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Yreina Cervantez's Chicano mural La Ofrenda (1989)-executed. with the assistance of Claudia Escobedes, Erick Montenegro, Vladimir Morales and Sonia Ramos-reflects some of the basic tenets of U.S. Latina feminist discourse (Figure 1).1 Cerv;intez, in this work,2 employs visual strategies similar to those used by Latina Feminist scholars who faced overwhelming obstacles in order to merely discuss their concerns as women of color. Cervantez in La Ofrenda has systematically engaged many of the theories Latina feminists formulated during the 1970s and 80s in regards to the highly gendered and often exclusionary nature of social and political spaces. The notion of space then becomes a leitmotif in La Ofrenda that not only informs this mural's subject matter and the distribution of its iconography across the wall surface, but also defines the position of Latina artists vis A vis mainstream artistic institutions and within the history of muralism itself. By using a means of visual communication Cervantez conveyed equally specific ideas as those imparted in Latina feminist texts.3 But unlike the publications of her literary counterparts, this artist in La Ofrenda appeals to a broader audience by locating the mural in an outdoor and public setting thereby transcending the limited exposure of scholarly publications and of museum or gallery displays.
Latinas and Feminism
Latina writers have often struggled to carve an epistemological space for themselves. They feel excluded from traditional feminism since they believe it benefits primarily white middle class women. Judith Butler observed that Euroamerican and European feminism mistakingly concluded that it was possible to collapse all feminist and feminine concerns within one identity: "That form of feminist theorizing has come under fire. for its efforts to colonize and appropriate non-Western cultures to support highly Western notions of oppression" (3).4 Patricia Zavella writes that while "white feminists demanded reproductive rights, including the right to abortion, Chicana activists were fighting against forced sterilization and defending the right to have children" (27).5
Vicki L. Ruiz and Ellen Carol Dubois have additionally complicated the Anglo-American feminist equation by exposing how social class affects women of color in the United States: "In U.S. History, race has coincided closely with class. The segmentation of people of color in lower-echelon industrial, service, and agricultural jobs has served to blunt their opportunities for economic...