Around 1995, I founded Grande Mesa Magazine in Denver with local writers and friends Aaron Leff, Paul Kukreja, and Tino Rivera. Grande Mesa was originally intended to be a modern ethnic publication, but the politics of that particular context were oppressive. Internal disagreement about the direction for the magazine was ever-present.

Perhaps as a result, Paul created NeoAztlan. He kept the domain and site developing it in fits and spurts until eventually letting the domain go sometime in 2003. In his mind’s eye, he could see what he wanted for NeoAztlan, but it never fully materialized.

The domain remained undeveloped for the next year and a half when I began researching a new Web project to replace the defunct GrandeMesa.com Web project which had been live for over six years.

I threw around the idea of resurrecting NeoAztlan, but it never seemed to be a good time contextually. There were other ideas which seemed to fit into my vision for a contemporary art, music and culture venue for a global audience (see DeliciousDonut.com), but I kept returning to NeoAztlan.

Finally, in 2006, I committed to the project and to the concept of a neo-NeoAztlan. It wasn’t an epiphany. It was just a defiant reaction to the recent efforts by an American society at-large to fit my round peg into a political or sociological or ideological or creative or moral square hole.

NeoAztlan would reappropriate a historically ethnic term (“Aztlan”) while preserving the important tenets of a contemporary Aztlan (peace, love, understanding). It would seek out and bring those tenets to life in the profiles of positive and influential people, places, and things in contemporary art, music and culture and it would do so without regard for race, color, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, etc.

We publish features monthly, we feature guest interviews of artists by people who are leaders in their field and we update often with news bits.

Welcome to NeoAztlan.

Steve Peralta
Founder and Editor
speralta@neoaztlan.com