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Getting Up for the People: The Visual Revolution of ASAR-Oaxaca
Getting Up for the People tells the story of the Assembly of Revolutionary Artists of Oaxaca (ASARO) by remixing their own images and words with curatorial descriptions. Part of a long tradition of socially conscious Mexican art, ASARO gives respect to Mexican national icons; but their themes are also global, entering contemporary debates on issues of corporate greed, genetically modified organisms, violence against women, and abuses of natural resources. In 2006 ASARO formed as part of a broader social movement, part of which advocated for higher teachers’ salaries and access to school supplies. They exercised extralegal means to “get up,” displaying their artwork in public spaces. ASARO stands out for their revitalizing remix of collective social action with modern conventions in graffiti, traditional processes in Mexican printmaking, and contemporary communication through social networking. Now they enjoy international recognition as well as state-sanctioned support for their artists’ workshops. They use their notoriety to teach Oaxacan youth the importance of publicly expressing and exhibiting their perspectives on the visual landscape.
- GenresArt
128 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2014
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August 16, 2022
"“In the historic center of Oaxaca, paint is not allowed because it is part of the historical patrimony and there are many restrictions, but sometimes people also support us. In more remote parts of the city, we do have support. That’s where we want to leave information because it’s where people are most marginalized. They don’t have the same resources that those who live in the historic center have. It’s that pueblo, the one living here and now, who gives us means for creating consciousness.” —Chapo, ASARO"
"ASARO disrupts this upside down dialogue by taking the city back for Oaxacans and inviting passersby to see what officials have been hiding."
"The trick is changing the context and transforming it into something else. You don’t change the natural state of the thing, but you change the context in which it’s framed…. This place, the Espacio Zapata, intervenes with the dominant order. As you go to other galleries, you come to see other forms, other possibilities to intervene in the street.” —Ita, ASARO"
"The image of Flores Magón, who was exiled from Mexico for illustrating the absurdity of authoritarian “order,” connects 2007 with the past and employs its memory for direction in the future."
"This creative remix harks back to indigenous Mexican beliefs in incarnate connections between the living and the dead celebrated throughout Mexico on the first days of November, and venerated in the artistic persistence of calaveras (skeletons) in Mexican art."
"For ASARO it is not so much “getting up” through public art as it is raising the people back up within it."
"The crowd in this image seems to be a throwback to early twentieth-century strikers, but the boy holding their banner wears a contemporary baseball cap cocked to the side with APPO’s five-pointed red star."
"“During our struggles, our people have always used tools to make graphics reproducible. In Mexico we have a great tradition of graphic production used for utilitarian and social purposes. ASARO tries to further develop that tradition.” —Mario, ASARO"
"“When I think of both Palestine and Juárez, I think about colonized bodies. I think of Palestine as a broken body due to the occupation of a foreign entity. Juárez also brings to mind bodies in a different way. The history of Ciudad Juárez assigns a different value to them. In both cases a foreign power imposed upon another has resulted in the death and impoverishment.” —Anonymous"
"The stencil Abre los Ojos (Open Your Eyes) is a more direct challenge to blind compliance, integrated into the Espacio Zapata logo."
"The apostles in this La Última Cena Mexicana (The Mexican Last Supper) stand at the table not with Jesús, but a drug lord with a Texan hat grasping a semiautomatic rifle. The decapitated head of Benito Juárez lies on a plate in the center of the table surrounded by wine glasses, a plate of cocaine, and empty bottles."
"“I want to make images that have become universal and play with them to change what they say. For instance, the image of the ‘Last Supper,’ it’s an image everyone can recognize and the discourse on it here has been changed to criticize the powerful elite in Mexico. You could see the image from afar and know it’s the last supper and as you look and start asking ‘Who’s this and that?’ you start to learn what is happening.” —Yescka, ASARO"
"liberal, nineteenth-century indigenous president is transposed by all of these participants into the drug lord’s final meal, with all manner of church and government dignitaries celebrating at his side."
"“ASARO seeks to create images that summarize the critical force that comes from the periphery, from the districts and villages.” —ASARO Manifesto"
"These peripheries are numerous in Oaxaca de Juárez."
"“Televised allegories of humble Mexicans in the big city don’t actually reflect on the intelligence of indigenous characters, who are always bilingual from the start. Imagine a city person going to the fields and doing what farmers do. Let’s see how they succeed.” —Ita, ASARO"
"ASARO uses these images in their work to keep peripheralized peoples in the big picture while encouraging viewers to take notice and think about their own place vis-à-vis these individuals."
"“ASARO’s intent is to turn the word art around; and it’s something that’s done from the ground up. Museums can be intimidating and people don’t think they will understand or they see museums as churches where they are not permitted to touch anything. There is no option to interact with it. ASARO goes to the street, and puts something there. Sometimes it’s something people don’t want to see, but it’s there, and not like other things in the street. It’s an imprint. I’ve seen many graffiti stencils, which were really cool and complex, also communicate with people who didn’t think they could understand art. I like that communication.” —Ita, ASARO"
"outside markets set prices that are out of reach for most average Oaxacans."
"It is little wonder that when Oaxacans spontaneously organized under APPO in 2006, rural state residents helped fill the capital with five hundred thousand mega-march participants. Much of ASARO’s work brings these peripheral issues into the discussion as well."
"“We did a series on petroleum. The rich and the powerful are the ones who ultimately suck up all the capital. The ones that hold the straw or the access keep the others wanting a piece.” —César, ASARO"
"“Everything trickles down from the cost of petroleum to the ability to earn a living in remote municipalities, to having the means to purchase a single piece of fruit.” —Mario, ASARO"
"ASARO also documents socioeconomic difficulties at the northern edges of Mexico’s national territory, where many different peoples cross the Mexican and U.S. borders, hoping to survive in what has long been considered to be the economic center of the hemisphere. Many people crossing this border have already traversed multiple national boundaries throughout the Americas, only to succumb to death in the end. Body Parts on Railroad expresses this paradox by depicting Honduran, Salvadoran, and Mexican body parts on the tracks bordering the United States. This disturbing image also comments critically on a tendency to treat people at this border as expendable—bodies and hired hands identified only by their country of origin. When they do make it across in one piece, they are decried as criminals, illegally entering into a place that is not theirs."
"“In Oaxaca, everyone has family there at the border or in Ciudad Juárez, a cousin or an aunt. When we hear about the violence that occurs there, we fear for them. We keep wondering if they’re okay. Maybe there is more opportunity there than in Oaxaca but there are also many opportunities to be a victim of something bad.” —Anonymous"
"Regardless, her half-interred body, bones buried beneath the earth, is ripped from its grave by a scavenging canine, the bottom of the print identifying a culprit: complicity and inaction."
"“Two Oaxaca’s coexist: one is bottled and sold in mercados while the stories behind the person putting out their cup to beg go unnoticed. It’s kind of like the way Artesanias are wrapped in newspapers that detail events, but no one pays attention to them.” —Anonymous"
"“We resumed the form of the assembly because we believe in the possibility of recovery of force in the art community and because the assembly is the way we dialogue and make decisions based on the collective interests.” —ASARO Manifesto"
"Collectivism has strong roots in Oaxacan social organization, most likely because the state’s isolation spared it capitalist investments in private property."
"It is difficult to find that common purpose, however, because domination and resistance have laid intricate patterns of oppression. Untangling them requires complex, but very practical, points of convergence, not to mention meaningful symbols of unity that reject individualism."
"In Chiapas and beyond, the contemporary remix of the Zapatista Army or EZLN found this symbolism in the mask they wear."
"On one hand, the mask confronts prejudicial equations of indigenous peoples as nobodies without voices, showing others what they might look like in an overt and assertive way. On the other hand, it pragmatically protects individuals within the EZLN from identification and subsequent punishment. In more philosophical terms, the mask covers individual faces and mouths and projects a group image. As one EZLN soldier puts it, when he wears the mask he is a Zapatista rather than just another Indian."
"Not unlike the EZLN mask, ASARO’s collective signature protects individual anonymity while enhancing the reach of their artistic voice through collectivity."
"Cultural events like the disturbance advertised in the Espacio Zapata poster create opportunities for ASARO artists to network with others to develop pragmatic, bottom-up installations that do not speak for the people so much as they dialogue with them."
"Historically, community-based protest has proven powerful in Oaxaca, so it was no surprise that Oaxacans organized in assembly after being attacked by the governor in 2006."
"Both Ruiz Ortiz and Vicente Fox rationalized their aggression against Mexican citizens as “restoring order.”"
"One of ASARO’s first collective installations was building sand sculptures in the Zócalo in 2006 for the Day of the Dead. On this occasion, they collaborated with performers so that song, dance, and theatre could transform the square from the war zone it had become."
"These actions brought a traditional festival, and the activities commonly associated with it to bear on exposing the culprits for the losses Oaxaca had experienced in recent months. It also provided an occasion for artists to actively mock the notion of restoring order through police control of peaceful cultural events."
"“For me there is no ‘art for the people,’ rather I think there is art that you make with the people. The people in this case participate with a type of visual language that will help to communicate what is happening. It is an art where everybody can participate.” —Irving, ASARO"
"One ASARO member describes assembly as the most equitable—albeit imperfect—format for making community decisions. Another, more recently joined member credits ASARO’s commitment to assembly as the reason for their work’s tremendous presence of community."
"Each of these formats present faces as memorials, suggestive of the posters families made demanding to know their loved ones’ whereabouts after the October 2, 1968, massacre of students in Tlatelolco Square. An ASARO painting with skulls staked atop one another in a large grid is suggestive of the same processes."
"“The walls of Oaxaca are never quiet. They are always talking, with comrades throwing up stencils and communicating something. What I found interesting was that someone would come and put up a stencil and then someone from the government would come and paint over it. After that the same determined person would put up another stencil. This whole game involved people that would come to intervene, people that knew about art and those that might not have agreed with it, but the ensemble of forms became so interesting, so vital that you were interacting without even know that you were communicating.” —Irving, ASARO"
"“ASARO is in favor of inclusion and the fight to create new rules of social participation and of a profound change in the consciousness of the Oaxacan. We are a counterculture movement of artistic creation.” —ASARO Manifesto"
"“ASARO seeks to create awareness and generate ideas to help build a new contemporary ideological current, which has at its center humanist values that break the mold set by the system and create a society free of alienation as well as a revolutionary art—that transforms, while advocating for change and innovation.” —ASARO Manifesto"
"Together they challenge this figure’s socially inscribed categorization as passive, silent, and victimized. This woman’s opened mouth and raised arm suggest she is none of those things."
"By raising an implement signifying her “place” in the kitchen in an act of protest, she breaks the cultural mold that inherently dissociates the kitchen with activism and challenges the fictive symbol of a woman at home in the kitchen."
"ASARO creates awareness by challenging viewers with tangible examples that question socially accepted stereotypes."
"The cues in this image provoke myriad discussions in different communities, but in Oaxaca the image is read first as a memorialization of an actual event in 2006. On that occasion, women used the implements available to them in their homes, such as pans, to defend against aggressive police if necessary."
"“In 2006, many of us were employed by the people to do dirty work. We were young anarcho-punks and they gave us spray-paint cans while others were given Molotov cocktails.” —Anonymous"
"Government forces reclaimed these stations after twenty days, but the women’s voices reverberated as loudly through Oaxaca as they do in this illustration."
"Depictions memorializing assertive women in public protest document female participation in social movements while also challenging normative discursive structures equating traditional indigenous dress, cooking implements, and women with limited visibility and power. Representing prominent and socially effective female subjects implicitly situates women front and center in the rebellion, ensuring that if their contributions are lost in official publications regarding these events they do not go unrecognized by the public."
"This image memorializes artists who painted in blood from their hands at the barricades in 2006 as well as those who lost their lives during that time."
"Filling Oaxaca de Juárez’s historic city center with images designed by and for Oaxacans is a direct challenge to old rules of social participation in that space."
"“We live in a society where space is not socialized, it is owned privately, so we say that since the walls encircle the people, we need to take them—the walls, intervene for/with the people.” —Mario, ASARO"
"They reintroduce Oaxacan diversity to this place, revealing social problems alongside the colorful customs favored by tourists."
"In one of these workshops, ASARO artists help children create and modify a stencil depicting a traditional Oaxacan woman dancing. The children remix the stencil’s traditional portrayal of their local indigenous culture by covering the bottom half of the figure’s face with a bandana. As with the EZLN mask, this symbolic implement openly signals rebellion and belonging. It also reflects on a pragmatic lesson learned during 2006: a bandana soaked in vinegar dispels the effects of tear gas. In addition to offering a space for children to learn about their recent history and to recreate it in the public space as a group, this workshop builds community between ASARO artists, children, and their shared space."
"The 2006 uprising in Oaxaca essentially began when teachers gave voice to their frustration over the lack of sufficient resources to instruct their students."
"“Our workshops are a form of giving back to the people who don’t have creative spaces and supplies.” —Chapo, ASARO"
"“We propose to start an art movement in order to be in direct contact with people in the streets and public spaces.” —ASARO Manifesto"
"“We believe that artistic expression needs to be a form of communication that allows dialogue with all sectors of society and enables the display of real existing conditions, rules, and contradictions of the society we inhabit.” —ASARO Manifesto"
"The Spanish language extends this last notion into the dramatic arts where a performance is “represented” rather than acted."
"As an urban countercultural youth movement in a peripheralized state, ASARO creates pieces that blend urban hip hop ideas with the indigenous concepts of communality."
"The ranks of the EZLN in their masks embody this notion of simultaneously standing for a community and serving as a taxing reminder of indigenous perseverance."
"“The strongest and most important art is in the streets.” —Yescka, ASARO"
"Throughout Mexico and in much of the Mexican-American or Hispanic Southwestern United States, the image of Emiliano Zapata equals revolutionary. A smaller grouping within a disperse community sees him more familiarly as a man of the rural people, representing their rights to land. In this sense, Zapata’s image is the periphery fighting back for possession of their land. His representation is invoked for these purposes even outside of Mexico by those marginalized as a result of colonialist and imperialist land-grabbing."
"Zapata may stand even stronger now as the iconic symbol of an unfinished movement."
"“Today we have more access to images; and sometimes, while mixing what you learned in fine arts, you come across some other icon, a new visual space through graffiti. These icons and personages are mediums for young people to express power.” —César, ASARO"
"Regardless of party affiliations, the Mexican national government maintains the guise of stability through repression, caring little for the social cost of injustice."
"Zapata represents social expectations for systematic change."
"It is tempting to present ASARO’s depictions of Zapata as reiterative or opportunist because of the immediate recognition afforded his mustached face inside and outside of Mexico. While there is certainly some element of replication and opportunism in ASARO’s use of his effigy, the act of repurposing his representation for contemporary contexts is deliberately performative."
"“Until Zapata’s last day he kept fighting, demanding better conditions. Zapata is associated with the revolutionary. In Morelos he established a government of the people; and with them armed you didn’t need a specialized police force. It was the people that made sure there wasn’t delinquency. He gives us a model our communities can identify with.” —Mario, ASARO"
"As the syncretized image of Tonantzin and the Virgin Mary, Guadalupe is symbolic of resistance in Mexico."
"Guadalupe stands as representative of unification,"
"“We call on all artists who genuinely seek social transformation to organize to expand the creative movement of resistance and bring art to all sectors of society.” —ASARO Manifesto"
"These pieces invite viewers to stand up with the artists and participate in transforming the social reality."
"“When we say pueblo, we’re talking about the farm worker, the wage worker, the housekeeper, the student, etc. We are driven by them, to lift their morale, inspire them to keep fighting. We make graphic art for the people that are fighting. For those people who are asleep, we want to give them purpose—a desire to struggle and to take off their chains of exploitation.” —Mario, ASARO"
"El Indocumentado Carga el Bulto que el Legal no Cargaría (The Undocumented Carries Baggage Legal Citizens Wouldn’t) puts the viewer at the border fence, readied to climb on with all the “shit” one takes across that boundary."
"In July 2013, ASARO sponsored an initiative to collectively create a roof garden designed to teach local families how to grow in urban spaces and use it as a way to socially understand many of Oaxaca’s native roots."
"“We use the same tactics that companies use to attack the city in order to sell things for consumption. We turn it around and say, all right then, here, consume change.” —Yescka, ASARO"
"ASARO continues to do graphic art with social content, giving workshops in various locations. It has opened the Espacio Zapata as an alternative workshop/gallery resisting the dominant aesthetic in the state, working instead to present social and political issues both in Oaxaca and the world, and building bridges with various individuals and organizations."
"ASARO disrupts this upside down dialogue by taking the city back for Oaxacans and inviting passersby to see what officials have been hiding."
"The trick is changing the context and transforming it into something else. You don’t change the natural state of the thing, but you change the context in which it’s framed…. This place, the Espacio Zapata, intervenes with the dominant order. As you go to other galleries, you come to see other forms, other possibilities to intervene in the street.” —Ita, ASARO"
"The image of Flores Magón, who was exiled from Mexico for illustrating the absurdity of authoritarian “order,” connects 2007 with the past and employs its memory for direction in the future."
"This creative remix harks back to indigenous Mexican beliefs in incarnate connections between the living and the dead celebrated throughout Mexico on the first days of November, and venerated in the artistic persistence of calaveras (skeletons) in Mexican art."
"For ASARO it is not so much “getting up” through public art as it is raising the people back up within it."
"The crowd in this image seems to be a throwback to early twentieth-century strikers, but the boy holding their banner wears a contemporary baseball cap cocked to the side with APPO’s five-pointed red star."
"“During our struggles, our people have always used tools to make graphics reproducible. In Mexico we have a great tradition of graphic production used for utilitarian and social purposes. ASARO tries to further develop that tradition.” —Mario, ASARO"
"“When I think of both Palestine and Juárez, I think about colonized bodies. I think of Palestine as a broken body due to the occupation of a foreign entity. Juárez also brings to mind bodies in a different way. The history of Ciudad Juárez assigns a different value to them. In both cases a foreign power imposed upon another has resulted in the death and impoverishment.” —Anonymous"
"The stencil Abre los Ojos (Open Your Eyes) is a more direct challenge to blind compliance, integrated into the Espacio Zapata logo."
"The apostles in this La Última Cena Mexicana (The Mexican Last Supper) stand at the table not with Jesús, but a drug lord with a Texan hat grasping a semiautomatic rifle. The decapitated head of Benito Juárez lies on a plate in the center of the table surrounded by wine glasses, a plate of cocaine, and empty bottles."
"“I want to make images that have become universal and play with them to change what they say. For instance, the image of the ‘Last Supper,’ it’s an image everyone can recognize and the discourse on it here has been changed to criticize the powerful elite in Mexico. You could see the image from afar and know it’s the last supper and as you look and start asking ‘Who’s this and that?’ you start to learn what is happening.” —Yescka, ASARO"
"liberal, nineteenth-century indigenous president is transposed by all of these participants into the drug lord’s final meal, with all manner of church and government dignitaries celebrating at his side."
"“ASARO seeks to create images that summarize the critical force that comes from the periphery, from the districts and villages.” —ASARO Manifesto"
"These peripheries are numerous in Oaxaca de Juárez."
"“Televised allegories of humble Mexicans in the big city don’t actually reflect on the intelligence of indigenous characters, who are always bilingual from the start. Imagine a city person going to the fields and doing what farmers do. Let’s see how they succeed.” —Ita, ASARO"
"ASARO uses these images in their work to keep peripheralized peoples in the big picture while encouraging viewers to take notice and think about their own place vis-à-vis these individuals."
"“ASARO’s intent is to turn the word art around; and it’s something that’s done from the ground up. Museums can be intimidating and people don’t think they will understand or they see museums as churches where they are not permitted to touch anything. There is no option to interact with it. ASARO goes to the street, and puts something there. Sometimes it’s something people don’t want to see, but it’s there, and not like other things in the street. It’s an imprint. I’ve seen many graffiti stencils, which were really cool and complex, also communicate with people who didn’t think they could understand art. I like that communication.” —Ita, ASARO"
"outside markets set prices that are out of reach for most average Oaxacans."
"It is little wonder that when Oaxacans spontaneously organized under APPO in 2006, rural state residents helped fill the capital with five hundred thousand mega-march participants. Much of ASARO’s work brings these peripheral issues into the discussion as well."
"“We did a series on petroleum. The rich and the powerful are the ones who ultimately suck up all the capital. The ones that hold the straw or the access keep the others wanting a piece.” —César, ASARO"
"“Everything trickles down from the cost of petroleum to the ability to earn a living in remote municipalities, to having the means to purchase a single piece of fruit.” —Mario, ASARO"
"ASARO also documents socioeconomic difficulties at the northern edges of Mexico’s national territory, where many different peoples cross the Mexican and U.S. borders, hoping to survive in what has long been considered to be the economic center of the hemisphere. Many people crossing this border have already traversed multiple national boundaries throughout the Americas, only to succumb to death in the end. Body Parts on Railroad expresses this paradox by depicting Honduran, Salvadoran, and Mexican body parts on the tracks bordering the United States. This disturbing image also comments critically on a tendency to treat people at this border as expendable—bodies and hired hands identified only by their country of origin. When they do make it across in one piece, they are decried as criminals, illegally entering into a place that is not theirs."
"“In Oaxaca, everyone has family there at the border or in Ciudad Juárez, a cousin or an aunt. When we hear about the violence that occurs there, we fear for them. We keep wondering if they’re okay. Maybe there is more opportunity there than in Oaxaca but there are also many opportunities to be a victim of something bad.” —Anonymous"
"Regardless, her half-interred body, bones buried beneath the earth, is ripped from its grave by a scavenging canine, the bottom of the print identifying a culprit: complicity and inaction."
"“Two Oaxaca’s coexist: one is bottled and sold in mercados while the stories behind the person putting out their cup to beg go unnoticed. It’s kind of like the way Artesanias are wrapped in newspapers that detail events, but no one pays attention to them.” —Anonymous"
"“We resumed the form of the assembly because we believe in the possibility of recovery of force in the art community and because the assembly is the way we dialogue and make decisions based on the collective interests.” —ASARO Manifesto"
"Collectivism has strong roots in Oaxacan social organization, most likely because the state’s isolation spared it capitalist investments in private property."
"It is difficult to find that common purpose, however, because domination and resistance have laid intricate patterns of oppression. Untangling them requires complex, but very practical, points of convergence, not to mention meaningful symbols of unity that reject individualism."
"In Chiapas and beyond, the contemporary remix of the Zapatista Army or EZLN found this symbolism in the mask they wear."
"On one hand, the mask confronts prejudicial equations of indigenous peoples as nobodies without voices, showing others what they might look like in an overt and assertive way. On the other hand, it pragmatically protects individuals within the EZLN from identification and subsequent punishment. In more philosophical terms, the mask covers individual faces and mouths and projects a group image. As one EZLN soldier puts it, when he wears the mask he is a Zapatista rather than just another Indian."
"Not unlike the EZLN mask, ASARO’s collective signature protects individual anonymity while enhancing the reach of their artistic voice through collectivity."
"Cultural events like the disturbance advertised in the Espacio Zapata poster create opportunities for ASARO artists to network with others to develop pragmatic, bottom-up installations that do not speak for the people so much as they dialogue with them."
"Historically, community-based protest has proven powerful in Oaxaca, so it was no surprise that Oaxacans organized in assembly after being attacked by the governor in 2006."
"Both Ruiz Ortiz and Vicente Fox rationalized their aggression against Mexican citizens as “restoring order.”"
"One of ASARO’s first collective installations was building sand sculptures in the Zócalo in 2006 for the Day of the Dead. On this occasion, they collaborated with performers so that song, dance, and theatre could transform the square from the war zone it had become."
"These actions brought a traditional festival, and the activities commonly associated with it to bear on exposing the culprits for the losses Oaxaca had experienced in recent months. It also provided an occasion for artists to actively mock the notion of restoring order through police control of peaceful cultural events."
"“For me there is no ‘art for the people,’ rather I think there is art that you make with the people. The people in this case participate with a type of visual language that will help to communicate what is happening. It is an art where everybody can participate.” —Irving, ASARO"
"One ASARO member describes assembly as the most equitable—albeit imperfect—format for making community decisions. Another, more recently joined member credits ASARO’s commitment to assembly as the reason for their work’s tremendous presence of community."
"Each of these formats present faces as memorials, suggestive of the posters families made demanding to know their loved ones’ whereabouts after the October 2, 1968, massacre of students in Tlatelolco Square. An ASARO painting with skulls staked atop one another in a large grid is suggestive of the same processes."
"“The walls of Oaxaca are never quiet. They are always talking, with comrades throwing up stencils and communicating something. What I found interesting was that someone would come and put up a stencil and then someone from the government would come and paint over it. After that the same determined person would put up another stencil. This whole game involved people that would come to intervene, people that knew about art and those that might not have agreed with it, but the ensemble of forms became so interesting, so vital that you were interacting without even know that you were communicating.” —Irving, ASARO"
"“ASARO is in favor of inclusion and the fight to create new rules of social participation and of a profound change in the consciousness of the Oaxacan. We are a counterculture movement of artistic creation.” —ASARO Manifesto"
"“ASARO seeks to create awareness and generate ideas to help build a new contemporary ideological current, which has at its center humanist values that break the mold set by the system and create a society free of alienation as well as a revolutionary art—that transforms, while advocating for change and innovation.” —ASARO Manifesto"
"Together they challenge this figure’s socially inscribed categorization as passive, silent, and victimized. This woman’s opened mouth and raised arm suggest she is none of those things."
"By raising an implement signifying her “place” in the kitchen in an act of protest, she breaks the cultural mold that inherently dissociates the kitchen with activism and challenges the fictive symbol of a woman at home in the kitchen."
"ASARO creates awareness by challenging viewers with tangible examples that question socially accepted stereotypes."
"The cues in this image provoke myriad discussions in different communities, but in Oaxaca the image is read first as a memorialization of an actual event in 2006. On that occasion, women used the implements available to them in their homes, such as pans, to defend against aggressive police if necessary."
"“In 2006, many of us were employed by the people to do dirty work. We were young anarcho-punks and they gave us spray-paint cans while others were given Molotov cocktails.” —Anonymous"
"Government forces reclaimed these stations after twenty days, but the women’s voices reverberated as loudly through Oaxaca as they do in this illustration."
"Depictions memorializing assertive women in public protest document female participation in social movements while also challenging normative discursive structures equating traditional indigenous dress, cooking implements, and women with limited visibility and power. Representing prominent and socially effective female subjects implicitly situates women front and center in the rebellion, ensuring that if their contributions are lost in official publications regarding these events they do not go unrecognized by the public."
"This image memorializes artists who painted in blood from their hands at the barricades in 2006 as well as those who lost their lives during that time."
"Filling Oaxaca de Juárez’s historic city center with images designed by and for Oaxacans is a direct challenge to old rules of social participation in that space."
"“We live in a society where space is not socialized, it is owned privately, so we say that since the walls encircle the people, we need to take them—the walls, intervene for/with the people.” —Mario, ASARO"
"They reintroduce Oaxacan diversity to this place, revealing social problems alongside the colorful customs favored by tourists."
"In one of these workshops, ASARO artists help children create and modify a stencil depicting a traditional Oaxacan woman dancing. The children remix the stencil’s traditional portrayal of their local indigenous culture by covering the bottom half of the figure’s face with a bandana. As with the EZLN mask, this symbolic implement openly signals rebellion and belonging. It also reflects on a pragmatic lesson learned during 2006: a bandana soaked in vinegar dispels the effects of tear gas. In addition to offering a space for children to learn about their recent history and to recreate it in the public space as a group, this workshop builds community between ASARO artists, children, and their shared space."
"The 2006 uprising in Oaxaca essentially began when teachers gave voice to their frustration over the lack of sufficient resources to instruct their students."
"“Our workshops are a form of giving back to the people who don’t have creative spaces and supplies.” —Chapo, ASARO"
"“We propose to start an art movement in order to be in direct contact with people in the streets and public spaces.” —ASARO Manifesto"
"“We believe that artistic expression needs to be a form of communication that allows dialogue with all sectors of society and enables the display of real existing conditions, rules, and contradictions of the society we inhabit.” —ASARO Manifesto"
"The Spanish language extends this last notion into the dramatic arts where a performance is “represented” rather than acted."
"As an urban countercultural youth movement in a peripheralized state, ASARO creates pieces that blend urban hip hop ideas with the indigenous concepts of communality."
"The ranks of the EZLN in their masks embody this notion of simultaneously standing for a community and serving as a taxing reminder of indigenous perseverance."
"“The strongest and most important art is in the streets.” —Yescka, ASARO"
"Throughout Mexico and in much of the Mexican-American or Hispanic Southwestern United States, the image of Emiliano Zapata equals revolutionary. A smaller grouping within a disperse community sees him more familiarly as a man of the rural people, representing their rights to land. In this sense, Zapata’s image is the periphery fighting back for possession of their land. His representation is invoked for these purposes even outside of Mexico by those marginalized as a result of colonialist and imperialist land-grabbing."
"Zapata may stand even stronger now as the iconic symbol of an unfinished movement."
"“Today we have more access to images; and sometimes, while mixing what you learned in fine arts, you come across some other icon, a new visual space through graffiti. These icons and personages are mediums for young people to express power.” —César, ASARO"
"Regardless of party affiliations, the Mexican national government maintains the guise of stability through repression, caring little for the social cost of injustice."
"Zapata represents social expectations for systematic change."
"It is tempting to present ASARO’s depictions of Zapata as reiterative or opportunist because of the immediate recognition afforded his mustached face inside and outside of Mexico. While there is certainly some element of replication and opportunism in ASARO’s use of his effigy, the act of repurposing his representation for contemporary contexts is deliberately performative."
"“Until Zapata’s last day he kept fighting, demanding better conditions. Zapata is associated with the revolutionary. In Morelos he established a government of the people; and with them armed you didn’t need a specialized police force. It was the people that made sure there wasn’t delinquency. He gives us a model our communities can identify with.” —Mario, ASARO"
"As the syncretized image of Tonantzin and the Virgin Mary, Guadalupe is symbolic of resistance in Mexico."
"Guadalupe stands as representative of unification,"
"“We call on all artists who genuinely seek social transformation to organize to expand the creative movement of resistance and bring art to all sectors of society.” —ASARO Manifesto"
"These pieces invite viewers to stand up with the artists and participate in transforming the social reality."
"“When we say pueblo, we’re talking about the farm worker, the wage worker, the housekeeper, the student, etc. We are driven by them, to lift their morale, inspire them to keep fighting. We make graphic art for the people that are fighting. For those people who are asleep, we want to give them purpose—a desire to struggle and to take off their chains of exploitation.” —Mario, ASARO"
"El Indocumentado Carga el Bulto que el Legal no Cargaría (The Undocumented Carries Baggage Legal Citizens Wouldn’t) puts the viewer at the border fence, readied to climb on with all the “shit” one takes across that boundary."
"In July 2013, ASARO sponsored an initiative to collectively create a roof garden designed to teach local families how to grow in urban spaces and use it as a way to socially understand many of Oaxaca’s native roots."
"“We use the same tactics that companies use to attack the city in order to sell things for consumption. We turn it around and say, all right then, here, consume change.” —Yescka, ASARO"
"ASARO continues to do graphic art with social content, giving workshops in various locations. It has opened the Espacio Zapata as an alternative workshop/gallery resisting the dominant aesthetic in the state, working instead to present social and political issues both in Oaxaca and the world, and building bridges with various individuals and organizations."
September 27, 2015
This is a brief introduction and overview of the Revolutionary Assembly of Artists of Oaxaca (ASARO), a political and educational art collective that emerged from the 2006 turmoil in Oaxaca, including the takeover of Oaxaca City by the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) and a brutal federal crackdown. It documents the use of art in public spaces, recurring images (e.g. the face of Zapata, Guadalupe, masked figures, and skeletons), the "re-mixing" of iconic images and themes, and something of the democratic processes and uses of art as part of revolutionary practice. The book generously features annotated images of wheat pastes, block prints, stencils, murals and sidewalk art. Tantalizing but the subject is deserving of a more comprehensive and larger volume. In particular, the entirety of the ASARO manifesto (often referenced) would be a welcome addition.
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