It’s well known that most of the people think that graffiti is an act of vandalism and a show of

power and territory that some gangs tends to do in order to assert dominance. But, just like
everything, there’s also another side, a good one specially, where graffiti is used as a way of art
(not only done by students, young adults, teenagers, but almost anyone who wants to express
their thoughts trough some flashy and explosive color). So, graffiti can be used either a good
thing and as a bad thing, let me explain you more about those two sides.

Surely everyone knows that Trujillo is currently facing the worst criminal wave from all the past
years, this wave has started to gain ground even in the main city. An easy way to recognize
them is by the graffities that their gang members tend to do, like a symbol, a sport club letter,
or even the name of the one who did the graffities next to the name of their gang in big letters.
The police have tried during many years to catch the culprits, but unfortunately for them, if
they catch one then two more appear, is like a never-ending battle. Police first tried to increase
the punish that the persona who does graffities will face, but they just took it as a challenge
and started to paint more. After that, they thought a “plan”. If we ban any kind of graffities
then they will stop doing it. They never thought that policy could also work as a psychological
game, like when someone tells you to not do something, and then you start to feel a strange
force that tells you to do it. So, because of that “plan” a lot of graffities appeared around the
whole city, even the little towns that didn’t have anything to do with the gangs. So, due to the
completely failure of the plan, officers have to thought another way to stop the sudden
increase of graffities. After a long investigation they found out that most of these graffities
were being made by youngers and teen adults, who doesn’t fit very well in society, they just
follow orders from their bosses, they never tried to create a graffiti by themselves, they were
just like a puppet following his master orders. So, how can the officers help those “puppets” to
liberate from their master chains? Simple, they just need to fight fire with fire

First the police started to look for “big” and widely places that were completely “clean” so
graffitiers would target them, then they started a campaign about free graffities painting along
all these places, creating many amazing works. If we walk around the city, especially around
the bypass near to Grau Avenue, we will see many graffities that tells different faces about our
history, and there are even also painted many daily situations in there, as a show that even if
we are different, we all are also living the same things, like waiting for the green light, or even
taking a bus. Another excellent example of “good” graffities are the ones done near the “Bellas
Artes” school, were their students portrayed many examples of Trujillians daily activities. This
way of graffities are the ones that lead people to free themselves from the classical paintings
that we are used to, and exchange it for a spray can, that can fill and create many flashy, lively,
and amazing art. Because the mere act of living can be considered as an art, and if we fuse that
with the recreation of our most common activities but with the creativity of those “artists”
then the possibilities of the graffities are almost infinite. Anyone can paint, anyone can write,
and anyone can draw, but not everyone can open their soul and their heart to create what
their mind tells to them, and I believe that graffities is one of the most handful tools to free
ourselves and start to create
As you can have read above, graffities can be used for either bad and good, but in the case of
our city, in the end graffities made our city more colorful and livelier, showing us the artist that
many people hide in themselves. We can help more people to “release” themselves from
those gangs, and start doing something better (like art) all we have to do, is leave those future
artists a place where to paint and show themselves.