Santa Barraza Quotes

“The "Ofrendas" exhibition [within the 1987 art exhibition "Hispanic Art of the United States"] emphasized the fact that religious cosmologies and practices of Latin America are not minor/minority but rather espoused by vast numbers of people who are not white Protestant males. Unwittingly, perhaps, the exhibit suggested that we drop the words cult and superstition, as applied to non-European spiritual practices, and substitute the word religion.”
― Santa Barraza, Santa Barraza: Artist of the Borderlands

“When you think of home, you think about your mother. She was creative--she conceived you and gave you life. Like the maguey, woman is life-sustaining. As the plant renews and sustains life, woman procreates and maintains. The maguey is the symbol of home, of hogar.”
― Santa Barraza, Santa Barraza: Artist of the Borderlands

“According to pre-Columbian legend, the Cihuateteos . . . were the spirits of pregnant women who died in childbirth. They immediately became warriors because they had died in battle--the struggle in life to produce "a new life for the empire." This deified the women's souls, since their spiritual role complemented that of the male warrior, who assisted the sun in its journey across the sky. The spirits of these females supposedly carried the sun from its midday zenith to the west, it's place of descent. The spirits of male warriors carried the sun from daybreak to its zenith. The grieving husbands were expected to safeguard the bodies of their deceased wives, becaise young warriors would mutilate and steal the middle finger from the left hand of a Cihueteteo as a talisman. These feared women were associated with bodies of water, the transformative element of the journey of death, and crossroads. They were believed to return to earth on five special days each year to torment children. Thus the legend ofmthe Llorona, the weeping woman, emerged from this ancient myth.”
― Santa Barraza, Santa Barraza: Artist of the Borderlands

“[T]he gods created humans out of maize to aid them in the immense labor of maintaining order in the cosmos. As beings who could see into the future, into the past, into infinity, these gods made original humans just as powerful as themselves. But when the gods realized that they had created these individuals almost as powerful as themselves, they suppressed their humans' eyes, their vision, so that they could not see into the future, into infinity. So the human beings created an instrument to maintain that vision of infinity. So the human beings created an instrument to to maintain that vision of infinitu--the Popol Vuh, a council book, a timeless vision of past, present, and future.”
― Santa Barraza, Santa Barraza: Artist of the Borderlands

“Today Kingsville [,Texas], which in 1913 became the seat of Kleberg County, has a population of about 25,000 and encompasses approximately 15,548 acres, appropriated from Spanish and Mexican land grants.”
― Santa Barraza, Santa Barraza: Artist of the Borderlands

“My [art]work attempts to recapture a history never written or narrated visually before. I reaffirm my identity as a Mexica-Tejana and assert a new system of existence through visual manifestations of the oral history, myths, legends, and more of the borderlands.”
― Santa Barraza, Santa Barraza: Artist of the Borderlands