For a very special Day of the Dead piece, San Antonio contemporary artist Cristina Sosa Noriega draws inspiration from the pecan shellers of the city’s historic Westside.
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Story by Pamela Price
Related story: Observing Day of the Dead in Texas
It was a striking social media photograph of a work in progress shared that first caught my eye.
No, I’m not talking about a traditional stretched canvas or a sculptural piece. Instead it was a massive, 3D skull painted a brilliant blue. In the eye sockets were bright orange marigolds—and a pair of extraordinarily realistic pecans.
The artist? San Antonio’s own Cristina Sosa Noriega, a painter who drew inspiration from a story too often overlooked in the pages of history.
So how did the muralist and writer come to paint a gigantic skull?
To get the answer, I rang up Noriega early one sunny October morning, after both of us had seen our families out the door. In our brief conversation, she shared how a group of San Antonio residents—led primarily by Javier Ruiz Galindo —working on the city’s newly expanded Day of the Dead observance reached out to her earlier this year.
“The team organizing the project were brainstorming different artists. Apparently my name kept coming up,” Noriega recalled with a chuckle. “When they reached out to me through [local marketing and PR pro] Dawn Robinette, whom I knew through the Alamo City Moms blog, I jumped at the opportunity.”
Another of the organizers, Chef Johnny Hernandez, shared with her the planning committee’s vision of a Catrina parade, altars, events and a collection of painted, larger than life calaveras reminiscent of the traditional sugar skulls displayed during the Mexican holiday.
“I learned that, in Mexico City in previous years, sixty of these hand-painted skulls have lined the Paseo de la Reforma, the main city’s paseo. Here in San Antonio, they wanted to pick 10 artists to decorate new skulls. How could I say no?”
Noriega added that she’d been working on public Day of the Dead ofrendas (altars) in the last couple of years. This work had not only had heightened her interest in the holiday but also taught her how useful the observance could be in educating locals about their history.
“I love painting and see it as a real opportunity to showcase the history of San Antonio,” she said.
And that’s where her latest painting’s inspiration, Emma Tenayuca, comes into play.
The late Mexican-American labor organizer and civil rights advocate led the 1938 pecan sheller’s strike which attracted national press. In that era, Noriega said, there were around 12,000 mostly Mexican-American women shelling pecans, earning starvation wages and working in dusty conditions with no sanitation.
In 1938, industry leaders decided to reduce wages further. For many, including Tenayuca, enough was enough. A weeks-long strike was launched, with Tenayuca front and center. (The striker’s successful advocacy only protected their meager wages for a short time, as automated shelling systems soon replaced them.)
Remarkably Tenayuca was in her early 20s during the strike, and her outspokenness earned her the nickname “La Pasionaria,” a name Noriega said she might use to name her own painting.
It would be a fitting choice, frankly, given the image of Tenayuca and her fellow striking workers that appear on the side of the skull. And those pecans centered in marigolds, resting in the eye sockets and decorating the nose bridge? They have the vibrancy befitting accounts of Tenayuca’s assertiveness.
[Update: Noriega settled on La Lucha Sigue, “The struggle continues,” as the piece’s name.]
The pecan’s historical and social relevance resonates further when you consider 2019 marks exactly 100 years since the pecan tree was named the state tree of Texas. It’s a coincidence that underscores the pecan industry’s significance to the state’s economy.
For Noriega, however, her piece is primarily an opportunity to raise awareness about history, labor rights and the efforts of the women who have spoken out valiantly about causes in which they believe.
That the final unveiling of the piece will come in the wake of significant national press coverage of young, outspoken women like Greta Thurnberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is noteworthy. And Emma’s story is a reminder that although the saying “well-behaved women seldom make history” sounds clever, all too often Mexican-American women’s history is marginalized in schools and popular culture.
“I’m from San Antonio, and I don’t remember being taught about her. I took a class in college and learned about her, that she was working on civil rights before the names I knew well, like Cesar Chavez and MLK, Jr. From there, in college, I started doing my own research.”
Noriega’s calavera has a deeper personal connection, too.
“Pecans are a theme I’ve used before [in a mural project tied to the city’s World Heritage site designation]. It’s personal for me. I remember going with my maternal grandmother to pick up what felt like a million of them. We’d take bags of unshelled pecans to sell and maybe make $6.”
Later, Noriega’s father commented to her that his own mother was a pecan sheller in San Antonio.
“Like so many, she came here during the Mexican Revolution, but she wouldn’t talk much about it, save to say that it was a thankless job.”
The hardscrabble nature of the pecan sheller’s work is also reflected in Noriega’s piece, with colorful imagery depicting older hands holding nuts.
“I want to show how this was work for people of different generations, that it was labor intensive.”
And what does the artist hope people will take away from encountering her painted skull this November?
“Maybe people will take a moment to google it all, you know? The strike, Emma Tenayuca? I want to reach people. I want to keep her story and the story of those women alive, especially for San Antonio’s Westside.”
Noriega’s piece honoring Emma Tenayuca will be on display at San Antonio’s La Villita Nov. 1 – 3, 2019, as part of the city’s Day of the Dead observance.
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