Abstract
First known as an organizer of the 1968 East LA walkouts, Moctesuma Esparza has spent a fifty-year career in the film industry engaging in various types of activism to change the representations and treatment of Latina/os. This article traces his life before and during the Chicano movement (1950s–1970s), the development of Chicano and Latino cinema (1980s–1990s), and the increasing visibility of Latina/o entrepreneurs (1990s–2000s). In addition to offering a historical account of Esparza’s political involvement, this essay contributes to the emerging scholarship on Latina/o entrepreneurs by focusing on Esparza as an entrepreneur in the cultural sector, one whose trajectory offers us a window into wider cultural and economic phenomena. Esparza’s endeavors illuminate the mainstreaming of Chicano politics, and his experiences also offer us an entryway into understanding the discourse of Latino entrepreneurship as a political and cultural tactic and in relation to neoliberalism.
Resúmen
Conocido inicialmente como organizador de las huelgas de East LA en 1968, Moctesuma Esparza ostenta una carrera de cincuenta años en la industria cinematográfica, en la cual ha participado en diversos tipos de activismo para cambiar la representación y el trato de los latinos y las latinas en el cine. Este artículo recorre su vida antes y durante el movimiento Chicano (décadas de 1950, 60 y 70), el desarrollo del cine chicano y latino (décadas de 1980 y 90) y la visibilidad cada vez mayor del sector empresarial latino (décadas de 1990 y 2000). Además de ofrecer un recuento histórico del activismo político de Esparza, este ensayo aporta a la investigación académica sobre los empresarios latinos al centrarse en Esparza como empresario del sector cultural: un empresario cuya trayectoria nos ofrece una ventana a fenómenos culturales y económicos más amplios. Los esfuerzos de Esparza iluminan la popularización de la política chicana; sus experiencias también nos ofrecen una forma de comenzar a entender el discurso emprendedor latino como táctica política y cultural y con relación al neoliberalismo.
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Notes
Esparza estimates that about half of his films have been about Latina/os.
Neoliberalism valorizes a free market. It values undoing any regulations—such as government oversight, taxes, and tariffs—that would infringe on the rights of the individual and corporations to pursue and accumulate capital. Among other effects, it has led to exacerbated inequality between the rich and the poor, the privatization of public resources, the increasing influence of money on politics, and the weakening of the welfare state. See Harvey (2005), A Brief History of Neoliberalism.
Wendy Brown discusses entrepreneurialism as characteristic of neoliberal rationality, which “disseminates the model of the market to all domains and activities—even where money is not an issue—and configures human beings exhaustively as market actors, always, only, and everywhere as homo oeconomicus” (2015, p. 31, italics original).
The Young Citizens for Community Action (YCCA) was a group of Mexican American high school students who joined together in 1966 to engage in local politics and community service. Several members, including Esparza, had also served on LA Mayor Samuel Yorty’s Youth Advisory Council. Members grew increasingly politicized by the obstacles to education and by a growing awareness of police brutality; in 1967 the group changed its name to Young Chicanos for Community Action. Police harassment had prompted some YCCA members to adopt more militant tactics in self-defense and, by 1968, to form the Brown Berets (Haney López 2003, pp. 178–182).
UMAS was founded in 1967 at a student conference in LA, with the goal of forming branches on college campuses citywide.
These trials would serve as the basis for Oscar Zeta Acosta’s novel The Revolt of the Cockroach People.
Esparza (2017, interview) reports, “Juan Gómez dropped off in about six months and then Raul Ruíz and I co-hosted the show for about two or three years. Then he dropped off and I did the show for seven years.”
Father John Luce was the pastor of an Episcopal church in Lincoln Heights, originally the meeting place for the YCCA. Esparza describes Luce as an important mentor to him and other Chicano activists.
In the 1970s, Esparza also produced the Oscar-nominated documentary Agueda Martinez: Our People, Our Country, directed by Esperanza Vásquez.
Asked about his ethnicity in an interview for NBC Latino, the real Tony Mendez revealed he does not identify as Hispanic even though his father’s family came from Mexico (Rico 2013). It is not clear whether Esparza knew about Mendez’s self-identification.
Although data such as these highlight Latino entrepreneurs as a more recent phenomenon, historian Geraldo Cadava prompts us to take a longer view. He finds that post-1965, there was sharp increase in Latino businesses but argues that colonialism itself was an entrepreneurial endeavor and thus we should take into account Spanish settlement as part of this history, as well as the economic enterprises in ranching, agriculture, and mining that occurred in the Southwest and before the urbanization of the Latino population that is more readily associated with Latino business ownership (Cadava 2013). In addition to understanding Latino entrepreneurship as part of a longer history, it’s also important to know that many variables can help or hinder economic integration and success within this grouping, as Zulema Valdez’s research illuminates. As Valdez puts it, we must “consider how race, class, gender, and not only ethnicity intersect to affect the entrepreneurial outcomes of a diverse group of entrepreneurs” (2011, p. 155).
The Latino Donor Collaborative declares its mission to be “To reframe and advance an accurate perception, portrayal and understanding of the important contributions American Latinos make to American society” (http://latinodonorcollaborative.org/).
Esparza still identifies as a Chicano but can pinpoint when he started using “Latino” with greater frequency. It was in the early 1980s, during “big debates with Raul Yzaguirre.” Yzaguirre asked Esparza to take over what would come to be called the National Latino Media Foundation and wanted to use the word “Hispanic.” Esparza asked, “Why the hell can’t we call it the National Chicano?” Yzaguirre responded, “We have to create a big tent. Since we are the largest group, we have an obligation to create a tent so that we can create a greater market and political force.” Esparza recalls, “Then it became an issue of, which is the lesser evil, the word Hispanic or the word Latino? I was in the room where these discussions and debates were going on, just as I was in the room when the word Chicano was consciously selected and used (Esparza 2017, interview). Esparza’s use of Chicano and Latino exemplifies how identity labels are historically influenced, are situational, and can be employed strategically.
Agius Vallejo (2015), for example, registers how charter schools can serve to legitimize neoliberalism.
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Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the following for their engagement with the ideas in this article: the anonymous reviewers, Tiq Chapa, John Alba Cutler, Jennifer Harford Vargas, Priscilla Leiva, Ralph E. Rodriguez, George Sánchez, and the Newberry Seminar in Borderlands and Latino/a Studies.
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Román, E.M. From walking out to walking in: Activist goals, neoliberal constraints, and the discourse of Latino entrepreneurship. Lat Stud 17, 5–26 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-018-00165-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-018-00165-9