Civil Rights Leaders Are Celebrated in S.D. Mural

Mark Twain would have been proud of Mario Torero. The artist did Twain’s Tom Sawyer one better. Torero talked the whole Southeast San Diego community into painting his fence for him.

Actually, Torero, unlike the fictional Sawyer, did a lot of the painting himself on the colorful 200-foot-long mural that completely covers the cement-block retaining walls on the northwest corner of 32nd Street and Imperial Avenue.

The mural, dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. and begun on King’s birthday anniversary last Jan. 15, was completed Friday and dedicated by a group of church school youngsters who left their handprints in bright colors among the portraits of King and other world civil rights leaders.

The wall--like every other surface in the neighborhood--used to be covered with the graffiti of youth gangs proclaiming their turfs and signaling their invasion of others’ territories.

Now, interwoven in the decorative background surrounding the eight-foot high faces of Mahatma Gandhi, Bishop Desmond Tutu, King, Corazon Aquino, Winnie Mandela and lesser-known fighters for human rights are the gang names of West Coast Crips’ members--Dr. Dove and Iceman--along with the “W/C” gang symbol.

Torero doesn’t mind the additions, although his main purpose in painting the mural was to remove the graffiti and to discourage the open drug dealing that once went on at 32nd and Imperial. “As long as it is part of the mural and it isn’t destructive, I think that is OK,” he said. “After all, this is the work of the community.” Indeed, the credit for the mural reads “Torero and the community.”

“I had a few young blacks stop and help me out,” Torero recalled. A number of Latinos also contributed to the mural.

Christ the King Catholic Church across the intersection from the mural contributed money, people and paint to the project. The Israelite Church of God in Christ next door, which owns the property where the wall is located, provided the cement-block “canvas” for the painting, Torero said. Frazee Paint donated paint, and San Diego Organizing Committee nearby provided funds and support, he said.

Some of the figures in the painting are unidentified, representing angry youths with their fists raised in protest. Others, like Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, bring puzzled glances from viewers unaware that the Indian leader was considered one of the most enlightened of his people by President Theodore Roosevelt.

Chief Joseph refused to honor a treaty, signed by his father, that would have dispossessed the Indian tribe of the Idaho valley where they had lived in peace for generations. After fleeing with his tribe for 1,000 miles over the Rockies, he and his people were captured 40 miles from the Canadian border and freedom.

Perhaps equally unknown is Sojourner Truth, who was born a slave in New York State and sold as a child. She worked to aid blacks after she was freed and also spoke eloquently on women’s rights, although she never learned to read or write.

Torero admitted that he knew little about Sojourner Truth, “but we knew that she must be important because we found her picture on a postage stamp. So we put her on the wall. “I guess we all got a little education from this mural.”

Two King portraits occupy the corner, accompanied by a portrait of his widow, Coretta Scott King. Winnie Mandela and Tutu reign over a section that carries a banner advocating an end to apartheid.

At the western terminus, Jesus and religious symbols dominate. And on 32nd is a section painted by the children from the Christ the King summer church program.

The children, who range in age from 5 to 16, “feel that they have had a part in creating this,” said Diana Cvitanovich, summer program director. “It has made this summer a special one.”

On Friday, the last day of the church program, they added the final touch to the mural by dipping their hands in cans of bright-colored paint and pressing them along the wall.

Torero said he worked almost every Saturday for the past four months, putting in more than 100 hours to complete the mural, kept company by the children and by passers-by who often stopped to help--”although a lot of them had never painted a stroke before.”

“Some days,” though, he said, “I couldn’t get any painting done because people would come around and start to talk and ask questions and make suggestions about the mural.”

However, professional artists Cliff McReynolds and his wife Pat volunteered their time, as did a visiting priest from Los Angeles who has worked on murals there.

On one day, a man stopped to ask Torero if he could paint the name of his daughter on the wall. Torero was reluctant, he said, because “I didn’t want to have people adding graffiti because that was what we were trying to cover up.” But when the man explained that his daughter had died a few days earlier, Torero gave his permission. The name is still there: Nicole Ivy, died 1-29-86.

Torero is convinced that the painting won’t be defaced by the gangs who had decorated the wall with their names and their warlike challenges. He has painted murals elsewhere--in Chicano Park, on abandoned buildings downtown, on concrete freeway sides. And they have remained untouched.

“People here appreciate art and they appreciate what we are doing,” he said. “We are covering up ugliness with beauty.”