Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center

San Pablo, California

Mission

To promote traditional arts in a social context as a means to strengthen youth, families and community.

Community Heritage Project &

Cultures of Mexico in California Project

Reviving and presenting the art of Mexican immigra nts and Mexican Americans to encourage social connection and cross-cultural understanding through the Community Heritage Project , a youth arts education program, and Cultures of Mexico in California , which develops musical CDs and documentary films and performances for the general public.

Community Context

West Contra Costa County suffers from many social ills that plague many inner city communities nationwide. There is high crime, violence, and poor performance in the local schools. Los Cenzontles began as a youth music and dance group in the late 1980s and was incorporated as a non-profit in 1994 as a grassroots effort to use the cultural arts as a means to strengthen the community. When Los Cenzontles began, the students were mostly Mexican American teens who primarily spoke English. The Latino demographic shifted dramatically in the 1990’s with a boom in immigrants from Mexico. Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center (LCMAC) programming has reflected that shift. In fact, it was the inherent optimism of these newcomers that founding director Eugene Rodriguez tried to tap into in forging a new approach toward community building. This approach includes building on the capacities of the community, not on a deficit-oriented model. We have also looked to bridge vernacular expressions with folkloric forms. While reviving traditions we have also supported popular traditions such as banda and norteño music popular in the community.

Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center

All of Los Cenzontles projects are focused on reviving and presenting the art of Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans, as well as using these traditional and popular art forms to encourage social connection and cross-cultural understanding, both for youth and adults. We have two distinct projects: the Community Heritage Project focuses on our local community through a youth arts education program and community events. The Cultures of Mexico in California project builds on the lessons we have learned locally, creating cultural products (musical CDs and documentary films) and presenting performances for the general public that help to build cross-cultural understanding.

Community Heritage Project

The Community Heritage Project is a locally focused project that includes the Mockingbird Youth Project and sponsorship of community events.

The Mockingbird Youth Project offers beginning to advanced classes and workshops in music and dance based in Mexican traditional and popular arts to 200 students each week (300 – 400 students annually). These classes are taught primarily by master artists of traditional art forms or techniques.

Twenty-eight group classes are offered in twelve-week sessions on a quarterly basis, and 150 students take part in group classes each session. The student-teacher ratio is approximately 6:1. Private, one-on-one lessons are given to an additional 50 students.

During a one-year period, at least 300 students participate in the School for the Arts. The program serves primarily Latino youth ages 4-18. However, we also serve non-Latino youth: 42% of our program participants are of other ethnicities or of mixed heritage. Nearly all of our students are well below the median income level of this area.

The Mockingbird Youth Project offers a curriculum that focuses on mastery of traditional and popular Mexican art forms through long-term acquisition of skills. Students learn how to play an instrument, sing, dance (or a combination) in order to study and perform.

The curriculum is designed to graduate students through five stages of artistic development by gradually increasing the levels of achievement. A student would start with the Beginners class in the first twelve-week session, then if promoted, would go on to the intermediate, then advanced classes. Students who master the advanced classes are invited to audition for the Los Cenzontles Touring Group. Exceptionally dedicated members of the Touring Group become teachers and mentors, passing on their skills, experience, and confidence to the younger children.

Promotion of students from one level to the next is the decision of the Artistic Director after extensive consultation with Master teachers, student Mentors, and the student and his or her parents. A positive working attitude, behavior, commitment to technical and artistic advancement, and excellent attendance are the criteria for promotion.

Rather than offer scholarships to individual students, Los Cenzontles prefers to keep class fees low so that all students in our community are able to participate, regardless of their economic circumstances. Class fees are some of the lowest in the Bay Area, only $60 per session, amounting to an average subsidy of $140 per student.

Our goal is that the youth in the program develop artistic and life skills that will help them grow as individuals and as members of a larger community. We strive to continue valuable Mexican traditions by passing them on to youth within a social context. The program encourages students to use their study of Mexican arts to gain an appreciation for their culture and history and learn to persevere through all kinds of challenges they may face.

Los Cenzontles Mexican Art Center (LCMAC) was founded in 1994 as an urgent community response to spiraling social problems among local youth. That year, fifteen-year-old Cecilia Rios was raped and murdered in a San Pablo schoolyard. Amidst talks of gang-retaliation and escalating violence, friends of Cecilia were having difficulty expressing grief in a constructive manner; graffiti reading “R.I.P. Cecy” was commonplace at that time. Founding Director Eugene Rodriguez saw this tragedy as an opportunity to test his theories about connecting with youth through the traditional arts. At Los Cenzontles he gathered a group of twelve of Cecy’s friends to create a workshop to put their grief into verse—the first time that many of these young people had expressed their pain. The result was the Corrido of Cecilia Rios, a story-telling ballad that was eventually released as Los Cenzontles first CD recording Con Su Permiso Senores . Two years later a short film was released of the same name and screened at the Sundance Film Festival.

In developing the program over the years, Mr. Rodriguez and other staff at Los Cenzontles recognized that in order to compete with the pervasive negative messages influencing our youth, one must build powerful alternatives to affect teens. This meant ensuring that Los Cenzontles had a very high profile in the community. It is not seen as another bureaucratic program, but an exciting center that represents the aspirations of many local youth. The program is built upon a solid foundation driven by a core of teens and young adults who are themselves longtime participants in the program. The artistic success of the performing group, the Los Cenzontles (the Mockingbirds) Touring Youth Group, and its potential to attract and affect community youth, is fourteen years in the making and growing stronger daily.

Cultures of Mexico in California

Cultures of Mexico in California (CMC) is a research, performance, and documentation project consisting of three documentaries and a variety of cultural products and outreach initiatives. The project was developed in 2002 with funding from the James Irvine Foundation and the U.S. Mexico Fund for Culture to examine the evolving cultural identity among Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans in the U.S., using the changing social function of traditional Mexican music and dance as a guidepost.

The project has extended beyond the three documentaries to include the production of at least three musical CDs and outreach and engagement activities in communities in California and other parts of the country.

Through CMC, Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center has received substantial and widespread recognition on both sides of the border as an important center for the practice, research, preservation, and promotion of traditional Mexican cultural aesthetic as it was traditionally practiced—integral to a social context. This is in contrast to the more prevalent theatrical and commercial forms of Mexican arts we see today: static, passive presentations that lack a base in the community and the involvement of children, youth and families.

Traditionally, the practice of Mexican art forms was integrated with community life, and the art forms reflected daily realities, including the culture, values and struggles of the people who lived in the community. Los Cenzontles is studying, documenting and using traditional forms of Mexican art as a template for community arts activism in contemporary life with much success. Our work is providing a new/old model for using culture as a relevant tool to include parents, children, teachers, community members, seniors, and artists to share and communicate with each other. The Center is reviving traditions that are in danger of being lost, and brings value to forms that have historically been undervalued and discarded as more commercial and profitable forms were promoted.

The authenticity and depth of performances by Los Cenzontles Touring Group—most of whom are young immigrants who grew up within LCMAC’s youth program—coupled with engaging documentaries, create an effective outreach package for the discussion of cultural identity and its vital role in community self-determination. The issues provoked by Cultures of Mexico in California are of increasing importance to the discussion of social justice and change at the local and national levels.

Promoting first-person stories of Hispanics: Given the enormous number of Mexican Americans, LCMAC feels strongly its responsibility to contribute to the telling of authentic stories in a quality and engaging manner on public television—stories in which Hispanic Americans are the protagonists in their own narratives.

Promoting intercultural understanding: Los Cenzontles is advocating for people of Mexican heritage to better understand and value their own authentic history and cultural identity and project that value to the broader community. We seek to create authentic images of immigrants and therefore reinforce their positive perception as a community asset. Educational materials focusing on Latino culture are woefully out-of-date, creating negative or stereotypical perceptions of Latinos at a very young age, both for Latino children and their non-Latino peers. A very important component of this project includes updating cultural materials used in education so that we can begin promoting cross-cultural understanding from a young age. We have begun to distribute educational curriculums tied to national standards to teachers in local school districts. Our the intent is that the teaching of the curriculum culminates in a performance by Los Cenzontles Touring Group that brings the ideas and activities in the curriculum to life.

Learn more

LCMAC has produced two documentaries to date for community screenings and broadcast. They discuss the role of traditional arts in our ever changing society. The first is titled Pasajero, A Journey of Time and Memory and the second is Fandango, Searching for the White Monkey. The organization also hosts a professional touring group, Los Cenzontles, for concerts and workshops. This group is comprised of young arts leaders who grew up in the program. They have released sixteen CDs to date. LCMAC also hosts a number of websites with information about the cultural traditions of Mexico.

Contact

Eugene Rodriguez, Executive Director

Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center

13108 San Pablo Ave.

San Pablo, CA 94805

510.233.8015

Contact(at)loscenzontles.com

www.loscenzontles.com

Photo

Young students, children of immigrants, with Los Cenzontles staff. The staff, who are immigrants themselves, began at Los Cenzontles as students in around 1996.

Photo, Mike Melnyk, courtesy of Los Cenzontles

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