WEBVTT

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We tip you off of what we talked and then I'll just when we get the camera rolling I'll

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repeat some sort of little question to tell you to go.

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So let me just first, the first thing that we talked about.

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Susan wait for my cue before you.

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You're going to get her started.

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Scene one, take one, roll one.

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Okay so if you could tell us about.

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Wait for my cue.

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Let me.

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Okay go ahead Susan.

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Okay if you could tell us a little bit about Ayutlal coming to Chicago.

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Well I grew up in a very small town and they call Ayutla Jalisco which was around 2000

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at that time but it was pretty much spread in a valley, lots of mountains.

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And at the time that I was there as a child they had just built a dirt road that went

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through there.

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This town happened to be on the way of a very popular place called Talpa which is where

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a virgin was supposed to be doing miracles so it was actually an exciting place to be

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at and that's probably why they built that road.

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Pretty rural people made their living by planting corn.

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They had their own cows and had their own gardens and things like that, fruit gardens

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and vegetable gardens.

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That was in contrast to Chicago where the house I remember where we moved to didn't

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have even a yard.

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It was one big apartment building and my mother was very concerned about safety so we spent

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most of the time inside the house which was a two bedroom where there was usually three

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or four kids and we got up to eight people so it was quite crowded.

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The coming, the change, the switch was quite shocking.

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When I was used to going hiking up the hills by myself or just with another kid even at

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the age of eight we usually accompanied our cousins going hiking or we went to the river

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to wash clothes.

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Here we couldn't go out at all so the restrictions, the limitations and that sense of fear too.

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We didn't know many people around in Chicago.

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Over there we knew everybody.

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The other things was again I was so used to the mountains and we had two rivers that sort

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framed the town with mountains on the other side and so I missed it terribly.

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I missed it.

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Weather was completely different, different climate.

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There was usually in the 70s we had our dry season and rainy season here.

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We came in the fall so winter was quite a surprise with the snow.

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I was curious initially but after a while it was just too cold.

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So it was very different and I've forgotten the flavor or I've tried very much to forget

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the emotional flavoring of this big change, rather big change.

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Scene two, take one.

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Oops, sorry.

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It's late.

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Here it's still a little bit.

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Scene two, take one.

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It's a lot quieter now.

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Okay, Sue.

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Okay, so if you could tell us a little bit about the background of the problems in the

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community and the coming of the murals.

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Okay, as a child and a teenager there was a strong sense of isolation, of being different

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and not in a good way.

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The difference was negative.

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There were few people like me in the neighborhood and we didn't have the same kinds of shelter,

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the same kinds of food.

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Everything was very different.

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And there was also a lot of sense that we couldn't do anything about the isolation,

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the problems which were a lot of gang violence, city services not being provided, et cetera,

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et cetera, just a lot of things.

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So we started going to Howe House, which in the early 70s became Casa Aslan, which was

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a place for immigrants to go and find services and find about information.

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And it was going to Casa Aslan, especially after they started painting murals that I

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think the community as well as myself broke from that sense of isolation.

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Okay, very good.

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Good.

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Why they were important.

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Speed.

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Scene three, take one.

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Okay, Sue.

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So tell us a little bit about the murals at Casa Aslan.

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For a child's eyes or even a teenager's, when you are feeling, again, very isolated,

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seeing these giant figures on the wall of people that looked like you, of people that

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you read about as you were growing up, people that my grandfather used to talk about.

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He didn't know how to read and write, but he could tell us stories about the revolution

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and it was like bringing memories of home, memories of home.

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So they had a special coloring of emotional coloring besides the vibrancy of the very

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murals themselves.

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And they became a way that I felt as a community we were expressing our memories of home and

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our hopes for the future.

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The some of the murals at Casa Aslan, the initial ones again, were pretty much of sort

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of a revolutionary theme, which is what we needed.

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We felt that we had a break free, we had a something had a change in the community.

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And the fact that these were paintings of people who had successfully changed things,

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that was very important.

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And so there was layer upon layer of emotional impact.

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So that going there was inspiring overall.

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And Florida is also the bringing, commented skylines.

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Scene four, take one.

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We'll come back to anything you think we're missing.

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Scene four, take one.

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Okay, Susan.

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Okay, the theme of old and new.

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I think what the murals provided the observer, and that's people in the community, was with

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a visual image of integration or at least transition from past homeland to present home.

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And you will find in a lot of the murals either skylines of Chicago and skylines are usually a rural

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place or maybe like an island, things like that.

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So it brought in a sense generations together because, for example, at my house we talked about

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oh, this is the way it was and that's the way it was back home.

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And that was integrated.

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Usually, at least some of the murals provide with a transition, a transition, visual transition

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where you're here in the new home.

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Certain murals that have more of a pessimistic or at least a realistic depiction of what was going on

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in the neighborhood then go from the heroic past with temples of the Aztecs to depictions of the city

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where there's crime and gangs and pain and suffering.

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And the optimistic ones, the ones that I think sort of go beyond just a realistic depiction,

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then offer a solution, a way out of that.

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So it unified generations.

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And then, of course, parents could tell their kids about the past and their roots, which they felt proud of.

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And offered, in a sense, hope that the future could also be glorious.

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Again, the themes, there was a lot of glorious past heroic events.

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And so it's not surprising at all to see Indian symbols, historical Indian themes,

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together with new things that are going on in the city, here in Chicago, mostly.

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I think I'm about to sneeze.

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Scene six, take one.

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My favorite murals were the ones that depicted some kind of protest or expressed outrage.

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They expressed my feelings at the time about what was going on in the community.

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And it made public the fact that there were a lot of things that were socially outrageous.

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That's what they were.

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And for example, it still is one of my favorite ones, was the one that displays the banner of the Cesar Chavez Union workers.

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I was very much aware of the conditions under which migrant agricultural workers lived.

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Because one of my father's brothers was a migrant worker.

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And they had never been able to get anywhere.

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So I know that my family and families that lived around us supported the Lutleto strikes and boycotts.

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And again, we had attempted to express to the city what was going on.

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The other thing that happened was we weren't getting public city services,

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like having our streets clean or our garbage picked up on a regular basis.

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And the sidewalks were full of potholes and it was dangerous for kids to be on the sidewalks.

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So those things, again, there was a sense of outrage.

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And the usual channels for communicating this weren't there.

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Some murals provided a channel.

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If this was happening, someone was going to see it.

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And again, the size of the murals was very important.

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It had to be something big or someone big expressing this, which the artists were very good at capturing.

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If you could talk about the size, start with that, the size and why it needed to be big.

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To a lot of us, the problems were gigantic in proportion.

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So the size of the figures had to be gigantic in proportion to fight the problems in the community.

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Also, the size was important.

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And again, large figures could not be ignored in that sense, too.

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The coloring of the human figures also, of which denoted a sense of determination with the dark browns and oranges and reds,

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and a sense of strength.

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So that sense of we are determined to do something.

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And again, I'm visualizing at this point the figure in the mural called Si Se Puede, a very strong hand holding the banner.

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And again, the title of it, that yes, it can be done.

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And it was an inspiring thing at the time.

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It was revolutionary, too, because everybody felt that no, you couldn't do anything.

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Things were going to stay the same.

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And again, the artists captured very well what was needed.

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Scene seven, take one.

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If you could talk about how the murals helped to bring families together.

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The murals played an important role in opening up communication, not only in the community, between families, but within families as well.

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For example, I know that in my own family and also those of friends, as we were getting over the shack of moving to such a different place,

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there was a lot of silence.

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And I think the silence had to do with not finding words to express how the changes had affected us.

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And as we started seeing these murals being painted and depicting figures that we were familiar with, we started talking about the past.

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As we started talking about home, the old home.

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And it was a neutral thing that we all could have our input, be it as basic as we like the colors of this or we don't like the colors or as complicated about what does it all mean.

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And I can see fragments of old symbols and new ones.

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So it slowly, almost in a way that it could not be perceived, allowed us an avenue for communicating events, experiences, but also emotion.

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Emotion about the past as well as the transition into the present.

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Okay.

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Again, does that make sense? You remember this? You still feel the same way?

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No, yes.

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Scene eight, take one.

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Get ready to...

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How the murals spark a process in you.

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From my own perspective, a variety of issues dealt with in the murals, not only in the Pilsen community, but also in other parts of town.

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It also opened more of a social consciousness.

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I think that since I come from an extended family where you are socializing to being aware of other people's needs and the connectedness between people,

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the murals were sort of windows into other communities aside from the Pilsen community, aside from my own family.

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And so there was the curiosity. It was sparked again.

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And I read extensively about, in the newspapers, magazines, about what was going on elsewhere.

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What was going on in California with the movement there, what was going on in other places in the United States, in Mexico, Central America, things like that.

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That combined with my going to a public university where people from all kinds of cultural backgrounds and nations came to learn.

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That sort of fostered and nurtured that sense of awareness about other people, other cultures, differences, but now no longer in a negative sense, rather as a very positive thing.

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Scene nine, take one.

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Some of the murals were on a certain level the unconscious or even the dreams of the community.

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And dreams are very essential in a person, in the process of becoming the person one dreams of becoming.