Malaquías Montoya Oral History Interview

Amanda Belantara: Today I'm speaking with artist, activist, and educator Malaquias Montoya. The interview was conducted for Bibliopolitica, a digital history of the Chicano Studies Library at UC Berkeley. The interview was recorded remotely on November 6, 2023. Caleb Hotchon recorded a tape sync with Malaquias's in El Mira, California. The interviewer is Amanda Belantara. So thank you for joining us today, Malaquias. I was hoping you could start off just by introducing yourself and sharing a little background about your work.

Malaquias Montoya: Well, my name is Malaquias Montoya and I was born 85 years ago in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We came to California in the early 40s. Every summer we would come out to San Joaquin Valley to work, work in fields, grapes and other fruits. And finally in 48, my dad and mom separated. So we stayed out here in California, which was good because we, every time we went back we were late for school because our parents would keep you out of school until the harvest was over. And so that usually meant that school started in September and you were still turning trays or boxing raisins and start school till much later. So for that reason, they just assumed that you were learning disabled or you, I was in the third grade, they put me in what they usually call then MR classes, mentally retarded classes. And for others, they would put in students who from a foreign country who were having difficulty with language. For me, that was quite a nice experience, you might say, because in the classroom we were all predominantly Mexicanos, one or two, they used to call Oakies and Arkeys at that time, white kids and Afro-American children. So we were all, most of us were all alike. We were all supposedly dumb, but I enjoyed that class because we did nothing but artwork, you might say. The teacher would bring in boxes of paper and color and pencils and we would cut paper, glue it, make collages, do drawings, circles, squares. And I enjoyed drawing because my older brother did artwork and he used to do these cartoon characters. And you stayed in that class until you were in the eighth grade technically and then you were allowed to leave that class. Unless you had a special talent and I developed a talent for art in that class. Students were always commenting on how well I could draw and that was very good for me because it gave me some kind of self-esteem. Students would always say, "Oh God, my kids, you're so good at that. You can really draw." And I felt good and I decided I enjoyed school. I decided I liked it and I ended up remaining in school while other of my friends were dropping. At the fourth, fifth grade, I had a difficult time in the regular classroom, but as long as I had my art or I could shine a little bit, I was content. So I finished school my senior year in 1957. I was just my mom and my two sisters. I came from a family of seven. My older brothers and sisters had taken off already from home, but it was me and two younger sisters that stayed with mom and we continued to work in the fields. And then I guess after high school, I found out that if you joined the military, you could get allotment monies that the government would send home to your parents every month. And I thought that was great because that could help my mom out. And so every month, mom would get $150 and she didn't or we didn't have to work that much during the winter, which was nice. Finally, I got out of the military in 1960. I went to a junior college there near Fresno called Reedley College. From Reedley College, I went on to the Bay Area to visit my brother and stay with him in Oakland. At Oakland, I would come, I'd go to San Jose to visit my mom because she had moved to San Jose. And it was one morning in San Jose that I answered an ad in the paper that said, "Printer wanted." I assumed they were talking about somebody that could print good lettering by hand, which I thought I could do, but it wasn't a print shop of that nature. It was an actual silk screening shop. And although I didn't understand silk screening, he was very helpful and made me understand what it was. He even said, "If you work for me for a month, and if you succeed, I'll pay you after you complete that month." So I did. I stayed there and for a month I didn't get paid, but then he hired me at the end of the month and several months later he paid me for that first month. And I worked for him for seven, eight years and I started going to City College there in San Jose City College so I could learn more commercial art techniques. Now they call them graphic designers, but at that time you were a commercial artist and it was during that time that I learned how to silk screen. I did a poster for the walkout at San Jose State in 1967 or eight, I think. When the graduation, there was a walkout where students, all Chicano students and their parents and faculty who supported them, Chicano students, all walked out of school. And of course that was the beginning of a lot of demand for better classes. So I did a poster for that. And that designed a poster that would print it at night. And then one morning my boss came in and he wanted to know what that silk screen had been used for, the frame. After you've silk screened some, you can still see the shadow of the print. And he was looking at it and said, then I kept asking dumb questions like, "Oh, which one are you talking about?" He said, "I don't know, I don't know." Finally he took me by my arm and we went and he held it up and said, "This one." And I said, "Oh." And then I had to tell him what I had done. And that's when he said, "Malaquias, you don't seem to be happy here anymore." And I felt my stomach just turned because I loved that place. But he decided that it was time maybe that I'd move on. And I was happy also because I had fallen in love with a professor at school. He was an incredible human being. He became my mentor. He lived till just about eight months ago, I think he passed away at 95 or 94. But he was an incredible teacher. And as a human being, I just fell in love with him. He was so great. He was just an incredible teacher. And he's the first one, I think, who told me that I come. He said, “Malaquias, I can teach you how to use color. I can teach you how to use a brush. But you come from such an incredible culture that all you have to do is look to your culture to be inspired." And that to me, it almost made me cry there because I didn't know anything about my culture. In high school, we never learned anything. I found a painting in a book by a guy named Pizarro. And I said, "Oh, I'm Mexican painter." So I was telling all the kids in school about this guy named Camille Pizarro. And then finally, the librarian called me up to the desk and said, "You know, Malaquias, I need to tell you something that Camille Pizarro is a French impressionist. He's not a Mexican." And I said, "Oh, God." But by that time, I had built something in me because of Professor Zirker, who had told me that turned to my culture, and that's where I would become an artist, a good artist. And could you say the professor's name one more time? Yeah. Joseph Zirker. He taught at San Jose City College. He taught at USC, but he didn't like to teach at big universities. He said, "The students come there just to kill time." He said, "I'd rather teach at a junior college where students work during the day and then they come to learn." And they were more receptive to learning. So I remained close to him and his wife and daughter for all these years. I was very sad when he passed away. So yes, his name is Joseph Zirker.

Amanda Belantara: I understand that you graduated from UC Berkeley in 1969.

Malaquias Montoya: I did.

Amanda Belantara: Can you talk a little bit about your involvement in the Third World Liberation Front?

Malaquias Montoya: Yes.

Amanda Belantara: What was your role and how did it shape your art practice?

Malaquias Montoya: When I left Prangers, the business, the commercial art place, my hands had deteriorated so bad from printing using lacquer thinner, paint thinners that the health that took care of my health said, "Malaquias, you have to stop printing. You cannot use that solvents anymore." So when they told me that I should stop printing, Joe Zirker said, "Well, Malaquias, why don't you go to Berkeley?" He said, "There's an artist there who I know, and the name was Elmer Bischoff. He was teaching there." And he said, "Go study with him." He's one of the only figurative painters that still exists. He said, "Everybody else just makes squares with tape and spray cans." I went to Berkeley and I got accepted. I went to Chicano Studies. While I was there at the university, at first I didn't do any printing at all. My hands were clearing up very well. And I got involved with some of the students that were active then, and one of them being Ysidro Macias, who later became a third world activist. There was going to be a walkout, a sit-in at the chancellor's office on Fulton Avenue, I think it was in Berkeley, where university runs into Fulton, I think. So I went, like you do, usually you follow the crowd and you went. We were in the hallway and part of us were in the office. And then they had told us that we had to leave the place by five o'clock or else we would be arrested. Well, at five o'clock, close to five o'clock, Ysidro came and said, "All right," he says, "We're going to be arrested. Those of us who stay in here," he said, "but don't feel like you have to stay." He says, "Please, that wouldn't do us any good," he said. So if you don't want to be arrested, go home. Well, I'm one of those guys that you don't want to walk out when something is happening and you feel bad and guilty. So I decided that I would stay. But a minute to five, Ysidro said, "Okay, we're walking into the chancellor's office now and then the door will be locked and we'll stay there until we're arrested." So I got in line and I'm walking in real nervous thinking, "God, my kids are expecting me home for dinner," and I had to help them with their homework. And then about that time, Ysidro grabs my arm and he says, "My kids, you can't be arrested." I said, "Why?" He says, "Well, we're going to need artwork. We're going to need flyers. We're going to need poster designs." And of course, I acted like I hesitated, but I was so happy when he said that. But I went home and then that's when I started. They gave me a room off campus that later became the Chicano Art Center, which later became my class. It was in that room where I decided, where I started doing flyers designs, and then they asked me to do posters. And of course, I didn't stop and think, "Well, I shouldn't because of my hands." I just took it as a commitment. They had asked me to do it. So I did a bunch of posters for the, I think they were called the Berkeley 13 or the Berkeley 10. I don't remember, but they were arrested and they were in jail, Santa Rita for, I think, 13 days or something. And I was doing posters and that's how I got involved in doing posters. My hands started immediately to deteriorate again, but I was committed that I was going to stick it out and be part of that. And then right after that followed the Third World Strike. That's when San Francisco had finished their strike, I think. We became part of the Third World Strike at Berkeley. That lasted for quite some time, almost a year, I believe, or three quarters. I don't know exactly the time, but that's what I did then. I did posters for the walk-on. I did posters for those who were being arrested and those posters were given to Granma's bookstore that was on Telegraph Avenue. And Granma would sell them and that money was used to bail out students who were being arrested and needed bail fund money. Yeah, that I'd go to school in the morning and get off on the bus there and walk down to the Art Center, which was between Channing and the street where the People's Park was at. It was an old shingle house and the school had been at one time and I had school for girls. But now there's some other departments that are in there, but it was a very nice place to have a studio. I could no other classes took place there. Mine was the only one, so I would open at eight in the morning and I was there until six and students could come whenever they wanted to, in and out, in and out. I was there for four years. We even made a sign this first year we were there, we made a big billboard, I mean, four by eight panel of plywood and we painted it white and then we put the Chicano Center and hung it out on the stairs. That was there until even afterwards I'd drive by Berkeley sometimes and drive by and there was still the sign there, the Chicano Center. I don't know if anybody was using it for a classroom or not, but we did. It was open every day. I was running posters on Saturday, on Sundays, so students would see that Malaquias was at the Art Center and they would come in and work and do their work or help me print posters. When the classes started, class went Monday, Wednesday and Friday and like I said earlier, students could come anytime they wanted to, as long as they produced three different types of posters. It was nice because I was off campus. I would go to campus every morning real early just to say hi to, I can't remember her name, who was there. Maybe her name will come to me soon, but that's where I started working.

Amanda Belantera: Can you tell us a little bit more about the Chicano Art Center? How did you bring it into fruition and how did you approach teaching the students?

Malaquias Montoya: I had just graduated from the Art Department and I didn't like the Art Department. I didn't like the art that was taking place or what they did and how they taught. Eduardo Hernandez Chavez, who was then the chairperson, I think, he said, "Malaquias, go find a place then. Go somewhere, if you can find a place close to campus, maybe we can turn it into a classroom." I started walking around the neighborhood there and I'd walk into churches and see if they had a basement where I could use. A lot of them were interested, but they just didn't have the space. Then there was a cafe on Telegraph Avenue called the Mediterranean Cafe. I had gone there and instead of going up Telegraph to campus, I turned right and walked and I saw these buildings there. I looked at one and it had all these windows that faced the street and faced People's Park. It wasn't called People's Park yet, but I thought, "Well, I'll go in there and look." I went in and peeked through the door. I was upstairs and there was a gentleman in there and I walked in and he was an ex-professor from UC Berkeley and they had given him that space so he had to use as a studio. When he told me he was leaving, he retired and he was going to retire from there. I said, "If you're interested, ask about it." I did. I told Eduardo and Eduardo checked into it and they said, "Yeah, you may use it as a classroom." I had never taught before, but I knew that I didn't want to teach the way they taught up at the art department. I decided that I would teach it more like a business, you might say. I would go out into the Oakland area and ask different centros there if they had any events coming up. I would take whatever they said, "Yeah, my kids, we're going to have a dance on the 20th of September. We're going to have this going on or this going on." I would bring those back. At the beginning, I would design them myself, but then I would prepare the printing of it as the teaching component of the class. The students would all gather around and I would say, "Okay, this is a poster." What you need first is you need to draw out a layout. Then after you've done the layout, then you have to start preparing what colors you want to print first and you number them, one, two, three, four. Then you start cutting stencils and I'd explain to them the different stencils that they could use. Then I would print them with their help. They would help me print, but after three or four weeks of that, they were pretty much on their own. Then I would go back out in the community and I'd bring back like an order, you might say, maybe three or four posters that needed to be printed. I would pass those jobs out to the people that I thought were more ready for, that they could take it from there. I would give it to Ramon and Ramon would take it and then I would select two or three people that would help Ramon. That's how I taught them, just by having them do real things. Then after a while, they were the ones who delivered the works. They would print the posters, package them up and say, "Okay, Malaquias, I'm going out to Fruitvale Avenue to deliver these posters." It became that. Then they would all, they found out they could print extras. They would print maybe 50 for the Cento Cultural on Fruitvale and they could keep 20 of them themselves. They started somehow ending up in the library. I started to find out through Angie, Richard's brother, and they would keep them and then they started to be stored there, I think. Richard knows this better than I do. I don't know why I left. Oh, I know. This is Richard's aunt, I think, Mirta Chabran, who just passed away recently. Her and I were very close and we'd always have coffee and talk about the department and the students and how things were going. We started having discussions about how students and the department were not going in the same direction that we had promised them or that the students had wanted, that there was something missing. Of course, the faculty is very much responsible. It always happens. You start getting money. You start getting a paycheck and you start not wanting to lose that paycheck. You start walking a straight line, you might say. Some of the students were starting to complain to us. They knew Mirta and I were very supportive of them and they started to complain that things weren't going well and that the department was becoming more like any other department. We could see that. We knew that that was happening. So Mirta and I made suggestions to the chair at that time and we started to think maybe it's time to leave. So Mirta and I decided that we would retire from the department. We wrote a letter resignation and we turned it in. The chair, who was, I don't remember her name, was pretty content that we left. She wasn't happy with us anyway. We were always bugging her about needing to do something different and she was too comfortable to do anything different. Why do something different? We're doing fine. We're getting FTEs, we're getting this. But the students knew that there was something wrong and we felt that.

Amanda Belantara: So you mentioned that while you were teaching the students at the Chicano Art Center that you learned that once the students started printing extra copies that they were giving some of their artworks to the library. Now how was it that you first heard about the Chicano Studies library?

Malaquias Montoya: Well, going up to campus every morning, even as early as it was, the woman that worked there in the front office, she communicated all that to us that Richard was starting a library and Richard Chabrán was running back and forth. So that's how I started to hear that things were being done, that there was going to be a library and of course I thought it was great. It was hard to imagine because you'd be in a little tiny office and then you'd think of the big library that you went to every day and you just could imagine a library in Chicano Studies. But it did, it happened. And then it moved from, I guess, from that little place to another building and then it started to feel more like a library. And then pretty much I was there only four years I think when I'm after I resigned. And then I went to the California College of Arts and Crafts. But that's how I heard of it. And I knew that Richard and Angie was really excited too because of course Angie being a book person, everybody thought it was great. So when you first heard about it, did you think that the library was needed? I didn't think about it at first in that way, but then I thought, well, of course, we've got a Chicano Studies library. We've got a Chicano Studies department. Why shouldn't we have a Chicano Studies library? It's important for us that we can start gathering our own books, our own history, and our own poets starting to publish and writers and we need to keep those somewhere. You knew that, well, of course it's going to go in a library. They'll be in a big library, but it wasn't a Chicano Studies library. And we wanted that.

Amanda Belantara: Could you talk about that a little bit more? Why would you want it to be in a Chicano Studies library? And what would that mean for the community?

Malaquias Montoya: Well I think what it would mean for them would be that they could go and they'd first of all be Chicano students or Chicano people working in there. They could be guided to certain books or even the community could bring up ideas for books that they wanted to read or that they would feel their sons and daughters should be reading and they should be housed there in a library. That was a nice feeling. That was a nice feeling. Just like it was when you'd be out in Oakland in a community meeting and you'd hear people talk about the presence of Chicano at a Chicano Studies department, how great that was. It started just to spread like that. People were overjoyed that all of a sudden you had a Clinica de la Raza, which was there. You had a mental health center of Chicano. All those things were happening and you could almost become like a little city, like a little town. That was great. That's why the Chicano Studies library I think was so important. You need a book. You can ask Richard, "Where do I find this book, Richard?" Then Richard said, "I don't know." No, I'm joking.

Amanda Belantara: How does the work of a library connect to the work that you do as an artist?

Malaquias Montoya: Well, it's about words. It's about language. It's about reaching out to people. It's about holding things that are important for our community and the community can come there and learn. The only difference I guess is that we, through the poster, we go out to that community and put it in front of them, you might say, whereas in the library people came. But that's fantastic. La masala píblo teca. There you go, walking off of your mom and dad to the library. That was unheard of at one time, I think. I know when I was hired at one of the art schools up at the CCHC, we were talking with some of the professors. These are all art professors who have galleries who publish their work, who exhibit their work. They asked me, my ideas, he says, "Do you have a gallery that supports you that carries your work?" I remember I knew this question was coming sooner or later. Then I said, "Of course I do." I said, "I have a library that shows my work all year round." They all got real interested. They said, "Oh, really?" I'm like, "Where's that at?" I said, "Well, if you go from Lake Merritt up East 14th all the way to 87th Avenue, that's my gallery." I said, "You'll see my work hanging on telephone posts, on fences, on windows, and buildings." I said, "I don't even have to put it up," I said. People just come and put them up for me. Then they realized that I was pulling their leg, but it was true. That was the gallery. It became our gallery. Different than a mural, a mural is also something you reach out to people, but a mural sits still. It sits on a corner. People come to it and look where posters travel. You can run 200 posters, send 50 to Oakland, 25 to Los Angeles, and another 25 to Denver, Colorado. They spread all over. Then maybe from Colorado, they go somewhere else. That was the nice feeling of doing posters. There was nothing more exciting than to finish printing posters at three or four o'clock in the morning. You're tired, but you wait for them to dry, and you stack them and rack them. Then you get a staple gun with boxes of staples and put them up, put them up, put them up.

Amanda Belantara: Well, then I also heard that, well, we know now that we've been talking about the library holds a lot of your artworks in its collections, but it also holds a set of interviews that you recorded with Chicano artists in the 1970s. Could you talk a little bit about this interview project?

Malaquias Montoya: This was a project, I think, that Juan Martinez. He taught history. He didn't tell me, but he wanted to do a book on art history. Him and I talked about how great it would be if we had a collection of other artists' works through slides and through maybe tape recording. I thought that was a great idea because I had gone to Colorado and done that with three artists already on my own. I did. I got a little grant, and I selected the artists. Again, I went to Manuel Martinez in Colorado. I went to Texas. I went to New Mexico. There are two artists in New Mexico, Arizona and then down in San Diego and LA. That's what I did. I did. I went out and I interviewed Corky Gonzalez. I interviewed Manuel Martinez again. I went to New Mexico and interviewed Cleofas Vigil in the mountains of northern New Mexico. He was a poet and well-known. Betita Martinez and them had done several interviews with him that interviews came out in El Grito del Norte, their newspaper. I came up here and interviewed Jose Montoya, Esteban Villa, several artists around this area. It did. It went into the library. Then Juan wanted to turn it into a book. I said, "Wait a minute. I thought that was just supposed to be a project for the library and us." "Well, no." He said, "This is invaluable." While talking to one of the students that worked for Juan, she told me, "No, he had been planning this." He was so excited about it that it was happening. [laughs]

Amanda Belantara: I just have one more question for you, Malaquias. What impact would you say the library has had on you as a person and as a community member or your career?

Malaquias Montoya: Just to associate myself with the library, it's a nice feeling to be able to say yes to the library, to things that take place there. I think it's very important in the sense that I'm part of some institution that also values art and values reading and books and those things that are part of what I do and what I am. That's the nice feeling to be part of something big like that. To know that, 30, 40 years later, we're talking about it. That's a nice feeling.