Stylogenyin the style of Oaxacan Protest Printmaking & Street Graphics (ASARO)

Counterculture · 2006–present · Latin America & Caribbean

Oaxacan Protest Printmaking & Street Graphics (ASARO)

Also known as ASARO (Asamblea de Artistas Revolucionarios de Oaxaca), Oaxacan street art, Gráfica oaxaqueña de protesta, Post-2006 Oaxaca print collectives

The street graphics of Oaxaca City since the 2006 teachers' strike and APPO uprising, when ASARO, the stencil collective Lapiztola and later workshops such as Colectivo Subterráneos made the colonial centre's walls a newspaper. Black woodcuts and linocuts, some mural-sized crowds on newsprint, are wheat-pasted under the collective's name beside photographic stencils, screenprints and sprayed slogans: Zapata, Indigenous warriors, women, masked fighters, calaveras and a Virgin of the Barricades against a caricatured governor and police, in the lineage of Posada and the TGP.

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A sample layout drawn from the style’s design choices. Stylogeny doesn’t generate images of this style, out of respect for the people it belongs to.

Use it with care

This is the living work of Oaxacan collectives, many of whose young members come from the Indigenous and Black Oaxacan communities they depict, made in answer to real repression: the 2006 conflict left at least 17 dead, and Subterráneos's 14 de Junio recalls the police raid of 14 June 2006, so do not reuse its barricades, prisoners or riot-police scenes as edgy styling for a brand or event. ASARO credits only the collective, and one of its artists has said that simply putting a print up in the street makes you a criminal, so credit the collective, never attach an individual's name to an unsigned collective street print without consent, and commission or buy from the workshops rather than imitating their prints. Zapotec and other Indigenous dress, maize, jaguar warriors and the Virgin of Guadalupe, even in ASARO's Virgin of the Barricades, carry community and devotional meaning in Oaxaca; learn whose they are before borrowing them, and never caricature Indigenous or Black Oaxacans the way the prints caricature politicians.

01

How it works

  • Carve the image in wood or lino and print it in black on cheap paper or newsprint, so it can be cut fast, pulled by hand and pasted by the dozen; at mural scale, carve the crowd itself, figures with raised fists, banners and flags, some in traditional dress carrying flowers and tools.
  • Take the print straight to the wall: wheat-paste it at poster or mural scale, sign it with the collective's name or not at all, and expect it to be torn down, painted over and pasted or stencilled again on top of the paint.
  • Let carved prints, photographic stencils, screenprints and sprayed slogans share one wall, so the street reads as a layered conversation rather than a single poster.
  • Cast Indigenous, popular and revolutionary figures (Zapata, jaguar warriors, women carrying children, peasants working the land, masked wrestlers and fighters) as the protagonists of the present struggle, and caricature the governor and the police as its villains, labelled with the crimes the street charges them with.
  • Turn the popular images of death and devotion to the struggle: la muerte, the calavera Posada used for satire, against capitalism and violence towards women, and the Virgin of Guadalupe recast as ASARO's Virgin of the Barricades, crushing the demons of capitalism and oppressive power.
  • Keep the image simple and the slogan short, cut by hand in capitals, so a passer-by can read both at a glance.

Oaxaca City, Mexico: the teachers' strike of May 2006 and the APPO uprising that followed the police raid on the Zócalo encampment on 14 June 2006. ASARO formed during the uprising, as did the stencil collective Lapiztola; later workshops such as Taller Artístico Comunitario and Colectivo Subterráneos (2021) carry the practice on in the historic centre.

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Gloss & highlights, Geometric sans, Gradients, Pastel, Modular grid, Luxurious & glamorous, Authoritative & institutional, Non-representational

Palette

  • #141414
  • #ebe4d3
  • #b3ad9f
  • #c1272d

Typefaces

  • Capitals gouged by hand into the wood or lino block for slogans, such as 'The earth belongs to those who work it' on ASARO's peasant poster

  • Cut-card stencil capitals for sprayed captions and slogans beside the paste-ups

  • Freehand spray-painted slogans and graffiti tags by the crews who joined ASARO

Known for

  • ASARO (Asamblea de Artistas Revolucionarios de Oaxaca), formed in 2006 during the uprising from graffiti crews, students, folk and trained artists; its woodcuts, stencils and posters do not credit individual artists

  • Stencils on Oaxaca's walls, painted by ASARO and other individuals and collectives

    Governor Ulises Ruiz holding a pistol, captioned 'Fourth state of the state address', and a lit Molotov cocktail, '2010, we are ready'; and a stencil of 1 August 2007 of two women marching and speaking over a megaphone, marking the anniversary of the women's takeover of Channel 9, above which its artist, an unnamed young woman, sprayed 'We will continue' in red (John Gibler, Fifth Estate, 2009)

  • ASARO's Santísima Virgen de las Barrikadas, a secular Virgin of the Barricades who crushes the head of the demons of capitalism and oppressive power, first seen on Oaxaca's walls in 2006 (Leafa Wilson, Waikato Museum, 2015)

  • ASARO block-print poster of a barefoot peasant tilling the land under the slogan 'The earth belongs to those who work it', and stencilled portraits of the governor labelled 'Cynic, Thief, Autocrat, Repressor, Murderer' (reproduced in Getting Up for the People, PM Press, 2014)

  • Princeton University Library Graphic Arts

    49 ASARO woodcuts, stencils and posters acquired in 2010, many as large as 100 × 70 cm, one showing army helicopters dropping chemicals on peaceful protesters

  • Lapiztola (from lápiz, pencil, and pistola, pistol), stencil collective formed in Oaxaca during the 2006 conflict

    (now Rosario Martínez, Roberto Vega and Alejandro Alfonso Luis), whose stencils are built on photographic principles; mural El camino, on migration, for the Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City (Gaceta UNAM, November 2024)

  • Colectivo Subterráneos (formed 2021, taught by ASARO printmaker Mario Guzmán), 14 de Junio

    ¡Ni Perdón, Ni Olvido! (2022), linocut on newsprint, 16 × 8 ft, a black-and-white print of figures with raised fists holding banners, shown in Las Calles de Oaxaca (Lesley University, 2022; Erie Art Museum, 2023–24)

  • Taller Artístico Comunitario (TAC), Oaxaca workshop for large-format street graphics, shown with Subterráneos in A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words (Penticton Art Gallery, 2022)

03

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This styleOaxacan Protest Printmaking & Street Graphics (ASARO)2006–present · Latin America & Caribbean

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

04

Sources

  1. Wikipedia: '2006 Oaxaca protests' (strike from May 2006, the raid of 14 June, APPO formed after the raid and declared itself the governing body of Oaxaca on 17 June; ASARO formed in June 2006 as the APPO's artistic wing, working in printmaking, stencils, wheat-pasting, screenprinting and murals; collectives ASARO, Colectivo Subterráneos, Lapiztola, Taller Artístico Comunitario, Burro Press and Cooperativa Gráfica Oaxaca)
  2. Michael Graham de La Rosa and Samuel Gilbert, 'Oaxaca's revolutionary street art', Al Jazeera, 26 March 2017 (Espacio Zapata, Taller Siqueiros and Yescka; screenprints, wheat-paste posters and large woodcuts; revolutionary heroes, Indigenous symbolism and villainous politicians; lineage of Posada, Leopoldo Méndez and Diego Rivera; at least 17 deaths in 2006; prints sold at the 2016 Feria Gráfica)
  3. John Gibler, ''We Will Continue': Street Art in Oaxaca', Fifth Estate 380, Spring 2009 (stencils by ASARO and other individuals and collectives: Ulises Ruiz with a pistol, a Molotov cocktail; the Channel 9 anniversary stencil of 1 August 2007 by an unnamed young woman artist, painted over layers of paint where the government had covered earlier stencils)
  4. Tim Stelloh, 'Mexican street art with an edge', Christian Science Monitor, 15 August 2008 (Ivan Arenas of ASARO; stencils, wheat-paste posters and woodblock prints; masked wrestlers, Zapata, Juárez, an Indigenous warrior, a woman with a child on her back, 'The fighter becomes the symbol'; borrowing from Posada and Rivera)
  5. Princeton University Library, Graphic Arts Collection blog, 'Asamblea de Artistas Revolucionarios de Oaxaca' (July 2010) (49 woodcuts, stencils and posters, many as large as 100 × 70 cm; no individual names used; cites Louis E. V. Nevaer, Protest Graffiti Mexico: Oaxaca, 2009)
  6. Ryan D. Purcell, review of ASARO, Mike Graham de La Rosa and Suzanne M. Schadl, Getting Up for the People: The Visual Revolution of ASAR-Oaxaca (PM Press, 2014), H-Socialisms, October 2014, reposted on the PM Press blog (graffiti crews, taggers, students, folk and trained artists; the peasant print, the stencilled governor portraits; exhibition Getting Up Pa'l Pueblo, National Hispanic Cultural Center, Albuquerque, 2014)
  7. Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, exhibition page for Oaxaca Ingobernable: Aesthetics, Politics, and Art from Below, closing 29 March 2025 (maxwellmuseum.unm.edu/node/1031) (Colectivo Subterráneos started in 2021 with six members; relief prints and murals; Pavel Acevedo's linocuts drawing on Zapotec storytelling; Indigenous and Black Oaxacan communities; a woodblock inked for printing on fabric)
  8. Erie Art Museum, 'Las Calles de Oaxaca' (15 September 2023–February 2024, curated by Andrew Mroczek; Subterráneos's 14 de Junio: ¡Ni Perdón, Ni Olvido!, 2022, linocut on newsprint, 16 × 8 ft; prints wheat-pasted throughout the historic centre; master printmaker Mario Guzmán)
  9. Penticton Art Gallery, 'A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words' (8 July–17 September 2022; Subterráneos and Taller Artístico Comunitario, both rooted in ASARO; wood and linoleum block prints, graffiti murals, stencils and wheat pastes)
  10. Wikipedia: 'Colectivo Subterráneos' (formed August 2021; Mario Guzmán of ASARO as teacher; influences of the TGP, Méndez, Posada and the muralists; jaguar warriors, street vendors, Zapata)
  11. Roberto Frías, 'Nuevos espacios de expresión en El Chopo', Gaceta UNAM, 7 November 2024 (Lapiztola formed in Oaxaca during the 2006 teachers' conflict; members Rosario Martínez, Roberto Vega and Alejandro Alfonso Luis; stencils based on photographic principles; the mural El camino)
  12. Latin American & Iberian Institute, University of New Mexico, 'Zimmerman Library Explores Mexican Concept of Death', 26 March 2014 (an exhibit by Megan Jirón of ASARO images from the UNM Latin American Collection: 'images of la muerte are used by the artists in ASARO to fight against capitalism and violence toward women'; Posada's calavera satirising the upper class)
  13. Leafa Wilson, Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato, 'Santisima Virgen de las Barrikadas | Blessed Virgin of the Barricades', 7 December 2015, Wintec Research Archive eprint 4356 (review of a 2011 serigraph by Xavier de la Cueva Meade: 'ASARO's secularised version' of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who 'crushes the head of the demons of capitalism and oppressive power', first appeared on the walls of Oaxaca in 2006 by ASARO)

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