Chavez. Maria Elena. OSA: Tell me your name, where and when you were born.

Maria Elena Chavez Interview: Oct. 5, 2005 South Central, LA, CA Maria Elena Chavez is a writer, director, and visual media artist and has been greatly influenced by having been born and raised within the farmworker movement. She is the daughter of Richard Chavez, brother of the late Cesar E. Chavez, and Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, AFL- CIO. Chavez graduated with a BA in film production from USC and is currently serving as Filmmaker Coordinator for the Los Angeles Film Festival. She is committed to using film and television to improve the representation of women, youth and people of color. In 2002 she was awarded the prestigious Premio Mesquite for Best Short Film at the 25 th Annual Cine Festival in San Antonio, Texas, for her film Espiritu. OSA: Tell me your name, where and when you were born. MARIA ELENA: My name is Maria Elena Chavez and I was born in Bakersfield, California 1972, February 26. OSA: You are a USC alum, so, to begin, let s talk about your experiences at the University of Southern California. MARIA ELENA: Let s see, before going to USC I was actually pretty nervous, and I expected the worst in the way of going to a school which didn t have that many minorities, which didn t have that many Chicanos/Latinos present, especially in the film program. So I kind of went there with an attitude of okay I know this is going to be rough. These folks have a reputation for being very mainstream, and I went in knowing that I didn t want to do mainstream film production. If I was going to do work, it had to do with social justice issues. I was going to want to focus on issues and themes that were probably not popular, and I didn t know how the faculty was going to interpret that. So I kind of went in with my fighting gloves on, I guess you could say. I don t know if this is important or not, but I was also accepted to the UCLA film program. So I had a decision to make between the two schools. I consulted my mentors and tried to get different perspectives on where I should go. Osa Hidalgo de la Riva was one CHICANA SPECTATORS AND MEDIAMAKERS Osa Hidalgo de la Riva, editor, Spectator 26:1 (Spring 2006): 35-42 35

MARIA ELENA CHAVEZ of the mentors that helped introduce me to USC. I honestly have to say that I felt very at home at UCLA. I felt a lot of people there were going to be familiar with the Chicano Movement, and I felt like I d be a lot more at home there. It s for that reason actually that I decided to go with USC because someone said, you know there s not a lot of Chicanos there, and someone actually told me this, one of my mentors, that s exactly why you should go there [to USC]. Because you have the opportunity to go and you need to be there and take advantage of that opportunity. It s a great film school. And so, I thought to myself, even if there s not a lot of Chicanos/ Latinos in that program, I do need to go represent and be there, and be the one to bring up those numbers and help represent our upbringing and educate people who don t know about it. So I went there with that mind frame. I have to say, honestly, that I was actually pleasantly surprised. OSA: Did the people you had met at USC influence your decision? MARIA ELENA: You know, I think it s important for people to have a connection because I know that not that many people do have someone that they can refer to who went through the school. I think a lot of, especially Chicana/ Chicano or Latina/ Latino, students who are going through there don t have a family legacy. There are those exceptions which is beautiful and that s the way it should be: to be able to have a family history at a certain university. So I felt very privileged to have an older brother, Fidel Huerta, who had gone there for his undergrad and then went to medical school at UCLA. And then, to be able to make that connection with Raul Vargas of MAAA (Mexican American Alumni Association) who was not only there for my brother but was also definitely instrumental in helping me feel like, okay, there is a population here of Mexican Americans, and they re going to do their best. I also met with El Centro Chicano, which it was called at that time, under the leadership of Abel Amaya. They were instrumental in helping me feel like okay, it s not going to be totally void of your people, and people you can connect with. So that was definitely important, meeting with Mark Harris, who had directed a documentary about the United Farm Workers called Huelga, which was one of the films that had influenced me when I was growing up, and which I had included as an influence in my mission statement. So I was happy to see that, without really making a connection to who the director of that film was; I was pretty surprised to realize that the director of this movement documentary film, which was dear to my heart, was actually teaching at USC. So, again, that was another pleasant surprise and another aspect to make me feel it wasn t going to be so bad after all. I could take off the boxing gloves and just get ready to learn and have a great experience. OSA: What were some of the films you made while you were at USC? MARIA ELENA: I made a film called Masks of Life, which was an experimental documentary. It was one of my first serious productions, and I was really worried going into it. My professor s name was Duke Underwood, who was a really great guy and he was very, very supportive. He pushed me further into experimenting and really pushed me into exploring different elements of the film, places that I was scared to go; he pushed me into going with my ideas and making this experimental narrative. So, I really appreciated that, and that was the kind of thing that I wasn t expecting at USC and was very happy to get; he wasn t at all bothered by the political content. OSA: What was Masks of Life about? 36 SPRING 2006

CHICANA SPECTATORS AND MEDIAMAKERS MARIA ELENA: Basically, it was about my experience growing up in the United Farm Workers Union and sort of feeling this you know as you grow up in something you tend to resent it or take it for granted? It s about my story, as a young person. Like all teenagers do, they go through their partying phase and they want to forget about those heavier issues, serious issues of growing up in the Movement, about being involved and fighting for people s rights and that kind of thing. Rebelling against your immediate environment which, for me, happened to be a movement of social justice and caring about people and fighting for equal rights. So I rebelled against that, and then had a reality check, a wake up call. My mother, Dolores Huerta, was beaten up by the San Francisco police in my junior year of high school. This really shook me up into shape and I decided to refocus myself. OSA: And you put this into your film? MARIA ELENA: Right, this was all in the film. I decided to refocus and get back into school, prepare myself to go to college and realize that this, this is going to become part of my mission. Even though I was then planning to study theater, I ve always kind of realized that. Also, I found my voice as an artist. I think that film depicted my turning point in realizing that, even as an artist I have a contribution to make to the Movement and that I m going to do that through my work. Through my film, media, theater, what have you, I ve always used the Movement as a foundation. OSA: What was your experience like, growing up in the Movement? MARIA ELENA: I guess for me, I had a very rural existence growing up in the United Farm Workers Union headquarters in La Paz. It was out in the mountains near Tehachapi, private property; I very much grew up in an environment rich in nature. OSA: Getting back to your experience at USC, did you ever feel any prejudice or resistance because you were Chicana? MARIA ELENA: I want to preface this by saying that, even though I could say my experience at USC didn t end up being as isolated as I thought it was going to be, I did a lot of work to create that situation. And I will say, too, that there were other experiences early on, maybe not so much resistance among the professors in terms of racism, but maybe just a general lack of understanding that people have. There s an ignorance, it s not a malicious ignorance, but there s just a plain ignorance of our culture. So that definitely existed, but there was also ignorance among the students. And we would get into discussions and debates about different issues. In general, there was a lack of understanding of diversity, a lack of cultural sensitivity. And this would definitely show up in critiques of your work; people, you know, can be offensive without realizing that they re making offensive remarks. OSA: How did you work through these comments? MARIA ELENA: I was always very vocal; whenever I felt like something was being said that was not culturally sensitive or that was racist, I gave them the benefit of the doubt of being ignorant and always felt that it was my responsibility as a Chicana to educate them about what piece of knowledge they may be lacking that led them to that conclusion, that perception that they have. It gets tiring after a while, it really does. But, the way I was raised, I can t keep my mouth closed. I feel it s my responsibility to say something. I had such a diverse upbringing I didn t grow up just around Chicanos, I was IMAGINING TRANSCULTURAL DIVERSITY 37

MARIA ELENA CHAVEZ 38 SPRING 2006

CHICANA SPECTATORS AND MEDIAMAKERS exposed to many different populations of people growing up in the Movement. White folks, Black folks, other people of color, people from different cultures, different sensibilities you name it; that s how we grew up in a very well-rounded environment. OSA: What were your experiences with the Latina/Latino Cinema Society? MARIA ELENA: I can t remember how I began, but I was definitely a chair of the actual Latina/Latino Cinema Society at one point, which I believe we all just rotated leadership roles depending on who graduated when. There were about five of us that always had a core position within the Latina/Latino Cinema Society, and I think being involved in that Cinema Society was a great thing because it really helped us provide a forum for our classmates to share their work, not only with each other to see who was doing what in the different classes, but it also provided an opportunity and a forum for us to show our work within our community. And at that time, there was not a lot of opportunity to see a lot of Chicano and Latino film. I think we re definitely encouraged by our brothers and sisters at UCLA film school, who have been doing their Chicano/Latino student film festival for over twenty-five years; we had relationships, we were definitely in touch. It was a small world so we knew the filmmakers; we would go to support them at their events, likewise, they would come and support our events. There wasn t that competition amongst us. You know, it s played up with the football rivalry, but, hey man, we knew we needed each other, we knew we needed to support one another because there was just not a lot of us in this field. Period. And in these schools, we knew that that was a great opportunity and privilege that we had. At USC, we began our own annual Latino/ Latina student film festival, and it was a lot of work to get it going at first. We had to go to a lot of people and beg for money from all different areas of the school, really get people to understand why this was needed. And of course, once we did get it underway it was a beautiful thing. I mean, we had people from the community come out and it was a good motivator for the students because a film really isn t a film if it s sitting on a shelf or in a box it doesn t breathe until its screening in a dark theater, in a room full of people who can respond to it and have their heart strings, you know, pulled. I mean, they re the instruments like an interactive experience, especially with our communities. It was beautiful. Those were very beautiful experiences. OSA: The organizing experience itself was probably very educational. MARIA ELENA: Definitely, it was a good opportunity for us to outreach to the other departments within the school, not just the Latino departments and organizations, but also the other women s groups, people of color, and just a great opportunity to bring everyone together to support a really great thing. I also thought it was very important to honor women at the film festival because we definitely have people working in the media and, because of the lack of opportunities, they re not necessarily recognized in the newspaper or making headlines. So this was an opportunity to recognize these women in the media who have been in the trenches, who helped break open the doors and lay the foundation for us to have the opportunities that we re having today. OSA: Can you talk about your sister s liver transplant and your decision to help her? IMAGINING TRANSCULTURAL DIVERSITY 39

MARIA ELENA CHAVEZ MARIA ELENA: My sister, Juanita Chavez, was diagnosed with chronic active auto immune hepatitis when she was in high school and was told she was going to need a transplant at some point in her life. Ten years later, it came time for her to need to have that transplant. We had an opportunity to do a living organ donor transplant, so I volunteered. After months of testing and going to counseling, everything was green-lit. So, we underwent the surgery in November of 2002. During the surgery, basically, I gave 70% of my liver to Juanita, and the 30% that I was left with grew, eventually grew back it s the only organ in your body that will regenerate. And the 70% that was in her body also grew to 100%. So, it was really a great experience, very painful of course, it took me about three months to really, you know, recuperate from that. But, yeah, she s doing great now and I m 100% normal functioning. I will say that when we did the living donor transplant at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, we were one of the first to have that surgery done, so it was very new still. And then, of course, the media played a big role in that as well because we had just done the surgery. It was right before Christmas OSA: So you were in the spirit of giving! MARIA ELENA: Exactly. But, needless to say there was a lot of press. And so we did a lot of interviews, television, radio and print about that. It was great, you know, since then we have spoke publicly on behalf of the American Liver Foundation, and have adopted that as one of the causes that we advocate for because there is, of course, a lack of people who donate their organs or even know the correct process to go through to do that. They may have expressed that to a family member but never filled out their own organ donor card and so the family doesn t honor their wishes. So there s a lot of education that needs to be done around that especially within the Latino community. OSA: Did you document any of the time you spent in the hospital? MARIA ELENA: I had a camera, which of course I couldn t use after the surgery because I was too weak. But, thank goodness we had a camera around when friends came in they would hold the camera, they would help document. I had intended to make a documentary My sister and I were in separate rooms, so somebody went and actually filmed my sister, then I made a statement with the camera to my sister and just said, Hi Juanita, I just want to let you know I m doing fine, the surgery went great, I love you, and just as if she was there I said it to the camera. And then they took the camera and they filmed her, making her statement to me and we shared that with one another. And that, that was the first interaction we had after the surgery was us speaking to each other. And I never would have imagined that that was the role the camera was going to play, but it did. It played the role of helping us communicate with one another in the most critical time when we needed to see and hear from one another. So, I went in with one intention in terms of what role the camera and that medium would play, and, in the end, it took another role, a role that we never would have imagined and was so much more prominent. OSA: You re a member of one of the Royal Chicano familias de Aztlan. Can you talk about this? MARIA ELENA: There are a lot of brothers and sisters. My mom has eleven children, from three different marriages. And the last four children are 40 SPRING 2006

CHICANA SPECTATORS AND MEDIAMAKERS with Richard Chavez and I come from that last batch. My dad, Richard Chavez, is a younger brother to Cesar. I m number nine in terms of my mom s children, and my dad also has children from a previous marriage. Two marriages he has children from, and so there s nine of us in total. He has also been very supportive, they ve both been supportive of my work, which started out being my first passion was as an actress and doing theater. They have always supported my role as an artist and making that my life s work. Even though we didn t grow up with a lot of money, which I think is often the main catalyst behind parents who push their children into going to college, starting a discipline that they can then come out from and have a solid career, that s going to be traditional, money-making career, something that they can make a living off of, my parents have been supportive of my art. And the reason I think that they didn t quite push me in that way is because they ve seen the role that art has played in the Movement, beginning with Luis Valdez s Teatro Campesino. In that respect, the Teatro was key in not only entertaining the workers, but teaching people, teaching the farm workers about their rights and what they re entitled to. And also to inspire them by bringing them up on stage and having them play the different roles, really letting them feel what it s like to be in charge. What it feels like to stand up to the patron and fight, stand up for their rights. My parents knew that theater played that role in the Movement, so I think that had a big role in them supporting my chosen career as an artist. My brother Rick Chavez is another artist of the family. Rick is a visual artist; he does pottery, New Mexico-style pottery. And he s also a rapper in La Paz. La Paz is a rap group and he has cd s and performs around LA and through different colleges and universities throughout the country. So, my parents have seen, you know, through his music it s very conscious music or again, through all of the visual art throughout the Movement, the posters that were plastered around the city to let people know that those grapes have blood on them. The murals, you know, everything. So, in that way, I think that played a big role in their supporting my chosen career as an artist. OSA: What projects are you working on now? MARIA ELENA: My mom, after moving on from being co-founder and first Vice President of the United Farm Worker s Union, has since started her own foundation, The Dolores Huerta Foundation. So she is very much continuing her life s work as an organizer. And she is doing what she can to teach that to others, to create communities of consciousness. She has always very much been involved with media, but doesn t have a lot of work produced about her life s work, about her as a person. I realized that I definitely wanted to be the person to bring my mom s life story to fruition in whatever capacity that would be. And so, right now we are actively working on laying the ground work: getting the seed money, laying the foundation to do the documentary on her life story. So, that s definitely going to be in the works for the next few years and it will be a project of the Dolores Huerta Foundation. OSA: You ve been invited to speak and screen your work at many film festivals, is there any piece that you re particularly proud of? MARIA ELENA: I haven t been screening in too many film festivals since I screened Espiritu, which is a film that I wrote and directed. Espiritu was based on a family IMAGINING TRANSCULTURAL DIVERSITY 41

MARIA ELENA CHAVEZ story, and it is about a husband and wife coming to terms with their cultural and religious differences acknowledging not only their Catholic beliefs, but also the indigenous beliefs that shape who they are as a family. And of course there is some resistance to acknowledge the validity of the indigenous spirituality. And throughout the process of the movie we see that the husband, who is most resistant in accepting that, has a change of heart, and realizes that is just as important as anything else. It was wellreceived, I won an award, the Premio Mesquite for Best Short Film at the 25 th Annual Cine Festival in San Antonio, Texas. So that was a great experience. Also, I happened to be in Cuba a year or so after that during their International Film Festival. And I was happy to see that it screened there in Cuba; that was definitely a highlight and I got to be there for that. Most recently I served as Associate Producer on a film called No Sweat, directed by Amie Williams, that was screened on KQED in the Bay area. It looks at two garment factories: one that was a union shop and one that was non-union and compares the trials and tribulations of those factories and their workers. OSA: Didn t you also make a short film about the janitor strike at USC that occurred a few years ago? MARIA ELENA: When the janitor strike was happening at USC, I made a short film, and I was very involved during the hunger strike that took place on behalf of the workers, the hotel employees and restaurant employees international. They didn t have a union contract, the workers there, and they got a union contract as a result of that strike. What comes with a union contract are improved wages, job security, health benefits, paid vacations. I mean everything that people take for granted, so I was definitely very involved in that. OSA: What do you see for yourself in the future? MARIA ELENA: I think way in the future it would be great to be involved in some kind of multimedia production that is focused on indigenous people, that has something of the tradition mixing with modern technology in a way that s never been done before. I don t know what that looks like, I ve had different ideas of what that might look like but I think ultimately, I want to do something with technology and spirituality. As I said when I did Espiritu, which is based actually on a story that my grandma would pass down, to me, making, whether it be film, video, television, radio, those are all extensions of the oral tradition which we grew up with. And it s as ancient as our people doing the codices. It s just a modern extension of that, and I think the two are more closely related than people like to believe. I feel like what s missing and what has been lost is this idea that just because the technology is so far removed from the tradition, that the story as well has to be removed. Of course, when you apply this to capitalist philosophy, you lose a lot in that mix, it has nothing to do with spirituality or righteousness for the most part. And humanity, that s what s missing in our day and age and we need to find a way to bring those two things together. And people are doing that; don t get me wrong, it is happening. It s a struggle though for the people who do make it happen. And we need to make that process easier. But I think that with technology becoming more accessible to folks that that will be happening more and more, which is a beautiful thing. Sí, se puede! 42 SPRING 2006