Many Chicano murals in Denver have become signposts for streets and neighborhoods they reside in. Their colorful compositions packed with rich symbolic meaning define public spaces in cultural memory. The term La Alma means “the soul” in the Spanish language, and we might even consider recreation centers to represent the heart of a neighborhood or community. Emanuel Martinez painted this mural—bearing the namesake of the Denver recreation center—in 1978 as a gift to the Westside Chicano community. This mural, painted before a public audience with the assistance of artist Michael Maestas and residents living in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, was intended to represent the rootedness of visitors to the recreation center in both the community of Denver and the greater history of the Americas.1 It came about directly following various urban renewal and gentrification projects which increased the cost of living and drove longtime Chicano residents further away from the city.
Martinez grew up in Denver’s Westside neighborhood and witnessed it actively change as neighborhoods were demolished to make way for citywide urban renewal. Dissatisfied, the artist actively participated in the struggle against the erasure of the Chicano community through protest and painting, creating his first mural at age thirteen.
In the grand tradition of Mexican and Chicano mural painting, one learns through the act of creation. Among the most famous muralists of the midcentury were Diego Rivera (1886-1957), David Siqueiros (1896-1974), and Jose Clemente Orozco (1883-1949) , who each eventually made their way to the United States to paint commissioned works, training artists in the process. Emanuel Martinez studied with Siquerios for a period of time in his youth, and he continues the same mentorship practice with other young people through an initiative titled the Emanuel Project based in Morrison, Colorado. The continuation of the mural tradition as a way of transforming and informing the public demonstrates their effectiveness in bringing people together to preserve important histories.
“The impact the mural project has on the kids who work on the mural is pretty phenomenal, but even more so, is the powerful impact it has on the kids who get to see the mural on a daily basis.” Emanuel Martinez
Art historical formal analysis of the style, techniques, and motifs represented in murals such as this can help us understand these powerful storytelling devices. It also highlights their connection to the conventional artist studio practice, furthering the need to protect and preserve them.
The rich symbolic meaning embedded in the layers of imagery comprising La Alma emphasize a story of shared heritage and humanity across centuries and borders as the two figures of his composition deliver the promise of thriving youth, full of resilience as their neighborhood continues to be reshaped by urban renewal. Martinez’s open studio, the park in which it was painted, also represents a place of congregation and protest as the community fought against displacement and unfair treatment as a result of gentrification and racially-motivated violence. Taking seriously the possibility of this mural and others like it being the open studio of the artist or artists who paint them allows us to marry their artistic and historical importance in a way that could be significant to their preservation at the local and state level.
Preserving Denver’s Chicano heritage does not only imply the protection of older murals, it also involves documenting and supporting the creation of newer works. Recent projects such as the Su Teatro murals (case study #3) created by Carlos Fresquez (b.1956) and students from the Metropolitan University of Denver demonstrate the need to create new murals as well as the importance of mentoring the next generation of artists.
1Martinez de Luna, Lucha Aztzin. “Heritage and Place Chicano Murals of Colorado.” In Murals of the Americas. (Mayer Center Publications, Denver; 2017): 156.