The evolution of Chicano poster art began in 1965 with the production of graphic images to support the organizing and boycotting efforts of the United Farm Workers. The U.F.W. logo -- a black stylized eagle with wings shaped like an inverted Aztec pyramid -- became a key symbol of the Chicano movement. It appeared prominently on all official U.F.W. graphics, and its inclusion on unrelated posters made by Chicano artists signaled support for the union. Posters also were utilized to promote other Chicano political causes, such as the 1968 Coors beer boycott in protest of the company's discriminatory hiring practices. ...

Chicano poster art addresses a community with a long history of mutuality, solidarity, and struggle. Images of La Virgen de Guadalupe, loteria cards, low riders, jalapeña peppers, and Pancho Villa provoke powerful memories, associations, and emotions among people from Mexican-origin communities in the United States. These posters build, strengthen, and maintain the community that their images depict. They build a communications network on the walls of homes, stores, and offices that allows people in different places to share the same symbols, to appreciate the same aesthetic forms, and to enjoy the same humor.

Posters perform the work of community building in many ways. They advertise community events ranging from theatrical and musical productions to demonstrations and rallies. They transform spaces by inflecting them with ethnic identity, by filling them with depictions of familiar faces, foods, and fashions. They make collective memory active, dynamic, and present through portraits of popular heroes and images of important historical events.

In a society whose media repeat the same images over and over again, Chicano poster artists create an alternative public sphere. Here suppressed and repressed signs and symbols survive and thrive. They decorate and celebrate existing Chicano spaces, but they also serve as incubators of the imagination, as crucibles for creating the people, communities, and coalitions of the future.

The artwork and text are from the exhibition "Just Another Poster? Chicano Graphic Arts in California," at the University of California at Los Angeles's Fowler Museum through December 9. The University Art Museum organized the exhibition at the University of California at Santa Barbara, with the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives on that campus, and the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, in Los Angeles.