Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Sociology
3332/Anthropology
3332
Intro
to
GIS
Project
(Graduate
student)
Final
Report
Miguel
Juárez
May
4,
2011
1
Introduction
The book Colors on Desert Walls: the Murals of El Paso1 (1997, Texas Western Press)
features over 200 murals that range from works painted under the Works-‐Progress
Administration (MPA) in 1938 to Chicano murals painted under the Spaghetti Bowl in
2010. Even today murals are being painted on walls in El Paso. In retrospect, when Colors
was published in 1997, Texas Western Press did not see a need to include maps in the
book. This, I believe is one of the book’s deficiencies. At the time I did not know whether
the TWP had the capacity to create maps or if I as the author, was supposed to provide
them—regardless, the topic was not discussed. Another deficiency of the book was that
the TWP wanted to produce a coffee table-‐like book of images of the murals, whereas I
wanted to write a social history of murals and mural-‐making in El Paso. I created several
drafts and all met with dislike from the Marcia Daudistel, the acquiring editor at the time
who asked me to trim it down and revise it several times. In the end, as a compromise, I
decided to interview the artists who had painted the murals and to publish their oral
histories and that would comprise the text accompanied by images of the murals created by
Cynthia Farah, who was my co-‐researcher in the creation of this work. I interviewed and
transcribed the artists featured in the book and Cindy provided the images.
Geo-‐coding Murals
Before beginning the project I searched for other projects that may had done
something similar but I did not find anything related to what I sought to do for this project.
I did locate an article on the Internet titled: “Philly Chooses GIS to Showcase and Manage its
1
Miguel Juárez, Colors on Desert Walls, the Murals of El Paso (Texas Western Press, 1997).
2
City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, Muralfarm.org, http://muralarts.org/muralfarm. Accessed May 4, 2011.
2
Thousands of Murals,” published on 1/7/2009 that documented the City of Philadelphia’s efforts
Introduction to GIS class I chose to geo-‐code murals in El Paso featured in the Colors on
Desert Walls book that had addresses where murals had been painted. For murals that had
addresses I added their zip codes by looking up the addresses in various Zip Code search
engines like the UPS Zip Code finder.3 I added these Zip Codes to the Excel file that coupled
with the addresses produced the data to produce this project.
It is important to note that not all locations where murals had been painted had
addresses. I did embark on locating addresses for various murals using Google Earth, as
well as the Internet, but at a certain point this proved to be too laborious, so I limited the
number of murals to 200 and included the murals that I felt were important to include.
Initially, I created a spreadsheet with various attributes but again after entering data for
several days, I chose to capture the data I felt most important like Title, Address, Year
Painted, and Creator along with pertinent attributes when possible. Among the different
techniques like using x-‐y coordinates, latitude and longitude, addresses with zip codes
provide
a
means
to
geo-‐code,
so
this
is
what
I
utilized
for
this
project.
2
City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, Muralfarm.org, http://muralarts.org/muralfarm. Accessed May 4, 2011.
3
UPS Zip Code Lookup, http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/welcome.jsp, Accessed April 1, 2011.
3
Producing
Mural
Maps
I created eleven maps for the following areas in El Paso: (1) a map of murals in the
Upper Valley; (2) a mural map of Central El Paso; (3) a mural map of Downtown El Paso;
(4) a mural map of El Paso Community College murals at the Valle Verde Campus in East El
Paso; (5) a mural map of murals in East El Paso; (6) a mural map of murals at Lincoln
Center in South Central El Paso; (7) a mural map of murals in Northeast El Paso; (8) a
mural map of works in Central El Paso; (9) a mural map of works in the Lower Valley; (10)
a map of murals in Segundo Barrio and Chihuahuita; and lastly (11) a map of various areas
I found difficulty in separating clusters of murals that shared one address and one
zip code. There are three clusters of murals in this study that separately share singular
addresses: (1) eight murals at the University of Texas all share one address—due to the
fact that all buildings share the same university address; (2) forty-‐three murals at Lincoln
Park that are painted on the various columns under what is informally referred to as the
Spaghetti Bowl. With the creation of the various freeways spanning the Lincoln Park
Community, historical addresses were obliterated and basically all murals now share one
address. Another cluster of murals is located at (3) the El Paso Community College Valle
Verde Campus and again, all buildings, like the ones at UT El Paso have one address.
In the creation of preliminary maps, I tried to include too much information on the
various maps and then Dr. Collins suggested I create an Appendix so I could list the murals
I created one shape file and worked off of it because I found difficult creating
separate files using the Open Attributes tool and combining different SQL data because all
4
fields
were
classified
as
numerical
data.
This
proved
to
be
effective
but
then
I
found
that
there needed to be consistency in creating the various maps. When I made an edit to
improve one map I then had to go back and apply the same edit to all the other maps. In
the middle of creating several maps, I found that the “Save As” function was easier than
creating an entirely new map. I found it necessary to create a hand-‐drawn style sheet (like
a flow sheet) to plan out how I was going to do the project and to have a place where I
could note what fonts I was using for titles and various labels. This style sheet also gave me
an overview of my progress and what needed fixing. I also noted the file name for each of
the maps. The sheet helped me “visualize” the overall project and complete it.
The areas with the most murals include: (1) Segundo Barrio/Chihuihuita; (2)
Lincoln Park; and (3) Central El Paso. Unbeknownst to the general public, murals are found
throughout the city. This was a very labor-‐intensive project and might have been too
Conclusion
I found creating these maps was a very satisfying and exhilarating experience given
that I was able to use my old data and in effect, by geo-‐coding it, make it “new” again. I see
great possibilities of utilizing this technology for a myriad of uses—for history, for the
analysis of information needs, for tracking population and demographic patterns, and for
5
I
realize
that
this
project
could
easily
have
risen
to
an
entirely
new
level
if
it
could
have incorporated additional data, images and indexing, as well as assigning numeral codes
to murals and describing each in detail. Or like the Philadelphia project mentioned in the
beginning of this essay, this work can live online and work similar to a UCLA product called
Hypercities.4 A separate section could feature murals that have been painted over and no
longer exist. Yet for this assignment none of this was warranted, although I can see how
this project would be the ideal for the merger of community art, socio-‐political art history,
urban history, politics, geo-‐coding (all areas I am very interested in) and with the analysis
of those results and the addition of some theory on the built environment and socio-‐
political factors in the creation of murals and mural making and it could easily become my
dissertation.
4
Hypercities, http://hypercities.com/. Accessed May 4, 2011.
6
Appendix
A
Areas include:
7
• “Sports
murals”
• “Heroes
of
Mexico”
• “La
Familia”
• “Senor
Sol”
• “Nuestra
Herencia/Our
Heritage”
• “Aztec
Ball
Players”
• “Iwo
Jima”
• “Mujer
Obrera/Working
Woman”
• “75th
Anniversary,
1915-‐1990”
• “Emiliano
Zapata”
• “Aztlan”
Downtown Murals
9
• Mariachi
Sol,
6B
• Mariachi
Luna,
7F
• Music
Under
the
Stars
#1,
7B
• Music
Under
the
Stars
#2,
9B
• Music
Under
the
Starts
#3,
10F
• Daylight,
12F
• Open
Your
Eyes,
12B
• The
Struggle,
13F
• Legends,
17F
• Chuco
Suave,
23F
• Twin
Serpents,
23B
• 2012
A
New
Light,
24F
• Pachuca
Blood,
25F
• El
Corazon
de
El
Paso,
28F
• Festival
San
Elizario
Mission,
28B
• Our
Lady
of
Guadalupe
Mission,
29F
• El
Chichihuacaahuco,
29B
• Tletl
(Fire),
30F
• Tlalli
(Earth),
30B
• Ehecatl
(Wind),
31F
• Atl
(Water),
31B
• Maiz,
32F
• Title
Unknown,
32B
• Native
American,
33F
• Blank,
33B
• Aztec
Sunstone,
34F
• Space
Shuttle
"El
Paso
Through
My
Eyes",
34B
• UTEP
Campus
"El
Paso
Through
My
Eyes,"
35F
• UTEP
Campus
"El
Paso
Through
My
Eyes,"
35B
• Faces
"Faces
Through
My
Eyes,"
36F
• Faces
"Faces
Through
My
Eyes,"
36B
• Eddie
Guerrero
"El
Paso
Through
My
Eyes,"
37F
• Latino
Heat
"El
Paso
Through
My
Eyes,"
37B
• Southwestern
Theme
• El
Santo
Nino
de
Atocha
• Guardian
Angel
• In
Memory
of
Andrea
Hensley,
1978-‐1993
10
• Mural
de
Senecu
• Stages
of
Life
• Tigua
Pueblo,
Ysleta
Mission
• The
Coming
of
Rain
• Image
of
Unity
• La
Virgen
de
Guadalupe
with
Ysleta
Mission
• Aztec
Gods
Iztaccihuatl
and
Popocatepetl
• Sports
mural
• Conquistador
11
• “Houchen
Bus”
(1982)
• “Kids
on
the
Moon”
(1987)
• “Three
Faces
representing
Chicanos”
(1975)
• “Geometric
Codex”
(1975)
• “Chicanos
Unidos
del
2nd”
(1975)
• “The
Children
First/Primero
Los
Ninos”
(1994)
• “Discover
the
Secrets
of
the
Universe
Through
Your
Library”
(1994)
• “Zavala
Elementary
School
Mural”
(1986)
Upper
Valley
and
West
El
Paso
Murals
12
Maps
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24