MIGUEL CONTRERAS LEARNING COMPLEX (MCLC) DIGITAL MURAL PROJECT

In 2011, Distinguished UCLA Professor Judy Baca’s UCLA students of the UCLA@SPARC Cesar Chavez Digital/Mural Lab "Beyond the Mexican Mural" courses at the request of Maria Elena Durazo, of the AFL-CIO collaborated with the UCLA Labor Center, Professors Kent Wong and Janna Shaddock Hernandez, the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex (MCLC) High School Students, and SPARC to produce a new 18ft x 33ft Digital Mural for permanent placement in downtown LA. The work, sponsored by the Miguel Contreras Foundation, will be installed in a cafeteria centrally located on the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex grounds.  The UCLA students' assignment was to create a mural in a 20 week period that commemorates the legacy of labor leader Miguel Contreras while visually representing the issues affecting the students of the Center, who come from the local area.

Students began the project utilizing the DML methodology, which focuses on researching the specific site where the mural will be located.  Studies were conducted by students regarding the demographics of the region and school, the income and  labor force of the students' families, local violence, gang activity, and what the students perceived as assets of their neighborhoods.  Workshops with the MCLC students were conducted to learn about the high school students' aspirations as well as the impediments to achieving their goals and the obstacles that keep them from graduating (the school has a 56% drop out rate). 

Students' parents were also interviewed to assess their viewpoints on local community issues, their children's obstacles, and their own jobs, immigration status, and visions of their children's futures. Following a tour of the high school and opening introductions, the initial conceptualization of the mural began at a workshop held at MCLC, which continued to foster relationships between the high school and UCLA students.  Through this workshop both groups of students collaborated in a mutual learning environment to articulate educational, cultural, financial, and community issues weighing on the shoulders of these youth in a highly urbanized region of Los Angeles with a majority Central American demographic. 

Themes were carefully selected and envisioned for a future workshop at SPARC, which opened the imagery process of the mural.   Utilizing state-of-the-art computer technology at SPARC, students were able to produce visual imagery in the digital lab. The walls of the lab were quickly filled with facts, metaphors, and visual imagery.  Woven together, these elements connected the history of Miguel Contreras with the present-day stories of the community culminating in  a sense of identity and unified belonging.

From this important dialogue, and in combination with the students of MCLC, we created a mural that would remain forever on the walls of the cafeteria, prominently impacting future generations. This mural was not only meant to commemorate Miguel Contreras, but to show how his legacy would continue with the graduates of the school who would plant the seeds of future dreams into the local soil. The mural would show the work of the past and the planting of the future by the educated and empowered graduate and fighter for social justice; it would show the future of Los Angeles as a green city with violence and social injustice as a distant memory of the past. The mural inspires achievement, elevates women, honors the past, and creates belonging.  

Professor Baca teaches for the Cesar E. Chavez Department of Chicana/o Studies and World Arts and Cultures Department