Zapantera Negra

An Artistic Encounter Between Black Panthers and Zapatistas (New & Updated Edition)

Emory Douglas, Marc James Léger, David Tomas, Marc James Léger, David Tomas

• Publisher: Common Notions
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781942173557
• eBook ISBN: 9781942173632
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art & Politics

A powerful elixir of hope and determination, Zapantera Negra provides a galvanizing presentation of interviews, militant artwork, and original documents from two movements’ struggle for dignity and liberation. When Emory Douglas, former Minister of Culture of the Black Panther Party, accepted an invitation from the art collective EDELO and Rigo 23 to meet with autonomous Indigenous and Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico, they explored the role of revolutionary art in times of distress. Zapantera Negra is the result of their encounter. It unites the bold aesthetics, revolutionary dreams, and dignified declarations of two leading movements that redefine emancipatory politics in the twentieth and twenty-first century.

The artists of the Black Panthers and the Zapatistas were born into a centuries-long struggle against racial capitalism and colonialism, state repression and international war and plunder. Not only did these two movements offer the world an enduring image of freedom and dignified rebellion, they did so with rebellious style, putting culture and aesthetics at the forefront of political life.

ENCOUNTERS

JOURNEY TO ZAPANTERA NEGRA

Rigo 23

IN OCTOBER OF 1989, the inaugural Feria Nacional de La Mexicanidad took place in Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico. An initiative of Celso Humberto Ramirez, then Tepic’s governor, the fair promoted Mexican cultural identity and historical self-awareness. Local Cora and Huichol representatives were the guests of honor, but in a demonstration of the reach of La Mexicanidad, a handful of Chicano muralists from the Bay Area had also been invited.

When sudden illness forced a last-minute cancellation, Ray Patlán, with whom I had developed a strong student/mentor relationship, suggested I join the Bay Area delegation. The spirit which moved these artists was such they all deemed it more important that “each one teach one” than to scrutinize my dedication to the cause or my Mexican-ness. Hailing from the same geography as Columbus, having practically just arrived on the continent, and being a whole twenty-three years of age, I would have not stood a chance. Had I never boarded the plane, this would have been enough of a lesson, but I went, and brought with me three friends who paid their own way and took turns helping the other muralists. This trip became the first of many into the geo-cultural region known as Latin America and the beginning of a long and still unfolding learning process.

During the festival, I met Yucaye Kukame (José Benitez Sanchez in Spanish, or Silent Walker in English), a Wixárika (Huichol) marakame and accomplished visionary artist with whom I would spend many afternoons enthralled by his art and words. He was my first encounter with the cosmogony and poise of an original people from this Continent. I had only been living in San Francisco since late 1986, and most things were new and exciting but these few weeks in Tepic were of a different magnitude. I returned to California with three of José Benitez’s yarn-on-beeswax paintings, and the realization that I was a changing person. I immediately began a journey seeking evidence of the same cultural survival within US borders. This eventually led me to the Klamath River region of Northern California and the powerful Karuk, Yurok, and Hoopa worlds that still survive there.

In the early nineties, a short news item in one of San Francisco’s weeklies grabbed my attention. It stated that Geronimo Pratt had, yet again, refused to appear at his own parole hearing at San Quentin Prison, a stone’s throw away across the Bay. In the article, they referred to Geronimo as both a leading figure within the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and a political prisoner. Having grown up in post-1974 Portugal, I was no stranger to the notion of state-sponsored oppression and racism. The nineties was a time of collective reckoning with the country’s recent fascist regime and long colonial history in Africa. I was nevertheless stunned to read about political prisoners in California in a mainstream newspaper. So I cut out the news clip and pinned it to the wall right above my desk as a constant reminder of the new historical context I was now living.

As fate would have it, I was invited in the summer of 1994 to paint a mural with inner-city youth from Oakland as part of a program called YES (Youth Engaged in Service). The idea was to offer local youth meaningful occupations and, at the same time, reduce their chances of “getting into trouble” while on break from school. We were to paint a mural on the façade of the Jubilee West Thrift Shop at 10th and Center Streets in West Oakland. At my first site visit, the organizers pointed out that Jubilee West was headquartered in the same building that once housed Post 188 of UNIA—the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the organization that Marcus Garvey founded in 1917. They asked that I include Garvey in the mural, as well as a portrait of Huey P Newton in his iconic pose in the wicker chair. Excited by the unexpected developments, I return to my Mission District studio to start work on a sketch. Every time I lifted my eyes from the page, Geronimo stared back at me.

In the process of researching Huey P Newton, cofounder with Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party in 1966, I was reminded that he had been murdered a mere five years earlier and a couple blocks away from where Jubilee West Thrift Shop now stood. This, coupled with my awareness of the ever-growing number of Black people trapped in California’s booming prison system, led me to suggest the inclusion of a portrait of Geronimo Pratt—proclaiming his innocence—over one memorializing Huey Newton. I believed this would give the surrounding community a sense of vindication and hope and an incentive to remain in the struggle rather than dwelling on the trauma still festering from Huey’s violent and tragic death. It took some self-convincing to muster the courage to make such a bold proposal to the Jubilee West organizers, but they were kind, heard me patiently, and promised to have an answer by our next meeting. After they had discussed the issue among themselves, their decision had been unanimous: I should go ahead and paint Geronimo’s portrait. Unbeknownst to me, this turn of events was about to profoundly shape my life.

In the final design, Geronimo’s portrait, prominently framed by a wide golden frame, spanned the full height of the mural. Only one of his eyes was visible, peeking from a sliver of wall between two bar-covered windows. Running vertically along either side of his face ran the text: “Geronimo Pratt/Still Innocent.” Throughout the morning workdays, the group of youngsters who turned up was a lively bunch, continuously playing practical jokes on each other and teasing me about my accent. Because they were not allowed on ladders, they would paint the lower parts of the mural, and after clean-up time I would work on the upper parts into the early evening. Day after day, as the sun slowly arched down on West Oakland’s sky, the volume on the neighbor’s record player would rise up. Warm and soothing, or sharp and frenetic jazz would envelop the block.

On one of those late afternoons, as I was wrapping up and about to head out, one of the neighbors called me from across the street from his front porch steps and asked, “Hey, where you from?” As was my habit, I told him “I’m from Madeira Island, Portugal.” This caused some amusement and he repeated the question: “Yeah, but where you live?” I was barely done with the “o” in San Francisco when he cracked up, turned to his friend and said: “Didn’t I tell you?! He don’t even live around here.” They both nodded and laughed some more. It was all uphill from there. First they offered to lend me taller ladders, then to fill my buckets with clean water, and lastly to keep the art supplies at their house, so I could work on Sundays when the thrift shop was closed. The jazz, in the meantime, never let up.

In one of our short, sunset-lit interactions the neighbor dropped the bomb, “Does Geronimo know you’re doing this?” I remember being shocked by the question and feeling newly out of place. Had I somehow trespassed and done something wrong? “Well, he’s in prison,” I tentatively replied with tremor in my voice, no longer able to hear the jazz music or much else for that matter. “Yeah, but you can still write him.” These words, though stern, rescued me from my temporary deafness and after a brief silence he delivered his finale with masterful tempo: “He’d love to know you’re doing this.”

The BART ride back to 16th and Mission was surreal. I remained in a daze. It had never occurred to me that I could communicate directly with Geronimo and the history he represented. Sure, I was painting a mural about him with a group of young kids from West Oakland, but it never crossed my mind that I should write to him! Why would he care to hear from someone he knew nothing about? That said, I was in the situation to learn and be respectful. I knew the right course of action was to follow the neighbor’s advice and I found out Geronimo’s prison number and address, got over myself, and did just that: I wrote to him, introduced myself, my family, shared where I came from, what I did, and let him know I was painting a mural of him.

I could never have anticipated the intensity of the joy of receiving a letter addressed to “Nghuru Rigo” from Mule Creek State Prison—the pleasure remains unparalleled to this day. It was Geronimo who, via his letters, directed me to meet Emory Douglas and to do whatever I could to help shine some light on the magnitude of Emory’s contribution to the struggle. “He is not only a revolutionary and visionary artist but a true selfless soldier who embodies the best of us all in the Central Committee.” These were Geronimo’s words. In the letters he also spoke of his family, how his father was Native American, a Cree from Louisiana who made a proud living by collecting, hauling, and selling scrap metal. He himself was born Elmer Pratt and gained the nickname Geronimo during his time in Vietnam, where he won two Purple Hearts for bravery in battle. As his maternal ancestors were from West Africa he replaced the slave brand “Pratt” with the Ji Jaga lineage. After returning home, armed with the GI Bill, he enlisted at UCLA where he befriended John Huggins and Bunchy Carter, joined and soon became Minister of Defense for the Black Panther Party.

A year after finishing the “Jubilee West Thrift Shop” mural I entered Stanford’s Master of Fine Arts program. In my first week, during a break between classes, I found myself in one of the many campus bookstores. There I ran into a small, almost pocket-sized book in Spanish titled Yo, Marcos. I felt like a spoiled brat biking away with a too-easy-to-liberate book. But I knew I needed to read it. One year prior, in January 1994, I was in Portugal and the Zapatista uprising was front-page news. I had been eager to learn more about the movement ever since and the book’s arrival felt like a divine gift. Marcos’ use of Spanish was like a Dismantled Spanish echo to Fela Kuti’s Broken English. It had a cumulative effect on my twelve-year relationship to Fela’s unapologetic and thorough dismantling of the English language as a necessary step for the rebuilding of an African perspective. His Spanish as a Language of the Indigenous exposed the capitulations and distortions of the Mexican state’s ode to Western civilization.

Together, Fela’s and Marcos’ glossary of broken and repurposed official Histories and Languages, engulfed and propelled me on a journey through which I am still navigating. I felt adrift on a canoe, which although tiny was not about to be swallowed up in the ripple waves caused by the mighty tankers of official narratives. This journey required swallowing enough water to know its taste, and trusting the chance encounters with the force of truth in order to chart a path. I spent my first semester at Stanford making a seven-by-seven foot portrait of Geronimo, now Ji-Jaga, using 28,000 plastic and metal push-pins, thumb pushed one at a time into four silent plywood panels—a meditation on time and perseverance. The finished portrait was included in the exhibition “Time and Time Again” at the Richmond Art Center in the North Bay.

On June 10, 1997, I found myself, camera in hand, at the Orange County Courthouse witnessing Geronimo’s historical release after twenty-eight years of wrongful imprisonment. As he made his way to the front gates he was nearly lifted off the ground by the adoring crowd who rushed towards him. The sky-piercing chants and heart-thumping beat of a Lakota drum circle nested on a nearby garden patch commanded the sonic sphere. Some of the dozens of journalists gestured towards the drummers to stop so they could better use their microphones and video cameras, but Geronimo asked them to keep going. “This is so auspicious that I should hear native chants as I walk to Freedom,” he said. “What’s your plan now?” one journalist screamed louder than the rest. “I plan to go see my mother. I’ve always been a mama’s boy, and she has waited long enough.” Eunice Pratt was then ninety-three years of age and had not seen her son for nearly a quarter of a century. A week later, on June 15, my parents were with me on the occasion of the Stanford University graduation ceremony. Like everyone else, I was handed a very official leather folder when called to the podium, only mine contained a note instructing me to turn in my final papers or I would not graduate.

An expanded version of the Richmond Art Center exhibit was scheduled to open on July 1 at the Watts Labor Community Action Committee at 105^th and South Central in Los Angeles. However, with Geronimo’s unexpected release twenty days prior, we had to quickly adapt and re-imagine much of it. Aside from the work dedicated to Geronimo’s plight, an entire gallery showcased Emory’s art. Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier had a section each, and one of the largest galleries was dedicated to a local teenager who had been detained by the police for photographing graffiti on a rooftop. The exhibition was retitled “Guilty Until Proven Innocent—In Tribute to Geronimo and the Thousands.”

July 1, 1997, was momentous. Geronimo turned down a combo of ringside tickets for the Tyson/Holyfield fight with private jet to Vegas, and instead chose to come to the Watts art show. It was the first time we would meet him in person, and when we were introduced he gave me a clear mandate: “This is what you do, your job is to spread information: Free all political prisoners.” He added: “That portrait is bigger than my cell was.” Needless to say, Emory Douglas was there too, as were many legendary figures from the Black Liberation Movement.

It would take me over a decade for a chance to visit Chiapas. It came in the winter of 2008, nearly twenty years after my initial visit to Mexico and my encounter with Yucaye Kukame (Silent Walker). That fall, the Sixth Intergalactic Commission of the EZLN—Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional—had put out a call for like-minded people to converge in Oventic and CIDECI, in San Cristóbal de las Casas, for the First World Festival of Dignified Rage. The three-day series of talks at CIDECI—...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Preface
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Introduction
• Encounters
• Platforms
• Poetry
• Contributors