SOCC Mission

The SOCC seeks to re-establish the Centro Cultural de la Raza as a relevant and dynamic community cultural Center that is open and responsive to the aspirations of the Chican@ / Mexican@ / Indigena community; that supports the free expression and liberating qualities of our culture; and that embraces all races, ages, genders and sexual preferences.

The Save Our Centro Coalition is a member of the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture

ART

CULTURE

ACTIVISM

The Save Our Centro Coalition is a member of the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture.

The Boycott of the Centro is Still in Effect!

April 13, 2007

For Immediate Release

Contact: community@saveourcentro.org

CENTRO CULTURAL DE LA RAZA LEGACY EXHIBIT POSTPONED

In order to best resolve the Boycott of the Centro Cultural de La Raza in San Diego and acknowledge the gains made by the current Mediation process, the joint SOCC/Centro Transition Team, in conjunction with the Centro Board has decided to postpone the Centro's upcoming Legacy Initiative Exhibition until the resolution of the Boycott.

Since November of 2005, the National Conflict Resolution Center began to work with members of the Centro Board and the Save Our Centro Coalition (SOCC) to begin the process for ending the 7 year Boycott of the historic Chicano/a community cultural arts center.

To this end, a joint Transition Team, which is comprised of Save Our Centro Coalition and Centro Board members, was formed to lead the organization into a re-unification with its community.

The Transition Team members understand the importance of having artists involved in the exhibition of their work and having adequate curatorial support to make this possible.

Together the Centro and the Save Our Centro Coaliton will collaborate on a Legacy Initiative that will celebrate and reintegrate the vibrant Chicano/a arts community back into its historic home in San Diego's Balboa Park.

A public announcement detailing the date of this future exhibit -- and the expected end of the Boycott -- will be made at Chicano Park Day on April 21, 2007.

-- The SOCC/Centro Transition Team

April 12, 2007

San Diego Union Tribune
Monday, November 6, 2006

Centro Seeking New Director

LATINO ARTS: Centro Cultural de la Raza – the Balboa Park organization that has come under fire for supposedly not living up to its mission – is seeking a new executive director in the wake of the sudden resignation of Rick Hernandez.

Centro artistic director Viviana Acosta confirmed Hernandez left the organization Oct. 31. “He left for personal reasons,” said Acosta, who was unable to elaborate.

Hernandez, 36, could not be reached for comment. He was hired by the Centro board in October of last year. His arrival had been expected to quell the strife that has plagued the Centro for the past seven years. The 36-year-old institution has been criticized by some artists, Latino community leaders and others for “not being open and responsive” to the aspirations of the “Chicano/a, Mexicano/a indigenous community.” The Save Our Centro Coalition has led the attack, spearheading a boycott of the facility.

The Centro has posted the executive director job opening on its Web site and also on the jobs page of the San Diego Performing Arts League.

– Preston Turegano

We would like to thank all those who have respected the boycott and supported the efforts of the SOCC to bring the Centro back to the community.

La Lucha Continua,

Save Our Centro Coalition

For more information, please contact info@saveourcentro.org

June 3 , 2005

Lalo Alcaraz Pulls His Artwork from Centro Exhibit

Nationally-syndicated cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz has demandsed that his artwork "Run, Bush, Run" be removed from a touring exhibit at the Centro Cultural de la Raza in solidarity with the community boycott of the once-dynamic community cultural arts center.

Alcaraz joins artists Richard Lou and Robert Sanchez in removing their artwork from the exhibit at the Centro, an organization that has been the subject of a five-year boycott. The boycott began in May 2000 when the administration refused to resolve the community's concerns about censorship, the destruction of art, the elimination of a representative Arts Advisory Committee, the forcing of a Chicana activist off the Board, nepotism and the hiring of an Executive Director without a national search. The administration used police to lock out the community and end dialogue.

For more information, please contact the Save Our Centro Coalition at centrowatch@aol.com.

The email below has been forwarded to the Centro Cultural de la Raza and Carolina Ponce de Leon, Executive Director of the Galeria de la RAza, the parent institution of the exhibit at the Centro.

Subj: SD EXHIBIT
Date: Friday, June 3, 2005 11:47:35 AM
From: pocho@pocho.com
To: Centrowatch@aol.com

To whom it may concern: I was surprised to read that one of my artworks is on display at San Diego's Centro Cultural de La Raza as part of a traveling show originating at San Francisco's Galeria de la Raza. I am a participant in the boycott against the Centro Cultural de la Raza and have vowed not to perform or present artwork in that venue until significant issues regarding the administration's stance against Chicano artists are resolved.

I request that my artwork, "Run, Bush, Run," be removed immediately from the exhibit at the Centro Cultural de la Raza and that this statement be displayed in its place.

LALO ALCARAZ Nationally Syndicated Comic Strip Artist, "La Cucaracha" --

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http://www.lacucaracha.com http://www.pocho.com http://www.cartoonista.com

listen to the POCHO HOUR OF POWER, Fridays at 4pm PST on KPFK 90.7FM for live streaming visit http://www.zkpfk.org

April 26, 2005

SOCC Makes Presentation to Centro Board

Dear Save Our Centro Members and Supporters,

After five years of requesting dialogue not denial from the Centro, the Save Our Centro Coalition made a presentation at the April 26 Centro Board meeting. The Board consists of mainly new members, as there has been a high turnover rate in recent years. Aida Mancillas was no longer listed as being on the Board and was not present at the meeting. Executive Director Nancy Rodriguez and ballet folklorico instructor Viviana Enrique were in attendance.

Save Our Centro representatives Endy Bernal and Sandra Sarmiento gave a five-minute presentation at the morning meeting, which was held at the Old Gallery coffee shop in downtown San Diego. They handed Save Our Centro buttons to all in attendance and read a prepared statement inviting the Board to participate in a community forum mediated by representatives of the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture.

The Board was asked to provide a written response by May 10 indicating their participation in this important first step at resolving the serious issues which resulted in the ongoing boycott.

As we await the Board's response, we ask all artists, organizations and individuals to respect the boycott and continue to support the SOCC effort to return the Centro to the community. We are hopeful that the new Board members will not express the antagonism toward the community that characterized their predecessors.

We thank you all for your continued support and encourage you to contact us at centrowatch@aol.com if you wish to participate in a community forum. For continued information and updates, please visit our website, www.saveourcentro.org.

La Lucha Continua,

Save Our Centro Coalition
www.saveourcentro.org

SOCC April 26 Presentation to Centro Board

April 26, 2005

Dear Members of the Board of the Centro Cultural de la Raza,

We thank you for honoring the Save Our Centro Coalition¹s longstanding request for dialogue to resolve the current situation. Five years is a long time to wait for this opportunity, and we cannot underscore its importance. Since many of you are new to the Board, we will provide a brief introduction.

We are here as representatives of the Save Our Centro Coalition, a large group of artists, activists, educators and community members committed to serving the needs of the community. Our Coalition includes Centro founders, former Board members, curators and the Centro¹s Arts Advisory Committee. We are a nationally-respected and award-winning group of leaders in poetry, publishing, music, dance, drama, film, journalism, photography, painting and performance.

Our members work throughout the community to produce such events as Chicano Park Day, the Barrio Bookfest, the Adams Avenue Street Fair, the City Heights International Village Celebration, San Diego Latino Film Festival and the annual International Dia de la Mujer Celebration.

We have contributed our expertise to organizations such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Sherman Heights Community Center, the Children¹s Museum, Bienestar, Chicano Perk Café and afterschool programs throughout San Diego.

SOCC members have served on the Boards of numerous organizations, including Voz Alta, the City-County HIV Housing Committee, PACTO and the Media Arts Center San Diego.

We are here today to offer you a plan to bring our resources back to the Centro.

For thirty years, the Centro Cultural de la Raza was the dynamic epicenter of Latino arts and culture in San Diego. It was founded by the same community that founded Chicano Park and shared a common vision of social justice and community empowerment.

This vision attracted and nurtured internationally recognized artists and groups such as Guillermo Gomez Peña, Judy Baca, Los Lobos, Culture Clash, the Border Arts Workshop, Lourdes Portillo, Gronk, Lalo Lopez Alcaraz and many others.

Five years ago, many mistakes were made that resulted in the alienation and exclusion of the community from the Centro. We both know that differences still exist and that sincere effort is necessary to resolve them. But these differences must be resolved now for the good of all.

Fulfilling the Centro¹s original mission as a community space, a resolution can only be accomplished through mediated discussion in an open community forum.

We are here to invite you to this forum. The National Association of Latino Arts and Culture has agreed to serve as mediators, and we have gathered more than one hundred fifty new signatures calling for this meeting. All we need is your participation.

We ask for your response in writing by May 10. You may send your response via email to centrowatch@aol.com.

We trust in your maturity and willingness to engage in the serious task before us. We hope that your positive response to this invitation will help us all begin the work necessary to bring a positive resolution to the standing boycott.

Sincerely,

Erendira Bernal
Save Our Centro Coalition

Sandra Sarmiento
Save Our Centro Coalition

January 8, 2003

"Perhaps SOCC's strongest argument against the Centro is its current lack of programming - a reality that becomes even more striking considering the sheer volume of work created there in the past." Cover Story San Diego City Beat January 8, 2003 The following letters to the Editor were sent to San Diego City Beat in response to the Jan. 8, 2003 cover story on the Centro boycott.

Letters to the Editor S.D. City Beat

Regime Change

I read your article on the Centro Cultural de la Raza [“Cover Story,” Jan. 8] with great interest. I have great interest because I have been personally involved in the development of Chicano/Latino cultural centers for the last 25 years. I was executive director of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio, Texas from 1983 until 1998. During this time, I am not aware of Nancy Rodriguez, who claims to have been an administrator there, to have ever held any such post at the GCAC.

While your detailed article has so many indications of why and how a community-based arts center can go awry of its community, and how its leadership can alienate not only its founders, but the entire community as well, they prove to be too many for me to point out. I can say that it is clear to me that this center needs to have its current leadership removed and to install one that has the backing and blessing of its community, both artistic and general community. A cultural center without arts activities and without a community, is not a cultural center.

Last, an indication of the lack of genuine interest in the community displayed by the current administration, was apparent to me when Nancy Rodriguez called me on occasion to ask my advice regarding her battle with the artists. During this conversation, when I began asking some hard questions regarding her actions and the “Centro,” she became defensive and discontinued the conversation. It was evident to me that she was not interested in hearing anything other than her own views.

Pedro A. Rodriguez,
San Antonio, Texas

Editor’s note: In our Jan. 8 cover story, we incorrectly said Centro Cultural de la Raza Executive Director Nancy Rodriguez was a former administrator at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio. This information came from a source deemed reliable, and both Rodriguez and Centro Board President Aida Mancillas failed to respond to two CityBeat requests for a follow-up interview. In response to the above letter, Rodriguez said she was both an arts patron of and juror for the Guadalupe Center. She also participated in several shows there as a performing artist. She said that at no time did she claim to have been employed by the center prior to being hired at the Centro. We regret the error.

Flawed Mission

After reading the article regarding Centro Cultural de la Raza [“Cover Story,” Jan. 8], I wanted to offer two points. As the executive director of a cultural arts center with much the same history as El Centro, and one that contracts artists, and both presents and produces, it is at the core of your basic relationship with artists that the ownership of an artists work is sacred.

While it is true that programs are the property of the organization, the work of the artists, unless specifically commissioned, are not. It is crap, and a lie to offer that every nonprofit owns whatever work is produced at their facility. I would offer as someone who negotiates on behalf of the artist that they are foolish to agree to such an arrangement. The way you own an artist’s work is you buy it. You don’t pay them an hourly rate and give them materials.

I would be shamed to offer artists such an arrangement. Work for hire is exactly that: work for hire. It is a blatant and ethical infringement on an artist’s intellectual property and certainly misrepresents the norm of arts organizations around the country.

The second point is the issue of vision for the organization. This is the second time I have read [executive director] Nancy Rodriguez describe her organization’s future exclusively in terms of size and prestige. In an earlier article she talks about being a multi-million dollar organization.

For me, these are financial goals that clearly relegate programming and services to the community to secondary status. An executive director and board of directors that is mission-driven (as nonprofits should be) would ask, what are the needs and requirements of their communities, and then develop financial goals that would allow them to carry out the work. Apparently, Rodriguez and her board have determined that money and prestige are what their community needs, so that is what they seek. If they are able to raise substantial money, even if it comes at the expense of exploiting its artists, they will consider themselves a success.

“Community control” of it’s own institution was a tenet of the Chicano movement, separating from the community and pandering to the mainstream were not. It is somewhat infuriating to listen to people pay homage to the Chicano movement and it’s legacy, as Rodriguez and Aida Mancillas do, and at the same time carry out activities that are clearly in contradiction.

Anthony J. Garcia, Executive Director, El Centro Su Teatro Denver, Colo.

Culture Crash

I read your account of the misnamed El Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego. It is misnamed because of what is there now. To me, it is no longer El Centro Cultural.

The present directors, in my opinion, with their power-hungry desire to have their own center and ethics be damned, should not have stepped on the faces of the original artists, activists and founders. To me, on a scale of 1 to 10, their behavior ranks a minus-15.

They have usurped an artistic enterprise with a 30-year history that brought to San Diego art works, the majority of which were of international caliber, and so recognized.

Whatever the case may be, history should record that the present board of directors, collectively, have killed something far more valuable than anything they have to offer. Having jointly participated in this cultural murder, their subsequent behavior can only be categorized as none other than grotesque.

First, emanating from the present board of directors, there has been an ideological self “liberation” undercurrent.

Second, by edict, the creative works of the artists will henceforth become the private property of the board of directors to do with what they will. This is nothing less than indentured servitude, an insult to the concept of “liberation,” and the first cousin of a fascist state.

Third, they have promised health benefits to the artists they have deposed, if only they would return. This offer is an example of ruthless and sadistic dominance. It is the boot stepping on the face of the deposed with boots that have had their heels and soles coated with honey. It is a classic example of the liberated becoming the oppressors.

Fourth, they have usurped not only the physical plant, but also the name. This is an abhorrent effort to capitalize on something others have created. Furthermore, it is totally dishonest, for it conveys to the public that nothing has changed.

Fifth, in my opinion, the present board of directors should either move out, establish their own center or change the name of the place. Nothing less would establish them as totally dishonest, devoid of any ethics, and antithetical to the deepest spirit of art, artists and the true spirit of Chicano culture.

Octavio I. Romano,
Berkeley (Formerly from Old Town and National City)

To learn about Save Our Centro Coalition members or events, please email us at centrowatch@aol.com.

c/s 2005