28
Historical Riverside The Riversider | June/July 2022
Viva El Cheech! Viva la Raza! Riverside Mexican American Pioneers, El Movimiento, and The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Arts and Culture WORDS: H. VINCENT MOSES, PHD
Cheech Marin’s eagerly awaited Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture in Downtown Riverside throws open its doors on June 18th. Opening day is sold out, and tickets are sparse for the following few days. The Cheech by any definition is a roaring success right out of the gate! Under the management of the Riverside Art Museum, The Cheech is an unmatched achievement for Riverside and its historic Latino community. Yours truly is humbled and proud to have introduced Cheech’s Chicano art to Riverside in 2003 as Director of the Riverside Metropolitan Museum. We hosted the first Cheech Marin exhibition at the Museum that year. Thanks go to my friend Melissa Richardson Banks, and Cause Connect that managed the first Cheech shows and enabled the Museum to mount the first exhibition in Riverside. Later, Melissa facilitated a Chicano art show with Drew Oberjuerge; Director of the Riverside Art Museum and the rest is history! The Cheech is an authentic outgrowth of El Movimiento, the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s—a powerful social movement among young Mexican Americans fighting for a distinct cultural identity that preserved and built on their Mexican and Latino heritage. Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers Union grew out of the El Movimiento— the Chicano Movement. T he movement sprea d to college s an d universities, including UC Riverside. UCR’s Latino students embraced Chicanismo/a, creating local chapters of the Mexican American Youth Association (MAYA) and Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MECHA), and pushing UCR to establish the The Riversider Magazine
Mexican, Italian, and Japanese congregation of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church arrayed in front of the Church building under construction, Madison Street, Casa Blanca, c1922. Mexican and Mexican American tradesmen, parishioners of St. Anthony’s built the structure by hand and with funds raised by the community. Courtesy Museum of Riverside
