Con Safos

by Jenesy Lazo, Second-Year Graduate Student in the History Program specializing in American Western Expansion - October 13, 2026

In celebration of Hispanic Heritage month, this blog post will highlight the historic Chicano grassroots magazine, Con Safos. The phrase “con safos” comes from graffiti culture in predominately Hispanic American areas in East Los Angeles from the 1950s to 1960s. The tag “C/S” was used to mark artwork left by Chicano and Pachuco street artists as protection. Translated, it means “with safety” or “with respect.” The phrase grew to accumulate other meanings throughout Chicano history but was chosen by the founders as a nod to the protective culture that it reinforced. 

Con Safos was started in 1959 by two college students, Ralph López Grijalva-Urbina and Arturo Flores, at California State University, Los Angeles. They came together with the goal to create a voice for Chicanos in a tumultuous period of Mexican American history. This was no coincidence when considering that East L.A., where the CSULA campus is located, was the epicenter for El Movimiento, the Chicano civil rights movement, and the Chicano Moratorium, the Chicano movement against the Vietnam War. The sentiment created through these movements was that there was a fight on the equality of Hispanic Americans that needed to be fought on home territory, not overseas, and Con Safos was created to defend it. 

Their first publication, titled Con Safos: Reflections of Life in the Barrio, was available for sale and subscription in 1968. The first editorial introduction is an important look at what’s to come for the rest of the issues. From the get-go, the reader is told that these magazines are “an attempt at expressing the entire spectrum of feelings that are the soul of the barrio.” When flipping through the pages, the stripped back, amateur appearance is apparent and puts an emphasis on this first “attempt.” But one of the segments that stands out is the dialogue on education. The exchange begins with Joe McKnight’s “Can Anglo Education Survive in a Mexican-American School?”, which questions how an education system shaped around Anglo-American standards can function within Mexican American communities. This first article highlights the very significant issue of racial inequality in L.A.’s school district in the 20th century. The responses that follow signify the importance of dialogue and conversation on such topics within the Chicano community and set the political tone for future issues.

Con Safos hits its creative stride and begins to find their artistic style with their subsequent publications. The third edition is the first to explicitly let readers know that they welcome any submissions from its audience. This openness to contributions helped to evolve the magazine’s artistic identity. As more people were invited to contribute, the publication became a visual and literary record of the culture, concerns, and creativity of the people it attempted to represent. The inclusion of big names such as R.R. Salinas and Oscar “Zeta” Acosta, as well as other up-and-coming Chicano contributors, reflects the range of impact and perspectives that Con Safos was able to bring together. They began to include crossword puzzles, games, and quizzes that were about barrio culture, making the magazine very interactive for subscribers. Every page also has artwork from artists with wide-ranging art styles that, again, represents the diversity within the Chicano community.

It must be stated, though, that these magazines are a product of the environment and culture of their time, being both politically educational as well as raunchy and explicit. This is important to note especially when considering the voices of women and the ways in which they are portrayed, represented, and not represented throughout Con Safos. One of the biggest contradictions within Con Safos is that the magazine presents itself as an attempt to express the “entire spectrum” of life in the barrio, but that spectrum was not always equally represented. Women appear as objects, secondaries, and supporters within the magazine’s sexual and cultural imagery while women’s own voices and contributions to political organizing received considerably less attention. The contrast between the space given to men and the lack of comparable attention to women reveals how Con Safos, despite challenging racial and cultural marginalization, still reproduced some of the gender inequalities of its time.

The 1972 eighth issue, the last one to be published, ends with the words, “Con Safos is still alive…subscribe.” The subsequent ninth issue was never published after the unpublished edition was seized by the FBI, bringing Con Safos to a bitter end. Although the magazine was ultimately forced to stop publishing, its attempt to create and preserve barrio culture was successful and remains an important contribution. At the same time, looking back at Con Safos through a contemporary lens is encouraged because the magazine was not without its contradictions. Its limited representation of women and the masculine presence surrounding political activism reflect the gender inequality of the period, an issue that still needs to be discussed today. But rather than taking away from their importance, these contradictions make Con Safos a valuable artifact to examine, which you can do here in Special Collections & Archives. 
 

Post tagged as: rare books, los angeles