Leaping from his car, Al Ramirez grabs a spray can from the boot and furiously gets to work.
“In the street, all you have is your reputation,” says the incensed graffiti artist, as he retouches one of his murals, recently defaced with dripping scrawl. “When someone paints over your work, it’s like spitting in your face.”
Al, who’s on a mission to create the first guild of urban artists, is one of more than 400 artists in the Chilean port city of Valparaíso, where the authorities now accept graffiti as part of the city’s culture and appeal. Almost every shop front, house and pavement has been decorated to create one of the world’s largest unofficial open-air museums of street art. No wonder, then, graffitists are running out of space.
Valpo, as it’s affectionately known, is wide open to interpretation. To some, it’s nothing more than a scruffy, rundown town, where stray dogs howl long into the night; for others, it’s a bastion of liberation, freedom of speech and unfettered creativity, where lost, abandoned souls can find a happy home.
Acceptance, equality and opportunity were building blocks for Valpo’s foundation. A port of call for commercial ships crossing the Atlantic and Pacific via the Strait of Magellan, it attracted thousands of immigrants in the
