Culture Clash knows the end is near. It wants to go out with a bang

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Set us as preferred Richard Montoya of Culture Clash doesn’t mince words when it comes to politics, current events or the state of mainstream Hollywood.But he does sugarcoat his technological limitations as a 67-year-old comic in the dreaded age of video calls with a punchy Chicano twist.

“I’m a low-tech Aztec,” he writes via email when requesting a Zoom link to our Monday interview.Culture Clash — which includes members Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Sigüenza — arrived on the scene as a guerrilla sketch theater group from the San Francisco Mission District in 1984.By that time, the Chicano movement had reached its peak, thanks to the United Farm Workers labor movement, as well as student activist organizations like Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), which advocated for Chicano unity, political empowerment and educational access.

Luis Valdez, founder of El Teatro Campesino — who began putting on social justice-oriented plays for the striking Delano farmworkers in 1965 — backed the slapstick satire troupe, considering the trio “the cutting edge of fresh, new Latino comic genius.” Culture Clash stood out in a time when Chicanos became more vocal and visible — and its members challenged an entertainment industry that has historically lacked Latino representation.Between 1993 and 1996, Culture Clash hosted its own self-titled TV show on the syndicated Fox network.

The show, which was filmed at the Mayan Theater in downtown Los Angeles, is widely considered the first Latino sketch comedy to air on American television.Throughout the last four decades, Culture Clash has parodied nearly every prominent Latino figure in history, including Che Guevara, Frida Kahlo, Ritchie Valens, Rita Moreno, Edward James Olmos and others.

Its members have mocked hard-shell cholos and gangsters, often by plac...