Patty Interviews Enedina Cásarez Vásquez
A native of San Antonio, Texas, Enedina Cásarez Vásquez is a poet, playwright, and visual artist. She was a teacher at St. Peter Prince of the Apostles Catholic School for ten years, and she is recently retired. Vásquez also served as Poet-In-Residence for the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) from 1990-96. She is the author of Recuerdos de Una Niña (1979, Oblate Fathers Publishers), a collection of her memories of growing up in San Antonio along with accompanying artwork. Her poetry is included in the performance piece Woman’s Work, which has received critical acclaim in San Antonio and New York. She is also the author of La Virgen de San Juan do los Lagos, a play recounting the events surrounding the apparition of the Virgin Mary. This play was performed at the Virgen de San Juan de los Lagos Church in San Antonio. Her play titled The History of the Catholic Church in Texas was performed at San Antonio’s Municipal Auditorium during the Catholic Church’s celebration of its sesquicentennial year in the State of Texas. Her short story, “The House of Quilts,” has been published by Third Woman Press, Riverhead Book (Putnam Publishers), and Arte Publico Press. Recently her poem, “Bad Hair Day,” was included in Flor y Canto Sí (Penguin, USA). Vásquez’s art is also discussed in Speaking the Other Self, a work of scholarly criticism (University of Georgia Press). Her poetry has also been published in other publications including: Caracol, Mujeres Grande Anthology, Artist’s Alliance, and Tonatzín. From 1986 to 1991 Vásquez served on the Fine Arts Commission for the City of San Antonio. Her Dia de Los Muertos Altar exhibit is included in “Chicano Now: American Expressions.” This traveling exhibit is sponsored by Cheech Marín, the Smithsonian Institution, and Target Stores. The exhibit started in 2001 and traveled to various cities for five years.
Patty Ortiz (PO): First, I want to thank you for your wonderful art piece that you created for the Angela De Hoyos Award. I spoke to you briefly about your association with Angela. You mentioned that you were part of the Mujeres Grandes group. Can you tell me about this group?
Enedina Cásarez Vásquez (EV): Yes, and thank you Patty. In the late 1980′s I began to unite Mexican American poets here in San Antonio and by 1991 we had formed into the Mujeres Grandes. I had gotten the idea to bring the women together because we needed to be able to read poetry and perform our works. The first group included local women, such as Angela De Hoyos, Lucia Serna, Juanita Luna Lawhn, Beverly Sanches-Padilla, Mary Guerrero Milligan, Josephine Casarez, Sr. Mary Rodriguez, and others. We met in my home most of the time and we talked, ate, read poetry and discussed ways of publishing not only our works but the works of other aspiring women poets. We read at different colleges, universities, cultural centers and different public events. We began to get a very good reputation and that led us to believe that we could make some money to publish our works. Angela De Hoyos and her husband Sandy stepped in and offered to publish our “Mujeres Grandes Anthologies” through their press, M&A Publications. We managed to bring in new younger members, such as Shiela Sanchez Hatch, Alicia Galvan, and Nikki Simons. Mujeres Grandes got its name from a television program that I used to watch on the Univision station that was called, “Gente Grande,” and so I was so sick of hearing of the cuatro grandes (Mexico’s foremost painters, that I thought that is was time for “Mujeres Grandes.” We performed for many years, and we also traveled out of town to perform in places like Denver, Laredo and at events such as the Episcopal Diocese of the Southwest where “Mujeres” were the guests of the Episcopal Bishops of Texas at a meeting at Camp Capers in Warring, Texas. Through “Mujeres” we developed short plays, poems that included music and singing, and also performance poetry. All of the women that belonged to “Mujeres” were exceptional women who loved poetry, loved life and gave of their creativity to pave roads for the younger aspiring poets that came into our path. Today “Mujeres Grandes” exists and the members come and go, and our performances are now few only because we have all gone our separate ways, but still carry the title of having been a “Mujer Grande.”
PO: That sounds quite supportive. You probably pushed each other to create and move farther. Can you talk about how artists got involved in political actions during this same time? How did art play a role?
EV: All of the women came into the group because they had something to say about such subjects as: growing up Latina, childhood abuse, domestic violence, discrimination, and the migrant experience. At times I took to introducing our readings as “angry women over forty.” We had all gone out and gotten our education through hardship and had set ourselves free to “scream out” our anger through our poetry, yet not all was angry poetry. Don’t get me wrong, we loved having our voices heard and to give younger women the opportunity to speak out. Some of the poets used songs as they read. Angela and I used artworks created as part of the message of the poem. We used sound effects as needed also, but it was the unified voice of our common experiences that was the gel that kept us together. It was Beverly Sanchez Padilla who was our director at times, her theater experience was important to the group. Josephine Casarez was the mujer who used comedy in her routine to bring home the plight of the Mexican American in the cruel Texas school system. She was the one who got the standing ovations most of the time. We tried to focus on the plight of the intelligent gifted Chicana who had to fight the system in order to get an education. We became beacons for younger women and women looking for a voice.
PO: Do you feel that these issues are still relevant today and/or are there new issues that artists are addressing?
EV: Yes, these issues are still relevant today. Women’s issues continue to be the same throughout the history of human beings. It has taken many lifetimes of struggle to get us to the point like today where a woman can set herself free and be a person who works, educates herself, has children and if she does not like something, she can complain and be heard. This is possible because of the women who have marched in the streets and risked life and limb for them to be able to do so. Mujeres Grandes, through their poetry, gave some a voice. We were strong enough and educated enough and “con ganas” to demand our rights and to vent our frustrations. I think that women today, young women today, still battle the same battles that we did, but for them it is easier to get an education and to enter the work force, it is easier for them to get help to leave abusive relationships or marriages because my contemporaries fought the good fight and we helped create the agencies and pass the laws that are there for them to take advantage of. It was not easy, but we knew that we had to do it for our daughters and for our sons.
PO: Visiting your home, I really felt that your art is your life. Can you talk about how your wonderful home art installation began and how it continues?
EV: I think I began drawing on the walls of my bedroom when I was a teenager because I just felt like it. It continued into my adulthood and I have never stopped. I think to me it is who I am. I have to surround myself with art that expresses who I am, what I think and how I feel. People began to come to my home after my book, Recuerdos De Un Nina, was published in 1979 and early in 1984 someone came and said that they wanted to leave something at home to show that they had been here, so I handed them a permanent marker and said, “Write your name here,” and they did and from then on everyone that came from all over the world have left their mark. I must admit that I don’t let everyone sign my walls. It depends on how I feel about them, their visit and reason for their visit. As for having all those paintings and works of art on my walls, well, they too speak as to who I am and how I feel and what I believe. The paintings, some painted over forty years ago, are from the different “art periods” of my life. There are the dark ones from when I was diagnosed with cancer, the ones from my reflections on the migrant experience, some from my yearnings to capture my mother in her childhood, some of my son and, of course, the Mujer Grande paintings which speak of women’s longings, dreams, voices that scream out through the use of color. And, of course, my home is filled with nichos and retablos that my husband Arturo and I produced together. Those speak about not only our lives, beliefs and dreams, but about the raza and the history of our people, the people of the borderlands and the children of immigrants. I have recently taken to painting the doors of the different rooms, like the bathroom door which is the Frida Room; my bedroom which is the Lady Bird Johnson door (painted the day I heard she had passed); and the door to my office which is the Mujer Grande door, where the mujer is asking her husband to return home. I plan to begin painting the outside of the house, and will probably begin that this summer, much to my son Arturo’s dismay….”What next Mom?”
Sample of Enedina Cásarez Vásquez’s work
Acrylic on office door
Details of interior
Details of interior 2
Tags: art, chicana, playwright, poet, san antonio, visual artist