Bay Area, through the Americas, and Back
This video explores Paul Chin's journey as a Bay Area activist
in parallel with La Peña's early history
Third World Liberation Front 1967-69
Student movement at SF State, and later at UC Berkeley, demanding campus reforms and the establishment of Ethnic Studies Departments. TWLF held the longest student strike in American history.
Students who participated, like La Peña board member Paul Chin, were inspired to continue cross-cultural coalition building for social justice.
Chilean Military coup d'état
1973
Democratically elected socialist President, Salvador Allende is overthrown by the US-backed Chilean military. Dictator Augusto Pinochet and the military junta violently repress all left-wing movements. A number of Chileans flee Chile and resettle in the Bay Area.
La Peña is founded by Chilean exiles in partnership with internationalists and allies in Berkeley, 1975.
Cold War
1979-89
The U.S. fears communism in the American Isthmus and uses covert military operations to eliminate perceived communist threats in Guatemala Nicaragua and El Salvador.
La Peña supports Central Americans
engaging in Liberation Theology and resisting U.S. intervention. Chilean academic and UC Berkeley professor, Beatriz Manz works with indigenous rural communities in the Guatemalan highlands.
Anti-war Movement
1964-73
Closely aligned with the Free Speech and Civil Rights Movements, this was a broad social movement across college campuses and communities demanding an end to the war in Vietnam. The Bay Area, and Berkeley specifically, played a key role in the movement leading massive demonstrations in protest of the U.S. intervention in Vietnam.
This movement strengthened internalism between U.S. citizens and transnational communities.
Born in Resistance
La Peña Cultural Center was born out of the need for cross-cultural and community based organizing during a moment of global political tensions. In 1973, after nearly two decades of U.S. military intervention in Vietnam, the U.S. signed the Paris Agreement “Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam.” Growing opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war culminated in massive protests and resistance efforts by sympathizers of the Third World Liberation Front, Civil Rights Movement, and the Free Speech Movement. California’s Bay Area became a sociopolitical center of American opposition to the war which eventually led to the military’s withdrawal from the Third World country. U.S. military intervention in Vietnam, like U.S. sponsored wars and military coups in other countries, were proxy wars connected to greater global tensions in which the U.S. and Soviet Union engaged in an ideological struggle for global political influence.
While U.S. foreign policy was shifting away from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, it was stepping into the Republic of Chile with a keen focus on the administration of Socialist President Salvador Allende. The U.S., with foreign interests rationalized as “domino effect” vigilance, perceived democratically elected President Allende as a communist threat and on September 11, 1973 supported his forced and unconstitutional removal from power. The military coup d’état, taking place just months after the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, was backed by the U.S. and executed by the Chilean military junta under the leadership of General Augusto Pinochet. Following the military coup, violent repression of leftist movements and activists was the law of the land as Pinochet consolidated power. Chilean citizens who were considered leftist suspects were incarcerated and tortured or assassinated under the military regime. Other Chilean activists, artists, and intellectuals fled Chile for their safety.
The Bay Area was a destination for many of those exiled Chileans. In 1974, just a year after the violent military coup in Chile took place, a number of Chilean exiles and non-Chilean internationalists formed the Collective that would establish La Peña Cultural Center. The following year in 1975, the Collective opened the doors to La Peña with just $10,000 and a vision for a democratic community space founded in arts and activism. In 1977, La Peña Collective was able to purchase the building at 3105 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, California.
- LULU
Growing Pains
By the 1980s, La Peña was forced to rearticulate its commitment to a global Left in flux and to reconfigure their organization in order to confront the rise of a New American Right.
U.S. backlash to the gains made during the 60s and 70s by pluralistic multicultural social movement culminated in the consolidation of a new American right-wing and the 1980 election of President Ronald Reagan. Domestically, this meant the systematic dismantling of hard-won social safety nets established during the Progressive Era to stave off the most extreme effects of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy.
Internationally, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were locked in a struggle for global control, a cold war staged both at home and in dispossessed “Third World” nations still grappling with the unbroken chain of colonialism. Desperate to prove the dominance of capitalist liberal democracy over a growing anti-colonial and Communist impulse, Reagan’s advisors and their operators in the CIA set their sights on Latin America.
La Peña responded by expanding its definition of community to include a new wave of global anti-colonial movement such as Nicaraguan Sandinistas and the emergent Iranian rebellion. Peña staff also worked to broaden their commitment at home to protect marginalized communities under concerted assault such as LGBTQIA artists.
Since the late 1970s, the center had been scaling back their ultra-democratic collective model to meet the demands of shifting economic and political circumstances. Heightened pressure under the Reagan administration made these changes all the more urgent.
Listen to Paul describe the need for La Peña to broaden its understanding of art and culture, in the 80's, as their political focus shifted in Nicaragua and Chile .
In 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake tore the Bay Area apart, collapsing part of the Bay Bridge and a freeway about a mile away from La Peña. In the aftermath, Paul Chin remembers that he and other members of the leadership began to consider how they might sustain their project in the event of another disaster, natural or political. By 1991, they had formalized a board of directors in order to prepare for a future in which the fate of non-profit arts centers would be uncertain.
- Max
The Struggle for Justice Continues
If the challenges and triumphs of the 1980s are any indication, La Peña will be able to recover and rebuild from their economic struggles in 2012 to meet the needs of community.
Like many people, businesses, and nonprofits in the United States, the 2008 economic crisis greatly affected La Peña. The organization lost two thirds of its funding over the next four years, crippling its ability to support the community. In addition, key community organizers, staff, and board members left the organization for financial reasons or differences brought up by the increased stress on the nonprofit. During this time, the Staff Collective dissolved, leaving just the Board to solve La Peña’s deficit.
Contextualizing La Peña's Political
Moments Through Posters
By 2012, La Peña Cultural Center needed to revitalize. It had become a very quiet, underutilized space. They could no longer afford to pay the whole staff so the staff became one executive director, disrupting La Peña’s democratic values in a time of desperation. Additionally, they took over the restaurant next door as Cafe La Peña in an effort to create more revenue for the organization. There was a lot of turnover and leadership changes, contributing to instability in the organization that they are still addressing.
In 2016, La Peña’s Board reviewed the organization's values and hired two young co-directors, hoping to revive the center and secure La Peña’s future in the next generation. With a healthier budget, they are returning to an ultra democratic model by currently hiring new staff, expanding their capacity to educate, politicize, and empower community through the arts.
Listen to Paul describe the switch to an executive director as a pragmatic decision to revive the center at a time when they were questioning if La Peña would even continue.
Moving into the current political moment, we have witnessed resistance like Occupy, Black Lives Matter, and Standing Rock in response to injustices like an increasing wealth gap, incarceration rates, police violence and so much more. In the words of Paul Chin, “the struggle for justice continues” and La Peña does that indirectly through arts education and directly through fundraisers. The organization continues to align itself with global anti-imperialist movements and supports multicultural communities here in the Bay Area.
-Abigail