EL TECOLOTE (SAN FRANCISCO) -- Juan Fuentes, 70, is a featured artist in the exhibition. Growing up in rural Watsonville, California, Fuentes and his 10 siblings worked in the farm labor camps picking produce. Like other Chicano artists, Fuentes’s art naturally gravitated toward the farm labor activism movement.
Attending San Francisco State University in the late ’60s, Fuentes was among the first wave of students to be exposed to ethnic and, as they were called in those days, third-world studies. He grew ties to the Mission District, which was a progressive environment for artists and activists.
Fuentes’ works have advocated social change for issues such as the labor movement, the Palestinian freedom struggle and Native American political prisoner injustice.