Between The Lines: The Online Art/chive of Informes Informales

To commemorate Cinco de Mayo, California artist Pablo Picoso cut the arms off the statue of a Mexican man reaching up with hands outstretched that he had erected in his yard.

"It was a tough decision, but I did what I had to do," explains Picoso, who has named the statue the "Cinco de Milo."

Picoso claims that he was not bowing to censorship from people who disliked the statue, although he received severe criticism for the original work.

"I cut the arms off on Cinco de Mayo specifically to comment on how Mexicans in California have been treated as second-class citizens despite their strong historical contributions," says Picoso. "It was this whole bracero vibe kind of thing."

Picoso explains that this drastic measure came after more than a year of trying to erect a memorial statue in several California locations.

"I wanted to create a statue that powerfully spoke to the strength and possibility of today's Chicano/Mexicano community but also openly addressed the questions of the past," said Picoso, "but no city I went to would have that."

Picoso's first idea was to create a tribute to the early Californios by putting a statue of Pio Pico, California's last Mexican governor, in the historic section of Monterey, the city that once served as California's capital.

"I presented it to the local art commission, but they were less than receptive," said Picoso. "They informed me that they would only fund projects that dealt with official California history from the Bear Flag Revolt to the present. So I made another proposal."

Picoso's second proposal, a piece called "The Bare Flaggers," was to erect a statue of nude mountain men raising the original Bear Flag.

"I thought it was very Iwo Jima-esque," says Picoso, "but the arts commissioners said it looked more like a gay homeless orgy. Plus, they didn't appreciate the misspelling."

To maintain historical accuracy, Picoso's depiction contained the original misspelling on the Bear Flag, which omitted the letter "l" from the word "Republic."

"Imagine the shock of the well-educated Californios when all these grungy street people come out of the mountains proclaiming the birth of the 'CALIFORNIA REPUBIC,'" says Picoso. "The arts commissioners thought I was being disrespectful, but I was only being historically accurate."

A proposal in Sacramento for a totem pole representing faces from the diverse cultures that made up California of the 1850s was similarly met with disapproval.

"I said, 'Look, we can have Indigenous, Mexican, Chinese, Russian, Swiss, Irish, Peruvian, Italian and American faces in it.' I thought it was great," says Picoso, "But they were more interested in a tribute to the logging industry. They had the nerve to ask me if I could take an old sequoia and carve it into a giant walking Bigfoot that said 'Keep On Truckin'.' Then they asked if the Bigfoot could be made wearing Nikes, because Nike was a big sponsor of the city's annual California Greaser Days Festival."

Frustrated, Picoso went to Salinas and proposed a sculpture near the main railroad station commemorating the hundreds of thousands of working class Mexican and Mexican-Americans who were deported during the Great Depression.

"Let's just say they voluntarily repatriated my ass out of there," said Picoso.

Working his way down the state and meeting similar responses wherever he went, Picoso ended up in San Diego, where he came to a bold realization.

"There was nowhere else to go. Any further south and I would have been in Mexico. My statue had to be here."

But Picoso found the local arts commission was less than receptive of his artistic vision.

"They called my work controversial, but there was nothing controversial about it," says Picoso. "It was just celebrating our history and dignity. Every proposal I made, they stalled and blocked. They almost approved my tribute to maquiladora workers, though. It was like Rosie the Riveter, only she was called Maquila Dora. They said I could only do it if I let them sell the naming rights to Sony."

A proposal to put a combination wishing well/drinking fountain at the border was turned down, because plans were already being made to turn the entire border crossing area into the world's largest McDonald's drive thru.

Finally, Picoso decided to pool all his frustrations into one work and place it in front of his house. It was a man standing with arms upraised and hands outstretched.

"He was reaching out for a better future," explains Picoso.

But even this was controversial.

"Immediately, I got negative comments saying the guy was asking for a handout. Others complained he was reaching out to take their jobs. Police drove by and said he looked like he was going for a gun. One guy asked if he could take the statue for a day to pick oranges. That's when I cut off the arms."

Picoso says people seem to approve of the statue now that the arms are gone. But Picoso warns that his Cinco de Milo statue still has a few tricks up its sleeve.

"I didn't cut off the arms for good," says Picoso, "I'm just reshaping the hands into a different gesture."

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