Mexican Murals Teach Culture Even After

Death of Pilsen Muralist

By Julius Rea for ChicagoTalks
Pilsen commuters walk through more than turnstiles at the 18th Street L Pink Line stop; they
walk through brightly-colored Mexican history as told by Francisco Mendoza.
Mendoza died on March 12 at the age of 53, and the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen
held a wake for Mendoza on March 16. He painted the neighborhood with Mexican history and
tradition.
Cesareo Moreno, National Museum of Mexican Art visual arts director and chief curator, said
Mendoza was a prime example of a teaching artist that was attached to local schools and the
museum was a fitting place to sort of pay our last respects to Francisco.
I think not only because of the size or the amount of people that were expected but
symbolically for him to be resting in state here at the premier arts institution in the city of
Chicago, certainly in Pilsen, I think it was perfect, he said. It was something almost had to
be.
Some of Mendozas most famous work in Chicago includes the Orozco Academy, Cooper
Elementary School, South Chicagos YMCA and the 18th Street Pink Line L stop.
Hector Duarte, a Mexican muralist who lives in Pilsen, said that Mendozas legacy lies in his
teaching.
Mendoza worked at Orozco Academy before it was turned into Cooper Elementary.
Dating back to the 1980s, Mendozas murals displaying Mexican history and culture cover
Coopers main hallway as well as the auditorium stage, which now resembles an Aztec
pyramid. His colorful mosaic panels also wrap the exterior of the school.
Principal Martha Monrroy worked with Mendoza for 15 years as a fellow teacher. While
continuing to lead young students, she remembered her former colleague and his murals that
cover the school and neighborhood.
Those of us who taught with him always saw him as a really good partner because he really
brought joy to the kids day, she said.

Monrroy said Mendoza was always interested in teaching students about their heritage and
culture through paintings and murals.
Cooper Elementary is a stop on the mural tour held by National Museum of Mexican Art.
As Mendoza and his work is remembered by colleagues, friends and members of the Pilsen
community, a new light is shed on the importance of mural art and its connection to Mexican
history.
The idea of murals came from the fact that there were people who couldnt read and write
and there were a group of artists that took it upon themselves to educate the people through
their artwork, said Mario Hernandez, National Museum of Mexican Art educational tour
guide.
According to Moreno, arts in the form of murals helped reform modern Mexico and define
the identity of its people after the Mexican Revolution ravaged the country.
It wasnt art for rich people. It wasnt art for museum walls. It was art for everyday people
many of whom couldnt read but they understand that their own personal private history was
on those walls of the public spaces, he said.
During the late 20th century muralist movement, Mexican-American murals faced the streets.
In Mexico, murals were more commonly placed in public buildings and schools. The Mexican
government promoted muralists while the movement in the United States was driven by the
artists themselves, Duarte said.
Moreno said murals in the United States helped to physically establish and identify the
Mexican community boundaries.
The Chicano, or Mexican-American, communities really embraced the whole idea of murals
to portray ourselves, to celebrate our community, to not forget our heroes and those things
that are culturally of value to our community, he said.
Duarte has worked since the 1980s on murals that communicate the identity of the Mexican
immigrant and community identity.
His house and studio is covered in a mural which portrays a large Mexican man in a reclining
position surrounded by barbed wire and colorful imagery of Chicago.
It symbolizes that if we the community help him, he can integrate into the community.
But if the community doesnt, he wont. Hell fall, he said.

Duarte said he used the story of Gullivers Travels to represent an immigrants journey. The
size of the subject represents the success of crossing the border while the wire represents the
border itself.
The subject also wears a cap and a mask, which represent factory and field workers and the
death of his previous Mexican identity respectively.
He is currently working on a collection of 20 portraits of those who are important to him and
his culture, including Pancho Villa and Rudy Lozano, a Chicago community organizer who was
killed in 1980s.
While Duarte interprets the information gathered by working with the community, Mendoza
was heavily involved in traditional education and worked with students learning to paint,
Moreno said.
In the end, we have two important, significant, creative people from our community. Both are
visual artists, but both have a different technique or a way, Moreno said.
Despite the different techniques, the work created by both artists represent a strong sense of
culture that has been fundamental in teaching about Mexican history.
[Art is] significant in that it really has this ability to get you to understand and reflect a little
bit about your own condition by looking at someone elses condition, Moreno said.
Hernandez said visual art like murals makes you acknowledge some of the issues in the
community that have to be brought up.
Aside from working with Mendoza, Chicago artist Sam Kirk also created a mural on the
corner of West 17th Street and South Ashland Avenue depicting the architecture developed
by Mexican blue-collar workers in the area.
[Mendoza] was an amazing, amazing man, she said. You couldnt meet a more humble
optimistic person. She worked with him on an unpublished series of mosaic paintings before
he became ill.
As time goes on, the work of muralists like Mendoza and Duarte continue to have a strong
connection to educating young people about culture.
Monrroy said she and Mendoza discussed funding to finish the mosaic panels that line the
front of the school. After attending his wake, she hopes to contact his old students to finish
the mosaics.

So many of his students have gone into the art field that I dont think it would be that hard to
gather a group to come together and finish the mosaics in his honor, she said. I think theres
a lot that people will continue to learn from his murals.