Tamara Mozahuani Alvarado: Making Space for Multicultural Arts
Tamara Mozahuani Alvarado is the former Executive Director of the School of Arts and Culture at the Mexican Heritage Plaza, a historical facility that houses various arts and cultural programming around promoting and protecting the local San José community. She has held various positions across the city, serving as the Executive Director of MACLA (Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana), a contemporary arts space; establishing the Multicultural Arts Leadership Institute (MALI); and directing the Washington United Youth Center on South 1st Street. She is currently the Executive Director of the Shortino Family Foundation. In addition to her community roles, she is also a traditional Aztec dancer with Calpulli Tonalehqueh Danza Azteca.
What was it like to grow up as a young Chicana?
I’m a true California girl in the sense that I was born to immigrants in Los Angeles, I was raised in Southern California for the first 18 years of my life. The second part of my life thus far has been here in the Bay Area. I have been in San José for the last 23 years; essentially, over half of my life. I like to think of it as having grown up as a young adult in San José. Some of the things that have been critical to my growth here and influential to me in my development as a young person have been arts and culture, spaces for youth, and the existence of artists and creative people here in San José. When I was twenty-one, I was figuring out who I am, what I was trying to do, and what I was trying to accomplish. I was really supported by the arts and youth services that were both provided for me; when you’re 21, you still fit into the global definition of youth — 15 through 35.
What was your experience attending Stanford University, a place that could be challenging for a young person of color?
I graduated from Stanford University in 1995. Stanford was very challenging for me. It wasn’t so much about the school being academically challenging — although that was a part of it — but it was culturally very challenging to be in a space that is very white. White supremacy is so much a part of the culture that you don’t see it or understand it intellectually. You knew in your gut that you were pushing against something that didn’t accept you. Stanford has, to their credit, Casa Zapata, El Centro Chicano, and the Black Student Union that at least signaled to us that there were spaces within the university that did honor our cultures, our languages, and our experiences.
During that time period, there were moments that were very influential to who I am right now. One of them was the Rodney King uprisings (some people call them riots) in Los Angeles in April 1992. I remember we organized student walkouts, and it was very difficult to process that while being away from home. There were a lot of us from Southern California, and I was really feeling the anger and sadness around what had happened. I was eighteen years old during my first year in college, and I thought, “These things are happening?!?” It was impactful and shaped me. It was the first time in my generation’s (then) short history that you were able to see an event like that on television, before the advent of social media.
For a young woman born in East Los Angeles, raised in a small racist town, it lit a fire inside of me.
The other piece that greatly influenced me was the hunger strike that we organized for Chicano Studies, which then resulted in the establishment of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CSRE.) I was one of the four hunger strikers and we were all women. There was mostly female leadership, including in our MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán) organization. We had twenty-six demands, and we were so young because we thought, of course, we can have twenty-six demands! We won one demand which was the Center for Comparative Studies for Race and Ethnicity. So now, you could major in Chicano Studies at Stanford, and before, you couldn’t. CSRE wasn’t established because the university was going to do it. It was established because we demanded it. We organized around it, people went on hunger strikes, and there were negotiations that went on. It was a lot of work and well worth it.
It also came at a great price. I barely graduated within four years. For one of the hunger strikers, her health was compromised. Since then, she’s recovered but these are things that we sacrificed. We were influenced by people like Cesar Chavez, and I was a freshman or sophomore when he died — that was a huge impact on our community, too.
When I think about my work at the Mexican Heritage Plaza, the Plaza is on the same land where Cesar Chavez held the first grape boycotts. His family home is a quarter mile away from here. I feel a lot of pressure, in a good way, of the legacy of our elders, like Cesar Chavez, and how they died for these causes.
At Stanford, I was also able to be a part of overseas travel. I lived in Santiago, Chile for three months. It was very powerful for me to get out of my own country and have perspective on what the world looks like. I have been traveling to México with my mom since I was a baby, as soon as she was able to get her documentation together, but it also gives you perspective when you’re far from home. Stanford gave me that opportunity. Stanford gave me a lot of experiences — hard lessons but also good opportunities. Yeah, I may talk trash about my school once in a while but it’s a good school!
How did you gravitate towards indigenous dancing and Calpulli Tonalehqueh, the Aztec dance group you are a part of?
My parents would take us to Chicano Park in San Diego when we were children. My parents weren’t joiners — they were observers. My dad was a trumpet player, so he was involved in the arts as a professional musician. My parents would consistently take us to Chicano Park for cultural festivals and Aztec dance ceremonies. They were not the people who would ask, “Can we join your group?” But they always took us to see the murals there. We had family that lived right next to Chicano Park in Barrio Logan.
They planted that seed and I always carried that with me. Soon after I graduated from Stanford and started living here in San José, I was able to meet people who were Aztec dancers through the Washington United Youth Center. We had a literal storefront, and whenever we opened up the Center, these people came to see if they could practice there. I was like, wait a minute, this is my chance!
Everything happens for a reason. So we negotiated with them for a space and I asked, “Can I come to practice?” And they said, “Yeah come to practice.” That was in 1999.
It will be 20 years next year. It was one of those things where I saw the opportunity to reconnect with something that my parents had already connected me with. They never said “this is important,” but they told us through their actions that it was.
I’ve been an Aztec dancer for a while; I’ve been a part of groups and have started groups, too. I’ve been a member of Calpulli Tonalehqueh since 2010, and prior to that, I was a part of two other groups. I’m still out there practicing — it’s part of my family’s spiritual path. It’s very different from, say, a Folklorico group that is very much performance based. I’m not saying that you can’t have spiritual moments if you’re a Folklorico dancer. I’m sure you can. But dance is part of our spiritual practice. Dance is very much the public part of it but we have our ceremonies like sweat lodges that are not things that are necessarily seen by the public.
For me, it’s really about reclaiming our heritage and our native Mexican roots.
When people sometimes say, “so are you Aztec?” I say, yes, and I’m a lot of other things too. We acknowledge that we are a colonized people and we’re trying to decolonize. We are reclaiming our culture and pushing away the colonized mentality. Our indigenous will is to be in alliance and in harmony with the natural elements — with Mother Earth, with Father Sun, with the wind, with the rain, with all these pieces. When you think about the Water is Life movement, it’s connecting how putting pipelines through Mother Earth actually impacts the ability for this planet to be sustainable for our children and then seven generations beyond.
What is the history of the Mexican Heritage Plaza and the School of Arts and Culture? What have been the challenges and victories in building these spaces and, in some ways, decolonizing the Silicon Valley and San José?
The Mexican Heritage Plaza opened in 1999 with a 34 million dollar investment by the then-open Redevelopment Agencies. Redevelopment agencies existed up and down the State in different large cities. A few years ago, they were closed down by Governor Jerry Brown, and those monies were sent to the State. The agencies’ job was to redevelop so-called “blighted” communities. A lot of what you see downtown in the core of San José has come out of redevelopment funds. On the Eastside, those funds have been seen primarily in some housing projects and, of course, the Plaza.
The Plaza was going to be the “Latino Lincoln Center of the West,” and then, it went through seven to eight years of significant leadership and financial challenges. There have been a lot of research, reports, and Mercury News articles talking about why. From my perspective, the ‘why’ really came down to having a lot of people in our community — elders, politicians, lobbyists — who had the vision to organize the political and social capital for a place like this on the Eastside, but didn’t necessarily know how to run a cultural center.
It’s one thing to be a politician or an attorney. It’s another thing to know how to run a cultural space and run programs that the community wants.
They thought a lot about the brick and mortar but not deeply about maintenance and operations and the costs associated with that. To their vast credit, the Mexican Heritage Plaza is amazing and led by the vibrant non profit, School of Arts and Culture at MHP.
There’s a 535-seat theater, six classrooms, a gallery space, a dance studio, beautiful gardens, and a pavilion. You can, and there have been, May Day Marches that start from here. You can have a Quinceañera. You can have a production here with children from the Eastside up on stage for their dance recital in Folklorico. You can have 120 Aztec dancers here on a Wednesday night, reclaiming heritage, too.
The City of San José is the owner of this facility. What that means is that this place is owned by the community. Saying it’s owned by the city sounds like it’s the city’s responsibility in the bureaucratic sense but it is owned by all of us. When this was all falling apart, the city and the community agreed that there needed to be new leadership here and a new vision.
The city asked the past operator to hand over the keys, along with structuring an agreement for them to cease and desist with operations of the plaza. Then, the city did something amazing (and I rarely say this) — they put together funding for a staff person to help lead the transition for consultants to help the community and organize a 13-member steering committee of volunteers. They were not paid to figure out what to do with this place. One of the challenges for the broader Latino/Mexican community was a sense of shame and anger: “Why can’t we have nice things? Why can’t we take care of this?” Along with the direct racism that was verbalized in public comment precisely as “why should our community even have a place like this.”
The victories, I would say, was working with the city on a process that was 22 months long with the community, and resulting with a vision of a School of Arts and Culture and services to children, artists, and community. That became a reality in 2010 with a business plan that we helped to write.
Sometimes, you get asked to do certain things and then you say, “Sure, I’ll help you with that project.” In the end, I’m running this project! How did this happen? The city asked our organization, 1stAct Silicon Valley, to take this vision, plus the business plan that was fully vetted by the community and City Council, and asked, can you take this on? Can you establish a new non-profit that stewards this entire six acre facility that establishes programs for the community? That was a major win, but the challenge that came with that was there were a lot of people in the community who said, “Good luck with that.”
When you think about colonized mentality, part of that is being negative.
Instead of saying, “How can I help?” people would tell us, “good luck with that.” This place was known to be a black hole, a money pit, nothing works here. That was hard in the beginning. We signed onto something, and asked ourselves, is this going to work? Our names and reputations are at stake.
But it was the families of Mayfair and the Eastside who responded to the arts education and then the artists and arts organizations responded to our call. We brought our names and reputations, but people had to take a risk. I remember going to San Jose Taiko and asking, “Hey, you’re San Jose Taiko and when you have your home show, you’re in Campbell Heritage Theater.” I said, “How about you have it here?” They took a risk because they didn’t know if their community would follow. Their community, the Japanese American community, said, I don’t know if we want to go there either. I remember we had a conversation with the San José Youth Ballet and one of their parents asked if they could see a homicide map for the area.
I didn’t blink. I mean, internally I said, wow that’s a little different, but to them I said, “Certainly.” I got something off the Mercury News and it showed that there haven’t been any homicides around this area.
We were dealing with stereotypes even from other communities of color — from the Indian community, the Japanese American community, never mind just the broader mainstream community.
We’ve been pushing against these stereotypes and really breaking them apart. That’s been a victory. We went from 23,000 people a year to 70,000 people annually from all backgrounds — Day of the Dead festivities, San Jose Youth Ballet, San Jose Taiko, Aztec Dance, Folklorico, Filipino dance programs.
Those have been some of the initial battles that we’ve overcome. Now, I think one of the major challenges for the organization and this community is dealing with how development occurs. Gentrification and development looks different in this community.
I remember you could go to San Francisco and see a lot of people of color of every background. Now, it’s very different. On the Eastside, it’s not that you don’t see brown people. We’re densely packed. We’re living with two to three families in a home. The major challenge right now is how does this arts organization play a role in activating public space with the community that’s here to be a part of that retention. How do we set up our foundation so that the organization can continue to call developers to the table? What I’ve done with the platform of the School of Arts and Culture is, along with Camille Llanes-Fontanilla, ED of Somos Mayfair (a sister organization), is establish the Alum Rock Urban Village Advocates.
I’ve been a part of the leadership to establish it and what we do is bring developers to the table who want to develop in this neighborhood and we force them to identify and define what they think “community benefits” mean. A lot of developers say their housing will be “affordable” and that it will create community benefits. But just creating housing is not a community benefit. What kind of affordable housing is it? Is it for extremely low income families? Is it for the working poor? What is your affordability index? Your level might not be at the level that the community needs, to not be displaced. If we’re basing it on people not having cars, are you going to have VTA cards for them so that they can actually use the public transportation system? We’ve done that with developers. There are some victories there. There will be a housing project called Quetzal Gardens and we’ve worked with Berkeley-based developer Resources for Community Development. They have been amazing. They are a nonprofit and they are a Bay Area wide housing developer. It will be 71 units and it is truly going to be affordable housing. It’s going to be great to have that. That’s a win. But we have so many other wins to get. It’s challenging because at the end of the day, this is still an arts organization but we’re embedded in this community. We can’t say, “don’t talk to me about anything but art” — that’s not who we are or what this place is.
What do you think the Mexican Heritage Plaza and School of Arts and Culture mean to San José’s history?
When we talk about the Plaza, we’re talking about the facility. The organization that stewards the whole thing is the School of Arts and Culture at MHP. It’s interesting because when things were going bad, people hated it –they hated the architecture. It looks like a fortress, they would say. Now that they love what’s happening here, people will tell us, I just feel so safe here. It’s like an oasis. I feel like I’m in a resort. It’s so funny when you can literally change people’s perspective.
The architecture is the same. We didn’t topple anything, but what’s happened is that people are engaged differently with the place. I would say that the Plaza symbolizes hope. It symbolizes valuing diversity in a very tangible way. People and politicians talk about the “diversity” of San José all the time, but we had people and politicians who voted in support of this project who were able to say diversity is important. And here’s how much it’s important — thirty four million dollars worth of importance. The Plaza itself stands for heritage, but it’s also about diversity and going deeper and thinking about equity and inclusion. Those are the things that the School of Arts and Culture values because this is a physical place that has importance and layers of historic legacy and service. The School has been in service to the community. Culture, heritage, inclusion, place, and service — those are the things that the School brings, or aspires to bring.
What is the origin story of the MALI program?
Roy Hirabayashi is a co-founder of San Jose Taiko, which is in its 45th year this year, and Raul Lozano, at the time, was running Teatro Vision, a Chicano theater company. These two old dudes, who are both my mentors, knew they needed to bring in somebody younger than them, and at the time I was younger. They said, why don’t we set up a program that we would want to be a part of? (p.s. I love these “old dudes” and now I am old, haha! Life is funny like that right?)
We were so tired of always being one of the two people of color unicorns in every sector who got asked to start projects or initiatives; we were on every committee and task force, and the three of us were the only people of color representatives from the arts. It was Raul, Roy, and myself.
We were motivated to create a leadership program for people of color who are deeply engaged in arts, culture, and entertainment.
The stars aligned right when 1stACT Silicon Valley was forming. We were able to get funding from the Knight Foundation for 1stACT Silicon Valley and it included a significant pilot grant for the Multicultural Arts Leadership Institute (MALI). So, I left MACLA after five years to take on this program as a concept, and establish it. MALI’s first year was 2009, and we’re now in our 10th year. There’s a 10th class that’s completing and right now, we’re recruiting for MALI 11.* The impetus was, how about we don’t wait for some outside entity to tell us people of color what to do. I always say MALI is a program created by people of color for people of color. No outside foundation said “you should do this.” We said, we need to self-identify our own leadership and then equip ourselves with the tools and the network that you need to hold leadership positions, be they volunteer or paid.
We wanted to have the broader community see us less as a cult of personality, where there’s only a few people in power (which again is that whole colonized mentality). MALI is about decentralizing that power, and saying, No, the power exists already. How do we raise it to the surface? Surface it, and then make it visible. That’s been part of the goal in making that program.
One big win was the advocacy that the network did in its very early stages for the Mexican Heritage Plaza. We didn’t create MALI to advocate for this place, but let me tell you, when it came time to go to City Hall and line up people to say, “This is a good thing,” the majority of people who lined up were MALI Alumni.
Other wins have been things like helping San Jose Taiko transition from their founders to their new leadership, Wisa Uemura and Franco Imperial. Roy and PJ were the founding artistic and executive directors of San José Taiko, and they were able to get financial support from MALI, in the form of a grant, to help them in their transition of leadership. When I look at San Jose Taiko, who celebrated their forty fifth anniversary, I feel like MALI can take 1 percent credit for that critical piece we contributed.
Sometimes people call me and say, “Tamara, I want to have a MALI grad on my Board,” because they know of the program and its community value.
There’s also things we didn’t plan, such as artistic collaborations and different arts organizations that meet through the MALI program. There was a production called Mosaic put on by Sangam Arts led by this amazing woman named Usha Srinivasan, a graduate of MALI class 8. She’s from the classical Indian dance community– she personifies the MALI spirit, because she’s curating intercultural experiences. The Mosaic production was true intercultural collaboration. They had a Mexican folkloric dance company work with a classical Indian dance company in a collaborative piece. It’s very San José. When I saw that show here in the theater, it affirmed that this is working, because normally none of these groups would have met; Usha was able to dip into this program that told her intercultural experiences and collaborations are really important, fruitful, and can be artistically high quality and the community will respond positively.
I could give you a long list of people who are now in this or that leadership role, volunteering or employed, on a task force, publishing their first books, having their own exhibitions in San Francisco, or finishing a graduate program at Mills College; and those are the things that get me really excited. They’ve been pushed by the MALI program, which is free of charge. That was another very important element for us because there’s a lot of leadership programs out there, but they’re very expensive and inaccessible to a lot of communities of color. So our program is both competitive and very accessible, because it’s free.
I am now a MALI adviser, since I haven’t run the program for several years. MALI class 4 graduate Demone Carter has been running the program since MALI Class Six.
What are some dreams you have for San Jose? How do you see yourself growing?
I would like to see San Jose retain a good amount of its culture. When I say the culture, I think that it’s laid back, it’s not snobby. I’ve always experienced this place as being pretty open-minded and not judgmental of where your family is from, or where did you go to college. It’s been a lot more open in that way, and also culturally speaking it’s very diverse with a lot of different and strong communities here. There’s the third oldest Japantown in the country, the Vietnamese community, the Mexican community, the Filipino community; these are all strong communities that are active culturally and politically. So I would like to continue to see that and I think it’s up to us.
There’s people who complain about how San Jose isn’t “this” or “that” and then I always say: “What are you doing about it?” Because you can’t complain unless you’re doing something about it. If I want to complain, I can complain, because I do plenty. What is your action? Are you emailing your electeds? Are you calling them? Are you having meetings with them? Everybody should do that at some point and make it a practice. Let these people know what is your perspective– they need to hear that. Also in terms of creativity and the arts: How are you transcending your day-to-day life? That can only happen through the arts; it’s when you read a book, or see a painting, or in the theater you experience a collaboration that you never could have imagined. It’s when you go to a jazz festival, or Juneteenth downtown. That is when you transcend your existence of your skin and you’re lost. If we let go of that in San Jose, then we just become a technology wasteland of corporate buildings.
Pretty much everything I’ve done, I haven’t done before.
Moving forward, I think that in my new role as a funder at The Shortino Family Foundation, I’m excited about being able to uplift his legacy of valuing the arts education. The Foundation was established by Leo M. Shortino who was an Italian immigrant to this community; he made his fortune in real estate, but he was a jazz musician, so he valued the arts and education. I’m excited about that and also it’s a challenge. I haven’t worked in philanthropy before, but pretty much everything I’ve done, I haven’t done before. That’s been a through line in my career. I didn’t know how to run a youth center, and then we opened one up with 15,000 square feet. I didn’t know how to run a leadership program, but I got to learn. I didn’t know how to run an arts organization. I cut my teeth big time at MACLA with that. And then this came up for our team and they said, “OK, Tamara you get to lead this.” You get to find out who your friends and collaborators are, and who are the risk takers.
I feel like I’ve done more difficult things, but check in with me in a few months and I’ll let you know if it’s harder than I anticipated, probably. [laughs]
What are some words of wisdom you’d like to give to folks who are interested in arts leadership and organizing?
For organizing and leadership, whether in the arts, housing, or immigration services, there’s a couple things I would say:
- Look for opportunities to volunteer at the level that’s comfortable for you.
Can you volunteer at a festival? Can you volunteer to be at the door, or help with cleanup? If you don’t quite know how to grasp leadership development, go march in May 1st and be with the people. How are you with your community? How are you showing up with them? Are you going to Japantown to Obon in July to celebrate that culture? Celebrate other people’s culture. Attend things. There are so many things happening in San Jose, culturally speaking. Don’t sit on your sofa and complain about how things are boring.
2. Then second I would say: volunteer. Be present.
Figure out a way to volunteer at something, and then that will give you a really good sense of understanding, could I potentially see myself doing something more? With this festival, this organization, this non-profit, this organizing issue. There’s issues around housing. There’s the anti-displacement policy that needs to be developed for the city, and we get to say so we get to have one. Other cities have that. Or there’s a flag raising happening for your particular culture– show up!
Look at what my parents did. They were observers, not participants, but they showed up and they added their physical presence. And when when people saw Chicano Park full of people who were active participants and observers, it made Chicano Park very important. And it is still open today.
Take it in small chunks.
For go getters, I would say OK! Reach out to people like myself and others and ask, Is there an entity that I can serve on the board for?
There’s plenty of entities that need volunteers on boards that help with events, big and small, and maybe they need somebody who has the perspective of a young person of color from a particular community. That’s how I started on my very first board! I was a young person of color with no experience, but I had my perspective. That’s what I brought. And then I listened.
(Also I’m full of unsolicited advice, and one day I will have a podcast!)
I would say if you’re interested in arts leadership and you are part of the creative sector, check out the Multicultural Arts Leadership Institute and apply, because it’s such an amazing opportunity and such an amazing network of doers: people who do things, create things, collaborate, and it’s housed at the School of Arts and Culture at MHP, so it’s supported and it’s staffed.
Anything else to add?
My husband and our four kids, we’re from San Jose and we continue to strive in spite of all the economic pressures to push us out. We’re renters, and so we do feel the forces of being pushed out.
Part of what keeps us here is the fact that we have a very rich cultural and spiritual life here in San Jose. I know it’s difficult to live here, but we have to keep trying. We have to keep pushing back against displacement and not lose hope.
Each of us brings our own tool to that table; what I bring is arts and culture, and there’s an approach to that. You bring an organizing model and you bring other people who bring their different perspectives. We just have to keep pushing back.
Quotes and books that I refer to often for inspiration:
bell hooks has a great quote about not having to go through a wall but to go around it. Anything bell hooks is great, so can’t go wrong with her work.
Living My Life, a Two volume autobiography of Emma Goldman, is excellent.
Lastly, Black Elk Speaks is also an important book.
*At the time of this interview in 2018.
