Join the California History Section for a live webinar on Palabra: A Conversation with Comadre Warriors of the Chicano Movement on Thursday, October 30, at 4pm! 

Join the California History Section for a talk between Maestra Irma Lerma Barbosa, one of the original members of the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF) artists collective, and Dr. Ella Maria Diaz, author of Flying Under the Radar with the Royal Chicano Air Force: Mapping a Chicano/a Art History (2017). The talk will explore Lerma Barbosa’s work as an artist and organizer and the key roles women played in shaping the RCAF’s community-focused action and art.

Irma Lerma Barbosa is a Chicana Yaqui American painter, printmaker, muralist, performance artist, civil rights activist, and community organizer. Raised primarily in Northern California by Mexican and Mexican-Yaqui parents, she became deeply involved in the Chicano movement during the late 1960s and 1970s. As an original member of the Sacramento chapter of the Brown Berets—a youth activist group focused on civil rights, education, and community empowerment—she designed and hand-sewed a key flag for the organization in the late 1960s, symbolizing Chicano pride and resistance. She also joined the Royal Chicano Air Force, a collective of Chicano artists and activists, where she honed her skills in silkscreen printing and mural-making. Her artwork often draws on themes of Chicana feminism, cultural identity, surrealism, and activism, blending personal heritage with social commentary.

Ella Maria Diaz is Professor of the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at San José State University.  She specializes in Chicano/a art, history, and cultural activism during the U.S. civil rights era, as well as visual and cultural analyses of testimonio as an art of the Americas. Her first book, Flying Under the Radar with the Royal Chicano Air Force: Mapping a Chicano/a Art History (2017), won the 2019 National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Book Award. In 2021, her second book, José Montoya (2020), received Gold Medal awards for Best Arts Book and Best Biography from the International Latino Book Awards. Among several chapters and journal articles, Diaz’s 2017 essay in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies was anthologized in The Chicano Studies Reader: An Anthology of Aztlán, 1970-2016.