Roberto “Beto” De La Rocha’s Story
Before joining Los Four in 1973, Beto de la Rocha had already established himself as an active and committed artist within the East Los Angeles community. He earned his MFA from California State University, Long Beach, where he developed his technical skills and began to shape his unique artistic voice. Deeply influenced by Indigenous iconography and Chicano cultural traditions, Beto became a prominent figure in local activist art circles.
El Malcriado, so they say…
Before Beto was up on gallery walls or making history with Los Four, he was already making noise, but rather with ink, papel, and a radical printing press. In the mid-1960s, long before Chicano art hit mainstream, Beto found himself behind the scenes of El Malcriado, the underground newspaper launched by César Chávez and the United Farm Workers.
First published in 1964, El Malcriado was run and written by migrant workers. The paper denounced the harsh, exploitative conditions faced by Mexican and Filipino farm laborers during the 1960s and 1970s. It also highlighted the brutal wages, poor housing, and inhumane working conditions that defined life in the fields; long before these struggles made their way into academic discourse or museum exhibits. This wasn’t just any newsletter but as many say it was la voz del pueblo since it printed in both Spanish and English, una mezcla that felt just right for the people it served. The readers would mostly be migrant farmworkers and young Chicanos in need for dignity and justice. Inspired by revolutionary Mexican print media, El Malcriado incorporated sharp political commentary, satire, and visual art that echoed the strength of the working class. Under the guidance of Chávez and its first editor, Bill Escher, the paper regularly featured powerful illustrations and political cartoons that broke down complex issues into visual stories.
Artists like Beto, helped shape this visual rhetoric, blending Indigenous motifs with labor imagery and street aesthetics. Beto worked as the art editor during its most radical and influential years, likely from around 1965 to the early 1970s. His involvement began shortly after the paper’s founding in 1964 and aligned with major farmworker actions like the Delano grape strike. Much of El Malcriado’s early popularity can be traced to its involvement in the Delano grape strike led by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) in the mid-1960s. The newspaper didn’t just report on the strike, it mobilized readers to join it. Tens of thousands of copies circulated not just in California’s Central Valley but throughout barrios in Los Angeles and across the Southwest. It was passed from hand to hand, in the fields, on picket lines, and in union meetings, making it a living, breathing document of resistance. During this time, Beto helped shape the newspaper’s powerful visual identity through politically charged illustrations and layout work. As internal tensions within the United Farm Workers grew and editorial control tightened, El Malcriado’s tone softened, and by the early 1970s, the paper began to fade; just as Beto transitioned into his next chapter as a founding member of Los Four in 1973.
Inspired by revolutionary Mexican print media, El Malcriado incorporated sharp political commentary, satire, and visual art that echoed the strength and dignity of the working class. Under the guidance of Chávez and its first editor, Bill Escher, the paper regularly featured powerful illustrations and political cartoons that broke down complex issues into visual stories. Artists like Beto, helped shape this visual rhetoric, blending Indigenous motifs with labor imagery and street aesthetics. Beto worked as the art editor during its most radical and influential years, likely from around 1965 to the early 1970s. His involvement began shortly after the paper’s founding in 1964 and aligned with major farmworker actions like the Delano grape strike. Much of El Malcriado’s early popularity can be traced to its involvement in the Delano grape strike led by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) in the mid-1960s. The newspaper didn’t just report on the strike, it mobilized readers to join it. Tens of thousands of copies circulated not just in California’s Central Valley but throughout barrios in Los Angeles and across the Southwest. It was passed from hand to hand, in the fields, on picket lines, and in union meetings, making it a living, breathing document of resistance. During this time, Beto helped shape the newspaper’s powerful visual identity through politically charged illustrations and layout work. As internal tensions within the United Farm Workers grew and editorial control tightened, El Malcriado’s tone softened, and by the early 1970s, the paper began to fade; just as Beto transitioned into his next chapter as a founding member of Los Four in 1973.
Beto’s time with El Malcriado predates his involvement with Los Four, but it was foundational to his development as both an artist and activist. Working with the paper taught him that art could be much more than aesthetic but rather it could be la herramienta de lucha, a tool for community education, cultural reclamation, and political resistance. His experience there shaped the voice he would bring into the collective, grounding his later mural and gallery work in highlighting community struggle.
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El Malcriado, so they say…
Beto’s time with El Malcriado predates his involvement with Los Four, but it was foundational to his development as both an artist and activist. Working with the paper taught him that art could be much more than aesthetic bur rather it could be la herramienta de lucha, a tool for community education, cultural reclamation, and political resistance. His experience there shaped the voice he would bring into the collective, grounding his later mural and gallery work in grassroots struggle.
Beto’s Hiatus
In the mid-1970s, during what should have been a high point in his career, Beto de la Rocha experienced a profound spiritual and personal crisis that led him to destroy nearly all of his early artworks. This moment came shortly after the landmark 1974 Los Four exhibition at LACMA, where Chicano art was brought into a major American museum for the first time. Although Beto had contributed to the collective’s foundation and early vision, the sudden visibility and institutional attention conflicted deeply with his evolving beliefs.
Struggling with the tension between public recognition and private conviction, Beto turned inward. He began to feel that the art world, especially its commercial aspects, was misaligned with the moral and spiritual values he was coming to embrace. Rooted in a strict, almost ascetic form of Christianity, Beto came to see his previous artwork as “graven images,” a reference to biblical prohibitions against idol-making. As an act of cleansing and renunciation, he gathered nearly all of his early paintings and drawings and burned them in a backyard bonfire, an intentional erasure of his past work and public identity as an artist.
This act marked the beginning of a roughly 20-year period of self-imposed isolation. He retreated from the art scene entirely, stopped exhibiting or collaborating, and focused instead on spiritual study, fasting, and living a quiet life in his father’s Lincoln Heights home. Beto didn’t stop making art forever, but for decades, he created only privately, if at all, disconnected from the collective that he helped shape.
His destruction of his own work is one of the most radical acts of refusal in the history of the Chicano art movement, a rejection not only of fame but of the very system that had begun to institutionalize what was once grassroots and rebellious. While painful to many who admired him, this moment speaks volumes about his uncompromising integrity and the deeply personal nature of his artistic journey.