It is 4:30 a.m. Roosters are crowing. The courtyard where the mural is being painted is awakening. Ripe mangoes, fallen from the night before, are being picked off the ground. A bicycle is wheeled out to the street. The horn of a freighter echoes in the distance as it crosses the Gulf of Mexico. Electricity has just been restored after being off from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m.
Havana is surviving like a city at war and under siege. Power shortages are endemic. Artist Mario Torero is on a tight schedule. The mural must be completed by tomorrow morning.
The elements are all there: the dynamic mix of color, shape, and form—larger than life but somehow more real; the slogans reflecting both historical and revolutionary reality; the honored images of courage and hope standing side by side with new images and new tales of moral outrage and adventure. Like murals everywhere, the mural is out in the open for all to see.
"The cultural revolution follows the political revolution," Torero contends. "Murals reflect periods of intense societal change, providing the means for expressing needs as well as dreams." For Torero, murals are monumental political art. He might even go so far as to say they are the highest, the most logical, the purest and strongest form of painting. Not for private gain or for the benefit of a certain privileged few, murals are, by definition, part of a philosophy that integrates art with community activism. They are of, by, and for the people.
TORERO’S MURALS have offered large-scale challenges to the public’s conscience from San Diego to Prague. In Prague during the Velvet Revolution, he created a mural dedicated as the John Lennon Peace Wall. In San Diego, his adopted city, his murals helped establish the cultural identity and unity of the name "Chicano."
Torero projects the image of Martin Luther King Jr. from a slide onto the far right side of the Havana mural. The image is appropriate, since the courtyard is on the grounds of the Ebenezer Baptist Church’s Martin Luther King Jr. Center. The early hour causes the image to be slightly distorted. Later, Torero will be asked who the image is. His answer will be that it’s who you think it is. "Heroic substitutions are important so that people can fly away with their imaginations. The distortion opens the image up to a more humanitarian attitude that crosses borders and revolutions.
"We leave and, without the mural, it’s just a memory. The blockade reinforces the Cubans’ sense of isolation," explains Torero. "The mural is there to energize and serve as a constant reminder, a steady celebration, that the world cares."
Torero’s mural team includes a heterogeneous group from the U.S.-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan, a humanitarian aid project intent on demonstrating that concern. With a mix of participants including Chicanos, Chicago students, pastors from Manitoba and Virginia, Washington trade unionists, and Mexican professionals, the caravan is the largest act of civil disobedience against the 33-year-old U.S. blockade of the island. More than 300 people, traveling across the United States in 100 vehicles, gathered 150 tons of badly needed humanitarian aid.
The mural team also includes Cuban artists from the collective Amor y Paz ("Love and Peace") and residents from Havana’s neighborhood of Mariano. Delfin of Amor y Paz is instrumental in gathering paints. Those Torero brought for the occasion are still aboard the Friendshipment freighter, the Pinar del Rio, heavily laden with humanitarian aid for the Martin Luther King Jr. Center. The generosity of the Cuban artists is overwhelming considering the shortages.
DIPPING HIS BRUSH into bright red paint, Torero paints "Sí se puede" in huge block letters across the top of the mural. Borrowed from the United Farm Workers’ cry of hope and action, the words "Yes we can" are also part of the U.S.-Cuba Friendshipment Cara-van’s rallying cry. César Chávez’s bigger-than-lifesize image steps out in front of "Sí se puede." The wings of a great black huelga eagle form a backdrop be-hind the words and Chá-vez. Sym-bolizing la causa, the farm workers’ cause of unifying for better workers’ rights, the huelga eagle ultimately became a symbol of civil rights for all peoples.
Lorenzo Garcia suggests a Chávez quote to grace the mural. "Nosotros tenemos cosas de las cuales, los ricos no pueden ser dueños. Tenemos nuestros cuerpos y espiritus, y la justicia de nuestra causa, como nuestras armas." ("We have something the rich do not own. We have bodies and spirits and the justice of our cause as our weapons.")
Neighborhood children run back and forth in the church courtyard, bringing parents and friends. Everyone is excited about the colorful mural coming to life before their eyes. Many of the children have drawn pictures of a yellow school bus which they have sent to President Bill Clinton. One little girl steps forward and hands Torero her drawing. He bends down to thank her and hold the drawing up to the sunny afternoon light. The suggestion to add the yellow school bus to the mural receives overwhelming support from the community.
The yellow school bus became a symbol of solidarity with the Cuban people after U.S. customs officials refused to allow the U.S.-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan to take it across the U.S.-Mexico border as part of the humanitarian aid shipment destined for Cuba.
Unwilling to abandon the bus, 13 "caravanistas," including Rev. Lucius Walker Jr., executive director of Pastors for Peace, initiated a hunger strike in the tradition of other acts of civil disobedience. After 23 days, the White House gave in to enormous grassroots and international pressure and allowed the bus to be taken to Cuba.
The yellow school bus takes center stage on the mural. Influenced by the children, Torero gives the bus an animated, cartoon-like characteristic. The body of the bus undulates forward, leading a colorful caravan of vehicles from behind. The bus windshield is created by a real window on the mural wall, providing depth "to see through the United States’ lies," as Torero puts it. A hand emerges from the right side of the bus in the "V" for victory. From the left a fist emerges, acknowledging the power of the hunger strikers back on the real bus at the U.S.-Mexico border. The bus appears to be leaping out of the mural and over the words, "Romper el bloqueo" ("Break the blockade"). The bus generates a sense of freedom and unity surrounding the mural.
Torero contends that he is simply the medium for visualizing the message of the community. He transfers the evolving energy and interprets it via the mural. People ask him, "Are you Cuban?" and he says, "No, not yet; I’m just the embodiment of all your struggles and all your ideals." Suggestions fly from all corners of the courtyard. Torero encourages everyone to pick up a brush and paint. Time is short. Soon the U.S.-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan will be returning to the States via Mexico. Emboldened observers come forward. How about this? How about that? How about a rose? And so a rose, symbolizing in Cuba both delicate beauty and piercing strength, is painted atop hot rays of sun.
Three flags are drawn in one remaining pocket of space above the Chávez quote. It’s argued that there really should be four—the Cuban, American, Mexican, and Canadian—for all the participants in the Friendshipment Caravan. But space and time only allow room for three. The Cuban, Mexican, and U.S. flags are superimposed over one another in reverse order of power. The blue, white, and red colors—plus the green and brown of the Mexican flag’s eagle and cactus—bleed into each other. Red, the color symbolizing sunrise and all beginnings, stands out in all.
"Cubans need a new shot of awareness, of message," Torero theorizes. "With Mexicans and Americans coming, it will wake up a certain element of direct communication. The people will see themselves as speaking. It will celebrate their spirit and leave a permanent imprint for the people who witness the mural."
Torero is off. But not before signing the mural, "Con Amor" ("With Love") from himself, Raza students, "y todos," and all. It is just past noon. The courtyard will never be the same.
The mural has brought together hundreds of people from Canada, Cuba, Mexico, and the United States. The borders have been broken. The mural speaks.
MARTHA ORIANNA BASKIN is a free-lance writer living in Seattle. She traveled with the most recent Friendshipment Caravan and is planning to participate in the next one in November.
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