This is the second in a series of neighborhood mural tours in the “Live Like a Local” section of the San Antonio Report.
How does a young suburban punk become the custodian of San Antonio’s West Side Chicano culture?
“I’m just talking to tall boys listening to punk rock under the oak trees in Tacoland,” said artist Cruz Ortiz. All over the city he creates over 50 murals (and counting).
On a sunny weekday morning in early fall, Ortiz leads a tour of the important western murals that helped establish San Antonio’s now thriving mural culture and connect the present with the city’s deep heritage and cultural traditions. did.
OG of Chupaderas
Ortiz and friend Manny Castillo chatted and decided they wanted to create a mural, but realized it might require more than the usual punk rock, DIY (DIY) no-budget, no-permissions approach. . In the 1990s, the West Side was in need of revitalization and provided a prime opportunity for community involvement.
The two fledgling muralists recruited painter Juan Miguel Ramos to share years of dedicated volunteerism, community relationships, fundraising, research into mural traditions, and the local history of Chicano murals. Undertook painstaking painting work to revitalize it.
They started their mission in 1993 at the corner of West Guadalupe and Chupaderas streets. Ortiz, Castillo and Ramos knew in his early twenties that he could not represent Chicano Westside culture in real life without learning from his neighborhood.
Education Cruz Ortiz (left) and Manny Castillo painting the first mural for San Anto Culture and Art, titled . ” class=”wp-image-5299303″ srcset=”https://i0.wp.com/sanantonioreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Cruz-Ortiz-and-Manny-Castillo-c1993-scaled .jpg?w=1712&ssl=1 1712w, https://i0.wp.com/sanantonioreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Cruz-Ortiz-and-Manny-Castillo-c1993-scaled.jpg? resize=201%2C300&ssl=1 201w, https://i0.wp.com/sanantonioreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Cruz-Ortiz-and-Manny-Castillo-c1993-scaled.jpg?resize =685%2C1024&ssl=1 685w, https://i0.wp.com/sanantonioreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Cruz-Ortiz-and-Manny-Castillo-c1993-scaled.jpg?resize= 768%2C1149&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/sanantonioreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Cruz-Ortiz-and-Manny-Castillo-c1993-scaled.jpg?resize=1027 %2C1536&ssl=1 1027w, https://i0.wp.com/sanantonioreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Cruz-Ortiz-and-Manny-Castillo-c1993-scaled.jpg?resize=1369% 2C2048&ssl=1 1369w, https://i0.wp.com/sanantonioreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Cruz-Ortiz-and-Manny-Castillo-c1993-scaled.jpg?r esize=1200%2C1795&ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/sanantonioreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Cruz-Ortiz-and-Manny-Castillo-c1993-scaled.jpg?resize =1568%2C2345&ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/sanantonioreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Cruz-Ortiz-and-Manny-Castillo-c1993-scaled.jpg?resize= 400%2C598&ssl=1 400w” sizes=”(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px” data-recalc-dims=”1″/>“Good muralists pay attention to their communities and participate in research,” said Ortiz. “In fact, with every mural, what we did was knock on the door and ask people, ‘What would you like to see in your neighborhood?'”
The San Antonio skyline was the number one request, Otis said with a good-natured laugh.Flowering added to it A flock of gun-toting gangbangers rendered in a cartoon calavera style influenced by nopales, spiky agave, Mesoamerican sunrise, Teotihuacan style Aztec pyramids and Mexican illustrator José Guadalupe Posada. Above it towered a rendering of a girl holding a banner emblazoned with the word “education” in all capital letters.
Googly-eyed, but the gang was no joke. Gang wars plagued the neighborhood at the time. Ortiz said residents heard gunshots every night and reports of children being killed the next day.
“That’s what we wanted to work on. We needed to talk about how to stop gang violence somehow, and that was obviously education,” he said, which became the main theme of the mural. By recognizing Antonio’s deep cultural history and its pre-colonial heritage, children will come to appreciate their ancestry and ultimately “get out of the spirit of violence as the solution to everything.” ” it might be.
Ortiz and Ramos invited neighborhood children to paint with them, establishing a tradition of cooperation, collaboration, and mentoring of young artists that the San Ant Community Mural Program continues to this day.
“church mural”
Around the corner of the side wall of the building that would house the San Anto Cultural Arts, which was formally established as an organization in 1997, neighbors requested a Jesus-themed mural. Not only did artist Mike Roman give them the monumental head of Jesus wearing a crown of thorns, but he also intentionally separated the two to illustrate how the imprisonment affected neighborhood residents. Two angels reach out to an anonymous human arm outstretched through a barred window above a banner reading “paz, salvación, amor”.
Castillo and Ortiz practice “see how murals work” in community settings, whether graffiti or tags, attracting admirers or photographers. One day they saw a lone woman, recognizable among the prostitutes who frequented Via Guadalupe, standing silently in front of a mural. Ms. Ortiz said, “They won’t let me into church…that’s why I come here.”
Ortiz said Nexus is what separates true community-driven murals from those created for “Instagrammability” or commercial purposes.
“When community murals function, when murals and images can function on a level that incorporates not only the culture but also the spirituality of the neighborhood and people,” they realize their true power.
Further east on and near Guadalupe Street, which Ortiz called the “Melo Hueso” of the West, other murals speak of important issues affecting the community.
Mural on Colorado Street depicting police brutality piedado (pious)was created in 2003 by artist Ruth Buentero. education Mural on the Chupaderas Street.
Another mural by Roman on nearby Colorado Street, titled you can’t forget Painted in 2006 from real photographs created by Vietnam veterans and their families, it is now used as the backdrop for the annual Veterans Day celebration.
credit: Briar Woods/San Antonio Reportghosts and phantoms
However, some murals do not survive.
The murals were once painted on the walls of the Cassiano Homes Apartments along Apache Creek, but have been painted over over time and have worn and faded with age and weathering.
Always aware of history and heritage, Ortiz says the murals that emerged from the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s were a major inspiration and reason for keeping the mural tradition alive.
Another lost mural was painted by Mary Agnes Rodriguez, whom Ortiz sees as the driving force of West Side art and culture, in a small building on the corner of South Zarzamora and West San Fernando streets. Ortiz recalls the mural as follows: Stages of Domestic Violencea candid depiction of familial abuse, is based on the artist’s own experiences intended to warn, instruct, and heal others.
Today, the walls are ghostly white and, in Ortiz’s words, “phantoms.” “There is nothing wrong with the cycle of life [of a mural] In that sense,” he said, recalling the “DIY” (DIY) punk rock ethic that shaped him. “They rise, then fade, chip and fall apart, never to be the same.”
credit: Briar Woods/San Antonio ReportThe Cassiano Homes mural was already gone when he and his associates started work. “So we already knew that this was going to last a little while, and that’s okay, because it was to help heal that small part of that generation, that little community, in that moment, in that moment,” Ortiz said. Told.
urban development
One institution Ortiz cannot forget in the history of West Side murals is Inner City Development, a neighborhood nonprofit founded in 1968 by community advocates Patti and Rod Ladle.
After Tacoland spoke with Castillo in the early 1990s, Ortiz quit his lucrative construction job and volunteered for Inner City Development. Inner City Development offered me room and board in exchange for a 15 hour work week. Recreation He worked with children in his room, helped feed neighborhood residents who lined up daily for nourishment, helped sell the annual Halloween haunted house and Christmas toys, and later moved to Castillo, I started working on a fledgling mural program with Ramos and others. .
Patti Radle helped make neighborhood connections and support mural projects. In 2001 she peace and memory, a mural on San Patricio Street near Trinity Street dedicated to commemorating victims of violence in the community. An early image of the work shows his 50 names, but Ortiz found that number more than doubled during his tour of the mural.
credit: Briar Woods/San Antonio ReportStill, it’s the resilience of West Side residents to keep the neighborhood prosperous that most impresses Ortiz, and the colorful and charming gallery of murals reflects their spirit.
Overall, the West Side’s living gallery of murals stands as a marker of local culture and tradition maintainers, as do other more formal establishments in the city.
“This,” he said, gesturing broadly around the neighborhood. “This is a museum”
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