Complicated times call for new strategies. In the '80s artists from Mexico, the border region and southern California were illuminating issues of Latino politics. Some were doing more than that by actually employing art strategies to get involved in the binational political struggle. Their issues included the survival of Mexico City in a time of terrible crisis; the outlaw status of undocumented workers in the U.S.; the cultural visibility of Latinos and other ethnic groups in southern California; and the reinterpretation of reality in the borderland region between the two countries. Here San Diego-based scholar and border artist Emily Hicks positions four noteworthy activist artists in the postmodern cultural battlefield.