美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Murales Rebeldes!': These Disappearing LA Murals Mirror Their Community

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Now we're going to tour the threatened Chicano murals of East Los Angeles.

Most of the shops have signs in Spanish. There are places selling fruit juice, wedding dresses. And in a little storefront, a bunch of women are exercising to Latin music.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SHAPIRO: We're standing 1 at the corner of Cesar Chavez and Soto Street in the middle of the Boyle Heights neighborhood, which is a Latino neighborhood where there are Chicano murals that were painted largely in the '60s, '70s and '80s reflecting the political debates of the time, whether it was over education, the Vietnam War, civil rights. One of these murals right in front of us is called "El Corrido De Boyle Heights," "The Ballad 2 of Boyle Heights." And it shows a woman singing in the center of the image surrounded by men - one with a guitar, one with a violin - people dancing on the side. It's an exuberant 3, brightly colored image.

ERIN CURTIS: Los Angeles during this time in the 1970s and moving into the 1980s became known as the mural capital of the world.

SHAPIRO: Erin Curtis is the curator of a new exhibit in Los Angeles called "Murales Rebeldes," or "Rebellious 4 Murals." The show highlights surviving murals and some that no longer exist, documenting the Chicano political movement that animated 5 Mexican-American communities in Los Angeles.

CURTIS: Some murals have been painted over as neighborhoods change. Other murals have been censored 6 or contested because of their political content.

SHAPIRO: It's an interesting juxtaposition 7. We're standing on a busy street with corner stores. It looks like a relatively 8 low-income area. And at this intersection 9 is a huge piece of art that looks like it could be hanging in any fine art museum depicting 10 the life of this neighborhood.

CURTIS: Chicano muralists really worked on breaking down those distinctions between high art and low art. They often worked outside of museums because institutional spaces didn't welcome Chicano artists at that time. So they forged their own paths and started to work in a different style. They worked on walls outdoors. They did these murals with the input 11 of the local community.

SHAPIRO: There is an almost kind of fetishization of street art these days...

CURTIS: Yes.

SHAPIRO: ...Where Banksy can paint something on the side of a building and suddenly it's worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Is it strange to see that happening at the same time that these Chicano murals that have been around for decades are being torn down, painted over and destroyed?

CURTIS: It's not particularly strange to me. I think that it speaks to the collective value that we place on artworks based on who is making them. They're...

SHAPIRO: You're saying we value artwork by Chicano artists less than we value artwork by a Brit like Banksy.

CURTIS: I absolutely am saying that, yes, in many cases. Now, I want to be clear that within this community this work is valued. But often outside this community it's not seen in the same way and not regarded in the same way.

SHAPIRO: A bus stops in front of this mural, and men and women from the neighborhood pile out.

RITA CHAVEZ: My name is Rita Chavez, 85. You can go to any place and see murals, and it'll tell you what you see in the mirror.

SHAPIRO: So what does this one tell you about what you see in the mirror?

CHAVEZ: Well, what I see here is that this is kind of poor area or middle class. It depends where you live. And it tells you the children you raised. You know, some kind of sad, some happy. But it's trying to tell you the past, what they've been through, and what they're going through now.

SHAPIRO: Next, curator Erin Curtis takes us to see a mural that has been mostly destroyed. It's at a carwash. Both these works of art are by an artist's collective called East Los Streetscapers. One of the painters in the group is Wayne Healy. He's now 71 years old. And he met us at this second mural, which is called "Filling Up On Ancient Energies." When he painted it for a gas station on this site, it was about 20 feet long and 6 feet tall. Now just one small section remains 12, mostly hidden behind a wall of tires. It shows two Mayan deities 13 and a jaguar 14. Healy told me one of his goals with these murals was to fight negative stereotypes 15.

WAYNE HEALY: One of the things that was motivating that was negative images that were always heaped on us in the movies. You know, you go to the curio shop and you see the Mexican asleep under the cactus 16, stereotypes like that.

SHAPIRO: So you wanted to portray 17 different images of your community?

HEALY: Exactly. I wanted people to look at the mural and think of it as a mirror. They would see themselves in it and would feel good about themselves. Yeah, that's us.

SHAPIRO: Do you think they did make people feel differently about themselves?

HEALY: Absolutely. I can recall a time when I'm painting and some lady's - I look down and she's crying. She's saying, you're telling our story.

SHAPIRO: Wow.

HEALY: You know?

SHAPIRO: A gas station commissioned this mural in 1980. And in 1988, the gas station decided 18 to tear it down. As painful as it may be to see your artwork destroyed, isn't it the right of the gas station that decided to commission it in the first place?

HEALY: Absolutely. It's his right to do what he wants with his property. The law doesn't say you're stuck with our mural. The law says give the artist a chance to remove the mural, take pictures of the mural or do nothing with the mural. But give them 90 days.

SHAPIRO: The law that he's talking about only exists because Healy and other members of his art collective sued Shell for tearing down the wall without telling anybody. The California Art Preservation 19 Act is one step the state has taken to try to preserve some of this art and history. I asked Healy to describe what this mural would have looked like when it was complete.

HEALY: It's about 6 feet tall. And then you'd see dinosaurs 20 sinking into the muck of eons of time, converting themselves into fossil fuels. You'd see a refinery 21. You'd see low riders, which is a car culture of East LA, and they'd be getting filled up. You'd see a car full of guys and a car full of girls flirting 22 at each other as they're cruising down Whittier Boulevard.

SHAPIRO: These murals were painted decades ago, speaking to the issues of that time. Do you think that the murals speak to today's issues? Or are they just historical artifacts?

HEALY: They're relevant. Excuse my confidence. They're timeless. History is timeless.

SHAPIRO: The exhibition "Murales Rebeldes!: LA Chicana/Chicano Murals Under Siege" opens in downtown Los Angeles next month, and the book is out now.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE PREMIERS SONG, "GET ON THIS PLANE")