Campaign by City Hall Against Graffiti Reignites "Spray Paint War" in São Paulo

01/17/2017 - 11h44

Holding up a can of spray paint, Mayor João Doria (Brazilian Social Democracy Party) painted over a wall on Avenida 23 de Maio (May 23 Avenue) in gray and declared: "São Paulo is undertaking a major campaign against graffiti sprayers".

Graffiti sprayers declared their own war in return. On weekend, four of them were apprehended while spraying in different regions of the city - one of them was spraying on a building belonging to city hall in the center.

Responding to the proposal by the Mayor's Office to transform graffiti vandals into graffiti artists - he wants to create a "Graffiti Drome" inspired after a neighborhood in Miami - one graffiti sprayer wrote "Doria, spraying is art" on a building in the center located along the mayor's route to the municipal administration offices.

In the western zone, a center median wall displayed the phrase: "Don't be ashamed, São Paulo isn't Miami". The author and graffiti painter, 30-year-old Mundano, said that "a beautiful city isn't gray".

	Diego Padgurschi/Folhapress
	Graffiti Wall in Cambuci, Sao Paulo

The illegality and the challenge motivate those who paint the walls - graffiti can be charged as either property damage or as an environmental crime, both minor infractions that aren't punishable by jail or prison time.

On a Thursday, meeting together on a central avenue, graffiti painters showed each other the phrases they planned to paint and commented on the declarations from the mayor's office. "When Doria says these things he just motivates us even more to climb up the walls" said one of them. "If it were legalized, it would no longer be graffiti", declared another.

Translated by LLOYD HARDER

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