Margaret “Quica” Alarcon
Jarana Cosmica, 2023
Serigraph, Ed. of 69
22 x 30 in. 

Jarana Cósmica represents a conversation and reflections between me and musician and Artivist Quetzal Flores about our experiences and observations during the grassroots Chicana/o artivist movement of the 1990s in East Los Angeles. In our conversations, Quetzal shared how he was inspired and mentored in his musical practice while falling in love with the Jarana. We both agreed that the arts connect us to the spirit or cosmic realm. Many artists and writers were meeting up, creating, collaborating, organizing encuentros, and speaking truth to power through artistic expression. Our collective community arts building became a force for social justice and positive outcomes within our marginalized communities. We also remembered how the relationality and grounding philosophies of the Zapatista Movement (EZLN) in 1994 inspired us. Musician, scholar, and activist Martha Gonzalez documents how these concepts and inspirations emerged in her 2020 book, Chican@ Artivistas: Music, Community, and Transborder Tactics in East Los Angeles. Gonzalez describes how “…emphasizing a cosmic view of relationality, the Zapatistas requested an engagement and a dialog with other struggling communities worldwide. They called for people and sites of resistance to come to the table to dialog without false government language and discourse. With a new language, Zapatistas believed, as they do now, that encuentros were important, self-reflexive exercises that engendered community building and incited critical consciousness.”