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2010: Highlights of a memorable year for Latino culture
2010: Highlights of a memorable year for Latino culture
A Nobel Prize in literature tops this year’s cultural achievements for Latinos around the world. There were, of course, many other accomplishments in the arts. As it is always the case with end of the year synopsis, there were painful loses as well as memorable firsts during 2010.
Here are some highlights that made this year memorable:
• City wide celebration of Mexico
In Chicago, never before have so many cultural institutions joined to celebrate an anniversary of a foreign country as they did for the yearlong cultural feast of the bicentennial of Mexico’s independence and the centennial of its revolution. The celebration included more than 70 events organized by prestigious institutions such as the Art Institute, the Goodman Theater, the Ravinia Festival and the National Museum of Mexican Art.
The Mexico 2010 program included a Chicago Symphony free concert featuring Mexican conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto at Benito Juárez High School in the Pilsen neighborhood on September 16th, Mexican Independence Day.
The Mexico 2010 program, coordinated by the Mexican Consulate of Chicago, allowed top Chicago cultural institutions to reach out to the Mexican community. Cultural institutions in the city need to keep on attracting the increasingly growing and diverse Latino market.
The celebration of Mexican culture and history concluded with a nearly sold out concert at the House of Blues featuring Chicago-based, Sones de México, as well as Guillermo Velázquez and his band Los Leones de la Sierra de Xichú. The concert took place on November 20th, the day Mexico celebrated the centennial of its Revolution.
• Chicago remembers two writers
On a sad note related both to Chicago and the Mexican Revolution, Friedrich Katz died in October at the age of 83 in Philadelphia after battling cancer for several months. An Austrian of Jewish ancestry, Professor Katz was widely regarded as the most authoritative scholar of Mexican history. His 1,000-page biography “The Life and Times of Pancho Villa,” published in 1998, became a bestseller. Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes called it “a masterpiece of historiography.” Katz will be remembered as a world-renown scholar who loved Mexico and its people.
Carlos Monsiváis was another writer with a strong connection to Chicago who passed away this year. A noted novelist, essayist and journalist who chronicled with unique sarcasm and humor the political and cultural life of Mexico, Monsiváis was a friend and mentor of Chicago-based writers such as Febronio Sataraín and Raúl Dorantes and was a featured lecturer on literature and journalism on several occasions at the Librería Tres Américas as well as the National Museum of Mexican Art.
• Firebrand from Venezuela
In classical music, there is no bigger name now than Gustavo Dudamel, who at 28 is the youngest conductor of a major orchestra. As the Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Dudamel has been able to attract a younger generation to classical music with his charisma, accessibility and energetic style. This year Dudamel has continued to excel as a conductor. Early next year, Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra will embark on a seven-city European tour.
• Nobel in Literature to Vargas Llosa
Frankly, it was about time. The Spanish-speaking world had been waiting 20 years —since Mexican poet Octavio Paz won the Nobel prize for Literature in 1990—for the news that either Mario Vargas Llosa or Carlos Fuentes would be recognized for the most coveted literary prize in the world. Vargas Llosa finally won for his novels, essays and articles examining the labyrinth of power in Latin America. The Swedish Academy praised Vargas Llosa “for his cartography of the structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.”
The Peruvian writer, who unsuccessfully ran for president and has been chastised for his political views against Latin American left wing governments, criticized the regimes of Cuba and Venezuela in his acceptance speech. He affirmed the values of freedom of speech and imagination. “Without fictions we would be less aware of the importance of freedom for life to be livable, the hell it turns into when it is trampled underfoot by a tyrant, an ideology, or a religion,” Vargas Llosa said in his Nobel lecture.
Hopefully the world won’t have to wait 20 years for the Swiss Nobel Academy to recognize another world-class author who writes in Spanish.
• Frida sin Diego
This year, the art world celebrated the centennial of Frida Khalo’s birthday with exhibits from Mexico to the United States to Germany. Frida has become one the most revered artists in the world. Diego now seems an afterthought in Frida’s blazing posthumous career. Books analyzing her life and work are published regularly in many languages and experts continue to examine Frida’s influence on the new generations of artists.
• Emerging alternative Latino music
In 2010, National Public Radio launched an amazing weekly radio show and blog called Alt.Latino that features some of the best alternative music and rock en español coming out from Latin America and Spain. NPR labeled Alt.Latino as a mix of “many sounds and scenes of Latin alternative, a blend of rock, hip-hop and fusion from Latino cultures around the world and down the block.”
Alt.Latino hosts Jasmine Garsd and Felix Contreras are knowledgeable and refreshing. And they know how to mix it up. On a recent show, the listener could appreciate electronic cumbia, Panamanian rap and a Spanish garage-rock band. It is just too bad that the radio stations that target Latino listeners do not play more Latino alternative music. Alt.Latino is definitely a show to hear the music being created in the Latino world beyond Shakira and Chayanne.
• The end of an era: Décima Musa closed
We were shocked by the news of the restaurant-bar Décima Musa closing its doors in mid December. There are a handful of places in the Latino community of Chicago that truly deserve to be called iconic, and Décima Musa was one. It was named in honor of the Mexican 17th century poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz who was called Mexico’s Tenth Muse.
Located in the Pilsen neighborhood, Décima Musa became a place for artists, writers, poets and politicians to gather and exchange ideas. Co-owners Rosario Rabiela and Carmen Velásquez opened La Décima Musa in 1982 and it quickly became a center of culture and a place where you could have a drink (or several) under the penetrating gaze of a portrait of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
These highlights of 2010 in Latino culture do not intend —by any means— to be a full compilation of the most relevant events that happened during the last 12 months. These highlights are only an invitation to a conversation about what was significant in Latino culture this year.
Next year is upon us and I am sure we will continue to experience the growing influence of Latino culture in Chicago and the rest of the world.
Alejandro Escalona is a Chicago Sun-Times columnist focusing on Latino issues.
image courtesy of Daniele Devoti
