Las Mujeres Muralistas ("The Muralist Women") were an all-female Latina artist collective based in the Mission District in San Francisco in the 1970s.
Patricia Rodriguez, Graciela Carrillo, Consuelo Mendez, and Irene Perez are recognized as the founders and most prominent members of the collective,[1] but other female Chicana artists assisted along the way and even joined later on, such as Susan Cervantes, Ester Hernandez, and Miriam Olivo among others.
[3] Member, Ester Hernández, went on to be credited with creating one of the first images to link the plight of farmworkers to the effects on consumers and the environment with her screenprint, Sun Mad, 1981.
[4] Groups of women artists of color, like Las Mujeres Muralistas, protested marginalization on the basis of gender, race and ethnicity.
To accomplish this, they used a lot of symbolism that was relevant to Latinos in their mural, such as a pyramid of cornstalks illustrating the significant role that corn played in the lives of indigenous American peoples.
"[10] San Francisco's Mission District was home to a large and diverse group of Latinos, whom the Mujeres Muralistas acknowledged in their mural.
"[11] Much like the Mission District, the Murjeres Muralistas had a diverse group of Latinas, their unique cultural and national identities influencing their stylistic contributions to Latinoamérica.
Artwork, for example, would depict people performing daily jobs and tasks, often focusing on the working class (e.g. farm workers and laborers).
A McDonald's had just been built across the street, so the mural on the Paco's Tacos building was an effort to keep the restaurant unique and relevant compared to its new competitor.
They considered the kind of people that would engage with the space and the final product was extremely colorful and had a lot of symbolism tying back to the Latino culture, such as a female sun acting as a sort of Mother Nature type goddess and a woman blowing wind in the top lefthand corner that appeared to be of Mayan descent.