Feature: Young artists paint Mexico's largest mural to help community eliminate violence

The main cause of death for young people in Mexico is violence. This is why the country has launched a program as part of which a group of young people designed and painted a 20,000-square-meter mural across 200 houses in eastern Mexico.

The mural is in the community of Palmitas, Pachuca, capital city of Hidalgo state, which has witnessed serious social problems such as drug and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, school absenteeism and unemployment.

With an investment of 5 million Mexican pesos (295,500 U.S. dollars), the government created the "Pachuca paints itself" program, which aims to rebuild social cohesion and increase citizen participation in city life.

"Palmitas has turned into an emblematic site, beyond simply being Mexico's largest mural," Mexico's Undersecretary of the Interior for Prevention and Citizen Participation Eunice Rendon told Xinhua.

Moreover, Rendon said that the program relied on the support of civil society as well as from the municipal, state and federal governments to elaborate a concept that the people of Palmitas could identify with.

"This plan seeks to promote security and peaceful coexistence, as has happened in the case of the mural, which has become very popular in a number of countries," she said.

The idea for the mural first came up in 2014 to try and reduce factors leading to an increase in violence and crime in Palmitas, particularly among young people.

Rendon said the program involved four phases -- the first was socialization, during which talks were held to explain it to locals; the second involved cleaning the area by using the same white paint on 209 houses, symbolizing hope and peace; the third consisted in carrying out a color diagnosis to reach a consensus about which colors the residents of Palmitas preferred to use; and the final was painting.

The young painters were led by Mexican visual artist Enrique Gomez Guzman, also known as "El Mybe."

Gomez Guzman, founder of the German Crew artistic collective, told Xinhua that this program was one of the largest he had ever taken on, adding that it was to create, through a visual language, "a homage to the community, architecture, history and art of Mexico."

"The objective was, through community integration, to reduce violence and empower the community to transform itself and recover its dignity and public spaces," he said.

"These streets and houses were once unsafe, but they now represent the many possibilities that youngsters who live (in them) can choose to develop their future potential," Gomez Guzman said. "With this paint, we plan to plant a seed that will grow to help us protect the residents of this community."

When he first arrived in Palmitas, Gomez Guzman saw that there were clashes between two rival gangs, one living on top of the hill and one living at its foot.

"By painting, we became closer to the neighbors and they learned to know each other. I learned their names, we all lived here and shared the same activities," he said.

Many of the young people in the area were seen as addicts, alcoholics and gangsters by their community, with few of them holding down a job.

"The first thing we did was show them what we were doing. They saw examples of murals online and became motivated to help us. We only had to tell them once what we needed and they did it," the artist said. Endi