Alejandro "Monkey" González: The precursor of graffiti in Chile

The most recognized founder Ramona Parra Brigades, which just received a Altazor, talks about how it feels to be labeled as a precursor of graffiti in our country and the current time of the mural. Nor let the opportunity to refer to the bill that would ban the sale of spray to minors: "It is repression and censorship," he says.


Paolo Villagrán Lara



Alejandro "Monkey" Gonzalez is like those old cracks that never fail to score goals. He started painting walls around age 15 and has not stopped to this day, by around 1964 the name was already in the newspapers of the time communists who supported the candidacies of Salvador Allende. At the time, Gonzalez was just a kid who had a good painting. Gradually was taking the political ideas of the world around him.

Years later, he was instrumental in the creation of the Ramona Parra Brigades, and promoted the development of the mural in our country. Closed fist, the dove, star, human faces and bright colors were felt strongly in the streets of Chile Popular Unity, even got to paint a mural with Roberto Matta in La Granja.

Time took care of the rest. With the coup many murals were destroyed, but the Chilean muralist style remained forever in the collective memory as iconographic sign Allende revolution. And beyond that, as a new form of expression in society: Through the walls

Considering the context and needs, ¿The chilean muralist hastily developed?
Not at all. The murals in Chile was a very long process that evolved from the earliest applications of Allende until he got the presidency in 70. In the early years was articulated movement with ties to the Mexican muralists and fences Cuban revolution. Besides that all things were doing, I was studying tracer letters and art, as well as many other colleagues who already did things.

¿Did it manage to mature the muralismo?
Was going in ripeness, but it was cut abrupt by the military dictatorship. As the popular government and the artistic movement of the new Chilean song. Imagine where we had come if they had not stopped us...

      Allende and the Popular Government already do not exist, ¿What does support alive today the Chilean muralist? 

       To me what takes me forward is to think if my son or my grandsons will have water in a couple of years more… they are the longings and the opinions, about what it happens today, which they support to the muralismo. We, in these new times, have to have in the street a unit of work and there allow that all the opinions anti systemic express and develop freely.

"Monkey" Gonzalez painting the roofs of houses in the working population 

Union, the Cerro Cordillera, in Valparaiso. (photo: huelladigital.cl)

Today, the artistic manager of the UP just won the prize Altazor makes Arcis university classes, is painting regularly in schools, colleges and walls of Chile, has scheduled several projects at a time and most part to paint a mural Belgium. A pace of life that is living in his studio, surrounded by sketches of designs and printing plates, plus a team of film students who recorded almost every day for a documentary.

For the rest, "Monkey" Gonzalez is considered by the majority of the graffiti artists national as the great pioneer of the discipline in Chile.

In your opinion, ¿What are the commonalities between the mural and graffiti?

First I think the risk, adrenaline and the need for young people to express themselves on the streets without permission and second, the fact that both are expressions anti systemic.

¿And the differences?

We were militants or supporters with ideas and convictions of government and society. But today the boys stick to something more personalized. In their styles, their tribes or their groups. Ours was more vertical and cross them is, I think this is due much to the social realities in which emerged both groups.

¿At a time the relationship was not good?

At one time it was neither love nor hate, but a marked difference. There was a time in which we, and I do that a strong self-criticism, we looked at the graffiti as subjects who did not care what was happening in society.

¿Do you still keep that thought?

In a way yes, because I feel that lack of concern that commitment for the rest, but I also understand that they are different experiences. Everything that happens with young people today is the product of the cultural vacuum left by the dictatorship ... destroyed the walls, burned books, decried many things. In addition we must add the fact that young people today are living in a democracy means, full of moorings as a legacy of the dictatorship.

"Life and Work", the mural enlivens Bustamante Park Station, 

Line 5 in subway of Santiago.

    

        ¿What do you think the level of graffiti in Chile?

      Very good. Chile, along with Brazil, leads the field of urban interventions and that is known everywhere. And not just the lead in quantity, but in quality and identity. You can recognize groups or graffiti, just like that of their work; it speaks that have generated an identity.

      Name some...

      Loads, but to give you some names I really like what the Negotropicos, the Aislap Ogotocs and do great things because of quality and self managed. In addition to all do with vocation, passion and a reason to live.