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Carmen Chavez-Aguirre
Professor Jackie Hymes
English 115 MW 11-12:15
1 November 2014
What is Art?
The piece I analyzed was Graffiti: Art or Vandalism? by Jessica Barahona.
Throughout her paper she wrote about how graffiti is used to allow Latinos to show their
pride and culture in their neighborhood, which would be her main claim. She makes very
significant statements regarding what can be considered street art and what in fact is
vandalism. She states her claim when saying, Murals in Los Angeles should be allowed
in free public spaces to express our culture fully. These are not vandalism; they are
representations of our lives, our identity, and our heritage. Barahona separates what she
believes to be street art and what she believes to be vandalism. Her claim is that street art
should be allowed when used to show culture and pride and to bring a type of nationalism
to bring people together. Street art is not when gangs use art to radiate a sense of fear to
the property and exclude people from their territory. It is also stated that City Hall has
begun to whitewash murals in Los Angeles and turn them into something more
acceptable in society, which requires their permission and permits. Barahona clearly
stands on the grounds that art showing culture should not be vandalism and destroyed but
should be considered art and preserved. In her paper she provides evidence by adding a
quote from an article titled Cement or Canvas: Aerosol Art & The
Changing Face of Graffiti in the 21st Century, in the quote it shows how we are
presently okay with other slogans and advertisements that inhabit our lives, so why
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should street art be any different from that. Another form of evidence she provides us
with is a picture of a very well done mural, with a caption saying, We are not a
minority. The reason this is used as evidence to her claim is because this does in deed
show art and not vandalism, it shows a positive message and pride. So it poses the
question on how something so positive like that can be considered illegal and to be
vandalism. I would say that the author is a bit biased on this argument. She uses the
words we and our a lot in which we can infer that she is a Latina. One main sentence
that shows this is, These murals are not just paintings on random walls in the barrio we
call home, but reminders of our culture and why we are proud to call ourselves
Mexican, Honduran, Salvadorian, Guatemalan, but overall, Latinos. Here we see that
her main standpoint is that street art is used as a reminder to show how proud they should
be about their culture. Bias is to have a very strong standpoint on a situation and in this
case she has a very strong standpoint on graffiti because she believes it to preserve her
culture. For the most part everything is believable and can be considered somewhat true.
One weak spot the author does have is the fact that she did not cover enough of graffiti
that is in fact vandalism and should not be allowed. One can argue that the sense of
nationalism felt by the Latinos within the street art can send off a fearful one to anyone
who is not Hispanic. Thus it would be considered vandalism and illegal. In order to pose
a stronger standpoint she would have to go over illegal graffiti in more of a detailed way.
Doubt can be instilled in Barahonas argument because she also does not provide too
much evidence on how City Hall seems to be having the murals whitewashed. The lack
of evidence is a weak spot in her claim.

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Works Cited
Barahona, Jessica. Graffiti: Art or Vandalism?. Web