Fight to Stay

Created by longtime Pilsen residents Hector Duarte and Gabriel Villa, Fight to Stay animates an entire side of the Pilsen Housing Cooperative, an organization founded in 2022 to combat gentrification and displacement of longtime neighborhood residents. The limited equity co-op promotes long-term affordability by limiting the resale price of each unit, encouraging owners and their families to stay in the community permanently rather than use the property as a money-making commodity. Duarte and Villa collaborated with co-op residents to create an inspirational, epically-scaled design that speaks to the mission of the organization—namely, fighting market forces that have driven so many friends and neighbors out of the community and erasing decades of Mexican American culture in the process. Incorporated within the mural is a careful recreation of Mario Castillo’s Peace, a 1968 work that is widely considered the first Mexican outdoor mural painted in the Pilsen neighborhood.