Chicanosauruz at the Border
hello
my name is victor ochoa i’m a chicano
muralist here in the
border area i call it the border zone
i was born in east l.a my parents were
undocumented so it was
kind of during the late 40s
50s there was operation was
going on at that time after
world war ii so we were very
my especially my mom was very frightened
of immigration and
she didn’t teach us any spanish because
they didn’t want us
want anybody to know they were mexican i
love school
so it was really really interesting for
me to go to school
and in art started with me at
a really young age i i did drawings
in at five years old that already had
fingers and
and hats and its best and when the kids
other kids were just doing stick figures
um in 1955 you know after going to the
opening
of disneyland the immigration came over
to our house they had
trench coats they had these big gangster
hats
and i remember seeing them with these
big 45
weapons coming out of their their their
these london fogs and um they gave us
three days to
to get out of out of the united states
and go back to mexico
so my dad was saving all these carpentry
tools and he called my grandfather from
tijuana
rented a big box truck and uh
we had uh lived in a 8 by
20 redwood trailer during the war
and so he put it on the back of his 51
mercury and that’s how we all caravan
back to tijuana
it was very provocative to me to go to
tijuana
because i asked my parents in the from
the backseat of the merc
man this looks like hong kong mom and uh
it just really you know the bordellos
all the street vendors all of that was
just
completely fascinating to me as a as a
young as a young boy
i went to school i had a really great
experience
as a uh you know somebody who didn’t
speak spanish
it took me like three months to be able
to get back
to school so i was put back a year
in school but being that i was i love
school
i kind of recuperated that um
i returned after graduating from the
sixth grade in tijuana
to i went back to east l.a
in my abuelita tonya that raised my
my dad because he was a orphan in sonora
so she really kind of raised him
and so she offered a garage a garage
for me to stay it was very very
very strong but first of all not living
with my
my parents that was pretty hard for you
know
for me and um and you know they were
pretty poor my
my family was only making twenty dollars
each a week
living and working in tijuana so they
couldn’t really help me and support me
or
so it was really uh really difficult
i know that when i when i start going to
montebello junior high school
i i think that that’s where my chicano
attitude developed because i was very i
was very pre
you know protective of who i was they
were calling me
even the mexican kids were calling me
pollo which is
kind of a derogatory term but that’s
because i i could speak
spanish a lot better than them and i
knew
history and i knew um
like heroes and things like that for of
of mexico
so when they told me that pancho villa
was banned
i had to correct him i had to say you
know it
he was a national hero but the final
thing that i think
was was really weird because
montebello was primarily mexican and
they wouldn’t let us speak spanish
and so there was these two kids that
came in from tijuana
and they didn’t speak any english and i
could relate to that
and so they asked you know they were
asking where the
where the snack bar was for recess and
we had this place called the sugar shack
in the in the playground and so i i
walked them down there to
and show them where the snack bar was
and that
and i i was speaking to them in spanish
this teacher
uh said in this really racist way
you’re not supposed to be speaking
spanish on campus
and so that really um
ticked me off i actually punched him in
the face
i’m not a very violent person but i did
that
they sent me to the to the principal’s
office mr
perry i remember him i did a portrait of
him when he retired the following year
and i told him i told him the story and
he says i’ll go back to class don’t
worry about it and
i never saw that teacher that told me
that again
and so i’m not sure what what happened
finally i it was such a hardship living
in l.a and my parents still in tijuana
so i moved on my own to
uh aunt’s house for the first semester
in back to san diego to be closer and be
able to
to see my parents once in a while but
um i had to work so um
even in the ninth grade they wouldn’t
let me at hoover high school
they would not let me um
work and go to school at the same time
and so
i i got a job in a silk screenshot
during that time i was getting more and
more involved
in civil rights issues during that time
of the mid 60s you know there was a
black
the black movement of women’s liberation
movement
anti-vietnam war was
all these issues of course the chicano
movement was going on
and cesar chavez and and the farm
workers
so after work i was asked to print
a poster for the farmworkers
and uh you know this i did it completely
by hand
it had some of the issues that were
going on at that time including the
short haul the short haul issue was it
they had like stoop labor you know and
my parents
had told me that it was really terrible
for them to
to be um like that and i actually
painted them
like that on their knees on the ground
i still remember this so clear because i
was asked to
take the posters to cesar chavez
in a safeway parking lot here in san
diego
and i was like kind of really nervous i
actually printed some extra bumper
stickers
i got there on time like my mother
always told me
be on time and do what you love to do
which are the two things that i
always will remember my mother and i saw
sister chavez
and i opened the package i had 150
posters and
and i showed him to he loved them and he
he patted me on on the back and he said
we went travajo
hoven i think he said um i i was very
touched with it because you know cesar
chavez seemed to me like almost a
jesus-like person
it really you know was really important
to me to have experienced that
i met him afterwards in other campaigns
and that but that was my first
my first time in my first kind of direct
graphics work to the movement
that was you know really an important
time for me i went to city college
try to work in visual arts as much as
possible
never knowing what i wanted to do as a
career
during the time i was at san diego state
though um
i got a gestetner a flyer from city
college
that said hey everybody let’s go down to
logan
they’re trying to build a highway patrol
station at
under the bridge so i as a student i
just popped into my
at that time a volkswagen van and
went down to the park in all of a sudden
there was like
200 people they’re mostly kids and and
mothers
and there were some bulldozers and
things like that they
stopped the construction they had you
know chain
human chains around the bulldozers we um
you know i guess it was during those
hippie times where we had
i already had a sleeping bag in the car
and and
and so we we decided to stay
there at the park until we
we took over the park you know so we
there were some of the senoras
brought big pots of beans and rice and i
go
oh i’m i’m here i can stay i was so i
stayed there for about
10 days i was one of the ones that
went to city council and argued
with the mayor and that about the park
our
first murals had chicano issues
from the beginning and and the chicano
issues
still remain the same you know there’s
racism
immigration has always been an issue
and it’s gotten actually gotten worse it
seems like we had a
bilingual education we didn’t know you
know
we weren’t taught very much of our
history
uh heroes or important people i
fortunately did
know a little bit more than most
chicanos about
um for instance women’s heroes i
i came up with uh circuaninas de la cruz
josefina artisa dominguez as
that the other other chicanos didn’t
know so we got a chance to paint those
issues knowing our indigenous rights our
our heritage in fact i painted the first
chicano flag with a
mestizo um image on there and so
all of those issues were still part and
still today
i think they’re still valid i felt
so fortunate that i was involved in the
movement
of all of those human rights movements i
felt like a surfer
on a tsunami you know it was like this
giant wave
of movements of women’s movement the
anti-war
all of those things that and that was so
much energy for me and i
i feel you know that i i
i really thank in a lot of ways um
immigration for booting me out
during that period um you know the
artist
you know this is something really close
to me because
the artists were involved in all these
different issues
and so we were almost simultaneously
taking over the centro cultural de la
raza here in balboa park
again i’m very fortunate because we were
very multi-disciplinary so
i was of course a visual artist but i
worked with poets
photographers dancers
uh actors theater people so
my development as an artist was first
no censorship in any of the murals that
i’ve been painting
for 50 years now at chicano park but
also
very multi-disciplinary i like music i
do
i play some percussion and so the center
was very instrumental
in developing the first budget of the
materials i
i was director of the center of the
first director during
71 to 73 and then later
in the 80s from 83
to 85 we we purchased materials
in the first ramps that we painted with
all of those
issues the quetzalcoat mural and the
historical mural
were painted with budget of the center
cultural
well during the the 70s um the height of
the
the civil rights movements started
dwindling and it was a little
slow in fact during that time i worked
with the black panthers
but one of the great things that
happened in the mid 80s 1984 to be exact
from the center cultural with help with
david avalos
in particular we started the border art
workshop taiyev de arte fronteriso
and that workshop was composed of
artists from tijuana from mexico city
black artists asian artists white
artists
all that were working on the issue of
the border
so it the dynamics of coming together
on a regular basis dialoguing on our
exhibits
was really energizing to me it was like
going back to the early 70s and uh
i loved it and we would argue cry and
and come up with some installations some
exhibitions that we were actually
nominated to the venice vietnam in 1993
but one of the pieces the end of the
line that we did performance piece
right at the end of the fence between
tijuana and san diego
i developed these border stereotypes
and actually did the costumes in a
performance piece that we did right at
the beach
between tijuana we had audiences between
both cities
these stereotypes are still continue i
mean you know like the maid
it’s like women they cross the border
they of course they’re coming only to
to work in the white uh households
as maids although you know that’s not
true we have you know they
they work in all kinds of different jobs
so the stereotypes i did the costumes
first
actually did the performance and we did
a the last supper
uh with corn given to all the audience
you know uh the issue of the borders has
been in my work
in a lot of different ways i’ve been
continuously painting different things
and because the issues are continues to
be
going on uh in the most recent times
we’ve been working on the anastasio
hernandez rojas miro
and this mural is one of the largest
ones at the park
i was invited by american friends
you know organization here in san diego
and i got a chance to meet the widow of
anastasio
during that time i started an airbrush
class
at grossmont college one of the pieces
that we did
i i love this photograph of maria puga
the widow and so i asked some some of
the students to come in
and get involved with the issue and
and do an interview with maria at the
park
and i noticed the emotions of of my
students and i really love that because
i think that that’s what’s developed
into this mural
that has a very uh almost a spiritual
dimension to it and it’s dedicated
now for the 10th anniversary of his
murder he was
murdered by about 10 uh immigration
agents at the border
they tased them after he was handcuffed
kicked them and and just beat them the
mirror we’re hoping that
we will finish it um this year
being the this uh pandemic is
is really uh made a stop but um we are
we’re hopeful that we will continue
i think that it’s um somewhat strange to
actually
thank immigration for kicking me
and my family to mexico but
i think my attitudes that that still
survive now
at my age still prevail my inferiority
complex
that a lot of mexican people have in the
united states is not there
i i’ve i feel like i’ve surpassed that
my knowledge of mexico feeling like a
mexican
i feel like a mexican in mexico and a
u.s citizen
in the united states so i’m a citizen of
both countries
you know all those issues that we’ve
been battling
continue to be part of the of my work
currently and it’s in them
um you know it’s one of my one of the
reasons that i’m here today