José Montoya is a Chicano activist, artist, teacher artist, and musician. Montoya grew up in San Joaquin Vally whereupon he accompanied his father in the crop fields. By doing so Montoya gained a first hand understanding of the living conditions that migrant farm workers underwent.
Through his experiences on the farm his activism, poetry, and art sprung up. His work in the Royal Chicano Air Force artists’ collective was primary in support of Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers movement to secure fair labor standards.
Montoya’s drawings—numbering in the thousands—drew inspiration from the verdant fields, farm towns, and port cities of post-war California and expressed affection for their inhabitants. Alive and pulsating with the rhythms of Beatnik-era California, Montoya’s drawings depicted pachucos and cholas, soldiers and sailors, campesinos and revolutionaries. An abundant harvest of characters occupied his drawings, snapshots of Montoya’s world, the field and the barrio, and a common Chicano history.
Sources
Royal Chicano Air Force Art 