Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: It was just such a place where they were characters everywhere. It was definitely a feeling of like, everyone could do what they want or just be themselves.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Carlos has seen the neighborhood through a lot of changes over the years. Stores closing, childhood friends priced out and beloved murals getting painted over. This Valentine’s Day, Carlos shares with us a story of one mural he loved dearly and what it meant to lose it. Stay with us.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: I’m Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí, and I’m the community engagement reporter with KQED. So my family first arrived in the Bay area when I was seven. We moved to Oakland. Back then it was myself, my mom, and at the time my stepdad. During that time, my little brother was born. We’re eight years apart. A few months later, when we moved to Hayward and and Hayward, things took a turn for the worst.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: My stepdad. He did things that made my mom and myself unsafe emotionally and physically hurting us. And it got to a point where my mom decided to leave and come to San Francisco, because here there are several really, really amazing, incredibly helpful and generous shelters for moms and their kids. The reason we moved to San Francisco wasn’t a very happy one.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: It was a very painful one, but it was also the start of a really, really amazing relationship with a place that welcomed us with a lot of people who worked really hard to make sure that we were safe and that we have what we needed. We first moved to Hays Valley, and that’s where we were for over a year and a shelter. And when I was ten, we made it to the mission where I still call home. At that time I was starting middle school.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: My middle school was in the Fillmore in the Western addition. It was a KIPP school, which for folks unfamiliar, that’s a charter school system, a very, very like disciplined charter school system. We had to be in school from 730 to 5. But as soon as it was five, the way that we would, like, run out like rats out of the school building to just hang out to like, run around for the kids who lived in the mission, you know, we’d get on the 22 and then eventually, you know, the 14, the 49 there.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: They’re these huge busses, these long, super long busses, and they’re like kind of like two busses, like connected. And the back, the windows were a thing where all you had to do was push them and they would open up, and there were these huge windows and we would always be parting. None of us had like real speakers, but we all had like, radios. We like blasting like radio music and then like doing other stuff that you weren’t supposed to do in our bus.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: And then as soon as, like, you know, the driver would get mad at us. We’d all, like, jump out from those windows. Seeing friends, you know, like, hold onto the back of the bus because they were on their skateboards and they would just, like, grab on the back of the bus, and the bus would just, you know, like, ferry them through the mission.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: There are definitely things that maybe things my friends and I were doing pretty early on that we shouldn’t have been doing. But it’s always been a very active, super colorful, super noisy, super loud part of the city, which I love. I was born and raised in Mexico City. Also, I’m very loud and very colorful and just very chaotic city. I knew I wanted to be back where there was just kids playing in the street, busses moving all the time, cars, music, am.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: Mission Street has always been that. I was ten years old when I first saw Al Fuego or Cease Fire by Juan Alisha on the corner of Mission Street and 21st Street. It’s immediately. What stood out to me was that it was the face like a kid. And this kid, he was standing on this beautiful, beautiful field. And there’s mountains and it looks so humid and green and just lush. But in front of him, there’s many, many machine guns pointing at him.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: But what’s separating him from the machine? Guns are two hands, huge hands. And you can’t see whose hands they are. They just appear in front of the kid. The kid is looking at you, and it’s very much like a mona Lisa effect, where no matter where you are on the intersection, it felt like he was looking at you. You know, they weren’t angry, they weren’t happy, they weren’t sad, but they were just eyes full of a very strong emotion.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: That immediately struck me. You know the element like, why are guns pointing at this kid? Who is he and who are those hands? Now, the mural was showing a moment where, like, a kid was in danger. But this force, these hands came and defended him. I’ve always been very protective of my mom. We were very close. At that time, I brother was only one when we left the situation with my stepdad. I made a promise that I would always protect them.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: Seeing a visual representation of hands coming to protect someone vulnerable, it’s showing me that it is possible and that I’m also in a place that believes in it, that strongly believes in it. You know, again, this wasn’t in a random alley. It was in the heart of this neighborhood. Tens of thousands of people must have walked past it every single day. Juan Alicia painted ceasefire in 1988.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: There was a lot of armed conflicts throughout the region of Central America and in Honduras. There was a very active American intervention, and the mural was actually set in the fields of Honduras. Many of the folks left and came to San Francisco. You’ve had families coming from Central America for 40, 50 years. Many other parts of the US are seeing folks come from Central America, and it’s like the first wave.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: But San Francisco is a place where you see, you know, two, three, four generations of Central American families here. And one Alysia in 1988 decides to paint a mural. Calling for a cease fire and a protection of civilians in Honduras. And that’s what we see. We see a young boy who represents the vulnerable civilian population of Honduras.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: Being protected, being shielded away from a lot of the violence, a lot of the guns, a lot of the armaments that were being brought in thanks to American imperialism, American foreign policy objectives. You know, as I became, I feel like more and more San Franciscan, I learned that that is history of folks coming from Central America to create a sanctuary, a safe space for their homes, for their families here in the city. It really connected? With what?
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: The reason that my family had come San Francisco. I first found out that the mural was the face through my mom. I’m out comes and I’m in high school. And she says, you can’t believe what happened to Juan Alice’s mural. And the next day I go check it out. And sure enough, someone had scribbled, I think, something like toy across it. A couple days later, more tagging happens on it and there was no explanation.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: It wasn’t necessarily something like frustrating, but really just like a why why someone would do this to something so beautiful and important. As I understand Juan Alisha raised funds to try to rehabilitate the mural, but at the end of the day, then it happened. And then years later, the property owners commissioned another mural on top of it. And it’s the painting of a horse. The horses isn’t like doing anything or jumping over a fence or anything.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: It’s just the horse, and it’s like standing on a beach or empty field and that’s about it. I really do think that it doesn’t have the same context and the same message. And I’ve definitely been in many conversations with people that are like, why is there a horse there and what? But years later, the horse is still there. So I guess it’s part of us now too.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: One of my favorite things to do when I go running throughout the mission is because I have a list of favorite murals I like to see, and there are some murals are no longer exist, but I think that that is the one that I it’s the most. Years later, I actually got to see a version of the mural one more time. And this was at an exhibition organized by the San Francisco Arts Commission. They included one of the original sketches that Juan Alicia had made of the mural, and it wasn’t huge.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: It was like maybe three feet by four feet and there wasn’t any color. But you know the boy. He looked at you with the same intensity. The landscape was still as beautiful as it was when I first looked at it. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that I was seeing it after such a long time. I never thought I was going to see them like a version of that mural again.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: So much had happened since I had last seen it. I went to college, I graduated. I became a journalist. I learned so many things about myself and seeing it again. It was like coming back into contact with that younger version of me, and I realized, whoa, it doesn’t necessarily have the same grounding effect as it did before, but I think that’s okay. You know, so much has changed for the better.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: My family, you know, we’ve obviously become a lot more stable. And we’ve been we’ve been able to grow. You know, my mom has been able to continue her career. My brother’s about to go to college. I. You know, I’ve been able to find a career I love. When we first came into this city, you know, we had so little and just so many, just the worries and anxieties and then seeing it again on the other side.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: I really appreciate that opportunity. When I think about this mural now. One of the things. That stands out is how San Francisco, this little place, specifically the mission, this little neighborhood, its place in the history of so many. Movements. So much organizing is just really, really cool. It just it shows you that this is in like the DNA of the community, of the neighborhood, of the Bay.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: I think it’s really cool when art, when public art can teach it again, because I came in as I’ve had no idea about any of this history, that I was like standing on sacred ground, pretty much. S.F. and the Bay. There’s always going to be tough spots and periods of transformation. But we have to have love for this version of San Francisco.
Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: I feel like San Francisco had faith in me and my family when we first came in. Right? And I’m not someone who, you know, drops a ball or leaves the court when things are getting a little, a little tougher. Things are not going to get better if the people that love it stop loving it.
