Welcome to Mexico City Ambles: Navigating the Blog

Welcome to Mexico City Ambles! Here we seek to present "el imaginario", a vision of the city as embodied in its cityscape, public art and neighborhoods (pueblos and colonias). Over time, as we sought to discover the physical and historical breadth and depth of the City, our search led us to focus on the life of its lesser-known, working-class neighborhoods, many of which were indigenous pueblos existing long before the Spanish arrived and took over 500 years ago. We visit these original pueblos when they are celebrating their traditional fiestas, which are lively, colorful celebrations of their centuries-long communal continuity and unique identity.

¡Bienvenido a Paseos por la Ciudad de México! Aquí buscamos presentar el imaginario, una visión de la ciudad como encarnada en su paisaje urbano, arte público, pueblos y colonias. Si bien buscamos cubrir la amplitud y profundidad física e histórica de la ciudad, nos ha llevado a centrarnos en en la vida de sus pueblos y barrios menos conocidos, muchos de los cuales eran pueblos indígenas que existían mucho antes de que los españoles llegaron y se hicieron cargo desde 500 años. Visitamos estos pueblos originales cuando celebran sus fiestas tradicionales, que son celebraciones coloridas y animadas de su continuidad comunal por siglos y su identidad única.

Escribimos en inglés porque somos norteamericanos y para dar a conocer a otros norteamericanos y hablantes de inglés la ciudad más allá de los lugares turisticos típicos. Sin embargo, es fácil traducir una página en español: vaya a la columna a la derecha. En la parte más alta hay una ventana etiquetada "Translate". Desplace la flecha abajo hasta encuentra "Spanish". Click en ese y inmediatamente todo el texto estará traducido en español por Google. Con certeza, habrá varios errores, pero creemos qué el sentido se quede bastante claro.  

Organization of the Blog

• Each post appears in the blog chronologically by publication date. 
• Scrolling down from this introduction takes you to the most recently published post. 
• Most posts, however, have thematic or geographic connections to other posts. 
• So, as a navigation aid, we have created individual PAGES (listed in the left-hand column) which organize posts according to major aspects of the city or themes in its history. 
• These pages provide short descriptions of posts, grouped according to a theme or by geography, with links to all relevant, individual posts.

Setting the Stage | Introductory Pages:

I. Making Sense of Mexico City: The first four pages acquaint you with Mexico City's organization (it does have one, despite its apparent chaotic appearance).

1. First, we introduce you to its sixteen alcaldías (literally "mayoralties", each governed by an elected alcalde, mayor, and a council) into which the city is divided spatially and politically. 

The name, alcaldía, was assigned recently, in 2016, when the self-governing legal entity of la Ciudad de México, Mexico City, was established. Initially created in 1928, they were called delegaciones (we use that term in our early posts). They were the components of el Distrito Federal, the Federal District, governed by the federal administration until 2000. The closest English equivalent for these divisions is "boroughs". Each one is distinctive in its physical characteristics, population, and history.

2. We then address why Mexico City architecture appears to the visitor to be such a hodgepodge of historical epochs and we present a way to view it as a horizontal archeological site, one of multiple eras sitting right next to one another. 

3. Then we present the history of how the city grew from a small, Spanish Colonial city on an island in the midst of a huge lake to its present huge size (at 573 sq. miles, slightly smaller than Houston [599] but bigger than Los Angeles [469]!). 

4. Finally, we describe el Metro, the "subway", which is the fastest and cheapest pathway (US25 cents) to get to most of the places we explore. If you avoid morning and late afternoon rush hours, it's fine. Taxis, both pink and white "libres" cruising the streets and white "taxis de sitio" (i.e. waiting at a taxi stand), are licensed, plentiful and safe. Now Uber and other phone-ap car services are here. 

• Mexico City's Sixteen Alcaldías: Mexico City is shaped rather like a lumpy pear: skinny at the top—it even has a "stem"—then rounds out to a very fat bottom. Originally called the Federal District, in 1928, it was divided into sixteen delegaciones, or boroughs, of greatly varying sizes, shapes, population densities and histories. On January 1, 2016, via federal law, el Distrito Federal, the Federal District, officially became Mexico City and the delegaciones were renamed alcaldías, mayoralties.

• Making Sense of Mexico City: Architectural Hodge-podge or Horizontal Archeological Site?: Your first experience of Mexico City is likely one of an architectural hodge-podge, an incoherent batiburrillo, a jumble of buildings from various eras. This is especially true, if, as a tourist, you visit el Centro Historico, where Spanish conquistador, Hernán Cortez, began to build la Ciudad de México on top of the destroyed city of the indigenous Mexica (aka Aztecs), Tenochtitlan. Structures from the colonial period, adapted to contemporary uses, are enmeshed with newer neighbors from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. So what to make of this hodgepodge of eras, these fragments of disconnected history, this batiburrillo? 

• How Mexico City Grew From an Island to a Metropolis: How did Mexico City, which started on an island in Lake Texcoco— replacing the Mexica (aka Azteca) altepetel (city-state) of Tenochtitlán—grow into the metropolis it is today, incorporating both ancient and new neighborhoods, side by side, all parts of the contemporary batiburrillo (hodgepodge)? Here is the story.

• Mexico City Metro: The Mexico City Metro (officially, the Collective Transportation System) is a network of subway and surface electric train lines enabling chilangos (city residents' name for themselves) and visitors to get around the city quickly, cheaply (US25 cents) and safely. The system has 12 lines, each distinguished by a specific color on its signage, making changes from one line to another easy. There are also multitudes of taxis, both libre (cruising and painted pink and white) and de sitio (waiting at assigned locations and painted white) and yes, they are both safe. Now, of course, there are also Uber and other phone ap systems for calling a private chauffeur.

II. Mexico City's Natural Environment: The next set of pages acquaint you with the city's special natural environment: 

• its year-round temperate, sunny climate, 
• its history as a valley filled with large lakes, 
• its spectacular geological setting in the midst of a circle of large, mostly dormant volcanoes, and 
• its smaller, but historically important volcanoes within the city.
• Mexico City Climate: Seasons, Sun, Sky, Clouds and Rain: If you are looking for a place to live year-round, permanently, as we do, or just to "winter" in Mexico, our advice is to head for the hills. The "hills" are comprised of the high plateau of Central Mexico known as el Bajío and the cross-country mountain chain just to its south, called the Eje Volcánico, the Volcanic Axis or Trans-Mexico Volcanic Belt. This area has year-round moderate temperatures because it is located more or less around 7,000 ft. above sea level, which keeps the climate quite stably moderate and usually sunny.

• Mexico City sits at 7,000 ft. altitude. Here is our account of the City's mild climate: its seasons (there is no real winter), the sunshine (which occurs most days), the sky (which can be unbelievably blue), the clouds (which can be dramatic towering cumulus), and the rainy season, more or less from May to October. Don't worry, it doesn't rain every day and usually, it's in the late afternoon or after dark and consists of brief, at times intense, thunderstorms. They serve as natural airconditioning and air purifiers, keeping the summer air dry, the temperatures moderate during the day and cool at night and, usually, with clearer air.

• City of Lost Lakes, Islands, and Villages: The Valley of Mexico, now filled by urban sprawl, was originally nearly filled by a chain of five lakes (covering about 580 sq. miles). Lake Texcoco was the largest, most central, and lowest of them, thus receiving water from the other four. Because of the surrounding mountains, they had no outlet to the sea, and Texcoco was salty. The original Mexico City and its predecessor, Mexico Tenochtitlán, were on an island in a large bay in the southwest corner of Lake Texcoco. In addition, there were hundreds of villages that occupied the land around the lakes, as well as many on islands in the lakes.

Over the centuries, the lakes have been almost totally erased since the Spanish began draining them in the 17th century to prevent the annual flooding of Mexico City during the summer rainy season, so the islands eventually became part of the mainland. We have been searching out these "lost" islands, which are still-existing pueblo neighborhoods within the city. Here we introduce the ones we have visited and the history of the changes they have undergone from islands to urban neighborhoods.

Five original lakes of the Valley
with some of the major cities and villages
around them and on their islands.
Note Tenochtitlan's location 
at the entrance to a bay 
in the southwest of Lake Texcoco.



• Encountering Mexico City's Many Volcanoes, Part I: Giants on All Sides: Mexico City, as most everyone knows, sits in and takes up most of the Valley of Mexico. It is, in fact, a spectacular valley because it is surrounded by tall mountains, all of them volcanoes. 
• Only one, Popocatepetl, (The Smoking Mountain), the tallest at nearly 18,000 ft (more than 10,000 feet above the Valley floor) is active, regularly emitting a plume of steam and sometimes erupting with huge columns of ash and lava. 
• Popo, as he is familiarly called, is joined by his beloved frozen princess, Iztaccihuatl (The White or Sleeping Woman), at 17,000 ft. 
• However, they are only the tallest and most dramatic members of the ring of volcanoes that surround the Valley. Here is an introduction to the many giants that envelop the city and make its geographic setting unique.

To the left is Iztaccihuatl

To the right is Popocatepetl

(as seen from Alcaldía Coyocán; they are forty to fifty miles southeast)

• Encountering Mexico City's Many Volcanoes, Part II: Little Volcanoes With Big Histories: While the huge volcanoes of Popocatépetl, Iztaccíhuatl, Ajusco and the others in the Cordillera de Chichinautzin, the Sierra de las Cruces and the Sierra del Río Frío, which create and dominate the Valley of Mexico and grab the interest of residents and visitors when they are in clear view, there are other volcanoes right within the city´s limits. They are small ash cone volcanoes, but despite their diminutive size, at least four of them have played prominent roles in the development of human settlements in the Valley and thus in the history of Mexico City. Here is our introduction to the four.

Cerro de la Estrella, Hill of the Star
Called Huizachtecatl (in Náhuatl) by the Mexicas.

• Mexico City Architecture: This group of pages focuses on the architectural qualities which predominate, particularly in the Cento Historico of the city, the original Ciudad de México which Hernán Cortés began to build on top of the indigenous altepetl, México-Tenochtitlan of the Mexica.

• Grandeza Mexicana: Grandeur of Mexico City: Walking the streets of Mexico City, from its Centro Histórico to various of its late 19th to early 20th century colonias, (planned neighborhoods) and modern boulevards, acquainting ourselves with their architecture and public art, we have noted the recurrence of what becomes a visual theme: an architectural grandness that relays a message of wealth and power. This city has been, and is, a seat of major political and economic power, expressed through physical grandeza, grandeur. Here we explore the particularly Mexican roots of this impulse to grandeur.

Zócalo
Main Plaza
second largest plaza in the world, 
after Red Square in Moscow.

• México Barroco | Baroque Art: Representing Divine Ecstasy, Evoking Awe: In Mexico, the art of the Baroque epoch (mid 17th to mid 18th centuries) is all around you in Centro and in many of the old churches throughout the city. It is the art of the height of the Spanish Empire, and it realized its most elaborate form in Nueva España. An excellent Wikipedia article on the Baroque helped us see its character as centered on grandeur, lavishness, and drama. We also came to realize the goal of its religious forms was to express holy ecstasy (stepping outside the ordinary world) and evoke awe. With that perspective, we explore the central and quintessential expression of Baroque religious architecture in Mexico City, the Metropolitan Cathedral. There are innumerable other examples in churches around the city.

El Sagrario
The Tabernacle portion of
the Metropolitan Cathedral,
in high Baroque style

IV. Thematically or geographically related pages: 

• Mexico's History As Embodied In Mexico City: Lists and links to all posts addressing the many stages in Mexico City's history as they are manifested in the cityscape, from the indigenous reign of the Mexica/Azteca through the Spanish colonial period (1521-1821), and the 19th and 20th centuries, up to the Mexican Revolution (1910-17) and its aftermath. 

Chapultepec Castle,
scene of several significant events
of the 19th century.

• Mexico City's Original Indigenous Villages and Their Spíritual Conquest: Contemporary Mexico City is an amalgam. It's core is the Spanish Colonial Centro. It did not significantly expand beyond that until the late 19th century. Then, in the second half of the 20th century, it exploded with rapid urbanization of previous lakebed and rural land. In that relatively recent explosion, it swallowed up ancient indigenous pueblos. These are villages, that, beginning some three thousand five hundred years ago, were established on the shores and islands of the five lakes at the center of the Valley of Anahuac. So Cortés and the Spanish not only had to transform Tenochtitlan, they also had to transform a geographically extensive civilization and culture via the "evangelización de los indios," or "los natuturales", what has been called the Spiritual Conquest. This series of posts explores the churches, neighborhoods and fiestas that continue to embody that encounter and the synthesis of the two civilizations. (This is our current work-in-progress).

Original, 16th century chapel of San Francisco,
in Quadrante (Quarter) of San Francisco,
originally the indigenous village of 
Hueytetitlan, now in Delegación Coyoácan.

• Centro: El Centro, the Center of Mexico City, actually consists of five colonias, or neighborhoods: Centro Histórico, and East, West, North and South Centro. Spanish colonial palaces and smaller residential and commercial buildings from that period are numerous, but mixed in among them are buildings from the 19th and 20th centuries. Within them, and flowing among them in the streets, is the everyday, timeless activity of selling and buying.

Portable shoeshine stand
in Plaza de Santo Domingo

• Chapúltepec Woods and Paseo de la Reforma: Five kilometers, three miles, southwest of Centro, on what used to be the western shore of Lake Texcoco, sits the ancient, sacred site of el Bosque de Chapúltepec, Chapultepec Woods. It was the first place that the Mexica/Azteca tried to settle down near the end of the 13th century, and later their royal retreat and source of fresh spring water for Tenochtitlan. The Spanish turned it into a park for themselves and continued to depend on its freshwater springs. 

Subsequently, a "castle", actually a palace, was built by a viceroy (ruling representative of the king of Spain) at the top of its landmark hill, an ancient ash cone volcano. After Independence was won from Spain in 1821, it served as the Mexican Military Academy and, in 1847, it was the scene of the last battle in the U.S. invasion of Mexico (aka Mexican-American War). In 1864, Emperor Maximilian I, put in place by Napoleon III of France at the request of Mexican conservative forces, decided to make it his palace. To connect it with the City Center, he had a boulevard built and named after his wife the Belgian Princess Carlotta. After his overthrow by liberal reform forces led by Benito Juárez in 1867. it became Paseo de la Reforma.

Paseo de la Reforma,
seen from Chapultepec Castle

• Reign of Porfiro Díaz and Neighborhoods of the Early 20th Century: As the 19th century approached its end, Mexico City's well-to-do, who had increased in numbers under the economic policies of Porfirio Díaz (multiple times reelected president and dictator from 1876 to 1911), sought new residences outside the old Spanish Colonial Centro Histórico. They began to develop colonias, planned neighborhoods, to the west, along Paseo de la Reforma boulevard, and to its north and south. Díaz and the well-to-do had a great admiration for French culture. Hence, these colonias have a French flavor. Posts on six of these neighborhoods, with introductions, are listed.

French Second Empire-style homes,
with characteristic mansard roofs.

• Mexican Revolution: Overview of Its Actors and Chapters: The Mexican Revolution (1910-1917) was a watershed between traditional and modern Mexico. Actually, a series of four civil wars fought between a diverse cast of characters with widely disparate histories and motivations, the war and its turbulent aftermath can be divided into five stages or chapters, each consisting of a number of critical episodes. This Page offers an overview of the war and links to Pages with fuller accounts of the personalities and each chapter of the war and its volatile aftermath.

Monument to the Revolution

• Mexican Muralists: During the Mexican Revolution, a revolution in Mexican Art was triggered. After the Revolution, it unfolded in a group of buildings in Centro and expanded across the city throughout the 20th century. This page provides links to posts on the sites and their murals—works by the "Big Three": Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and their successors, who continue to produce works up to the present.

Mural of Cortés and Malinche,
representing the mixing (mestizaje)
of Spanish and indigenous peoples.
by José Clemente Orozco,
in the museum San Ildefonso.

Mexican Muralists | David Siqueiros, Part III - His First, Unfinished Mural Forshadows His Later Work

David Alfaro Siqueiros
1896-1974

Siqueiros | Twentieth Century Odysseus

In our first post on David Siqueiros, we wrote that in the early 1920s, after the Mexican Revolution, he took part with Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco in creating the first works of the Mexican Mural Movement in the National Preparatory School (formerly the Jesuit College of San Ildefonso), but that he did not finish the mural he began there.

In 1925, after the election of Plutarco Calles as President, replacing Álvaro Obregón, José Vasconcelos—the Secretary of Education who had sponsored the artists' work and who had wanted to become president—was replaced in his post. The painters were dismissed. Siqueiros went to Guadalajara, where he could find work because he knew people from his participation there in the war.

His artistic and political passions then led him, over the intervening years, to Russia, South America, the United States and active duty in the Spanish Civil War. Whenever he returned to Mexico City, he would become active in the Communist Party and get jailed for various acts of protest. As a result, he was not to leave his own visible artistic mark on the city until the 1940's. (See our page: David Siqueiros: Twentieth Century Odysseus)

Returning to a Beginning

At the time we wrote the post, we had read that Siqueiros' first work, in San Ildefonso, was not accessible to the public, as it was in a "back stairwell" in an unoccupied part of the building. Subsequently, while visiting San Ildefonso to show its murals to friends, we learned that that part of the building was now the Museum of Light, under the direction of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), as is the main San Ildefonso Museum. But at that point, we had moved on to other topics in our Ambles, so we did not pursue visiting the Museum of Light.

Recently, we were able to redress that omission. While visiting Centro to explore another episode in the Mexican Mural Movement previously unknown to us (and which we will be writing about), we realized that we were very close to San Ildefonso, so after completing our new investigation, we went to the Musuem of Light, not knowing whether it would lead us to the Siqueiros mural that lay somewhere within. 

Third, east, patio of San Ildefonso,
now the Museum of Light

In the entry passageway, we ask the ticket taker if the Siqueiros mural is accessible. She replies, "Yes, if you buy a ticket. It's in the stairwell." We happily and excitedly pay the few pesos charged for admission and head into the patio to find the stairwell.

As soon as we start up stairs, we are confronted by the first sign of Siqueiros' presence hanging above our heads.

The bold color and forceful figure speak at once of the artist's eye and hand. Continuing upward, we then meet Siqueiros' artistic and ideological vision in full force.

Painted on the stairwell ceiling

A very human, very muscular winged goddess, traditionally of Victory, foreshadows Siqueiros' post-World War II mural entitled 'Democracy', in Bellas Artes. We have read that the artist referred to it as The Elements. To us it is a direct expression of his life-long focus on liberation of the suppressed underclasses.

Democracy breaks the chains of Fascism
Bellas Artes

We turn the corner of the stairwell and look up.

Mural at the top of the stairwell

We are definitely puzzled by the composition above us but not surprised, given that we have seen Siqueiros' final work, the Cultural Polyforum, completed nearly fifty years later, in 1971. Here in San Ildefonso, he first undertook the challenge of using a three-dimensional space to surround his viewer with his vision. His March of Humanity, in the Polyforum, is the culmination that effort.

Section of March of Humanity Toward the Democratic, Bourgeois Revolution,
Siqueiros Cultural Polyforum

So we try to decipher the various components. Fortunately, a small plaque on the wall helps us.

David Alfaro Siqueiros
The Call to Liberty
The Myths
The Burial of the Sacrificed Worker

Two themes are certainly central to the artist's lifetime work: Liberty and the oppression of Workers. We will try to figure out what the "Myths" might be.

The Call to Liberty

The Call to Liberty

In the right-hand corner of the stairwell's left wall, the figures in the Call to Liberty are hard to make out due to the low light and the viewing angle. However, the forceful nude male figure, with his large, strong arms and legs, holding a child in one hand and a pole in the other, although flatter and more static, is certainly the forefather of later males created by the artist.

Victim of Fascism
Bellas Artes, 1944

Two unfinished portraits stand to the side of the male figure. What their relationship is to the Call to Liberty isn't evident, but they are nonetheless interesting portraits.

             

The two portraits are markedly different in style: one is a face of fine lines, narrow width, wide eyes and relatively light skin; the other of thick lines, round-faced, somewhat veiled eyes and darker skin. Whether Siqueiros intended a reference to racial and social differences in Mexico (our hunch), or was just experimenting with styles remains a mystery.

The Burial of the Sacrificed Worker

The right wall of the composition also presents a puzzle, at least on initial viewing.

Three men hold an iridescent blue object. The image is far above the viewer and in low light, so we can´t make out the nature of the object. The title should have been clue enough, but it takes our later blowing up and lightening up of our photo to see: it is a coffin. On the top, barely visible, are a hammer and sickle, symbols of laborers and farmers, and their alliance via Communism. Siqueiros makes no secret of his political beliefs and revolutionary passions. 

We are also struck by the artist's use of cerulean blue. It was used extensively by José Clemente Orozco (San Ildefonso, third floor) in his paintings of ordinary Mexicans in the midst of revolutionary chaos, evidently to express a still-existing hope. But we haven't seen it used by Siqueiros in any of his other works, which are dominated by aggressive red and black. 

In the right-hand corner stand a woman and man painted in Siqueiros' favorite red. The woman holds one hand erect, in an apparent gesture of defiance. In the other, she holds broken chains, the symbol of liberation from oppression. 

In the middle of the wall is a single portrait, powerful in its directness and simplicity. The portrait is of a man—by his features clearly an indigenous Mexican campesino, traditional peasant farmer. We wonder what Siqueiros might have had in mind for the rest of this empty middle section.

The Myths

We now turn to try to decipher The Myths section of the mural on the center wall. 

Two large human figures and one small one seem to float at the top. At the bottom, two other figures lie on their backs, mouths agape. In between the two windows is Siqueiros' clear profession of faith, the Hammer and Sickle, symbols of the uniting of laborers and farmers via the Communist vision (myth?) of liberation from capitalist domination. 

The left-hand figure is clearly a king, now deposed, lying helpless on his back. The right-hand figure is another puzzle. From the heavy, dark features he would appear to be indigenous, but why is he then overthrown like the king? The covering on his head may be a hint. Its tan color reminds us of the battle attire of the jaguar warriors of Aztec/Mexica fame who, together with eagle warriors, were the elite soldiers protecting the empire and those who ruled it—the tlatoanis like Moctezuma the Younger and Cuhuatémoc, who were defeated by Cortés. 

If our interpretation is correct, the artist is depicting the overthrow of two empires, the indigenous and, later, the Spanish. 

Floating above are three figures. On the right is a morena, dark-skinned, woman, clothed in cerulean blue. Her arms are folded as if she were holding an infant; on closer inspection, she is evidently wearing a halo. Is she Siqueiros' image of the Virgin of Guadalupe—that synthesis of Spanish Catholicism and indigenous identity that is literally the vision (or myth for non-believers) that unites Mexicans from both sides of the Conquest?  

The image may also refect the Virgin's counterpart in Mexican "mythology"—one who elicits great ambivalence from Mexicans, Malinche. She was the indigenous woman who served as Cortés' translator, thereby betraying her indigenous world by opening its door to its conquistadores. In counterpoint, by bearing Cortés' child, she began the "mestization", the mixing of indigenous and Spanish blood that resulted in the Mexican people. If the woman is seen as Malinche, then we know the meaning of the child floating between the woman and the naked, face-down indigenous man on the left side. As such, he is not a vision (or myth) of hope.

We are reminded of José Clemente Orozoco's much more direct and, therefore, more powerful representation of this conflict between and mergers of races, of peoples from the opposite side of an ocean. It lives in another stairwell in San Ildefonso.

Cortés and Malinche
By José Clemente Orozco
San Ildefonso

We are also reminded that Siqueiros took up this primal Mexican theme (myth) at the end of his artistic life, at the Polyforum.

The Mestizaje,
The Interbreeding
Here the Spaniard is naked, exposed,
like the Cortés of Orozco.
One of the huge outdoor murals
at the Siqueiros Cultural Polyforum.

As for the row of steel bits filling the ceiling, that is another puzzle for us. Given the Communist frame of reference, perhaps Siqueiros was alluding to the industrial, capitalist economy and the related concentration of power that exploited and suppressed workers.

Fragmentary Hints of Siqueiros' Later Art

So, in another, previously inaccessible part of the ex-Colegio San Ildefonso—what in the 1920s was Mexico's first government-run high school—we gain a fragmentary glimpse of the artistic and revolutionary vision and the graphic style and palette of David Alfaro Siqueiros. All the aspects of his later works are foreshadowed here: bold, molded muscular figures projecting towards the viewer; predominant colors of red and black; themes of liberation of the common folk from oppression by those in power; and the attempt to master a three-dimensional space in order to surround his audience with this vision. 

We leave very satisfied that we have finally been able to see this first work of the master. We have a feeling that we have come full circle in our encounters with Siqueiros' tumultous life and dramatic works, connecting the later flowering with the first sprouts. And we are grateful to UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) for the opening of the Museum of Light in this previously neglected but grand space, making possible this encounter and fulfillment.

More about how the Museum of Light came to be in San Ildefonso will be shared in a subsequent post, which will also focus on an obscured beginning of the Mexican Mural Movement.

Reverberations of the Mexican Revolution: Representing the Ongoing Struggle

High up under the dome of the Monument to the Revolution, along the observation walkway and enscribed in plexiglass, is the affirmation: "To the Revolution of yesterday, today and tomorrow."

It is a Mexican credo, expressing the belief that the Revolution was not completed in 1917 or even in the years afterward, but remains to be fulfilled.

This declaration is more than a proposition. It is a statement of faith made in a post-Revolutionary effort to reconcile the anarchy of the series of civil wars fought from 1910 to 1917 and the violent power struggles that followed it through the 1920s, with the ongoing incompleteness of the fulfillment of the popular hopes raised for liberty, equality and justice for all embodied in the Constitution of 1917. Thus, the phrase postulates that the fulfillment of those promises requires struggle in the present that will need to go on into the indeterminant future. The refrain of the faithful that literally reverberates to this day through the streets of the capital is "¡La lucha sigue!"—"The struggle continues".

Two Mexican historians sum it up in a recent book on the Revolution and its meaning in Mexican culture:

"...the Revolution was not only used by the State to legitimize itself, popular organizations (working class and poor) have had it as the referent and symbol guiding their struggles. The predominant way of doing politics throughout the twentieth century was the politics of the masses established by the Revolution, that of mobilization and struggle (lucha) in the streets, organized in the workplace, in the ejidos (indigenous communal lands) and schools, by collective actors ...

"The Mexican Revolution was the source of that kind of politics by the popular sectors and their organizations. ... In many of these mobilizations and struggles the meaning that the Revolution had for the popular sectors was present. Thus, the Revolution remains a benchmark of the political culture and for the mobilization and struggle of Mexican popular sectors." (Felipe Avila and Pedro Salmeron, Historia breve de la Revolución Mexicana, Brief History of the Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Siglo XXI, 2015)

March up Reforma from Angel of Independence, September 26, 2015,
commemorating one year since disappearance of 43 Ayotzinapa Normal School students.
Note far right: Banner portraying Emiliano Zapata
In the distance, behind the Angel, is Chapúltepec Castle.
Photo: Cuartoscuro

This Revolutionary faith is manifested in frequent protest manifestaciones, demonstrations, that go on in Mexico City. They are usually organized along streets that form a slanted cross defined by three symbolic architectural points:

• Zócalo: Symbolic heart of Mexico, its people and its government and the location of the National Palace;
• Angel of Independence: Quintessential symbol of Mexican liberty on Paseo de la Reforma, southwest of the Zócalo; and 
• Monument to the Revolution: directly west of the Zócalo, across Reforma.

The branches of the cross intersect where Avenida of the Republic, coming from the Monument, crosses Reforma and becomes Avenida Juárez, leading to the Zócalo. These avenues are the stage on which the drama of these continuing struggles to fulfill the promises of the Revolution plays out.

Click to enlarge.

However, this blog is not about the politics of these struggles (for those, see our Mexico Voices blog). Here, we are interested in discovering the symbolic representations of the Revolution and its ongoing proclamations in the cityscape and public art of Mexico City. Of course, there are the names of streets (20th of November, Madero, Revolution, Carranza, Zapata, División del Norte [name of Villa's army]), colonias (Francisco Madero, Alianza Popular Revolucionaria) and delegaciones, boroughs, (Venustiano Carranza, Gustavo Madero, Álvaro Obregón) and, of course, the statues.

President Francisco Madero in front of Bellas Artes
near where he dismounted on his last ride
from Chapultepec Castle to the National Palace
during the uprising against him,
the Ten Tragic Days, February 1913.

Bust of President Francisco Madero,
outside Lecumberri Prison, where he was assassinated,
February 22, 1913,
ending the Ten Tragic Days.

General Francisco "Pancho" Villa
Entrance to park in his name,
along División del Norte,
the name of his army,
Delegación Benito Juárez.

Emiliano Zapata
entered Mexico City in the fall of 1914,
coming from the state of Moreleos, to the south,
Statue is in Huipulco, Tlalpan,
at intersection of the Calzada de Tlalpan
and roads into Tlalpan and Xochimilco

But in the most unexpected places, we come across representations of the Revolution:

Secular, socialist education
(note Communist red star and sickle at right)
overcomes Catholic education (bishop) and Fascism (Hitler)
Central Primary School, built 1934
across Balderas Avenue from the Ciudadela.

Catholic "Cristeros", opposed to Post-Revolutionary secular education,
drag a government teacher from her classroom during their uprising in the 1920's,
Central Primary School, built 1934.

The Revolution
Mosaic mural  in the Jesús Romero Flores Culture Center
Colonia Hipódromo Condesa.

Venustiano Carranza and the Constitution of 1917
Jesús Romero Flores Culture Center
Colonia Hipódromo Condesa

In a rather peculiar setting, but one quite Mexican in its peculiarity, we come across a rather strange mural. The setting is the Museum of the Secretariat of the Treasury, housed in the former Palace of the Archbishop, on Moneda (Mint) Street in Centro Histórico. The Treasury took over the building during the Reforms of the 1860s, when church property was expropriated by the government of Benito Juárez. The Treasury has a very nice art collection built from works given it in lieu of payment of taxes.

The mural, Song to the Heroes, by José Gordillo, a student of Dr. Atl, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera, is in the stairway. Created in 1952, it has two parts, which seem unrelated in both style and mood.

The much larger top portion portrays a bare-chested worker wearing a miner's hat
and manipulating a complex set of machinery.
The piece for which he is reaching is marked, "Made in the United States of America."
In his left hand is, apparently, a crumpled Mexican flag.
The tube extending into the lower left corner seems to be vacuuming up whatever is below it.

In a narrow strip across the bottom, some of Mexico's heroes stolidly stand. 

Independence: Miguel Hidalgo, Vicente Guerrero, José María Morelos. 
Reform Period: Benito Juárez, Melchor Ocampo. 
Revolution: Ricardo Flores Magón (radical author), Felipe Ángeles (general), Emiliano Zapata, Francisco Villa.

The mural is also curious for who is left out of the pantheon: Francisco Madero, Venustiano Carranza, Álvaro Obregón and Plutarco Calles, all buried together in the Monument to the Revolution.

"The Streets of My General"
Ad on a wall along Calzada de Tlalpan
Coyoacán

The Metro: Where Revolution and Mural Art Meet

The Revolution, or at least memories of it, live on in another, unexpected space. The Metro is the most visited public space in the city (average of 4.4 million travelers per day), so the city government has made it a space to present public art. Many of its stations serve as galleries for displaying murals portraying more or less explicit lessons in Mexican history or messages with an implicit social and/or cultural intent.

As such, these Metro station murals are direct descendents of the revolutionary mission of the founding fathers of Mexican Muralism; namely, to place politically meaningful art in public spaces. Metro stations become the extensions of the Secretariat of Public Education and San Ildefonso, variations of the marriage of everyday space with art with a message which was first embodied in the Abelardo Rodríguez Market.

In the Insurgentes Station on Line 1, we find a virtually explicit acknowledgement of the transmission of that revolutionary heritage that had its beginnings one hundred years ago with Dr. Atl in the Academy of San Carlos.

David Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera
Mural in Insurgentes Station,
Metro Line 1

The Revolution, or at least its particular heros and villains, is explicitly presented in a passageway in Hidalgo Station, where Lines 2 and 3 intersect.

Counter-clockwise, from upper right:
Porfirio Díaz, Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa,
Francisco Madero enters Mexico City, Madero and Lazaro Cárdenas,
"Adelitas" (woman soldiers) and, bottom right, railroad trains used by Revolutionary Armies. 

Revolution in Education

As manifested in the Central Primary School murals, the establishment of secular education was one of the major achievements of the Revolution. The National Preparatory (High) School was established during the Reform period of Benito Juárez in the mid-19th century, but there was little further development of public education during the rule of Porfiro Díaz in the second half of that century.

In 1910, just before the Revolution broke out, the National University was established by Justo Sierra, who was Secretary of Education under Porfiro Díaz. However, with the war, it didn't get underway until José Vasconceles was appointed in 1920 as rector for a short period before being named Secretary of Public Education. The University occupied the buildings of the former Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico in Centro Histórico, which had been founded in 1551 by decree of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and closed in 1867 during the Era of Reform.

In the 1950's the Mexican government decided to move the University to an entirely new campus in the Coyoacán Delegación, borough, in the south of the city. We will visit the Ciudad Universitaria, University City, next. For now, we make a stop in the University Metro Station at the southern end of Line 3, where there is a mural portraying the history of education in Mexico and its modern, secular transformation as a result of the Revolution.

Left: Aztec noble youth are educated in the calmecac.
Center, above: 17th century nun, Sor Juana, who wrote poetry and plays.
Center, right, with beard: Justo Sierra
Below: Frida Kahlo,
Right, below: Diego Rivera
Artist: Arturo García Bustos
1989

The Revolution and afterward

The merged raptors, the Andean condor and the Mexican golden eagle,

represent the envisioned bond of Mexico and South America.

The map of Latin America conveys the same vision and
is the basis of the crest for the National University,
designed by Jóse Vasconcelos (at right, arms raised).

On the white ribbon the University motto: 
"The spirit will speak for my race."

The outstretched arms of the nude female 
are reminiscent of Diego Rivera's two "new" men
in Bellas Artes and San Ildelfonso

Right: Behind professors in traditional robes,
students protest for University autonomy,
freedom from government control, granted in 1929.
Hence, National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM.

Revolution Redux

However, it is in the Xola ('Shola') station, on Line 2, just a few stops north of our home-base station, General Anaya, that we find ourself confronted by a mural that takes us back—not just in Revolutionary themes and imagery, but in dramatic artistic style as well—to the works of Orozco and Siqueiros that we first encountered in Bellas Artes.

The peoples don't protect (their) memory.
Ariosto Otero Reyes
1997

Education and Work
"Education will be democratic,
democracy understood not only as a legal structure and political regime,
but as a system of life
founded on constant economic and cultural improvement
of the people." Constitution, Article 3.

A hybrid figure, half-Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, half-Aztec Eagle warrior,
uniting enemies of the Conquest,
has his hand kissed by Spanish soldier.
(at right, in full mural, Catholic priest blesses this union
and Spaniard's submission)

An indigenous woman gives birth to a mestizo, mixed-race, child.
This recalls Orozco's "Cortés and Malinche" in San Ildefonso
and Rufino Tamayo's "Birth of Nationality" mural in Bellas Artes.

Inscription: "The Mexican Nation has a pluricultural composition
based originally in its indigenous peoples."

But to the left, right and behind this vision of cultural, spiritual and political resolution, all is not well.

Justice is a robotic prostitute,
backed by robotic, skinhead soldiers.
We are reminded of Orozco's drunken justice in San Ildelfonso.

Men in cowboy hats and sunglasses are, apparently, the new oil-rich.
"Atoleoducto" combines "atole", traditional corn-based drink,
with oil duct, representing what, in the late 1970s,
was supposed to bring new wealth and well-being to Mexicans.

Upper left: A street clown entertains to receive a few coins.
We are reminded of the clowns and masked figures
in Diego Rivera's "Carnaval de la vida mexicana" in Bellas Artes.
Lower right: peasant farmer, in traditional white,
and worker in blue pants, seem to struggle with each other.

Bartolomé de las Casas was a Spaniard who first joined in the seizing of land and oppression of
indigenous people in the first Spanish settlements in Hispaniola and Cuba in the early 16th century.
An ordained priest, he was subsequently influenced by Dominicans who preached against such abuses.

De las Casas had a change of heart. In 1515 he began to advocate for the abolition of encomiendas, Spanish land grants, the end to enslaving indigenous people; instead, gathering them into independent towns. He became a Dominican friar and wrote A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies to try to influence Emperor Charles V to change Spanish treatment of indigenous people. He later became the first resident Bishop of Chiapas, and the first officially appointed "Protector of the Indians."

Here, De las Casas reappears in modern time to try to intervene to protect the poor from the new "conquistadores," the World Bank (Banco Mundial) and its "enslavement by debt."

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse of the "New World Order" (global capitalism)
attack the people. Curiously, Batmen are among other masked characters in the crowd that follows
Aztec jaguar warriors trying to fight them off.

  

A woman trys to protect a fallen worker, who is clawed and stabbed by a blind figure.
The blindness of the act reminds us of the blind revolutionary in Orozco's "Revolutionary Trinity" in San Ildelfonso.

Mexico, represented by a small girl in tennis shoes, weeps.

The forward-thrusting perspective of the man echoes the figures of Orozco and Siqueiros in Bellas Artes.

In the background of this epic struggle, representatives of the people of today express their protests.

In the center, a group raises its hands as if voting, while, behind, others protest.
To the left, the contemporary "muralist"—graffiti or street artist with his spray paints—makes his visual statement.
(We will see some of their work in a later post.)
To the right: A youth appears to be blowing gasoline onto a hot object.
Men at street intesections do this today to elicit a few pesos from those driving by.

The creator of the mural is Ariosto Otero Reyes, born in 1949, who, like his famous "Great Three" predecessors, attended the Academy of San Carlos, named the Superior School of Plastic Arts in the 1920s after it became part of UNAM. Otero Reyes has created murals at other sites in Mexico City and elsewhere in the country.

This mural was orginally placed in the new Merced Commercial Center in East Centro in 1997, during the city administration of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-40), who is viewed as having most fully implemented the aims of the Revolution. However, in that location, it was poorly cared for, so, in 2008, at the insistence of Otero Reyes, it was removed, restored and placed under the care of the Metro system in Xola station.

The Metro's website lists another Otero Reyes mural, also created for Merced, called "Monstruos de fin de mileno," "Monsters of the End of the Millenium," portraying what the muralist saw as the now universal struggle of the poor and powerless against the rich and powerful. The Metro´s website says it is in La Raza (The Race) station where Lines 3 and 5 cross, north of Centro. So recently, we went to seek it out. We could not find it in any of the station's corridors. When a Metro employee was shown a copy of the webpage containing a photo and description of the mural, he replied that he had never seen it and that it was not in the station. 

Another Mexican mystery. "¡La búsqueda sigue!" The search continues.