Phoenix Murals By Lalo Cota, Thomas 'Breeze' Sakoia and Martin Moreno Draw Attention

Phoenix is getting revitalized with mural art.

AZCentral.com reports that artists Lalo Cota, Thomas “Breeze” Sakoia and Martin Moreno are adorning the city’s walls with elaborate paintings focusing on the themes of family and neighborhood pride to discourage graffiti.

“You’ve got to embrace your community,” Moreno says in the report. “So it’s got to reflect their concerns, their history, their culture.”

Murals have a long tradition in Mexican and Chicano culture. Earlier this month, the city of Los Angeles unveiled “Tropical America”, a mural created by David Alfaro Siqueiros, one of the art form’s greatest practitioners. The work, first painted and made public in the 1930s, had been censored for eight decades with a layer of white paint ordered up by city officials troubled by the mural's contents.

The Phoenix murals mark an at least partial public embrace of Latino culture in Maricopa County, Arizona -- the home of immigration hardliners such as Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Russell Pearce.

Check out the artists’ work in the video above.