A Cultural War has been on the rise for the last decades. The Right Wing has been instrumental in cutting public funding for the arts, censoring books, taking art programs out of public schools, stopping performances and closing down exhibits they felt were “controversial.”

From 1994 to 1998, Esperanza was attacked by the right wing of San Antonio and South Texas

In 1998, Esperanza launched the ‘Arte es Vida’ campaign in response to the citywide attack on the cultural arts and public funding of arts programs. In partnership with arts organizations throughout San Antonio, Esperanza worked to create public discussion of the arts and cultural expression in its many forms. As communities talk about the arts/cultura, and in its relationship to their daily lives, we have helped to facilitate discussions which connect attacks on immigrants, poor people, queers, women, the disabled, youth and elders to attempts to annihilate disenfranchised people by erasing their cultural expressions.

The Arte es Vida campaign first began with the January 1998 Martin Luther King, Jr. March where we marched and handed out flyers. We continued to promote the campaign at the 1998 annual International Woman’s Day March and Rally and continued at the César Chávez March, where we asked people of all ages to sign postcards supporting the arts. We also attended the Lowrider Festival and the Conjunto Festival and within six weeks had over 5,000 signed postcards.

On June 11, 1998, hundreds of supporters of the arts rallied at City Council to present the 5,000 postcards and to speak about the importance of public funding for the arts and culture of San Antonio. A week later, when the City Council ranked budget priorities for the upcoming year, the arts were listed as #10, up from #40 in 1997.

Throughout the campaign 10,000 bumper stickers were also given away and have found their way across the U.S. We still receive numerous requests for these bumper stickers. To obtain your bumper sticker, contact us at 210-228-0201.

PHOTOS

Esperanza Peace & Justice Center
922 San Pedro
San Antonio Texas 78212
210-228-0201, Fax 210-228-0000
esperanza@esperanzacenter.org
© 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 all rights reserved