The Rebirth of Our Nationality is a mural by Leo Tanguma, painted in 1973 across the southern facade of the former Continental Can Company warehouse at 5900 Canal Street. About 240 feet long and holding some seventy figures, it was made with 100 gallons of donated house paint during the Chicano mural movement, and the historian Jesus Jesse Esparza has called it perhaps the best-known example of Mexican American public art in Houston. At its center a deep red flower opens to reveal a young couple with outstretched arms, whom Tanguma described as the new generation of Chicanos, while older figures on either side are drawn toward them carrying their stories. Other figures embrace to show a family holding together to keep its culture, a farm worker holds a union contract, and a man is bound in rope to show how prejudice entangles people.
A white banner above the couple reads: To become aware of our history is to become aware of our singularity. Over four decades the house paint faded and peeled from the wall.
Harris County bought the building in 2013 for records storage and a Precinct 6 constable station, and folded a $70,000 recreation of the mural into an $8 million renovation. The old surface was whitewashed in the summer of 2017, and the aerosol artist Mario Enrique Figueroa Jr., known as Gonzo247, re-created it under the guidance of Tanguma, by then a longtime resident of Denver. The new version was celebrated in June 2018.
Getting there
29.7442, -95.3149
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop is an audio tour guide app that tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
