Luis C. Garza’s Photos of the Chicano Movement Reflect on the Present

A couple of years ago, Jaime Ramirez unexpectedly stumbled across a black and white photograph from the early 1970s of his brother as a young man shining shoes in downtown Los Angeles.

“When I came to the picture and I saw it, I recognized it right away as my brother,” said Ramirez. “I used to shine shoes with him, too. … I could have been a couple stores down.” 

Ramirez emigrated from Tijuana with his mom and seven siblings in 1969, was raised in Lincoln Heights, later moving to Boyle Heights, and now resides in West Covina. He never imagined that his brother would be immortalized in a photograph as a piece of history. 

“I grew up in the culture, and to see this, and being personified like this, is a blessing,” said Ramirez. “It’s encouraging.”

This photo is featured in “The Other Side of Memory: Photographs by Luis C. Garza,” now on display at the LA Central Library through July 13. 

Garza’s photographs from the 1960s and 1970s, documenting the civil rights struggles and moments of activism from communities in East LA and beyond, hold a mirror to our current adversities. The powerful photographs captured student walkouts, police brutality, prominent activists and the everyday life of underrepresented communities. The images twist memory and beg the question: is history destined to repeat itself, or can we learn from the challenges of our past?

“I look at my work as one of the voices within that movement, in particular the Chicano movement, that gave expression to a community that was not being documented or covered in mainstream media,” said Garza. 

Born and raised in the South Bronx, Garza was “baptized in the holy waters of the Chicano civil rights movement” when he moved to LA and met Ed Bonilla, who connected him to La Raza, a bilingual newspaper and magazine published by Chicano activists from 1967 to 1977. 

“La Raza magazine gave me a pathway. The movement, the activism, the involvement of social, political [and] cultural activity gave me a focus. It gave me un razón de ser [a purpose],” said Garza. “The camera became my gyroscope. The camera became my weather vane during a time of a lot of confusion.”

That destabilizing feeling from the past is once again surfacing in the present, with divisive politics and many communities fearing the unknown of the future. 

For Garza, a good photographic image “begins a conversation.” It breeds dialogue and reflection.

“I think that dialogue is what’s necessary to try to reason and come to an understanding of the differences, or the things that are so similar to us,” said Garza.

Curated by Armando Durón, the exhibit explores Garza’s photos through pairings, inviting the viewer to partake in a “three-way conversation” with the photographs, exploring memory and the untold stories within each image.

“On the other side of memory are perception, forgetfulness, non-memory, loss of memory and memory’s genetic encoding resulting from the collective unconsciousness,” Durón writes in an introduction essay to the catalog. “Luis C. Garza’s photographs defy time and subvert memory.”

Garza’s 1974 photograph, titled “Raza Gothic,” of a man on crutches and his wife standing side by side staring into the camera feels as though it could be taken today, and yet, it calls back to iconic images of the past – Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, the Grant Wood painting “American Gothic” and Gordon Parks’s 1942 portrait of government worker Ella Watson, which he famously titled after the painting. 

“The 60s and 70s are on constant repeat, and people keep on referring back to it, which I think is the significance of my exhibition at the LA City Library,” said Garza. “People gravitate to it because it expresses something that they can relate to – be it spiritually, intellectually or just simply in the gut.”

The exhibit feels more relevant than ever, as President Donald Trump’s administration attacks educational institutions, erases histories, silences student protestors and threatens immigrant communities with mass deportations. 

“I think it’s important for us to understand that we’ve been here before, in these sorts of times,” said Durón, whose mother was born in LA but was deported to Mexico at the age of two during Mexican Repatriation. In the 1930s, the Border Patrol expelled over a million Mexicans, including United States-born Mexican Americans. 

Recently, the Trump administration has detained people without due process, including 19-year-old Jose Hermosillo, a U.S. citizen who was detained for 10 days by border patrol agents for being “without the proper immigration documents.” The administration still refuses to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national granted court-ordered protection from deportation, who was detained and sent to CECOT, a megaprison in El Salvador. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers even deported three children ages 2, 4 and 7 who are U.S. citizens, along with their Honduran-born mothers.

“We’ve been through this before. We survived it then, we survived it in the 60s and 70s, and we’ll survive again,” Durón continued. “It’s important to unforget, not just for its own sake, but for what it can teach us and how we can apply that recovered memory and teach our children and our grandchildren how to survive, based on that experience.” 

Students today have participated in walkouts to protest ICE raids and mass deportations, following in the footsteps of the East LA Walkouts of 1968, when 15,000 students walked out of their classrooms calling for curriculum changes, bilingual education and the hiring of Mexican American administrators. 

Garza photographed those past protests and hopes his images encourage today’s youth to be active and organize. 

“The conditions that exist and are being exposed now are what create that desire for organizing. Out of this kind of maelstrom of civil upheaval, come leaders, come organizers, come activists, come people of consciousness,” said Garza, who added he got on-the-job training for not only his photography but also organizing. 

“As the streets erupt and defy against the administrative order that is being imposed upon us, out of that grows the inspiration, grows the artistry, grows the intellect, grows the community. It brings people closer together. And that’s where, in a time of crisis, you bind yourself together with family, and a sense of family, because that mutual support is your survival and your ability to overcome,” he continued. 

“Those images that I took so many decades ago are still worthy of speaking to the public. Past, is present, is future.” 

For more information about Garza, visit: luiscgarzaphotos.com

The Other Side of Memory: Photographs by Luis C. Garza
On view May 3 to July 13 
First Floor Galleries
Los Angeles Central Library
630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071