Hispanic icons

Photo illustration by Shawn Munguia and Gabe Hernandez / Valley Morning Star

Ask a person with Hispanic or Chicano roots about his favorite cultural icons and the responses are likely to be as varied as the cultural group itself, but inevitably several of the same names come up.

Popular Hispanic icons include deities, fictional characters and actual people.

The Virgin

Images of La Virgen de Guadalupe — the indigenous Mexican version of the Virgin Mary — can be seen on clothing and jewelry just as readily as they are tattooed on someone’s back or airbrushed onto low-rider pick-up trucks across the United States, Mexico and even in other parts of Latin America.

Virgin sightings are commonplace at the Narciso Martinez Cultural Arts Center in San Benito as well, said Director Cristina Balli.

“La Virgen de Guadalupe is probably the Mexican icon, above all the rest,” she said. “I don’t think she’s necessarily a religious icon — she’s a cultural icon. The Virgen de Guadalupe has transcended religion and cultural significance.”

Like many popular Hispanic icons, the Virgin has also transcended into the marketplace. Images of the Virgin are so popular that even H-E-B, Wal-Mart and Target stores carry products with her image on them. Online merchants, like Mis Cositas, even offer “La Guadie” aprons, handbags and cushions.

A large painting of the Virgin at NMCAC’s stage frequently appears in media photos of performances, Balli said.

George Gause and Virginia Haynie Gause, librarians at the University of Texas-Pan American, have lived in the Valley and have traveled extensively in Mexico for more than 30 years.

“I used to be afraid to wear T-shirts with the Virgen of Guadalupe’s image on them around devote Catholics, but I think at this point in time most open-minded people love the artistic value for the Virgen’s image as well as respect its religious significance,” Virginia said.

George called the Virgin “a pivotal icon within Mexico and anywhere Mexican

nationals now live.

“She’s traveled north with migration patterns and transcended political borders everywhere,” George said, thus far with the exception of Dillard’s and Foley’s.

The Revolutionaries

Simón Bolívar is venerated as the liberator from the rule of Spain of six nations, including his native Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. But his likeness is nowhere to be found in the Valley. Instead, it is the Mexican revolutionaries Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata whose photos often fill the walls of Mexican restaurants. Zapata last led the uprising in southern Mexico during the revolution of 1910, but he has not ceased to inspire movements such as the Zapatistas in Chiapas, México, George said. Like other icons of Zapata’s stature, his name and likeness are successful marketing tools. Earlier this year, Mexican singer Alejandro Fernandez posed as Zapata for the inaugural cover of “Bello Magazine” — complete with handlebar mustache, sombrero and bandoleers.

José Angel Gutierrez, a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington and founder of the Mexican American Youth Organization, said that “Emiliano Zapata is up top for me,” as is Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

The Artist

At least for the moment, Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is a popular figure with some Hispanics. Virginia said that she first heard about Frida Kahlo in the early 1970s from an artist from Mission.

“At that time, not many people here were aware of who she was,” she said. “But since the movie ‘Frida’ that has greatly changed.”

Frida seems to be en vogue, part of “la moda” (the trend), George said.

“I think she’s started to fade out a little bit,” he said.

Balli acknowledged that “Frida is a little cliché by now,” but added that Kahlo is revered because of the manner in which she handled her physical ailments and her womanizing husband.

“She is an icon for art and somebody who represents the strength of women,” Balli said. “By choosing to identify with the common folk, she acknowledged our indigenous roots. She was way ahead of her time.”

The Champion

The images of César Chávez and of the Aztec eagle of the United Farm Workers union he co-founded with Dolores Huerta have proved lasting, despite Chávez’s passing.

“He represents the struggles of the “campesinos” (field laborers) — the fight for human rights for Mexican Americans, just like Martin Luther King is an icon for African Americans,” Balli said. “He is an icon for Mexican Americans and Latinos overall.”

Comparisons to MLK are common because both men practiced civil disobedience, despite the beatings they and their peers received.

“I had the pleasure of meeting César Chávez in the mid-1970s,” Virginia said. “He exuded peace in his personal presence like no one I have been around before or after.”

The New Icons

Earlier this year, half a million online voters chose Juan Valdez (and the GEICO gecko) as the country’s favorite advertising icons of the year, according to AdAge. The coffee icon is the symbol of the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia.

Whoever said young people are apathetic? At Valley football games, shopping malls and high school hallways, it is not Juan, but Pedro who is the cult favorite. “Vote For Pedro” emblazoned on T-shirts are a salute to the recent film “Napoleon Dynamite,” in which a geeky Anglo teenager helps to get his shy Hispanic friend Pedro Sánchez elected student-body president.

Balli, a fan of “Wonder Woman” episodes as a youth, recently learned that Lynda Carter, the actress who portrayed the super hero on television, is Hispanic.

“I had no idea,” she said. “Recently she mentioned it in an interview. It just came up in passing. I would watch Wonder Woman all the time. I wanted to be like Wonder Woman.”

Professor Gutierrez said that each person should be at liberty to choose cultural icons. In fact, he listed Christmas “posadas,” “nopalitos,” a cactus dish popular during lent, and “mole,” a chocolate, peanut and chile dish, as his favorite cultural icons.

“To each her or his own and without imposition as to which are the right ones and which are the wrong ones,” Gutierrez said. “There are none that should not be used.”