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March 17, 2018

Mural Tour With Pete Galindo

The tour was presented by LACMA as an extension of their PST LA/LA exhibition Found in Translation. The fun started as soon as we left LACMA, as leader Pete Galindo talked about the context of the murals, rooted in the Chicano Moratorium of the late ’60s. He stressed that they were more than artistic expression, but also as political broadsides and a form of social media, long before the days of Facebook and Twitter, in a time when the traditional media were largely closed to this minority community and the schools were too often contemptuous of the people they were supposed to be serving. (Pete: I wasn’t really taking notes; please let me know what I got wrong.)

City Terrace murals by Willie Herron

First stop was the alley in the East LA neighborhood City Terrace where artist and punk rock star Willie Herron grew up and where he painted this iconic mural, The Wall That Cracked Open, one night in 1972, with materials he had on hand, on the spot where his 15-year-old brother had just been stabbed 11 times. The mural has been painted over and restored (twice, I think).

The artist joined us and we viewed two other murals in the alley.

Asco: East of No West was commissioned by LACMA in 2011 and depicts a 1972 street performance Walking Mural.

A third mural features Quetzalcoatl, the iconic plumed serpent of prehispanic Mexico. It was partially destroyed by the county’s anti-graffiti brigade.

Around the corner, Herron and a partner are restoring La Doliente de Hidalgo, (Hidalgo’s Pain), a beautiful piece in the tradition of the great Mexican muralists. The central figure of Miguel Hidalgo, Mexico’s George Washington, is a conscious tribute to the great painting by José Clemente Orozco at the Palaciode Gobierno in Guadalajara. Not only that, its breadth of scope suggests the masters’ work, with icons of the deep past, the suffering of the poor, and a hopeful look forward to the better future.

The mural was painted in 1976 for the facade of a pharmacy that occupied the building. The owner saw the alley murals and wanted Herron to have a more visible canvas. Unfortunately, the very spot where he painted Hidalgo’s face had a structural defect that caused rapid deterioration. He first restored the mural in 1990 for the Los Angeles Festival.

I believe you could walk past this mural every day, and every day you would see something new.

The Soul of the Bario, by the East Los Streetscrapers (see another great mural by the Streetscrapers at  ¡MURALES REBELDES! LA Chicana/o Murals Under Siege)

Murals of Ramona Gardens

Back on the bus…short drive…walk across pedestrian bridge over the I-10 to Ramona Gardens. Look it up on Wikipedia. You might get the wrong impression; certainly nothing like the full picture. The opening paragraph mentions public housing, the Big Hazard street gang, the Mexican Mafia, illegal drugs. Nothing about the murals, or the community they depict. And quite a few of the gang and violence incidents that the page reports are decades old.

I don’t know, maybe someone should edit this Wikipedia page. Pete?

Toypurina, the central figure of the ART HEALS mural at the Ramona Gardens Boys and Girls Club, was an indigenous healer who led a 1785 revolt against the missions.

We had already discussed the LA gang injunction that was declared unconstitutional in December. Pete told how eight members of his family  – everyone but the little children and aged grandparents who had gathered after an athletic awards program here – were arrested under the gang injunction. All charges were dropped, but only after years of legal battles and associated costs. When the injunction was lifted, a major vehicle of police oppression was eliminated.

En Memoria de los Homeboys y las Homegirls

Police don’t like this one, and tried to have it removed, but it’s still here.

Named after a local park which is named after LA Mayor Henry T. Hazard (1889-1892), Hazard Grande is the local gang, but listening to Pete, I realized that the relationship between the gang and the neighborhood was much more nuanced than I had thought. If you live in Ramona Gardens and walk across the pedestrian bridge to another neighborhood, you can be jumped by a rival gang whether you have “signed up” or not. If you live in Ramona Gardens, you have friends and relatives who are part of . Hazard Grande.

See also ¡MURALES REBELDES! LA Chicana/o Murals Under Siege, featuring eight murals that have been destroyed, whitewashed, censored and neglected, including The Wall That Cracked Open and L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective.