The heat rose off the sidewalk in waves as I turned the corner onto Franklin Avenue—and there it was.
Not a mural. Not quite a sculpture. Something in between, and somehow more than both. A cat, towering two stories high, bursting off the side of a downtown parking garage in a riot of color and junk. Tires became paws. A plastic shovel framed one eye. Broken buckets, pieces of crates, car parts, broom handles, bike wheels—all of it woven into a kaleidoscope of a kitten, sprawled on the side of the building like it had just flopped down for a nap in the sun.
This was Chuco the Cat.
Created by Portuguese artist Bordalo II, Chuco is part of his “Trash Animal” series—massive sculptures made from reclaimed garbage. And here in El Paso, it fits like a charm that had been waiting for its chain. The city is no stranger to contradiction or convergence, and this piece—joyful, chaotic, irreverent—feels exactly right. Not just decoration. Not just protest. Something more like celebration through survival.
Street art in El Paso doesn’t whisper. It doesn’t hide. It grabs your eye and holds it, insists on being seen. Whether it’s the Chicano murals of Lincoln Park or the lowrider saints painted on a cinderblock wall in Segundo Barrio, the message is the same: We are here. We’ve been here. We made this.
But Chuco struck me differently.
Because he wasn’t painted on. He was built up—layered, salvaged, assembled. Nothing about him was clean or perfect. And that’s what made him beautiful.
In a city that lives at the border—not just geographically but culturally, linguistically, economically—Chuco the Cat becomes more than a landmark. He’s a metaphor. The kind of creature that could only exist in a place like this, stitched together from a thousand cast-offs and made new. It’s not hard to imagine that the artist found these scraps lying around the same way El Pasoans gather memory, identity, and language: piece by piece, across generations, across fences.
The fact that Chuco lives on the side of a parking garage feels right too. There’s no ticket required. No frame. No spotlight. He just is. Watching over the traffic. Watching over the city. Holding his space.
And somehow, in that mess of plastic and metal, there’s gentleness in his eyes. Playfulness. Like he knows he came from the trash heap and is proud of it.
I kept walking, but I looked back twice.
El Paso street art doesn’t ask for permission. It just shows up. On underpasses, alleyways, storefronts, and brick walls. And in one unforgettable case—on the side of a garage—assembled into a cat that says more about the city than any official seal or slogan ever could.
We are what we make of what we’re given. Even if it’s broken.
Especially if it’s broken.
And in that way, Chuco isn’t just art.
He’s family.