Artist-activist Alicia Rojas saw a mural at risk and organized a citywide response
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In 2025, a Santa Ana Memorial Park mural by the late Orange County muralist and teacher Emigdio Vasquez was in danger.
Widely regarded as the “godfather” of Chicano art, Vasquez painted “Chicano Gothic” on the west wall of the park’s pool area in 1987. A reference to Grant Wood’s “American Gothic,” with a solemn man and woman side by side, the painting features working-class Mexican-Americans against a green field with citrus trees and the Santa Ana Mountains in the background.
Vasquez painted more than 30 murals in Orange County before his passing in 2014, but his “Chicano Gothic” mural had the misfortune of lying in the pathway of progress, more specifically a $25-million renovation to turn Memorial Park Pool into an aquatics center.
Alicia Rojas was concerned no one had taken the future of the mural into account.
“I happened be in a conversation with somebody at Public Works and I asked them what the plan was for the mural and it seemed there was a blank face of unawareness,” said Rojas. “After I found out what was happening, I started doing a small campaign with a couple of artists, advocating, emailing, and I showed up to a Memorial Park Neighborhood Assn. meeting with some ladies from my neighborhood.”
Rojas is a Santa Ana-based artist and activist and the co-founder of the Santa Ana Community Artist(a) Coalition. She is responsible for art projects like, “Las Poderosas de Latino Health Access” and installations like “Con Miel en la Boca” at Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana.
Her family emigrated from Columbia to the United States in the 1980s, first to New Jersey and later to Santa Ana, where the local Chicano murals made an impression on the young Rojas.
“I just fell in love with the murals, they were in Spanish, they talked about about things that mattered to my family,” said Rojas. “You could really see yourself on the wall.”
Following an organized public outcry to save “Chicano Gothic,” the city announced its intentions to preserve the mural in its current location. But without a strong public art and preservation policy, the city’s murals could be susceptible to risk again.
After all, this wasn’t the first incident to threaten Santa Ana’s public art.
Santa Ana boasts a large collection of Chicano murals and other public art, but the vulnerability of the works has long been a concern for community members. Many local artists are still haunted by the destruction of the 1972 Sergio O. Cadiz mural at City Hall nearly 33 years ago, in which a portion of the relief mural was destroyed during the renovation of the Civic Center.
On May 5, the Santa Ana City Council unanimously approved a public art and preservation policy and its adoption is a win that represents more than a decade of hard work and advocacy by Rojas and others.
Rojas served as a consultant on the policy, lobbying for as much community engagement as possible.
“It’s important that we show the city what we can accomplish together, when they open up the doors to an artist,” Rojas said.
Consulting on the policy was the result of ongoing work Rojas had been doing for years. In 2013, she founded the Santa Ana Community Artist(a) Coalition with artist Roger Reyes, focused on creating new murals through community input and advocating for existing art.
Rojas contributed to the city of Santa Ana’s 2016 Arts and Culture Master Plan as a member of the steering committee. In 2021, she joined restoration efforts of the “La Raza” mural in Santa Ana’s Artesia-Pilar neighborhood. She spoke up for “Chicano Gothic” in 2025.
The City Council meeting also included an agenda item calling for the Santa Ana city manager’s office “to have staff identify, evaluate, and prepare nominations to the City Register of Historical Properties for public artworks by Sergio O. Cadiz Moctezuma and Emigdio Vasquez.” The item was led by Councilmember Jessie Lopez.
“Supporting a public arts policy is about more than creativity,” Lopez said in a statement to TimesOC. “It is about preserving who we are. Our history, our stories, our struggles, and our community identity live in the work of our artists. For too long, that work has gone unrecognized, under-supported, and has been erased.”
The policy applies to public art on city-owned property and establishes criteria for the design and installation of new public art while supporting Santa Ana’s long-term stewardship of its current cultural assets. The policy also provides framework for historic preservation considerations, public engagement, maintenance and preservation.
On a recent Saturday, Rojas was joined by locals and leaders for a community painting day hosted by the Santa Ana Community Artist(a) Coalition, restoring the 2017 “Viva Santa Ana” community mural.
When she talks about the importance of murals, Rojas references Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco, who is credited with saying that murals are the purest form of painting because the work isn’t on view for a privileged few, but for all.
“The most purest form of painting is a mural, because it’s accessible. It’s outside of the white box of a museum, where inequities still happen,” Rojas said. “Families that don’t feel comfortable in a museum can see murals every day when they go to the park.”
Adults and children worked on refreshing the artwork in the alley behind 4th Street, between Main and Bush. For Rojas, helping younger generations feel represented the way she did when she first encountered Santa Ana’s Chicano murals is motivation enough to continue her advocacy.
“There was a little girl that painted with me who came back 15 years later with her Yale sweatshirt, and said, ‘I painted this wall and my admissions essay was about this wall,’” Rojas recounted. “That, to me, is our art.”
Local leaders like Lopez, who attended the community painting day, agree.
“When we invest in the arts, we invest in community pride, economic development, and small businesses that benefit from a thriving cultural ecosystem. A strong public arts policy ensures the artists who have carried our community’s story are finally respected, supported and sustained for generations to come,” said Lopez. “It’s what Santaneros want.”
But there is still much work to be done.
During the May 5 City Council meeting, Lopez requested a concrete proposal for the Public Art Trust Fund to pay for art preservation and maintenance. The policy also only applies to public property, but Rojas sees it as framework that can be used to eventually look at private property. Through continued efforts, Rojas believes Santa Ana can become an “open-air museum.”
As Rojas said, public art belongs to everyone. To help achieve that end, more community painting days are planned.
For information about upcoming community painting days, visit the Santa Ana Community Artist(a) Coalition website at the-artistcoalition.com
