Rasquache: a Chicano aesthetic with an “attitude rooted in resourcefulness and adaptability yet mindful of stance and style. Cultural activist Roberto Bedoya celebrates Rasquache as an act of placekeeping rather than placemaking, as a statement that celebrates being visible, even in neighborhoods threatening to erase him and his people.
I grew up in a working-class barrio called Decoto, in San Francisco’s East Bay. My neighbors were the Trianas, who had painted their house hot pink. I loved it. The Trianas’ house was across the street from the grounds of the Catholic church. Many of the Anglos who lived in the new tract homes being built around my barrio parked their cars in front of the house on Sunday, and I recall how they would speak ill of it as they made their way to church. For them the house was too bright. But for me the brightness represented Rasquache—an aesthetic of intensity that confronted our invisibility, our treatment as less than.
In the mid-1960s the state of California—in order to build a freeway through what it considered blight—decided to condemn the small houses in our barrio. It could not see that each one was unique and full of character, with features like a nopal cactus fence, a porch decorated with papel picado or anarchic rose gardens that overtook the yards. The community organized itself to defend our barrio through public hearings and petitions and a lawsuit filed by the Raza Unida Party. We stopped the freeway. Read more
During September, we are highlighting stories on community care. The story of Sandra Bland shows that community care, while essential, is not fully sufficient. When institutions are set up for harm, even the strongest systems of community care can be overridden.
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