[ On January 9th, 2007, Luis J. Rodriguez, the co-founder and creative director of Tia Chucha's Cafe & Centro Cultural, gave us the following sad news, Tia Chucha’s Café at its present location is closing - permanently. Here's Rodriguez's statement on the closing: ]

“Tia Chucha’s must move–but our Spirit, Creativity, and Unity are intact. Just after the holidays, Tia Chucha’s Cafe & Cultural Center was served with a notice forcing us to move. We have to leave by February 28, 2007. A powerfully energized and thriving bookstore/cafe/performance space/cultural center is to be replaced by high-tech laundry machines. The laundry company is apparently investing $8 million in the strip mall, something we can’t compete with.

Maintain a vibrant community space? Of course not! Instead, make way for another laundry outlet! That’s capitalism. Money follows money, not needs, not literacy, not community, or cultural expression. In the world we’ve inherited, most creativity and expression has to make big money, or it’s out.

We created a space that requires a lot of personal and community investment. The community came to embrace Tia Chucha’s and make this space its own. We plan to take the spirit, creativity, and unity we helped nurture to a temporary site as we plan and prepare to obtain a larger permanent site in the Northeast San Fernando Valley. This is a time to come together, strategize, and work to keep Tia Chucha’s viable as a cultural center while we explore our options. We will not give up. We will find a temporary space; we will also curtail our retail operations while we concentrate on our programming, events, outreach, fundraising, and growth.

We ask that you strengthen our efforts and sign this petition in support of Tia Chucha’s coming back stronger, bigger, and better endowed than ever (Editor’s Note: The petition is only available at the Cafe - but you can e-mail letters of support to the address given below.) We need this written support to show the various developers; city, county, and state agencies; and foundations that this community will fight for the arts, music, dance, theater, writing, film, publishing, and a vital gathering place where we can share ideas, history, politics, economics, and our indigenous traditions and thinking.

Our strategy this year includes implementing a fundraising plan with a 5th Anniversary event at Tia Chucha’s on February 17 . We will also have another “Celebrating Words: Written, Performed & Sung” festival at Sylmar Park on May 19. And we have been approved to do a benefit event for Tia Chucha’s at the Ford Amphitheater in Hollywood on July 29. Sign up for our e-mail newsletter, or call 818-362-7060 for more information.”

Bert Green Fine Art presents, Smoking Mirror, a solo exhibition by Ecuadorian artist Eduardo Villacis which posits an alternative history following the landing of Columbus on the shores of the Americas. Instead of a European conquest of Aztec culture, Villacis envisions Columbus taken prisoner, his navigational tools examined and used to embark on an adventure to subdue and colonize a new world which will be renamed “Amexica.” Yes, the Aztecs conquer Europe in the year 1493 after encountering Columbus in 1492.

Villacis’ installation is a mock historical museum, complete with artworks, artifacts, and historical fragments of a vanquished people who once called their land “U-rop.” With his ambitious project, the artist reflects on racism and the manipulation of religious beliefs as ideologies of conquest and as tools of deceit. A full color, 36 page catalog will be available at the exhibition. Smoking Mirror opens with an Artist’s Reception on Thursday, January 11, 6 - 9 pm, and the exhibit runs until March 24, 2007. Bert Green Fine Art is located at, 102 West 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90013. Phone: 213-624-6212. Web site, www.bgfa.us

Famed author and social critic Mike Davis, wrote in his book, Planet of Slums, that Photojournalist David Bacon is “a nonfiction Steinbeck, the foremost documentarist of the great human drama of the borderlands.” Bacon is concerned with the “issues of our times,” and over the years he’s been busy shooting photos of migrant workers, antiwar protestors, unionists, cultural activists, and many others. Of particular note have been Bacon’s photographs of immigrant farmworkers who labor in California’s agricultural fields, and Xispas has published some of these photos in the past. So it’s exciting to hear that he has a book of these images coming out, Communities Without Borders: Images and Voices from the World of Migration. People in the San Francisco Bay area can meet David Bacon when he presents a slide show on his works during a panel discussion on the issues of migration and work contained in his book. Other panelists will include Professor Emeritus Carlos Muñoz Jr. (UCB Department of Ethnic Studies,) and workers whose stories are presented in the book.

The book presentation and signing by photojournalist David Bacon takes place on Friday, January 19, 2007, from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. UC Berkeley Labor Center, 2521 Channing Way Berkeley, CA. For more information, call 510-643-7077. If you are unable to attend the event, you can make an online order of the book, Communities Without Borders, or visit Bacon’s extensive website.