Since 1990 Hamel has grown from an unkempt back alley to a site for impressionistic Afro-Cuban art, music, dance, and drumming. Salvador González deserves credit for this, beginning the transition when he was in his forties with a block-long mural overpowering in theme, presence, and execution. Spinning smoke, water, limbs, eyes, and roots surround feathers, goddesses, and serpents. Yemayá and Ochun, both deities of the Yoruba sect, entwine; others from the Abakuá dominate adjoining segments of the mural. The most recent addition is a thematic paint job on the back sides of the run-down five-story apartment houses that line the callejón, all the way up to the rooftop water tanks hundreds of feet above street level.