Political Media Review

Gentrification is one of those great battles the working class continues fight on a regular basis. Not that it has much of a choice. Urban desirability and the quest for community in cities across the United States have turned many a block into “neighborhoods in transition,” condominium war zones where the enemy combatants are the less well-to-do.

Although overshadowed these days in mainstream media by drug cartel violence, Cuidad Juarez has come to capture the minds of many people concerned about social justice, and for good reason. In no other city in Latin America do controversies such as globalization, economic collapse, institutionalized violence against women, history, immigration, resistance, North American exceptionalism and the much lauded Eduardo Galleano-esque mythology so crisply cut paths.

Mao Tsetung was famously quoted as saying there was no such thing as art for art’s sake, or art detached from politics. In Chicana and Chicano Art: ProtestArte, Carlos Francisco Jackson probes such concepts, as well as their limits.

Social justice-oriented creative expressions have proven a transformative force in many eras, from the Black Arts Movement to the explosion of Mexican-American humanities from the 1940s to 1970s.