Mexican Street Art

Something a little different..................

Walking around the beautiful streets lined with colorful houses and buildings it soon became obvious that graffiti art is common in Central America too.  Whilst there are a lot of simple 'tags' that ruin the look of the landscape there were some other pieces that made quiet an impact to the scenery.  Quite common was the use of ´stencilling' to quickly add a protest to a wall.  Political protest images were very common, particularly out of main cities where the Indigenous people struggle for justice.

The first four entries are the amature kid graffiti style that definately ruins a landscape.

A pedestrian overpass, what a perfect tool to enable kids to tag the tops of buildings

Even the icecream shop is not safe

Paint a wall white in a town where kids are bored and i guess you can expect it to look like this

Whilst it may look like nonsence, this is actually a message......' clean your house and wait for the garbage truck' ..... random.

This is a typical Zapatista image of protest.  The face cover, just showing the eyes, is typical headwear of the Zapatistas during protests and fits perfectly into their wall protests.  This is a stencil that is easily and quickly sprayed onto walls.

The main image is another detailed protest stencil from the Oaxaca region with, on the lower left,  another form of easy graffitti, stickers. 

One of the best art pieces we saw in Mexico, this one just happens to make up another protest on a wall as seen below

For an integrated protest campaign they use signs like this around town squares.  This one is a protest from local indiginous people from the Oaxaca region wanting autonomy and justice.  Local ladies sat infront of this sign and others like it, making traditional crafts.

Kinda ugly and random, this is actually a protest.  The words written in the beanie are anti government slogans

The following images are just random photos that captured our imagination during our many city walks in the towns we visited.

The photo below shows how Mexican businesses advertise an event.  Find a vacant wall, usually a disused lot, hire a sign writter and BINGO. 

All signwriters throughout Mex would use this type of freehand writing and style to post an event ad.  The quality of the paints in Mex would make it look old after about 1 month.