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The plaqueasos are beginning to be designated by some Chicano activists and artists as indigenous expressions of Chicanismo. Outdoor murals in barrios, originally an attempt to cover and discourage graffiti , are now appropriating the street writer’s techniques, symbols and verbal content to design walls mimicking the vigor of street writing. Sally R. Romotsky and Jerry Romotsky “Plaqueaso on the Wall,” 1975 The “Problem” of Murals and Graffiti It should come as no surprise that Chicana/o muralism emerged in the same spaces where graffiti, tagging, throw-ups, and plaqueasos/placas were and continue to be prominent in the urban landscapes of California. Though community muralism, Chicana/o Indigenism, and graffiti are creative expressions that have operated more or less independently of one another , this chapter explores the contested site where all three intersect in the urban spaces of California. Given that these three currents were sharing the same spaces and were being produced by similar communities, it stands to reason that they would encounter one another at various junctions. This chapter is also dedicated to examining the complex relationship between Chicana/o graffiti and muralism, as well as the Indigenist aesthetics that influenced, to varying degrees, many mural and graffiti practitioners in California . While I do not argue for a direct historical connection between graffiti calligraphy and indigenous glyphs, I do maintain that both forms explore the uncertain territory between image and text and offer alternative aesthetics to the Western canon that many Chicana/o artists sought. While Euro-American culture established clear demarcations between text and image, graffiti represented one of the first artistic movements in the Americas since the indigenous preconquest periods that took text back into C H A P T E R T H R E E Graffiti and Murals Urban Culture and Indigenist Glyphs G R A F F I T I A N D M U R A L S 101 the realm of the aesthetic. This interstitial territory that both graffiti writers and muralists traversed necessarily posed a challenge to the status quo. Ivor L. Miller, author of Aerosol Kingdom (2002), argued that graffiti represented “the idea of constructing an identity in opposition to the state and the consumer culture; and the idea that resistance through cultural production is reinforced with a consciousness of ancestral spiritual traditions.”1 Hence, the values at the core of graffiti’s existence were not unlike those of community muralism. Graffiti is a complex urban creative expression characterized by different criteria and fueled by varying degrees of motivation. Since its earliest forms, from the 1960s to the 1970s, graffiti has often been associated with youth gang culture because different groups or cliques would tag words, letters, numbers, or signs in public spaces, usually with spray paint or felt-tip markers , to stake their claim over a particular territory or neighborhood. In this way, they would make their presence known to local residents while also aggressively challenging prior claims by rival gangs. Gangs would also tag walls with “roll calls,” that is, listings of the various members of any given gang or clique. Claims for social and physical space as well as group identity are important elements of gang-related graffiti, not unlike Chicana/o indigenous murals themselves, even though they functioned in significantly different ways. The complex system of symbols produced by gangs was not unlike the heraldic tradition in Europe of creating coats of arms, Marcos Sánchez-Tranquilino argues: “[This tradition] served barrio calligraphers as a discursive model for displaying what was common to both heraldry and placas, namely, the public display of kinship ties, corporate liaisons, territorial ownership (or dominance), and collective strength.”2 Jerry Romotsky and Sally Romotsky further argued that another related European tradition taggers adopted was the use of old English script: “Perhaps the alphabet most generally admired . . . is old English lettering. The style conveys dignity and respect.”3 Through their adoption of this type of visual vocabulary, gangs were seeking to legitimize their group identity and informal youth memberships within the public sphere. Many graffiti scholars like Miller and Joe Austin, author of Taking the Train (2001), also locate the origins of graffiti in the civil rights movement during the 1960s, especially on the East Coast: “Radicalized youth of color had an especially strong presence in the city, particularly the Black Panthers and the Young Lords [Puerto Rican nationalist organization], who were active in many of the neighborhoods the writers called home.”4 Nevertheless, starting in the late 1960s...

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