(FOX40.COM) — Across Sacramento, colorful murals continue to tell stories of the city’s Chicano history.

Painted by Juan Carrillo and Carlos Lopez, “Una Noche De Salsa” covers the facade of the old ABC Tile building on Franklin Boulevard. The mural is a recent addition to a corridor where several murals celebrate Chicano culture and history.

The mural reimagines a silkscreen poster originally designed by the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF), a Sacramento-based art collective that used its work to promote events, activism and social change.

“Posters were made to bring social justice, not only to union issues, but educational issues, all kinds of issues that needed to be addressed,” Carillo said.

He went on to state that the mural also symbolizes love, while paying homage to the lowrider community.

“Love solves a lot of problems, brings people together for sure,” he said.

The city’s first Chicano mural, titled “The Emergence of the Chicano Social Struggle in a Bi-cultural Society,” was completed at the Washington neighborhood center on 16th Street in 1970 by Esteban Villa and his art students

“He noted, quote, ‘this mural conveys the message that despite continuous struggle, the chicano emerges to a to new levels of consciousness regarding history, culture and education,'” art historian Terezita Romo said.

Romo described Villa, along with fellow artist and educator José Montoya, as the co-founders of what became the RCAF.

“They’re the ones that drew all of the students to them and also the community artists,” Romo said.

That legacy is still visible at Southside Park.

“The mural we, we see here is the mother mural of Sacramento. This is the one probably the most iconic, the most photographed, the most presented,” artist, educator, activist and RCAF member Stan Padilla said.

Originally created in 1977, “De Colores de Southside,” painted in part by Padilla, covers the park’s amphitheater.

“Six different panels, all sort of, you might say, different aspects of our Chicano culture,” Padilla said. “This is a cry for unity. This is a grito, not a cry out of being sad, but a cry for the joyousness of living and family community being alive and again, being able for the first time to speak for yourself.”

Right on the other side of Padilla’s work is a new series of murals overseen by Richard Alcala.

“[It] was the first and only statue dedicated to Mexican-American soldiers in the United States,” project manager Richard Alcala said. “We are very colorful. We’re bright, we’re loud. We’re proud. And you can see it in the artwork. You can see it in our music, and you can see it in our food and in our lowrider cars, of course. You know, expression.”

More than half a century after the Chicano movement took shape in Sacramento, new generations still use the city’s walls to document what matters to their communities.

“We’re not just, again, image makers, graphic artists. We’re deep engineers of social change,” Padilla said.

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX40 News.