Leon Guanajuato: Voces Ciudadaños en Aerosol, Research Update

I meant to write this post two weeks ago but my partner’s accident and our move to a new house has thrown things behind. So this is the first time I’ve had a moment to try to recover some of the wonder and elation that I was feeling at the end of the trip: new things discovered and yet lots more to uncover.

I was in Leon 23 April to 7 May, a two week stretch that allowed me to conduct 23 interviews, go to a graffiti festival, see some works in progress and a “street art” class, and conduct a couple of mini-recorridos. I have to say first that none of this would be possible without the organizational finesse of Karina Kif and her friend Vincente who helped to navigate me from place to place, pesero to oruga, chaperoned me in some of the more conflictual neighborhoods where it would not be prudent to go alone, and helped me out with some of the slang that went over my head in interviews. And of course the rest of the writers whose stories form the backbone of this project. I also spent a good chunk of time at the Archivo Municipale Hemeroteca, going through over 30 folios of the daily paper AM. This trip I was looking at papers during the first Ciudad de Murales project, roughly December 2009 to October 2011, tracing whether and how the descriptions of writers changed during this period of official legal graffiti support.

I learned a lot, but here I’ll just highlight some of the themes that I encountered in interviews, and some of the surprises I experienced in the archives.

One insight that this trip reinforced is that more than the testimony of a few individuals, this art practice in León is a resource for expressing collective fears, hopes, and processes of reshaping public space to be more accessible to a wider range of citizens. Oral history interviews testify to this fact. Drunk, a writer who started in the late 1990s noted: “Graffiti is important because you feel it in the heart. It is something fantastic. … it is a phenomenon and a form of expression that the government doesn’t give us. It is something you see and say, ‘wow! no manches!(I don’t believe it!)” (2016) His brother, Cuate, also noted, “graffiti is a way of life, not a [mere] past time,” and allows him to criticize government practices, notably, how they instrumentalize street culture to gain popularity. He recalled: “The Casa de Cultura had this logo of a spray can dressed as a b-boy, so I would do graffiti using that same symbol to make fun of them, because they give us the very tools to mock them…there is corruption, they don’t listen to us, and they don’t care, so graffiti is a form to express this frustration” (Cuate 2016). Cuate showed one of his critical pieces: a drawing he made around 2002/2001 of Vincente Fox and George Bush touching figures like the Michaelangelo’s Man Touching God, but they were suspended over La Frontera with dozens of little crosses on the Ciudad Juarez side. In a similar fashion, old school writer Crook recalled using graffiti to criticize disingenuous governance practices: “During the elections I wrote this phrase, ‘Give us tortillas not PAN de mentiras’ meaning, the lies that the Partido de Acción Nacional offer” (Crook 2016). A younger writer named Sabio noted that graffiti and hip-hop culture is “an important alternative to drugs or gang membership” (2016). Graffiti also is a means of consciousness-raising about larger issues. Warner, an old school writer who participated in the protests against Zero Tolerance explained: “Graffiti can help society because it provides a message, can energize the souls of people.” His work, he explained, “often includes messages about respect for the natural world and the environment, as well as criticism of police repression saying ‘too many pigs’” (2016). La Kausa, a young writer and organizer of a legal graffiti expo held in the conflict-ridden neighborhood San Francisco noted at the Criminal Company Expo on May 1: “Events like this are important because they give an opportunity for people to see graffiti not as graffiti but as arte it is a way to express ourselves: the problems, and the pieces express what we feel. Graffiti is the only way to get the problems out and you can reflect on the work on the wall” (2016). In a similar vein, Espos described graffiti as “therapy” (2016). Painting on a crumbling wall across from a small library and large market across the wide and dusty road Wreck, one of the earliest writers in León agreed: “Graffiti is a means of expression. Many times people don’t have the ability to express themselves, and graffiti gives people this means through letters…[it] can help society by making it better, opening spaces, not sure if can change drugs or delinquency but as a means of expression for youth it is good. Some use it to stay out of drugs or trouble” (2016). This idea was supported by a young writer named Nespo (2016). Keim, a middle school art teacher and old school writer noted: “My students in San Marcos, a conflict filled neighborhood, they often use graffiti as an alternative to drugs etc. It is something that the gangs use, but I am trying to show them that there is another opportunity to explore, it lets them leave violence behind.” (2016) Lalo Camarena, Subdirector of the Municipal Youth Institute explained that graffiti s a “a form of expression for what the youth feel, a way to deal with the problems that face adolescent identity, the search for acceptance…now many are making a living from graffiti, channeling it.” (2016) It is crucial that the government and broader society understands the way that graffiti is a form of expression, Keim explained, because otherwise there are “inhumane” policies like Zero Tolerance where youth are judged only based on appearances and are treated with indignity (2016).

Another is some thinking about the affective dynamics of aesthetic practice that cuts across genres. The night I arrived in León was the screening of a film about the Leonese skate scene sponsored by “Hey Dog!” shoes. The film showed snapshots of skaters in action, using surprising surfaces and taking intense bodily risksin some ways to me a dance-like extension of graffiti’s appropriation of a variety of urban surfaces. But what I was more interested in was the way in which in the process of making practitioners when they are in a moment of flow practice absorption, what Sedgewick marks as a kind of screen or fold that one’s attention or interest makes between oneself and the world, yet, it can lead to a blush because it is a public performance of such absorption.

Third, this trip focused pretty heavily on talking to members of the old school, writers who started in the late 1990s and who experienced Zero Tolerance. Through these interviews I learned more about the dynamics of the early community, how Miercoles Tagger (Tagger Wednesdays) was an important social institution, but not for all, for instance, crews like BR and autonomous writers did not really partake.

BR Crew. Graffiti Expo San Francisco. 2016.

Different communication technology, unsurprisingly, also mediated the structure and frequency of meetings writers would have—many described trajectories of cross-city walks where one would pick up different writers along the way. Mexico City was a key stylistic influence and early writers self-published zines with copies and clippings of graffiti work they saw on trips to DF. Moreover, I learned more about the scope of Zero Tolerance, which was a campaign against graffiti carried out not only in the newspapers but on the airwaves and TVs—writers like Biers still remembered the jingle in its entirety. “They played it on the radio every day” he remarked.

Nikkis and Biers. En proceso. 2016.

Fourth, the dynamic or relationship between image based work and text based work resurfaced in interesting ways. Bone commented on how the tag is viewed with suspicion or disgust precisely because it is a trace of an individual—it is impossible to repress the singularity of the tag. In this way the tag works against norms of liberal universality wherein public space is not meant to reflect the race, class, sex or other particularities of groups. Obversely, Keim argued that the tag becomes a word-image, empty of signification. She noted of her style: “It is simple letters. Old English. We call them Letras Goticas, or really Letras Cholas—no, seriously! My art teacher even called them that. Just letters and colors. I don’t do characters or cartoons. These letters when repeated become a symbol an image they lose all signification and then it means whatever the viewer experiences aesthetically and that is art—its not important what it means only what it provokes. For instance, Cope2, who does these bombas de chicle (bubble letters) his name doesn’t mean anything, but all of the youngsters in my school know it and can repeat it, and so can I.” These statements provide interesting texture for thinking about one of the larger research questions of the project, which is how graffiti complicates, claims and reimagines public space and what a right to the city means.

2012 work, Las Molinas.

Author unknown. Las Molinas. 2016.

Las Molinas, 2016.

Chuen, Las Molinas, 2016.

Shady, Dafne, Sen. Instituto Municipale de Juventud. 2016.

Kif &Shady, 2015.

Shady, 2015.

Chuen, 2015.

I also spoke with Professor Hectór Gómez Vargas, a sociologist who focuses on youth identity in the Guanajuato region. He offered some crucial historical and contextual insights about the history of the cityas it relates to youth culture. For instance, he marked the year 1989 as a key turning point for the city as it entered a more global market. Between the 1950s and the 1980s youth culture “exploded” in León, influenced by U.S. cultural objects like the films Rebel Without a Cause and The Warriors (indeed, when I first met Nikkis he was wearing a Warriors t-shirt). In the 1970s Beatlemania took hold of León and “the city went crazy, they didn’t know what to do [about the phenomena]. This is the subject of Dr. Gómez Varga’s current research project, what he views as “an incendiary period for moral panic” and such 1970s anxieties, he believes, shapes how youth are treated today. Another key offshoot from 1989 is the legacy of the Panista government, marked both by corruption and more business-person-oriented models of governance (this also explains the harsh Zero Tolerance background, because there are tight ties between businesses and the state) but also social programs that draw attention to things not previously treated by the government (women, youth, etc.) They did three key things in this early period: a larger and more serious municipal archive, more funding for the Cultural Institute of Leon (ICL), and founded the Casa de Juventud. In his view, early graffiti (pre-1990s) was meant “to insult” with phrases like “chinga tu madre” (fuck your mother), later graffiti was about claiming existence and identity, “Aqui estoy” and is more of an international formation.

Zero tolerance, he noted, was a Panista program, and it took place at the time where government entities and businesses were trying to open Guanajuato to new markets in Korea, North America, Japan, Italy, Germany—trying to attract investors. They were also expanding the Mexican art scene—trying to create economic development in Leon there was a big tourism push, so they developed more cultural manifestations, night life, Fox Sports. They were opening micro busineses for youth. And the University of Guanajuato expanded a lot, and it became possible to have carreras(majors) like Arte and Cultura. There was also a move to recuperate the historic center and promote nightlife for consumption. Zero tolerance, given this context, becomes more interesting because it throws into relief how graffiti is positioned during this period as not fine art but instead a “hygiene and safety” issue.

AM Piece, 2010.

A lot of this was corroborated in the archives, namely, that graffiti writers are dignified as artists only when they make interventions into cultural patrimony and fine art, with the Cine de Oro (Golden Age of Cinema) mural painted in a tunnel of the Malecón and the Bicentenio murals, also painted in 2010. These murals are lauded (in opinion pieces, no less!) because they constitute legible contributions to official culture. Another interesting moment was the first reference to graffiti writers as artists (versus vandals) which occurs in a short article criticizing police violence against artists at a graffiti gallery show. It turns out the gallery was Wes’, the first in Mexico, and one of the artists assaulted by the police was Nikkis (both go unnamed in the AM piece). Is victimage what admits one into the polity? Is violence the price of admission?

Finally, another evolution of the project, beyond the book, is to initiate a cultural exchange program between my home city of Pittsburgh and León. There are important and interesting parallels between the history of graffiti as an urban problem in León and its urban “boom” and the conjuncture facing Pittsburgh now. During 2015-2016 I have noticed a sharp increase in anti graffiti activities, but also a kind of demonization and repression of youth, both by the city and in public discourse. Consider, for instance, that in a local neighborhood conversation website, NextDoor, that the arrest of a 20-year-old Latino graffiti writer is hailed as a great success and that multiple adults call for him to be punished with “several years in jail!” dismissing any concern about the role that graffiti might play as a means of public communication. I’ve been told by the curator of Pittsburgh’s industrial heritage urban arts program, Shane Pilster, that such vehemence is largely due to a lack of exposure: there have not been substantive conversations about graffiti (and the possibility of legal graffiti) in Pittsburgh. Indeed, when a City Paper front page raised the issue, the comments sections were full of anger about “hooligans” and “vandalism.” To that end, I believe that the artists in León who have been negotiating public discourse and educating non-graffiti-writer publics about graffiti for the past seven to ten years have much to teach us in Pittsburgh about how to craft spaces for youth voice that can work in concert with institutions, or creatively work outside of them. Thus, as part of a broader hemispheric exchange project about art, social change, industrial history, and hemispheric movements, I am working with a collaborator, public artist Oreen Cohen, to bring Leonese artists to Pittsburgh to work with Pittsburgh artists, participate in a symposium on graffiti history, culture, and futures, and lead workshops for K-12 Latin@ youth from Pittsburgh’s public schools. The Municipal Youth Institute of León is excited about an extended cultural exchange, so this would be the initial step in that direction.

** a hearty thanks to Villanova’s WFI Research Grant for funding, as well as the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and the Hewlett International Grant at the University of Pittsburgh.