Zonkey

Zonkey


Lapiztola

– Artist’s Website –
Lapiztula: The name combines lápiz (pencil) and pistola (gun), an allusion to the old adage that the pen is mightier than the sword.
the animal is in fact a donkey painted to look like a zebra; a “zonkey”.
Once upon a time, US visitors would flock over the border to Tijuana to drink, gamble and indulge in pleasures frowned upon by the law at home.

Tijuana developed on the back of such trade and, when the visitors noticed that some of the donkeys they’d posed with for photos were too pale to show up well on film, enterprising locals obliged them by painting their animals to resemble crisply photogenic zebras.

The violence of recent years, however, has scared most of the tourists away from Tijuana.

“Now the city has no tourists, people are trying to reclaim their identities and their city, so that’s why he’s washing the stripes off the donkey, He’s saying, ‘You’re a donkey and not a zebra.’”

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