Carlos Cortez

"Sitting at this bar
Thinking of places
Afar..."

The common man, the dreamer, the vagabond...all these faces of Carlos Cortez are embodied in this verse, the start of his poem Crystal-Gazing the Amber Fluid.

Artist, writer, poet and fiery political activist, Cortez has long been a fixture of Chicago and continues to be at the heart of art and politics in the city. A Mexican-American and member of the Industrial Workers of the World, much of Cortez' work deals with union struggles, immigrants' rights and other progressive causes. His political woodblock prints memorializing strikes, the activist Mother Jones, and victims of police brutality are seen all over Chicago - most recently at the Around the Coyote art exhibit and at the Art Against the Nightstick exhibit in Wicker Park. His print of Lucy Parsons proclaiming "Viva La Huelga" is currently on display at the Chicago Historical Society as part of an exhibit on displacement in West Town.

"A worker, wise man, poet. That's the way I see Carlos," wrote Cortez' friend and fellow Wobbly Eugene Nelson in a 1990 tribute. "If there was such a position as chief arbitrator or advisor of the world, I would nominate him for the post. For he loves the world and living things more than anyone I know."

As a socialist and pacifist during politically-charged times, Cortez often suffered for his love of the world. He spent two years in prison in Minnesota for refusing to fight in World War II. His poem City Central Blues refers to this experience: he writes of "thoughts before/ never understood/ till face to face/ with a window of iron/ a mattress of wood."

Much of Cortez' work, both literary and visual, pays tribute to other figures of passivism and communism. He has written odes to Joe Hill, Sacco and Vanzetti, Frank Little and the Hay Market martyrs, and continues to involve himself in the Latino and workers' rights movements. And he is frequently seen at poetry readings and art exhibits - both his own and others - around the city. With his Mexican dress, luminous eyes and halo of bushy white hair, he is easy to recognize.

"His face is a poem, his whole being is a poem," wrote Nelson. "(His) vivid, lively love of life and the whole world is so great that it overflows through his eyes and glows from his face."

Crystal-Gazing the Amber Fluid
By Carlos Cortez

Sitting at this bar
Thinking of places
Afar
In my glass of beer
I see
Thru the smoke-filled haze Of this room
Like a crystal vision
Looms
A ribbon of cement
Black line down the middle
Perdition bent
Like a galloping snake
On the make
Thru treeless prairies
And bottomless passes
Ever in motion
Over a moonkissed desert
Toward golden California
Grasses
Stopped only
By a big blue ocean,
Man----!
Give me the song
If you can
Of a greyhound motor's
Tirade
Crawling along
Some old ten-mile grade
Where life can be complete...

Works:

• De Kansas a Califas & Back to Chicago, 1992
• Emergency Tacos : Seven Poets Con Picante (with others) 1989

(c) Centerstage Media, 1994-9