Estelí, Nicaragua: Street Murals and Educative Cities
Action
For two weeks in December, we lived in Estelí, a progressive FSLN city in Northwest Nicaragua. For half of the day we studied Spanish at CENAC language school. The other half of the day we explored the city and continued learning, often from public murals on the streets:
Conquest of the Americas.
A quote from Gandhi: “We must be the change that we want to see.”
HIV/AIDS education
Poetry and Japanese-style drawings
Memorial to a martyr: “lecturer, teacher, poet, guerrilla, revolutionary”
Reflection
When walking around cities in North America, I’m used to passing by lots of blank walls, amongst the shopfronts and homes. When walking around Estelí, I also passed quite a few blank walls, but a surprising number of potentially blank walls had somehow covered themselves in educational and artistic murals. This seemed like a rather sensible decision on their part. After all, why shouldn’t streetfronts try to educate passersby?
While traveling around the US in September and October, we (re)read A People’s History of the United States. We were repeatedly struck by how little we’d learned, inside or outside of school, about the historical oppression and injustice described in the book. The “official story” seemed to be the only one we were taught, but perhaps this might have been different if the streets of Baltimore had as many popular education murals as Estelí. What if our city streets were designed not just to transport us around, but also explicitly to educate?
Question
What do you see in these murals? What would you like to have on the building walls of your neighborhood or city? What do you like or dislike about what is on these walls now?
For two weeks in December, we lived in Estelí, a progressive FSLN city in Northwest Nicaragua. For half of the day we studied Spanish at CENAC language school. The other half of the day we explored the city and continued learning, often from public murals on the streets:
Conquest of the Americas.
A quote from Gandhi: “We must be the change that we want to see.”
HIV/AIDS education
Poetry and Japanese-style drawings
Memorial to a martyr: “lecturer, teacher, poet, guerrilla, revolutionary”
Reflection
When walking around cities in North America, I’m used to passing by lots of blank walls, amongst the shopfronts and homes. When walking around Estelí, I also passed quite a few blank walls, but a surprising number of potentially blank walls had somehow covered themselves in educational and artistic murals. This seemed like a rather sensible decision on their part. After all, why shouldn’t streetfronts try to educate passersby?
While traveling around the US in September and October, we (re)read A People’s History of the United States. We were repeatedly struck by how little we’d learned, inside or outside of school, about the historical oppression and injustice described in the book. The “official story” seemed to be the only one we were taught, but perhaps this might have been different if the streets of Baltimore had as many popular education murals as Estelí. What if our city streets were designed not just to transport us around, but also explicitly to educate?
Question
What do you see in these murals? What would you like to have on the building walls of your neighborhood or city? What do you like or dislike about what is on these walls now?
2 Comments:
At 10:38 AM, Jen said…
This might not be a popular response, but I usually don't like art or murals on the side of buildings. I've seen a couple that are nice, but usually I don't like them or feel anything much towards them. I don't necessarily want the city streets to educate me in this manner. I'm not condemning murals or the reasons for people to paint them, or their desire to share the information. I just feel quite neutral about the subject.
At 9:31 AM, lernerm said…
I love murals, but as you know, I don't care for grafitti. I think it makes city more interesting when the buildings have lots of murals. I even like it when kids draw with chalk on the sidewalks. TO me, it's like gardens - fun to look at, and a nice way of expressing yourself. I like all kinds of murals - artistic ones, political ones - as long as they're not obscene, are well done from an artistic point of view, and they don't overwhelm - like the tons and tons of grafitti we have . I think the murals you posted are great - I wish we had more in Baltimore. It reminds me of the posting you had about art in the city - things like the models of fish that appeared in Baltimore and which are now sadly mostly gone. Nothing is worse than block after block of sameness.
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