New community center opens on Tucson’s south side

The installation featured processions of local community groups and organizations that have worked with Regeneración, including the descendants of the Chinese grocery store and FUGA Tucson bike group.

Each group left an offering representing what they want the future of the Louis Market to be.

The project recognizes connections between Chinese and Mexican history in Mexico and in the borderlands, and the ways migration has impacted those communities and complicated identities.

“The community on the south side of Tucson, and south Tucson, have been incredibly welcoming to me and my work,” said Grise, who helped found A TODO DAR Productions, an organization that creates convivial projects focused on how communities generate wealth and how the arts play a role.

Iterations of the project are designed for each space where it is featured, and the Louis Market installation embodies the longstanding community of support in Tucson’s south side.

“It’s really important that they’ve chosen to call it the Center for Cultural Organizing,” Grise said. “Culture and organizing are not separate; they’re together.”

The installation and the cultural center honor traditional foodways and collective grassroots activities, like neighborhood clean-ups or demands for safer streets.

“The center becomes the place where people can gather; but the work of organizing in their communities, the work of preserving culture through language and through art has been an ongoing work of folks on the south side of Tucson,” Grise said.

Community initiatives, like the center, also highlight how connections between Mexican and Chinese communities in the borderlands region often go unrecognized, said Feng-Feng Yeh, founder of the Chinese Chorizo Project.