MORE ABOUT ME
In an interview in July 2018 conducted in Fresno, California, artist, activist, and former teacher Antonio Bernal (b. 1937) resisted being categorized as “the first Chicano muralist,” a title bestowed upon him by art historian and critic Shifra M. Goldman, an early pioneer in the documentation of Chicano art. She was writing of his Del Rey mural (discussed in Chapter 2 by Gabriela Rodríguez Gómez), created in 1968 as a backdrop for performances of the Teatro Campesino in California’s Central Valley, where he was an actor for the grape strike headed by César Chávez. Although initially puzzling, his reaction to being categorized in such a way eventually made sense. This was a person who described himself as “between anarchist and socialist,” who questioned and struggled against labels, someone whose life had been unconventional, rich, varied, colorful, and vibrant. He had authored a novel, numerous political commentaries, and kept a blog; painted murals, in addition to oil paintings, collages, and other artworks; and worked as an actor in Mexico and the U.S., in addition to later being employed as a Spanish teacher at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles. He was on stage at the San Francisco Opera house with Renata Tebaldi in a production of Simon Boccanegra; shared space with Jane Fonda at an anti-war rally on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall; he sang Guantanamera with Pete Seeger at the Hollywood Bowl; he was proud to be friends with flamenco dancer Carmen Amaya, la Faraona (sometimes called "La Capitana".. His life was defined by crossing borders and boundaries, resisting easy answers, and by a commitment to truth telling. His novel, begun in 1999 and completed in 2008 but still unpublished, is entitled Breaking the Silence, a phrase that sums up his approach to his activism, teaching, and his varied creative practices. Bernal’s rich personal biography is also interwoven with the dramatic events of the 1960s civil rights movements. He was a member of the Congress for Racial Equality, friends with members of the Black Panthers, a member of el Teatro Campesino, a Brown Beret, and participant in el movimiento Chicano, the Chicana/o civil rights movement.
He was born Forrest Antonio Bernal Hopping in 1937 in Altadena, California, now a suburb to the east of Los Angeles, to Forrest Hopping Sr. (1894-1967), a U.S. citizen of Anglo descent, and María Luisa Bernal (1900-1995), born in Hermosillo, Mexico. His parents met at the famous restaurant La Golondrina on Olvera Street in Los Angeles, where Bernal’s mother, a performer and singer with an operatic voice, was singing. Smitten, Bernal’s father went over to sit with her. Antonio’s father had been the first child born in a utopian community near Sequoia, in California, the Kaweah Colony, at Atwell Mill in the Sequoia National Forest. His sister, Ana María Hopping, had been born in 1932; after a long career as a librarian, she retired to the Fresno area, where she still resides today. His father worked as an artist, an interior decorator, and stage hand, creating props for movie sets in Hollywood. As reported in the Fresno Bee in 1962, Hopping Sr. was also the “art director for El Pueblo de Los Angeles, the state historical monument which centers around Olvera Street and the Old Plaza in Los Angeles.” The same news article reveals that Hopping Sr. had been an interior designer in Mexico, working for elite members of society, including the widow of dictator Porfirio Díaz, Carmelita Rubio de Díaz; and King Carol of Romania, who had fled to Mexico during World War II, and was living in Coyoacán. He also worked designing the American Embassy in Mexico City. A photograph accompanies the news story, of Bernal’s father standing with a Pre-Columbian sculpture described as representing a corn god. He was in the process of building an adobe house for the family in Three Rivers, a house believed to still be standing.
Bernal describes his father as an “atheist-socialist.” Indeed, Hopping Sr. had been born at the Kaweah Colony, a utopian-socialist settlement in existence from 1886-1891. Located along the Kaweah River, the Kaweah Cooperative Commonwealth of California was founded by Burnette G. Haskell, James J. Martin, and Charles F. Keller, modeled on the socialist ideas of Laurence Gronland, author of The Cooperative Commonwealth in its Outlines, translated into English and first published in the U.S. in 1884. The number of inhabitants at the site varied, from about 160 in the summer of 1886 to about 300; a total of 400 people are believed to have lived there. Life at the colony was challenging; inhabitants build roads, housing, and other infrastructure. Yet, documents of the time record leisure and intellectual activities. There was a band and orchestra that gave concerts, dances, picnics, athletic activities, literary, scientific, and other intellectual discussions, a schoolhouse for children and academic classes for adults. The colonists enjoyed a library and published a newspaper. The colony rejected the use of money and instead the members exchanged work hours as currency. The Hopping family was an important and influential part of the Kaweah Colony. Bernal’s grandfather, George Hopping, was an early member, one of the supporters who did not live at Kaweah but provided financial support. He lived in New York and sent his children to live there. On September 25, 1890 the U.S. Congress voted to create Sequoia National Park; the Kaweah Colony was within its boundaries. By 1891, most of the inhabitants left, although many stayed out throughout the 1890s. Bernal’s father was born there in 1894, and it is clear that the utopian, Marxist, anarchist ideas of his forebears have influenced Bernal’s own political beliefs.
Within months of his birth in 1937, though, Bernal’s parents left Los Angeles for Mexico City, settling in Colonia Mixcoac, a charming colonial enclave in the southern part of the metropolis, where they lived in an ex-convent. Thus, although born in Altadena, California, Bernal’s earliest formative years were spent living in Mexico. As he states, paraphrasing Chavela Vargas, "Un mexicano nace donde le da su chingada gana". He would return there frequently to live throughout his life. Bernal identifies very closely with being Mexican. When asked if he identifies as “Chicano,” he responded:
The question always comes up are you a Chicano? The answer is I don’t believe in labels, because no one is one thing. I am Mexican first and foremost. Those are my people. I also speak 4 languages (English, Spanish, French and German). I have acted on stage and did Hamlet in English on Mexican TV (Canal 11). I also wrote a novel, based on my family, which I translated, so it’s in English and Spanish. I taught Spanish at Garfield High School for 23 years so I could support my wife and 3 children. I am also a Socialist and have many writings on the subject . . . I saw Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro in person (at different times). I went to Cuba for 10 years running in the 90s (periodo especial) and have many friends and letters from there. I have been several times in London, Paris, Berlin and Rome (once). Spent 7 weeks in Nairobi and Mombasa. Have been to Caracas several times, and know Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro and Santiago pretty well. Have also been in Santo Domingo and Panama. My father was of English extraction and spoke good Spanish, introduced me to Dolores del Rio, and he knew other Hollywood luminaries of the period such as Ramón Navarro, Ruth Chatterton, Ralph Forbes and many others. My mother was born in Hermosillo Sonora, and considered herself sonorense. Of course I'm a chicano, but I'm also other things. I have always lived in a Mexican neighborhood, whether in Mexico, Los Angeles or Fresno, and Mexican/chicanos are the very air I breathe. If I had to live in, say, Kansas, I would die of sadness.
In 1945, his family moved back to the U.S., to Santa Barbara, California, where he attended Harding Grammar School (now Harding University Partnership School). Three years later, in 1948, the family was in Three Rivers, close to the location of the Kaweah Colony, his father’s birthplace near Sequoia National Park. He attended Three Rivers Grammar School, and later Woodlake Junior High, then Mount Whitney High School in Visalia, California. Bernal completed what he considers his first artwork, a watercolor painting still life, at the age of ten, while in elementary school. His teacher at the time was deeply impressed by the painting. He clearly inherited artistic talent from his father, who also a visual artist. Talent in the arts clearly ran in the family, as his sister also painted as an amateur. She was featured in a library scrapbook in 1956 with a charming mural she painted of a deep-sea diver and an octopus guarding a treasure chest in the Visalia Public Library, keyed to suggested summer reading for children.
Bernal’s earliest career goals were to be a performer, following in his mother’s footsteps. He first performed as an actor in 1954, at the age of 17, in Oscar Wilde’s 1895 play The Importance of Being Earnest, a Trivial Comedy for Serious People. This experience was formative, and he strongly desired a life on the stage. After graduating from high school in 1956, he dedicated some years to training as an actor and dancer.
The years after high school are often transitional ones, as young people sort out their path in life. Bernal attended the College of the Sequoias in Visalia briefly and traveled to Mexico. In 1957, he returned there with his father, and met Mexican actress Socorro Avelar (1925-2003), with whom he would remain friends the rest of her life. Later that same year, he returned to California, this time to San Francisco. After a stint working at the Bechtel Corporation as a file clerk, in 1959 he began to study dance with the San Francisco Ballet. In San Francisco he met Langston Bowen (1932-2006), a muralist, actor, and peace activist. While in San Francisco, he also met the renowned Flamenco dancer Carmen Amaya (1918-1963) in 1960. He saw her again many times, and a few years later in 1963 and went backstage in Mexico City to greet her. That was the last time they met. Carmen died shortly afterwards.
By 1960 Bernal was back in Mexico, first to Valle de Bravo, in the state of Mexico, on the shore of Lake Avándaro, and also among the Mazahuas indigenous people. He also traveled around Mexico, visiting Akumel, in Quintana Roo and Acapulco. He then settled in Mexico City, in Colonia Roma, and was in touch again with the actress Avelar, whom he had met previously in 1957 on a trip with his father. Socorro mentored him and placed him in the the INBA acting school. He began studying acting at Mexico City’s Escuela Nacional de Teatro del Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes de México (INBA) and focused on the stage, acting in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and The Waltz of the Toreadors, a 1951 play by Jean Anouilh. He performed a Hamlet soliloquy on TV in Mexico. He met and became friends with many of Mexico’s actors, including luminaries from the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema (1933-1964): Amparo Rivelles (1925-2013), Enrique Aguilar (1935-1971), Jacqueline Andere (born 1938), Roberto Dumont, Xavier Marc (born 1948), Raúl Dantés, Héctor Bonilla (born 1939), Rita Macedo (1925-1993), Ignacio López Tarso (born 1925), Fernando Wagner (1905-1973), Alejandro Jodorowsky (born 1929), Carmen Montejo (1925-2013), Socorro Avelar (1925-2003), Hortensia Santoveña, Pilar Souza (1923-1999), Ada Carrasco (1912-1004), Ofelia Guilmáin (1921-2005), and others.
In his own estimation, he “failed at acting,” leaving Mexico to return to California at his sister Ann’s request in 1961. By 1962 he was on scholarship at the California Art Center, and soon to be deeply involved in various civil rights struggles of the time. Bernal recalls becoming “radicalized” during these years. In particular, he was involved in the Congress of Racial Equality beginning in 1963. He graduated from the California Art Center in 1966 (now the Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena).
In 1967, his father died. That same year he moved to Fresno, where he worked various jobs, including a stint with the city’s welfare department. In 1968, he became involved with the Teatro Campesino. A lot happened in that year: the massacre at Tlaltelolco, the Chicago convention, the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Bernal was witness to all. It was also at this time that he became a key participant in the Chicano Movement.
In 2012, he shared his memories of being part of el Teatro Campesino and the United Farm Workers, in a piece entitled in a mixture of French and Spanish, “Le Campesino”:
It was 1968-69. I had finished college and couldn’t find a job, so naturally I went to live with my sister, who was working. I heard about a Teatro that was performing in the Fresno area, and I went to see it. It blew my mind away. I had been raised in Mexico, and the Mexican feel of the thing was magical. I liked the fact that there was a feeling of family with the Mexican agricultural workers, and at the same time there were Anglos in the group who were just as much family. I joined and became part of the grape strike. We toured the area with Cesar’s message; “sign the contract,” which always stopped the show as people burst into applause. I painted what became know as the “del Rey mural,” showing la soldadera, Zapata, Villa, Cesar, Tijerina, Malcolm and MLK. On the other side of the building I plagiarized the Bonampak murals. By this time the Teatro had become famous, and we received an invitation to an International Theater Festival in Nancy, France. Before I knew it I was in a bus along the Seine with Notre Dame in front of me, as we sped on to the German border. We took the message of “le campesino,” as they called us, far and wide, performing in theaters, on the streets, and even at the Sorbonne. After it was over we all went our separate ways, Luis and Lupe got married, Donna Heber went to London and became a model briefly, Augie Lira dropped out, Luis and Danny started making movies in Hollywood. The farm workers continued working as they always had, their lives made better by the union until the growers could figure out how to circumvent the rules and keep them as an underclass. La lucha continua.
In his testimonio above, Bernal refers to the Teatro Campesino’s trip to Nancy and Paris, France in 1969 for the International Theater Festival, the year of Woodstock and anti-Vietnam war rallies throughout the US. On the trip, he translated into French. He fell ill in Paris, later splitting with the Teatro. MORE ON TEATRO; reference to his mural and other essays.
In 1970, Bernal moved back to Los Angeles again, settling in East LA. He worked for the Economic and Youth Opportunities Agency (EYOA), which administered Head Start and the Teen-Post program, among others, teaching adult basic education to prisoners. Mao Tse Tung had become very popular, and he became involved with various radical groups, most notably the Brown Berets, the Black Panthers, and the Congreso Obrero, his ideological mentors, and participating in numerous protests. He was a participant in the Chicano Moratorium, the protest of August 29, 1970, in which Rubén Salazar was killed. He was involved with other prominent activists, including Dorothy Healey, Rose Chernin (1901-1995), Herbert Biberman, activists and members of the communist party.
At this time, Bernal turned to teaching as a livelihood. In 1973, he was teaching Chicana/o Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. That same year, he met Belén Miranda, who would become his wife and with whom he raised three children, Hugo, Alex, and Gabriela. The following year, 1974, he left for Mexico City, where they lived in Colonia Navarte, and later Ciudad Azteca and Jardines de Santa Clara (1976) He remained there until 1983, when he would relocate East LA. In 1975, their son Alex was born. Bernal held a variety of jobs, working in Colonia Roma at a language institute (1977), at the embassy school, Relaciones Culturales (1978), the Escuela Mexicana-Americana, and in Echegary (1979) where he attempted organzing a union and for which he was fired.
In 1983, Bernal had relocated his family to East LA and began teaching at Garfield High School, where he remained for twenty-three years, retiring in 2005. He and his wife, Belén, divorced in 1985. At Garfield, Bernal taught Spanish to the predominantly Mexican American student body. He also painted a mural there, still preserved on the second floor of the high school (and discussed by Rodríguez Gomez in this volume). In fact, he flourished as a painter during the 80s and 90s. True to his anarchist nature and ever faithful to his progressive politics, Bernal would find himself in conflict over the years with school administrators at the high school. Several of his paintings were used in anti-war anti-imperialist demonstrations. But he loved his students and the feeling was mutual. His first semester of teaching, he threw away the gringo Spanish language textbook (American students go to Buenos Aires and drink Coca Cola), instead presenting great Spanish-language writers such as Lope de Vega, Poniatowska, Garcia Lorca, Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, etc. from which he taught his students literature and grammar. He was an inventive and dedicated teacher. He had his students create films in Spanish, having them write the script, then act in the final production, which was filmed. He asked his students to rewrite classic literary texts, setting them in their contemporary barrio. In one such assignment his students rewrote de Rojas’s La Celestina (1499). In another instance, his Spanish students wrote a play entitled Barrio Maravilla: Comedia en tres actos basada en Fuente Ovejuna de Lope de Vega. He also asked his students to read aloud in class and participate in group reports. His teaching methods were unconventional but effective. “Grades are stupid, and I never had the petty attitude that they were to be used as reward and punishment as some teachers do,” he recalled. “The administrators never had any idea what I was doing, all they saw was a lot of enthusiasm, but they hated my politics and tried to get me fired, but couldn't find a reason,” he recalled. “Dealing with those people was a constant struggle -- working with the kids, in spite of the occasional complaints, was a delight. I am still friends with some, and we still correspond on the net.”
Always a restless soul, in the 90s Bernal began to travel even more. He made regular trips to Cuba. Bernal visited Cuba ten years in a row beginning in 1989 and throughout the 90s, during the “special period” (periódo especial), and saw Fidel Castro in person. He also traveled to Africa, Europe, Mexico, and South America. In the fall of 1995, his mother passed away. His artistic production flourished at this time.
CONCLUSION --"I have been thinking about this Chicano thing. The key is that Chicano is nationalist, and I am internationalist. However, the key is also that one does not nullify the other. Internationalism implies solidarity, comradeship, a connection with all people everywhere. Chicano nationalism is an acknowledgement of the culture and the history that formed us, the thing we all have in common, the thing we refuse to give up in favor of gabacho temptations. 16:6 Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. 16:12 Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.
Chicano nationalism, like all nationalisms, can end up as right wing fascism. That is why it is important to keep the leaven of bread, but reject the temptations of the market, the Sadducees and Pharisees. - becoming slaves of capitalism, going into debt, having credit cards and cell phones, and doing everything Wall St requires of us. We have a tradition that goes back 10,000 years and we will not give it up for a few gadgets. Respect for our traditions implies respect for the traditions of others, and this in turn- paradoxically- makes us internationalists.
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posted by ANTONIO at 1:08 PM
