History Colorado

Land Rights and Recognition of Place

Staff of Life by Emanuel Martinez, 1976, Acrylic on cement, donated by Chicano/a Murals of Colorado Project

Mestizos

El Movimiento Sigue (the Movement Continues) in Colorado

Largest Hispano and Mexican Neighborhood in Denver

The Art of the Chicano Movement was an effort to continue the tradition of storytelling to describe a non-Western narrative of Mestizaje--mixed heritage--ancestry, history, and culture through poetry, theatre, dance, art, and public art, specifically murals in Chicano neighborhoods.  Chicano artists embraced their Indigenous ancestry by incorporating traditional storytelling, pictography, and symbolism in their art.

Art & Culture

Chicanos had grown angry with their history being left out and with racism in schools. By the 1960s and ‘70s, as students demanded equal treatment, schools became battlegrounds across the state. 

Student Movements

Inspired by the Mexican Mural Movement in the mid-1900s, young Chicano artists began to paint murals in historically marginalized neighborhoods.  Emanuel Martinez, pioneer of the mural movement in Colorado, began painting murals in the La Alma Lincoln Park Neighborhood in 1969.  Resident of the Lincoln Housing Projects, Emanuel, with the assistance of youth in the community, painted murals on the swimming pool buildings in various Denver parks and in the Lincoln housing projects.  The murals gave the community a sense of space and served as historical textbooks describing the rich history of Black, Indigenous, Hispanos, Chicanos, Mexicans, and others in Colorado. 

The Chicano Mural Movement

Digging sugar beets, cutting lettuce, and picking fruit: all are grueling tasks. Factory work can be equally hard. Relegated to the worst jobs, people of Mexican descent toiled for long hours under terrible working and living conditions.

Farm Workers and Labor

The Bracero Program

Vietnam War

Beginning in the 1690s, the Spanish gave large tracts of land to individuals or groups in New Mexico.  The Spanish settlers were isolated and had limited access to goods from Mexico City and became increasingly dependent on trade with Puebloan groups and other Indigenous tribes.  The settlers, also known as Hispanos, established distinct traditions and customs in the Spanish Empire’s Northern Frontier.  After Mexico won their independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico granted land to Mexican citizens in the present-day states of Colorado, New Mexico, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California. The land grants were meant to encourage settlement in Mexico’s northern boundary, where the United States was also interested in expanding. Hundreds of land grants were given out, mostly by the Mexican government to Hispanos and Mexicans.

Land Grants

A community advisory committee helped develop El Movimiento: The Chicano Movement in Colorado. The exhibit shares the story from their point of view, in their voices. History Colorado is honored to work with the committee, people who stood up for human rights at the height of the Movement in the 1960s and ‘70s, and who continue the fight for education and equality.

The Chicano Movement—El Movimiento—changed lives. Years of racism and discrimination that kept Mexican Americans poor, marginalized, and often invisible would not be tolerated anymore. The battle for justice and equality intensified in the 1960s and ‘70s, particularly in Colorado. 
Chicanos demanded better working conditions, housing, education, and representation. They called for an end to war in Vietnam. In cities, they stood up against police brutality; in rural areas, they fought to reclaim land. El Movimiento forced change, and the struggle continues.




Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program 1942-1964

Colorado Chicano Movement History: Portal 

The Wonderful World of the Chicano Experience

Chicano Murals in Colorado: The First Decade

Su Teatro: Cultural & Performing Arts Center

When a Colorado governor declared martial law and blocked poor New Mexicans at the border

La Gente: El Movimiento/The Movement

Civics and Government

Social Studies

U.S. History

World History

Chicano/A/X Community Murals

Denver Public Art Murals

Two figures stand in the same rigid pose, one a modern Chicano holding dumbbells, the other an indigenous man holding vessels filled with fire. Between these figures is an eagle on the contemporary side, the face and eagle wing are blue while the same image is reflected in red on the indigenous side. In the eagle’s talons are a skull on the blue side and a human embryo on the red, which represents the cycle of human life. The mural is a symmetrical representation of the responsibilities modern Chicano youth have to carry on the legacies left by their ancestral past.

 La Alma by Emanuel Martinez, La Alma Recreation Center, Lincoln Park Neighborhood, Denver, CO - 1978


Between the 1970s to present, murals by artists such as Emanuel Martinez, Carlota Espinoza, Leo Tanguma, Carlos Sandoval, Jerry Jaramillo, Tony Ortega, Leticia Tanguma, Andy Mendoza and others celebrated their identity, history, and heritage.  For more than fifty years, Chicano muralists have transformed their neighborhoods.

This mural is Brown Flowers by Carlotta Espinoza. Using a landscape of the Southwest as the backdrop, she paints period-specific buildings including a Mesoamerican pyramid, a colonial church, and the Denver skyline. The figures depicted in the mural are similarly diverse in both race and time period, all culminating into a celebration of the mixed heritage that defines the Chicano identity.

Brown Flowers, the Mestizo People by Carlotta Espinoza, Denver Human Services, Sunnyside, Denver, CO - 1988

The San Luis valley area is important to the Chicano and Hispano community as the fertile valley nurtured the community with a diverse variety of crops and opportunities to grow as a community.  The mural shares the importance of the San Luis valley with stretching fields that lead into the mountains far in the background. The sky stretches high above the mortal farmer.  Hispanos depicted in the foreground show Christ on the cross a cloud directly above him with figures representing the spread of Christianity in the Americas. 

San Luis-Sierras y Colores Mural in Colorado by Carlos Sandoval, Courtesy Chicano/a/x Murals of Colorado, San Luis de la Culebra, Colorado, 1986


This pictorial history of Denver’s West Side celebrates the United Farm Workers and farmworkers, Chicano, Mexican, Spanish artistic heritage, and the Auraria neighborhood that was destroyed in the early 1970s to build a college campus.

History of the West Side Community by Marc Anthony Martinez, 771 Santa Fe Dr., Denver, Colorado - 2002

When Leo Lucero painted this mural in 1976, city officials had already painted over other Chicano murals in Plaza Verde Park. He slept in the park for nearly two weeks to protect his work. The mural still stands, having been tagged with graffiti and repainted several times.

Plaza Verde Park Mural by Leo Lucero, Plaza Verde park in Pueblo, Colorado - 1978.

Huitzilopochtli is the Aztec (Mexica) patron deity, described by artist David Ocelotl García as “the hummingbird warrior.” His mural—which faces south towards the sun—celebrates art, energy, and creation.

Huitzilopochtli by David Ocelotl Garcia and Chicano/a/x Murals of Colorado Project, 2895 W. 8th Ave in Sun Valley, Denver, Colorado - 2008

The mural was painted over in 2020, then redone by Ocelotl with support from Chicano/a/x Murals of Colorado Project.

The mural depicts an Aztec (Mexica) eagle dancer floating on the steps of the Templo Mayor located in Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City). He is surrounded by soft blue wisps stretching across the mural’s mountain landscape and leading to the image of an eagle implying the dancer’s transformation into the mythical creature. This mural is on the wall of the Aztlan Recreation Center and is meant to inspire the youth who enter the space to undergo their own periods of transformation.

Flight of the Eagle Dancer by Jerry Jaramillo, Aztlan Recreation Center, Sunnyside, Denver, Colorado - 1989


Painted for the United Mexican American Students office, University of Colorado, Boulder. Pedro Romero’s mural memorializes the six young activists killed by bombs in Boulder in 1974.

The mural was removed in 2002 during a remodeling project and is currently housed in a conference room at Pueblo Community College.


Los Seis de Boulder by Pedro Romero, painted on the walls of the University Memorial Center, Pueblo, Colorado - 1989

Resource Kits

Object Library

Museums

La Gente: El Movimiento/The Movement

The Chicano Mural Movement

Background Knowledge

La Alma by Emanuel Martinez