PHOENIX — It’s not easy to distill an entire community’s culture down to a single picture.
But that’s not stopping Roman Reyes and Jose Andre Giron from painting.
“We’ve been doing so much painting over the years,” Giron said, brushing on a dark shadow with a small brush.
The mural is big; it’s the entire south wall of the American Legion Post 41 at 2nd Avenue and Grant Street. And it’s meant to show not only where the people of the community have come from, but where they’re going.
“As you come down, you see the family,” Reyes said, giving a tour of the massive mural. “Then as you come across you see the results of their work.”
The mural shows Hispanic families beginning in World War II, then the progress of their children.
“And as you go up, you see what they have become,” he said. “They become doctors, attorneys, lawyers, engineers.”
The mural was paid for by the Salt River Project through a community fund. Its location is specific. The barrio exists because of segregation and racism years ago. It’s the reason Post 41 was built.
“The young men from the barrios here were called to duty and went to war. They came back home and found out that they had to do another war,” Reyes said.
“They wouldn't let Mexican Americans join Post 1, which is the first post here in Phoenix. So we started our own.”
Both Giron and Reyes are veterans. Giron received a Purple Heart during his service in Vietnam.
“I joined up to go to art school,” Giron said, “but I ended up in Vietnam”
It was his ar that kept him going through his deployment in the jungle.
“I had a notebook that I would sketch, you know, every day,” Giron said. “The day I got shot, all I could worry about was my art book.”
“Matter of fact I contribute that a lot to getting through that war,” he said.
Giron and Reyes have spent a month sitting, standing, and climbing on the sidewalk. Slowly, brush by brush, building their own history on the wall.
VERSIÓN EN ESPAÑOL: Esta es la historia detrás del mural en la pared del American Legion Post 41 en el centro de Phoenix
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