You may have noticed the brand new mural near the corner of 23rd and Treat. The maybe 100 feet long wall has been turned into a work of art by a crew of 25 Bay Area muralists led by Josue Rojas. The work isn’t an isolated opera, it is the first step into the expansion of the famed Birds of America, an 80-foot-wide, 25-foot-tall mural that Rojas and a crew of 100 muralists painted in 2020 to celebrate the life of Latino people who had perished at the hands of the police across the Bay Area in the heat years of police shootings. The whole building—thanks to private funding—is being turned into a visual ode to the Latinx experience in the Bay Area. To paraphrase Rojas, it will become a beacon of the Latino struggle for inclusion and the improvement of the living conditions of the communities living in the Mission district and around the Bay Area.

 

The work was completed in July by a group of local muralists—including Bolivian painter Pablito Ruiz Arroyo, Oakland artist Vanessa Solari Espinoza aka 'Agana,' and San Francisco Bay Area’s Aroon de la Cruz, Alvaro Lacayo, and Franciso Aquino aka Twick. The mural celebrates the life of Jesse Travizon, aka Spider, a mission muralist who lived nearby, the next installments will be dedicated to commemorating Yolanda Lopez, James Prigoff, and Clarence Robbs. 

 

Three leading exponents of Latinx culture and political engagement, Lopez, a five-decade California feminist, and Chicana activist was the author of Portrait of the Artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe—one of the most famous Chicano artworks of the late ’70s. Lopez explored the experience of Mexican American women recasting herself, her mother, and her grandmother as the Virgin of Guadalupe.

 

Prigoff, who passed away in 2021 at 93, is the author of Spraycan Art, a seminal text for the study of graffiti, and of Murals of California, which is considered the Deus ex behind graffiti being accepted as an art form rather than remaining a misdemeanor. Robbs—aka Cuba—who passed away at 57 last year and had elected the Mission his residence instead brought "wildstyle" graffiti lettering—images formed by overlapping letters, arrows, and other geometrical forms to one another–to San Francisco

 

And the expansion of the Birds of America isn't the only work with which Rojas and his crew are engaged. He'll have created two additional murals between now and the end of this summer. A 10-story tall triticum that will occupy three sides of 681 Florida Street will become the new house of the mural “San Francisco's Carnaval,” and one at Downtown Highschool on Potrero Hill, Roja’s alma mater.

 

However busy Rojas may appear, he is but one of the many Latino artists who are animating what can be defined as a new Latinx cultural revolution in the Bay Area, which centers around a flourishing of murals, community centers, galleries, libraries, public events, budding musicians, poets, and writers. Works of “historical muralists,” like Marina Perez-Wong, tagger Dzire and Susan Cervantes, are now being flanked by those of Marco Rios, Ethan in Motion and King157—all muralists who were their pupils when they taught at Precita Eyes, a Mission-based and community-driven school for aspiring artists. Josue Rojas, an apprentice of the Precita’s hub himself is at the center of this movement. A former art director of Youth Outlook, a periodical that offered a writing outlet to the Youth of San Francisco's Juvenile Hall, Rojas, besides being a muralist, is also a community activist.

 

He has been director of youth programs at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, art director and editor of El Tecolote, and former Chair of Accíon Latina—the continuator of galleria La Raza. Rojas’ work was on exhibition last year along with Rivera's Pan-American from May to August at the SFMOMA. He was instrumental in organizing the local muralists’ presence at the museum during the activities surrounding the celebrated transfer. In the fall of 2020, Rojas coordinated a group of 100 muralists to produce Birds of the Americas. Recently Rojas (who also goes as JR The Artist) has been featured with his mother by KQED for their son-Mother Painting Duo. But talk about the Renaissance, and the opinions start diverging. How deep is the phenomenon? Is the artist himself aware of being part of a revival dynamic? Though one of the primary engines of the resurgence of creative activities around Latinx themes in the San Francisco Bay Area, Rojas himself is of two minds when it comes to the term. 

 

Yes, of course, there's the push against the gentrification of the Mission, which has sprung a grass-root movent that includes organizations suchas Plaza 16 Coalition, TODCO Group, United

to Save the Mission, the Tenderloin People's Congress and the South of Market Community Action Network. Just last February, with the participation of the neighborhood's residents, and after a battle that lasted almost a decade, they compelled the city to take over the "Monster in the Mission" from luxury real estate developer Maximus Inc. Maximus had planned to build 300condos on the 16th and Mission’s location and to destinate it to affordable housing. Then, there's the restoration of the Carnaval mural over the House of Brakes at 24th and South Van Ness. Next, the restoration of Clarion Valley after the murals were defaced in 2018. Finally, the formation of the Calle 24 District and now the expansion of the Birds of Americas, and many more worksare being painted by the day.

 

"Well, in light of these considerations, one may conclude that, indeed, a Latinx Renaissance is underway in the Bay Area," Rojas concedes.

 

For Lou de Matties, photojournalist, a former correspondent from Latin America for Reuters and Pacific News, and producer of  'Crimebuster,' and "Mission Noir" movies such as 'The Other Barrio' and 'Another Barrio,' a Latinx Renaissance has been underway since the seventies when Paco's Tacos at 24th and South Van Ness was hosting exhibitions by Latina muralists Patricia Rodriguez, Consuelo Mendez, and Graciela Carrillo of the collective Las

Mujeres Muralistas. It was a time when walking in the Mission, one would run into Roberto Vargas, the members of the Mission Poets of editorial Pocho-Ché, and Alejandro Murguía, first San Francisco's poet laureate and author of Mission Visions, adds De Matteis. "Politics played a big role at the time. The fight against Somoza, they fought in Nicaragua, with the fight against gentrification history, is coming full circle," says de Matteis. "This new generation of muralists, street poets, videographers, and musicians have turned the Mission again into a hotbed of Latino culture; their art seeks to elevate the visibility and the profile of the Latinx community." De Matteis points to organizations like Calle 24, The Brava Theatre, Precita Eyes, Mission Cultural

Center and The Women's Building during COVID spearheading the campaign for vaccinating the neighborhood's residents independently from official channels.

 

"The Mission and Visitation Valley have been ignored by the authorities; if it weren't for those organizations and the local artists, it would have been a disaster," says De Matteis, "and it is a seed that is spreading across to the Bay, for example, with Causa Justa," an Oakland-based nonprofit that provides legal assistance to low-income renters who have been evicted, as well as several collaborations and collaborations with artists and muralists across the South."

 

For playwright and performer Paul Flores, director of Paseo Artistico—a free public art walk that takes on 24th and adjacent streets every two weeks with performances, music, public readings, food, workshops, and seminars—the Renaissance began toward the end of the nineties with the program Regeneration, launched by the now-closed Galeria de La Raza on 24th and Bryant. Regeneration is meant to develop a new generation of Latino performers and visual artists.

 

"Out of that initiative have come to a lot of people, some have also become famous in their own right, like (graphic novelist and LGBTQ activist) Jaime Cortez, who just published Gordo a book for Grove Press, (performance artist, writer, and activist) Guillermo Gomez-Pena, and (performer, writer, poet, and lecturer) Leticia Hernandez who organized acting workshops," says Flores." We started to adopt the neighborhood's traditions and put them into music, poetry, spoken words." From there, organizing young Chicano artists and pushing for the creation of more Latino enterprises, the step was just natural. On 24th Street, there are about 20 Latinx 10 cultural venues: Precita Eyes, the Brava Theatre, Medicine for Nightmare Bookstore and Gallery, Adobe Books, Dance Mission, Mission's Precita, Evolved SF, the Mission Cultural Center, El Tecolote, Accíon Latina.

 

"We had local people saying, we want to participate in developing a cultural program on 24th that gets everybody involved," says Flores.

 

More bearish the position of long-time Mission resident Chris Carlsson. Writer, historian, "professor bicyclist," and creator of the Shaping San Francisco archive, Carlsson believes that whatever Renaissance may be talked about, Latinx dynamics in the city are marked by expulsion.

 

"If you consult the most recent census figures and compare them to 2010 and 2000, not to mention earlier censuses, you'll see there's been a steady fall in the population of Latinx people here in the Mission," says Carlsson. "Overall, there has not been an increase citywide, largely because it's too damn expensive to move here unless you have boatloads of money!"

 

Fernando Ramirez, co-founder of the clothes store/art gallery Evolvedsf, does not doubt that a renaissance is definitively in the Mission's cards, “particularly since the community has successfully contained the effects of gentrification,” stresses Ramirez. 

 

"I mean, you can see everything that's happening on 24th street. All the emerging artists, the new murals, the musicians coming up," says Ramirez. Currently, the gallery is exhibiting works by Tanya Hernandez, an artist of Guatemalan origins. She creates people's portraits on burned wood. "For her opening Diego Herrera, aka DJ Lucky provided the entertainment," adds Fernando. "Like many of the other operators of Calle 24, we also organize art classes, seminars, and other activities to allow neighbors to interact with the artists and to make art."

 

But talk about Renaissance, and opinions start diverging immediately. How deep is the phenomenon? Is the artist aware of being amid a revival dynamic? Did the artist of the Renaissance know that there was such a thing as the Renaissance?

 

"Sort of yes…but sort of no," Davide Gasparotto, senior curator of paintings at the Getty Museum answered recently. "As always in history, it is very complex; there's not an easy answer."

 

Giorgio Vasari was the first person to ever use the word Renaissance in 1500 to describe the creative wave that had been already shaking Europe for over the 200 year before his birth. He divided the phenomenon into three phases describing its mutation and growth over time. And if the past is immutable, the present uncertain, it is the future that tells the story. And on September 24, 2022, Venezuelan multidisciplinary performing artist, cultural worker, and educator Andreina Maldonado and the members of La Colectiva de Mujeres will open with "Our Work/ Our Dignity." Developed with the support of the San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist grant, "the work is about immigration, justice and low-wage workers, complete with personal stories, poetry, original music, and choreographed dance that uplifts the voices of the working class and puts immigrant people's lived experiences at the forefront of artistic spaces," says Maldonado. 

 

This fall, actress Virginia Blanco and her La Lengua Theatre group will debut Las Azurduy [las-ah-soor-doo-ee]. Written by Argentinian playwright Florencia Aroldis, it is a story about Juana Azurduy, a mixed-race woman of Indigenous descent who only recently was recognized by history books as a hero of Latin America's wars of independence against the Spanish crown. In addition, La Lengua and AlterTheater are collaborating on a playwriting residency program called Historias de Descolonización/ Decolonization Stories. Five BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) storytellers from all over the Americas have been chosen to produce short plays in Spanish, Spanglish, Diné, Aymara, and English to be showcased this fall. In addition, this past June 18 returned to Paseo Artistico. On that occasion, Accíon Latina presented "Somos Esenciales / We Are Essential," a bilingual, multimedia performance and research project by local Written and directed by Paul S. Flores that explores the stories of the "Latinx Pandemic," referring to when 80% of COVID infections were from the Latino community. 

And to cap everything, while great expectations brew for the second volume of SFMOMA's "The Mission Muralismo Video Zine," Duke University Press recently announced the upcoming publication (August 12, 2022) of Consuelo Jimenez Underwood:Art, Weaving, Vision. A collection of essayes curated by Laura E. Pérez and Ann Marie Leimer, the collection represents the first comprehensive look at the art of this Chicana feminist textile. Interestingly enough an upcoming exhibition about Jimenez Underwood's work is scheduled to open this October at the San Jose Museum of Quilts while the Smithsonian American Art Museum will feature one of her creations in the “Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women” exhibition scheduled for October 2024. In the meantime, in the Mission, everybody is getting ready for Precita Eyes' 45th-anniversary gala this coming October.