Elizabeth Orosco

Northeast News

Northeast residents gathered this morning on the sidewalk outside Calvary Temple on St. John Avenue after vandals spray painted a message on the north-facing wall.

The vandals also marked a wall under the Gladstone Bridge at Concourse Park, the bathrooms at Concourse Park, and the National WWI Museum.

Darin Snapp, public information officer with Kansas City Police also confirmed two more locations: the bridge at Truman and Woodland and a vacant building at 3000 Prospect.

“Glory to the fallen martryrs of Callao El Fonton” the graffiti reads in large red letters on Calvary Temple, between two hammer and sickles, a symbol that represents proletarian solidarity that was first adopted during the Russian Revolution.

The message refers to the Peruvian prison massacres which occurred on June 18 and 19 in 1986, killing 224 people, after a series of riots in the San Pedro, Santa Monica, and El Fronton prisons in Lima and Callao.

Residents who stood outside the graffiti said they have no idea who is responsible for the vandalism, but their main focus right now is to remove it or paint over it as quickly as possible.

One resident said he owns a few houses on surrounding blocks and volunteered to paint the entire wall to “keep the area looking as nice as possible.”

El Fronton is an island off the coast of Callao, Peru, which was used as a prison for most of the island’s history.

In June 1986, the Shining Path, the communist party of Pero, led an uprising on El Fronton and two other prisons, resulting in the prison massacres.

Kansas City Police responded to the location on St. John earlier this morning and are currently investigating the vandalism.

More information will be released as it becomes available.