A People With a Mural – Adams Mill Road at 18th Street N.W., Washington, D.C.

Near the corner of 18th Street N.W. and Adams Mill Road (and now overlooking a Zipcar parking lot) stands a three-story mural titled "A People without Murals is a Demuralized People." Originally painted in 1977 by Chilean brothers and artists "Caco" (Carlos) and Renato Salazar (the first of whom studied at the Corcoran and founded the now-defunct Centro de Arte organization), the work is touted as one of the oldest and largest of DC’s few remaining Latino murals, the last beacon of a wider Latino artistic movement in the city.

Informed by the artists’ interest in Picasso at the time, the cubist accents render the piece at once vivid and demure, simplistic and perplexing. "The flat, plain colors with thick outlines gave the figures more strength and, [like] poster art of the 70s, a more powerful view at [a] distance," says Caco in an e-mail regarding his original design. The geometric shapes and straightforward coloring were a practical decision, too. As the original Centro de Arte team worked with area youth to complete the piece, "Quality control was difficult … I had to develop a quick technique," explains Caco.

The composition is divided into three distinct but complementary pockets of activity: one along the bottom row, depicting community festivities; a second in the upper left corner – home life in greater detail; and a third in the upper right corner, consisting of a dark and suspicious trio of figures. On the far left, a large, white, ghost-like figure (a Big Brother-esque Cyclops according to The Washington Post; the Holy Spirit according to Pineda) seems to hold the three pockets in place, balancing the images as the eye follows the "yellow brick road" that connects them all.

Exposed as it was to the elements, the mural deteriorated during the twenty-five years following its creation. Through the support of the DC government and various community organizations, funding was secured to restore it over the course of three weeks in the summer of 2005, using latex and spray paints. Graffiti artist Juan Pineda repaired the wall and repainted the work.