This sculpture (The Six), facilitated by Jasmine Baetz, was dedicated on September 6, 2019. Two car bomb explosions in 1974 took the lives of six Chicano activists associated with the University of Colorado Boulder.
Ms. Baetz learned about Los Seis de Boulder when she saw a documentary film while a graduate student at the University. She wondered why she had never heard of them and was shocked that nothing commemorated this major event.
The artist worked with many community and family members to research the history of that time and the lives of the students, to design the memorial, and to create the images and the mosaic tiles.
The memorial was installed on July 6, 2019 in front of the oddly named Temporary Building No. 1 (now the Albert and Vera Ramírez building). This was built in 1898 as the first University Hospital, but in 1974 it housed the offices of the Educational Opportunity Program for Hispanic students. Activist students occupied the building for several weeks to protest discriminatory actions by CU including the withholding of financial aid, student expulsions, and the dismissal of faculty. This was the background to the bombings.
There are three sites in Boulder memorializing the student activists. El Movimiento Sigue, another sculpture by Baetz, is on the northwest corner of 17th and Pearl Streets and there is a stone inscription in Chautauqua Park, at the site of the first bombing. read more