Illustration of Los Cipotes band members by Camilo Ernesto Pérez Landaverde
As a part of Arts Gen’s Intergen program, Los Cipotes is a multi-platform community archive project by artist and print-maker Camilo Ernesto Pérez Landaverde. Intergen is a series of artist-led interventions that critically reflect on modes of intergenerational knowledge making and sharing.
Camilo worked with his father Carlos Alberto Pérez Hernández (known as Alberto) to document his experiences of forced displacement, creating communities away from home and grassroots organising using music.
As a displaced artist living in Narrm (Melbourne) Alberto founded musical group ‘Los Cipotes’ with other displaced El Salvadorians, playing folk political Nueva Canción music, from revolutionary Latin America.
During some of the most critical years of the civil war in El Salvador, grassroots organising raised awareness amongst the country’s people and the music from the movement reconnected displaced people of El Salvador living away from their homeland.
Camilo is currently developing an online platform that recreates moments from his father Alberto’s journey using illustration and creative writing, from fleeing San Salvador, to working as a muralist in Mexico, to grassroots political organising in Melbourne’s West. Download and read a sample of Los Cipotes here.
Camilo Ernesto Pérez Landaverde is a print based, contemporary artist from Melbourne, Australia. His work explores fractured memories, forgotten heritage, refugee diasporas, lost languages, conflict, subcultures, expectations of the young and social classes. He has tried to link his own feeling of having a fractured cultural identity, being a first generation Australian originating from asylum seeker parents.
“By being members of a student protest group, Alberto and Guillermina would attend protests and rallies, they were organised and were socially active. In these rallies, which were open to the public, there would be undercover agents taking photographs and people would be identified. Names ended up on lists, Alberto and Guillermina were on a list. Through contacts Alberto was informed, things had to move fast. The student organisation had exit strategies and contacts for people who had to leave, Mexico was the destination.” – excerpt taken from Los Cipotes
Illustration of Los Cipotes band members by Camilo Ernesto Pérez Landaverde
Still taken from archival footage of Camilo’s father Alberto performing in Los Cipotes at a community day celebration in Melbourne’s West. Year and source, unknown.
Illustration of San Salvador cityscape by Camilo Ernesto Pérez Landaverde
Midway Hostel, also known as the Maribyrnong Immigration Detention were Camilo’s parents where detained. Illustration by Camilo Ernesto Pérez Landaverde
Still taken from archival footage of Los Cipotes band performing at a community day celebration in Melbourne’s West. Year and source, unknown.