Season 1, Episode 3

Buen Hombre: Mario Acevedo Torero

This week we have a “Buen Hombre” like no other, an “Art-ivist”, and a person very well known in certain circles, but who should be known in all circles, all the way from the great country of Peru, but who has has spent most of his life in San Diego, California, my good friend, Mario Torero.

Mario Torero is a very well known Chicano muralist, artist, and just a great humanitarian. Some of his best works as far as murals in San Diego and Southern California are: “The Eyes of Picasso” painted, then demolished when the buildings, whose walls they graced disappeared then reappearing again all over San Diego County during the last 4 decades… And perhaps the most well known in the media is the “I’m Not A Minority” mural in Los Angeles. You also might be familiar with his painting of Cesar Chavez, or his iconic Chicano Park murals. 

Over the last 50 years he has been bringing his passion for “Art-ivism” and the Chicano Art movement all over California, to other cities in the United States and even in travels abroad to join other Artivist causes in Peru, Mexico, Germany, the Czech Republic, Japan, China, Cuba, Spain and more to come in the future.  Most recently I joined him in Berlin for the thirtieth anniversary of the 

Fall of the Berlin Wall last November, where he shared the story of the Chicano Art Movement and the Chicano Park Community Revolution with audiences there alongside myself and two other local Chicano Activists, artist/muralist Enrique Chiu, and artist/architect Adrian Luz.