Politics And Life In Tejas: Painting Analysis

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Furthermore, chapter 2, Politics and Life in Tejas examines the political life that Garza’s family was involved during the 1950’s. During this time period schools were still segregated and if they were integrated they still practiced segregation norms. It was difficult for Garza to be treated less than human during adolescent. The image I have selected from this chapter is Cakewalk, 1987. The medium of this painting is oil on canvas, 36x48 inches in size. The Cakewalk is a memory of Garza’s childhood where her family contributed to fundraising money for Latinos to go to college. The reason I have selected this image is because she paints of a memory of how her family was involved with their own community and the means in which they achieved this tactic. …show more content…

Within the painting, there is a circle with numbers with people walking around it and there’s a table where the cakes are held. The purpose of this Cakewalk is to walk around the number and when the music stops, a random number is called and whoever has the number wins a cake. Cakewalk is related to this chapter because we see a community effort to begin hope for the future generations of Latinos to go off to college. While her community contributes to education reform, we see a political activism in her community. According to Cortez, she states “Despite the best efforts towards educational reform and the community’s commitment to action, long term results of their work took years to become visible”. Garza’s family continued to change the system once Garza was in junior high and she wasn’t allowed to take classes she wanted or was segregated by gender. Although, it took years for results, the efforts her family and community did helped along the