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The
Centro Cultural de la Raza is a 30 year old non-profit cultural
arts organization, established in 1970, whose mission is to
create, promote, and preserve Mexicano, Chicana, and indigenous
art and culture.
Our programs include
a multi-disciplinary educational component, performing and
literary arts presentations, visual arts exhibits and film/video
screenings. The Centro's legendary circular facility is known
for its vivid murals, 150 seat performance space, 2000 square
foot art gallery, classroom/workshop space and offices with
computer and video technology.
San Diego's Centro Cultural de la Raza was founded in 1970 as a Chicano Community Cultural Center and functions as an alternative space that encourages and facilitates artistic growth and cultural interchange in the San Diego/Tijuana region.
With the specific mission of creating, preserving and promoting Chican, Mexican and Indigenous art and culture, the Centro provides classes and features a dynamic interdiscipinary schedule of events which includes exhibits, musical performances, installation art, readings, receptions, Azteca dance, Teatro Chicano, Ballet Folklorico, film screenings and other events. We welcome you to visit the Centro and invite you to participate in the exciting programs we have planned for 2007. The Centro is strategically
located in Balboa Park where it provides easy access to residents
and tourists alike interested in cultural events and education.
It is a unique asset to the City of San Diego as its first
and only arts education center dedicated exclusively to Mexican/Chicano/indigenous
arts.
It also serves as a regional,
national and international resource for information on the
cultural art forms of the United States/Mexico border region.
The Centro has handed
down traditional art forms through danza, ballet folklorico
and teatro. The Ballet Folklorico en Aztlan, the Centro's
resident dance company, has been instructing and performing
this traditional Mexican folk art since 1967.
The Literary Arts Program of the Centro Cultural de la Raza promotes the exploration of Chicano/a, Mexicano/a, Latino/a, and Indigenous experience through the medium of creative writing including playwrighting, poetry, prose, and non-traditional genres such as multi-media spoken word performances.
The Centro Cultural de la Raza views creative writing as one of the most democratic and readily-available forms of art-making. It has the power to give voice to persons and groups of people who have historically been silenced, and to transform the realities of community history and daily life into a tangible reality.
Writing has played an important part in the Centro's history and the Literary Arts Program builds on this history to cultivate a cross-disciplinary approach to writing and the literary arts. The Literary Arts Program recognizes a continuity of the literary arts and documentation beginning with the Aztec codices in Nahuatl, indigenous songs and poetry, to the spoken word performances of today.
One of the important goals of the Literary Arts Program is the preservation and collection of primary sources and community history. This is accomplished through documentation (hard copy, internet, and library by special arrangement) of oral histories, old journals, essays, family photographs and scrapbooks. In the Centro archives are numerous anthologies, catalogs and journals dating from the 1970's.The collected documents may be utilized for research by community members and scholars, or for presentation to the community in the form of storytelling, theater pieces, songs and poetry.
The Literary Arts Program has connections to local, national, and international writers, poets, and playwrights, and is linked to Latino booksellers in the San Diego area. |
