FILLMORE : Mural Turns Into a Picture of Protest and Compromise

The idea had merit: Employ a group of teen-agers over the summer, teach them job ethics and enhance the city of Fillmore’s image at the same time.

Supported by federal funds, a summer youth employment program hired 10 Latino Fillmore teen-agers to create a mural on the outside wall of the Fillmore Senior Center.

But what sounded to the teen-agers like a chance to express their heritage soon deteriorated in to a cultural clash with city officials. The teen-agers wanted to combine Fillmore’s history with Latino and indigenous images, while city officials wanted a historical rendering without reference to the Latino culture.

The trouble started soon after the project began in early August, when city officials overseeing the project rejected plans to portray Latino racial solidarity with writing in Old English-style lettering that city representatives said resembled gang writings.

Project coordinator Jaime Estrada said the teen-agers were being censored because of their ethnicity.

“They were picking on every little thing the kids wanted,” Estrada said.

But city officials said they thought they had an understanding from the start with Estrada, artist Alma Lopez, who supervised the art work, and the teen-agers, and that the project was to depict Fillmore history only and not the city’s cultural makeup.

“We felt some of the scenes the kids wanted to include were inappropriate for a city mural,” said Councilwoman Linda Brewster. “We didn’t want just one culture represented because that wouldn’t unite the whole city.”

Officials objected to an image of two clasping light-brown hands, atop lettering that read “La Raza Unidos , “ the race united. Estrada said city officials also vetoed a vintage-style car, which officials feared would be “a lowrider car with dingle balls hanging from the rearview mirror.”

As the 17-by-50-foot project nears completion this weekend, the mural reveals a tapestry of compromise and mild protest. All of the people in the mural are faceless and colorless, except for a Chumash basket weaver and two graduating students. The clasped hands, too, are colorless and the writing now reads “Unidos” in plain script.