Cyclona and Early Chicano Performance Art : An Interview With Robert Legorreta

J. Sternad

Robert Legorreta, also known as Cyclona, dates his earliest street performances to 1966. Only fourteen years old at the time, he regularly donned women's clothing, false breasts, and thick makeup and paraded along Whittier Boulevard, the main commercial thoroughfare in East Los Angeles. He was often met with open hostility and threats of physical assault from passersby and harassment from the police. Legorreta took these extreme reactions as artistically and politically instructive; he learned how to generate a public reaction using only his body and homemade attire, and this became the foundation for his lifelong career as a performer, activist, and self-described "political art piece."