Cortez, Carlos A.

CORTEZ, CARLOS A. (1923-2005). Activist, editor, and poet, Carlos Alfredo Cortez was a central figure and also a coordinator of alternative culture in Chicago beginning shortly after his arrival in 1965. A member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) from 1947 onward, he served as President of the Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company from 1987 until his death in 2005.

Cortez was born in Milwaukee to a German American, socialist-pacifist mother and a Mexican-born IWW father who had participated in the San Diego free speech fight of 1912. Cortez led a lively and engaged radical life. As a young man in Milwaukee, he wrote poetry and worked at a bookshop; joined Young Peoples Socialist League in 1940; affiliated with A. J. Muste and the War Resisters League; resisted the draft and spent two years in Sandstone Federal prison in Minnesota as a conscientious objector to war. After his release from prison, Cortez joined the IWW in 1947 and worked loading trucks in a chemical factory and did other manual labor. His published his first poems, drawings and cartoons in the Industrial Worker.

From 1965, when Cortez moved to Chicago, he spoke frequently at IWW “socials,” held at Solidarity Bookshop, organized by Franklin Rosemont, Penelope Rosemont, Tor Faegre, and Bernard Marszalek. Open to all, these were held in the tradition of Bughouse Square and attended by many Wobbly old-timers and friends, including Fred Thompson, Jack and Jimmy Sheridan and Ruth Sheridan, Charles Versek, Jenny Velsek and Karl Keller. In 1966, Cortez married fellow IWW member Marianna Drogitis.

From 1969 to 1975, Cortez edited the Industrial Worker and wrote often for it. His regular column, “The Left Side,” featured a drawing of the famed Black Cat. He wrote under various names but frequently as C.C. Redcloud. His columns compare with those of T-Bone Slim, the earlier IWW longtime humorist. In 1975, Cortez helped found the first Mexican Arts Movement in Illinois, Movimento Artitico Chicano (MARCH). He also organized “Wobbly: 80 Years of Rebel Art,” a selection of IWW cartoons that toured the United States and opened in 1985 at Chicago’s UE Hall.

Inspired by the famed Mexican artist Jose Posada, Cortez had by the 1980s gone from drawing simple cartoons to doing poster-sized wood blocks and linoleum blocks and put together a tribute to Posada. He produced two widely-seen versions of a poster in honor of Joe Hill, the famed IWW martyr. He also designed and printed posters for Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company of Wobbly heroes and heroines Lucy Gonzalez Parsons, Ben Fletcher Mother Jones, and Frank Little. Several books of his poems were published by Kerr. Long a supporter of the Kerr Company— from its reorganization in 1971 by Leon Despres, with a Board of Directors that included Fred Thompson, IWW labor historian; Joseph Giganti, International Labor Defense veteran; Virgil Vogel, scholar of American Indian Medicine; and Les Orear, Illinois Labor History Society—Cortez was elected president in 1987and served until 2005. During the 1990s, his storefront/gallery on the north side, became a famous gathering place for surrealist artists and his own poetry readings. A mosaic portrait of Carlos Cortez was installed in the 1990s by his many friends, next to one of Cesar Chavez, at the Orozco School (now Cooper School) in Chicago.

Cortez, Carlos. Crystal Gazing in the Amber Fluid. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co., 1990.

Cortez, Carlos. Where Are the Voices & Other Wobbly Poems. Introduction by Archie Green. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co., 1997.

Cortez, Carlos, Ed. Viva Posada: A Salute to the Great Printmaker of the Mexican Revolution. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co., 2002.

Sorell, Victor Alejandro. Carlos Cortez Koyokuikatl: Soapbox Artist & Poet. Chicago: Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, c. 2002.

Carlos A. Cortez. Works. Smithsonian American Art
Gallery https://americanart.si.edu/artist/carlos-cortez-6203