Between 1920 and 1940 Mexico went through a period of radical transformation. The revolution had ended and in its wake an energy for transformation was unleashed that was unparalleled anywhere. For the artistic and intellectual community those years were full of excitement and creativity as new identities, personal as well as cultural, were being forged. […]
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“While we are alive, we cannot escape from masks or names. We are inseparable from our fictions – our features.” Octavio Paz When I arrived in Mexico City in 1967, the first unexpected delight to catch my attention was the incredible array of masks that popped up everywhere in the city. Some stared at me […]
Continue ReadingAt least ten years before the “Big Three” – Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros – came into their own as world-renown muralists, a lone painter was setting the groundwork. His name was Saturnino Herran. He was the first Mexican artist to envision the concept of a totally Mexican art. And he laid the foundation for the development […]
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A long time ago, before the Spaniards came and changed everything, the people of the Mexican highlands cultivated maguey plants. Like the people, the magueys are native to the cool, dry, high elevation climate. The plants grew well and were useful for many things. Today, the various varieties of these agaves are sometimes called “century […]
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Reading the recent MexConnect article Tears of the maguey: Is pulque really a dying tradition? brought me to the realization that here in Cholula, many of the pulquerías (pulque bars) have slowly and quietly vanished, and only two or three remain. While nobody was sorry about the closing of the one near the elementary school, where the kids […]
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A great ideological struggle is never a day at the beach. Whether its matrix is race, nationality or economic inequality, the fight of the oppressed against the oppressor is always a somber affair. Nobody realized this better than José Clemente Orozco. Born at a time when Mexico was ruled by a seemingly revolution-proof dictator, Orozco […]
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The only thing that is definitely known about Subcomandante Marcos, the ski-masked mystery man who leads the Zapatista rebels in the jungles of Chiapas, is that he is an intellectual. Conflicting sources who assure us that they know the true identity of the man behind the mask have variously identified him as a disillusioned government […]
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In art as in life, Diego Rivera was a man constantly in rebellion. At 16, he left the prestigious San Carlos Academy in Mexico City in protest against the academy’s emphasis on representational art. He became an avid Marxist but outraged the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union by welcoming Trotsky to Mexico. Rivera shocked […]
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Los perros go everywhere with us, including to Mexico. Milo, a charcoal-hued Standard Poodle, is a veteran of seven such trips. He has reached the summit of the Nevada de Toluca volcano, walked into Guatemala, swum in the Pacific, Gulf and Sea of Cortez, explored the Copper Canyon, and visited almost every state in Mexico. Pancho […]
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Nowhere was the cord between man and spirit more tightly bound than in the making of amatl, the sacred paper of the pre-Hispanic peoples. This paper was so important to the spiritual needs of the community, that in spite of intense repressive measures by the Spaniards, it has continued to survive and is still used to connect […]
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