The Murals of Cabo

Its easy to be blasé about murals these days since all the cool neighborhoods and downtowns have them. Yet there is something uniquely wonderful about the murals in Cabo.

Not just professional ones on shop fronts and galleries, I’m thinking also about those you find off the main drag. Not quite as finessed or sophisticated, but wonderful all the same for their charming idiosyncrasies. They are always a surprise and fun to discover. You have to admire the vision and guts it takes to cover an entire wall, a street corner, or your very own home with such personalized imagery. That would be like getting a whole face tattoo.

You might find a giant octopus wrapping itself around around a house like this one in Cabo, tentacles curling around door and windows, big shiny eye staring right out.

There used to be a cousin to this, a magnificent purple beast on a wall, now gone, depicted in a bright aqua sea with little mantas, turtles and coral. The design extended across 3 adjoining, angled surfaces, creating a sense of movement and dimension.

You wouldn’t miss this little house in Cabo engulfed by an enormous, cheerful heart and anatomically correct blood vessels. The four chambers are a cosmos of spinning stars, the muscle a cave painting with tiny prehistoric stick figures holding spears, one of them riding a bike. I like the folkloric style, the friendly fish, the flowering cacti and little saying at the bottom.

Anatomically correct, fantastical hearts seem to be a theme. San Jose has one too, a flowering cactus-heart emitting bolts of electricity.

Mayan symbols and art on the walls and gates to this house represent another sort of fantasy.

Sometimes, murals take over an entire block, even the cross street, like this one in Cabo. It starts with graffiti style lettering on one wall and continues around the corner with a panel of Aztec styled portraits.

The longest mural has to be this one outside of Todos Santos, a conglomeration of work from several artists. I like the idea of agrarian scenes, warriors, goddesses, Frida, cartoon monsters and crabs all mashed into one.

Then there are the didactic murals, usually historic but not quite so deadly because of their curious subjectivity. For instance, this history of Todos Santos starts with cave dwellers and ends with a surfer. In between, you have Jesus, the Spanish conquest and the local sugar industry, watched over by the founding fathers.

This painting in San Jose falls in the same historic-panorama category while also including greatest hits like El Arco.

In contrast are whimsical murals which I am particularly fond of. Like the magical garden on these walls in San Jose that has peacocks, butterflies and a fire-breathing dragon holding a bandana-clad dragonfly in its tail.

I smile each time I go past this illustration on the side of a shop in Todos Santos- Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, Mexican style. I love the coincidental juxtaposition with the Bimbo sign.

My favorite, though, has to be this series on the wall to a modest house outside of Todos Santos. The construction of the wall, an old fashioned one with square pillars and distinctive open center with metal bars, allows a story to be told on multiple surfaces. The large oval of the wall’s open area is topped with big decorative stones. This and the line of metal bars make an interesting frame for the art.

An inscription states: “The foxes and the Nahual”. In Mesoamerican mythology, nahuals or naguals are shapeshifters, powerful, supernatural beings who can transform themselves from humans into animals. They can be a personal guardian spirit in animal form, a healer, shaman or witch.

The first pillar shows a drawing of a female figure in a halo of light and a very large sprig of herb. Compositionally this reminds me of standard depictions of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Next, on the street facing side, are renderings of a fox. On the other end of the wall, a pillar depicts a caballero with a big chain around his neck and the inscriptions, “The Lord of the Chains” and “Los Pinos Park”. It frames a niche which holds the central image of a woman in traditional dress collecting plants, presumably the Maria Leon, “local mountain herbalist, clairvoyant and healer”, described in the next panel. She must also be the woman in the halo depicted on the first pillar. Next to her is a large owl, one of the animals associated with nahuals.

I am curious about the man in the chains and whether there really is or was a nahual in Todos Santos named Maria Leon who could turn into an owl, and what her association might be with this house. And what about the fox, or the event at Parque Los Pinos, a real place in the heart of downtown? At the very least, I appreciate the enigmatic images and their charming, naive style.

So there you have it, the wonderful murals of Los Cabos. Fun, funny, amazing, weird and not always just decorative, they can tell us so much about a people and a place. By their very nature they are fleeting and therefore precious. Enjoy them while you can! I hope they inspire you to pick up sunglasses and hat for your own exploration into the streets of these very cool towns.

by Mei-lan Chin-Bing

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