When you live in a historic location, you might wish that the walls could speak and tell you about the people that came before you. But the residents of Denver’s La Alma Lincoln Park Neighborhood do not have to wonder what their walls would say—every day, they see these stories painted on the recreation center and other buildings.

The nationwide Chicano Movement of the 1960s and ‘70s integrated political activism with cultural education in arts, specifically murals, to reflect Chicano/a/x histories, bring art into neighborhoods, inspire pride in heritage, and strengthen communities in response to systemic racism, prejudice, and violence. Although the exact number is unknown, it is believed that more than 40 historic Chicano/a/x community murals exist across the State of Colorado. It is their ability to tell the often overlooked or erased histories that placed the Colorado Chicano/a/x murals on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 2022 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

Threatened by gentrification and preservation loopholes, Denver’s public art is in danger. However, advocates like Lucha Martínez de Luna refuse to let Denver’s historic murals—and the Chicano/a/x culture that they represent—be destroyed.

Murals as Historical Monuments

Paintings have a rich cultural tradition. Pre-Hispanic indigenous peoples such as the Mayans and Puebloans cherished wall painting. Lucha Martínez de Luna explains, “Chicanos in Colorado, a lot of them could trace their roots from when the Southwest was part of the Spanish Empire. Before Jamestown, the Spanish settled in New Mexico. And the first towns, post-European contact, settled in what is now Colorado were founded by Hispanos, Spanish descendants. But that history isn’t often recognized. Murals helped us tell our story in a safe space. They are a visual record of what was happening at that moment of time, in that community.”

While much of Colorado’s Chicano/a/x history has been excluded from textbooks, muralists have used their paintings to preserve their culture and their community. These indigenous and Latino/a/x voices live on through the unique aesthetic of Colorado’s art: textiles with geometric motifs and colorful portraits featuring brown-skinned, dark-haired people surrounded by flowers or vines.

By protecting important Chicano/a/x murals, Martínez de Luna hopes to preserve the memories they hold. And for Martínez de Luna, many of these memories are personal. Her father is Emanuel Martínez, who is widely credited for bringing Chicano/a/x muralism to Denver. Martínez was inspired by Mexico’s post-revolutionary art movement. After the Revolution, artists like Diego Rivera created murals to reflect the diversity of Mexican cultures. Murals were painted of and for everyday people, and they featured images of the working-class—like farmers.

Emanuel Martínez brought some of this artistic (and activist) spirit to Denver. “My father hitchhiked to Mexico, to study muralism with David Alfaro Siqueiros, one of the three most recognized Mexican muralists. Siqueiros encouraged him t o start painting murals in his own city. And that’s exactly what he did. He became a civil rights artist,” Martínez de Luna says.

The La Alma Lincoln Park Neighborhood was at the center of Denver’s Chicano/a/x civil rights movement, El Movimiento, in the 1960s and 1970s. Groups like the Westside Action Council advocated against police brutality and racism. Here, Martínez’s art found a sense of purpose. He painted his first mural—the first of many—outside of the housing projects in the neighborhood.

"These murals are legally viewed as paint and therefore can’t be legally protected. So while these murals are ‘character-defining features’ of the La Alma Lincoln Park district, the murals can’t be protected through the district ordinance," says Shannon Stage, the manager of grants and preservation services at Historic Denver, Inc.

Historic Denver is an urban preservation nonprofit that worked closely with the community to create the La Alma Lincoln Park historic cultural district, and continues to work closely with Martinez de Luna in advocating for Chicano/a/x Murals.

Stage explains that when a mural is described as a ‘character-defining feature,’ “it is identified as significant to the overall history of the district, but legally in a district you can do whatever you want with paint. So, the owner of a building with a mural on it isn’t required to keep the mural on their property. There needs to be a change in the City’s Preservation Policies to recognize murals beyond just paint.”

“The current hope is that the district designation and inclusion of murals as character-defining features will create more awareness of the murals’ significance and may encourage building owners to not paint over them in good faith,” says Stage.

Martínez de Luna argues that these district designations do not go far enough to protect murals. Since murals are powerful symbols of heritage, literally whitewashing over them can perpetuate the metaphorical whitewashing of history. She says, “They just use white paint to paint over these murals and they don’t put anything else on the wall. It’s an act of erasure that’s active and very intentional. It’s like trying to remove traces of Chicano history and heritage from communities that we helped build."

Advocating for Preservation

Through her nonprofit Chicano/a/x Murals of Colorado Project, Martínez de Luna is leading the effort to document murals before they’re destroyed and to revive the damaged murals that can still be salvaged. This preservation work requires a delicate artistic skill. CMCP is working together with the original artists to install plaques and apply MuralShield™ on historic murals. The product seals murals and protects the artwork from weather damage and sun fading.

These innovations bring some hope for the murals’ uncertain future, but Martínez de Luna explains that many of these artifacts are gone forever: “There’s potential, but there are very few murals from the '70s that were whitewashed. Most were sandblasted. There’s no way of recovering those.” Some whitewashed paintings can be uncovered if the first white layer of paint is stripped away to reveal the mural underneath. Sandblasting removes the painting from the wall entirely.

With Denver’s rapid gentrification, “it can feel like a race against time to try to save these murals,” Martinez de Luna says. That’s where her website comes into play. The Chicano/a/x Murals of Colorado Project maps out the murals. If a mural is destroyed, this digital record might help document that mural’s location, its artistic value, and its significance. The website references at least 40 Chicano/a/x murals in the state. Martínez de Luna invites users to add their own murals to the list.

She believes that preserving a mural is so much more than keeping the pigments on a wall. Denver’s murals document the role that the Chicano/a/x community played in Colorado history, and these art pieces show that Chicano/a people make Denver a better place today.