On orders from Lima’s mayor, and much to the dismay of the city’s artistic community, municipal workers began covering up murals in the historic downtown district of Peru’s capital last week.
“It’s an atrocity,” Pedro Pablo Alaiza, Lima’s former manager of culture told the Agence France Presse.
Mayor Luis Castaneda, who was elected to office in the fall of 2014, confirmed that he had ordered the coverup of the murals and said it was part of a project to revitalize Lima’s downtown, Reuters reported.
The first mural to go was that of indigenous revolutionary Tupac Katari, whose fate was sealed with the stroke of a brush and the color yellow, the same hue used for Castaneda’s conservative party election campaign.
Artists and residents took to social media to protest the erasure, using the hashtags #SalvemosLosMurales (Let’s Save the Murals) and#MuralesenLima (Lima Murals).
The murals first appeared between 2011 and 2014, during the term of Castaneda’s predecessor and political rival, Susana Villaran.
Take a look at photos of more of the murals of Lima, Peru: