort, we have no Guernica, but an idealized community that came to its artesanal fore during the war years. Guatemalan peace is figured in our representations, though women figures keep a vigilant eye and of course Rigoberta Menchú represents "the real thing"--or is that just another meso-dream? A few barely hidden wartine books remind of counter-realities–one is entitled, "Was It Worth It?" A zapatista doll, seemingly an afterthought of the landscape, points to where the war is now centered and where community dreams may become virtualities or nightmares. Indeed, Zapatista images frame and haunt region after region, town after town in the Mexican installations which follow.

This collage of Mexico respects no south, east, north or west. In a gauche Mexican calendar rendition, the Pope hovers over the scene, blessing even the Vírgen de Guadalupe and "el pueblo de México." To the left, a conquistador hovers over Chiapas Indians, and a Zapatista emerges. There are no signs of the countless Indian atrocities of recent years and days. But to the right of the Chiapas figures, airplanes hover over and perch on a Michoacán nativity. In the center, are sad clay and wooden buildings from Chihuahua and Acatlán Puebla, as Mexico’s most popular past presidents look over the scene (is this a kind of Mount Rushmore?), at their feet (and poised like a soccer ball) the head of a recent national leader not too much loved at the moment. To give the scene its required music, we present our best musicians from Izúcar de Matamoros, Puebla. And of course there are some Tuhamara Indian onlookers, probably not quite sure why they are there--though perhaps the answer is to be found in the sinister look of the Jalisco carousel in the foreground.

Famous for Taxco silver and ferocious wooden masks, for the amáte paintings of Olinalá, for coconut masks, for decorated boxes and gourds, for painted ceramic suns and moons and shell animals, Guerrero also boasts the folk-artwork of Temalacatzingo, with its lacquered amusement parts, its helicopters, planes and trucks, its little animals and ornaments; Temalacatzingo, a world seen with child’s eye, where play wins over work and even the trucks and planes are part of a child’s fantasy world in which everything is bright and full of life. Surrounding the Temalacatzingo play world are some village landscapes and figures threaded with straw–the preferred art style of San Nicolás Coatepec (Estado de México). On the bottom level, horse and mule figures from Celaya, Izúcar, Acatlán and elsewhere prance around, while an Aztec "license plate" reminds us again of earlier times, the Conquest and the role of horses and Aztec culture in the making of modern Mexico. Finally (should we remark it?) deeply tucked in the back of the second level of our pastiche retablo, as if in response to the upper most and most papal image dominating the scene, there is a poster on AIDS and HIV from the Taller de Documentación from Mexico City.

One of Mexico’s great handicraft centers. In the towns surrounding the capital city, in the hills leading to and from Mitla, Monte Albán and other archeological sites, we find all the artisans and arts that have made the region known throughout the world. Our exhibit features a church celebration attended by some of the fantastic wooden figures of San Martín de Tilcajete, Aresola and La Unión. With a fine band and some other pieces from Atzompa in the background, the second level features several black ceramic figures from San Bartolo de Coyetepec, and in the foreground, a fine group of figures by Josefina Aguilar. The Atzompa group pays homage to a birthed child; the black ceramic groups looks toward a painted Guadalupe virgin (though a few figures look elsewhere); meanwhile the Josefinas praise courtship, sex and childbirth. At the lower level, in the lower depths of Oaxacan hell, devil and death figures fashioned by Josefina and her her already-far-more-than-promising son, Demetrio, give a new perspective to the scene.

On the trip for this exhibit, we avoided buying many high-priced pieces from the Aresola pioneers and braggarts (Jiménez proclaims each figure he makes "a piece of God"), and we also avoided the Doña Rosa black ceramic monopoly; but we do have a fine representation from San Martín--including our friends Paula Sánchez and Delfino Gutiérrez as well as countless others. Extending our Oaxaca coverage is the central installation of the exhibit, a setting of devil and death figures, surrounded with commissioned pieces by Josefina Aguilar, Freddie Fuentes, Ventura Fabián, and the classic black ceramics potter, Josefina Morga.

According to Andrés Henestrosa, the Oaxaca painters use their evocative colors to create visual "echoes ... from ... Oaxacan antiquity. The ... artists dream ... of a distant past but make those of today present in that past." For his part, Manuel Cosmo notes:

Town after town dreaming and figuring its dreams in varying materials, modes and styles. The colonial Church cultivated crafts in many towns in and around Lake Pátzcuaro. In our representation, we feature some of the wooden masks and figures from Tócuaro; the magnificent straw and corn-husk work from Tzintzuntzín and other towns; a few examples of Santa Clara copper, and Capula ceramic work. Then moving toward Zamora and the border with Jalisco, we feature a ceramic pineapple from Ihuátzio, a clay piece and photos from the pre-Day of the Dead ceramics contest at Patámban; and finally the famous diabolical clay pieces from Ocumicho, with their celebrated meeting of tradition and modernity.

Although initially developed by a man designated as "ella," the Ocumicho pieces are mainly the work of women, many of whom are closely related, and who both compete and cooperate in the sale of their objects. Few of the men lower themselves to participating in this work; many are caught up in transnational migration patterns and may well be the inspirations for the devils who haunt the colorful ceramic work and give it its fiery, infernal flavor. We accompany our collection with photos of many of the artisans whose work is represented here–well-known artists like Paulina Nicolás, Barbara Jiménez, Magdalena Martínez, Rutilia Martínez and Apolonia Martínez, plus many others. At the lower levels, Capula, Pátzcuaro and Ocumicho death figures and devils represent the state’s nether zone–a flaming, infernal world of diabolical and deadly diversion..

From Oaxaca, from Michoacán and Chihuahua; from the Celaya Marías sold by FONART in Mexico City to the dolls from Amelia, Queretaro sold on Tlaquepaque streets–from all the cardinal points of the Mexican world, with a few African dolls thrown in just to remind us of the forgotten and ignored or third root of Mexican culture. No valley, but a basket-hill village of dolls--dolls scampering up and around, dolls reclining in the sun, on a beach near a beach town --where we find the poorest of the poor....

Before entering the intensely colored world of Jalisco, we pause before the wood and carton hovel world of Púmaro, its people, their animals, their jars and bowls, on the Michoacán coast. No Acapulco, Huatulco or Manzanillo even without hurricane, Púmaro and its handicraft remind us how harsh life can be, how great the struggle to survive even as the global economy proliferates goods and services throughout the world. But isn't there

some joy in the making of these sad and comical representations? The joy of displaced misery? The saddest display in the world.

Famed for its rich handicraft, especially in Tlaquepaque and Tonalá, Jalisco is now the site of an enormous pseudo-handicraft industry, mass-producing wares for a global market. Of course much survives, and we present mainly the pioneer folkart work from the Tonalá suburb of Santa Cruz de las Huertas, as well as some pieces from Tlaquepaque and neighboring towns. Special for us is the work from Santa Cruz, which has gone on for three generations. The pioneer was Candelario Medrano, whose roosters, carousels, Noah’s arcs and sheep are part of the Rockefeller collection at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. Now his grand-children like Maurilla, Juan José, Serapio and Juana Medrano and new in-law entrepreneurs like Oscar Ortega López elaborate on the legacy.

The work in crude clay and wired pieces is still some of the best folkloric representation in the area. And of course the artisans will tell you that the women of Ocumicho are just imitating them. What story might these pieces tell? Jalisco master-writer Juan Rulfo (that's him in the bottom rear of the third box setting) might have told one story; ours involves moving from the Huichol Indian highland areas, to the rural towns and then migrating with the farmers and sheep herders into the big city of Guadalajara, getting caught up in city pleasures ( the mariachis, the bull fights, the soccer games) but finally flying off as the mariachis play, the dancers dance the járabe tapitío, and the rooster singers crow their song (a nether world version presided over by Jalisco author Juan Rulfo and a lively but not quite alive mariachi band is also part of the sendoff).... Is the final destination the border, East L. A. or Chicago? Well, there are also political options....

With images from the Dominican Republic and Cuba, we have a portrayal of Caribbean dreams through a representation of Puerto Rican town life–from the streets of San Juan to the casítas of an earlier era. We have figures selling their wares, making their meals, going their way. We have mountain jíbaros and coastal Afro-Caribbeans. We have signs of African, Christian and other religious practices; we have Taíno representations, African representations, and even the new Cuban paper maché handicraft (how did we get these pieces?). In all this, our own center, again, is the enchanted island and its struggle to maintain its identity in the midst of the intense pressures posed by U.S. control and the processes of economic globalization. Every mask, every vejigante is a victory over cultural annihilation, an affirmation of a Puerto Rican will to live and thrive in spite of the military presence, the cruise ship invasions, the Burger Kings and Pizza Huts at the entrance and exit points of almost every town and village. No wonder the face of Albízu Campos stares out from so many places, even amidst the books and cd's featured in the display. A Dominican transsexual god is also present, smiling benignly from amidst the collection. Above, there are the Puerto Rican and Dominican masks, and then, the Puerto Rican silkscreens–centering on our exhibit signature piece, "Mí Borínquen," a COLLAGE collage concocted by Chicago Rican artist Gamaliel Ramírez. Then too, of course, above the Cuban pieces, a face from Rosario, Argentina also looks over the scene of pieces assembled–and also at those who look at him wondering about the future of Latin American dreams and dreamers.

With mulatto artist José Campeche as its brightest light, Puerto Rico was a great center of colonial art; at the end of the 19^th Century, Oller, Pau and others etched the crisis of their times; during the 40s, Lorenzo Homar, Rafael Tufiño and others led a movement of social protest art. In recent times nostalgia and politics have dominated the scene, while young college-bred artists, trained at Chicago’s School of the Art Institute and like places have entered international/cosmopolitan art worlds. At the same time, U.S. Puerto Rican visual art work flourishes in New York, Chicago and other points.

The Puerto Rican prints and the Chicago Rican collage on COLLAGE’s SPANISH CARIBE walls capture more rural and traditional dimensions of the island's life and imagination. From Loísa, Puerto Rico’s center of Afro-Caribbean expression, Samuel Lind presents two of his well-known depictions of fiesta and everyday life. Gamaliel Ramírez is a Nuyorican transplanted to Chicago years ago, and well-known for his portrayal of life in our city. Here he presents a nostalgic dream collage. Wilmer Colón Echevarría, from Peñuelas recently visited Chicago and left his rendition of the Three Kings, a predominant icon in Puerto Rican Christmas imagery. Other versions of the kings, and other icons, emerge in the silk screens of the other artists represented (Dafne Elvira, Torres Soto, etc.) , whose work most fully evokes borícua nostalgia for a bucolic, rural Puerto Rico of childhood memory and myth.

Look around the gallery and you will find cities of angels and devils, towns of masks and figurines, of dolls, of toys, and the dead--and of course Christmas towns and cities, nativities and kings–many village and city dreams of village and city dreamers. From Buenos Aires to Caracas, from Panama City to Los Angeles, and yes, Chicago, we offer these dreams and dreads, these wishes and fears, asking that you join with us in our hopes, in the face of all the problems that are heaped upon us, for a better life in all of America and the world.

Enrique Flores. The most represented artist in this exhibit and one of the younger of the well-known Oaxaca-area painters, Flores was born in Huítzo in 1963 and entered the Free Workshop of Oaxacan Graphics in 1984. In addition to his participation in the Washington, D.C. Mexican Institute exhibition of 1994, he has exhibited in collective shows in the Misrachi Gallery and Posada Cultural Center in Mexico City, as well as in galleries in Augusta Maine, San Diego, California. He has had private shows in the Arte de Oaxaca Gallery and elsewhere.

Cecilio Sánchez. Born in 1957 in San Jeronimo Yanhuicho, Oaxaca, he studied in Oaxaca and has participated in distinct exhibitions in his country as well as abroad, including the .Museum of Contemporary Latin American Art and the Mexican Cultural Institute (Washington, D.C. 1979 and 1994), the Contemporary Latin American Art Museum.; the U. of Arizona Museum of Modern Art; and the Heard Museum in Phoenix.

Dafne Elvira, an island artist known reinterpreting traditional motifs with contemporary techniques. Her work has been shown at the Gotay gallery in Old San Juan. Both "Lectura" and "Tregua" are typical of her work as they conjure up Christmas and San Juan themes in ways that are fresh and appealing. A more recent work, a saucy, feminine take on "The Last Supper," is also available.

LACASA Chicago will publish, distribute and promote or help find the proper public venue for creative and analytical projects that address issues and concerns stemming from the recent emergence and development of Latin American and Latino Cultural Studies. Emphasizing the contributions and perspectives of Chicago-based or related artists, writers, critics and scholars, LACASA seeks to provide opportunities to neophytes in concert with more established cultural workers; the organization seeks to help build and diversify Chicago’s Latino/Latin American cultural infrastructure. Above all, its aim is to project the city as a Latin American center in relation to other Latin American centers in the U.S. and Latin America for the coming century.

Carlos Cumpián, Coyote Sun. ISBN 1-877636-08-8. Biting urban poems by a Chicano in Chicago. $6.50

Olivia Maciel, Más salado que dulce/ Saltier than Sweet. ISBN 1-877636-13-4. Poems in Spanish and English translation by a Chicago Mexican writer. $7.95.

Marc Turcotte, The Feathered Heart. ISBN 1-877636-12-6. Nature and urban struggles in these poems by a poet of Ojibwa and Irish ancestry. $7.95

Frank Varela. Serpent Underfoot. ISBN 1-877636-11-8. Urban meditations, some translated into Spanish, by a Chicago Puerto Rican. $7.95.

Marc Zimmerman, U. S. Latino Literature: An Essay and Annotated Bibliography. ISBN 1-877636-01-0. A much-praised reference to Chicano and other U.S. Latino texts. $8.95 (discount).

Michael Piazza and Marc Zimmerman, New World [Dis]Orders and Peripheral Strains: Specifying Cultural Dimensions in Latin American and Latino Studies. ISBN 1-877636-16-9. Essays on Latin American/Latino modernity, postmodernity and globalization. $15.95.

Carlos Cumpián, Armadillo Charm. ISBN 1-882688-09-0. Chicago: Tía Chucha Press. New meditations and riffs by the Chicago/Chicano poet warrior. $10.95.

Axe Street Arena, Disparities and Connections: The Excluded on Postmodernism. An international collection of writings on postmodernity, with considerable attention to Latin American themes. $9.95.

Marc Zimmerman, Sueños de los Pueblos/Village Dreams and Dreamers. Catalog of the LACASA CHICAGO exhibit at the COLLAGE gallery with photos by Beto Cholico, Diana Solís and the author. Limited/numbered/signed edition. $5.95; full color edition, $25.00. Proceeds divided evenly between LACASA, COLLAGE and the Colorín Colorado Chiapas Childrens Aid project.

Include quoted price plus $2.00 postage/handing for first book and $1.00 for each additional. Checks go to MARCH., Inc., P.O. Box 2890, Chicago, IL 60690.

Sponsor of the Sueños de los pueblos exhibit and catalog, COLLAGE DE LAS AMERICAS, is one of the most vibrant Latin American handicraft centers in Chicago, the Midwest and the U.S., with a genuine commitment to presenting the most representative folk-art of Latin American-Caribbean peoples in Latin America, U.S. Latino communities or wherever possible. COLLAGE specializes in Mexico and Puerto Rico; but it also has fine work from Guatemala and Peru--from the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Bolivia and elsewhere.

First, LACASA Chicago members, friends, supporters and readers may order and purchase handicraft items at a 10% discount, with an additional 10% going to LACASA CHICAGO itself to fund its ongoing and future projects. Second, COLLAGE offers to serve as a resource for information, educational exhbits, locating handicraft and other culturally-related matters. Third, COLLAGE will work with LACASA members and friends to seek out and establish ties with artisans and artisan groups, and in some cases, to represent them so that their work finds its way to Chicago and beyond. The goal in all these matters is to foster the continued production and appreciation of Latin American handicraft and art, and to work with artisans and cultural promoters in furthering and divulging their work, of having some impact in the global dispersion of goods, while maintaining links between production and group identity, in spite of the global pressures.

Marc Zimmerman___________________________

Diana Solís_____________________________