SAN ANTONIO — Chuco Garcia first embraced the Chicano Culture back when he was in high school. 

What You Need To Know

  • Garcia is only 29 but he’s a Chicano from the Souhtside of San Antonio who knows his history. 

  • After Garcia received a kidney transplant when he was 23, he started to document things through film. 
  • Garcia was called to the stage to talk about a recent documentary he filmed.

“I’ve always been intrigued by the style, by the culture and the ranflas, the cars, and everything like that just intrigued me to get into and know my history about it,” Garcia said. 

Garcia is only 29 but he’s a Chicano from the Souhtside of San Antonio who knows his history. 

“When people were being Nikes and Adidas for the first day of school I was buying Stacey Adams,” Garcia said. 

Garcia says people always thought he was in a clika, which is a gang but he was just a chill chavalo who couldn’t get into trouble — even if he wanted too — it’s because of the health issue that he dealt with.

“When I was eight months old, I had a liver transplant, by the age of 19,20 I was already on dialysis,” Garcia said. 

After Garcia received a kidney transplant when he was 23, he started to document things through film. 

“I just learned on my own, I picked up a chafa (cheap) editing software, my computer would get all frozen,” Garcia said. 

Garcia put on his burgundy zoot suit, and stopped by the Guadalupe Cultural Arts on San Antonio’s West Side for a film festival called CineFestival. 

Garcia was called to the stage to talk about a recent documentary he filmed. 

“What’s happening raza, this is Chuco Garcia, the documentary I put together is about Dimas Garza its called You’ve Succeeded: The Life & Times of Dimas Garza,” Garcia said on stage. 

Garza’s a legendary Chicano Soul artist from the West Side of San Antonio, who passed away in 2008. Garcia’s connection to Garza is his through  love for 45s, which are 7-inched records. 

“His voice is so distinct,” Garcia said. 

So distinct that he swayed this young Southside man to preserve Garza’s legacy. 

“It’s our roots, we got to keep it alive, si no, it gets forgotten, man,” Garcia said. “You know its important, man, it’s like a history class because they don’t teach us that in school.” 

After the festival Garcia went to spin oldies records at The Lighthouse Neighborhood Lounge, a bar on San Antonio’s West Side. 

Ruben Molina was also spinning records that evening. Molina is an author and historian from East Los Angeles and he was also featured in Garcia’s documentary on Garza. 

“I just really felt it time for us, as a raza, to start documenting our own stories,” Molina said. 

Molina’s done it through his book Chicano Soul: Recordings & History of an American Culture, where he featured the West Side sound. This created the opportunity for Garza’s’ song You’ve Succeeded to be placed in the Smithsonian. 

“It is important for generations to follow, to see that footsteps have been laid in the right direction ,” Molina said. 

Garcia believes that the right path is simple — document Chicano culture at all costs.

“As long as its they’re in libraries, in books, in film format or audio format, it’ll stay alive,” Garcia said.