Irving T. Summary Four

Ochoa, J. (2015). Shine Bright like a Migrant: Julio Salgado's Digital Art and Its Use of "Jotería". Social Justice, 42(3/4 (142)), 184-199. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24871334

SUMMARY

Juan D. Ochoa’s article analyzes the work of digital artist, Julio Salgado. As stated by Ochoa, a single-issue lens does not suffice to explain Salgado’s work. Ochoa instead uses jotería, as an analytical tool to describe Salgado’s contributions more holistically. The term jotería is not only a reclaimed Spanish term (joto) originally meant as a slur against the queer community, it's also traced to early works of 1960s Chicana lesbian feminisms including Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga. Jotería serves as the method for viewing the intersection for Salgado’s art between migrant, immigrant queer, race, class, body positivity, nationalism, among other identities.

Figure 1. Julio Salgado's digital print.

Ochoa takes readers back to his first encounter with Salgado’s work while scrolling through Facebook. The digital piece “In the Wise Words of Jay-Z” referenced the song, “Dirt Off Your Shoulder”. According to Ochoa, he was encouraged to brush off the xenophobia he had recently experienced after moving to Arizona and continue to be strong, resisting. 

It is then he takes readers into exploring Salgado’s work via jotería analytics i.e., making connections with previous efforts such as Chicana feminists of the 1960s who were combating the hetero-normative and patriarchal views of the Chicano movement. And the connections with Patrick Joshnson’s “quare” theory meant to introduce issues of race and class inequalities in response to “queer theory’s” lack or representation of people of color (POC), a field also known as queer of color critique. According to Ochoa, one can visualize the intersectionality of jotería by imagining it as a cog where several theoretical links (chicanx movement, chicanx feminism, queer theory, body positivety etc.) work together to move forward.

RESPONSE

When talking about digital identity and the overlapping that occurs between the virtual world and the physical world, this article is an empowering article for minorities that may identify with one, some or all of the links mentioned in the article; chicano, feminist, undocumented, queer, BoPo, the list goes on.

Fig. 2 Visual of jotería analytics 

The history of jotería according to Ochoa brings about reflection and hope. For example he writes about the positive contributions of the Chicano movement to jotería however, discusses the limits placed by traditional patriarchal and heterosexual family constructs. Other times, hope is found in the progress made such as in the discussion about Johnson renewing queer studies (renaming it quare) to include the issues of non-middle-class, queer folk. Even the author himself limits the Chicano movement contributions to male and female by referring it to “chicano/a” when perhaps a more inclusive term would be “Chicanx movement”, yet I wonder if that takes away (or adds) from the terminology used at the time of the movement. Finally, I’ve created a visual to help myself understand a significant part of the article using the authors visual of the cog and the several theoretical links used to analyze the artist's work. 

QUOTATIONS

"I propose that jotería acts like a cog that links several theoretical threads to trace the political stance(s) of queer Chicanas/os." 

"In this article, I conceptualize a jotería analytics that is informed by Chicana feminisms, queer of color critique, and Chicana/o studies to create a queer Chicana/o optic to analyze the art of Julio Salgado.