[News] Los Seis de Boulder sculpture to remain at CU as part of university archives

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.colorado.edu/today/2020/09/16/los-seis-de-boulder-sculpture-remain-cu-part-university-archives
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Los Seis de Boulder sculpture to remain at CU as part of university archives
Published: Sept. 16, 2020
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The Los Seis de Boulder sculpture installed on the CU Boulder campus last
year will remain at CU as part of the permanent collection in the University
Libraries’ Special Collections, Archives and Preservation department
<https://www.colorado.edu/libraries/libraries/norlin-library/special-collections-archives-and-preservation>,
the university announced today.

The archives’ mission is to collect, arrange, preserve and make accessible
the collections of the university's history as well as rare and unique
collections that support the university's teaching, research, service and
administration. The department connects students, faculty and the community
with significant primary sources and rare materials that document the life
and cultural outcomes of the university community.

Robert McDonald, dean of University Libraries, senior vice provost of
online education and professor of library administration, said campus
archivists look forward to working with the Los Seis de Boulder sculpture
<https://www.colorado.edu/asmagazine/2019/08/19/place-los-seis> so they can
develop educational and research tools, data and information that will
enable the campus to reclaim this chapter of university and state history
and amplify it broadly for students, faculty, staff and other audiences.

“This acquisition is a great opportunity to examine our campus history and
highlight areas for broadening our library collections in areas that have
been underrepresented or purposefully silent for many of our students,
faculty, staff and alumni,” McDonald said.

Los Seis de Boulder depicts the lives of six students who died after two
car bombs exploded in the city of Boulder in 1974 during a three-week
period in which students occupied Temporary Building No. 1 and demanded
equity in education at CU Boulder.

Alumna artist Jasmine Baetz conceived of the artwork in 2017 after learning
about the deaths of students Una Jaakola, Reyes Martínez and Neva Romero,
who died on May 27, 1974, after a car bomb exploded, and Francisco
Dougherty, Heriberto Terán and Florencio Granado, who died on May 29, 1974,
after a second car bomb exploded, also injuring Antonio Alcántar.

Chancellor Phil DiStefano noted that the sculpture’s place as part of the
university archives “will help to provide current and future students,
faculty and staff opportunities to learn more about an important chapter of
Colorado and university history. Under the terms of the acquisition, our
campus will be able to develop new teaching, research and outreach
programming that will help us further educate audiences about the historic
Chicano rights movement.”

He said the artwork would also help to advance the campus’s ability to
confront questions of race, inclusion and equity at a time when those
questions are of urgent importance.

“I recognize that we must better understand how the events of 1974 connect
to the events that are occurring now,” DiStefano said. “People will view
the Los Seis sculpture in many different ways, and our mission calls for us
to preserve the sculpture and use it as a focal point for our community to
engage in difficult questions about how the Boulder campus will respond to
racism and provide greater equity to students, faculty and staff of color.”

Baetz, now an assistant art professor at Coker University in Hartsville,
South Carolina, said she hopes the community-created project will
contribute to a climate in which the university can act with “honor,
integrity and accountability toward BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of
Color) students, staff and faculty who were and are impacted by systemic
racism at CU Boulder.”

“It's hard to accept that the killings of Los Seis have been silenced for
so long,” said Baetz, who graduated from CU Boulder in May 2020 with a
master’s degree in fine arts. “My hope is that the sculpture's preservation
will weaken our institution’s historical amnesia around civil rights
struggles at CU Boulder.”

Michelle Steinwand, whose sister Una Jaakola died when a bomb exploded at
Chautauqua Park, said she is comforted by knowing that future generations
of students, alumni and community members will be able to visit the
sculpture.

As a family member, she said she was honored and grateful to participate in
the creation and dedication of a work of art that chronicles the lives of
Los Seis and other student activists of the 1970s, and that it gives her
“comfort and joy” to visit the sculpture to “remember and honor my sister's
life and all those who were a part of the struggle.”

Priscilla Falcón, coordinator of Chicana/o Latinx Studies at the University
of Northern Colorado, who knew the Los Seis de Boulder students, said the
sculpture’s historical significance is that it pays homage to the United
Mexican American Students (UMAS) who “struggled to move away from
marginalized spaces by embracing a commitment to educational empowerment,
community organizing and a call to action by challenging institutional
racism both on and off the CU campus.”

The sculpture “highlights the authenticity of the social justice struggles
of the Chicana/o student movement that were dynamic and complex,
incorporating multiple dimensions—many of which are being explored by
scholars today,” Falcón said.

Chancellor DiStefano added, “CU Boulder must embrace opportunities for us
to learn from the past and hear voices that challenge our conceptions of
who we are and what we can become. We build our community through shared
experiences, like the one that Los Seis provides for us to connect our
history to our present moment.”
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