¡Ándale! The Chicano Mural Movement at Stanford
A short documentary film
With paint and brushes, how did the early generations of Chicano students claim space, build community, and connect with solidarity movements across the world? This 20-minute documentary film interviews experts and alumni about the intersection of Chicano and Latino student activism and art-making at Stanford University.
Coming soon to Stanford University’s Department of Special Collections at Green Library.
Psycho-Geographic Map of Chicano Murals at Stanford (2025)
To celebrate the film and the art-making legacy it overviews, Dr. Salseda commissioned new work by Perry Vásquez, a San Diego based artist, art professor, and Stanford alum (Class of 1982). The psycho-geographic map Vásquez created connects cutting-edge legacies across time to encourage viewers to see the university anew.
Vásquez drew inspiration for the background’s striations from images of colliding electrons and particles at Stanford’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, a center world renowned for its research on the origins of our universe. To these elements, he added icons of maíz, a staple crop domesticated and grown by Indigenous civilizations for millennia. Then, in the center, Vásquez placed a Stanford campus map from the 1970s to mark the arrival of the first major cohorts of Chicano students. He encircled the map with the outer edge of the Aztec sun calendar, underscoring the long history of Indigenous cosmology, innovation, and artistry. Vásquez then marked the major sites for Chicano creativity on campus with images of murals and arrows pointing to Casa Zapata and El Centro Chicano y Latino. Together, these elements link multiple lineages of imagination, science, and art.
© 2026 Rose Salseda