美国国家公共电台 NPR 'From The Mundane To The Magnificent': Photos From The Chicano Rights Movement

 

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The movement to achieve civil rights for African-Americans is well known at this point. What fewer people probably know is that a parallel movement for civil rights for Mexican-Americans was going on at the same time. In Los Angeles, the Autry Museum of the American West has gathered together previously¹ unseen photos from that time in a new exhibition. Just before it opened, Karen Grigsby Bates from our Code Switch team got a sneak² peek³.

KAREN GRIGSBY BATES, BYLINE⁴: It's mid-morning at the Autry Museum. I'm walking through tall doors into a darkened room. Dozens and dozens of framed photos lean against the walls waiting to be hung. Pictures of boycotts⁵, of long distance marches, of young dandies posing for the camera. There were also a couple of huge images the size of posters and bus shelters. Luis Garza co-curated the exhibit.

LUIS GARZA: You come into this space here and you see these large, huge blowups that we've done with some of these photographs.

BATES: He leads me to an image that stops me in my tracks.

GARZA: This is a photograph taken by Maria Varela.

BATES: It's a photo of a little girl, maybe 5 years old, with brown skin, her dark hair in pigtails. Her little arms clutch a bunch of newspapers, and Varela's camera has caught the child with her mouth wide open as she shouts for buyers to come. That's such a great photo.

GARZA: Isn't it?

BATES: All these are photos from La Raza, a newspaper-turned-magazine that covered the lives of California's Chicanos. That's what many political Mexican-Americans called themselves back then. Garza, who was a La Raza photographer in the '60s and '70s, says the photos in the exhibition are just a sampling of some 25,000 images from La Raza's archives.

GARZA: The vast body of this work has never been seen, has never been printed until now.

BATES: They're not all masterpieces, and he's OK with that.

GARZA: We did not edit. We brought everything in. So you go from the mundane⁶ to the magnificent.

BATES: The La Raza photographs captured a turbulent time in American history. And 50 years later, Garza says, a lot of the issues they addressed are still relevant. Back then, LA's Chicanos were largely invisible in the media.

GARZA: The coverage⁷ of what was going on within our community was nil⁸ to nonexistent at all.

BATES: So there are photos of the walkout staged by thousands of students in East LA to protest the segregated⁹ substandard education they were being given and shots of a huge Chicano anti-war demonstration¹⁰.

GARZA: You'll begin to see photographs of the Vietnam War, the August 29 Moratorium¹¹ march.

BATES: Of all these photos, Maria Varela's little news girl haunted me. I wanted to know more, so I called Varela at her home in New Mexico to ask if she remembered what was happening that day when the photo was taken. She said it was 1968, when a Chicano delegation¹² had traveled to Washington, D.C., to participate in the Poor People's March.

MARIA VARELA: There's a vague recollection that this might have been the time that everybody emptied out to go up to Arlington Cemetery¹³ to honor Robert Kennedy, who had been assassinated¹⁴, like, two weeks before.

BATES: Varela photographed that march and dozens more for La Raza. She says the paper and others like it kept Chicano communities across the West connected.

VARELA: This was our Facebook. This was our communication network. It was a little clunky, but people got the word out about what was going on in these individual communities.

BATES: Many of those communities have changed over time, but they're preserved in the photographs here, evidence of Chicano purpose and pride. Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF GARY DELANEY'S "EVANESCENCE - JEREMY ROWLEY REMIX")

1 previously   

adv.以前，先前（地）

参考例句：

• The bicycle tyre blew out at a previously damaged point.自行车胎在以前损坏过的地方又爆开了。
• Let me digress for a moment and explain what had happened previously.让我岔开一会儿，解释原先发生了什么。

2 sneak   

vt.潜行(隐藏,填石缝)；偷偷摸摸做；n.潜行；adj.暗中进行

参考例句：

• He raised his spear and sneak forward.他提起长矛悄悄地前进。
• I saw him sneak away from us.我看见他悄悄地从我们身边走开。

3 peek   

vi.偷看，窥视；n.偷偷的一看，一瞥

参考例句：

• Larry takes a peek out of the window.赖瑞往窗外偷看了一下。
• Cover your eyes and don't peek.捂上眼睛，别偷看。

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 boycotts   

（对某事物的）抵制( boycott的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Their methods included boycotts and court action, supplemented by'sit-ins". 他们的主要方法包括联合抵制、法庭起诉，还附带进行静坐抗议。
• Are boycotts for other purposes illegal? 至于用于其它目的的联合抵制行动是否也是非法的呢？

6 mundane   

adj.平凡的；尘世的；宇宙的

参考例句：

• I hope I can get an interesting job and not something mundane.我希望我可以得到的是一份有趣的工作，而不是一份平凡无奇的。
• I find it humorous sometimes that even the most mundane occurrences can have an impact on our awareness.我发现生活有时挺诙谐的，即使是最平凡的事情也能影响我们的感知。

7 coverage   

n.报导，保险范围，保险额，范围，覆盖

参考例句：

• There's little coverage of foreign news in the newspaper.报纸上几乎没有国外新闻报道。
• This is an insurance policy with extensive coverage.这是一项承保范围广泛的保险。

8 nil   

n.无，全无，零

参考例句：

• My knowledge of the subject is practically nil.我在这方面的知识几乎等于零。
• Their legal rights are virtually nil.他们实际上毫无法律权利。

9 segregated   

分开的； 被隔离的

参考例句：

• a culture in which women are segregated from men 妇女受到隔离歧视的文化
• The doctor segregated the child sick with scarlet fever. 大夫把患猩红热的孩子隔离起来。

10 demonstration   

n.表明，示范，论证，示威

参考例句：

• His new book is a demonstration of his patriotism.他写的新书是他的爱国精神的证明。
• He gave a demonstration of the new technique then and there.他当场表演了这种新的操作方法。

11 moratorium   

n.(行动、活动的)暂停(期)，延期偿付

参考例句：

• The government has called for a moratorium on weapons testing.政府已要求暂停武器试验。
• We recommended a moratorium on two particular kinds of experiments.我们建议暂禁两种特殊的实验。

12 delegation   

n.代表团；派遣

参考例句：

• The statement of our delegation was singularly appropriate to the occasion.我们代表团的声明非常适合时宜。
• We shall inform you of the date of the delegation's arrival.我们将把代表团到达的日期通知你。

13 cemetery   

n.坟墓，墓地，坟场

参考例句：

• He was buried in the cemetery.他被葬在公墓。
• His remains were interred in the cemetery.他的遗体葬在墓地。

14 assassinated   

v.暗杀( assassinate的过去式和过去分词 )；中伤；诋毁；破坏

参考例句：

• The prime minister was assassinated by extremists. 首相遭极端分子暗杀。
• Then, just two days later, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. 跟着在两天以后，肯尼迪总统在达拉斯被人暗杀。 来自辞典例句