I really have never talked to anybody about murals, but when the subject came up that I talked to my mother, she said it would be something interesting, something nice.
And my point of view is something that symbolizes what our Mexican culture is really about.
But we never really talked about that in our neighborhoods.
We've been several times at Jesus Garcia, the elder man of our 22nd ward, we have mentioned that we want more murals around 2016.
I don't know what really goes on about that.
What does he say? He says that he'll try and find someone to do it, to organize it, and read books to, to get an artist to do that.
So he's just sort of interested in that? But what's really more interesting, what people in our neighborhood are really interested in right now is to get everything fixed up, get rid of the gang violence, clean up the streets more.
You have a lot of gangs in your area? Not anymore as before.
What are the main gangs in your area? My area is just gang kings.
That's about it.
They're big, aren't they? They're big.
They're a pretty big gang.
Yeah.
Well you see their stuff all over the place.
There's some where we live too.
But I'm not thinking about that.
That's a crown, right? Yeah, it's a crown.
Or a king, you know, with a large crown.
So why do you think, like you say, people want murals? Why do you think people want them? One of the reasons I understand for is to get, to keep the people that do graffiti or game signs to keep that off the walls.
Because when there's a, as long as there's a mural up, nobody's going to, you know, everybody will respect it and nobody's going to ruin it or anything.
Why do you think that is, they respect that? Our neighborhood, because a lot of people are proud of their Mexican culture.
So they really are associating that then.
Do you think, do you think like, where you live, people really are interested in sort of in like becoming kind of what, kind of special neighborhood or sort of taking charge of things? Yeah, that's what we mostly want to prove, especially us Mexicans, that we are not just another small minority group, that we are a powerful minority group.
A minority group that can do anything they want.
If you were wandering around the city and you come to a neighborhood that you don't know that well and you see murals, what would that mean to you? Well, I really wouldn't know exactly unless I see what the mural is about.
You know, because each mural symbolizes a different thing.
Like for instance, the mural on 25th and Pulaski is, and Banos Azteca symbolizes the Aztec heritage, how the Aztec used to live, and the way they used to bathe.
You're pretty good at reading all the symbols.
You think most people are? The graffiti symbols, artistic graffiti, most teenagers are good at reading those.
Oh, I lost $6 ,000.
What about some of the different symbols like Quetzal Fátima? Most people know what those are.
Yeah, because most people are Mexican heritage and they have studied or have seen at least read or have at least read a book of Mexican history.
I see.
They would just about know, Potemoc, Esacal, Montezuma, and other such gods.
So it sounds like most people really know a little bit about their past.
You know what's interesting, actually, because they were just telling me, we went by that one barbershop, and I was talking about the barbershop, and they were like, well, that was fun, but, and you were saying that your grandfather was, right? No, my great grandfather, he was in the revolution.
And there's pictures of him with Pancho Villa.
Really? How fun.
That would be cool.
Are there some memories in your family, some things that people talk about that people recall? My mother says that she remembers my uncle, my great grandfather talking about the Civil War, I mean the Civil War, the revolution.
And they have some stuff from the revolution.
I thought it was the Civil War too.
And they have some stuff from the revolution right there, my grandmother says.
Was your grandmother alive during the revolution or no? Ended in 1920.
Hold on.
I just, I know that my grandfather, my mother's father, was born in 1910.
You were a program, right? I don't know exactly.
So you would have been 10 when it ended.
It would have been around 10 years when it ended, because it took quite a long time.
And it still continued after it was officially declared over because of all the, Pancho Villa and all this.
Pancho Villa got killed about, what was it, 19 years after the war ended.
No, 9 years after the war ended.
He got killed in what was it, 1929? What do people think when they hear his name? What I think, what I think myself, is a hero for Mexico, for the campesinos, which are people who grow corn and other products.
Someone struggling for farmland and people's rights.
Yeah, same with him and Villa.
Agrarian reform? Yeah.
Do you think that? Yeah.
Giving land back to people who have lost land? Also Zapata and Madero.
People, when we hear that, some hero, they try to do something big for the farmers, the campesinos.
What about when we go back even a little bit further in time, somebody like Benito Juarez? Oh, Benito Juarez, that's even more of a hero, because he was the one that separated church from state.
Because before it was ruled by, how could I say this, it was ruled by the church.
The government was a church in itself.
And Benito Juarez came out with the idea that it wasn't supposed to be like that.
It was two different things.
The government was one thing and the church was another.
The church was a religion.
So he changed things that it wasn't separated in.
