By Arturo R. García
While San Diego Comic-Con has become linked with the city’s economy, it’s worth pointing out that one reason other cities probably feel they have a shot at wresting it from San Diego’s grasp is, there’s very little inside the event that actually reflects the city.
Over the weekend, the Chicano-Con exhibit began putting more of the “San Diego” back into this sphere. The event, a pair of two-day art exhibitions inside Barrio Logan, a neighborhood less than a mile from the convention’s high-rent district that formed its identity in the early 1900s with the infusion of refugees from the Mexican Revolution. Brent E. Beltrán, highlighted this disparity in the San Diego Free Press:
Comic-Con International recently bought a building at 16th and National in Barrio Logan. Yet no official events are scheduled to take place here.
There’s not even a shuttle bus stop yet there will be Comic-Con buses running every twenty minutes down Cesar Chavez Parkway heading towards the freeway. And there will also be countless attendees using this community as a parking lot to escape the outrageous parking fees.
Yet no official activities take place here. No outreach has been done to incorporate a low income, mostly Latino community impacted every year by Comic-Con. And that is unfortunate.
We love comics and the popular arts as well. We’re even known for our art. Yet, Comic-Con ignores us.
There are more events on tap in the area during SDCC weekend, which we’ll highlight in our upcoming convention preview. But this past Saturday, we went to Border X Brewing for the Chicano-Con exhibition, and you can see most of the artwork on display under the cut.
While most of the displays were two-dimensional, artist Cesar Castañeda lent two more sizable works to the collection:
There were also individual comics on display, but at a glance, Wonder Woman — first played on TV, of course, by a biracial Latina, Lynda Carter — got the most individual attention:
As one might expect, Lucha Libre was also well-represented at the exhibition, with a particular emphasis on Mexico’s all-time best attraction, El Santo:
For the sake of comparison, here’s Aguila Solitaria, the wrestler:
Some of the featured works took on more political messages:
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