\u00a0<\/p>\n
On August 26, Carmelites commemorate the \u201cpiercing\u201d of St. Teresa\u2019s heart by an angel. In her autobiography, she writes how she \u201csaw in his hand a long spear of gold,\u201d which he thrust \u201cat times into my heart and to pierce my very entrails.\u201d \u201cThe pain was so great,\u201d she continues, \u201cthat it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it.\u201d It\u2019s difficult to ignore the sexual undertones of St. Teresa\u2019s description of this experience, immortalized in Bernini\u2019s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa<\/em>. From its obsession with the Virgin Mary to its longstanding requirement for a celibate clergy, the Catholic Church has something of a fixation on sex, prompting Pope Francis to lament the Church had become obsessed with abortion, contraception, and same-sex marriage, to say nothing of the sex abuse scandal that rocked the Vatican for decades and implicated thousands of priests. But throughout its history, the Catholicism has been associated with a sexual morality that elevates the \u201ccharmed circle\u201d of monogamous heterosexual coupling over all other forms of human intimacy. Although the Church\u2019s positions on sexuality may be the most visible manifestation of its politics, it\u2019s far from the only one. To be sure, Catholics have been a powerful conservative force across much of the globe, from their opposition to the French Revolution to their support of the Francoist dictatorship in Spain. Alongside this history, however, runs the countercurrent of Catholic social teaching, such as within the Catholic Worker Movement founded in NYC by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin at the nadir of the Depression. These developments were especially pronounced in Latin America in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, when theologians like Gustavo Guti\u00e9rrez, Leonardo Boff, Juan Segundo, and Jon Sobrino drew inspiration from the Sermon on the Mount to defend a \u201cpreferential option for the poor.\u201d Liberation theology, as it came to be called, emphasized \u201cintegral mission,\u201d stressing both evangelism and social responsibility.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n These ambivalent political legacies of Catholicism help us to make sense of the use of religious imagery within Chicano art. In this article, I focus on Asco, a Chicano collective active in East LA from 1972 to \u201987 initially composed of Harry Gamboa, Jr., Glugio \u201cGronk\u201d Nicandro, Willie F. Herr\u00f3n III, and Patssi Valdez. Working primarily within performance, the members of Asco, grew up during the Vietnam War, which many Chicanos in the Los Angeles area believed was killing them at a disproportionate rate. Indeed, Gronk cites the Vietnam War as inspiring Asco\u2019s name. In his words, \u201ca lot of our friends were coming back in body bags and were dying, and we were seeing a whole generation come back that weren\u2019t alive anymore. And in a sense that gave us nausea\u2014or \u2018nauseous.\u2019\u201d To protest Vietnam, Chicano activists banded together to form the Chicano Moratorium. This group organized the National Chicano Moratorium March along Whittier Boulevard to voice their disapproval of the War and its effects on their community.<\/p>\n A major commercial corridor in East LA, Whittier Boulevard from the LA River to Brea. Not only was Whittier Boulevard the location of much community activity but it also connected the Eastside to the heart of LA. Several of Asco\u2019s performances over the years occurred along Whittier Boulevard. Regarding the street\u2019s importance to Asco, Herr\u00f3n reminisces,<\/p>\n At the time of the Moratorium, I was in high school. I remember the procession originating at Belvedere Park, protesting the Vietnam War and all the Chicanos that lost their lives. The police brutality was incredible. It affected me quite a bit and I think it affected all of us. So that\u2019s why Whittier Boulevard became such an important street, and a place for us to conduct our performances and connect them to our community and the way society viewed us at the time.<\/p>\n We can see in this quote the double role Whittier Boulevard plays as symbolizing both the reality and reputation of East LA, as well bridging the Chicano barrio<\/em> and the Anglo art world, between which Asco would continually navigate.<\/p>\n![\"Brandon.Sward_.PROJECTSUMMARY.Image1\"](\"https:\/\/entangledworlds.utoronto.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Brandon.Sward_.PROJECTSUMMARY.Image1_.jpg\")
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