On June 23, 2011, the Press-Telegram (
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"New Long Beach theater celebrates Manazar Gamboa's life of redemption
By Greg Mellen, Staff writer
POSTED: 06/23/11, 12:01 AM PDT
LONG BEACH — In his first life, Manazar Gamboa was a self-described "vato loco," a product of the streets and the California correctional system.
Once upon a time, that would have been his legacy, lost in the clamor and desperation of thousands of other tragically similar stories.
However, it is a different Gamboa who will be remembered Saturday when a theater bearing his name is dedicated.
The Manazar Gamboa Community Theater, built with Redevelopment Agency money, is adjacent to the Homeland Cultural Center where Gamboa was a co-director, writing and poetry instructor and founder of the Homeland Players.
As one-time barrio street thug, Gamboa transformed himself and his life.
As a poet, artist and teacher, Gamboa created a legacy of transforming lives until his death in 2001.
One of those lives belonged to Linda Delmar, who had never written a creative word in her life before attending classes at Homeland.
"I believe he gave me a new life," Delmar said. "It changed my life. They gave me a safe place to express myself creatively."
Karla Diaz and Mario Ybarra Jr. were inspired by Gamboa to pursue lives as professional artists and to earn masters degrees in art.
"He was a friend, a mentor, a teacher," says Diaz, "we was a like a father to a lot of us."
Mike Rivera, aka "Iceman," remembers Gamboa from when Rivera began to teach dancing to the kids at Homeland shortly before Gamboa became sick.
"He was a good guy," Rivera recalls. "He liked to tell stories and talk to the kids."
"He was quite a guy, a force of nature," said Jim Ruggirello, the supervisor now at the park.
Although Ruggirello did not know Gamboa, the stories at Homeland linger. They are timeless.
Life story
The narrative of Gamboa's life certainly lends itself to legend.
Born in the hardscrabble barrio, Gamboa spent his early life with his itinerant farm worker family.
Later in his boyhood he lived in Chavez Ravine before his home was bulldozed to make room for Dodger Stadium.
He showed his rebelliousness early in school, refusing to speak in English. Later he turned to crime and drugs and would spend 17 years in prison.
In Soledad, he weaned himself from drugs and found his salvation in literature and poetry.
He read works by and about the classic poets, Yeats and Dickinson, Keats and Byron, Coleridge and Shelley.
From and through them and the writing process Gamboa found an outlet for the rage, shame and confusion from his past, what he called his "other life."
Where he had once opened a vein to drugs, he now opened it to writing and found healing.
Gamboa had his first poem accepted while in jail. He took on the pen name Manazar from his given name, Manuel, and the Hebrew, azar, which means help or teach.
A new life
After his release from prison in 1977, Gamboa became a respected voice in Chicano literature in Los Angeles.
His life stories became the tapestry for much of a prolific body work, which were detailed in works such as his self-published book "Memories Around A Bulldozed Barrio."
"I hate oppression. That's why I wrote this book," Gamboa told the Press-Telegram in 1996. "Not because it happened in my barrio, but because it happens all over the place."
Gamboa conducted thousands of writing workshops in California prisons, juvenile facilities and schools. He was president of the Beyond Baroque Foundation, a literary arts center in Venice, then came to Homeland where he would be until shortly before his death from heart and liver failure.
Stories continue
Now, Gamboa's influence lives on in others. It's in Delmar, who now teaches at Homeland. It's in Diaz and Ybarra, who founded Slanguage Studio, an arts program for youth in Wilmington. It's in Jose Martinez, who still works at Homeland and has his own graphic arts business.
And it lives in the stories told and yet to be told.
"He believed everybody has a story and he was always willing to listen to everybody's story," Delmar said.
That's the legacy Ruggirello hopes is fostered by Homeland and the Gamboa Theater in years to come.
"We want to give (people) the opportunity and the venue to tell their stories," Ruggirello said. "Homeland is about sharing the various cultures. Not just ethnic culture but the urban youth culture. Now we have a venue."
And a man's legacy."