Fading Defiance

 

There aren’t as many murals in my home town as I used to remember. In a segregated town such as ours was a few decades back (and I’m not talking about officially-sanctioned segregation, but instead, that which endures and flourishes because it reflects socioeconomic differences), it was always the case that the murals were found in the “Mexican” side of town. It was a marker that distinguished us as a community.

 

These particular murals are found on a wall next to the city park. The adjoining businesses are a long-standing mechanics garage and, relative newcomer, a shop for the selling and repair of lawn mowers. With regards to the latter, it seems particularly incongruous that they have not taken steps to paint over the murals. It is a shop that sells higher-end equipment, by makers such as John Deere, by which I mean to suggest that this is equipment geared towards lots with lawns that are considerably bigger than those found in adjoining residential areas.

After viewing the murals and thinking about them for a few days, I am struck by the prevalence of images of violence, decay and death. Many of the figures seem to be either mournful or angry, reflecting a tension and frustration that seems to be little uplifting.

I’ve seen murals in other spaces that project longing. There are images of doctors and nurses and labor leaders, and idyllic park settings that capture an urging for more open and verdant spaces, a locus amoenus where desires are fulfilled.

 

 

In these murals we have murals that reflect on the pageant of Mexican and Chicano history. We have a very, very dark Virgen de Guadalupe, darker than any I have seen, and her visage seems to communicate not so much a maternal abnegation but instead a type almost of indifference. She is older as well.

There is a figure of a white man with a luxuriant beard, one who seems at first glance to be a Conquistador but without the trappings or the figure of an angry God until one looks closely and determines that he must be the Mexican Prometheus, the figure known as Quetzalcoatl.

Skulls figure prominently, whether used to portray ancient Aztec warriors, dead soldiers, mournful mothers, exploitative plutocrats and yes, even jesters. Perhaps one could say that there is an equalizing impulse in the use of this motif, but also, one would have to highlight as well the way in which they are used to convey not only irony but also a sense of hopelessness. There is a certain spectacle that is conveyed with them, an insistent drumbeat in the repetition of this motif that sounds as if it projects only one mournful note. It is characteristic, perhaps, of a feeling that overwhelmed these artists during this particular moment, these murals corresponding to the late 70s and early 80s, a moment of anger and pessimism that, like the seething tensions in Los Angeles, didn't find expression otherwise. There seems to be little hope in these angry or grimacing visages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The soldier in the pageant of Mexican history is missing a hand. Although the arm is upraised, the absence of this hand also communicates futility, as if the ideals of the Revolution are ephemeral, as if they had, indeed, been illusory. Is it a reference to the missing hand of General Obregón, one of the heroes of the Mexican revolution and one of the earliest consecrated leaders in its aftermath?

The pachuco also seems angry as he stands next to his lowrider. He is defiant, threatening, with a pose that seems to convey a challenge. What a difference between him and the peasants, his forbearers, in the preceding mural, they who seem almost helpless under the weight of a historical struggle that seemed to prove so futile.

Skulls are also defiant, of course. They represent a visage that is one of the “Mexican masks” that characterize Mexican identity, if we recall Octavio Paz’s essay from his collection El laberinto de la soledad.

But skulls only grimace, they don’t nurture, they accuse and the mock. Here, in the references to a pre-Colombian Mexican past, the skulls seem threatening and even the grill of a lowrider car bears more than a striking resemblance to a skull.  What we have is a catalogue of defiance and aggression, unfortunately, with little of the lyrical quality or the baroque exuberance of murals I have seen in other communities, for example, those painted in certain areas of East Los Angeles.

Perhaps we always have felt ourselves to be embattled. There was, to reiterate an earlier point, a de facto segregation in this town when we were young, and we felt as if we (by which I am referring to the Mexican and Chicano community) were in a subservient position. But it still strikes me that these murals seem dated.

I’m not sure if muralismo or these themes of resistance and defiance, using this traditional iconography, hasn’t exhausted its power.

OGRomero © 2013
(Copyrighted by OGRomero, 2013)