"Los Elementos" (The Elements) Mural by Raul Valdez

"Los Elementos" (The Elements) Mural by Raul Valdez

Photo of a slide depicting a mural titled "Los Elementos" painted by Raul Valdez on the outside of Juarez Lincoln University

This mural. titled "Los Elementos" (The Elements) was painted by Raul Valdez on the outside of Juarez Lincoln University (715 East First Street) in 1976 and/or 1977. Juarez Lincoln University was a school that gave credit for life experience rather than classes as part of the Mexican-American education movement. The building was first firebombed in 1980 and then demolished in 1983. According to Valdez's online portfolio, this mural was "destroyed by greed in 1984."

The mural depicts (from L to R) Aztec style stone snakes (Quetzalcoatl), a flood of water on which two Latino men walk, one holding an accordion and the other a guitar. Plowed fields form the background, and a Latina woman holding a curved trail of fire that extends to the distant sun seems to run out of the mural towards the viewer.

Raul Valdez

Miscellaneous Photographs Box 3 Slide #2 Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin.

Benson Latin American Collection

1976, 1977

Image Slide

East Austin, Austin, Texas