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How is art a form of protest today? The story of Chuy Renteria

  • Writer: Amy Lee Lillard
    Amy Lee Lillard
  • Dec 16, 2025
  • 3 min read

Can art be a form of protest? Does art really work as resistance? And how can you make protest art?


In times like these, it's natural to wonder if art is really important. If writing, music, performance, and other creative work really matters.


I find hope and inspiration from looking at stories of artists using their work to resist the status quo. The story of Chuy Renteria is a super powerful example to show the way.


Listen to this story!

This is a special bonus episode of The Art of Resistance, focusing on modern artists creating writing, music, and more to resist the status quo.

 

Chuy Renteria was the kid of immigrants in West Liberty. It’s a town in Iowa that has made news in the past as a supposed anomaly – a small town dominated by immigrants. The town’s meatpacking plant advertised heavily in the 1970s and 80s, recruiting Mexicans to come to this nowhere place, make a living, make a home.


In his memoir, We Heard it When we Were Young, Chuy talks about the deep complexities of growing up in West Liberty – a kid who was Mexican and American, a kid in small-town America, a kid growing up with friends that looked like him, and a kid with parents he barely understood.


When he was 14, though, he found something that would change his life.


All us 80s kids remember seeing b-boys in movies and shows, and our jaws dropping at the footwork, the speed, the ways dancers contorted their bodies. It felt like magic to watch, and still does. In researching this episode, I could see why - people who analyze breaking today see roots in kung fu, tap dance, gymnastics, and capoeira.


From the start breaking was fueled by Black and Latino dancers, and it was a way to break out of neighborhood and generational cycles in the Bronx. Over time it evolved into competitions, money-making opportunities, and today even the Olympics.


But back to Chuy. In the late 90s, at age 14, Chuy borrowed a scratchy VHS tape of a breaking battle featuring the crew Style Elements. Soon he was devoting hours every day to learning how to be a b-boy.


Chuy was rebelling like most teen kids, who see the status quo and balk. But it was more complicated than just that.

Because there was the small town Iowa masculinity of tight lips, tight hips. The only emotion allowed: anger. The only movement: work, and sports.


And compounding that, there was a Mexican immigrant masculinity, in his dad, his family, his friends, expanding on these traits.

 

As a kid exploring the eastern Iowa and greater Midwest scene, joining crews, battling, building, dance could be a gender affirming practice while also a bit of rebellion.    

 

Now, Chuy is teaching the next generation of b-boys and b-girls, hoping to bring them a tool of expression, and rebellion. And joy.

 

At the same time, he’s writing more. In a world of ICE stealing people off the street, or from an Iowa City restaurant he frequents, he’s thinking about the body and expression in new ways.

 

Art on a small scale often gets overlooked. Chuy lives and works in Iowa, where I live, and we’re not known for big names in art. But there’s power in small.


Chuy talks to kids in schools about dance, creativity, writing. He helps individual kids find something they didn’t know they’d be passionate about. He also edits the arts and culture sections in our alt-weekly paper, Little Village, where he gets to amplify other art to people in the state. And he tells his stories in small presses, where he can prioritize truth above all else.

 

That’s art as resistance.


The Art of Resistance is a podcast from Rebel Yell Creative.


SOURCES AND FURTHER READING:

 

 

 

 

 

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