When Javier Arroyo and Abraham Ramirez opened their restaurant, La Licor Panamericana in 2024 in Logan Square, they sought to represent the food and drink from all of Latin America, stretching from the northern Mexico border to the tip of Argentina.
How to bring that all together on a two-story mural on the side of a building, though, was challenging.
“We did a good job inside but we were missing something on the outside,” Ramirez says.
So, Ramirez called his old friend, the muralist who goes by the artist name Draine, to travel from their hometown of Guadalajara, Mexico. There, Draine — whose full name is Diego Flores — had painted murals on some of Ramirez’s previous restaurants.
Over two days in May, Flores added a two-story mural to La Licor Panamericana at 2521 N. California Ave. that represents the different cultures that exist throughout the nations in South and Central America and in Mexico in North America.
The final result, Ramirez says, shows “the unity between all of our cultures.”
The main focus of the piece is a woman with dark hair and eyes, staring out from the massive painting.
“She doesn’t have a single nationality,” Ramirez says, and might come from a country like Venezuela or Brazil. The earrings and forehead piece she wears represent jewelry from Aztec and Incan cultures.
The waves of color in the background represent Peru’s Rainbow Mountains, while a green, turquoise and white macaw takes flight near the top left side of her head. The farmer and old turquoise truck near the bottom of the image represent the agave farmers and the vintage trucks that drive through the fields, hauling in the harvest.
The four symbols down the top right corner of the mural represent the ingredients prevalent in the restaurant’s menu: grapes that represent the wine and spirits like pisco from South America; coffee beans to represent the single-origin coffees from Columbia and other Latin American nations; sugar cane, which serves as the foundation for popular spirits like rum; and agave, which is a main ingredient in much of the alcohol from Mexico.
Flores is home in Guadalajara now, Ramirez says, but travels the world to paint his murals. Along with his native Mexico, his work can be found in Berlin and Hamburg in Germany, Denmark, France and multiple spots in the U.S., including New York, California and now Chicago.
As for the final product, “I love it,” Ramirez says. “The mural says a lot without saying anything at the same time. It’s says unity without saying it. There’s no words, there’s not anything written. But I think you can tell.”
