Making a There There: Marian Muralism and Devotional Streetscapes

Abstract

This article provides a history of Mexican‐American and Chicano/a muralists' depictions of the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe that have been painted in Los Angeles/Southern California from the 1960s to the present. It examines a variety of cases: from barrio murals to business signage to contemporary church facades. It argues that these murals reflect sets of customs, values, and a sense of shared history that encourage local unity as well as represent the community to outsiders. Ultimately, it also shows how Marian muralism is a powerful component of the lived religious life of the city and is a practice that serves to define urban places.

Keywords:

• Virgin of Guadalupe
• Murals
• Los Angeles
• Chicano/a Art
• Vernacular Arts
• Diego, Juan (1474–1548)

Notes

1. Richard Edward Martinez, Padres: The National Chicano Priest Movement (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 36–40; David Gomez, Somos Chicanos: Strangers in Our Own Land (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), 156–60.

2. Oscar Zeta Acosta, Revolt of the Cockroach People (New York: Vintage, 1989), 11.

3. See the classic statement on the mural movements of the 1960s and 1970s: Eva Cockroft, John Pitman Weber, and James Cockroft, Toward a People's Art: The Contemporary Mural Movement (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998.)

4. Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), 38.

5. Eve Simpson, “Chicano Street Murals: A Sociological Perspective,” Journal of Popular Culture 13, no. 3 (Spring 1980): 516. Also see Marcos Sanchez Trauilino, “Mi Casa No Es Su Casa: Chicano Murals and Barrio Calligraphy as Systems of Signification at Estrada Courts 1972–1978” (master's thesis in art history, University of California, Los Angeles, 1991).

6. David Khan, “Chicano Street Murals: People's Art in East Los Angeles Barrio,” Aztlán: International Journal of Chicano Studies Research 6, no. 1 (Spring 1975): 118.

7. Shifra Goldman, “The Iconography of Chicano Self‐Determination: Race, Ethnicity and Class,” Art Journal 49, no. 2 (1990): 167–73.

8. For the pious legend of the apparition of Guadalupe, see Lisa Sousa, Stafford Poole, James Lockhart, Miguel Sánchez, eds., The Story of Guadalupe: Luis Laso de la Vega's Huei Tlamahuiçoltica of 1649 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).

9. “The Mural Message,” Time Magazine, 7 April 1975, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,917263,00.html (accessed 27 October 2008).

10. Kevin Delgado, “A Turning Point: The Conception and Realization of Chicano Park,” Journal of San Diego History 44, no. 1 (Winter 1998), http://sandiegohistory.org/journal/98winter/chicano.htm (accessed 27 October 2008); Martin Rosen and James Fisher, “Chicano Park and the Chicano Park Murals: Barrio Logan, City of San Diego,” The Public Historian 24, no. 4 (Autumn 2001): 91–111; Eva Cockroft, “The Story of Chicano Park,” Aztlán: International Journal of Chicano Studies Research 15, no. 1 (Spring 1984): 79–103.

11. See Marshall Rupert Garcia, “La Raza Murals of California, 1963–1970, A Period of Social Change and Protest” (master's thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1981); Eve Simpson, “Chicano Street Murals: A Sociological Perspective,” Journal of Popular Culture, 13, no. 3 (Spring 1980): 523.

12. David Arreola, “Mexican American Exterior Murals,” Geographical Review 74, no. 4 (October 1984): 409–24.

13. Hector Nava, personal interview by author, Los Angeles, California, 1 March 2008.

14. Anita Brenner, Idols Behind Altars: Modern Mexican Art and its Cultural Roots (New York: Payson and Clarke, Ltd., 1929), 174–75.

15. “Revered Catholic Icon Becomes Mysterious Target of Vandals in Los Angeles,” New York Times, 24 October 1999, sec. 1: 20.

16. http://www.la‐archdiocese.org/ (accessed 15 November 2007); “Nuevo Catholics,” New York Times Magazine, 24 December 2006, 40.