The San Diego Chicano Movement and the Origins of Border Art

This article analyzes how the complex and often contradictory immigration politics of the 1970s Chicano movement led to the development of Border Art in the San Diego region. Chicano leader Herman Baca insisted upon the importance of resolving the immigration debate, but cast the question in terms of a global system of inequity. Artists of the movement were forced to mediate between presenting the public with visions of a borderless world and circumscribing a Chicano “nation” within the U.S. Southwest. San Diego’s Chicano Park murals betray this tension, and several of the artists involved would go on to found the first border art collective. Freed from the entanglements of Chicano politics and the burden of nationalism, “Border Art” could focus on human rights violations and economic inequality.