Alma

Santa Lucía, Valles Centrales, Oaxaca

In Santa Lucía, Caminos designed a mural on a wall of a building which is central and visible to the population. The mural, through representative images, shared information about COVID-19 preventative measures. Alma shared that before the mural she knew that it was a potentially fatal disease, but also that many people did not believe it existed and did not take care of themselves; ‘With the mural many people understood the message and asked who was responsible for it, they shared that it was the Caminos organization.”

Alma participated in the mural process and for her one of the most important lessons was that the mural was a community project. In addition, she liked to paint and was glad to have participated in the collective effort.

The collective work allowed the community, through art, to have access to information about preventative measures that could be taken in the context of the pandemic. Alma expressed this when she mentioned that:

“All of the participants, children, adolescents, and adults, recognized the message of the mural because it used the power of illustrative images, and many people do not speak Spanish.”

Alma had not previously participated in this sort of collective project and for her it is useful to continue talking about this and other similar subjects: “I think about the rights of women, because men are very ‘machista’ and the village did not want a woman president. Because of this I want to reinforce the value of women’s rights and the rights of migrant women who work on the ranches.”