Muro que Habla, Canta, y Grita

El Muro que Habla, Canta, y Grita (The Wall that Talks, Sings, and Shouts) is a mural dedicated to the “everyday man and woman.”[1] The mural was commissioned by the famous Norteña band, Los Tigres del Norte, who can be seen playing behind a kneeling jaguar warrior. The warrior is marked with a Virgen de Guadalupe tattoo on his arm, and figures of social justice flow behind him, culminating in an image of the Aztec patron deity, Huitzilopochtli, as an eagle holding the sun. The female figure right before Huitzilopochtli could be La Malinche. She is shown with a speech scroll, possibly referencing her role as Cortés' translator during the Spanish Invasion of Mesoamerica. Although different readings exist about her participation in the fall of Tenochtitlan, more modern views cast her as a woman functioning within the male-dominated power structure of colonial Mexico. An apple tree rises up on the right side, invoking at once the pre-Columbian concept of the Tree of Life as well as the Christian Tree of Knowledge. A figure rises above the tree, holding a molecule containing a dove nestled in fire.

Men, women, and children march across the center of the composition while American police officers hold down one man but are unable to stop the rest. In the front, a family is making the long journey down a green road, which fades into a mountainous landscape, where in the background, a large crying Indigenous man is depicted. His outstretched arms support the green road on which the figures make their journey. The road they travel is made of other events and figures, such as a Spanish mission, a man with a torch, and a funeral procession. All these events seem to be leading up to the family in the foreground, who bears books and a laptop and moves towards a future of technology and education.