Originally published under title: Dictionary of Chicano folklore. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, c2000.

Ruben C. Cordova traces the history of Con Safo, one of the earliest and most significant of the Chicano art groups, from 1968, when it formed as El Grupo, to the mid-1970s, when Con Safo gradually disbanded. Founded by Felipe Reyes, the original group was made up of six San Antonio artists. The fluxuating membership over the decade of the group's existence included Mel Casas, Jose Esquivel, Rudy Treviño, and Roberto Ríos. Although the structure of the original group changed, its mission did not: Con Safo defined possibilities for Chicano art at a time when Chicano culture was largely invisible. Cordova's painstaking research, which included extensive archival work and interviews with group members and activists, resolves many of the contradictions and fills in many of the gaps that exist in earlier accounts of the group. Con Safo: The Chicano Art Group and the Politics of South Texas is an important resource for anyone interested in Chicano art and Chicano history. The book concludes with reproductions of original documents related to the group, including Casas's ?Brown Paper Report."

This book tells of story of a groundbreaking event in Chicano history. Here, for the first time, is the complete history of "Con Safos: Reflections of Life in the Barrio" the first ever Chicano literary magazine. Created by a legendary group of furiously independent barrio intellectuals and artists, connected to no established group and working on their own dime,10 magazine issues were produced in the late 1960s and 1970s in East Los Angeles. Many writers and artists who would later become well-known were first published in "Con Safos." Bilingual, using Calo' and the slang of the barrios, "Con Safos" helped to bring to attention an important inner vision of the barrio, Mexican American family life, "El Movimiento" --the Chicano civil rights protest movement-- and "El Moratorium" the Chicano movement against the Vietnam War. It used humor as its sword to tilt at establishment windmills. It made fun of everything--even itself as it took on the most serious questions of the day including racism and discrimination. There were those that hated it and those that loved it, but everybody read it. As it became the "Voice of the Barrio" it helped create a Chicano aesthetic enhancing the much-needed development of Chicano identity. In the last chapter, "Con Safos" "vatos" tell what they are doing now. Their contemporary lives reflect and illuminate the persistence of creativity through the life span in these Chicano men.

Presents the Chicano experience of living within, between, and sometimes outside two cultures, exploring the damnation, salvation, and celebration of it all.