The Mural Message

East Los Angeles is almost a separate city within Los Angeles' borders. Sliced by freeways and studded with factories, it is home to 110,000 Mexican Americans who speak Spanish, celebrate the Cinco de Mayo* and prefer tamales to hot dogs. "East Los" also has more than it share of vandalism, burglary and car thefts, in large part committed by tough Chicano gangs that mark their territory with special graffitti called placas. Yet in the past two years, there has been a remarkable change in the barrio. Reports Los Angeles Police Captain George Morrison: "Officers on foot patrol say that they notice an increase in community pride, a new awareness of self worth."

Needed Lift. What has made most of the difference is some 200 huge murals on the sides of once drab buildings. The idea of the wall paintings--which include bright abstract designs, realistic scenes of barrio life, mannered portraits of saints, Aztec warriors and campesino heroes--was conceived by the owners of a Chicano art gallery, John and Joe Gonzales, who felt that community art might give the barrio the lift it needed. They persuaded local artists to provide the inspiration, merchants the paint, fire fighters the scaffolds and residents the creativity necessary to carry out the project. The results have surprised even the Gonzales brothers.

Before, the muralists arrived, for example, the streets around the Estrada Courts housing complex were dangerous and deserted at night. Now 32 murals decorate the project and, says Resident Mary Mendoza, "it's fabulous to come out and see what beautiful paintings we have. People used to get depressed or angry and take it out on their homes. Now they take better care of them." In the Maravilla district of town, Artist David Lopez and Psychologist Sam Cepeda joined with the Arizona Gang to work on a Virgin of Guadalupe mural. After the painting was completed, gang members took a more proprietary interest in the neighborhood, and vandalism dropped sharply. "I could never get the Arizona boys to talk before," says Cepeda. "But," he adds, in typical professional jargon, "once they work on a mural, they verbalize a problem instead of lashing out blindly at society."

Many of the artists follow Mexican Muralist Jose Clemente Orozco's dictum that a mural is not a decorative piece but a screaming public message. In East Los, the message that comes through is pride in the Chicano heritage. One series of 19 murals, called "The Story of Our Struggle," show's events from Mexico's loss of the Southwest in 1848 to a present-day farm unionist cutting the chains that bind a fallen comrade. So well does the series trace the rise of chicanismo that elementary school classes are brought to study the murals as part of their history lessons.

Occasionally, themes promoting la raza are carried too far for sponsors.

The University of Southern California stopped a mural on a campus building because the artist portrayed an American flag preventing the light of education from reaching Chicano children.

But on the whole the murals have worked such alchemy that the U.S. Bicentennial Committee recently gave its backing to a new Gonzales proposal. As a result, it has commissioned 1,530 new murals throughout the entire city of Los Angeles.

* One of the most important Mexican holidays, commemorating the victory at Puebla on May 5, 1862, over the French expeditionary forces.

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