On 105th Street and Third Avenue is a mural that was first painted by a collective of Hispanic activist-artists in 1998. It is of Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara and Pedro Albizu Campos, a Puerto Rican nationalist and activist for independence. After 13 years the artists who originally painted got together with Luisa’s Liberation Artists Making Action (LLAMA) to restore the mural and remove the graffiti and tagging that had collected over the last decade.

One of the artists, Vagabond, feels that mural represents a number of things to the large Hispanic population located in East Harlem. He says that often, even in Puerto Rico itself, Hispanic children get taught a large amount of Western or American history in school. With the restoration of the mural, he hopes to reignite a dialogue between residents about their own history and culture.