Today, in preparation for the mental onslaught that will be our Spanish course starting tomorrow, is a quiet day. We walk around Valparaiso drinking in the sunshine and the sheer colour that characterises it. The Cerros (hills) of Valparaiso are a bright, windey haven, full of unusual architecture (being built in some inhospitable territory, no house can be the same), with bright and inventive murals in tiny corners or appearing, suddenly, on vast stretches of wall, to reward you for looking up. We take in image after image, some cruelly reflective of a struggling port (Valparaiso now has a thriving income from tourism, though with the exception if one hill which is almost entirely given over to tourism, the more residential areas, bar the poorer neighbourhoods we were so sadly warned away from, retain their other worldly charm, a far cry from the bustle and relative grey of 'the flat'. However previously its income as a trading centre was almost obliterated by the opening of the Panama Canal, leaving many business destitute.) Others are a celebration, of birds and creatures, or of Pablo Neruda, the famous Chilean poet. Some are darker and brooding, featuring skulls and strange, apocalyptic beasts. A few are downright rude. Others still, are rich and fantastical, featuring seas foaming with white creatures, who might be people, wraiths or animals. Some depict people, real or imagined, picked out in realistic or inventive portraiture, others simply swirl with complex patterns. All of them have something to say.
"You can read so much in these," said our guide yesterday, "apart from the tags, which tell you nothing."
A 'tag', for those of you not familiar with them, are the names and words with which gangs and individuals essentially mark territory. We see them a lot also in England. They might be a slightly more artistic rendering (the gang or individual name picked out in block capitals which merge together in a distinctive font or colour), or simply a scrawled word. Or an 'x woz ere' type message.
Tags, and in fact graffiti in general, are illegal in Chile. However, in a slight twist which I have not quite manage to grasp, the murals, or at least certain of them, are not, or are 'turned a blind eye to' in Valparaiso. The murals grew from the knowledge of new house builders, that their stretch of wall would be covered in tags almost as soon as it was painted. Once an artistic mural adorned them, however, the taggers would, especially if the artist was well respected, leave the wall alone. And would not tag over the top. And it's rather nice to have a mural on the side of your house. Artists tend to paint for free to gain notoriety and will in fact approach a new house builder painting a new wall to offer to paint a 'commission' on it.
There is some confusion here though, firstly, as a UNESCO site, I believe that the rule is that you may not change the outside of your house. So are the murals all historic, or do they still spring up? Secondly, if graffiti is illegal, how did tagging become such a problem in the first place?
The obvious answer to the latter might be that it is not especially ferociously policed, but we were shown yesterday a set of steps on the edge of which was painted a set if piano keys, so that from the bottom looking up, the steps resembled a piano. Our guide told us we were lucky to see it. When the artist painted them, in fact a repaint as the original had faded, at the request of the neighbours, he got only half way through before the police arrived. Even so, and as per the usual indomitable Chilean spirit I have come to recognise and admire, everyone agrees that a piano looks nicer than just a set of plain stairs, and as soon as the piano is removed, it appears again, the general belief being that it us not now the one artist that repaints it. But that residents take turns in somehow contriving to put it back!
Which raises further confusion as to the legal system in respect of street art. If it is so actively policed that the piano disappears every few days, how are there still so many of the rather more ugly 'tags' adorning the non be-muralled walls? Or do they disappear and reappear also? And secondly, the murals themselves are not removed, the artists display their names and are well known, even building their careers on it. Are they UNESCO protected? Or do the police make an artistic judgement somehow over the piano in particular as not being artistic enough? If so, once again, how do the tags survive?
Further research sheds more light on this quandry. It seems that the murals are allowable so long as the owner of the building gives permission, and the image is not overly offensive. Furthermore, murals are in fact sometimes even subsidised by the government. This makes sense. The colourful nature of Valparaiso as being essentially a free artist's canvas is a boon to it, rather than a problem, attracting tourists and rendering the city an undeniable beauty which it might not otherwise have. Taggers are quick and difficult to catch or stay on top of in terms of repainting, but easier fought by putting a public value on them as not being beautiful, or policed internally through the taggers' respect for the artist.
Everything makes sense, even the UNESCO rulings, if you consider that only two of the cerros are actually designated UNESCO sites and that the mural tradition is part of a thriving aspect of the city already in place when the UNESCO designation happened.
Everything makes sense apart from that piano. Why not subsidise that? Can't somebody commission it? It's hardly offensive.
Maybe, rather like Valparaiso itself, the sort of controlled anarchy that allows for the continual reappearance of the piano mural, is part of its charm. Perhaps, without that, it is only a few strokes of black and white paint. Would it have been so specifically included on our tour if it wasn't facing such a repeated threat of extinction?
Perhaps not. And legality, like the UNESCO rules which prevent easy restoration of destroyed buildings but allow for their slow and deliberate destruction by natural courses, has a hard time making perfect rules which can work in their entirety in every case.
It is strange, and rather beautiful, that a city as full of colour as Valparaiso, can so clearly illuminate the necessity for grey areas.
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