Giants of Chicano film and literature to headline UCR event

Two pioneering figures in Chicano cinema and literature will discuss their work and answer questions during the 38th annual Tomás Rivera Conference at the University of California, Riverside.

Luis Valdez wrote and directed “Zoot Suit” (1978), the first Chicano play produced on Broadway, as well as the 1981 film version of it. Severo Pérez directed and wrote the screenplay for “...And the Earth Did Not Swallow Him,” the 1994 film based on Tomás Rivera’s seminal novel from 1971.

The movie, which runs about 100 minutes, will be screened at 5 p.m. Oct. 15 at University Theatre. Afterward, Valdez and Pérez will take the stage for a conversation on Chicano storytelling and film. Doors open at 4:30 p.m.

“This year’s conference will focus on the enduring legacy of Chicanos in cinema and theater with our invited guests, both gifted filmmakers and storytellers,” said Alex Espinoza, the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair and professor of creative writing at UC Riverside. “Their presence will continue to honor the memory and impact of the late Tomás Rivera.”

Valdez also wrote and directed the blockbuster “La Bamba” (1987) among many other films and plays. He was awarded the 2015 National Medal of Arts.

Born in Delano, California, in 1940 to migrant farmworkers, Valdez attended San Jose State University. He initially studied mathematics and physics before changing his major to English. After graduating in 1964, he became involved with the farm labor movement, working with organizations such as the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and the National Farm Workers Association. During this period, he began writing and staging short plays that dramatized the experiences, working conditions, and struggles of farmworkers.

In 1965, Valdez founded El Teatro Campesino (The Farmworkers’ Theater), a company that became a major force in the development of Chicano theater. His work has earned him numerous honors, including a Peabody Award and Mexico’s Order of the Aztec Eagle.

Born in San Antonio in 1941, Pérez studied American literature and contemporary history at the University of Texas at Austin. He moved to Los Angeles in 1972 and became part of a generation of artists expanding the presence of Chicano stories on stage and screen.

Pérez worked with El Teatro Campesino, serving as playwright-in-residence and developing his craft. His plays include “Soldierboy” (1982), which he wrote with his wife, Judith Pérez. He is also the author of two novels, “Odd Birds” (2019) and “Willa Brown & The Challengers” (2012).

Over his decades-long career, Pérez has worked across film, television, theater, and literature, consistently placing Mexican American history and experience at the center of his storytelling. He was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2018.

UC’s first Mexican American chancellor

Tomás Rivera was a writer, educator, and scholar who was named chancellor of UCR in 1979, becoming the first Mexican American to lead a UC campus.

The son of migrant farmworkers, Rivera grew up following the harvest across Texas and the Midwest, an experience that defined his life’s work. “…And the Earth Did Not Devour Him” is regarded as a foundational text of Chicano literature.

Rivera came to see education as the way out of the hardships he watched Latino families endure, and he pursued it relentlessly: a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in education administration from what is now Texas State University, followed by a master’s degree in Spanish literature and a Ph.D. in Romance languages from the University of Oklahoma.

He taught high school before moving through faculty and administrative posts at Sam Houston State University, the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Texas at El Paso, as well as a stint as a corporate officer at the Times Mirror Company.

He held the post of UCR chancellor until his death from a heart attack in 1984. He was 48.