Raymond Barrio
Raymond Barrio was an influential artist, writer, and educator born in New Jersey to Spanish immigrant parents. After moving to California in 1936, he pursued higher education, earning a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and later a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Art Center College of Los Angeles. Barrio’s career spanned painting, teaching modern art and Chicano studies, and writing, with his first publication appearing in 1967. His notable works include "The Plum Plum Pickers," a novel that addressed the struggles of migrant farmworkers, and various essays and articles that reflected his political engagement with social issues affecting Chicanos and the Latino community. In 1969, influenced by the plight of fruit and vegetable pickers, he wrote this seminal work, which initially faced challenges in publishing but ultimately gained recognition. Barrio also created a publishing house to share his work and later wrote a political column, further solidifying his role as a voice for marginalized communities. He died in 1996, leaving a legacy that contributes to the ongoing discourse in Chicano literature and art.
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Subject Terms
Raymond Barrio
American artist and writer
- Born: August 27, 1921
- Birthplace: West Orange, New Jersey
- Died: January 22, 1996
- Place of death: Escondido, California
Barrio was an able artist and exponent of modern art as well as a talented writer and teacher. He wrote not only about art but also about the exploitation of the Hispanic laborers by California agribusiness in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
Early Life
Raymond Barrio (BAHR-ee-oh) was born to Spanish immigrant parents in New Jersey, the elder of two boys. His parents, Saturnino and Angelita Barrio, had arrived in the United States in 1920. Saturnino died in an industrial accident when the two boys were still young. Angelita made a living as a dancer, while the boys were raised by foster parents, receiving a Protestant rather than a Catholic upbringing.
In 1936, Barrio moved to California. He entered the University of Southern California in 1941 before enlisting in the U.S. military in 1943. During the next three years, he saw active service in Europe but managed further academic study at Yale and the University of California at Berkeley. He received his B.A. from Berkeley in 1947, then went to the Art Center College of Los Angeles to study for a bachelor of fine arts degree, which he earned in 1952.
For the rest of his life, Barrio painted, taught art, and wrote. His teaching included courses on modern art, creative writing, and Chicano studies, mostly at colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay area. In 1957, he visited Mexico and met Yolanda Sánchez, whom he married. The couple had five children.
Life’s Work
Barrio’s first writing dates back to 1967. It was published by a Ventura, California, company as The Big Picture: How to Experiment with Modern Techniques in Art. A year later, he published Experiments in Modern Art, a revision of the previous work that enjoyed a New York publisher. The same year, he released Art: Seen, a much more informal, even whimsical and personal publication, consisting mainly of graphics with some commentary.
Further works on art followed. The Prism (1968) was a series of essays on art. A focus on Mexican art produced Mexico’s Art and Chicano Artists in 1975. He combined art and text in Walden: A Selection (1968), a small booklet, followed by The Fisherman’s Dwarf, a book for children, the same year. He never ceased to be active in the art world; by the end of his life, his work had appeared in eighty national exhibitions.
In 1969, Barrio made a significant change of direction. Having moved to Guerneville, California, he became aware of the plight of the fruit and vegetable pickers in Santa Clara County, a plight not dissimilar to that portrayed thirty years earlier in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Steinbeck described the exploitation of the “Okies,” migrants from Oklahoma. This time, the exploited were either Chicanos, American Latinos, or temporary farmworkers from Mexico. They had been depicted a little earlier in José Villareal’s novel Pocho (1959).
Barrio’s response was the novel The Plum Plum Pickers (1969). At first, he could find no publisher. The story’s style was ironic, fragmentray, and the subject matter politically incendiary, with contemporary attempts to unionize the migrant laborers often resulting in violent clashes. In the end, Barrio formed his own publishing house. Once the novel had sold ten thousand copies, a national publisher—Harper—offered to buy the manuscript. Later, Barrio bought it back in 1976, when the book had sold twenty-two thousand copies. Selections from the novel are now widely anthologized, especially in textbooks.
Barrio’s second description of the migrant laborer situation appeared as the playThe Devil’s Apple Corps: A Trauma in Four Acts, in 1976. Meanwhile, expanding on his political career as writer, he ran a weekly column, “Barrio’s Political Estuary,” in a number of local and national periodicals. The best of these pieces were published as Barrio’s Estuary in 1981. A further collection of political writing came out in 1985 as Political Portfolio. A further long-planned novel, Carib Blue, appeared in 1990. Barrio died in Escondido, California, in 1996.
Significance
Although he was not a Mexican American himself, Barrio identified himself politically with Chicanos, both in his art and in his writing. His lasting influence will be felt through his first novel, The Plum Plum Pickers. It is significant as an early piece of Chicano literature, a significant social statement, and also as a historical text in an ongoing social and political situation.
Bibliography
Lattin, Vernon E. “Paradise and Plums: Appearance and Reality in Barrio’s The Plum Plum Pickers.” Selected Proceedings of the Third Annual Conference on Minority Studies 2 (April, 1975). A definitive essay on Barrio’s most famous work.
Lomelí, Francisco A. “Depraved New World Revisited: Dreams and Dystopia in The Plum Plum Pickers.” Introduction to The Plum Plum Pickers, by Raymond Barrio. Tempe, Ariz.: Bilingual Press, 1984. A good introductory essay to Barrio’s novel, setting out the main themes and characters to study.
Preslar, Andrew B. “Latino Long Fiction.” In Critical Survey of Long Fiction, edited by Carl Rollyson. 4th ed. Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 2010. Places Barrio’s work in the context of other Latino writings and the social movements of his era.