Longmont – City officials, in remodeling a youth center in a largely Latino neighborhood this month, decided to paint over a mural honoring the late Chicano rights activist and poet Corky Gonzales.
That, in turn, has upset those involved in painting the mural, a former Longmont employee who helped organize the project and Latino community activists in the greater metro area.
Nita Gonzales, Corky Gonzales’ daughter, said she is angry at the decision. Glenn Spagnuolo, a former Longmont employee who is also a social justice activist, said the decision is another example of institutionalized racism and insensitivity toward Longmont’s Latino population.
“This is the latest attempt to whitewash Latino culture in that community,” Spagnuolo said.
But 18-year-old Luis Villagran, who worked on the mural, said he thinks the repainting was not an act of racism, just “a bad decision.”
“It was kind of like a lesson, you know,” Villagran said. “Now we know how community decisions have to work.”
Close to a dozen people attended Tuesday night’s City Council meeting to protest the re-painting. Amy Ogilvie, manager of the youth resources department, apologized at the meeting for the outrage the re-painting caused.
Karen Roney, Longmont’s director of community services, said a day earlier the controversy is a big misunderstanding. City officials didn’t realize the mural had been painted by kids and didn’t know feelings ran so deeply over it, she said.
“This isn’t anything about disrespect of Corky Gonzales and his work throughout Colorado,” Roney said. “It certainly wasn’t about disrespecting any of the young people’s creativity and artistic expression.”
The idea for the mural began several months ago in a project Spagnuolo used to run called the L-Town Unity Program. Spagnuolo used Gonzales’ epic poem “Yo Soy Joaquín” to teach kids in the program, most of whom were Latino, about their heritage and culture.
After Gonzales’ death nearly a year ago, those in the program began talking about a way to honor him and decided to paint a mural at the youth center. It was 8 feet by 15 feet, and depicted Gonzales, as well as several historical figures he mentions in the poem, including Pancho Villa, Diego Rivera and Emiliano Zapata.
Soon after the mural was finished, the city decided to transfer control of the commons area in the youth center, where the mural was, from the recreation department to the youth resources department and change the programs offered there.
Roney said as a part of those actions, the city decided to remodel the neutral area and talked with some kids about how to make the area more kid-friendly. But, she said, city officials did not talk with kids who worked on the mural.
Ogilvie said the remodeled youth center will have large canvasses for kids’ paintings.
Villagran said he hopes he gets the chance to repaint the mural. “We would like to repaint it and put it up for the community.”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
