Tucked between two of the quaint brick and wooden struc-

tures comprising the colonial phantasmagoria that is LA’s Olvera

Street, is a roof-top mural, painted by the famed Mexican activist,
Marxist organizer and painter, David Alfaro Siqueiros. The passion
project of the 1920s preservationist Christine Sterling, Olvera Street
represented Southern California’s new, much whiter population’s
fantastical vision of “Mexican History.” Known today as the “orig-
inal gentrifier,” Sterling partnered with the notorious Los Angeles
Times editor and real-estate mogul Harry Chandler
to help construct this vision at the center of down-
town. With Chandler’s financial backing, Sterling
revamped the street beside the Avila Adobe—a ves-
tige from the Mission era of Spanish colonization—
to create a simulacrum of a Mexican marketplace.
Unencumbered by the long history of Spanish and
Anglo colonization and genocide that had displaced
so many indigenous Califorinian peoples, today’s
Olvera Street remains true to Sterling and Chandler’s
1930s vision; a romanticized historical proxy that
protects its visitors from acknowledging America’s
genocidal past.
Soon after Olvera Street’s opening in 1930,
Siquieros was commissioned to help complete Ster-
ling’s spurious vision. Despite Siquieros’ renown as a
leader of a political and cultural revolution in Mexico,
founded in a rejection of U.S. Imperialism, the finan-
cial interests looking to trade in on Siqueiros’ notori-
ety and cultural capital were shocked and dismayed
when he unveiled his completed mural, América Tropical: Oprimida
y Destrozada por los Imperialismos (Tropical America: Oppressed
and Destroyed by Imperialism, 1932). A striking homage to the
indigenous culture and labor upon which the affluence and power
of the emerging 20th-century Los Angeles metropolis was built,
Siqueiros’ painting stands in stark contrast to its idyllic surround.
The mural depicts thick, nodular tree roots in brassy, oak-hued
tendrils that dominate the pictorial frame in a rhizomatic field that
enwraps the viewer into its narrative of indigenous exploitation. The
Myth & Mural on roots serve as a curvaceous canopy against which a sturdy Aztec
pyramid is juxtaposed. The figure of an indigenous man is offered
Olvera Street up in the center of the frame. The man is tightly bound to a wooden
double-cross, his head hanging askew in tragic lifelessness. Perched
atop the man, a vivid, yellow-golden eagle is perched with wings
BY KELLY RAPPLEYE
spread and beak agape, as if crying out in victorious joy; lording
over its bounty of prey.
Though today the once vibrant mural has faded, this was part
of Siqueiros’ original intent. Siqueiros insisted the mural never be
repainted or restored to its original colorful state. According to
him: the mural’s eventual decay reflects its boundedness to its en-
vironmental milieu, and to time as history. Unfortunately, the mural
was never given the chance to age naturally as it was swiftly cen-
PR OV E N A N C E sored and painted over in 1932. Since that time, renewed attention
brought about by Chicano civil rights activists working in the 1960s
and 1970s inaugurated a restoration project. In a collaboration with
the Getty Conservation Institute and “The City” (El Pueblo de Los
Angeles Historical Monument), the mural restoration was complet-
ed in 2012. You can now view the celebrated mural for free at the
American Tropical Interpretive Center located at the heart of Olvera
Street.
Looking at the mural today, amidst ongoing ICE raids and mass
deportations, we must ask ourselves what Los Angeles loses in
times of massive urban “regeneration” and development; DOES LA
HOPE TO COMPENSATE BY INVESTING IN THE CULTURAL CAP-
Roberto Berdecio, a friend of Siqueiros during the 1930s, stands in ITAL of revolutionaries What does Los Angeles seek to gain when
front of Siqueiros’ mural, América Tropical, shortly after completion.
© 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SOMAAP, Mexico it invests in the cultural capital of revolutionaries, and the historical
City. Photo: The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. myth-making of a romanticized Spanish-Mexican past? Perhaps we
must look to Siqueiros’ original message for the answer.

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