Dear Sir,
I am responding to the letter to the editor in the Nov. 17-23 edition, from Peter Howarth of San Juan Cosala. I think that even though the skateboard parks are for the young people, they are in public spaces and seen by all of us. As for me, I don’t want to see graffiti. If you attended the inauguration of the park, you would have heard music with English lyrics saying something like, “We just want to smoke our weed, we just want to drink our booze, we just want to _ _ _ _ our chics, etc.” You would have also seen stickers for skateboard-related products pasted on every light post. In the caption and photo of the Mezquitan cemetery in Guadalajara, which appeared in the Reporter awhile back, the murals there, in less than a year’s time, have been graffitied.
My husband and I recently traveled to San Cristobal de las Casas, a colonial city and Magic Pueblo in Chiapas. We almost cried. Graffiti has taken over. As part of the “no Chapala graffiti” group, we have sent information to Lic. Magnolia Velazco, in charge of attention to tourists, who tells us Chiapas will be erasing graffiti in San Cristobal. We hope so, as anyone going to the San Cristobal Spanish School, advertised in the Reporter, may cry when they arrive and see a truly magical place defaced by graffiti.
Nanette Phillips,
San Antonio Tlayacapan