"Mestizo City" Creator Henry Muñoz Talks Art, Politics and Robert Rodriguez

Photo by Al Rendon

Jarritos, art, Breakfast Tacos at Tiffani's, and Robert Rodriguez's Chingon. Can Basel week get any better?

Representing the "vibrant and varied" influence Latino culture has played in the United States, Henry Muñoz's 6,700-square-foot, site-specific interactive art instillation, Mestizo City, opens tonight in Miami's Design District.

But the San Antonio-based CEO of Kell Muñoz Architects, designer, and activist started championing the "intermarriage" of cultures when he was a kid.

"Both of my parents were labor leaders during the prime of the labor union movement in the United States," the 52-year-old tells New Times over breakfast at the Setai. "I grew up on picket lines, marched with the farm workers. In fact, one of my great possessions is a picket sign that I carried when I was five-years-old for the United Farm Workers of Texas. It read: 'Texas needs $1.25 minimum wage.'"

Today, the minimum wage in Texas is $7.25. And Muñoz is one of the United States' most influential Latino visionaries.

"I always tell Henry, 'You continued your dad's legacy in a different way,'" says Kell Muñoz Architects Director of Marketing, Theresa Wyatt. "In a nicer suit."