A 23-year-old Mexican-American Vietnam veteran was beaten to within an inch of his life by Houston police officers and thrown into Buffalo Bayou, where he drowned, while Texas artist Vincent Valdez was growing inside his mother’s womb.
The George Floyd murder of its era was the 1977 murder of Jose Campos Torres. Two Houston police officers were found guilty of negligent homicide, placed on one year of probation, and fined $1. The value of angry protesters yelling “Chicano slife” is greater than a dollar! protested by taking to the streets.
Houston would not issue an apology for forty-five years. And 47 for Valdez to turn the narrative into a creative reflection on police abuse.
In order to gather shells and debris from the river where Campos Torres drowned, Valdez and his romantic-artistic companion, Adriana Corral, traveled to the Buffalo Bayou’s banks earlier this year.
A white gypsum statue of a Madonna, with one hand somewhat distorted in the casting, was injected with bayou debris by the couple. The Madonna is broken by the bayou’s fragments. On the other side of the museum wall is a glowing sketch of Campos Torres dressed in his Army uniform, which nearly seems cherubic.
Valdez’s huge and provocative new retrospective at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston includes the tribute to Campos Torres. As a testament to how highly the curators regard Valdez and his work, the exhibition, which runs until March 23, is the first time the museum has devoted its whole space to a single artist.
The murder of Campos Torres was a troubling American refrain and a foreshadowing for Valdez, who divides his time between Houston and Los Angeles.
He said that Houston, Texas in 1977 is now an echo chamber and a foreshadowing of a dystopian America that normalizes repressive practices like police brutality and systematic violence.
In this way, Valdez has dedicated his professional life to uncovering America’s sometimes-overlooked past, particularly the aspects that the nation frequently attempts to hide.
His artwork has addressed issues such as lynchings, police brutality, the forced relocation of Mexican-Americans from their homes in Los Angeles to make room for Dodger Stadium, and the notorious attack by U.S. sailors on Mexican-Americans wearing the gaudy, anti-cultural Zoot Suits during World War II.
Provocative history
Valdez is most recognized for his striking 30-foot-long painting from 2016, which depicts 14 members of the modern-day Ku Klux Klan staring out of the canvas as they engage in combat with the observer. The cloaked figures include a number of ladies. One hooded father is holding a terrified hooded baby who is pointing accusingly at the observer while playing with a Pikachu toy. The most obvious clue that the picture is set in the present rather than the past is when another person is holding an illuminated cell phone.
Because Valdez started the painting a year before Donald Trump successfully capitalized on white resentment during his first presidential campaign and two years before emboldened white supremacists marched through Charlottesville, North Carolina, brandishing tiki torches and chanting, “You will not replace us,” a New York Times writer referred to the piece as prophetic in 2016. The piece’s Austin museum placed a warning that it could stir up strong feelings.
The City I, a painting by the Klan, was deemed controversial and offensive by art critics.
Valdez is not an artistic provocateur, according to Andrea Lepage, a professor of art history at Washington and Lee University in Virginia.
According to Lapage, raising awareness of issues that we should be aware of is not controversial. Perhaps ignorance of our country’s past could be regarded as contentious.
One of the first art collectors to recognize Valdez as a budding artist was the comedian and actor Cheech Marin. After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, Valdez was living with his parents in San Antonio in 2001.
Valdez received a call from a gallery owner who informed him that a prospective buyer was interested in viewing his artwork. When Valdez opened the door, he was shocked to discover Marin, the Nash Bridges actor who portrayed Banzai the Hyena in The Lion King and who initially became well-known in the 1970s as half of the stoner comedy team Cheech and Chong.
Pulling a rolled-up picture out from beneath the bed, Valdez led Marin into his parent’s bedroom. Marin claimed to have had a near-spiritual experience when Valdez unfolded a signature piece of his undergraduate artwork that showed the Zoot Suit riots.
At least half-jokingly, Marin compared it to discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls. This language is distinct.
Kill the Pachuco Bastard! was purchased by Marin, who then included it in a traveling show of Chicano art. Because the picture showed a gruesome barroom altercation in which an American sailor rapes a woman on the floor, some museum administrators were reluctant to display it.
Marin retorted that museums have no trouble displaying paintings of rape in ancient Rome by artists such as Edgar Degas, Pablo Picasso, and Peter Paul Rubens. The museums eventually conceded.
Marin, who established a museum devoted to Chicano art in southern California in 2022, stated, “This is our version of the violence that was wreaked on the Chicano community.”
Spotlighting Campos Torres
The Valdez retrospective, which included his most important pieces, took five years to prepare for at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston.
Valdez once anticipated the city would display the Madonna sculpture as part of a public monument to Campos Torres, and it is the newest component in the exhibition.
In 2021, Houston officials commissioned Valdez to create the memorial’s design. He created a plan that included Madonna imagery, but he ultimately decided against it because he was worried the city would weaken his message. According to Valdez, he intended to let the family go with the city memorial planners and then create his own unique tribute to Campos Torres.
“I didn’t want to sanitize this story, so I decided to bow out,” he stated. Before admitting that we are dealing with the same problems in our society, how do we Americans hope to go forward? Until we address our collective amnesia, these horrible occurrences will continue.
In 1977, Campos Torres was slain after being jailed for unruly behavior at a pub. A jail supervisor ordered the officers to take their subject to the hospital after they severely assaulted Campos Torres, who was handcuffed and intoxicated. Rather, they brought Campos Torres to The Hole, an infamous wharf on Buffalo Bayou.
The officers threw Campos Torres into the water, with one officer saying: Let s see if the wetback can swim, according to the city memorial along the Buffalo Bayou where the Vietnam veteran was killed.
In 2022, Houston unveiled the tribute which includes a towering image of Campos Torres in his Army dress uniform affixed to the side of a building near the Harris County Sheriff s jail processing center overlooking the Buffalo Bayou.
Sylvester Turner, the mayor of Houston at the time, stated that the memorial ought to be a
a reminder that when one person is treated unfairly, everyone is treated unfairly.
During the dedication ceremony, he stated that it is too late to offer an apology and acknowledgement after 45 years. But until it is done not only can t the Torres family heal, not only can t the Hispanic community move forward, but the city itself cannot heal until all of the parts that make this family together move forward.
Valdez said he felt compelled to spotlight Campos Torres in his new exhibition because stories like his often are overlooked.
As a Chicano, I can t help but consider the fact that, even in the year 2024, national conversations about police violence seldomly address brown and indigenous communities in the center crosshairs of American police, he said.
Valdez exploration of America s darkest corners left him unsurprised by Trump s re-election. Indeed, he considered it all but certain.
For far too long, America chooses to simply slap a Band-Aid over our self-inflicted injuries, he said. Here we are, then. These wounds are now dangerously infected. It will be very difficult to expect a quick heal and call it a day in hopes that someone somewhere down the line in the next generation will cure us.
At times like this, Valdez said, artists really get to work.
Art will not solve the world s most pressing issues, he said. If I can offer a small moment of silence and clarity during moments of distraction and distortion, this is my small contribution back to the world, as a way of pushing back. Like miniature sparks of resistance that eventually over time, will spark a wildfire.
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