Mexican Muralists | Diego Rivera´s Murals in the National Palace, Part II: Some of Mexico's Original Civilizations

When we recently entered the National Palace to view Diego Rivera's mural of The History of Mexico, we didn't know that we would encounter another whole series of Rivera murals portraying what might be called the pre-history of Mexico, that is, of some of the indigenous civilizations that existed prior to the arrival of the Spanish in 1519.

On the right side of the stairwell housing "The History of Mexico"
is a mural portraying some of the elements of indigenous civilization.

At the top, the Sun god, Tonatiuh, watches everthing.
To the left, a volcano, perhaps Popocatépetl, the Smoking Mountain, erupts.

Floating in the sky to the right is Quetzalcóatl, the Plumed Serpent,
god of knowledge and culture.
Below him, to the right, a corn festival is celebrated.

In the center, wearing a green tocado (headdress) made of quetzal bird feathers,
is the tlatoani (speaker, i.e. chief), surrounded by his council of elders.

Below the council, a group grinds corn on a metate and makes tortillas,
the Mexican staple food for 10,000 years.

To their left, porters or tradesmen (pochtecas) carry large packs.

Lower left, a battle is fought between rival groups.
Those in elaborate costumes are likely Aztecs/Mexicas of Tenochtitlan.

Walking up the staircase below the mural, to the second floor and turning left, we encounter a series of murals portraying various regional civilizations.

Tenochtitlan
City of the Aztec/Mexica

A lord watches, possibly supervising
the tianguis, the open-air market below him where trade flourishes.

Above, men form large rolls of unknown material and purpose.

Behind is the Templo Mayor, the Great Temple
dualy dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, God of War and patron of Tenochtitlan,
and Tlaloc, agricultural god of all waters.

Beyond stretches the city, with its canals and many other temples.
To the right, above, in the far distance, is the Templo Mayor
and the sacred district around it.
The causeway leads to Tlacopan (now Tacuba),
along which Cortés and his men were to flee
on la Noche Triste, the Night of Sorrows.

At the upper right corner, are the snow-covered volcanoes that form Iztaccíhuatl,
the Sleeping Princess.

(The mural actually stretches farther to the left and right, beyond our photo:
the narrow balcony prevented standing far enough away to take in the whole.)

Detail of the tianguis
(left side)

Detail of the tianguis
(middle)

Detail of the tianguis
(right side)
The woman in white, selling calla lillies, is an image much used by Rivera.
However, calla lillies are native to South Africa; hence, their presence is anachronistic.

Zapotecs of  Oaxaca
Portraying various crafts,
including feather art for headdresses
and the refining and working of gold.

Totonaca of El Tajín, Veracruz

Tradesmen (left) arrive from the central highlands, possibly Toltecs from Tula,
which was contemporary with El Tajín (600 to 1200 CE), likely a Totonaca city.
They seek to trade for tropical products such as vanilla and rubber
that grow along what is now the west coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

In the background is the city of El Tajín, with its
Pyramd of the Niches,
voladores, flying dancers in bird costumes, and
ball court (far left; El Tajín has 20 courts, by far the most found
at any Mesoamerican site).

Maíz, corn cultivation,
Chinampas, artificial islands in the lakes,
such as Xochimilco and Chalco,
 of the Valley of Anahuac
(now Valley of Mexico).

Chalchiuhtlicue,
goddess of springs, lakes and rivers,
stands mid-left.

Purépecha culture of Michoacán

Rivera portrays them cultivating cotton (rear left),
and weaving and dying fabrics.
A Purépecha lord oversees.

Lake Pátzcuaro is in the background.

The Purépecha were contemporaneous with the Axteca/Mexica,
but were never conquered by them.

Mexican Muralists | Diego Rivera´s Murals in the National Palace, Part I: "History of Mexico"

Confronting the Daunting National Palace

We admit it. Although we initiated our Ambles around the City in the Zócalo, the huge plaza in Centro Histórico that is the heart of Mexico City, we have stayed away from the National Palace dominating its east side. Similarly, we had stayed away from the Metropolitan Cathedral, on its north side, until we were able to come to terms with, and write about Mexican Baroque architecture, of which the inside of the Cathedral is the quintessential example.

Like the Cathedral, the National Palace is intimidating in its grandeza, grandeur, and off-putting because of its associations with the history of Mexican authoritarian governments. The fact that this symbolic center of Mexican democracy is called a palace is indicative of the paradox of Mexican government: is it, or is it not, a democracy?

The Palace—first of Cortés, then the Spanish Viceroy,
then of the Mexican government—has been
rebuilt and expanded many times over nearly 500 years.
The third story was added in the 1920s, after the Mexican Revolution. 

Nevertheless, as we were recently publishing some posts on Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo borrowed from our spouse, Jane's "Jenny's Journal of Mexican Culture", we decided it was time to cross the threshold into the Palace to see Rivera's mural of the History of Mexico. We had also read that one could see through a window on the floor a part of what was once the private prayer room of Moctezuma the Younger in what had been his "New Houses". After destroying the house of Moctezuma, Cortés built the Palace on that site.

At the Center of Mexico's Heart, Tranquility

Visitors to the Palace enter via a side door on the north side, on Moneda (Coin) Street (the former mint was just behind the Palace). We had often glimpsed the inner courtyard as we passed by on our way to other destinations in East Centro. It looked inviting. When we finally enter, we find a beautifully landscaped, tranquil garden, an oasis in the very center of the City's bullicio, hubbub.

Inner courtyard,
in the rear of the Palace.

Formal, front courtyard,
used for Presidential speeches and other formal events.
Rivera murals are in the stairwell from this courtyard and on the second floor.

Diego Rivera's Vision of Mexico's Complex and Complicated History

The History of Mexico
by Diego Rivera
1929 to 1935

Our initial reaction is one of being visually and mentally overwhelmed.
There are a huge number of figures, all apparently jumbled together,
with no obvious organization.

Then we notice five arches overhead. Looking more closely,
we see that within each are group portraits of various people,
apparently in 19th century dress, recent Mexian history at Rivera´s time.

Below these five groups, across the middle of the mural,
we realize there are a series of scenes of Spanish colonial life.

At the bottom, within a triangle, is a portrayal of the Spanish Conquest.

So, to "read" the mural and grasp Rivera's vision
of Mexico's compleja y complicada, complex and complicated, history,
we must start at the bottom, and move upward. 

Part I: The Violent Spanish Conquest (1519-21)

The Spanish Conquest of the Aztecs/Mexicas

The History begins in the bottom, triangular space.
It portrays the Spanish attacks on indigenous warriors.
This section of the mural also requires visually separating it into parts in order to truly "see" it, i.e., take in and experience it in a comprehensible manner.

Starting from the left, we see Spanish soldiers and some of their indigenous allies
attacking Jaguar Warriors, an elite Aztec/Mexica corps. 

Middle portion of the Conquest section of the mural.

We are viscerally struck by the military and cultural differences
between the Spanish cavalry and indigenous warriors in symbolic garb. 

Right-hand portion of the Conquest section.
Rivera pulls no punches in portraying the violence of the Conquest.

Part II: Life in Spanish Colonial New Spain (1521-1823)

"Reading" from the left, across the middle band
we see portrayals of Colonial Nueva España, New Spain.

At left, an indigenous man is branded as a slave.
At right, the Franciscan Diego de Landa Calderón burns Mayan books in the Yucatán.
Above them, indigenous workers build Nueva España, New Spain, for the Spanish.

Next, under a canopy, the Viceroy and the Archbishop
oversee autos de fe, trials and executions of supposed heretics,
i.e., persons not maintaining the Catholic Faith.

In the fourth scene (we'll return to the third shortly),
Spanish friars carry out the conversion and baptism of the indigenous peoples,
the so-called Spiritual Conquest whose vestiges we have been exploring in many posts
on the Original Indigenous Villages of Mexico City.

In the fifth scene, indigenous men labor as virtual slaves in the mines.
Mexican silver financed the expansion of Spanish power in Europe.

In the third, middle, scene, at the center of the grand mural,
Father Miguel Hidalgo, proclaims the War for Independence from Spain.

Immediately to the left of Hidalgo is Ignacio Allende (in Spanish Army uniform);
to the right is Jose María Morelos, who took leadership of the rebellion
after Hidalgo and Allende were captured and executed.

Far left, with red crown, is Agustín Iturbide,
Spanish Army general who joined the almost elimnated rebels in 1821,
defeated the Spanish, and had himself declared Emperor of Mexico.

To the right of Iturbide is Guadelupe Victoria
 (in red vest, holding the Mexican flag),
a rebel who, after Iturbide was deposed, became the first President of Mexico.

The other figures are other persons who played roles in the War,
but their identification is beyond us.

Part III: Mexico of the 19th and early 20th Centuries

The top row of the mural, under the arches, portrays scenes from 19th and 20th century Mexican history, primarily one of foreign army interventions (the U.S. and France), and civil wars between wealthy conservatives—supporting the privileges and powers of the Army and the Catholic Church—and liberals seeking a democratic, egalitarian government (the mid-19th century War of Reform and the early 20th century Mexican Revolution). For some reason, Rivera did not not present them in chronological order. He placed the Mexican Revolution at the center, above the War for Independence.  We present them in historical order, to make the story more comprehensible to extranjeros, foreigners. 

Defense of Chapultepec Castle
from U.S. forces in 1847
during the War of the U.S. Intervention (aka Mexican-American War in the U.S.).
It is the American eagle arriving, holding arrows in its claws.

The fall of the castle, which served as the military academy,
was the last battle in the U.S. capture of Mexico City.
President James Polk intitiated the war to gain California from Mexico,
which had refused to sell it. 
So, losing the war, Mexico's was forced to surrender half of its territory,
virtually all of the currnent U.S. Southwest and west. 

Benito Juárez and the Laws of Reform

Conservative President Santa Ana, 
a Spanish Army general who had joined Iturbide to win the War of Independence,
but then joined the rebellion to overthrowm him as Emperor,
had been president several times since 1833. 
He had lost Texas in 1836 and the War of the U.S. Intervention in 1847,
and had gone into exile abroad each time.
Nevertheless, he was called back from exile by conservatives 
to be president once again in 1853 to oppose a liberal uprising.

In 1855, liberal forces succeeded in deposing him. 
They established a new government and issued a series of Laws of Reform, 
mostly written by Benito Juárez, a lawyer and President of the Supreme Court
 ( the moreno, dark-skinned Zapotec indigenous man, holding laws in his hand). 
These laws took autonomous power from the Army and property from the Catholic Church.
(Note fat friar, Army general and Bishop, and others with their hands in the kitty.)

In 1857, conservative generals, in turn, overthrew the liberal govenment. 
Upon the surrender of liberal president, Ignacio Comonfort, Juárez became president.
He took the government to various cities in Mexico 
and engaged in the War of Reform (1857-61).
Defeating the conservatives at the end of 1860, Juárez and his government
returned to Mexico City on Jan. 1, 1861.

Figures on each side of Juárez are other persons in the Reform Period (1855-1876).

The French Intervention
1861-1867

In reaction to the liberal victory in the War of Reform, 
conservatives went to Emperor Napoleon III of France 
and asked that he select some European royal to become Emperor of Mexico.
Prince Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph of Austria, younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph I,
accepted Napoleon's offer and came to Mexico to become Emperor Maximillian I.

The liberals, led by Juárez, waged war against him. 
In 1866, Napoleon, under pressure from the U.S. and others factors in Europe,
 withdrew French troops, leaving Maximillian with only the support of 
conservative Mexican generals and their troops.
The next year, in mid-May 1867, Maximilian
(red-haired, bearded figure, far right) was captured and executed a month later.
.
Mexican conservative Generals Miguel Miramón and Tomás Mejía were executed with him.
The fleeing eagle is evidently that of the Austrian Empire.

Mexican Revolution (1910-1917)

President and dictator Porfirio Díaz (1876-1911), 
(at left, in military uniform, many medals and presidential sash)
was overthrown by forces led by Francisco Madero 
(light-skinned, bearded man, wearing presidential sash, right of center).
Madero was overthrown and assassinated in Feb. 1913, by Victoriano Huerta
(military figure, at right of Díaz, wearing presidential sash).
  
Then, Venustiano Carranza (white-bearded figure, wearing presidential sash, lower right), 
Pancho Villa (dark-skinned figure in sombrero behind Carranza), and
Emiliano Zapata (mustached figure in sombrero, upper right)
waged war to overthrow Huerta in 1914.
Carranza subsequently fought and defeated Villa and Zapata, 
becoming President in 1917, and ending the formal series of wars. 

Mexican Revolution and Beyond

In 1920, Carranza was overthrown and assassinated by his former general, Álvaro Obregón, 
because Carranza overlooked him in choosing a successor.
In 1924, Plutarco Calles (far left figure holding eagle standard) became president. 
After the assassination of Obregón, who had been reelected president in 1928, 
Calles maintained power as "chief boss."
In 1934, Lázaro Cárdenas (at right of Calles, wearing presidential sash) 
became president and sent Calles into exile. 

The mural was finished in 1935, just after Cárdenas took power.
He was seen as a liberal, even socialist, 
who implemented many of the labor and land reforms sought by the Revolution
and written into the new Constitution of 1917, but not carried out.
In back,
Emiliano Zapata (killed by agents of Carranza in 1919) and an
industrial worker in blue overalls, hold the banner "Land and Liberty".

This represents Rivera's hope for a true, communist revolution,
such as he portrayed in his mural, "Ballad of the Revolution"
in the Secretariat of Education.

Rivera's Vision of a True, Marxist-Communist Revolution

The Mexican Revolution was a very ambiguous series of conflicts between los de abajo, those from below (represented by Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata) and los de arriba, those from above, represented by Carranza). The outcome was, likewise, ambiguous. Carranza became president, but was forced to accept a Constitution that included a list of "rights", such as to work and an education, sought by the popular forces. Much power, however, was given to the president, such that, despite a Congress and a Supreme Court, he could essentially ignore the liberal articles of the Constitution. 

Like many other Mexican artists and intellectuals, Rivera was a communist and was disappointed by the authoritarian path the post-revolution government was taking. (In 1936, he painted a mural entitled "The Dictator", in which he portrayed Calles as a Fascist; the mural is now in Bellas Artes.) He continued to hope for a real revolution of the agrarian and working class that would overthrow the capitalist powers. As he had done in his "Ballad of the Revolution", here in the National Palace, the very seat of government, in the stairway to the left of The History of Mexico, he also painted a vision of that hope.

A Strike,
like one that actually occurred in the Cananea copper mine,
in the northern state of Sonora, in 1906.
The mine was owned by a U.S. company,
and the strike was suppressed by Mexican soldiers
and volunteer "rangers" from Arizona.
The men who have been hung are labeled
"anarchist" and "communist".

Call for a Communist Revolution of Workers (hammer) and Farmers (sickle),
suppressed by soldiers wearing gas masks (like those used in World War I)

Corrupt, immoral Capitalist Class,
focused entirely on money (scrutinizing stock market ticker tape, upper left).
Note the priest, engaged with a prostitute, at left.

Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto
(at very top of mural).

"All of the history of human society, up to today,
is a history of the struggle of the classes.
For us, it doesn't have to do precisely
with transforming private property,
but to abolish it.
It doesn't have to do
with blurring the differences between the classes,
but of their destruction.
It doesn't have to do
with reforming the present society,
but of forming a new one."
Karl Marx

Needless to say, Rivera's vision was never realized in Mexico. Led by Calles and then Cárdenas, the Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI) (an oxymoron of a name) consolidated power into a one-party political system, not unlike what also actually happened in Russia. This system lasted until 2000, when Vicente Fox of the National Action Party won the presidency. However, the PRI returned to power in 2012, led by Enrique Peña Nieto. The mixture of democratic forms with authoritarian ways of operating, which goes all the way back to the beginning of an independent Mexico, is ongoing.

Small Gems in the Archbishop's Palace: Antonio Ruiz's Paintings of Post-Revolutionary Everyday Life

We have been following the trail of the grand art of the Mexican Muralists around Mexico City. Our hunt began at San Carlos Academy, where almost every Mexican artist received his training. It stands at the corner of Academy Street and Moneda, Coin Street, so named because the mint of New Spain was located there, just behind the National Palace, off the Zócalo in Centro Histórico.

Aztec Temple to Bishop's Palace to Treasury to Art Museum
On Moneda Street, halfway between the Zócalo and San Carlos. across from the Mint (now the National Museum of Cultures), stands another of those grand Spanish colonial palaces, the former Palace of the Archbishop. Its construction was begun in the 16th century, on top of the ruins of the Aztec temple to the god, Tezcatlipoca, a god of night, the underworld and warriors. The Palace reached its present form in the Baroque period of the 18th century.

In the 1860s it was expropriated by the Reform government of Benito Juárez and made into offices for the Secretariat of Hacienda, the Treasury. In the 1950s it was converted into the Museum of the Secretariat of Hacienda. The Treasury obtained its collection via in-kind payments for taxes owed. Over the latter half of the last century, it became a Mexican tradition for artists to donate works instead of paying cash.

Former Palace of the Archbishop,
now Museum of the Secretariat of Hacienda, the Treasury.
Towers of the Cathedral in the background

We originally visited the Musuem to see the mural, Song to the Heroes, by José Gordillo, one of what we call the Reverberations of the Mexican Revolution, art inspired by the Revolution that is scattered around the city.

The Un-Muralist
While there, we explored the exhibits and were surprised and delighted to come across another of the city's hidden gems. They aren't murals, but small paintings by an artist we had never heard of, Antonio Ruiz. No more than 18" by 24", in their own manner and voice, they tell us of the post-Revolutionary era of the second quarter of the 20th century in Mexico City. While the Big Three, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, tended to disdain easel painting as art for the rich, Ruiz explicitly chose to work in small, very focused oil paintings.

Born in 1892 in Texcoco, State of México, adjacent to Mexico City, in 1914 Ruiz entered the Academy of San Carlos in the midst of the Revolution (1910-1920). But unlike his fellow student, Siqueiros, he did not become a revolutionary. After his art training, he worked in the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation and as a primary school art teacher. He spent two years, 1925 to 27, in Hollywood, working as a set designer, which was a skill he continued to use throughout his life in Mexico, designing stage sets for Mexican plays and ballets. Early on, he adopted the very Mexican apodo, nickname, “Cocito”, "Little Corzo", because he looked like a Spanish toreador, “El Corzo”.

Ruiz taught at the Institute of Bellas Artes and the Academy of San Carlos. In 1942 he became director of the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado aka "La Esmeralda", the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving, known as "La Esmeralda" from the street on which it was located. He died in 1964 of a cerebral hemorrhage. 

Ordinary People in a Time of Change

Through a focus on ordinary people and their daily lives in Mexico City, Ruiz communicates the post-Revolutionary transition from, and conflicts between, a more internally focused, traditional Mexican culture to one seeking to join the modernity of the larger world. Working slowly, seeking to communicate through details, he did not produce many works. The Flemish masters were his models.

About a dozen of his works are in the Museum of the Hacienda, in their own small gallery on the second floor. They are portraits, not just of individuals, but of an epoch. To us, they say as much about that time as the murals of the Big Three, but in a softer voice.

The Miners
(Compare with Rivera's Entrance to the Mine)

School Independence Day Parade
Father Miguel Hidalgo is portrayed on the banner.
Parades like this are still held every September 16,
all across Mexico

The Milkman's Girl Friend
Milkmen no longer go door to door in the city,
but plenty of other vendors still do,
often with bicycles and baskets.
Romance, of course, is eternal.

The Serenade
Nowadays, one would hire a Mariachi Band.

Opening of the Pulquería,
Pulque bar.
Beer has pretty much replaced pulque,
a beer made from juice of the agave,
now used to distill mezcal and tequila.

The Shoppers
Polanco, Fifth Avenue or your local mall.

Summer
This is our favorite. Make the bathing suits skimpier and it could be today.
Peasant couples still appear occasionally on the streets of Mexico City.
The number 8 is pure Art Deco.

The Paranoids
We would love to know what Ruiz had in mind.
These characters could be from New York

Self-portrait
The "turkey" envisions himself as a peacock
or an even more fantastic bird.
Such a sense of self-deprecating humor!
We think Orozco would get it;
Rivera and Siqueiros, probably not.

To us, Ruiz's art has the same focus as that expressed by another observer of the details of la cotidianidad, everyday life, in Mexico City some 350 years earlier, Bernardo de Balbuena, who painted what he saw with words in his poem, La grandeza mexicana, that is, the grandeza of ordinary people:

Of various looks and various movements

various figures, faces and demeanors,

various men with various thoughts... 

Grandeza Mexicana: Grandeur of Mexico City

Grandness on All Sides

Walking the streets of Mexico City, from its Centro Histórico to various of its colonias, neighborhoods, acquainting ourselves with their architecture and public art, we have noted the recurrence of what becomes a visual theme. There is a grandness to the architecture that communicates a message of wealth and power. If you were dropped down into the heart of the city without knowing where you were, you would quickly gather that it was, or has been and desires to continue to be, a seat of major political and economic power, one whose leaders wanted to present themselves with pride, with grandeza, grandeur.

The sheer size of the Zócalo, symbolic center of the city and country, is almost overwhelming. The world's second largest plaza or city square after Red Square in Moscow, the Zócalo is framed by the monumental Metropolitan Cathedral on its northside and the National Palace to the east.

Zócalo, central plaza, built atop the Aztec plaza
Metropolitan Cathedral stands at the north end.

The Palace, first of Cortés, then the Spanish Viceroy,
then of the Mexican government. Over nearly 500 years, 
the Palace has been rebuilt and expanded many times.

Spanish colonial palaces of the lesser nobility, wealthy businesssmen and the ornate Baroque Catholic churches, convents and colegios (schools), many now converted into government offices or museums, are found throughout the Centro Histórico, known as "The City of Palaces".

So-called Palace of Emperor Iturbide,
now Banamex Cultural Center,
on Madero Street

Antiguo Colegio Jesuita San Ildefonso,
now a museum,
on Justo Sierra Street

The 19th century added to the city such grand structures as the Ciudadela, Chapúltepec Castle and Paseo de la Reforma.

Ciudadela
in West Centro

Chapúltec Castle,
with Monument to the Boy Heroes
from the U.S. "Intervention" of 1847.
CDMX, Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico City.

Paseo de la Reforma
seen from Chapultepec Castle.
Six White Columns are
Monument to the Boy Heroes
against the U.S. Invasion of Mexico
Photo by Carlos Cortés
Wikipedia

Porfirio Díaz, President and dictator from 1876 to 1911, placed his own grand stamp on the city.

Palacio de la Secretaría de Comunicaciones
Now National Museum of Art
Photo: Scott Nicholay, Wikipedia

Palacio de Bellas Artes, Fine Arts,
begun by Porfirio Díaz in 1910,
interior finished in 1930's
by post-Revolutionary government.

Tollowing Díaz's lead, the nouveau riche of modern business built grand homes in new colonias north and south of Reforma. This impetus continued among the wealthy even after the Revolution (1910-1917). 

Home of Joaquín Baranda MacGregor,
now UNAM House of the Book
Culture Center.
Colonia Roma Norte.

French Second Empire-style mansion,
now a private school.
Colonia Benito Juárez.

The victors of the Revolution were not to be outdone by their predecessors' grandness.

Monument to the Revolution,
"World's Tallest Triumphal Arch",
built over the framework of Porfirio Díaz's unfinished Legislative Palace
at the direction of President Lázaro Cárdenas in 1930s.

National Lottery,
intersection where Avenida de la República,
coming from Monument to the Revolution,
crosses Reforma and becomes Avenida Juárez.
1930s Art Deco. 

Then there is the grand project of the Mexican Muralists to create grand works of public art to visualize the grandness of Mexico´s history, its Revolution and its future.

The New Creation,
portraying the new, Mexican Adam
emerging from the union of indigenous and European culture.
Diego Rivera,
Antiguo Colegio San Ildelfonso, 1922.

Man at the Crossroads,
between Past and Future.
Diego Rivera,
Bellas Artes, 1934

And the grandest of all, the world's largest mural:

March of Humanity Toward the Cosmos.
David Siqueiros Polyforum
1971

We could go on with more examples of grandness, and we will as we continue to explore Mexico City and write about our discoveries. But now we ask the question: Are there particularly Mexican roots to this impulse to grandeur?

Before proposing an answer to our question, let us note one last, yet to be realized, example of Mexican grandeza. President Enrique Peña Nieto has spoken of  "Una nueva grandeza mexicana", "a new Mexican grandeur". And he has initiated his potentially most public expression of it, a new Mexico City Airport:

Environment of Natural Grandeur

We believe the source of Mexicans' ongoing search for grandeur can be found in the country's natural environment and the human works of la grandeza, grandness or grandeur, that began to be constructed within that environment more than two thousand years ago.

Mexico City lies in the center of the Valley of Mexico. Its predecesor, the Aztec city of Mexico-Tenochtitlán, was set on an island in the middle of a lake in that valley, then called Anáhuac. At 7,000 feet, the high valley is ringed by mountains rising around the city 10,000 to over 12,000 feet. Ajusco [extinct volcano]—which now lies within the delegación, borough, of Tlalpan, on the city's south side—rises to 12,900 feet, nearly 6,000 feet above the valley floor. Reaching this high valley on foot, as was the case for millenia, was in itself quite a feat.

Ajusco,
seen from our bedroom window in Coyoacán

Moreover, forty to fifty miles southeast, but imposingly visible on clear days, rise the volcanos bearing the names given them by the Nauhua peoples of the valley:

• Popocatepetl, Smoking Mountain, 'Popo' is an active volcano; and
• Iztaccíhuatl, Sleeping Woman, is Popo's reluctant bride in Nahua mythology; unlike in Sleeping Beauty, Popo is unable to wake her up no matter how much he huffs and puffs.

Just recently, in January, 2016, "Don Goyo", as he is affectionately called, raised a new lava dome 1,000 feet above the floor of his crater, a sign that he is likely to "blow" again soon. He reaches an altitude of 17,802 feet, making him the second highest mountain in Mexico. At 18,000 feet, Pico de Orizaba, to the east, between Puebla and Veracruz, is the highest in Mexico and third highest mountain in North America. Popo comes in fifth. All mountains higher than these two are far from urban civilization in Alaska or Canada.

Popocatépetl, Smoking Mountain
At 17,802 ft. second highest peak in Mexico
and fifth highest in North America.
Rises about 50 miles southeast of Mexico City.

Popo blows, April 2015.

North of Popo, at the other end of a ridge of lower volcanoes, rests Iztaccíhuatl, Sleeping Woman.

Iztaccihuatl, Sleeping Woman
At 17,160 ft. third highest mountain in Mexico
and eighth highest in North America.

Valley of Mexico, late 19th century, by José María Velasco
Mexico City, still confined to the area of the Aztec island,
 lies in the distance, middle left.
Volcanoes Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl form the southeastern horizon.

Popo and Iztacc, and numerous other volcanoes around the Valley of Mexico, are part of The Transverse Volcanic Axis that runs from the Pacific Ocean, north of Puerto Vallarta, east to the Gulf of Mexico near Veracruz.

Trasverse Volcanic Axis (yellow)
and related
Volcanoes and Earthquake Centers of Mexico

The Axis—and Mexico's ruggedness—was created by the pressure of four tectonic plates that underly and shape its surface. As a result, Mexico's topography is especially dramatic, one of the most varied in the world. It is reported that when Emperor Charles V asked Cortés to describe Mexico, he crumpled a piece of paper into a ball and tossed it on a table.

What is now Mexico lies at the southern edge of the vast North American Plate, which includes not only all of the North American Continent but parts of Siberian Asia and Greenland as well. To the west is the huge Pacific Plate. The Cocos Plate, smaller, presses up from the southwest. The combined pressure of the Cocos Plate (from the southwest) and the Caribbean Plate (from the southeast, on which Central America rests), creates the curved “hook” and mountainous terrain of Mexico’s western and southern regions, with its attendant volcanoes and earthquakes.

For more on Mexico's geography see: Geography: Ground of Mexico's History and Culture

Mesoamerican Sacred-Political Spaces

It isn't surprising that, within this dramatic environment of peaks and valleys, the indigenous civilizations that arose based on the cultivation of corn, sought not only to imitate its grandeur but to appease and ally with the powers of the gods, i.e., nature.

Entering one of the great cities of the Mesoamerican civilizations, you are surrounded by monumental architectural and artistic statements that totally dominate and define your sensory experience. As complete environments, they are aesthetic and physical statements situating you in the presence of unified sacred (natural) and political powers, the realm of gods and kings.

Teotihuacán: "Avenue of the Dead" looking toward
Pyramid of the Moon
(about 30 miles north of Mexico City)
(500 BCE to 500 CE)

For more on Teotihuacán, see: The City Where the Gods Are Made

Pyramid of the Sun
Teotihuacán
Third largest pyramid in the world

Plaza of Monte Albán, Oaxaca
(500 BCE to 500 CE)

Palace of Palenque, Chiapas
built by Pakal I and his sons
7th Century C.E.

El Tajín, Veracruz,
6th to 12th Centuries C.E. 

For more on El Tajin, see: El Tajín: Beauty and Mystery
For more on Mesoamerican cities, see: God-Kings as Ctiy Planners

Tenochtitlán, with Templo Mayor, the Great Temple at the center.
Volcanoes Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl form the eastern horizon
Painting in the Museum of the City of Mexico

The Grandeza of the Spanish Empire Arrives

When Hernán Cortés and his men passed between the two grand volcanoes, over what is now called Paso de Cortés and entered the wide, lake-filled valley, they were awed by both its natural drama and its extensive civilized development. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, one of Cortés's lieutenants, wrote:

"Gazing on such wonderful sights, we did not know what to say, or whether what appeared before us was real, for on one side, on the land, there were many great cities, and in the lake ever so many more, and the lake itself was crowed with canoes, and in the Causeway were many bridges at intervals, and in front of us stood the great City of Mexico." (The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, translated by A. P. Maudslay, De Capo Press, 1996)

After Cortés and his men, with their indigenous allies, defeated the Aztecs, they leveled the city of Mexico-Tenochtitlán and engaged in a massive enterprise of constructing a replica of their old world and its culture on top of that even more ancient one. In the Spanish Empire, as in Mesoamerican culture the State and religion were wedded. King Charles I was also Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and thus God's secular representative on Earth. After conquering the Papal States in 1527, he won from the Pope the power to designate the bishops of the Spanish Church.

Thus, the monumental Palace and the Cathedral, framing the Zócalo, embody, in their grandeur, the power of the Spanish State and the Catholic Church. These archetypes of power were deliberately built over their respective political and religious predecessors, the "New Houses" which were the palaces of Moctezuma II, and the Temple or Pyramid of the Sun.

 

Idealized portrayal of Spain's King Charles IV as Roman Emperor,
erected in Mexico City in 1802, six years before Napoleon deposed him,
giving rise to Mexico's War of Independence from Spain.

Like the indigenous temple precincts, the Spanish Baroque Colonial cathedrals and churches of all sizes, found from the major cities to the smallest rural villages, also seek to surround and define the experience of those who enter them. Their message, like those of the Mesoamerican spaces, is that you are in the presence of God, allied with an earthly State that is both His chosen instrument and His defender.

Metropolitan Cathedral,
Mexico City

Grandeza Mexicana:
"This Famous City, Center of Perfection, Hinge of the World"

Around 1580, sixty years after the Conquest, a young man, Bernardo de Balbuena, came from Spain with his father. They had been granted land near Guadalajara, Jalisco. Bernardo later came to Mexico City, where he studied theology and became a priest. In 1606 he returned to Spain, earned a Doctor of Theology, and rose within the Church to become Abbot in Jamaica (1610) and Bishop of Puerto Rico (1620). Despite his priestly duties, he found time to write long and elegant poems.

Perhaps his best work is Grandeza mexicana (Mexico's Grandeur, published in 1604), in which he replies in elegant and lyrical verse to a nun who asked him for a description of the young Spanish Colonial City of Mexico. Balbuena presents a detailed inventory of the complicated, luxurious and beautiful city.

Mexico City is "the richest city the world enjoys, as the sun goes round it ... its site, its populous grandeur, its rare things, its wealth and its dealings, its illustrious people, their splendid work." 

Bathed in a temperate, fresh wind,

where nobody would have believed there was a world,

it enjoys its flowery, gifted site.

Within the zone where the sun passes overhead,

and tender April walks, wrapped in roses,

planting its odors,

on a delicate soft crust,

that sustains it over two lagoons,

surrounded by waves on all sides,

its features, carved in large proportion,

towers, spiers, windows,

present themselves with pride.

With beautiful landscapes and vistas,

highways, playing fields and open spaces,

orchards, farms, mills and groves,

parks, gardens, thickets,

various beautiful plants and fruit

in bloom, in bud, ripening, already ripe.

The sky does not have as many stars 

as it has flowers in its garland,

nor heaven more virtue than it.

"... its features, carved in large proportion,
towers, spiers, windows ..."
CLICK  on collages to enlarge them.

"... it enjoys its flowery, gifted site.
Within the zone where the sun passes overhead,
and tender April walks, wrapped in roses,
planting its odors ..."

"Here everyone is trading and bustling about, so no one has a moment of calm."

But, after praising Mexico City's physical beauties, the poet goes on to laud another grandeur:

And this great city on water has made

firm roads that, for the many people

who fill them, become crowded;

and at all times and all occasions,

people travel these roads and highways,

mounted on horseback,

on pack trains, wagons, carts,

carrying silver, gold, riches, supplies,

they come loaded; they enter in droves.

Of various looks and various movements

various figures, faces and demeanors,

various men with various thoughts;

mule drivers, officials, contractors,

gentlemen, soldiers, merchants,

gallants, litigants;

clergymen, priests, men and women,

of various color and diverse professions,

of various states and various views;

different in languages ​​and nations,

in purpose, goals and desires,

and even sometimes in laws and opinions;

and through all the shortcuts and detours

in this great city, they disappear,

turning from giants into pygmies.

... Its deafening noise and bustle entertains;

here everyone is trading and bustling about,

so no one has a moment of calm.

Ambition circulates,

and interests of one type or another

are dealt with and practiced everwhere.

This is the sun that gives life to the world:

preserves it, governs it, increases it.

protects, defends and strengthens it.

And if some of them help each other and agree,

men and their world

remain within this human interlocking and linkage.

Self-interest takes their hand,

reinforces the pleasure and increases the vigor,

and makes everything plain.

Take away the lordship from this giant, and

the laws it has imposed on mortals

shall turn harmonry into delirium.

The principal columns on which the world

and its grandeza rests will have fallen,

and everyone will be in equal confusion.

For this hidden force, the living fountain of

political life, the breath that enlivens 

the most tepid and frozen breast,

among its other assets, gave this famous city 

its site in mountains and water, and in its construction

laid the first foundation.

And insomuch as human ingenuity solidifies,

it achieves art,
and desire is given voice.

"And this great city on water has made
firm roads that, for the many people
who fill them, become crowded."
Calzada de Tlalpan follows original Aztec causeway
across Lake Texcoco.

"They enter in droves ..."

"Of various looks and various movements
various figures, faces and demeanors,
various men with various thoughts ...

"And if some of them help each other and agree,
men and their world
remain within this human interlocking and linkage."

The lagoons are pretty much all gone, as are the orchards and farms. Some still exist in the southern delegaciones, boroughs, of Xocimilco, Tláuac and Milpa Alta (High Field). We plan, someday, to visit them.

A woman poles her trajinera, flat-bottom canoe,
through the canals of Xochimilco.
Flowers and vegetables are still grown on the chinampas,
"floating gardens" of built-up soil (visible in background).
But she is selling beer to tourists.

But otherwise, de Balbuena's description of Mexico City still pretty much applies today. The grandeza of its "towers and spiers"—Spanish Baroque, Neo-classic, Art Deco and International modern—and its "zone where the sun passes overhead and tender April walks" (pretty much all year round) are still here. As are, of course, the ageless, encircling mountains.

But for us, as obviously for de Balbuena, while we are intrigued by the grand buildings, enjoy the varied public art and savor the tranquil plazas and parks, in the end we most value the humbler, everyday grandeza of the people, "trading and bustling about" in the markets and streets. 

De Balbuena called their motivation "self-interest" or even "greed", but clearly this priest saw "this hidden force" as positive, even crucial, "the principal column on which the world and its grandeza rest", "the living fountain of political life, the breath that enlivens the most tepid and frozen breast."

We call this the ánimo, the Life Force ... the ultimate grandeza.