Latina Artist and Art Educator Santa Barraza Has an Illustrious Career

South Texas artist Santa Barraza has been painting for 50 years and seldom allows herself to slow down. She will have some artwork in the upcoming January 2026 exhibit, Frida: The Making of an Icon, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston [MFAH]. Curated by Mari Carmen Ramirez, the show includes over 30 works by Ms. Kahlo and more than 120 pieces by artists inspired by her from the 1970s and 1980s. In addition to painting on a regular basis, Barraza allocates hours daily to organizing her archives as she prepares to place her work at a major university currently interested in collecting her drawing and notes.

Santa Barraza, “Los Abuelos,” 1986, mixed media on paper (original stone lithograph created in NYC). 14 ½ “ x 15.” Courtesy of the artist.

Barraza came of age during one of America’s most conflicted times. The high death rate of Latinos in the Vietnam War, housing segregation, bombings of Black Churches, and the absence of Blacks and Latinos in political leadership strained the nation’s conscience. Barraza told Latinopia that her encounters with the civil rights movement and the struggles of Mexican Americans” during the time period she attended Texas A&I University in Kingsville and UT Austin impacted her social and emotional outlook.

Santa Barraza. “Virgen Indigena,” 2015, 2 color lithograph print, 14 ½” x 17 ½.” Courtesy of the Artist.

Eighteen-year-old Barraza enrolled at Texas A&I in her hometown of Kingsville in 1969. She arrived during a year of unprecedented political unrest across America’s colleges. At Kingsville, where she studied for three semesters, Barraza met a score of Mexican American artists who identified with “El Movimiento” and believed that through their art they could help “la causa.” Barraza’s artist statement for the CARA exhibit included thoughts about growing up. She wrote: “Coming of age in a border-town community in Texas during the 1960s and early 1970s helped shape my art.”

Barraza wrote in an autobiographical essay that her years at the Kingsville campus were exciting, “with the Chicano movement, the women’s movement, peace movement protests against the Vietnam War, and other movements for social, political, and economic change” all around her. Mexican American students at the Texas A&I campus were especially politicized by anti-war activists in the late 1960s.

For Latinos, significant social and political influences also emerged from college student’s participation in Cesar Chavez’ farm workers movement and the rise of “El Movimiento” [the Chicano political movement] associated with Mexican American Youth Organizations [MAYO] and later La Raza Unida Party. Chicano artists such as Amado Pena, Cesar Martinez, Carmen Lomas Garza, and Jose Rivera were among the Kingsville students involved in “El Movimiento” in the mid-1960s. These artists remained in contact with students like Barraza and others who attended A&I in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Santa Barraza, “Torso Series: La Guadalupana with Holy Spirit,” 2024, acrylic on canvas, 12” x 12”. Courtesy of the artist.

With the intent of pursuing a bachelor of fine arts degree, Barraza transferred to the University of Texas at Austin. Her time in Austin–at the university and in the Austin Latino community–was transformational. In the 1970s, Mexican Americans represented only a small number of the students at UT Austin, a campus with an enrollment of more than 27,000. At the time, Barraza was one of only a few Chicana students in UT Austin’s art department.

Barraza credits UT Art Professor and photographer Russell Lee’s imagery with helping her develop a broader artistic perspective, as well as her other professors. She wrote that Lee’s photographs remained powerful to her because of “his portrayal of the sense of family.” She added: “This is precisely what I was seeking and wanting to communicate in my work–a sense of identity, of place, of belonging. I wanted to decolonize myself by understanding and appreciating my history.” “Los Migrantes” and a pencil-sketch portrait of famed Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros are among Barraza’s earliest works of art.

Santa Barraza, “Mujeres Nobles Series: Los Abuelos with Cortez as Richard King,” 2024, acrylics on amate paper with attached metal amulet. Courtesy of the artist.

Barraza earned that Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in the 1970s and a Master’s Degree in Studio Art in 1982. In the early 1970s Barraza co-founded, with Nora Gonzales-Dodson, the organization Mujeres Artistas del Suroeste [MAS]. She was also a member of Los Quemados and was active with local Chicano artists and Juarez-Lincoln students who founded LUCHA at Juarez-Lincoln University in Austin. By the 1980s Barraza emerged as an artistic leader and activist in the Mexican American community at the local, state, and national levels.

Barraza joined Gonzlez-Dodson, Nanci de Los Santos, Sylvia Orozco, Modesta Trevino, and others to incorporate MAS as a nonprofit in 1978. They located studio space in East Austin and worked with LUCHA [League of United Chicano Artists] from Juarez-Lincoln to sponsor exhibits. The most ambitious programming by MAS occurred in 1979 with the Conferencia Plastica Chicana held in Austin at The University of Texas, Saint Edward’s University, and LUCHA at Juarez-Lincoln University. The MAS artists joined Women and Their Work, Inc. in 1976 in an art festival, Encuentro Femenil, at the Austin campus of Juarez-Lincoln University. The Encuentro had the assistance of the Juarez-Lincoln cultural center and the League of United Chicano Artists [LUCHA].

Santa Barraza, “Mujeres Nobles Series: Cihuateteo con Coyolxauhqui y St. Philomena,” 2013, acrylic on canvas, 60” x 50”. Courtesy of the artist.

Among Santa Barraza’s earliest international art recognitions was an 1983 exhibit in Mexico City, “A Traves de la Frontera.” The show traveled to all of Mexico’s border towns including Tijuana, Juarez, and Matamoros. Eight years later in 1991, her art was also exhibited at “Alma, Corazón y Vida: Multi-Media/Multi-Cultural Art of Women from the Western Hemisphere” in Rome, Italy.

Barraza experienced additional American exposure when her mixed media drawing of her grandmother titled “Renacimiento,” appeared in the Amalia Mesa-Bains essay in the CARA exhibit catalog. Mesa-Bains noted, “Renacimiento is a classic Chicano work that blends myth, spirituality, and family sustenance in a symbolically coded layering.” The “Renacimiento” was later acquired by the Mexican Museum in San Francisco for their permanent collection. The Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation exhibit known as CARA, [1991] traveled to ten American cities and included the Washington, DC’s Smithsonian National Museum of American Art.

Barraza gave careful thought to her artistic approach and philosophy. She wrote in the CARA catalog: “I am interested in borders as regions of appropriation. I appropriated pre-Columbian symbols and myths in historical and contemporary symbols as mechanisms for resistance to oppression and assimilation.”

Santa Barraza, “Codex of Coyolxauhqui Como Sirena,” 2000, acrylics on canvas, 36” x 36.” Courtesy of the artist.

Chicano artists were coming of age, and after the early 1990s, art lovers were learning more and more about them. In 1994, Barraza explained her approach and her philosophy about her art to Shifra M. Goldman, author of Dimensions of the Americas, “At the beginning of my creative endeavor, I created art about my physical experiences and struggle for my Raza [people]. Today I utilize images from the unconscious, working intrinsically to convey a personal, indiscernible, and emotional experience.”

As a Chicana feminist and cultural interpreter, Barraza draws upon historical figures such as La Virgin Guadalupe, La Malinche, and La Llorona. Many of her earlier works are included in her book, Santa Barraza: Artist of The Borderlands. Her more modern visual presentations include labor leader Emma Tenayuca, singers Selena and Lydia Mendoza, curandero [faith healer] Don Pedro Jaramillo, and the Soldaderas of the Mexican Revolution.

Santa Barraza, “Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl, Reversed,” 1984, serigraph, (image dimensions), 25” x 19”)Courtesy of the artist.

Barraza recently retired from Texas A&M-Kingsville where she taught for 23 years. She continues to exhibit and enjoys public presentations about her art and borderland subjects. She has also opened an art Gallery in the downtown center of Kingsville to show Latino art and to continue her commitment to promoting images of Latina cultural interpretations and affirmation.

Barraza currently lives in a community once populated by the Karankawa tribe and takes pride in her indigenous heritage: Her great great grandmother was a Karankawa named Cuca Giza. Barraza writes, “I live in South Texas because I feel I am in my element of culture and environment. The land feeds me physically and spiritually.” As a tribute to her Indigenous roots, she includes in many of her works the earth plants such as agave, maguey, corn, and mesquite trees which provided food, clothing, and shelter for the first people of the Americas, her ancestors.