Statues of the La Paz Malecón

TBC

The most accessible art in La Paz is the collection of statues along the malecón.  If you’ve ever wondered about the artists and the stories behind these works, a free app is available to help.  ”Statues of the La Paz Malecón / Estatuas del Malecón Paceño” is a guide to the more than twenty statues, identifying each by artist and title, with an interactive map, photographs, and other information.  The sculptors include legendary 20th-century artists Juan Soriano and Jose Kuri-Breña, as well as dynamic modern talents like Octavio González Gutiérrez and Manuel Salvador Rocha Higuera.  Several artists have more than one work here; this app will help you know which statues share the same creator.  It will also direct you to other statues that are close but not directly on the Malecón, works easily missed but worth seeking.

The app was created by Cindy Yates, a full-time La Paz resident.  She is originally from Texas, where she earned engineering degrees from Texas A&M and UT Austin.  After a brief engineering career, she developed educational software and taught multimedia development at Austin Community College. This eventually led to her dream job at Apple, Inc. where she worked for more than 6 years before moving to La Paz.

Cindy began app development as a hobby after she moved to La Paz.  The statues app is her first to appear in the App Store, and is available as a free download for iPhone and iPad, in both English and Spanish.  She is planning an update incorporating augmented reality and including the street murals and other cultural sites in the city.

Earlier this year, Cindy was in the inaugural class of the Apple Entrepreneur Camp — a two-week program for organizations founded and led by women.  She has been featured in the Mexico City newspaper Reforma as well as a website for women’s news called actitudfem.com.  She envisions a future with a vibrant developer community in La Paz, and is always looking for ways to encourage and enable young paceños — and especially young paceñas — to learn programming skills.