Over the last six weeks I have continued my field work with
the Muraleon team in León, am also been building my knowledge base about youth
culture and the emergence and function of youth as a social category for political
and intellectual inquiry, and through observation and conversations learning
more about the social and political dynamics of León.
September 16 is Independence Day, and it is announced by a grito, a public shout by elected
officials to renew enthusiasm and commitment to la Republica. It is also celebrated by partying, chile en nogada, and a parade. The parade
in León took place on Calle Madero, the historic walkway for the city, and a
symbolic space for Leonese identity, beginning with the Arco de Calzada and
ending with the Plaza Principal. The participants included police,
firefighters, and military (including the K-9 division proudly outfitted with
vests and stretchy leg warmers) who assumed action poses (some holding ropes
that were suspended from truck beds, legs posted against the back of the truck,
appearing as if they were about to base jump into conflicted territory), and
whose presence was announced by all sirens on every vehicle ramped up to
maximum volume. Other participants included religious associations, riding on
floats or walking with mantas (cloth
signs) with images of their patron saint. Yet other participants included caballeros, men in full cowboy regalia
on horses with braided manes and checkered patterns stamped or shaped onto
their hindquarter, caballeras in
detailed dresses with extensive piping, and children on little ponies. Civic
groups designed floats with scenes from the conquest, and the revolution.
The
next day, September 17, across Mexico feminist groups held marches protesting
ongoing femicide. With shouts like “Ni una más! Nos la queremos vivos! Las
calles están nuestras!” and heart breaking testimony from the father of a young
woman in León who was recently murdered, where he took aim at both
institutional complacency and impunity, and then a consciousness raising
exercise where in the very same Plaza Principal we stood, a smaller inward
circle facing a larger external circle, and discussed recent moments where we
had felt afraid walking in public space; what we do to keep ourselves safe; and
what we do to keep our compañeras
safe, with hugs at the end, a different performance of the nation took place,
one that highlighted its intensely gendered inequality. It was not a massive
group, maybe 40 or 50 people, but, my colleague Lupe informed me, it was an
excellent turnout for León where there is “not such a culture of street protest
and activism,” a truth that was evident in the surprised and curious, and sometimes
critical, looks of passers-by. I bring up these two moments to remind us that
public space is a place of contention and ongoing production and reproduction
of the myth of sovereignty, as well as acts of gendered violence and exclusion
(my other colleague at Ibero, Dr. David Martinez led a study about piropas, cat calling, as verbal acts of
violence).
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| Ni Una Mas protest. 9.17.17 |
Legal graffiti art is not exempt from the work of producing,
reproducing, and challenging the state. Whereas in 2010 the legal graffiti
program in León was deeply involved in celebrating Mexican Independence through
a series of bicentennial murals, some still extant on the underpass where Lopez
Mateos passes the IMSS hospital in the city’s western side, the current program
does not really engage with nationalist iconography. Instead, the major projects
planned for 2017: the 5 de Mayo mural, a set of murals commemorating Mexican
authors on the “Duraznal” apartment complex, Malecolor (a project creating the largest
legal graffiti space in the world), and the Panteón San Nicolas pre-hispanic
culture and urban legend mural, use elements of popular culture and popular
identity to create a set of resonant images for the city, color therapy used to beautify public
spaces.
Panteon San Nicolas was the signature program of the first
and second iterations of legal graffiti sponsorship in the city. In both
iterations (2010 and 2013) the tall and massive walls surrounding the city’s
largest cemetery were covered with portraits of La Catrina, an iconic figure for death, a beautiful woman with a
skull face. However, members of Muraleon explained that this image as been “used
up” or used “too much,” it is an image that does not necessarily come from
León. Rather, it is an image that foreigners are invested in and use to imagine
Mexico. In this project, writers are using images from pre-Hispanic culture
related to death, urban legends, and images from a famous film from the golden
age of Mexican cinema, Macario
(1960), to renovate the image of the Panteón, and the City.
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Quena in process. 9.26.17.
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Panteon San Nicolas. In process. 9.26. 17.
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Moreover, writers who work with the Muraleon program occupy
a different cultural position than what they assumed in 2010-2012/2013-2015. In
an interview with Ante, who writes Muostro legally, he explained that when he
first worked with the Youth Institute in 2010 he was mainly just receiving
support from the institute in order to elaborate murals. Now, in his capacity
as a member of the Muraleon team, he sees himself more as a
promotor, a promoter or organizer who
has the privilege (and responsible) to design opportunities
for other writers to participate in
creating new images in and for the city.
Yet,
he acknowledged, there are limits to what one can do. Telling a story about
giving graffiti workshops in
colonias
populares in the Del Bajio region, he said that at the end of the workshops
youth would say “Don’t go!” which was heartbreaking, or, when youth experienced
misfortune (one experienced his family car being stolen, which impeded his
mother from taking him to needed doctor’s appointments), there was not much
that they could do as teaching artists. Kif, when discussing her participation in
designing a legal graffiti/youth space with the Instituto Municipal de
Planeación de León (IMPLAN), explained that though writers actively
participated in designing a park, Parque Extremo, ultimately they were not
given free access to the space, one had freedom, “only up until a certain
point.”
Ruben Jasso, former IMPLAN architect replied, “Why can’t they recognize that a
citizen can be their own authority?”
Another limit is in the extent to which IMJUV can patronize
the aesthetic development of
graffiti. “IMJUV is concerned with youth and preventing delinquency,” Zhot
explained in an interview, “they are not an arts organization.” The limits of
institutional structures are also important to keep in mind when imagining how
to design public arts programs.
This question of limits is important, because it relates to
larger questions about the situation of youth and social inequality in Mexico
and an increasingly neoliberal (and attenuated) state. Rosanna Reguillo argues
that during the postwar period “youth” became intelligible as a social category
much more broadly (1940s-50s) and that this visibility also coincided in a rise
in the language of “human rights” in the wake of fascist regimes. So, she
reflects, paradigms for punishment of youth also changed, and the state was
situated as a “benefactor” and when they are punished it is not castigation but
“correction” and “care.” As promotores,
writers are situated as arms (or fingers) of a benificent and caring state,
part of a larger apparatus of maximizing the productivity of these social
actors and channeling their affects and practices into more productive
terrains, and persuading writers to acercarse
(to get close to) the government.
One of the ways that the Muraleon team is working to
overcome the limits of art world perceptions of graffiti as “folk” and not “art”
is by hosting a charity auction in late November/early December. Brote
explained in an interview that such an event, pitched towards the CEO’s and
executives who follow his and his crew’s work, will help convince León’s elite
that graffi should, indeed, be considered as part of the plastic arts. Another
way Brote sought to elevate his cultural capital as an artist is by
participating in the Meeting of Styles festival, a global festival that I have studied
in-depth over the last seven years. At this international festival artists can
display their work to a multi-national public, and the fact of their
participation holds a particular level of cachet, a possible analogue to the
global contemporary artist who has the studio in London and one in Mexico City.
Another limit is with respect to gender. Though there are
two women employed in the fourteen-person Muraleon team, they so far have not
been situated as project leaders, even though one of them has been active in
the graffiti scene for a very long time. In terms of the content of many of the
murals the female body or the female face is a recurring trope. Yet, these
figures are frequently passive objects for the male gaze.
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| Malecolor preparation. September, 2017. |
Finally, in September an events called Malecolór was
supposed to take place. This is an event designed to celebrate and inaugurate the
opening of the largest permission graffiti space in the world: the full length
of León’s Malecón del Rio, a concrete riverbed that cuts across the entire
city, will be open to graffiti, day and night. Because of weather (rains) the
even could not take place. Two participants in the HCUAP 2016-2017 pilot year,
Stef Skills and Kane One, from Chicago, still came out to visit and the
Muraleon team found a prominent wall under a bridge on Campestre that crosses
the Malecón to paint. There, we spent the weekend under the bridge while the
artists painted. It is a highly visible site, and Lalo Camarena estimated that
about 10,000 cars pass a day. While there, we received a mix of catcalls, celebratory
honks, and cars pulling over to take photos or to exchange contact information
to request/commission mural projects. These everyday moments of contact are
strong examples of the extent to which graffiti in León is increasingly
accepted and even celebrated by the average resident. Stef and Kane’s reactions
to the city, and appreciation for its textured surfaces also indicates the
promise that León holds as a graffiti epicenter. Stef executed a somewhat site
specific piece, her name in the style of hand engraved leather with jocular
flowers surrounding it, Kane an abstract and atmospheric multicolored piece.
Mersi, Zhot, Brote, JHard and Wes painted the middle section of the wall with a
mix of lettered pieces, elaborate and abstract designs, a futuristic hip hop
robot, and a face, complimenting the eyes staring at us from the opposite
underpass. The opposite side of the highway, another bridge, had been painted
by the team a few months ago and was a medley of different styles including a
rudimentary hand created by the breakdance instructor, Neo.
Finally, in September I met with Dr. Guillermo Adrián Tapia García, a professor in the social sciences department at Ibero, and the research team for the Instituto Municipal de Juventud. Dr. Tapia Garcia spoke eloquently about the emergence of "youth" as a social category, and a subject for academic analysis, an emergence that is fairly coterminous with the urban "boom" in the Del Bajio region. "Youth" are not a transhistoric or a trans regional category: economic, social, geographic, and political contexts inform when and how youth emerge. Moreover, there is a vexed relationship between youth and concepts of "citizenship" and public space because many early youth collectives were in fact Catholic groups working against a secular understanding of the state. The places where graffiti became a social problem in León, he explained, are precisely the spaces of contention in the wake of modernization policies or deeply routed European/Indigenous urban divides. López Mateos was constructed about 40 years ago, and was created through violently destroying and rupturing numerous neighborhoods. The Malecón is a 'natural' border between what were Spanish and Indigenous settlements in León. Madero has long been the iconic walkway for the city, connecting the arch to the central plaza. That graffiti should begin in appear on these spaces en masse is offers significant evidence of a certain expression of voice by the displaced, the angry, or the talkative. Meeting with Roberto Ortiz, a photographer working on a history of rap in León, he discussed the centrality of the barrio as a social and imaginary site for the creation of rap culture and the mercado tecnico as something that only some rapper aspire to enter into, largely a decision dictated by class (those of working class backgrounds are more committed to rap staying outside of profit regimes, he commented), a kind of tendency that may also resonate with graffiti worlds. He, too, talked about the way that the contemporary image of León, and the historic center's pedestrian walkways in particular, are relatively recent constructions, the product of initiatives designed to play up a new and particular image of the city (possible creative cities discourse localized in the Del Bajio context). To track in coming months is the kind of urban image Muraleon brings into focus.
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| Zhot eyes. Campestre and Malecón. Photo September 2017. |
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| Starting the Campestre mural, 9.24.17. |
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| Opposing mural, Campestre and Malecón. 9.24.17. |
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| Kane One. In process. 9.24.17. |
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| Zhot detail. 9.24.17. |
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| Add caption |
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Kane One. 9.24.17.
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| Brote in process. 9.24.17 |
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| Brote detail. 9.24.17. |
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| JHard in process. 9.24.17. |
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| Mersi in process. 9.24.17. |
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| Zhot in process. 9.24.17. |
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| Mersi detail. 9.24.17. |
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| Muraleon team and Stef Skills. 92.4.17. |
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| Stef skills. 9.25.17. |
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| Kane One mural, Muraleon team. 9.23.17. |
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| Stef Skills, Neo, Jonathan. 9.25.17. |
