Canto CCCLXXXI: Alicia Rojas, Artista Poderosa

Gentle cabrones:

Alicia Rojas clearly remembers the first time we met.

It was in the mid 2000s, probably on the earlier side. She had sent me an email. She was an artist in the Santora Building in downtown SanTana, and could I please go visit her space to see her work?

I did, and that gesture proved to her once and for all how down I was, how community oriented I was and what an incredible reporter I was.

I remember none of that.

I get invited to events all the time – sometimes from a press releases, sometimes from earnest fan mail, sometimes a text or call. I truly wish I could go to all of them, because you really don’t know what’s out there and possible unless you go out there. But it’s rare that I ever go to even some, then and now, because I’m always working too much.

But for whatever reason, I went to Alicia‘s show.

I couldn’t tell you what it was about, and I couldn’t even tell you what our interaction was. But she obviously made an impression on me, because she soon became part of the circle of people I pay attention to for trends and news.

She went from just a random email to someone who I knew was fighting for artists in SanTana to someone who got involved with the Occupy movement to a friend of my honey and then a friend of mine.

Alicia became so close to us that she was there for our wedding (the greatest wedding you never attended) and saw multiple TV series at our house all the way through. And as the years went on, I saw her profile and portfolio get better and better known. Besides the politics, she began to help out on murals, then made murals of her own, then began to restore historic Chicano murals in SanTana. She’s been an artist-in-residence at Grand Central Art Center in downtown SanTana and did an incredible show about bees that involved film, testimonios and sculpted honeycombs made out of beeswax.

That exhibit in 2023. This year, her project was even more ambitious.

Poderosas: Powerful Women is a multidisciplinary project that’s part coffee table book, part 60-some oral histories, part public art, part film and all heartfelt brilliance. It documents some of the promotoras — volunteer health advocates — at Latino Health Access, specifically their work and lives during the height of Covid in all of its joy and pain. She was kind enough to ask me to do the forward to the book, and kind enough to ask me to be in conversation with her at 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica.

Of course, but…

It’s fucking Santa Monica – for an Anacrime boy, might as well be on the other side of the Milky Way. As much as my honey would’ve loved to have gone, she couldn’t because she has a restaurant to run. As much as Alicia’s home crowd would’ve loved to have gone, it’s fucking Santa Monica. But it’s Alicia, so off we went – me, her, filmmaker Cecilia Ortiz Fernández and the film’s composer, Ali Coyle, whose family owns the incredible Irish restaurants, Dublin4 and Fable & Spirit.

Fucking Santa Monica. DId I mention my honey and I once let Alicia take her pals to our lawyer’s home out in Palm Springs so she could enjoy a long birthday weekend? Así es de chingona our comadre.

So off we went.

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It was a sunny, crisp day, with no traffic at all heading up the 405. I had heard of 18th Street Arts Center, but had never been. What an org! Artist bungalows and studios and funder of artists like Alicia. We met Deputy Director of Artistic Programs Michael Ano, who thanked us for being there, thanked Alicia for her genius, and worried about the pause in funding all arts organizations will probably face in these years.

Alicia — who loves her fun but is also no-nonsense like any good accountant is (which was her day job) — wasn’t phased.

“That’s why,” she told us, “we have to do art more than ever.”

Alicia worried about how many people would show up. I worried that she was banking on my repute to bring people in — um, no one knows who I am. I was proven right — five people who weren’t us SanTana Four showed up, and only one of them came because of me even though I promoted this to ustedes fookin’ ingrate followers how many weeks in these cantos?

I digress.

Almost no one went, but it didn’t ruin our day one bit. Alicia and I chatted for about 35 minutes, then we watched Cecilia’s short documentary, then I brought up Cecilia and Ali to ask them each a question about their work, then took questions from the audience, and that was that. Only five people showed, but Alicia easily sold 10 books, because it’s a gorgeous, glossy coffee table book with portraits of the namesake poderosasa that Alicia shot and composed in her SanTana artist-in-residence studio.

More importantly, Alicia got to talk to the 18th Street people in person, and they liked her work so much that they said Alicia should keep talking to them.

You really don’t know what’s out there and possible unless you go out there.

The drive up to pinche Santa Monica was about 55 minutes; the drive back down would be an ungodly hour and a half. But we were happy. We gossipped and listened to music and awaiting us back home was a small celebration at Chapter One, our evening local (because Alta Baja is the breakfast and brunch spot). Ali‘s partner was there, along with a couple that Alicia had married, and Hairo Cortes, the Michael Berman of Orange County. And a guy who was at the Santa Monica event drove down all the way to hang with us!

We ate and drank, and Alicia repeated her story about the time we first met. I just nodded and smiled.

She credits me with giving her a sense of validation abut her art at a time few did, but I really didn’t do that. I never wrote about her show that I attended. I really haven’t written about her until now. I did nothing to help her career — it’s always been her WERK.

And yet here we are almost 20 years later, still here — and Alicia’s upcoming work is going to be the best thing she’s ever done. What do I always say? Surround yourself with people smarter than you.

Alicia: Gracias for being one of those people. Everyone: buy her book. She also does downtown SanTana art tours through Alta Baja, so sign up for that.

But the Néctar aguardiente in juice boxes that she brings to me every time she returns to her native Colombia? I ain’t sharing those, Jack.

**

Enough rambling. This was the semana that was:

IMAGE OF THE WEEK: Rick Guzman, the man behind the DELICIOUS Pizzeria Irene in Old Towne Orange, named after his late abuelita. It opened in September, but he just began to open on Tuesdays because the demand is so high, so start going NOW.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “The key is to tell it straight. It is done by reporters and by country folk” — Gabriel García Márquez

LISTENING: “La Iguana,” Banda Los Costeños. The song is a classic of the Mexican state of Guerrero; the group is a standard of the Tierra Caliente portion of the state. The style of music you hear is son calentano, which you never hear on radio in Southern California but plays almost every weekend in SanTana at Festival Hall because the city is pure Guerrero — just ask Hairo! Great tune — but how would you dance it?

READING: “The Weight of Gold: A Mandaean Journey Through Exile”: Since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated by the ancient religions — Zoroastrianism and Yazidism, Mandeaism, and Jainism — that survived in a world and regions where Islam, Christianity and Hinduism reigned supreme. This article by the ever-impressive New Lines Magazine talks about a woman brought up in the Mandean faith (they believe John the Baptist was the greatest prophet of them all) who lost her connection to it as part of the Mandean exodus in the wake of the terrible Iraq War. Refugee lit, second-generation memoir all leading to an ending that doesn’t happen the way you think it will but is nevertheless stirring.

Gustavo Events  

April 26, 3 p.m.: I’ll be moderating “The Activist Spirit and the Embodiment of Solidarity” at the L.A. Times Festival of Books at Newman Recital Hall at USC. Tickets will be required but not released until April 20, so stay tuned.

April 27, 11:45 am. and 4:15 p.m.: I’ll be moderating two more panels for the L.A. Times Festival of Books: “Voto Latino: Post-Election Reflections” and “Ask a Reporter: How We Cover Immigration.” The former will be at the De Los Stage and accessible to all, the latter will be at Mudd Hall 203 and will require tickets that are not released until April 20, so stay tuned.

May 3, 9 a.m.: Join me and one of my co-authors of A People’s Guide to Orange County as we do a tour of Anacrime! Tickets are $20 but completely worth it — buy here.

Gustavo in the News

“Losin’ Ugly”: In which I get a Chicago handshake in the form of a photo of Hall of Fame pitcher Hoyt Wilhelm and two baseball cards of Hall of Fame outfielder Minnie Miñoso.

“The Guild Eagle: Buyouts, AI blowback”: My union’s newsletter shouts out a columna of mine.

“L.A. Times Sports Scores APSE Triple Crown”: I’m part of this, so COOL…

“‘Looney Tunes’ has been removed from Max. This is why it feels like an attack”: Brilliant Los Angeles Times television critic Robert Lloyd shouts out a columna of mine.

“Re-enforcements have arrived: Welcoming Jeff Pearlman’s “The Truth OC!”“: Vern just can’t help himself.

Gustavo Stories 

“Grítale a Guti”: Latest edition of my Tuesday night IG Live free-for-all.

“Immigrant kids to get stronger protections in OC”: My latest KCRW “Orange County Line” commentary talks about moves at the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

“Alta Baja Market”: I do a plug for Very Old Barton’s, a FANTASTIC bargain bourbon, for my honey’s store.

"Alicia Rojas in conversation with Gustavo Arellano”: The full discussion between Alicia and myself at 18th Street Arts Center.

“Checking in on Medi-Cal as state approves $3 billion loan and concerns of federal-level cuts loom”: I appear on AirTalk with Larry Mantle to talk about columnas of mine.

“In a turbulent time, LAFD union head isn’t who you think he is”: My latest L.A. Times columna is about Freddy Escobar, who had some interesting things to say about Guatemalans, of all people. KEY QUOTE: “But his evasive explanation about why there aren’t more Latino firefighters in L.A., coupled with his anti-Guatemalan thoughts, cast him as a type of Angeleno I know too well: The powerful Latino who dismisses their own kind the moment they get theirs.”

“Jeff Pearlman goes from sportswriting to throwing fastballs at O.C. politicians”: My next latest L.A. Times columna is about a legendary sportswriter who just started a newsletter about OC politics. KEY QUOTE: “Still, Pearlman writing about O.C. politics seems a little like Gustavo Dudamel quitting the L.A. Philharmonic to moonlight as a drummer at the Dresden Room. Shohei ditching the Dodgers to join a local pickleball league.”

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