Vietnam War Special Series Lecture #2

Steven Chi

5/2/14

ASA 2 – Section A02

In response to Professor Malaquias Montoya

                On May 1^st, 2014, I attended the “Movements, Arts, and Activism” lecture led by Professor Malaquias Montoya. While explaining how Chicano social movements are tightly intertwined with the Vietnam War, Professor Montoya showed us a series of his artworks, one of which I’ve decided to address in this response.

                First, I was surprised by how Professor Montoya was treated in elementary school. Because of ongoing racism and discrimination, he was forced to attend classes designed for “mentally retarded” children, in which all he ever was assigned to do was to “draw.” But he was clearly not mentally retarded. As a gifted artist, many people found his drawings were exceptional and meaningful, which ultimately allowed him to transfer out of the mentally retarded class. Here, I believe that school administrators were too quick to judge minorities. Many of them, like Professor Montoya, are talented people who can achieve great things – but their success was limited at the time because administrators were not willing to give them a proper education. 

One of Professor Montoya's many anti-war posters

                Professor Montoya continued to draw even as he attended college at UC Berkeley. He created many protest posters, including many anti-war sketches such as the one shown above. This drawing stood out to me because it showed that many of Chicano descent were united and fiercely against the war. Professor Montoya realized that the United States shouldn’t be fighting in Vietnam and that, in fact, “the battle isn’t in Vietnam … it’s here in the United States, against our own people.” What I think Professor Montoya meant by that statement was that people within the US were getting scarred – psychologically and physically – by the conflict abroad. The government said it was to contain communism, but many citizens didn’t even want the United States military there in the first place.

                I always knew that artwork can be powerful, and I’m pleased that Professor Montoya used his skills as a method of protest. After all, as the cliché goes, “a picture speaks a thousand words.”