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"An explosion of human colors": Murals in ascendance
Since the late 1960s, cultural workers in San Francisco's predominantly Latino Mission District have produced an impressive body of literary and artistic work. Their creative milieu was important in helping to mobilize the Chicano movement and spurring a Latino cultural renaissance of local and national significance. As a result, reading the iconography and discourses that pervade their work is imperative for interpreting the ideologies that have shaped a pan-Latino identity in the United States.
Two key works of the mid-1970s - the murals "Homage to Siqueíros" and "Latino America" - warrant in-depth attention for their high profile in the community and the variety of cultural juxtapositions they represent in terms of their content, creation, and history. Both "Homage to Siqueíros" (Figure 1 - See PDF,) and "Latino America" (Figure 2 - See PDF,) were produced in 1974, and while they share many of the same ideas and circumstances, they also reflect creative and philosophical differences that indicate the complexities of defining an iconography, a neighborhood, and a movement. While "Latino America" continues to provoke discussion as one of the key works by the influential Mujeres Muralistas, a cooperative of women muralists, "Homage to Siqueíros" is just as noteworthy for the publicly confrontational, flagrantly anti-capitalist voice of its three male artists. In developing a closer reading of these two murals, which are both homages to Latin America and critical responses to circumstances in the United States, I will deconstruct a variety of visual narratives to develop a more complex understanding of the dominant visual and ideological discourses in the mid-1970s Mission District and in the nation as a whole.
The Mission District's gradual transition into a predominantly Latino barrio following World War II was solidified by the late 1960s. According to the 1970 census, Hispanics comprised 45% of the neighborhood population.1 With the onset of the Civil Rights Movement, the Mission District emerged as a site of Latino identity.2 Writer Alejandro Murguía recalls how the Mission, "teemed with painters, muralists, poets, and musicians, even the occasional politico or community organizer who acted beyond the rhetoric and actually accomplished something... . We had no problem being understood because La Mission was a microcosm of Latin America,...