On November 2nd, the Smithsonian Latino Museum Studies Program: Alumni Webinar – Latinx Horror in Art and Film was held via Zoom. Moderators Brenda Salguero and Dr. Orquidea Morales had speakers Dr. Colin Gunckel and Dr. Josh T. Franco discuss their studies through the lens of Latinx horror.

The webinar began with Salguero informing the audience about her and Dr. Morales podcast called “Monstras: Latinx Monsters & Folklore,” which focuses on the world of Latin American and Latinx folklore, horror, death, and monsters. The podcast can be found on Spotify, their website monstraspodcast.com, and other podcast streaming sites.

Dr. Gunckel, an Associate Professor of Department of Film, Television, and Media and American Culture at the University of Michigan, started his talk talking about the art collective Asco, an East Los Angeles group of Chicano artists who produced empowering and socially conscious works. They created a “visual vocabulary” of what it was like living in LA during the “horror show at times” 60s/70s, as well as the response the group had to police brutality, gang violence, and Vietnam.

The group started making No Movies, a statement against cinephiles and the exclusion of Chicanos within mainstream Hollywood, and stereotypes Mexican-American’s had to endure watching in Hollywood films. Since 1957, low budget horror films were being imported from Mexico to the United States, but they didn’t get the recognition or viewership many other films at the time received.

Dr. Franco talked about his archival work at the Archives of American Arts, Smithsonian Institution, where he is a National Collector. “The archives and death go hand in hand…death not being the fine line,” he said.                                   

That is because the archives collect personal belongings and sometimes even bits and pieces of the people themselves. A person’s hair or ashes, even a pencil with teeth marks is organized within their system.

The Smithsonian has an online exhibition called, “Words Cannot Express: Death in the Archives” that documents death in the art world and builds on the legacy of those artists. Dr. Franco shows the participants the lock of John Fredrick Peto’s hair and laurel leaf in the archive as one example. Another notable document in the collection is Mark Rothko’s letter to Lee Krasner about Jackson Pollock’s sudden and tragic death. Dr. Franco also picked out his favorite line from the letter, “..and that the great loss that I feel is not an absurd thing at all.”