Street Art as a Discursive Site for Negotiating Pluricultural Governance

Abstract

The Oaxaca Commune, a popular uprising that grew into a broad-based movement for social justice, erupted in June 2006 in the capital of the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. In this article, I analyze various forms of street art created in the Oaxaca Commune, including graffiti and print media, to examine how these formations created a matrix of visual discourse mapping the political terrain of the Oaxaca Commune onto the spatial terrain of Oaxaca City. Artist collectives mobilized the aesthetics of Mexican graphic agitprop, revolutionary iconography, and religious traditions to create a site for dialogue and negotiation among civil society about key issues of the movement, the development of a popular assembly, and the future of Oaxaca’s democracy.