What is the RCAF?
The Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF) is an
artistic collective based in Sacramento, California. Initially
named the Rebel Chicano Art Front, the RCAF was founded in 1969 to express
the goals of the Chicano civil rights and labor organizing movement of the
United Farm Workers. Its mission was to make available to the Chicano
community a bilingual/bicultural arts center where artists could come
together, exchange ideas, provide mutual support, and make available to
the public artistic, cultural, and educational
programs and events.
The founding members of the RCAF include
José Montoya, Esteban Villa, Juanishi V. Orosco, Ricardo Favela, and Rudy
Cuellar among others. Montoya and Villa knew of each other through
their involvement in the Mexican American Liberation Art Front and the
California College of Arts and Crafts. During the Chicano Movement
students pressured
colleges and universities to diversify their faculties. As a result,
Montoya and Villa were hired as professors of art at California State
University, Sacramento. Their academic positions gave them the creative
freedom to initiate programmatic exchanges between the university and the
barrio community. Through this effort they initiated many programs
including the Barrio Art Program, which required university students to go
out into the community including senior centers to teach art courses.
The RCAF created in 1972 the not-for-profit
Centro De Artistas Chicanos. This community based organization became the
spring-board for all types of Sacramento community programs, such as La
Nueva Raza Bookstore (with its Galería Posada), Aeronaves de Aztlán
(Automotive Repair Garage), RCAF Danzantes (Cultural Dance venue), Barrio
Art Program, and the RCAF Graphics and Design Center. By 1977, the Centro
de Artistas Chicanos and Breakfast for Niños Program (a community
non-profit program that fed children before school) joined forces to
create the Cultural Affairs Project, which further funded their many
community services.
The RCAF is best known for its mural
paintings, poster art production, and individual artistic contributions.
The artists of the Centro have produced murals and exhibitions from San
Diego to Seattle. RCAF is significant as a collective that has maintained
a forty year history of engaging communities to express their
Chicano culture, history and struggle for equal rights.
While the "RCAF" originally stood for the
Rebel Chicano Art Front, people confused the letters with the acronym for
the Royal Canadian Air Force. Montoya and his fellow officers capitalized
on the misunderstanding, and in good humor adopted the name Royal Chicano
Air Force. This new identity found its way into their wardrobe, as well as
their highly successful silk screen poster program, which began to
disseminate the World War I aviator and barnstorming bi-winged planes as
icons. The RCAF gained a well-deserved reputation for outrageous humor,
fine art posters, murals, and community activism. Their pioneering spirit
throughout the 1970s and early 1980s was well-known in the California
Chicano community, and continues to the present.
