Art and Social Movements: Cultural Politics in Mexico and Aztlán - Tapa dura

"Masterful. . . . The value of a transdisciplinary lens surfaces in the diverse bodies of knowledge activist artists draw on `to produce a deeper knowledge of the social world' they inhabit (165). Clear in McCaughan's analysis is the ability of artists to draw from the works of philosophers, writers, and historians to further promote movement efforts." -- Daniel Sarabia * Social Forces * This book offers a detailed and fascinating exploration of the work of a generation of Mexican artists during the decades that followed the 1968 student revolution. . . . The real strength of the book is that the author, as a sociologist, is always keen to place art and artistic practice in a wider context." -- Annette Jorgensen * Visual Studies * "Based on extensive research and informed by the perspective of a witness to and participant in the political activism of the 1960s and 1970s, Art and Social Movements carefully attends to the cultural and artistic dimensions of recent social movement history and experience." -- Bruce Campbell * Journal of Latin American Studies * "Overall, McCaughan's book is an excellent resource for scholars interested in the cultural dynamics of social movements or who have an interest in the Chicano movements of the late 1960s. As text, the book would be useful in undergraduate and graduate courses addressing art and social movements." -- Katherine Everhart * Mobilization * ". . . [A] broad and politically sensitive addition to the English-language literature on three contemporaneous social movements whose demands and achievements continue to reverberate in the contemporary art worlds of Mexico City, Oaxaca, and California." -- Christopher Michael Fraga * Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology * "As more works on 1968 Mexico and its role in the Cold War continue to be published, this text will remain a standard for understanding how Mexican and Chicano activists interpreted their historical moment. More importantly, McCaughan explores how artists reinterpreted, challenged, and reflected on that moment for decades afterward." -- Elaine Carey * Hispanic American Historical Review * "Only when the art and culture of social movements are explored along with their politics do we begin to have a vital and comprehensive sense of the emotions and creativity involved. The sad, violent, and arbitrary border between Latin America and Latino USA too often ignores the history of collaboration and influence across that fictitious line. Through personal experience and exhaustive research, Edward J. McCaughan sets the record straight."-Margaret Randall, author of To Change the World: My Years in Cuba "Art and Social Movements makes a powerful statement about the continued vitality of-and need for-the creative arts in radical political movements. By effectively synthesizing grounded analysis of grassroots politics with deft theoretical explanations of artistic genres, Edward J. McCaughan provides what I believe is the most significant empirically grounded study of cultural politics in Latin America since the anthology Cultures of Politics, Politics of Cultures: Re-Visioning Latin American Social Movements was published in 1998."-Howard Campbell, author of Mexican Memoir: A Personal Account of Anthropology and Radical Politics in Oaxaca "Overall, McCaughan's book is an excellent resource for scholars interested in the cultural dynamics of social movements or who have an interest in the Chicano movements of the late 1960s. As text, the book would be useful in undergraduate and graduate courses addressing art and social movements." - Katherine Everhart, Mobilization ". . . [A] broad and politically sensitive addition to the English-language literature on three contemporaneous social movements whose demands and achievements continue to reverberate in the contemporary art worlds of Mexico City, Oaxaca, and California." - ChristopherMichael Fraga, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology "As more works on 1968 Mexico and its role in the Cold War continue to be published, this text will remain a standard for understanding how Mexican and Chicano activists interpreted their historical moment. More importantly, McCaughan explores how artists reinterpreted, challenged, and reflected on that moment for decades afterward." - Elaine Carey, HAHR "[T]his is an informative, useful book. Recommended. Graduate students, faculty." - D. Harper, Choice

Art and Social Movements offers a comparative, cross-border analysis of the role of visual artists in three social movements from the late 1960s through the early 1990s: the 1968 student movement and related activist art collectives in Mexico City, a Zapotec indigenous struggle in Oaxaca, and the Chicano movement in California. Based on extensive archival research and interviews, Edward J. McCaughan explores how artists helped to shape the identities and visions of a generation of Mexican and Chicano activists by creating new visual discourses.McCaughan argues that the social power of activist artists emanates from their ability to provoke people to see, think, and act in innovative ways. Artists, he claims, help to create visual languages and spaces through which activists can imagine and perform new collective identities and forms of meaningful citizenship. The artists' work that he discusses remains vital today-in movements demanding fuller democratic rights and social justice for working people, women, ethnic communities, immigrants, and sexual minorities throughout Mexico and the United States. Integrating insights from scholarship on the cultural politics of representation with structural analyses of specific historical contexts, McCaughan expands our understanding of social movements.