MURALS: The People are no longer “desmuralizada”
By hola | Published | No Comments
The historic mural in Adams Morgan has finally been restored
After a year of waiting for funds to come in and the weather to settle, one of D.C’s oldest Latino murals, the “Un Pueblo Sin Murales es Un Pueblo Dismuralizado” (A people without murals is a demuralized people), was finally restored this spring by local artist Juan Pineda.
Disfigured three years ago in the 5.8 magnitude earthquake that shook the District, this iconic mural ended up discolored with grayish lines displaying where brick masons had repaired the building.
The mural, which graces the side of the KoGiBow Bakery building near the intersection of 18th Street and Columbia Road NW, tells the story that unfolded in its vicinity during the mid-1970s, when it was originally painted by Chilean artist Carlos “Caco” Salazar and a crew of volunteers. Starting at least two decades earlier, in the 1950s, people from Caribbean countries such as Cuba and the Dominican Republic, followed years later by Chileans, Argentinians and other Latin Americans, many fleeing war and civil unrest, began to moving into Adams Morgan, turning it into one of Washington’s first Latino neighborhoods. Salazar’s composition makes many references to this lively Latino melting pot, complete with bongo players, dancing ladies and bohemians reading books on the sidewalk, as well as to the real estate speculators who, even then, were snapping up the neighborhood’s rowhouses and apartment buildings and evicting less well-to-do residents.
The mural was last restored in 2005 thanks to the insistence of Washington activists determined to keep yet another of the city’s Latino murals from demolition as dozens of others had been lost during decades of gentrification and real estate development. This time around, it also took the perseverance of a coalition of people to get the job done.
Pineda, the graffiti-influenced painter who conducted the 2005 restoration, signed again, using his signature spray paint technique to apply a fresh sky-blue to the sky and touch up the beige of the pavements where the mural’s kids run and play, and enthusiastic festivities are displayed through music and dance. He finally started work on April 10 after a long delay due to funding and the weather.
“We had a major delay in getting the actual money we were awarded by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities,” says B. Stanley, Executive/Artistic Director of the District of Colombia Art Center (DCAC). “We were awarded the money in early 2013 but didn’t get the money until early 2014. So that was a real drag on the project.”
Once the Commission’s funding arrived, all that was left to do was buy the supplies and start painting. But the weather became another obstacle, says Kristen Barden, Executive Director of Adams Morgan Partnership.
“Juan needed a series of sunny days, about 50 degrees, to get it done,” Barden said in an email. If you can recall back to March, she says, any kind of weather was hard to come by; some days were at high 50s, others days we were still having snowfalls. By the time the weather improved, Pineda grabbed his paint cans and finished the job within a week.
The Adams Morgan group, DCAC, and the Mayor’s Office on Latino Affairs, as well as the Commission on the Arts, were among the local institutions that supported this year’s restoration but many individuals, excited to see the work underway, showed their support in different ways, Stanley says.
“The reaction was great,” he says. “People stopped by while Juan was working on it. He got offers of food and refreshment.”
After a long struggle to get the project started, Barden says it was great to see how the community rallied around Pineda while he worked. “I think it was a tremendous community accomplishment,” she says.
Pineda didn’t respond to a request for an interview with this reporter, but last year he told Hola Cultura, “It’s very important to restore and preserve it.
“It’s the largest and oldest Latino outdoor mural in Washington DC. It highlights the cultural movement of immigrants from the late ’70s and ’80s in the nation’s capital,” he added. “It identifies us as a community—people with strong traditions and rich cultures.”
— Photos and story by Edwin Martinez
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