INDIGENOUS INDIGNATION

These words comprise the fact driving every indigenous movement. Colonized but never conquered, the indigenous everywhere can only wait right up until the moment that they don’t have to wait any longer. One day, alternative developments outside the official system are happening everywhere all at once and the waiting is over.

 

But we’re still waiting.

 

And so the system in place sent a man to the moon. So what if we were inspired to develop an alternative to the crushing of the indigenous that continues to this very day by indulging the twisted imagination of the master magical realist Abel Alejandre.

 

 -Sting

 

What if we insist that Chicanos landed on the moon in 1968. To deny what we are told - to deny their cultural fictions allows us to deny their scientific facts - is resistance. To minimize what is contextualized as achievement is to conspire toward a world without a before and after, a world without a winner and loser class. If the colonized refuse to applaud, all of the system’s victories matter less. It isn’t resentment when the system’s knee is on the neck of the outsider.

 

-Albert Einstein

 

The only difference between fiction and faith is the verve of the adherents. Abel Alejandre takes the leap of faith. He uses precision in paint to evoke the certainty that one’s mindset must change before anything else can change. To insist that fiction is fact is to imagine possibilities for a future that will be denied if a people are not bold. This is bold art making a bold claim. The point of these fantastic, intricate pictures is not to build an urban legend. They exist for your legend to become fact. May you enjoy them enough to blast off on a destiny toward freedom.