José Montoya (May 28, 1932 – September 25, 2013) was a poet and an artist from

Sacramento ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. He was one of the most influential

Chicano Chicano or Chicana is a chosen identity for many Mexican Americans in the United States. The label ''Chicano'' is sometimes used interchangeably with ''Mexican American'', although the terms have different meanings. While Mexican-American ident ...

bilingual poets. He has published many well-known poems in anthologies and magazines, and served as Sacramento's

poet laureate A poet laureate (plural: poets laureate) is a poet officially appointed by a government or conferring institution, typically expected to compose poems for special events and occasions. Albertino Mussato of Padua and Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch ...

Biography

He was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico and raised, along with his brother, Malaquias Montoya, in the

San Joaquin Valley The San Joaquin Valley ( ; es, Valle de San Joaquín) is the area of the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California that lies south of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and is drained by the San Joaquin River. It comprises seven ...

in California. He and his family were migrant farm workers and Montoya started helping in the fields at age nine. The experience made Montoya decide that "farm work would not be his destiny." His mother was an artist herself, stenciling images for churches and homes and creating her own pigments and his experiences assisting her helped him think about becoming an artist. From 1951 to 1955, he served in the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

. After the Korean War, he used his

G.I. Bill The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...

to go to college. He entered

San Diego City College San Diego City College (City College or City) is a public community college in San Diego, California. It is part of the San Diego Community College District and the California Community College System. San Diego City College is accredited by t ...

as an art student, Montoya later transferred to the California College of Arts & Crafts in

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1962. He began his career by teaching at Wheatland Union High School. Later, he earned his MA in 1971 from

California State University, Sacramento California State University, Sacramento (CSUS, Sacramento State, or informally Sac State) is a public university in Sacramento, California. Founded in 1947 as Sacramento State College, it is the eleventh oldest school in the 23-campus California ...

. He taught Chicana/o studies in the Department of Art at California State University, Sacramento. Here, he worked for over twenty five years and started a unique program called the "Barrio Art Program." This program worked with student teachers who went into neighborhoods that were traditionally "under-served" in order to teach art to young people. In the early 1970s, Montoya joined his students and members of the Chicano community to found the Rebel Chicano Art Front, later renamed the Royal Chicano Air Force, which supported the activities of Cesar Chavez and helped to advance the cause of the United Farm Worker's movement. The RCAF under Montoya and his artist comrades produced countless silk screen posters and organized numerous cultural, educational, and political activities in the Sacramento area and well beyond. They also did community work, such as the "Breakfast for Niños" program that served food to children in poor neighborhoods. His poetic career was said to have begun with the publication of his poem, "La Jefita" (1969) in ''El Grito: A Journal of Contemporary Mexican-American Thought''. His poetry was noted for using

code switching In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation. Code-switching is different from plurilingualism ...

, barrio slang and for its themes about struggling against injustice. His son

Richard Montoya Richard Montoya is an American actor, director, producer, screenwriter, playwright, comedian, and co-founding member of the San Francisco based performance troupe Culture Clash.Grimm, Tracy. ''Richard Montoya Papers''. Julian Samora Library at the ...

is a member of the performance troupe

Culture Clash Cultural conflict is a type of conflict that occurs when different cultural values and beliefs clash. Broad and narrow definitions exist for the concept, both of which have been used to explain violence (including war) and crime, on either a mic ...

"El Louie"

   Hoy enterraron al Louie.
   And San Pedro o san pinche
   Are in for it. And those
   Times of the forties
   And the early fifties
   Lost un vato de atolle. :— ''El Louie'', 1969 "El Louie" is probably Montoya's most famous and most often anthologized poem. With compassion and anger, it tells the story of Louie, a

pachuco Pachucos are male members of a counterculture associated with zoot suit fashion, jazz and swing music, a distinct dialect known as '' caló'', and self-empowerment in rejecting assimilation into Anglo-American society that emerged in El Paso, ...

from San José and California's Central Valley who is a popular local figure. After he comes back from the war in Korea his life disintegrates as he continues coming into conflict with the white-dominated world of California; he is a hero and a loser, hocking his combat medals for booze and drugs; he dies alone in squalid conditions. Louie is not elevated to gangster sainthood, but he is "recognized as a normative model" rather than portrayed as deviant, dangerous or insignificant.

Works

*Montoya, José. ''El Sol y Los De Abajo and other R.C.A.F. poems por José Montoya''. San Francisco: Ediciones Pocho-che, 1972. *Montoya, José. ''In Formation: 20 Years of Joda''. Chusma House Publications, 1992. *Trio Casindio and the Royal Chicano Air Force. ''20 Years of Songs by José Montoya''. *Montoya, José. ''Los Compas: Chale Gallego y'l Xorty''. Copilot Press, 2010.

References

Sources

*Elliott, Emory. ''The Columbia Literary History of the United States''. NY: Columbia UP, 1988. *Hernandez, Guillermo E. ''Chicano Satire''. 2 March 2004. https://web.archive.org/web/20040302235506/http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/csrc/gmo/span145/articles/satirepgs52-84.html. Austin: U of TX P, 1991. *Montoya, José. ''In Formation: 20 Years of Joda''. Aztlán: Chusma House Publications, 1992.

External links

Guide to the Montoya José Papers
from the

California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA) is an archival institution that houses collections of primary source documents from the history of minority ethnic groups in California. The documents, which include manuscripts, slide photograph ...