Drawer, painter, sculptor and animator Jeffrey Miranda just completed his Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). His last show in the Visual Arts Buildings (Art Barn), entitled ‘Los Sombreritos’, ran from Oct. 29-Nov. 27.

The Overture sat down with Miranda to talk onions, sombreros and conquistadors.

Growing up working in an onion field

I grew up in a working class village called Canutillo, TX, near El Paso. Most families there earned their living working in the onion fields. My grandparents paid for their house by working in the onion fields.

You start around 3 or 4a.m; people would have breakfast on the way there in the car. It irked me the way my uncle would always slurp his cereal in the car.

You’d get to the fields and you’d see the people who got there before you. You’d hear a field full of scissors working. Everyone was working to fill potato sacks with onions. Each sack was worth 50 cents. At seven years old, I was able to fill 20 sacks in a day. My uncles could fill 250. It was hard labor. By 10 a.m, you were tired. Even after you left the fields the onion smell would stay with you.

I finally said ‘I’m going to school. My hands are not made for the labor and toil.’

Mexican Art

In my art I always try to use something Mexican.

We come from Aztecs, a highly artistic culture. We can dance, rhyme. That is the Native American side of us.

We have a Spanish conquistador side: they were willing to go into no-man’s-land and kill in the name of God.

Mexicans are a Molotov concoction of Spanish and Native American culture.

We get mad in a volatile way. Like tequila, our tempers are feared in the modern world.

Why Mexican food is so good

Everyone likes Mexican food. Why? Because it comes from the equator; you’re eating plants from the best region-avocados, corn, mangos. As you go north the sun doesn’t hit the produce anymore and it’s not as good.

I think there is an imaginary line in San Antonio where you can’t eat the food north of it.

Los Sombreritos

It means ‘little sombreros.’

When I draw the famous icon of the sombrero some people say it is racist.

It’s a short cut to a conversation that may take 20 minutes for me to explain. It has an interesting, almost scary effect when you put a bunch of them together.

A sombrero was your protection from the sun. It shows we came from the fields. The land shows our Native American side.

Emiliano Zapata said ‘The way to peace is through respecting what’s not yours; the land,”

Give the poor the land they work on, the food they grow. History is all about the land. The expansion through the killing of the Native Americans.


Emiliano Zapata. Photographed by Alexander Chi


Bullets


Close-up of bullets. Photographed by Alexander Chi


I read an article in ‘Ask a Mexican’ where someone asked ‘Why is it when you fight a beaner, you have to fight the whole burrito?’

Growing up, whenever you got into trouble in the streets, there was always someone who would help you out. Mexicans always unite.

The question reminded me of a scene in ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ where a detective finds some magic bullets.

The image of the machine gun with chain bullets of Mexican after Mexican sends the message of overwhelming your enemies.

La Handy Calavera Incebollada


Photographed by Alexander Chi


The many-armed figure is Kali, The Indian God of War. The idea was to represent Mexican handiness. The American cultures have absorbed this.

I heard that George W. Bush was asked what more he would have done as president and he said he would have helped Mexicans out more. He said he had a Mexican nanny and she was the one who raised him.

The Mexicans are in the sushi/ Indian restaurants. We’re everywhere. I try to acknowledge our work force.

Kali is analyzing a unit of work, in the form of a Mexican, after grabbing it from a Roman galley.

To the left is a Trojan horse that Kali is stuffing the unit of work into. That’s how we get into the USA, in a Trojan horse of work.

I love tanks. The Panzer was the workhorse of the Germans, and so I threw one of those in too. The child in the picture is fascinated with the Panzer in the way that America is with the cheap labor they get in a Mexican.

Mexicans Going to Work


Mexicans Going to Work. Photographed by Alexander Chi


It’s meant to look like George Washington crossing the Delaware. They’re Mexicans going to work to package ‘Lunchables’ and make surfboards.

Montezuma’s head dress is homage to the Aztec culture. I’ve also put in the Spanish conquistadors.

Jesus is in there-not just because everyone’s uncle is named Jesus-but because Jesus loves us. Some people think that Mexican immigrants are evil but we all believe in the same God.

Mexican flight

It is a ghost town in Mexico. When you have a chaotic society, nobody wants to live in it. Everybody has a cousin/ uncle who sales drugs; by accepting it you’re a hypocrite.

We don’t like what they are doing but we like their drugs.

People see the girls, money and cars and think they’d rather gang bang than go to school. We as Mexicans haven’t taught our children ethics. If you’re not corrupt, you won’t make it. Even mobsters can go to church.

Gatlin Mexican


Gatlin Mexican. Photographed by Alexander Chi


They had a Gatling gun during the Civil War but they actually tested them by going after Pancho Villa and other Mexican rebels. Villa was considered a terrorist; much like Bin Laden is today. Like Bin Laden, they couldn’t capture Villa either.

For a white Anglo, all those little Mexicans in a group could be scary. Maybe I’m playing with that fear.

Written by Rebecca Gomez

Edited by Carlos Duque