June 26, 1988-San Antonio Express-News

'Resistencia' in the park

There was in the air in San Diego's Balboa Part last weekend, the kind of passion that sings liberating serenades to all peoples.

Along with the passion, there was a heady admixture of aesthetics, political awareness and human compassion as the Fiesta de Resistencia wove a daylong canto to the balmy weather.

It was the kind of event where artists and performers speak out with a honed expression of concern to issues afflicting humankind.

It was an event put on by activists and small businesses, not to make a buck but to express a spirit of solidarity with immigrants, youth and exploited peoples of color.

Poetry was inter-woven with the music, while visual arts gave that patch of park a nature bespeaking human dignity and love.

Politically astute poets spoke with loving words, and skillful musicians took a fairly large audience onto planes of realization.

Justice-loving ideals

"Yes," the notes seemed to harmonize, "there is but one humanity, and it still struggles to create on Earth a solidarity built on justice-loving ideals."

The Festival of Resistance was organized by members of La Resistencia such as Keith James of Los Angeles.

The theme of resistance to social policies that unjustly penalize immigrants, American citizens and peoples of color was much in the air, as were poetic expressions of love's being the essential, the dynamic that unites caring beings.

Reggae music by T. Irie Dread set the tone, a positive and reinforcing beat that swayed people. The poetry of John Peterson stretched out the ennui and growing anger of waiting at migra roadblocks going north from Tijuana to Santa Cruz:

"Border patrol check/point Highway 5/... to see if I'm an alien/or alienated. . ."

There was the pathos of Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, a fiery poetica merging Nuyorican melodies with Southern Califas sensibility, and the years rolled back more than 14 summers to when we met in Wisconsin.

Still engaged in a poetry that sings out to struggling peoples, Papo has not wavered in his ideals. There was a gentle strength to him, richer than the turbulence of another time, yet still very sincere and rooted in his culture.

Backdrop for poster

A work of art by Torero, whose Acevedo Gallery helped sponsor the fiesta - along with Trade Roots Reggae Shop, La Resistencia and Blue Door Bookstore - served as the backdrop for the poster.

Black and White, an L.A. rap group, probed our minds with well-honed poetry speaking out against heavy drugs and socio-political exploitation, and the youths in the audience were moved to sing and dance with exuberance and energetic self-empowernment.

Rubén Guevara recited poetry, backgrounded by concheros playing flute and drums.The image of Azteka danzantes in solidarity with a modern LA. Chicano poet was salient, as if a sentient people was arising upon that grassy slope.

Time had an elastic quality to it, a plastic malleability as Storm blended its Latino-jazz-fusion into a half-hour of urgency and enjoyment, all laced with vivid imagery of our individual and communal rights and responsibilities.

The splendid beauty of youth danced through the power of the music of Colours.

More poetry followed by Maggie Jaffe, Steve Kowit, Robert Jones and Terry Hertzler, and the festive notes became broader strokes of creativity geared to reach out to those who suffer.

Skajah reggae drove the beat deeper into consciousness, and then the Jalapeño Dance Band moved the audience into a travelogue through Chicano Califas a la San Diego.

Outcry of liberation

All the while, the words and lyrics painted a joyful outcry of human liberation, of the right of all peoples to reflect their unique sensibilities. Blended into that cornucopia of cultural expressions was the traditional ritual danza of Xipetotec, concheros Aztekas from Los Angeles.

The event was organized in a matter of a few weeks, and it was not publicly funded. Private individuals and artists freely gave of their time, and many small fund-raising events were held in order to put on the affair.

It was very much the kind of event that Chicanos used to stage for the community years ago, and that same kind of spirit was very much alive in that park near the border. The organizers and performers spoke of staging even greater events, all for the purpose of helping the community come to grips with pressng issues that affect everyone.

The protest of Simpson-Rodino, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, has a logic to it. Everyone now has to prove his or her right to employment, and employers can bar people without the proper documents from employment dooming families to starvation.

There is hunger in the land, as well as a rising tide of racism stalking our institution and streets.

Resist encroachment

The artists and activists bespoke the need for people to take control of their lives, to resist the encroachment of a government that every day invades more of our privacy and rights to dignity.

A language of empowerment rode that grassy spot throughout the day, and it had a visible effect on many in the audience.

Hundreds moved with the rhythms and rolled with verbs of adamant, yet very positive, solidarity, and the hue of the moment was one of the beauty of human diversity. It was freedom brewing as dignity was shared, and there were no strings attached, no lines or fearful vacillations.

Art and poetry celebrated while also expressing solidarity in a people's Fiesta of Resistance.