By: Zoe Mendelson

Date: June 20, 2022

Location: Mexico City, Mexico, North America

Resource Type: Linked article

In 2022, to the horror of many of her constituents, Sandra Cuevas, the now-deposed borough president of Cuauhtémoc, Mexico City, ordered her district’s street food stand owners to cover up or remove about 1,500 colorful hand-painted advertisements and replace them with her administration’s logo. She called it an effort to improve the urban environment. The signs, known as rótulos are joyful. They are often tongue-in-cheek. Sometimes they are crude but mostly they are painted with precise techniques passed down master-to-apprentice through generations.