Mosaic of the Americas: Many Strengths, Many Struggles

View the Mosaic Story slide show. Click any photo for a detailed description or to leave a comment.

The Mosaic of the Americas adorning our building is the result of 10 weeks of production and more than a year of planning. Four artists from Morelia, Mexico—Isa Estella Campos Castañeda, María Guadalupe García Rojas, Crescencio Méndez Gaspar and José Luis Soto González—traveled to Minneapolis to produce the mural with Minnesota artists Lori Greene, Gustavo Lira and Deborah Ramos. The Morelia artists work in a collective called the Visual Arts Research Workshop, the world leader in a tile-mosaic technique called azulejo. More than 150 community volunteers participated in the production, doing everything from cutting the tiles to running errands to providing meals. More than 20,000 ceramic tiles cover the building’s south face, measuring 22 by 44 feet.

Mosaic does more than improve the Minneapolis urban scenery. The project enters public conversation with an image of the diverse peoples of the Americas and their hopes amid globalization. It’s a durable and highly visible public statement of the Resource Center’s commitment to equality, democracy and justice.

Translation of the Mural Concepts

The main door takes the shape of the Mayan arch. At the top of the arch is the symbolism of the four directions and additional Mayan iconography.

In the center of the mural, integrated into the main door: the roots of the Maya Yaxché tree, explaining the divine origin of humankind in connection with nature and the cosmos.

In the upper center portion: the sun and moon as stars of the two winds, denoting a new time and a new era.

The eagle and the condor as representatives of the North and South, to lend an attitude of flight together in search of peace on earth.

The map of America divided in two large segments, North America and Latin America.

On the Mexican border, a horizon of silence, crucifixes and fences, as a perennial sign of those who have fallen to border patrols.

In the lower right-hand portion, two Latin American maquiladora women workers wearing the lyrics to one of Victor Jara’s famous songs “And my Hands are All that I Have”

In the lower left-hand portion, a critical vision of technocracy and xenophobia: a helicopter, armed riders of the apocalypse (the victims of globalization) and dishonored, displaced, and enslaved vultures.

Behind South America: two slave hands, one fighting for liberation, and another in a fist, as imagined by Simon Bolivar’s vision of the Great Homeland.

In the upper right-hand portion, the Latin American man with his angel of peace and democracy.

A contemporary man and a woman exuding improvement and a “we shall overcome” attitude a propos the values of family integration

A newly-launched flight of monarch butterflies, which, according to Nahua or Mexican legend, are the souls of the dead returned, with a burst of vitality signifying a new spring. The butterflies also symbolize the continual migration of peoples from north to south and south to north.