The Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento presented “Honoring Facundo Cabral: a Día de Los Muertos Poetry Reading” Friday evening. More than two dozen people attended the event, which included music, poetry, art and history. Friday’s event was one of several associated with the “Voice for the Voiceless” exhibit featuring the artwork of Malaquías Montoya, who had created a piece in memory of Cabral, an Argentinean writer, singer and peace messenger who was murdered in Guatemala City on July 9, 2011. “Facundo Cabral Presente” was the backdrop for the evening’s reading and music, which featured poets Betty Sánchez, Nancy Aidé González and Francisco X. Alarcón, and musician Manuel Lopez. B

On Friday, the Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento will present “Honoring Facundo Cabral: a Día de Los Muertos Poetry Reading,” one of the events associated with the “Voice for the Voiceless” exhibit, featuring the artwork of Malaquías Montoya. Curator Xico González will host Friday’s reading. A poet, artist and activist, he recruited four area poets to pay homage to Argentinian Facundo Cabral, a writer and performer of protest songs who gained fame in the 1970s when dictatorships, coups and other crises plagued Latin America. Cabral’s most famous song was “No Soy de Aqui, Ni Soy de Alla” (“I’m Not from Here, I’m Not from There Either”). Cabral went into exile in Mexico from 1976 to 1

It was standing room-only for the people who came to hear Malaquías Montoya speak about art, life, protest and language Wednesday evening at the Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento. The crowd spilled out the door onto 19th Street and included UC Davis students, CCAS members, artists and activists. An electricity filled the room as voices rose and fell. Current and former students proclaimed they are all fans of Montoya. Curator Xico Gonzáles served as the evening’s host, leading the audience in a welcome applause before speaking about Montoya, under whom he had studied. Montoya stepped up, without a microphone, and asked, “Why do we do the things that we do daily?” He answered tha

A cultural reception was held Saturday, opening with a blessing performed by Kalpulli Maquili Tonatiuh, a spiritually-based local Aztec dance circle, thanks to Xico González, curator of Malaquías Montoya’s solo exhibit, “Voice for the Voiceless” at the Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento. “In the Chicana/o tradition, we pay homage to those that came before us, to the people that Malaquías pays homage to in his artwork,” González said. Homage was certainly paid as the dancers assembled outside of the center to first bless the building. Jessica Alvarado, donning a headdress with green feathers, carried a smoke pot in which tree sap burned. She read the blessing in the Nahuatl language.