Los Seis de Boulder
In 2017, Jasmine Baetz, Master of Fine Arts student, started a project dedicated to “Los Seis de Boulder,” the six Chicano activists who died in two separate and unexplained car bombs in Boulder, most of them students or alumni. The incidents took place in May 1974, and it wasn’t until Baetz saw the documentary “Symbols of Resistance” that she realized how deep this violence has been buried in our university’s history.
As explained on the sculpture’s website, the bombings were “during weeks-long occupation of Temporary Building 1 on CU Boulder’s campus, in which students demanded continued funding and growth for the Educational Opportunity Programs that brought Mexican-American students and other minoritized students to campus beginning in 1968. “
To commemorate the activists, Baetz created a sculpture that, two years in the making, can now be found between Sewall Hall and Clare Small. It’s a tribute to justice and equality. Hundreds of people helped contribute to this installation, composed of mosaic tiles of all six activists, each of them facing the locations where they died. Reyes Martinez; Neva Romero; Una Jaakola; Florencio Granado; Heriberto Teran; Francisco Dougherty.
Yet, right now it’s a temporary installation.
Cheryl Higashida, Associate Professor of English, started a campus-wide petition to make the sculpture a permanent installation on campus.
“Regarding the petition, it started with me trying to get the English Department as a whole to sign on to support the permanent installation of the sculpture. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get unanimous vote on that, so I changed the petition to get individual signatures. That allowed me to collect signatures not only from faculty but also from graduate and undergraduate students in English,” said Higashida. “From there, the petition took a life of its own as a couple of undergraduate students collected signatures from peers in other majors. This speaks to the fact that so many in the CU Boulder community understand the importance of knowing our history so that we can carry on the legacy of the courageous Chicanx students who gave their lives for equity in higher education, especially to open CU to young people from the most vulnerable populations who have been savaged by the University’s active and ongoing complicity in settler colonialism and racial violence. The permanent installation of the sculpture commemorating Los Seis de Boulder should be a logical extension of CU’s support of DACA students and diversity.”
On Thursday, October 24, Baetz and a representative from the Boulder Office of Arts & Culture gave a 30-minute presentation on the monument and its importance on campus, photographed below.
Send letters of support for the sculpture for Los Seis to remain in front of TB-1 to: los6bouldersculptureproject@gmail.com
To learn more, please visit: www.losseisdeboulder.com.
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