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I really have never talked to anybody about murals, but when the subject came up that

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I talked to my mother, she said it would be something interesting, something nice.

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And my point of view is something that symbolizes what our Mexican culture is really about.

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But we never really talked about that in our neighborhoods.

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We've been several times at Jesus Garcia, the elder man of our 22nd ward, we have mentioned

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that we want more murals around 2016.

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I don't know what really goes on about that.

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What does he say?

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He says that he'll try and find someone to do it, to organize it, and read books to,

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to get an artist to do that.

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So he's just sort of interested in that?

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But what's really more interesting, what people in our neighborhood are really interested in

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right now is to get everything fixed up, get rid of the gang violence, clean up the streets more.

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You have a lot of gangs in your area?

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Not anymore as before.

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What are the main gangs in your area?

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My area is just gang kings. That's about it.

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They're big, aren't they? They're big.

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They're a pretty big gang.

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Yeah. Well you see their stuff all over the place.

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There's some where we live too.

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But I'm not thinking about that.

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That's a crown, right?

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Yeah, it's a crown. Or a king, you know, with a large crown.

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So why do you think, like you say, people want murals? Why do you think people want them?

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One of the reasons I understand for is to get, to keep the people that do graffiti or game signs

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to keep that off the walls.

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Because when there's a, as long as there's a mural up, nobody's going to, you know,

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everybody will respect it and nobody's going to ruin it or anything.

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Why do you think that is, they respect that?

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Our neighborhood, because a lot of people are proud of their Mexican culture.

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So they really are associating that then.

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Do you think, do you think like, where you live, people really are interested in sort of in like becoming kind of what,

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kind of special neighborhood or sort of taking charge of things?

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Yeah, that's what we mostly want to prove, especially us Mexicans,

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that we are not just another small minority group, that we are a powerful minority group.

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A minority group that can do anything they want.

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If you were wandering around the city and you come to a neighborhood that you don't know that well

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and you see murals, what would that mean to you?

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Well, I really wouldn't know exactly unless I see what the mural is about.

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You know, because each mural symbolizes a different thing.

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Like for instance, the mural on 25th and Pulaski is,

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and Banos Azteca symbolizes the Aztec heritage, how the Aztec used to live, and the way they used to bathe.

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You're pretty good at reading all the symbols.

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You think most people are?

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The graffiti symbols, artistic graffiti, most teenagers are good at reading those.

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Oh, I lost $6,000.

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What about some of the different symbols like Quetzal Fátima? Most people know what those are.

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Yeah, because most people are Mexican heritage and they have studied or have seen at least read

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or have at least read a book of Mexican history.

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I see.

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They would just about know, Potemoc, Esacal, Montezuma, and other such gods.

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So it sounds like most people really know a little bit about their past.

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You know what's interesting, actually, because they were just telling me,

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we went by that one barbershop, and I was talking about the barbershop,

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and they were like, well, that was fun, but, and you were saying that your grandfather was, right?

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No, my great grandfather, he was in the revolution.

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And there's pictures of him with Pancho Villa.

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Really? How fun. That would be cool.

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Are there some memories in your family, some things that people talk about that people recall?

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My mother says that she remembers my uncle, my great grandfather talking about the Civil War,

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I mean the Civil War, the revolution.

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And they have some stuff from the revolution.

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I thought it was the Civil War too.

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And they have some stuff from the revolution right there, my grandmother says.

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Was your grandmother alive during the revolution or no? Ended in 1920.

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Hold on. I just, I know that my grandfather, my mother's father, was born in 1910.

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You were a program, right?

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I don't know exactly.

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So you would have been 10 when it ended.

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It would have been around 10 years when it ended, because it took quite a long time.

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And it still continued after it was officially declared over because of all the,

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Pancho Villa and all this. Pancho Villa got killed about, what was it, 19 years after the war ended.

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No, 9 years after the war ended. He got killed in what was it, 1929?

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What do people think when they hear his name?

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What I think, what I think myself, is a hero for Mexico, for the campesinos,

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which are people who grow corn and other products.

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Someone struggling for farmland and people's rights.

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Yeah, same with him and Villa.

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Agrarian reform?

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Yeah.

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Do you think that?

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Yeah.

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Giving land back to people who have lost land?

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Also Zapata and Madero.

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People, when we hear that, some hero, they try to do something big for the farmers, the campesinos.

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What about when we go back even a little bit further in time, somebody like Benito Juarez?

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Oh, Benito Juarez, that's even more of a hero, because he was the one that separated church from state.

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Because before it was ruled by, how could I say this, it was ruled by the church.

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The government was a church in itself.

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And Benito Juarez came out with the idea that it wasn't supposed to be like that.

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It was two different things.

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The government was one thing and the church was another.

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The church was a religion.

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So he changed things that it wasn't separated in.

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