Assignment: The Themes of the Pilsen Mural Tour

Pilsen Mural Tour, June 2009

Life is color. Life is pain and joy, heritage and future. In the neighborhood of Pilsen, all of that is evident. The neighborhood is a testament to reality—to life. Lives happen in the streets and restaurants, churches, schools and little homes. Then, the stories of those lives are splashed on the walls in the form of Pilsen’s famous murals.

As we began our mural tour on a baking summer’s day, I reveled in the humanity around me. Everything that is important to people surfaces in this neighborhood. Children play in the hoses, neighbors and friends grill hotdogs.  Vestiges of home in a predominately Mexican neighborhood are evident. Spanish rolls from people’s tongues, street side vendors peddle exotic fruit and spicy treats. Still, I felt a shadow over all of this color—many of these people are incredibly poor. A giant smelting factory spits toxic chemicals into the air and strange diseases strike those living there. Many of the residents are undereducated, don’t speak English or are illegal—and so the illnesses continue.

Jose, our guide, led us down winding streets to stop us by walls popping with color. The murals were beautiful, thrown on to the walls of tortilla factories and churches, schools and homes. Many of them featured portraits of the community members below; grinning children, wizened grannies, and scolding teachers. The murals celebrated the communities heritage with a  backdrop of the Puerto Rican flag, words in Spanish or portraits of leaders like Cesar Chavez or Rigoberta Menchu. They were playful—coloring in shadows and creating puns with words. They were sad, showing disintegrated families and loneliness. Ultimately, they were filled with the dreams of immigrants—that their children would rise up—that they would one day read, would graduate, would embrace the future.