Montoya shies away from being called ‘Renaissance man’

Wednesday, May 5, 1999 | 10:22 a.m.

When Jose Montoya served in the Navy, during the Korean War, he fought for the United States as a Mexican-American.

But not in the eyes of a few short-sighted superiors.

"Even when I was in the Navy, I had to deal with being labelled," said Montoya, who appears today at 4 p.m. at UNLV's John S. Wright Hall, Room 103, for a lecture, which is free to the public, to coincide with Cinco de Mayo. "They'd tell me, "Remember, you're not a Mexican-American, you're a Mexican."

There was also some confusion about Montoya's surname.

"I had a person who always called me 'Mercado,' and I'd say, 'No, it's Montoya," he said. "He'd say, 'Mercado, Montoya, whatever. It's all the same.'

"We've made great strides since then, but whenever we start making real inroads, at those precise moments, they attach labels to us."

Montoya is one of the premier poets, orators, authors, artists and musicians in Northern California Hispanic (or, as he prefers, Chicano) culture. He has devoted his entire adult life to a multi-faceted program of both formal and artistic education, providing a glimpse into the heritage of his people.

"I'm a product of the turmoil and the greatness of the Chicano movement in the civil rights era, the late '50s and early '60s," said Montoya, a native of Chilili (or, land of the laughing people) in northern New Mexico. "It was a creative time, an experimental time in poetry and art and music and it's important enough to be talked about and explained."

Montoya has done just that, professionally, as a high school instructor in Wheatland, near Sacramento, Calif., and later as the chair of the art department at Sacramento State University. He's retired from teaching after 27 years at the university level, but keeps busy with his art, writing and music and was recently nominated as the poet laureate of Sacramento.

Not that he's preoccupied with being bestowed such a distinguished honor.

"To me, being the poet laureate is not a big thing and not something I'm concerned about," he said. "I'm not a Renaissance man, but because of my age (66) and the number of readings I've done, I'm on the list."

Montoya has drawn national attention and acclaim. His poetry is illustrated in the 1997 book "El Sol Y De Abajo," and his band, Jose Montoya Y Casindio (Jose Montoya and the Almost Indians, in translation) recorded "A Pachuco Portfolio" last summer and performs regularly in the Sacramento areas.

"I consider myself a folk singer," Montoya said. "We put the poetry I write to music and play a lot of ballads, because what I write works well in music. But we can also play 12-bar beat rock, too. Whatever the audience wants, we play."

Montoya is working on another book surrounding his often unnerving experiences in dealing with prejudice in the Navy, and just last week, his artwork was featured at an East Los Angeles gallery opening. He's a busy speaker on the university circuit, having recently made an appearance at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, near his childhood home.

Whether its music, poetry or painting, Montoya's work focuses on the culture of young Chicanos, or the Pachuco era.

"I'm definitely prone to figurative painting," Montoya said. "There is enough drama and excitement in the Chicano world that doesn't need to be depicted in a graphic way. The general idea of the people in my canvasses is crucial. My heroes, the illustrators in my day, painted that way."

Montoya's is the quintessential grass-roots story. He enrolled at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland just after departing the Navy in the mid-'50s, and found what he called "a bigger and better part of the world."

He soon dove into painting and fine arts.

"I noticed painters didn't seem to have the same deadlines or constraints as other professionals," he said. "But there was no work for painters, either."

He decided to "join the enemy" and push toward earning a teaching credential.

"I did not get along very well with my instructors, so I resisted becoming one of them," he said. "But I found that teaching painting and drawing was so rewarding, and I loved every minute of it."

After nearly a decade of teaching teenage students, Montoya earned his master's degree at Sacramento State and finished his career in academia in rural Northern California, rich in Hispanic culture.

"We do have some incredible writers here and an unappreciated artistic and literary culture," Montoya said. "People might not think of Sacramento that way, but they should."

Montoya says he keeps busy with his music (the band is working in a new bass player) and conducting seminars similar to his appearance at UNLV.

"It's important to be inclusive," Montoya said. "It's always seemed there are people who want to send us back to Mexico, without realizing that many of us didn't come from there in the first place. We have a Spanish and European and Native American heritage as well.

"We're here, and my whole purpose is to show people what it means to be a Mexican person who is not from Mexico."

In that regard, Jose Montoya is a walking (and writing, painting and singing) encyclopedia.