Quotes from Santa Barraza

The "Ofrendas" exhibition [within the 1987 art exhibition "Hispanic Art of the United States"] emphasized the fact that religious cosmologies and practices of Latin America are not minor/minority but rather espoused by vast numbers of people who are not white Protestant males. Unwittingly, perhaps, the exhibit suggested that we drop the words cult and superstition , as applied to non-European spiritual practices, and substitute the word religion .

My [art]work attempts to recapture a history never written or narrated visually before. I reaffirm my identity as a Mexica-Tejana and assert a new system of existence through visual manifestations of the oral history, myths, legends, and more of the borderlands.

Today Kingsville [,Texas], which in 1913 became the seat of Kleberg County, has a population of about 25,000 and encompasses approximately 15,548 acres, appropriated from Spanish and Mexican land grants.

When you think of home, you think about your mother. She was creative--she conceived you and gave you life. Like the maguey, woman is life-sustaining. As the plant renews and sustains life, woman procreates and maintains. The maguey is the symbol of home, of hogar .