This weekend, a sharp resident noticed on Saturday morning that Marta Ayala Minero’s mural on the northeast corner of 24th and Valencia streets had been vandalized.
When I contacted Ayala on Saturday, she said she would be out the next day to restore it.
Indeed, she did just that.
When I mentioned that the mural had been somewhat different earlier, she gave me a lesson on its evolution. First painted in 1992, thanks to a grant from the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, “Roots and Frequencies Basic to Our Education” “had a lady speaking the phrase for ‘nonviolence’ in a few languages.”
The mural was based on a dream the artist had, growing up in El Salvador.
Ayala left it untouched for a few years, but she eventually added a few images “such as women planting trees.”
After it was vandalized the first time, Ayala “decided to change some images to honor the Nairobi people,” who were having serious issues with water and being moved from their homes. “The painted images trigger an ancestral memory of how we are connected, even if we live on the other side of the world.”
Ayala said she would be working on the wall for the next two or three weekends, “to sharpen the Quetzal, the waterfall and other areas to make the images less loose and write a little bit about what they mean.”
“The Arabic letters on the top,” she wrote “were painted by the grandfather of the building owner. Those will remain untouched.” They speak to nonviolence.
In the years to come, Ayala wrote, the mural will likely evolve again to introduce and pay homage to the Muwekma Ohlone tribes of the San Francisco Bay Area. That is an effort that may take some sponsorship, she wrote.
As for the defacement of the faces with white paint, she wrote, “It has been categorized as a hate crime.”
But she was sanguine about the vandals. They used primer, she said, “so they left it primed for me.”
“We are warriors,” she added, “and if we fall, we get up again with dignity.”
Why would anyone deface this innocuous mural?