This story has been updated.
Until a week ago, a faded mural called “La Musica de San Anto”, painted on the side of a building along Commerce Street, welcomed people entering the city’s West Side from downtown.
On Feb. 27, workers began painting over the the colorful public art piece. By the next day, it was gone — replaced by a gray wall. Little to no evidence of the documented history remains.
The mural was originally painted by more than 30 artists for the San Anto Cultural Arts Center, a community youth and arts advocacy organization that has produced 66 public art murals across the city.
On Monday, the San Anto Cultural Arts Center took to social media to inform its community that the 16-year-old mural had been “whitewashed,” meaning the original artwork had been erased.
“La Musica de San Anto” paid tribute to local Mexican American musicians who have died and are seldom recognized in musical history, including the organization’s founder, Manny Castillo, who “always wanted to have murals on West Commerce Street and Guadalupe Street, the gateways to the West Side.”
Castillo died in 2009 following his battle with cancer, before the mural was completed.
A community meeting to discuss replacing the mural will be scheduled within the coming weeks with the building’s new owner, Mike Afsous, who said he purchased the property in January.
The mural depicted San Antonio-based musicians from different decades — including Randy Garibay, the “Chicano bluesman,” of the band Cats Don’t Sleep; Clifford Scott, the “Honky Tonk,” jazz musician who performed with Ray Charles; and Rocky Morales of the West Side Horns band who went on to perform at Carnegie Hall — engaged in a jam session, welcoming people into the barrio.
“Muralism is very important in Chicano culture. It’s a way for us to tell our narratives when we’ve been strategically kept out of galleries and exhibitions and museums,” said Keli Cabunoc-Romero, development and engagement manager for the San Anto Cultural Arts Center.
“The walls become our museums and it’s a way to tell our stories, to tell our narratives, to make sure that our history continues to live, that future generations [and] young kids are able to walk by these murals and feel proud and inspired,” she said.
One San Anto Cultural Arts Center volunteer named Guadalupe Olguin lived on in the mural, even after his death on March 1, 2024. The art piece depicted a portrait of Guadalupe and his wife Aurora dancing.
It made the mural’s cover-up all the more painful for the family on the first anniversary of Guadalupe Olguin’s death, Cabunoc-Romero said.
“The community’s just really hurt I think,” she said, sympathizing with the owner who thought he was doing the right thing.
Afsous, who has several properties in San Antonio, Boerne, New Braunfels and Converse, was immediately apologetic about painting over the mural.
He told the San Antonio Report he been in contact with David Blancas, the person the realtor told him had painted — and who Afsous thought owned — the mural.
Blancas did paint the mural, but not independently. He was the lead muralist for the San Anto Cultural Arts project in 2008 and painted it with a team of professional muralists.
According to the San Anto Cultural Arts Center, its artists are required to sign contracts saying that the imagery belongs to the organization on behalf of the community.
Afsous said that Blancas told him that he was interested in “re-doing” the mural.
Afsous said he saw an opportunity to communicate interest in painting over the mural because of damage it had sustained over the years, like cracks and holes, not to mention how faded it had become.
The building owner said Blancas “got it approved” some time after and called him back to approve the request to paint over the mural. Afsous hired the crew to start the work. Then, calls from the San Anto Cultural Arts came in.
“We’re going to work into restoring it back to its original glory,” said the center’s Executive Director Cuauhtli Reyna, who pointed out an area the painters missed that shows a tiny part of the colorful mural. “We historically preserve murals in the way they were originally painted because that’s the way the community painted them and that’s the way the community conceptualized them. There’s no re-imagining, there’s no deletion.”
“I did the right thing,” Afsous said, “But I was, I guess misinformed, but they’re going to put it back and it’s going to look nicer than before.”
The displacement of the mural raises questions about policy and legislation of how to protect community murals in the barrio as developers purchase properties to flip or lease out.
“People don’t know how many times we’ve almost lost murals or mural owners’ walls have changed hands because mural owners have sold buildings,” Reyna said.
The San Anto Cultural Arts Center has a preservation manager who stays in touch with mural owners to ensure murals aren’t displaced, but since the property recently sold in January, Cabunoc-Romero said the organization hadn’t been able to get in touch despite numerous phone calls.
The City of San Antonio partially sponsored the mural and has worked with the organization for other public art projects and reaffirmed its commitment to help ensure San Antonio’s cultural art is protected, Cabunoc-Romero said.
At the community meeting, there will be more clarity on a timeline and how the community can have a hand in the public artwork.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the name of an artist. His name is Rocky Morales.
