América Tropical: New Doc Tells Story of Whitewashed Siqueiros Mural

A little piece of Los Angeles history is hiding in plain sight on L.A.'s Olvera Street. It's a mural by the great Mexican artist David Siqueiros, and it's called "América Tropical." The work was painted by Siqueiros in 1932, but less than a year later, it was whitewashed because of its political message.

Now the mural has since been restored. A new documentary that debuts today looks at this history and the legacy of "América Tropical." It's called América Tropical: the Martyr Mural of Siqueiros. Nic Cha Kim is the senior producer of arts and culture at KCET and one of the producers of the film. LAist's Nick Roman interviewed him about the documentary. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

LAist: Siqueiros was one of three great Mexican muralists, along with Diego Rivera and José Orozco. What brought Siqueiros to Los Angeles?

Nic Cha Kim: Well, he was invited, actually, to paint this mural. There was an entrepreneur by the name of Christine Sterling, who had envisioned Olvera Street kind of as a theme park for locals and tourists to almost visit Mexico without having to go visit Mexico.

So they asked Siqueiros to paint this mural — like a tropical setting — as a way to attract visitors in time for the upcoming Olympics of 1932.

LAist: Describe América Tropical. I mean, it gets painted, it's there, and then someone decides to whitewash it. What was behind that decision?

NCK: That's right. Originally, they thought that he would paint something that would attract tourists. Something tropical, so to speak. But in secret, he really wanted to paint something else. Something that had a message.

What he did was he painted an image of an Indigenous Native being crucified on a cross, and there was an American eagle above him. And off to the side, there are these snipers, assassins, with their rifles pointed directly at them. And it's immediately clear when you view the mural that it's a message against imperialism and capitalism. And when Christine Sterling saw this, she understood right away that it was not something that she originally wanted. So that's what happened.

LAist: And then it gets whitewashed. It's it's out of sight for many decades. Then it's rediscovered. It's restored. Tell us about that process.

NCK: It's a decades long process actually, you know during the Chicano movement in the 60s. There was a lot of activity. There was a lot of interest in the mural. They wanted to restore it, actually. They wanted to remove the whitewash. They wanted to repaint it. But Siqueiros actually put a stop to that, because he understood the power of showing what happened to it, the erasure of it. So he forbade them from repainting over what happened to his mural.

So that's in the 60s. Now in '88, the Getty gets involved. They decide, "Well, we can't repaint it, but let's preserve what's there. Let's bring it back out." So they painstakingly study the mural and figure out what they can do. So they built a shade structure. They look at the infrastructure of the building and they also build a museum two buildings down that they call the América Tropical Interpretive Center. And they built a viewing deck so visitors can just come for free, climb up to the rooftop, and actually see the mural for themselves in its current state. It's like a ghostly image because it's no longer vibrant. You can just barely see it, but you do see it.

LAist: Talk about his influence Siqueiros has today on muralists.

NCK: That's actually a big part of the story. What we do [in the documentary] is we meet with contemporary muralists working today. We meet with a group called 3B Collective. We meet with an artist named Erin Yoshi. And we meet with Fabian Debora from Homeboy Arts Academy.

What's interesting about what Siqueiros did is he actually pioneered the use of spray paint. That's something that's very common nowadays with muralists, but that kind of technology didn't exist back then. He was using paint sprayers. He was using projection systems, projectors that he had borrowed from MGM Studios. And that was very controversial back then. Muralists or artists would say, "That's cheating." But nowadays that's very common. That's something that muralists do all the time.

The most important thing is the idea of a mural as an art form that conveys history. They tell stories — it isn't just a pretty image. There's always a message behind a mural. And that's what these artists, when they study Siqueiros, that's what they try to incorporate in their own work.

América Tropical: The Martyr Mural of Siqueiros premieres Wednesday, Oct. 11, at 9 p.m. on KCET / Friday, Oct. 13, at 8 p.m. on PBS SoCal.