Save Tortilla Flats Mural

Something magical is happening with the Tortilla Flats mural, the 500-foot-long love letter to a vanished Ventura neighborhood that lines a wall along lower Figueroa Street:

The same community spirit that created it is now rallying to preserve it and find it a permanent home.

The neighborhood was wiped out in the early 1950s to make way for the Ventura Freeway. In 1995, Moses Mora and M.B. Hanrahan mobilized a platoon of displaced former residents and others to preserve its memory. Interviewers took oral histories. Those recollections and old photos inspired colorful, lively images that became the mural.

Requests for funding fell flat, so the project was carried out on the cheap with volunteer labor, donated plywood and any old paint that could be scrounged. Sponsors were found for individual panels but both the available materials and the location--a temporary wall enclosing a site destined for development--dictated that the work’s days would be numbered.

But when Mora and Hanrahan recently announced plans to dismantle the now-fading mural, the community said no. This piece of Ventura’s history should not follow the Tortilla Flats neighborhood into the dust of history without a fight.

Last week a committee was formed to explore options. These include cleaning and sealing the panels to prevent further weathering, at least for a few years; moving it to a fitting location; possibly even recreating it with more durable materials. Any of these actions would take money, which the creators of the mural are skeptical can be found. If not, they would rather remove it than see it weather away to nothing.

The art world has recognized the Tortilla Flats mural. It is included in a photo book of California murals and visiting it is a popular outing for everyone from Elderhostel groups to Coastwalk hikers to art-lover bus tours from Los Angeles. But what is truly remarkable about it is the way it was created, in a sort of extended family reunion of those who remember the multiethnic mix of homes, shops, barbecues and music joints, churches--and people of all descriptions.

The mural is as worthy of preservation under Ventura’s Art in Public Places program as any other project in the city. Its deterioration should be halted and a protected home found for it--if not at the Ventura County Museum of History and Art then perhaps at a nearby school.

Tortilla Flats vanished once from the Ventura landscape. It should not be allowed to do so again. Anyone who wishes to help preserve the mural should contact committee chair Jim Capito at 643-9063.