The noble struggle and history of Latino Americans is a common theme in Southwestern American murals. This tradition stretches back to the early 20th century, when Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozsco created artwork depicting a cohesive national identity or mexicanidad, tying together all the political, ethnic, and cultural factions that remained after the Mexican Revolution. Contemporary muralist Yreina Cervantez follows in this lineage, artistically portraying the experiences of latinx folks in the United States. Oftentimes these murals explore topics like immigration, institutional racism, assimilation, labor issues, and identity struggle. Images of ancient indigeneous figures are often featured as a reference to the Atzlàn - the ancestral home of the Aztec people stretching well across the current U.S. border. Cervantez is a third generation Chicana raised in Southern California. Beyond her mural work, she is a tenured Professor of Chicanx studies at CSU Northridge. Located in Los Angeles, Yreina Cervantez’s 1989 work La Ofrenda is “an homage to the strength of the latino people. It brings attention to the hardships of war and immigration and emphasizes women’s roles through the central image, a portrait of the United Farmworker’s Union leader, Dolores Huerta.”1
Above: Photograph of mural.
The mural’s title references the ofrenda or offering table used in the Dia de Muertos tradition. The ofrenda is an ancestral altar, displaying pictures and objects from passed family members to pay homage. Cervantez’s La Ofrenda is a metaphorical offering table for the labor struggles of latinx farmworkers, personified by the image of civil rights leader, Dolores Huerta. Huerta and fellow activist Cesar Chavez co-founded the National Farmworkers Association in the 1960s and organized many successful strikes and nonviolent demonstrations advocating for better work conditions and pay for latinx immigrant farm laborers. In La Ofrenda, Yreina pays homage to this longstanding legacy of latinx civil rights.
In 1995, Cervantez collaborated with fellow academic/artist Alma Lopez to paint La Historia de Adentro, La Historia de Afuera or The History from Within, The History from Without in Huntington Beach. A short description of the mural written by Cervantez and Lopez is included in the Dunitz archive. The work’s title recalls a philosophical concept posed by Mexican anthropologist Miguel Leon Portilla in his book Endangered Cultures: “Nonetheless it is undeniable that history as a search for roots and antecedents from one’s own orientation is fundamentally linked with an awareness of cultural identity and its defense… deprived of its memory, cultural identity dissolves.”2
In this way, La Historia is less a literal depiction of latinx history (as is the case with La Ofrenda), but commentary on the idea of cultural identity itself. Despite local outrage and protest by fellow artists and civil rights leaders, the mural was eventually painted over in 2008.3
To learn more about Yreina Cervantez and other contemporary muralists, feel free to browse our collection.