![]() ![]() Drawing on Maylei Blackwell’s “useable legacies” of social justice work and José Esteban Muñoz’s concept of “concrete utopia,” I suggest that Zapata’s image in Chicana/o murals often creates opportunities to see how communities can act locally, through moments of collective, creative action, to carve out inclusive spaces within an otherwise hostile society. This paper examines reproductions of a famous photograph of Zapata in Chicana/o murals to rethink androcentric, heteronormative understandings of the original Zapatista insurgency, Chicana/o social movements, and relationships between art and political activism. Because artists have used the image of Emiliano Zapata, historically, as a symbol of machismo and male privilege, unpacking connections between these toxic ideologies and the revolutionary’s image is crucial for helping contemporary audiences to put Zapata back to work for emancipatory, egalitarian purposes in the twenty-first century. ![]()
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