The Festival Internacional Cervantino (FIC) is a world-class
art festival held in Guanajuato, Guanajuato for the bulk of the month of
October. The programming is diverse in terms of artistic medium and country of
origin: in the same day one can see a play be a French theater troupe, a DJ
session by a Chinese MC, and then see students, some dressed in 18th
century velvet breeches and hats singing as they make their rounds to the bars
(Estudiantinos). The festival is an enormous tourism draw, and the ancient city
with narrow cobblestone streets and steep hills is full to bursting with
foreigners.
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| Cervantino 2017 Flyer. |
What then, of local residents? In 2014, there were the first
set of graffiti and hip hop workshops hosted at the festival.[1]
This year there were offerings of free graffiti, stencil, yarn bombing, break
dancing and rap workshops. These events were organized by a DF based
organization called Circo Volador,[2]
and were a response to the “¿Nosotros
Que?” movement. “¿Nosotros Que?” is what
local Guanajuatense residents formed to call attention to the exclusionary
effects of the FIC, where city residents could rarely afford to pay to enter
the events that were hosted in their own city. “What about us? They asked,”
Israel, one of the workshop leaders, explained in an interview. The graffiti
workshops were offered for three days in a row with the idea of creating a
collaborative mural out of the temporary wall that would be covered in aerosol
paint and stencils.
These three-day workshops were held near the Ex-Estacion de
Ferrocarril, the site of Guanajuato’s former train station, a key center for
the movement of metals throughout the republic in the 19th and 20th
century. Now it hosts NGO and government offices, with a maze of tianguis on
one side, and then a colorful maze of 1 or 2-room shacks to the right, with
mountains peppered with colorful houses behind. There was a wrought iron fence
by a brick walkway with images of cameras and sometimes phrases like “punto de
vista.” A group of youth in uniforms, likely in prepa, were giggling in packs and taking photos by the scenic
points, and a group of four men sat together on a bench, gossiping and smoking,
seeming to be somewhat drunk. They were in front of a large white temporary
wall which was about 30 feet wide and 20 feet high, about 1.5 feet thick.
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| View from workshops site. Guanajuato, Gto. 10/19/2017. Photo by Caitlin Bruce. |
There was also a stage and stadium seats built into a hill,
and there more youth lounged while a couple of writes painted outlines. People
in t-shirts with a cholo on the
front, Cervantino in gothic script,
and then their names or nicknames on the back were setting up tents, tables
with stations with paper, pencils, and markets. I asked about the graffiti
workshop and was walked to the temporary wall and told to take a seat and wait
there. I wandered a bit, hearing paint wandered to the stage and was watching
the breakdance area, and was told they were painting a background for the dance
workshops, and that the graffiti workshop was something different.
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| Stage for breaking workshop. Guanajuato, GTO. 10/19/17. Photo by Caitlin Bruce. |
I waited about 30 minutes, and at around 10:30 I saw a group
of high schoolers, about 15, led by a teacher. I introduced myself to the workshop
leaders, Geraldo and Israel from the town of Torreon in the state of Cuahila, south
of Sonora and near Zacatecas. This is a border town, and is among one of the
first places where graffiti started in Mexico, Geraldo (aka Caporal) attested. He has been
writing since 1997.
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| Israel recounting graffiti history. Guanajuato, GTO. 10/19/17. Photo by Caitlin Bruce. |
Israel (aka Vlair) began by narrating the long history of graffiti: the
romans, prehispanic culture, and then in New York in the 1970s, “people wanted
and needed to express themselves…There was a guy named Taki 183 and he was one
of the first, he tagged all over the city because he was a delivery boy. York
in Mexico City is one of the first taggers in Mexico like Taki.” This theme of
graffiti as communication is crucial and recurred in Israel’s
presentation/interactions. “There are two kinds of graffiti,” he explained,
“Legal and illegal. With illegal graffiti it is anonymous, you do not know who
did it, and you have to do it quickly. With legal graffiti it is more developed
and artistic, but it comes from the illegal…graffiti came to Mexico from the
US, moving from north to south. There are also different kinds, which Gerald is
going to show you.” Gerald/Caporal took an orange can of Socel paint and began
to trace an angular, gang style tag, with some letters upside down so that the
letters appeared to be angry tridents. “That is gang style graffiti and it
comes from the east,” Gerald wrote “east” next
to it. “It’s like a cholo” a student reacted. “Then there are the tags
that are crew tags, and they are more flowing,” and Gerald wrote “Caporal” in a
fluid script. “That is more on the west,” and Gerald wrote “West” next to the
tag. “Another level of graffiti are what we call bombs, these are large letters
filled in with color with outlines,” and Caporal wrote “CAP” and then the last
level is a piece, which has at least three different colors, outlines, shading,
aura.” Caporal started to add shadows, drips, an aura. He only had three cans
of paint and later told me that it was frustrating that they were given so
little paint. “There is a difference between gang graffiti and crew graffiti”
Israel emphasized, “They are two different things.”
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| Caporal explaining differences in tagging styles. Guanajuato, GTO. 10/19/17. Photo by Caitlin Bruce. |
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| Geraldo demonstrating a fill in with effects. Guanajuato, GTO. 10/19/17. Photo by Caitlin Bruce. |
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| Geraldo demonstrating cholo style tag. Guanajuato, GTO. 10/19/17. Photo by Caitlin Bruce. |
“There are hundreds of styles of graffiti,” Israel
continued, “but no matter the style it is all about the need to communicate and
express yourself.” He mentioned that some street art/arte urbano has become
worth a lot of money, there is someone called Bansky, no one knows who they
are, but it is probably a team and if he or they painted on your house it would
be worth a lot of money, someone might come and try to take it off and sell it.”
“For millions,” a youth added. This youth was from Leon and was clearly already
an accomplished tagger because what he painted was fluid and defined. When
Gerald finished his mini piece he asked, “Preguntas? Dudas? Does anyone want to
paint?” “You should paint!” someone said to one of the young women. “Noooo!” she
demurred, giggling into a group of girls, who also exploded into giggles.
“Write ‘Paula!’” one of the boys persisted. She ultimately ended up painting,
and Geraldo helped another girl with her piece, creating an outline that she
could fill. The youth painted and played around for another 10 minutes and then
the teacher thanked the instructors and led them away. Then the guys stayed at
the wall, answering questions and giving mini summaries of the history to the
curious.
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| Students trying out tagging. Guanajuato, GTO. 10/19/17. Photo by Caitlin Bruce. |
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| Students trying out tagging. Guanajuato, GTO. 10/19/17. Photo by Caitlin Bruce. |
When I asked Israel about the experience of teaching the
workshops he said that he enjoyed leading them because “Everyone has a
different perspective about graffiti, young, old, and each place has different
problems that youth face and the youth in each place have different needs.” I
asked about the problematic he had divined in Guanajuato. “This city is a site
for global historic patrimony, so there are few to no places for youth to
paint, and it is frustrating, because they need to communicate.” This raises a
key question about the limits or the friction of legal graffiti regimes in the
wake of historical patrimony. In Guanajuato, which is seen as a site for
historic patrimony, graffiti is largely understood as a kind of damage to
historic walls. Yet, the city is an active site of residence and public life
for thousands, and so what right do they have to make their mark on its
environs?
Exploring Guanajuato itself over a series of four days I
found little graffiti but a fair amount of wheat pasting, not surprising given
the large number of print shops in the city. Only on a bus back to the bus
station did I see some burners on the side of a car shop, an out of the way
place on a sharp diagonal gradation of ground on the side of a hill. It is nor
surprising, in some ways, that graffiti, an art form that is fairly
marginalized in Guanajuato is used as a means of changing (slightly) how access
is calibrated.
On the one hand, the workshops as part of FIC offers a model
of providing access to what might feel for some to be an elitist and
exclusionary festival. It highlights challenges and possibilities for youth and
city spaces. On the other hand, it could be seen as a kind of compensatory
gesture: locals are not offered free entry into the more central events, and
the temporary wall itself it was on a hill and not visible in the city center
below. Like Art Basel’s public art events, they occur outside of and alongside
the festival, perhaps reaching more plural audiences, but do not provide access
into the “central” site itself. What would it mean for the FIC to integrate
live painting into its concerts, dance performances, and plays? Though the FIC
includes programming from local arts groups and free, open-air film screenings
and art exhibitions, what would it mean to provide full access to city
residents? Would it create informal economies of residence qualifications like
that which precedes South By Southwest? Would it generate a larger sense of
ownership of the festival for residents?
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| Rap workshop. Guanajuato, GTO. 10/19/17. Photo by Caitlin Bruce. |
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| "Come to scribble! 10:00am...Legalize..." Guanajuato, GTO. 10/19/17. Photo by Caitlin Bruce. |
* Muchas gracias a Caporal y Vlair para las entrevistas, y el equipo de Circo Volador para la experiencia.
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