Hector Galán: A Life Documenting Marginalized Stories

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This is Latino USA, the Radio Journal of News and Kurture's Latino USA, latin Us, Latino USA.

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I'm Maria Inojosa, nose Bayan.

One thing that's very important to me is that I have captured our experience Latino, not just Chicano, but Latino experience across the country. I think I'm the only one that has anything to that degree of our culture and history.

From Fudro Media and PRX. It's Latino USA. I'm Maria Ino JSA.

And today we continue to celebrate our thirtieth anniversary. We're bringing you conversations with some of the most influential Latinos and Latins of the last three decades, and this time filmmaker Ektor Galan, who for over forty years has been documenting our Latino communities. Since the late nineteen seventies, Ektor Galan has stood behind the camera, featuring the stories of the people he didn't see in mainstream media.

It was the summer of nineteen fifty five a Hollywood film crew and the biggest movie stars of the era descend upon the small, dusty town of Marfa, Texas.

His film documentaries explore a wide range of subjects.

Two thousand years ago, the world changed forever. It all began with the birth of a baby boy.

From the history of the Chicano Movement, Mexican Americans in Crystal City created their own political party, La Rasa Univa.

We no longer accept the fact that we are powerless and need to be complaining about our powerlessness.

We know we're.

Powerful and life in the Colognas along the Texas border.

The Rio Grande Valley in South Texas is one of the oldest settled regions in America.

To the rise of Conjunto music and the origin of the accordion.

One of the last of the Conjunto pioneers, Juan Lopez, helped define a unique musical tradition that still exists today.

As one of the first Latino filmmakers in public television, Ecdo paved the way for any of us, and in nineteen ninety three Latino USA's first year on the air, we invited Ecdor to the.

Show with us from Austin, Texas, the director of The Hunt for Panchovilla, Ektor Galan, Welcome to Latino USA, Ecdor.

Thank you, Leria Ekdor.

What Ekdod was doing in documentary film resonated with the mission we had established for Latino USA to highlight that the Latino experience is also the American experience.

We're Latinos, you know, we're Chicanos, and at times we're looking at it from American perspective, and at other times we're looking at it from a Mexican historical perspective as well.

Throughout the years, Ecdod built a production company, received many awards and recognitions, and mentored students and aspiring filmmakers, and all along the way, he would return to Latino USA.

Accordion Dreams, produced and directed by independent filmmaker Ektor Galan, who has documented many aspects of Latino life for public television. He joins us now on Latino USA and Ector, why conjunto music?

Why the Accordion? Why now?

Well?

I think Conto is an extraordinary music that I wanted to be able to bring about in a film to share with the rest of the country.

But after all of these years, I realized that I had actually never sat down with Ector to talk not about his latest project, but about him. How he grew up in a small town in West Texas, how the Chicano movement pushed him into filmmaking, and what stories are still left for him to tell. We're going to get into all of that and more today in a conversation

Well, thank you Marie, that's true.

I'm still going at it.

You know. It's been I guess now, oh jee, about thirty five forty years that I've been doing this.

You were actually one of the very first guests that we ever had on the first year of Latino USA, when we went on the air back then nineteen ninety three, you were about to premiere The Hunt for Buncho Villa. That film would go on to win multiple awards. It was going to be shown on PBS for the American Experience, the first Latino to ever direct an American experience.

What inspired you and and writer Paul Espinosa to develop this project, The Hunt for Bunchovilla and to add even more information about this mystique of the character bunch of Villa.

Back in college or even in our homes, we all had posters and the Banchovia who represented something to us as Chicanos. Some of us do you understand and know a little bit of the story of his life, but to most people in America it's more of a caricature.

You were directing a national film, correcting the narrative on this legendary Mexican revolutionary to a mainstream public television US audience told by a Mexican American proud Chicano from Texas.

Vian is just one person that can point at but a lot of the feelings along the border against Mexicans, you know, weren't They had their own stereotypical negative views of Mexicans. And we know that as a story too, so as as Chicano's US. It was very, very interesting to go through that process.

The premiere of The Hunt for Punchovilla will be on November third on public.

Television stations across the country.

Did us, Yes, that was a long time ago, but that was the first time that I interviewed you for Latino USA.

Remember anything about that?

I remember that interview.

Oh my gosh, I.

Remember where I went where Latino USA used to be here in Austin. And that's been many years now, you know. With me, I like to tell stories like Pancho Viar, stories that aren't really known. They need to be accessible to the mass audience, and that was my goal with these stories. You know, that was only one. I did two American experiences. The other one was called Los Minetos.

No Strive on Them.

This is a story of men who came to work in a foreign landge the story that has never been told.

They brought us from Mexico to work the couple minds of Arizona Beautiful film.

A lot of these stories.

I like to shine a light on us so that the rest of America can understand us a little bit better.

So speaking about that, you know, it was a particular thing for you a Latino public television to be talking to a show called Latino USA on public radio. I'm wondering because we were one of the places where you, you know, we're basically like tks. We know you, we get what you're doing with your work. But I'm wondering, do you have recollections about that?

Well? I think that the most important thing that there was a program called Latino USA. I mean, to me, that's extremely important. And to have it on NPR and be out there, I mean I was doing that interview was just it.

Was an honor, And for me it was an honor because I was like midiastick ching on. Let's get to the fact that by the time you are assigned that American experience very big deal, you had actually been working in television for over two decades. So I want you to take me back to there.

Where is it?

How long you growing up in San Angelo, Texas where you're just like, no, bis bis, I'm just gonna be a gamogna for I'm just like, how does that happen?

Well, it's really funny, Maria, that question, because when I graduated high school, court college didn't even come into the equation because nobody in my family or anybody my extended family had been to college.

So it was not like, Okay, you're attorney eighteen, they asked Parloni or see that.

It was you turn eighteen, you need a job.

Yeah, I'm good to be a truck driver or whatever. But I wanted to work in radio. So now what's interesting is that I grew up in West Texas, San Angelo. We still had remnants of Jim Crow and nothing compared to what my parents went through, but we still had a little bit of that, and some jobs in that town just weren't for Mexicans, you know. But there was this opportunity that came up at the local one local CBS affiliate station for a cameraman studio cameraman, and I said,

We definitely need a picture of that.

And I went in and lo and behold the person interview and me also had long hair. And I'm talking seventy two, nineteen seventy two long hairs. Whether you're Mexican or Anglo or whatever, we were all brothers.

Can you tell me what it was like to work in a tiny television station in West Texas in the seventies.

That's really where I got the bug for television, because even though I got real good at running the studio camera, I wanted more. I could hear the director in the control room, I could hear the tape room, and because we're all hooked up on headsets, and I said, I want to do that, And that's what started me. So I left that station to a junior college in Colleen.

But they were still weighing what thirty pounds more or less? Oh yeah, right, So just to work there you had.

To drag like a wheelchair, you know, with a power unit. But that's what got my start.

And then at that point I decided because I met so many people that were part of the Rasso Nita party and involved in protesting police brutality that Mexican America and Chicanos were facing at the hands of police here in Texas, all the marches. I started filming all of that.

So your introduction as a documentarian was because you were documenting the civil rights movement of Chicanos and Chicanas chican ecks in Texas. And you were not only documenting it firsthand, but you were also like yotamien ZOI prout Chicano.

That's right, you know, I became part of the Rasonita Party. I became part of the Chicano movement.

I met my.

Early friends like Assustravigno and people like that from California, because the winds of change were blowing from California to Texas. But we had our own organizing going on in Crystal City for the Rasonia Party.

And you know, in the nineteen seventies here in New York City, Puerto Rican activists actually took over Channel thirteen, which is the public television station of New York se to Maron Lasoficinas, demanding that there'd be more Latino representation in public media across the board. So you were a part of a historic wave of politically conscious, politically engaged, unafraid to say we are radical media producers. Deal with it, am I right.

You're absolutely correct. One of the first things that we did when I was out with the mini camps because now I got hired as a producer instead of a director, and I created a program called.

Slan well like as the programa the alolos Sados and Labola said competo agrado.

And we decided to do it in Spanish because they didn't know what we were talking about. Otherwise it take us.

Off the air Elasamana Kendra programa Conbindo Porrama Happenings and on the senas La.

But you know, that's how we spread the world.

And every week we would would would try to educate the community about what's going on in voting, police brutality, education, representation, all of that. We were covering stuff that they wouldn't even get to, and that's what gave me that verve.

In prepping for this interview, I didn't realize that you were really part of that first class of frontline.

It was.

It's really funny, you know, because I was working on a major series called Checking It Out with one of my mentors, Ada Baretta. She was an early pioneer. I was working doing this series for Hispanic teenagers at the time. I got recruited out of Lubbock to work on this film series being shot on sixteen, So that took me all over the country and I did a film on getting violence in.

Chicago that was very powerful and it was very very tough for me.

It was very very scary time, but I was able to get in and did a very powerful look at what's going on and why is there so much violence in our community. That series ended and I went to Dallas to work on a first major cable facilities called Cube. At that time, I had sent some tapes out to WGBH that I had read that were looking for people this proud you never heard from him back then for us, a three quarter inch tape a dove was expensive. So I called him and then they said what's your name?

And so Frontline again was very upstart. It was we're going to do our long documentary films. We're going to be uninterrupted by any commercials. The idea of Frontline hiring this radical Chicano producer and having him move from Texas to Boston.

To WGBH, I mean, that was a huge move. It was a huge feather in your cap. Again. We saw you as somebody who was breaking down these doors.

But it was difficult, right because you had not left Texas in that way before. Can you tell me a little bit about moving to Boston and working at a place like WGBH.

First of all, the people at GBH really didn't understand Chicano's. I mean, they didn't have anything against us, don't get me wrong, but they didn't know much about Latinos in America.

Believe it or not, Boston has its issues around race and segregation, and there's always been a Latino Latina presence, but it is Yeah.

I did the third front line of the first season on Marion Barry, the Mayor of Washington, DC, and then I did Sanctuary, and then I did Chasing the Basketball Dream. And at that point I said, look, I've got to go home. I really missed home. I missed Texas. I felt like a fish out of water in Boston. It's a beautiful town. I mean it's great, but I kind of felt like an oddball. And right before that, I

Fidel Castro marches triumphantly into Havana. It's a popular victory, a time of great hope, of great expectations.

I followed an exile back it's called Cuba Personal Journey.

My name is Antonio Gernica. I've lived in this country for more than twenty years. When I left Cuba as a child, I never really said goodbye. I thought I would soon return.

And I turned thirty in Cuba. This was in nineteen eighty three, believe it or.

Not, after twenty two years in exile, on returning with memories of yesterday's Cuba and meeting for the first time the Cuba of today.

At that point, David Fanning had seen my independent documentary and he said, Hector, why don't you work for us from Texas. I said, man, that would be great. So I came to Texas and I, did you know, eight more documentaries through my production company for Frontline. So really, Frontline me got me started.

Up on Latino USA.

Ektor Galan goes independent, creating his own production company and in the process making way for a new generation of diverse filmmakers.

Stay with us, not.

Yes, Hi. My name is Barbara Dolinsky in Simsbury, Connecticut. So I only started to listen to your program about two and a half years ago. I just felt it was right and special because even though it's Latino USA, it's for everybody. I'm very grateful I picked you up on the radio and thank you, thank you. Just stay safe.

Hey, we're back.

As part of our thirty year anniversary celebration, we're catching up with some of our favorite guests from the past three decades, and today a conversation with Ecdor Galan, who's an award winning documentarian who just before the break was telling us how he got his start in the business. Now Ekdor shares what it's taken for him to continue making films about the subjects he's passionate about for over forty years.

Here's the rest of our conversation.

So, Ector, in nineteen eighty four, you decide that you're going to go fully independent and you decide to found your own company.

It's called Galan Productions. So what about that moment?

How did you decide to come to this place of doing something entirely independently and on your own.

When I was doing these documentaries, I was doing it for the public good and trying to get themes and ideas out that I felt were very important for people to know. But then I did a film in nineteen ninety five called Songs of the Homeland, which was about Tehano music, the history of Tehano music, past hundred years, and all of a sudden that year, I started getting calls and letters of people wanting to buy the documentary

And I'm wondering what this meant for you personally, and it may have meant that it was the thing that gave you the life to be able.

To be a parent. It can also take a lot from our families.

I literally some mornings I'd wake up, you know, after having kids in over there, and say, what the hell am I doing because you're always worried about your next film, your next project, because you have to raise the money for it, and that's a very very difficult thing to do. Unfortunately, a lot of my colleagues people that started, you know, trying to do the same thing, and just.

Couldn't take it.

And I don't blame them, because you have to be very thick skinned and it's feast and famine.

But I think what really.

Grounded me was what we we're talking about. It was that period, that decade plus that I truly found my identity, who I am in this country and what it all means. And I still believe that that's the most driving force for everything that I do.

You become the series producer for Chicano, which is of series at premier on PBS Primetime, nineteen ninety six. But it was very important because you were controlling the narrative. It was the film about the Mexican American civil rights movement of the nineteen sixties and seventies.

In the nineteen sixties, a new generation of Mexican Americans created a militant social movement in response to the anger and frustration that had been building for so many years within their community.

There was two things that were very complicated in doing that series. One was funding, because there were a lot of big funders they thought were.

Radical in California and Texas. They demanded humane treatment in the fields where they labored.

Secondly, we weren't filming our movement, the Chicano movement the way say the African American Ones movement is captured. Everybody from New York was going down South filming everything, and there are such incredible arch of the black civil rights movement, it's amazing. Whereas with us, you know, a lot of us didn't have cameras or we weren't filming, so finding that material was very, very difficult.

But we did and work poor man, I mean work poor, and nobody wants to do nothing upon it. You still kissing the Democratic Party, think that they're gonna save you.

And they ain't gonna do it.

How big was it and continues to be Victor Gallan. You get invited to the White House to go screen Chicano with President Bill Clinton.

Well, I mean, you know, being a Chicano, it was an incredible experience. And you know, when I was in lovebook, working at the TV station and involved in the Chicago movement, the Rustle Nea and everything. All the sports guys and the TV people and many of the colleagues there, angels would call me a comedy, a pinko. Everything you can imagine, because I'm this radical guy.

By the way, if we have these listeners and they're like, what's a comedy pinko, well, it's a communist pinko.

Meant that you were read. I've heard these accusations, loved at you and at me.

Yeah, So you can imagine the feeling that I got thinking about that when I was sitting there with the President of the United States watching Chicago at the White House and their big private theater that they have inside.

Which is very interesting because President Bill Clinton his advisors had him working very hard to connect with Latinos and latinas he was at the launch party for Latino USA May fifth, nineteen ninety three. So your series Chicano and him deciding to watch it at the White House is kind of incredible. I mean, it's kind of like hard to imagine that that could happen today.

Well, what I do remember, of course, you know, he liked the series, but he kind of chewed us out a little bit on a Rassonita segment because he really didn't like the Rassina.

Wow.

Wow, this was early on when he was first Okay, he.

Was in Texas organizing with a Democratic Party and he didn't like, you know, that Lessonia was sucking Democratic voters away.

You know, Latino ones got you.

I see, I see.

And so it was funny listening to him about how he was really against the lesson in the part after he saw that segment, but he was. It was a vindication. I was sitting there watching it in this in the White House thinking about those days that what I endured, of what I was being called for doing what I was doing, you know, and I went, wow, they could only see me now.

I want to ask you something particular about your style, not just as a filmmaker, but actually as a human being, because you have made it a very important part of your work to mentor a lot of aspiring filmmakers and students. They've collaborated, they've worked, they've learned from you, and why is this so important for you? Actre this notion of I'm going to try and open the door. I'm going to continue to be a mentor, even though this is hard I'm going to continue to bring the next gen with me.

There's a couple of reasons.

Because I realized that a lot of the film schools, like UT and a lot of other ones, even though they're they have great film programs, a lot of these young people that I've mentored, they're missing one thing. They're real hot shots when it comes to the new technologies, not linear editing and all of that, but they lack and telling long form stories. They don't get that training. So I trained them and that's what I learned to do.

My name is me Lenn Moreno. I worked with Hector Galan during the nineties, right after film school. He introduced me to the world of public television and sent me into the stacks of Mexico's great photo and film archives to research and shape a documentary about the US's doomed hunt for Pancho Villa. I was given my first opportunity to produce, helming the lead episode of the legendary Chicano civil rights series.

From the start, Hector taught.

Me to swim by dropping me in the deep end it proved invaluable.

My name is Brian Remiitis. I'm an internationally distributed filmmaker. I worked with Hector Galan from six to seven, probably two of the most important years of my career. I was out of film school.

I would work hours on.

An edit and he'd come in and look at it and say, that's pedestrian comba. He said, anybody can do it. What separates you from everybody else? And that soon taught me that story, the way you craft a scene together has to be something special, has to be something from the heart, and you know.

That stuck with me.

Because of that, I have directed two feature films, and I even co executive croust One called Entertainment that was a Sun Dance hit, and I owe a lot to him. And I'm without Hector, I don't believe i'd be where I.

Am in my career.

You have this body of work that is incomparable in terms of documentary visually the Latino Latina experience. You went on to do documentaries called The Border Accordion Dreams. I love that ancient roads from christ to Constantine, Children of Giant, covering everything from music, film, culture, politics, and I won directed.

What do you think?

And I know it's hard, you know because most of the time we're not really busy thinking about our craft or this or that. We're just busy working. But what is your philosophy as a filmmaker and why do you think it's important to have more Latinos latin As latinx Latine who are working in the film industry and specifically in your realm and in my realm, you know, making documentaries.

You know you asked about me being in Boston.

At that point, I could have made the transition to work more in the feature film industry in LA and I was actually thinking about moving there. But because of my experience in the movement and all of that, I truly believed that the work that we were doing could change the world. And that stayed with me because what

Want to make sure that they realize that we need them to tell these particular stories because we have a perspective and if you want to be a filmmaker, documentary and don't hold back. In fact, you though you have received so many awards, we're not going to go through them all. In twenty seventeen, you were inducted into the

You know, things have of course changed, and I'm seeing that change, especially among young people. Young people are more open to many things, unlike us having to deal with our own parents and that generation. I see hope in the young people.

I really do so.

At the moment, I'm focusing a lot of my attention on Texas stories. I have like three of them on a back burner and one that I'm working on now called Bellleground Texas that will have on next year before the presidential election. Looking at young people, young Latinos here in state, how are we going to turn the state or get that representation, get that voice out there, and it's exciting to see what they're doing. Well, you know, the Latinos are the majority in the state of Texas.

So I'm hoping to keep continuing.

To do this, creating new films and using the archives, you know, for the younger people that didn't have any idea of what we went through and they can learn from that and be proud of it.

Much Ector Delan, It's been wonderful to have this conversation and to have you back on the thirtieth anniversary of Latino USA.

Much what is and for all of your work.

Thank you, Madie, this was extraordinary. I called me anytime you know, I'm ready to talk to you. Whatever you wish, and good luck and keep it up on Latino USA.

Man, we need that voice.

This episode was produced by Victoria Strada and edited by Andrea Lopez Grusado.

It was mixed by Gabriel Abiaz.

Special thanks to the staff of the Benson Latin American Collection and the University of Texas Libraries for retrieving historical content from the Latino USA archive. The Latino USA team also includes Marta Martinez, Mike Sargent, Deisi, condreds Renando Leanos Junior, Patrisa Surubran, and Elizabeth Lenthal Torres. Our editorial director is Fernanda Santos. Our director of Engineering is Stephanie lebou. Our senior engineer is Julia Caruso. Our associate engineer is jj Carubin.

Latino USA is made possible in part by the Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide, the Heising Simons Foundation Unlocking Knowledge, Opportunity and Possibilities more at hsfoundation dot org, and Latino USA thirtieth Anniversary episodes are made possible with support from our legacy sustainers, the Brett Family Foundation, Alonso Contu, Carmen Rito, Wong Vamos Enterprises,

I'm so proud to be talking to one of the most famous people in America.

Oh my godness, said Acdot. Why would you say that That's so not true?

Because we hear you in the car. We hear you at home, we hear you everywhere.

Well, that's adorable, Achdo. Thank you so much for saying so. I appreciate it.

No problem, I'm honored.