Con Safos co-founder and original Editor-in-Chief Arturo Flores in front of a 1970 Ruben Salazar portrait by Sergio Hernández. Photo by Oscar Castillo. by Alci Rengifo The passage of nearly 50 years has not dimmed the radical glint in their eyes. On July 9, the founders of the legendary Chicano publication Con Safos: Reflections of Life in the Barrio , reunited for an evening of war stories, snacks and a playfully nostalgic revival of the once annual Tortilla de Oro Awards presentation at the Museum of Social Justice in downtown Los Angeles' historic Placita Olvera. From February through August of this year, the museum housed memorabilia, art and artifacts as a survey of some of the issues and satirical artwork that made Con Safos an incendiary publication during the turbulent tail end of the1960s. Satirical cartoons, anti-war spreads and photos by renowned photographer Oscar Castillo, among others, graced the museum’s walls. Also included was a spread covering the deat...

Writer Denise Chávez. Photo by Norm Dettlaff, High Desert News by María Nieto   The border is a space cast in a constant barrage of terms, from predictable prepositions like across, before, after, over and between to interrogatories such as how, as in how in the hell did such a line in the sand come to be drawn? The artificial separation between two nations, the borderland of Las Cruces, New Mexico, is where Denise Chavéz made her entry into this world. The playwright, short story writer and novelist has been gifting us with her words for more than forty years, Denise Chavéz’s first work of fiction in 1995, Face of an Angel , won the American Book Award. Since that first novel, she has delivered three more books. The most recent, The King and Queen of Comezón , was published in 2014. In it, Chavéz opens the door for her readers, inviting them to visit the small, fictional town of Comezón. On its streets, in the homes of its residents or in the Mil Recuerdos Bar, Chav...

by Abel Salas Born in Chicago on June 15, 1953, Ana Castillo is a universally celebrated poet, novelist, short fiction writer, essayist, editor, playwright, translator and independent scholar. Her novel, Sapogonia , was a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year” and her first work of fiction, The Mixquiahuala Letters , received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Other award-winning and bestselling novels include Give It to Me, which was the 2014 winner of the Best Bisexual Fiction from the LAMBDA Foundation, So Far From God , The Guardians and Peel My Love Like an Onion .  Massacre of the Dreamers , her classic, award-winning collection of essays celebrated its 20th anniversary with an updated edition released in 2014 and her award winning novel in verse, Watercolor Women, Opaque Men will be re-released in fall 2016 by Northwestern University Press in a deluxe new edition. Calling her “the most daring and experimental of Latino novelists,” Com...