Arts by Inside Mexico

American Rebel

sue-ellen — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 08:18:31 -0700

Cuban Rebels, including Fidel Castro, were already engaged in the fight to liberate their country from
the dictator Fulgencio Batista when in 1958, William Morgan arrived from Toledo, Ohio, joined a nascent rebel outfit in the middle of the country and helped the Second National Front of the Escambray (SNFE) win a series of victories against the Cuban army.

Morgan and the Argentine Che Guevara were the only foreigners to hold the rank of comandante in the Cuban rebel army. After the rebel victory, Castro, on national television, referred to Morgan as a Cuban. By the middle of 1960, however, Morgan, worried about where Fidel was leading the
country, began conspiring against the Cuban government. The Americano, as he was popularly known, was arrested in late 1960 and executed in March, 1961 a month before the Bay of Pigs invasion.

I began researching this book on rians, rebels, journalists and anyone else who could help me put together the pieces of Morgan’s story.

The more I studied, the more the histories of William Morgan and the men he fought with began to reveal a space that had existed in-between the extremes of the Cuban government and the reactionary Cuban exiles.

The SNFE struggled to restore the pre-Bastista democracy of 1940s Cuba. When their march toward democracy failed, most the SNFE’s leaders were killed or forced into exile. Morgan and the men he fought with have been written out of official Cuban history and their participation in the fight against Batista causes discomfort in anti-Castro Miami.

I wrote this book, in part, to offer something beyond the gridlock between Cuba's extremes. I believe that the experience of these Rebels who risked their lives fighting against Batista, but who were left out of Castro's program, are an essential part of a true understanding of the Cuban Revolution and an honest evaluation of Cuba's possibilities for the future.

You can purchase The Americano: Fighting with Castro for Cuba’s Freedom at amazon.com.

Renaissance Man

sue-ellen — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:30:07 -0700

Immature poets imitate; maturepoets steal; bad poets defacewhat they take, and good poetsmake it into something better,or at least something different.The good poet welds his theft into awhole of feeling which is unique, utterlydifferent from that from whichit was torn…”

–T.S. Eliot, from The Sacred Wood: Essayson Poetry and Criticism, 1922.

Javier Marín's colossal ColoniaRoma workshop is bustling: constructionworkers bathed in dust climband descend a stairway, wieldingdrills; a woman meticulously examinesa schedule tacked to a door. Inone corner, four young men are movingone-sixth of the 250 kg frame thatwill be part of an installation at the Casa de America cultural center inMadrid. Together, the six pieces willform one of two fiberglass rings filledwith wired-together pieces of brokenmolds from Marín's many previoussculptures—disembodied hands,faces, torsos, so fragmented as to beabstract—and will be attached likewreaths to the building’s façade.

Marín's work inspires passion.“People identify with my work; it’s accessible,”he says. “The human figureis the most universal thing. At someshows, there are people who comeand they just cry and cry.”

The man himself is slender andhandsome, gracious and easygoing.He exudes the confidence of someoneat ease with their talent, neitherboastful nor artificially humble.

Born in Michoacan in 1962 to afamily of ten, Javier Marín studiedVisual Arts at the National AutonomousUniversity (UNAM) in MexicoCity. Though gifted in photography,painting and theater costume design,he soon settled on sculpting, and withthe exception of a bad review at the beginningof his career (“I was just happy that someone took the time to write awhole page of how much they hatedmy work,” he says) his 27-year careerhas been an unqualified success.

An oversized coffee table book onthe sculptor and his art -- beautifullycurated and produced by theartist -- intersperses essays writtenby critics between photographs ofhis work. There are repeated referencesto classical and modern titansof art, mythology and philosophy:Aristotle and Apollo, Michelangeloand Dante, Rodin and Nietzsche.

One’s instinct is to classify Marín'saesthetic as classical. In a recentexhibition at the Pinacoteca DiegoRivera in Xalapa, Veracruz, five enormous heads, bearded and Poseidon-like, preside over the museum’sentry, like a council of the Gods. Butrather than make the pieces perfect,copying the Greco-Roman ideal thatwe’ve known since grammar school,these heads, and the other piecesin the exhibit and in his studio, aremonumental but distorted, riddled with holes, graffitied with cryptic numbers and words like vivir andni tu ni yo. They’re at once largerthan life and vulnerable. The effectis overwhelming.

When he refuses to be pigeon-holed,when he levels the influenceof the classics in his work with thatof comic books, urban culture andtelenovelas, the claim rings true.He robs the poses of the ancient andItalian masters, infuses them withthe exaggerated energy and movementof pop images, and layers it allwith a directness and sentimentalitythat in the hands of a lesser talentwould be hackneyed. He plays tothe audience, but we don’t mind onebit; like the best popular culture, Marín's work is great art: familiar,purloined and original. Instead ofidealized statuary, what he presentsis closer to what we view in the mirroreach day -- bodies and souls mademore beautiful and more interestingby the scars of life and time.

“I want to show us the way weare in reality, somewhere betweenpleasure and torture,” he says.

The emotion in the work is individual -- grief, anguish, ecstasy -- andcollective: it’s difficult to view thefragmented installation pieces likethe Casa de America ring withoutrecalling the genocides that havemarked the 20th and 21st centuries.

Despite Marín's unsparing eye -- or perhaps because of it -- hissculpture is optimistic and truthful,openly embracing all aspects of ourhumanity, however ugly or painful.Like the great masters of anyepoch, he has the talent and visionto appeal to the art world’s standardbearers, and a popular sensibilitythat roots his work in the publicrealm. Ultimately, it is this rarecombination that has made Marín not just an acclaimed Mexican artist,but one of the most successfulsculptors in the world today.

Marín won’t deny the pleasure that comesfrom his work’s broad appeal.

“I love people,” he says with asmile, acknowledging the crowdsthat show up when his work is ondisplay. “I love that lots of peoplecome.”

The art of living

sue-ellen — Sat, 16 May 2009 08:02:18 -0700

Akiko Miyashita has lived in Oaxaca since 1991. Besides removing her shoes when entering the house Akiko preserves many other Japanese traditions, such as eating foods like green tea, rice, and wasabi, and valuing responsibility, respect, hard work, and contact with the water; she washes her hands and face a few times a day. “Japanese people like water so much. My father used to say that Japan is the rainiest country in the world because it’s a volcanic island. But for reasons of climate change I am not sure about that anymore,” she says.

Akiko was born in Gifu, located in the south-central portion of the island. She studied art in Nagoya and her last five years in Japan were dedicated to improving her graphic abilities.

“One day I met [Japanese print maker] Shinzaburo Takeda, when he had an exhibition in Nagoya. He told me I should go to Oaxaca, where he was living and teaching art at the Escuela de Bellas Artes. So I took intensive Spanish classes and I came to study art for two years. But the language was still difficult for me”.

When Akiko arrived in Oaxaca there was less tourism than there is now. “I am not against development, but when I arrived at Oaxaca’s Historical Center the only people you found there were local families. That traditional atmosphere was a unique thing.”

Akiko married Mexican artist Fernando Sandoval and the couple decided to move to Japan. One year later, however, they returned to Oaxaca, to live in the San Felipe neighborhood. “Japanese cities are not like Oaxaca. It’s harder to have as comfortable a life as the one I have here; it is not easy to live as an artist. Oaxaca is warm, family oriented, and the time seems to go slower. It reminds me of my childhood in Gifu, the rice fields, and little automobile traffic. Now that city is different. It has been developed and it’s now like the rest of Japan. But many changes are taking place in this city too; the Historical Center has become very commercial and people are moving out to live in the small towns nearby.”

She remembers that the first time she arrived in Oaxaca, the mixture of the wind, the dust and the heat made her feel far away from Japan. She was also struck by the inequalities in education, economics and culture. But the biggest impression came later. “After living here for a year and a half I traveled by train from Oaxaca to Mexico City to receive my parents who had come to visit me. From the train I saw landscapes different from Oaxaca and Puebla, and I saw a whole town built with cardboard and plastic. That was the hardest image I have ever seen in Mexico. I asked myself who lives here and why?”

She has had to face rejection by some local people, and has endured abuses like being overcharged for taxis or fruit and vegetables in markets. Recently, she has experienced prejudice for being a divorced woman. But “there are some people who have become more open,” she says. “People in Japan are more isolated because they have such organized lives and services. Technology has developed so fast that contact with others is no longer possible.” These are the things Akiko appreciates most about Mexico: traditions, family values, and friendship.

“The thing I miss the most about Japan is rain, water” —because Oaxaca has such a dry climate— “but also the sensation of belonging to a place. Nevertheless, when I’m in Japan I miss being a foreigner living in Oaxaca. I have Japanese blood but my attitude is Mexican.”

Only when the social or political problems seem too difficult or the water is scarce does she thinks about the possibility of returning to Japan. “But I am still here, with my two beautiful daughters María Nana and Sofía Yukari, and my art is going well.”

She’s become a paper installation artist, using centuries-old Japanese paper-making techniques. “You can see the Oaxaqueño influence in my art in my drawings, the landscapes of small towns and local people. Definitely, Mexico has had a great influence on me, it has changed my life.”

The Nortec Collective

sue-ellen — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:00:11 -0700

Out of the ashes of Tijuana’s drug wars and cultural chaos comes a rising star, the Nortec Collective, filling dance floors across the world with their special Tijuana blend of norteño music and techno.

The Nortec Collective was started around 2001 and is currently comprised of seven musicians going by the names Panoptica, Terrestre, Bostich, Fussible, PlanktonMan, Hiperboreal and Colorofila. They refuse to call themselves a band or a group, but instead describe their collective as a series of compilations created in and about Tijuana. The idea is that Nortec shouldn’t belong to just one person, but to everybody who wants to experiment with norteño culture and mix it with something different.

An American library in Mexico

catherine — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:26:06 -0700

Got a hankering for a glimpse of Andy Warhol? Wishing you’d read the Kurt Vonnegut classics when all the other kids in the dorm did? A little bit of home may be closer than you think—in the colonia of Juárez to be exact.

There, in a bright, airy room sealed off from the chaos and crowds of the DF is the Benjamin Franklin Library, a virtual warehouse of all things American– except perhaps the apple pie.

In the stacks, teenagers troll through collections of Star Trek videos. Aspiring government wonks dredge factoids from the “Handbook of Bureaucracy.” Mothers curl up in purple reading chairs with parenting tips from baseball great Cal Ripken. And yes, there’s one particular old-timer who comes to read American newspapers just about every day.

Making a good impression

The Ben Franklin, which celebrated its 65th anniversary in April, is the oldest and largest of 181 public libraries and smaller “information resource centers” sponsored by the US government worldwide.

At a time when US immigration policy is a sore spot with many Mexicans, the library takes a small stab at reversing negative perceptions.

“Here people get accurate information about US policy from a government source,” says Steven P. Kerchoff, who runs the library for the US embassy in Mexico. “It’s not just what the government’s doing, but our people, our culture, our values.”

When it opened in a French mansion on Reforma, the Benjamin Franklin’s collection numbered 4,000 books and periodicals – remarkable in a nation that was just beginning to build its own public libraries.

Its stated purpose was to promote “friendship through books,” though officials say the underlying goal was to nudge post-revolutionary Mexico toward a more open, transparent society.

“It’s an American value to have access to information,” says Kerchoff, who worked for years at the Library of Congress. “We’re providing for a more informed debate,” he says. “Even if you don’t agree [with the governments’s take], it’s an informed debate.”

Today, a staff of 14 maintains the collection of 24,000 books, 1,200 videos and DVDs and a website that draws more than 2,000 hits a day.

At no cost, Mexicans get a taste of life north of the border through a diverse mix of reference materials, literature, business advice, government reports, movie classics, pop culture, current events and history.

The literary smorgasbord includes Ambrose on Eisenhower, Dallek on LBJ and Clinton on Clinton – in both English and Spanish. There’s a complete set of Environmental Protection Agency regulations, and a copy of “Muslim Women in America.”

Artists as diverse as Andy Warhol and Georgia O’Keefe occupy space on the shelves, as well as handbooks in marketing, public relations and accounting.

For the non-reader, the library loans out dozens of American movies, documentaries and tapes of television programs such as the Simpsons.

The library’s clientele is as eclectic as its holdings, says Kerchoff. Entrepreneurs hoping to build a business in the US review corporate law. Teenagers research history term papers, while many Mexicans study English.

Many locals develop a relationship with the library that spans decades. “Our contact with a person might go back 20 years to when they were going to the US to study and came here to take the SAT [test for college entry],” says Kerchoff.

On one recent afternoon, Felipe Ramos Gomez, 26, and Livier Meraz Levin, 27, huddled at a table over applications to several US graduate schools. Levin has her eye on UCL A.

With its extensive database collection, the Ben Franklin is also a resource for embassy staff and aides to Mexican legislators.

“We have a lot of patrons who will never come to the library,” says Kerchoff. Librarians fielded 30,000 requests last year, most over the phone or via email.

All that work doesn’t come cheap

At least $1.3 million is spent on salaries and travel expenses for 28 library specialists and $1.2 million on databases such as Lexis-Nexis, according to Wendy Simmons, director of the information resources office in Washington.

In addition, the library has a budget of $150,000 a year for acquisitions.

Even with all that expertise and information, Kerchoff says library officials can’t always determine when or why their services are in demand. For example: “We had a staggering number of hits on the web site about Thanksgiving one week before the holiday. Who knows why?”

The Benjamin Franklin Library
Liverpool 31, Col. Juárez, Mexico City
Main office: (55) 5080 2089
Reference: (55) 5080 2733
Web: usembassymexico.gov/bbf/biblioteca.htm

High fashion

catherine — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:52:41 -0700

March in Oaxaca is warm, the skies sharp blue like glacier ice. Blooming jacaranda trees bathe this southern city, a beehive nestled in the Sierra Norte mountains, in a purple mist.

A year ago, Venezuelan fashion designer Carolina Herrera brought her understated elegance to Mexico, first to Mexico City to open one of her signature CH boutiques (the first in Latin American) then to Oaxaca, for Moda Mexico International, a two-day fashion spectacle that took over the former convent Santo Domingo and transformed that icon of the Oaxacan patrimony into a runway.

The simmering political situation was still more than two months from erupting into direct confrontation, and the city buzzed about, bartering for the hard-to-come-by tickets, gossiping about the celebrities who would or would not be making an appearance (“I hear Brad Pitt’s flying in today!” “Is that Naomi Campbell there on the corner?”). Barriers around the massive bronze-hued building kept curious locals at bay, then parted just wide enough to let in the svelte, the miniskirted, those wearing wraparound sunglasses or fabulous exotic-pelt boots.

Into the middle of the frenzy walked Carolina Herrera, timeless and gracious in a white suit. Her first time to Oaxaca, Herrera spent the day before the event perusing the panoply of textiles found in the local markets and lunching with artist Francisco Toledo (“He’s a very attractive man…such wonderful hands.”)

Venezuelan-born Herrera is one of the fashion elite, a designer whose classic style has earned her financial success, the respect of her peers, and loyal clients. The international society girl was late to entrepreneurship. At 40, she left Caracas for New York to make a go of the fashion biz, her husband and children in tow. And though most would scratch their heads looking for links between the wealthy woman whose business is based on an image of effortless luxury and the daily lives of many of the women in Mexico’s second poorest state, Herrera begs to differ.

“I was not supposed to have talent,” she says. “When I started this business, they thought it was a whim, that I’d never last. Well I showed them.”

“People look at an indigenous woman from Oaxaca, a poor woman, and they make a judgment and write her off. They don’t consider the talent that might lie beyond those preconceptions.”

Herrera has a clear point of view on her work and her profession. “The role of fashion is to please the eye, it is not intellectual.” Does fashion matter, then?

“Of course fashion matters. Fashion is for everyday. It brings us beauty. Fashion improves civilizations.”

The weekend’s crowd is overwhelmingly chilango, a slice of Mexico City society airlifted and transported en masse to Oaxaca. In fact, there was quite a brouhaha over how few Oaxacans—guests, press, even local designers—received invitations. Herrera, when told of the situation, was surprised.

“I wasn’t involved in the planning of the event,” said Herrera, “and I certainly don’t support that. Oaxaca has offered up its resources and welcomed us here, and of course Oaxacans should be allowed to enjoy this.”

At night, stage lights inside Santo Domingo painted the colors of the sunset on the convent walls. A demimonde of celebrities, stylists and fashionistas gives interviews and mugs for cameras. Beautiful Oaxacan girls dressed in brightly colored traditional dress, their hair adorned with ribbons in the style of Oaxaca’s isthmus culture shepherd guests to their seats. Backstage, models, skinny like exquisite praying mantises, turn up their faces for painting and shimmy their slender forms into the designer’s confections.

Herrera sits up front. There are other designers showing, such as Mexico’s Carlos Demichelis, but she is the center of attention. When her models parade down the runway, the crowd takes pleasure in both Herrera’s skill and the confident personal style that shows in the work.

“My inspiration comes from many places, from books, from memory. This collection was inspired by a late 18th century movement in Viennese prints and decorative arts, from a show I saw in Paris.” The clothes have classic lines but are adorned with bold prints, with pink, brown and periwinkle dominating the color scheme.

“One dresses according to the times,” she said. “We must translate our inspiration for the time in which we are living, so that the clothes are not folkloric. That is what it means to be modern.”

The last model leaves the catwalk, and the audience comes to its feet. Herrera limps to a podium to receive an award for her distinguished career, her white suit now set off by a painted purple cane, support for an ankle twisted on Oaxaca’s cobbled streets. She gives a short speech of thanks to the evening’s emcee and the crowd, then gingerly, but gracefully returns to her seat.

Los Folkloristas

catherine — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:42:54 -0700

Mexicans have a long, richly textured, and sometimes turbulent, history. Along the way, some of that history was set to music. Mexican musica folklorica; stories of love lost and found, adventure, conflict, sacrifice and times gone by.

Los Folkloristas was founded in 1966 by people passionate about preserving and recording the traditional music of Mexico and Latin America. From the beginning, they have worked hard to be faithful to the original sound of the old songs; they play instruments authentic to the time period and place of the music’s origin. In each concert you will hear as many as 70 instruments, collected from all over the region, some from very remote places.

Folkloric music has been handed down through the generations by oral tradition; there are few written scores. Los Folkloristas repertoire includes everything from a pre-Hispanic Mayan lullaby to Son Jarocho. During a single concert, you will be treated to as many as 20 different types of music.

El son is a danceable music played mainly in Jalisco, Veracruz and Nayarit. Locals take to the floor and dance in the zapateado way, striking hard with every step. The rhythm of the song is created in part by the sound of heels hitting wood.

La valona verses employ typically clever Mexican humor to give songs double meanings. For instance, the last word or sentence of a stanza might be repeated in the following stanza, but used in a different way, seeding the song throughout with funny double-entendres.

At one point the Catholic Church tried to suppress the Son Jarocho. Apparently the church took exception to the frequent use of sexual double-entendres and tendency to make fun of religion, death, and even the church itself.

And for the pre-Hispanic music, from the first moment I heard the song Raíz Viva, I fell in love with the unique sounds of the 20 or so drum and wind instruments.

Not all the instruments in this version are traditional; in the original piece musicians played the triple flute of Texexexpan, Veracruz, the triple flute of the Golf, and the Toltecas flutes. Even so, this haunting instrumental piece will transport you to an ancient past rich with myths, gods, and natural beauty.

If you want to experience all this yourself, you’ll have a chance this month. Los Folkloristas will be playing in Mexico City. Keep an eye out for dates.

For more information and tickets, see their website losfolkloristas.com.mx.

Filmmaker Juan Mora Catlett: The Universalist

catherine — Mon, 04 May 2009 09:28:15 -0700

"Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story."
-- Writer Tim O'Brien

Is the Mexican film director Juan Mora Catlett suing Mel Gibson for plagiarism? If you read the postings on the Internet the answer is, "Yes."

Mora, sitting in a screening room at the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográphica where he teaches in Mexico City, gives his head a shake and emits a wry chuckle. "No. I'm not even interested in suing. I just don't want people to think that we are copying Hollywood, when Hollywood is copying us."

What's interesting about this hullabaloo is how it came about. The "how" reveals a philosophical rift between one filmmaker who's a Hollywood kingpin and another who works outside this commercial hierarchy, whose motives are primarily cultural and artistic.

Likely, you have heard of Mel Gibson's latest movie, Apocalypto which opened in Mexico on January 19. Gibson made the film for $40,000,000 USD and during its first weekend in US and European theaters it set box office records.

Apart from the fact that the well-muscled actors speak their lines in Yukatek Maya, it's a rather typical Hollywood chase movie: Will the hero escape the decadent, city-Maya captors and return to his pillaged village in time to save his wife and children from drowning in the hole where they've been hiding from the bad guys?

It's also probable that you won't have heard of Juan Mora's two feature length films, Return to Aztlán (Retorno a Aztlán) and Eréndira the Indomitable (Eréndira la indomable). Released in 1991, the former is based on Aztec legend and history and tells the story of struggle for power between Aztec warriors and priests, precipitated by a devastating drought. Eréndira, which will be in Mexico City theaters on March 2, relates a Purépecha legend (the Purépecha are the indigenous people of Michoacán) of a young woman who steals a horse from the Spaniards and fights to preserve her culture against that of the invaders.

Mora's actors, like Gibson's, speak their lines in pre-Columbian language. But the familiar narrative of Gibson's movie makes Apocalypto's characters easily accessible to a Western audience.

Return to Aztlán and Eréndira are different. They're more an experience than an entertainment and it takes time to adjust to the pace and to characters whose motivations seem rather opaque--at least to a viewer accustomed to formulaic Hollywood films.

Mora recalls a screening of Return to Aztlán in the Austrian town of Klagenfurt. "When the film ended no one left their seats," he says. "It seemed that they were waiting for the question and answer period. But no one said anything. I kept inviting comments and questions. Finally, a woman stood up and said, ‘How do you expect us to ask questions after just finishing a mythic ceremony.'"

"One realizes," says Mora, commenting on that moment, "the power of film."

In their tone, intent, and impact on the viewer Mora's movies couldn't be more different than Gibson's. Gibson's thrill the way a fast-food Hollywood adventure should; as the anecdote from Austria suggests, Mora's films work their way inside you slowly; they move you. You don't realize how far you've come until they end and the return to the rush of the 21st century jangles your nerves.

* * *

The Gibson controversy surrounds the imagery and makeup that Mora first invented for his film Return to Aztlán. Mora makes his movies on a shoestring. To make Eréndira, he spent about $750,000 USD in cash and received approximately $600,000 USD in donations, a total that amounts to less than 3.5% of Gibson's budget for Apocalypto.

The budget was so tight while making Aztlán that he had little to spend on wardrobes. "So," says Mora, "we [Mora and his makeup artist Juan Piza] invented a substitute for wardrobe. We painted people. We invented body makeup out of earth. It was very interesting. The actors were almost naked and [they were] beautiful."

Mora and Piza drew the painted images from codices and from their own imaginations. A character meant to wear a leopard skin was painted to look like a leopard. Some characters were painted white, producing a chilling, otherworldly effect.

"Another thing we did was to pour dirt from the place we were shooting on the actors. They were covered in a patina of dirt that made their skin resonate with the place," says Mora.

The power of their idea revealed itself slowly. What had begun as a money-saving innovation became a bridge between the past and the present, history and myth. At one point during shooting, the actor playing Ollin--the main character in Aztlán--stood up from his squat. The dirt that had been caked onto his skin cracked and billowed into the air, forming a glowing, yellow cloud, a penumbra haloing his body. That was the moment when the idea of what they had made crystallized for Mora.

“We were turning people into clay sculptures. We discovered that a naked man covered in paint turns into a mythical being.”

Mora liked the effect so much that he decided to employ it again while making Eréndira. After working for eight years, it turns out that Eréndira’s release has coincided with that of Apocalypto. And, while Apocalypto was being filmed in Mexico, one of Gibson’s producers bought a copy of Aztlán from Mora for $100 pesos.

Mora says he’s never watched Apocalypto, but at some point he saw the trailer and noticed that Gibson had painted his actors white. It’s worth noting that this kind of body painting is not known to be part of indigenous Mexican culture. It’s not, in other words, historical. The innovation seems to be Mora’s in the Aztlán movie, a copy of which ended up with the Gibson crew.

When he saw Gibson’s painted characters, Mora’s first thought was that when Eréndira came out people would think that he had copied Apocalypto. He mentioned this concern to his distributor, who mentioned it to someone else, and the next thing you know, Mora was reading about his escalating legal battle with Gibson… in the virtual world of the internet.

* * *

Juan Mora grew up in a multicultural family of dedicated artists. His mother is the African-American sculptor Elizabeth Catlett (featured in the December/January issue of Inside México), his father was the Mexican painter Francisco Mora.

His brother David is painter who is married to a German woman and lives half the year in Germany and the other half in Cuernavaca. The eldest brother, Francisco, is a jazz musician who lives in New York and is married to a Cuban. “When I go home for Christmas we celebrate the German way, Mexican way, the Cuban way. I love it.”

But Mexico is home for Mora. “I don’t think I could [live anywhere else]. I’m very rooted here. There’s lots of poverty and oppression, but here’s where my work can make a difference.”

When he was a teenager, Juan Mora read that the best film school in the world was in Prague. He applied, was accepted, and in 1968 at the age of 19 he headed for Czechoslovakia.

He left just before the Mexico City student massacres in October of that year and arrived in Prague in time to see the Soviet tanks roll out of the city under the cover of darkness. Mora was impressed by the way the country’s 14 million citizens loved and celebrated their culture.

Six years later, the 25-yearold Mora returned to Mexico determined to mine Mexican stories in order to get at the essence of human experience -- to achieve the general by focusing on the specific.

“I felt a need to create a film language based on Mexican roots. This may sound a little bit pompous -- but I wanted to make something like Greek mythology. Instead of adopting others’ myths, I would try to [create] an original form from Mexican images, from what could be found in archaeology, anthropology, or whatever remains. Each culture has its own myths and often they are very similar. We are the same animal on the same planet. Most myths contain teachings that apply not only to a certain moment in time. Mexican myths can contribute to universal culture.”

Was this mission, in part, a way to understand his own complex identity? “We all speak of our own experiences. And cover them up when it hurts. But we all try to share our lives, to bridge the isolation of our individuality,” says Mora, acknowledging that his work is not unrelated to his own experience.

“I don’t care about these guys in the industry,” referring once again, obliquely, to Mel Gibson. “I don’t want them to provide false images of our country. I hate cliché. Caricatures of people. The bone-in-the-nose indigenous person cooking a missionary. King-kong stealing a white woman. Stupid Arabs with swords. It sets them apart. It doesn’t bring us together.”

The reward of his work comes from watching others walk from isolation to recognition and community. Toward humanity. After a recent showing of Eréndira in a pueblo in Patzcuaro, Michoacán, a Purépecha woman stood up and said that it was the first time she had ever understood a Mexican film.

That feedback, more than the measure of the box office, inspires Juan Mora to continue mining Mexican stories, legends and histories for subjects to turn into film.

The golden age of Mexican cinema

catherine — Mon, 04 May 2009 08:44:25 -0700

1. Santa (1931)
The first sound film made in Mexico from the best-selling novel by Fernando Gamboa. Agustín Lara's song of the same name is sung to accompany an extraordinary brothel scene. It was filmed partly in Colonia Condesa, and was the first of a genre of "good girl gone bad" movies.

2. La Mujer del Puerto (1933)
Good girl becomes whore, through no fault of her own ... starring the fabulous Andrea Palma, the "Mexican Dietrich."

3. Allá en el Rancho Grande (1936)
The archetypal Comedia Ranchera, a genre popular until the 1990s when Hollywood and free trade practically killed off the Mexican cinema industry.

4. Distinto Amanecer (1943)
One of the greatest film noirs ever made, rivaling "Casablanca," once again starring Andrea Palma and making Pedro Armendáriz a star. The train station finale gives one goose bumps!

5. María Candelaria (1943)
The first product of the great team of director Emilio "El Indio" Fernández and cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, and Dolores del Río's return to Mexican Cinema after a long stay in Hollywood. Made in conjunction with intellectuals and artists (including Diego Rivera) to promote the nobility of Mexican indigenous culture. Filmed on location in the "floating gardens of Xochimilco" (where everyone can tell you, to this day, which canals were used as locations).

6. Enamorada (1946)
María Félix was Latin America's greatest star, not well known in the USA as she never worked in Hollywood. This is her best film, another Fernández/ Figueroa collaboration, and a prototype of the Revolutionary film genre. The scene where Félix is serenaded and camera zooms up to her eye is justly famous.

7. Salón México (1946)
Another Fernández/Figueroa collaboration, and a noir classic, which made the late Marga López a star. Another suffering taxi dancer (read: prostitute) story, beautifully filmed and all taking place in Mexico City at night (in the rain, naturally!)

8. Los Olvidados (1950)
Filmed on location in Mexico City (including Colonia Roma and the Centro), Luis Buñuel's superb portrait of the struggling classes was banned shortly after its premier, offending some for showing Mexico in a bad light. In 2005 it was the first film to be named by UNE SCO as part of their Universal Cultural Patrimony program.

9. Nosotros los Pobres (1948)
Starring the great singer/actor Pedro Infante who created the archetype Pepe "El Toro," the urban working class hero. It was an attempt to depict and dignify the working class poor of Mexico City, several years before the more sophisticated (and pessimistic) "Los Olvidados" was made. This is the best known and beloved film in all of Mexican cinema, like "It's a Wonderful Life" is in the USA.

10. Aventurera (1949)
The best known in a series of lurid Rumbera films, another genre peculiar to Mexican Cinema which combines noir and musical numbers, and usually takes place in the underworld of nightclubs and gangsters. It stars Cuban actress Ninón Sevilla.

This compilation is excerpted from Jim Johnston's guidebook Mexico City: An Opinionated Guide for the Curious Traveler.

A Visit to Don Otavio

catherine — Sat, 02 May 2009 20:11:30 -0700

"Here it is then, the heartland of Mexico, the oldest country in the New World, where Montezuma lived in flowered splendor among the volcanoes and lily-ponds and volcanoes of Tenochtitlan... where Cortes walked a year into the unknown, the blank unmeasured ranges of no return, with a bravery inconceivable in an age of doubt ..."
-- Sybille Bedford, A Visit to Don Otavio

When Sybille Bedford died earlier this year she left us with a genre classic; A Visit to Don Otavio (1953) is the witty and warm tale of her travels through Mexico.

What first appealed to me about this book was Bedford's wry tone. And I was intrigued by her independence. At the outset of her journey from New York in the 1940s, she and her companion make two large pink gins in their train compartment. They carry glasses in a leather case, fresh tomatoes, basil, a vial of olive oil, a pepper mill and "a shining limpid" Portuguese sparkling rosé -- all without the merest concern of raising eyebrows. That's the kind of woman I would love to roam with -- and adopt as a role model.

A German by birth, Bedford is accompanied by her ironic American friend Ester Murphy Arthur (referred to in the book only as E.) through what The New York Times called, in its review, "a still inscrutable country."

The two are welcomed as guests of Don Otavio at his grand family home on the banks of Lake Chapala in Jalisco. Otavio is an upper class gentleman struggling to retain his property and servants despite bankruptcy. Bedford spends a lot of time here, giving her the chance to absorb the pace of life and interact with her hosts in their daily lives.

When she does venture away, the author offers poignant observations of places such as Oaxaca, Queretero, Guanajuato, Taxco and Guadalajara. In Mexico City she is, "swept into rapids of doing, hooting, selling...the pavements are narrow and covered with fruit ... Now a parrot shrieks at one from an upper window, lottery tickets flutter in one's face... one's skirt clutched at by a baby."
Over the course of the book, the two women are robbed, made to wait endlessly, fed meaningless promises, witness a brutal act of cruelty on a bus in Michoacán and an attempted murder in Jalisco, but Bedford's composure and compassion remain intact.

I relish Bedford's ability to communicate endless misunderstandings so that they provoke reflection on cultural barriers rather than a snooty tittering at Mexican quirkiness. Toward the end of the book, Bedford takes ill and lets us smile at some of the local health lore: "I lit a candle, heated a spoon in the flame, and pressed it against my cheeks and forehead ... After an hour of this treatment I began to feel some slight relief."

Guadalupe came in. "What are you doing" she said. "Don't you know what a candle and spoon are for? You are not so ignorant. You must wait until you are alone and then you must light the candle and hold the spoon and say your prayers backwards."

Bedford's illness is eventually cured with penicillin, but there remains a mood of depression -- or to fit in more with the parlance of the times, a stultifying melancholy. This is also something I can relate to, after the exaltation of being immersed in the glories of other cultures and landscapes, there may come a time of embaras de richesse, and a temporary emptiness. After straining the boundaries of the self, one may feel numbed by a lack of response.

One reviewer refers to Bedford's "brisk sense of the absurd" which for me is a charming and generous trait that leaves me wondering at all our human follies.

There are many directions in which to take a reading of the book, but as a simple and entertaining chronicle of a foreigner's experience in Mexico, A Visit to Don Otavio is a rare gem, poised, vivacious and with a delicate and finely-tuned sense of humor.

Barbara Kastelein is a Mexico City based journalist, currently writing a book about the Acapulco cliff divers.

Elizabeth Catlett, rock of ages

catherine — Sat, 02 May 2009 13:20:50 -0700

If I had stayed in the States, I wouldn't have done this work," says Elizabeth Catlett from her perch atop a tall chair in the Cuernavaca studio where she sketches and molds, saws and sands to the music of Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and Pete Seeger. Dozens of sculptures in various stages of development surround her.

"This work" is a lifetime of printmaking and sculpting that explores African American social and political identity.

Catlett is one of the most celebrated American artists of the 20th century. She received the International Sculpture Center's lifetime achievement award in 2003, joining Louise Bourgeois, Christo and Jeane Claude, Claes Oldenberg and Robert Rauschenberg in a select community. Ten universities have distinguished her with honorary degrees.

Her work is in the collections of the Instituto de Bellas Artes and the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C, and the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

At 91, Catlett is still working, and even though carpal tunnel weakens her left hand -- years of wielding drills, chisels and chainsaws have taken a toll -- her mind remains a sharp and nimble tool.

The granddaughter of slaves who sent all eight of their children -- four boys and four girls -- on to higher education, Catlett wasn't even five years old when she started making paper dolls, outfitting them in swell wardrobes, and peddling them for five cents apiece. She graduated from Howard University with a B.S. in sculpture and was the first woman to complete an M.F.A. in sculpture at the University of Iowa where Grant Wood, who painted American Gothic, taught her to "work what you know."

Six years later, in 1946, she was working as a school administrator in New York. She'd made only one painting and one sculpture in a year when the Julius Rosenwald Foundation suggested that she should leave New York to jump start a stalled career. The foundation gave her a grant and Catlett packed her bags. She went south to learn from Mexico's great public artists Francisco Zuñiga, Diego Rivera, and David Siquieros. It never occurred to her that she would spend the rest of her life here.

"I arrived in Mexico City one night and the next evening I went to the Taller Grafica. I got dizzy from the altitude so we all went to a café. I met my future husband that night.

"There were a lot of us, all artists. Leopoldo Mendez, Pablo Higgins, Francisco ‘Pancho' Mora. Pablo said, ‘You should teach Pancho English, and he can teach you Spanish.' He never learned English," Catlett says with a twinkle in her eye.

The two didn't need English to fall in love. They were married 56 years, until Pancho died in 2002.

The couple had three sons together. The oldest is a musician living in New York. The middle son is a filmmaker in Mexico City. As Catlett talked about her life, her youngest son David, an artist who splits his time between Hamburg, Germany and Cuernavaca, floated in and out of the studio. At times, he would gently correct his mother's memory. "No mami, fue así..."

Catlett slips easily between Spanish and English. She took to Mexico and its pace that allowed time for reflection and for work.

"Mexico City was a calm, beautiful place. Not like it is now. It was a sunshiny, green, lovely city, where everything moved slowly. I realized this when one day I was standing on the corner talking to a friend and waiting for a bus. When the bus came, I said, ‘I've got to go.' But the friend said, ‘Don't worry, another bus will come along'."

But, her inspiration remains anchored, as Grant Wood suggested it should, in what she knows most intimately: her African American roots and what it means to be an African American woman. She carves worlds from African American history and the curves and angles of black women's bodies. She's a storyteller with a chisel in her hand. Catlett's work attempts to present both the particulars and universalities of black female identity so that they will be accessible to any viewer, and especially to other black women.

There's her simple, beautiful sculpture called Female Torso, fashioned from ebony stone polished to a high gloss. The figure has no arms, no head, no legs below the knee. It's all thighs, breasts, wide hips, stomach and shoulders. A less talented artist might have carved woman as exotic object. Catlett's long fingers shaped a substantial body that has borne children and inspired an artist. With a slight twist of the trunk, it's as much verb as noun. The sculpture is comforting, womanly, and creative in every sense of the word. Real life stories are in that piece.

At a show of her work at Hampton University in Virginia, an African American woman approached the artist and said, "I know what you are doing."

"What's that?" said Catlett.

"You are doing us."

"I have gradually reached the conclusion that art is important only to the extent that it helps in the liberation of our people," she once said.

When I comment on the inclusive humanity that emanates from her work she says, "That is what I try to do."

Sleuthing the city with Paco Ignacio Taibo II

sue-ellen — Fri, 01 May 2009 15:47:58 -0700

Paco Ignacio Taibo II is not only Latin America’s foremost detective writer; over the years he has also been a political activist, journalist, and university professor. His detective novels read like an ode to his beloved Mexico City, but he was actually born in Gijon, Spain in 1949, and emigrated here as a young boy.

Paco Ignacio looks exactly as you might expect a detective writer to look. Sitting at a desk piled with books, overflowing ashtrays and half-finished bottles of Coke, he runs a hand through his mop of wild, thick hair, rubs his eyes, lights another cigarette and begins to reminisce.

“My first perception was that it was the end of the world,” he muses. “A journey of 28 days in a boat is like the end of the world for a boy of 8. It was like going to colonize Mars,” he says of the 1958 voyage that took him and his family from Bilbao to Veracruz via New York and Havana.

“The journey was full of surprises… everything was different, people even talked differently,” he recalls. “On the other hand, my sentimental education had prepared me for it, as I was forever reading adventure books.” A passionate reader, he devoured books from an early age, nurturing his childhood dreams of becoming a writer. “I knew I wanted to be a writer from age 5… along with being a trapeze artist and a fireman!", he chuckles, twisting the ends of his bushy grey-streaked moustache.

Taibo’s fondness for revolutionary heroes was piqued during this early epic journey. He remembers going with his father to listen to the ship’s radio for reports from the revolution in Cuba. “The captain remarked that it was strange that the battle was taking place in Cuba but the man on the radio seemed to have an Argentine accent,” he recounts. Perhaps this was the moment when the seeds for his biography of Che Guevara were sown.

Paco Ignacio’s father, writer and journalist Paco Ignacio Taibo I, and other members of his family supported the Republicans during the war in Spain. They were part of a generation of intellectuals who fled Franco’s Spain and would greatly enrich the cultural life of Mexico. Drawing on their experiences, Paco Ignacio’s latest novel, De Paso, is about an exiled Spanish anarchist who finds himself in Mexico in the early 20th century.

“I work at night and sleep in the mornings, and as you can see the phone rings constantly... maybe this is why I work at night,” he speculates. “Also with so many of my books being published in so many countries I am obliged to travel a lot.” Unlike many writers, he doesn’t adhere to a routine. “I write when I want and as much as I want when I can. I write here at my desk and in hotels and in trains and planes. Basically everywhere I can.”

Although he has produced books in several genres, he is best known for his series of novels featuring the hard-bitten detective Hector Belascoarán Shayne (so named because of the character’s Irish mother). Widely regarded as the inventor of the neo-detective genre in Latin America, his books have been published in 29 countries. Among many awards, he is the only three-time winner of the International Dashiel Hammett prize, given by the International Association of Crime Writers.

It's hard to believe that this straight-talking man would ever have trouble expressing himself on any topic, but ones of his reasons for choosing the detective genre was to write social novels without having to pen a straightforward social commentary. "Detective novels depict reality tinged with the grotesque, with magic and with a strong social burden, which is inevitable because in Latin America the essence of crime is the state."

His detective wanders the back streets of Mexico City much as Paco Ignacio often does, and in these books the city -- loved, hated, feared and worshipped -- is as much a protagoniste as any of the character. "Mexico City was a great discovery for me...I have a dual perception of the city as a monster and a love," he says. "I invent a lot in my novels, but I never invent the city; the city is real."

"I love the crowds, the hurly-burly and the chaos of the center of the city, the area around the Zócalo. It puts me in a good mood when I get off the metro there."

As the child of immigrants, does he regard himself as Mexican or Spanish? A "nice mixture" of the two, he decides: "Of course I am very, very Mexican, but when I am back in Spain for three months each year for [the crime fiction festival he organizes in Gijon], I also feel at home.

Many of Paco Ignacio Taibo II's novels have been published in English and can be found online at www.powells.com and www.amazon.com.

Hardly pedestrian: art for the people

sue-ellen — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:40:43 -0700

For a city of multitudes and mass transit, why not dance recitals in the Metro, outdoor film screenings projected onto buildings, and a photo mural compromised of pictures-by-celular?

Starting May 16, 2008 and running through September 2008, the festival Peotonal (which means “pedestrian”) will cast Mexico City’s public spotlight on politics and contemporary art. Artists, curators, researchers and academics will facilitate cultural interactions with ordinary citizens through debates and outdoor exhibits.

“We want to show that art can be used outside the museums, for other things such as political action, …to create participation, [and] promote aesthetic attitudes in everyday life,” says Carlos Prieto, the festival’s art director.

One element of the festival, Ruta Crítica Metropolitana, functions as a discussion forum about public spaces, art, and communication. Periferia presents contemporary art exhibits and manifestations in public locales throughout the DF. One display, by Mexican artist Iker Vicente, is a wall built out of left over material from the city’s construction sites. It will stand next to the Cabeza de Juárez monument in Iztapalapa, one of the city’s poorest and most populated areas.

The goal, says Prieto, is to provoke an examination of “the notion of nation and ideology, and the official relationship between art and politics.” Other highlights include: Moverse en la ciudad, a massive mural made of photos taken with cell phone cameras; Danza-minuto, the Metro dance performances; and Escucharte, a multimedia mural made of videos showing people expressing their opinions on art and culture in the city.

For more information, please visit www.cultura.df.gob.mx/peotonal

Focusing on water warriors

sue-ellen — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:36:03 -0700

The struggle for water has united many pueblos in Morelos, and the results, including roadblocks and clashes with police, are depicted in a new documentary by Cuernavaca director Francesco Taboada Tabone, titled 13 Pueblos en Defensa del Agua, El Aire y La Tierra. Photographer Fernanda Robinson and biologist Atahualpa Caldera also worked on the film, which was produced by the UNAM.

“At the heart of the matter is a battle for water and against pollution and the loss of agricultural lands,” explains Taboada, whose hour-long film premiered in Cuernavaca in March. The documentary, in Spanish and Nahuatl, opens with the observation that “in the future, wars will not be fought for oil but for water. In Mexico, that war has begun.” The film closes with references to the revolutionary struggle of Emiliano Zapata. Says one man: “We would rather die fighting than be killed through lack of water.”

The coalition of thirteen communities in Cuernavaca and neighboring municipalities arose through opposition to the construction of thousands of homes in the suburb of Emiliano Zapata. Opponents fear depletion and contamination of the Chihuahuita spring, which supplies many communities including Xoxocotla. The film shows last year’s roadside demonstrations: tear gas wafting amid protesters, an overturned vehicle in flames, and people being arrested by baton-wielding police. In August a court put the housing project on hold.

Another coalition goal is to prevent establishment of a landfill in Loma de Mejía in Cuernavaca, and the documentary shows people in Temixco blocking a road to the nearby site. Taboada lets the participants tell the story, contrasting statements by officials and opponents. Cuernavaca Mayor Jesús Giles is shown at a meeting in a church stating that no crops are grown in the landfill area, but local resident Eleazar Vargas is seen before a stand of green corn stalks, shucking an ear.

The group has called for recycling programs to reduce garbage, and has proposed that area barrancas (ravines), some with popular swimming holes and endemic fish, be declared natural protected areas. It is noted that a 1937 federal decree declared Cuernavaca a protected forested zone.

Taboada’s previous work includes the documentary The Last Zapatistas, Forgotten Heroes, featuring first-hand accounts by veterans of the Mexican Revolution.

The DVD can be purchased for $100 pesos at La Rana Sabia bookstore, Rayón 22, in downtown Cuernavaca. It is also available for $80 pesos through www.franciscovilla.com.mx, or by sending a message to Francesco@ franciscovilla.com.mx. Showings are planned in Mexico City. Additional information is available at www.13pueblos.blogspot.com.

Mexico 5-7-5

sue-ellen — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 06:11:57 -0700

The gringo haiku of the San Miguel School, as offered here, evolved from the needs of displaced expatriates to express their love for – and confusion about – their adopted land. Written in a big hurry, primarily in English, these evocative verses are flavored by the occasional Spanish word: margarita¹, caramba², plomero³. The traditional form of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five -- or as we say in these parts, cinco, siete, cinco—has been retained.

From its inception in Japan in the 12th century, the sensory aspect of haiku has been a central element. The scent of plum blossoms; blackbirds against a night sky; a wilting chrysanthemum: each conveys a world of
meaning.

The gringo haiku, on the other hand, relies for its sensory palette on the aroma of carnitas or packs of street dogs. To give a sense of place, Mt. Fuji or a still pond finds its gringo haiku equivalent in the Instituto or potholes.

The traditional “season word,” or kigo, of Japanese haiku – clouds to connote summer, for example, or fog to herald fall — might be represented in gringo haiku by scorpions or drought. Attention is also paid to the spoken sound of haiku, though even the most gifted gringo haiku poets find it challenging to convey in short form the soundscape that emerges from the confluence of church bells, fireworks, and crowing roosters.

It is also worth noting that true Mexican haiku is a fairly new development. Only recently has brevity been a factor in this proud civilization with its ancient mañana culture. The need to accommodate the arrival of the time-challenged gringo has forced a change in the old ways, leading to the rise of latino haiku, as well as the frozen taco. We had hoped to offer examples of haiku in español, in particular from the venerated Cantinflas school, but our grasp of the language proved inadequate to the task of translation.

In San Miguel you
never know for whom the bell
tolls—or why, or when.

***

Carnelian sun slants
on red tiled roofs. I wonder
what it will sell for.

***

Hot street fajitas,
tacos, carnitas. Dónde
está el baño?

***

Warm starlit evenings
through haze of vino blanco.
Ah, the golden years.

***

Drenching rains call forth
night blooming jasmine and a
touch of arthritis.

***

Bored mariachis
serenade beguiled tourists.
“La Bamba,” again?

***

On jardín benches
a row of stooped geezers eyes
the brown-eyed chicas.

***

Juan, Lupe, Miguel,
Jesús, María, José.
Good saints and neighbors.

***

On Vonage wings and
wireless internet I reach out
to the old country.

***

Colorful lace fans
flutter in unison to
ward off hot flashes.

***

Salt or no salt? Ice?
My mind spins just ordering
un margarita.

***

Painting, dance, drama,
music, poetry, mime. Are
all gringos artists?

***

Rain glistens on the
cobbled streets and the arm slings
of fallen women.

***

At Bellas Artes
I practice ancient art form.
No, not flamenco. Yoga!

***

Pale blooms sway on dark
stalks. Ah! With glasses I see
white heads bent over canes.

***

Mama, mañana,
cabaña, bandana. Who
needs Warren Hardy?

***

Wild untamed energy
no match for proud leashed force.
Street dog meets Fifi.

***

So, who does your hair?
And where did you buy that couch?
The timeless questions.

***

Pot belly? Ni modo.
No hair, who cares? San Miguel
bachelor: Priceless.

***

Dancing Aztecs, saints
and locos. Qué pasa? Just
today’s procession.

***

This place where fireworks
are prayers to heaven must surely
be heaven on earth.

__________________________________________

1 Tequila-based native drink. Schools of thought differ as to the addition of salt, ice, and lime.

2 Roughly equivalent to “yikes!”

3 Plumber.

__________________________________________

Leah Feldon and Lulu Torbet have lived in San Miguel only a short time, and are still consumed with finding patio furniture. They soon expect to move on to limericks, and then sonnets. In the old country they wrote many long books. Gringo Haiku: The Unabridged San Miguel Edition is available in many San Miguel de Allende shops for $100 pesos, or by ordering it from the authors for $120 pesos at lulutorbet@aol.com.

Bobby McFerrin: vocal technique at its best

sue-ellen — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:27:18 -0700

Bobby McFerrin stole the show from all the other music acts in town in February, 2008. The son of an opera singer and an orchestra conductor, and a trained pianist himself, McFerrin performs all pieces himself: his musical instrument is his voice, unlike conventional singers who are trained to shape melody with words.

The human voice was the first musical instrument ever played, when people started imitating animal calls and the sounds of nature such as rain and wind. It was later that carved flutes and whistles, the first melodic instruments, came into being. Strings followed, and melodic percussion instruments like marimbas and keyboards came last.

McFerrin has learned our ancestors’ way of making music vocally and has followed music’s evolutionary trail all the way to modernity. His work spans different historic periods, geographies, and vocal techniques, including Baroque breathing like that of a classical singer performing Handel or Bach; African American funk and jazz scat; blues and Caribbean folk phrasing; and Asian and African religious chants.

McFerrin’s recordings have sold twenty million copies, and he has ten Grammy awards to his credit. He has performed with jazz greats like pianists Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock; trumpeter Wynton Marsalis; and singers The Manhattan Transfer, as well as classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma; actor Robin Williams; and many others. McFerrin has also conducted orchestras in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and London.

His most famous piece, the upbeat “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”, was a number one hit on the pop charts in 1988, and won Record of the Year and Song of the Year at the Grammys.

Bobby McFerrin performed at Bellas Artes in Mexico City on February 14, 2008. The author is a soprano, jazz and samba singer, linguist, and symphonic castanets player.

Fighting their way to the big screen

sue-ellen — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:58:55 -0700

Translated by Michael Parker-Stainback.

Optimists will tell you that Mexican cinema is experiencing a new golden age: consider all the Mexican cinema-folk you've seen accepting awards at Sundance, Cannes, and the Oscars in the last year. IMCINE, the Mexican Institute of Cinematography, enthusiastically notes that film production grows annually, with over sixty films being made in each of the last two years. Film production even comes with the Mexican constitution's blessing: Article 226, approved in 2006, stimulates private investment in the industry.

That's the optimistic picture: unfortunately, getting independent Mexican films -- ones produced outside the big studio system, albeit sometimes with government funding -- into Mexican theatres often remains an ordeal.

Take one: Two Mexican films won big at the 49th Ariel Awards (the Mexican Academy of Cinematography's prizes for the best films of the year), even though they'd barely been seen. Ignacio Ortiz's Mezcal and Felipe Cazals's Las Vueltas del Citrillo received six awards each in the March 2006 ceremony. The media noted that the films had played at the Guadalajara International Film Festival, but had never been released commercially. Eight months later, Cazals's film made it into thirteen theatres, but was pulled after only four weeks. A full year after Cazals's critical success, his film still hadn't made it to a commercial movie screen.

Take two: They returned triumphant. Internationally acclaimed filmmakers Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro were presenters at the 2007 Ariel awards show. The image of the three successful directors sent a strong message that Mexican cinema was back. The message was backed up by the passage of Article 226, which stimulates private-capital investment in cinema through tax breaks. It was great news: it is estimated that Article 226 will foment the production of up to eighty films a year in the first five years.

IMCINE reported that 63 Mexican films were produced in 2006, a number not seen since the 1970s. Pan's Labyrinth was the big winner at the Ariels, snagging nine statuettes in ‘06. Notably, 90% of its financing came from Spain, despite the Academy's own regulations stipulating that for a film to be considered Mexican, 70%of its financing must be domestic.

So where are all the truly Mexican movies? Guillermo del Toro began pointing fingers in public, accusing cowardly distributors of disfavoring Mexican films. He saw El Violín as a perfect example. The film received over thirty international recognitions and stayed on marquees for three months in France. Twelve other nations acquired immediate distribution rights, but not one Mexican distributor did so. Ultimately it was left to Canana Films, (the production company owned by Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, and Pablo Cruz), with Del Toro's help, to facilitate domestic distribution.

Movies? What movies?

Distributors and exhibitors are only interested in films that earn big returns at the box-office, so it takes considerable time for an independent film like Mezcal to find a distributor. And even though Article 226 will help increase film production, how many of those movies will actually make it to theatres?

Víctor Ugalde knows this all too well. As Technical Secretary for the Cinema Investment and Stimulus Fund (Fidecine), he knows the numbers like few others in the industry. His desk is piled high with reports: attendance figures, production diaries -- even an annotated copy of the North American Free-Trade Agreement.

He says: "Films are dying in the theatres. If a picture doesn't earn back its theatre-rental fees in the first week, it's pulled and another goes in."

A typical year was 2006: of the 63 Mexican films released that year, only 13 stayed in theatres for more than ten weeks.

Even domestically and internationally acclaimed films like Sangre and Las Vueltas del Citrillo only lasted two weeks in ten theatres, and four weeks in thirteen, respectively.

Una Película de Huevos earned the biggest box office success. Nearly four million saw the animated feature, earning it a box-office take of $142,335,000 pesos, seconded by Cansada de Besar Sapos, which earned nearly ten times less with $1,636,000 pesos in just six weeks' distribution.

This trend continued in 2007. The release of Ricardo Benet's Noticias Lejanas, which took prizes at Mar del Plata, Biarritz, Vancouver, Guadalajara and not least of all the Arieles, was barely seen. It was in theatres for three weeks. Meanwhile, Fernando Sariñana's Niñas Mal, produced by Warner Bros. Mexico, reported box-office earnings of nearly $2 million pesos during the first four weeks.

"Niñas Mal is the kind of picture the public wants to see," Ignacio Ortiz laments. "And these are the movies with backing from the six big distributors that dominate nearly 90% of Mexican screens: Warner Bros., 20th Century-Fox, Sony-Columbia, United International Pictures, and BuenaVista International." distribution is a problem. There are plenty of important pictures to be screened, but the channels for many smaller Mexican films remain blocked.

IMCINE director Marina Stavenhagen admits distribution is a problem. There are plenty of important pictures to be screened, but the channels for many smaller Mexican films remain blocked.

Distribution Hell

Mexico has the fifth-highest movie attendance in the world, with an annual average of 165 million tickets sold, but until the system changes, producers will have to look for alternatives to overcome market-based disadvantages.

As Javier Romandía, producer of internationally acclaimed films such as Carlos Reygadas's Japón, Batalla en el Cielo, and Luz Silenciosa -- as well as the above-mentioned Sangre -- notes, "Making movies as a business doesn't exist in Mexico."

Mantarraya Films approaches things differently. Romandía devised a business plan that works outside Mexico. "We've made very profitable films. They sell well in other countries, especially to European television networks that have the money to support them."

Mantarraya Films don't cost more than one million dollars; with this modest budget, they earn back their costs. For the situation to change, Romandía says, and for there to be a film industry here like the one in Europe, a market separate from Hollywood films must be created.

Ugalde mentions legislative initiatives that have been sent to Congress, and the gains netted by Decine, one of the first independent Mexican distributors and producers.

"The presence of Decine is fortuitous since it's broken up a tacit agreement among the six distributors, who charged 25 percent or more in distribution fees and didn't offer advances. When Decine (headed by American expat Richard Ham) came along-with six films ready for simultaneous distribution -- it meant distribution fees were lowered from between 25 and 30% to between 17 and 19%. Distribution advances were also a possibility for the best films and this was a tremendous benefi t to film producers."

So Mexican films make it to the most important international film festivals, but then only get a week or two in Mexican theatres -- often after waiting years for distribution. In spite of increased production, a financial model that favors distributors and exhibitors currently hinders the industry at home.

Dulce Colín writes about culture and technology's influence on society. She can be reached at dulce.colin@gmail.com.

Nazi connections in Mexico enabled Trotsky's assassination

sue-ellen — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:12:46 -0700

Juan Alberto Cedillo stumbled upon a surprising piece of information in 1986, while conducting research in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.: Nazi secret police had collaborated with Stalin’s men to assassinate Leon Trotsky in Coyoacán, Mexico City. He began to wonder: just how active were the Nazis in Mexico in the period leading up to and during World War II? The answer, it turns out, is “very.” Last year Cedillo published a fascinating book on the subject (Los Nazis en México, Debate, 2007). Though the book has not been published in English, Inside México has translated and condensed the epilogue, which relates the bizarre plot to bump off Trotsky. If you read Spanish, we recommend the entire book.

On August 20 1940, Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City. His murder was planned by a special Soviet intelligence unit created to eliminate Stalin’s enemies abroad.

The Mexican secret service, aware of what was transpiring, didn’t merely complicate the operation; it caused the Russian agents to modify their plans. The Soviet operation had to call on new allies to help carry out its mission. Russian agents approached both the Gestapo [Nazi secret police] and the Abwehr [the German intelligence agency between 1921-1944], whose operatives circulated freely in Mexico City, cloaked by associations forged in corridors of power and money. Nazi agents were key to the Russian revolutionary’s murder.

One year before Trotsky’s death, on August 23, 1939, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and his Soviet counterpart, Vyacheslav Molotov, signed the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. The pact brought both countries’ overseas agents closer together and allowed for the exchange of classified dispatches. By April 1940, the American embassy in Mexico had confirmed the existence of this undesirable alliance to Washington.

The principal source for information sent to Washington was world-renowned muralist Diego Rivera, who with a team of thirty agents, gathered information for US intelligence officials.

The artist collaborated with Washington diplomats for nearly six months, during which he delivered information about former Communist comrades and the alliance they forged with Nazi agents.

For Rivera, links between Stalin’s and Hitler’s agents constituted a worse threat than the United States, motivating him to collaborate with “imperialism’s representatives.”

Rivera’s connection with the Americans began at the end of 1939, after he convened a press conference in which he denounced various Mexican politicians, accusing them of collaboration with Soviet agents that had entered Mexico at the end of the Spanish Civil War.

Soon afterward, Rivera met with an American operative and delivered a list naming fifty Mexican Communist Party (PCM) members firmly installed in President Lázaro Cárdenas’s government.

The US diplomat who established contact with Rivera was Robert McGregor. In their interviews, the artist insisted Mexican Communist Party leaders and Nazi agents were collaborating, statements that the American intelligence community accepted with skepticism.

Time would pass before the information Rivera had delivered would be confirmed. His accusations regarding the arrival in Mexico of “Stalin’s thugs”, there to assassinate Trotsky, were not verified until 1994, when Pavel Sudoplatov, director of the KGB’s Foreign Intelligence service, published his memoirs. In them, he confesses that “[he] was the author of Trotsky’s murder,” and recounts the moment Stalin ordered “Operation Pato” (“Operation Duck”), the name Moscow used to identify the crime that ended the exiled leader’s life.

Towards the end of 1938, Stalin called Sudoplatov and Laurentis Beria, Interior Minister and head of the Soviet security apparatus, and informed them that “without Trotsky’s elimination […]we won’t be able to trust our allies in the international Communist movement when the Imperialists attack the Soviet Union. If they have to worry about Trotskyite infiltrations in their ranks, their international role of destabilizing the enemy’s rear guard through sabotage and guerilla warfare will face major impediments.” Beria and Sudoplatov began to plan their crime immediately.

The team put together by Sudoplatov was led by Alexander Mikhailovich Orlov and Leonidas Eitingon. Orlov, a ferocious assassin, was Beria’s righthand man, whereas Eitingon was a personal friend of Sudoplatov. Eitingon’s mistress in Spain was Caridad Mercader, mother of Trotsky’s ultimate assassin, Ramón Mercader.

Eitingon and Sudoplatov decided to leave Orlov out of their anti-Trotsky plans. They argued to Beria that Latin American agents with no connection to anti-Trotsky activity should be used in order to eliminate obvious suspicions.

Eitingon selected collaborators in Spain that he then sent to Mexico. Eitingon also entered into contact with a group of Mexicans who had participated in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, and who publicly professed their disdain for President Lázaro Cárdenas and his offer of asylum to Leon Trotsky. The Mexican brigade, led by noted painter David Alfaro Siqueiros, was furious and felt that with Trotsky’s arrival in Mexico, its efforts in the Spanish Civil War were “devalued and practically ignored by Communists.” In addition, Stalin was the leader of international Communism, and it was a revolutionary duty to stay at his side.

In 1939, Sudoplatov and Eitingon reviewed the teams that would participate in the Coyoacán attack. A task force composed of Mexican nationals was under Siqueiros’ command. Ramón Mercader was chosen to infiltrate the Trotskyite network as a spy. Joseph Grigulevich, leader of a third section, was to make contact with Robert Sheldon Harte, one of Trotsky’s guards.

Eitingon requested $300,000 from Moscow and set up an import-export business in Brooklyn, New York, to cover his real activities and distribute money to his agents. Caridad and Ramón Mercader accompanied Eitingon to New York. The FBI documented that a former Mexican ambassador, Narciso Bassols, covered for Ramón and made sure he encountered no problems during his move to Mexico.

Eitingon and Caridad traveled to Mexico in September 1939 to oversee David Alfaro Siqueiros’ activities. It was first imagined that the group would approach from the rear and seize the Coyoacán house, but this plan—which had also entailed the use of boats on the nearby Churubusco River—was quickly discarded. The final plan was pulled together just days before the assassination attempt.

On May 24, 1940, automobiles pulled up to Trotsky’s house. They contained Siqueiros, […]Grigulevich and nearly twenty accomplices. Days before, two young female Communists, Julia Barrados and Anita López, were hired to create a diversion with the police officers posted outside the house. The women lived a few blocks from the Trotsky compound and that night they organized a party that various officers attended. Notably, the orchestrators of this exceedingly high-profile crime were able to involve numerous indirect participants by telling them that they would not kill Trotsky, but only sought to steal his papers.

Siqueiros wore a military overcoat as well as an enormous false moustache that made his co-conspirators laugh.

Around 4a.m. the group cut the compound’s power and telephone lines. Grigulevich knocked on the door and the bodyguard Harte appeared. Ramón Mercader had required little time to “make friends” with Harte; a few drunken sprees and nights with prostitutes, courtesy of Operation Pato, had sufficed. As the compound’s gates were opened, the group’s leader fired on the guardhouse. Then Siqueiros and a smaller group headed towards the room where Trotsky and Natalia were sleeping, stood before the windows, and opened fire. Upon hearing the shots, the couple hid beneath their bed. Police reported that the room was scarred by some 73 shots. However, the group didn’t dare enter, as the door was equipped with a firearm that would shoot anyone trying to pass.

During their getaway, the would-be-assassins deployed two incendiary bombs and left behind another device loaded with 1.5 kilos of dynamite, which failed to explode. They escaped in vehicles parked in the compound, one driven by Sheldon Harte, whose body was found by the police weeks later. Many of those familiar with the case, including Trotsky himself, wondered why Harte was killed when evidence existed that proved he was not compelled but instead voluntarily collaborated in the attempted murder. Sudoplatov confessed that the group decided to kill Harte because he knew Grigulevich, the only foreigner who had participated in the attempt, whose presence indicated that the crime had been orchestrated from Moscow.

The attempted assassination left no damage in its wake other than slight wounds to Trotsky’s grandson. Months of work, thousands of dollars, and a tremendous number of Soviet intelligence resources went up in smoke as a result of the rag-tag assassins’ inexperience. Siqueiros’ group left a great deal of evidence behind, jeopardizing the entire Soviet network.

Leonidas Eitingon sent a failure report to Moscow and reported that an alternate plan was in place. Ramón Mercader would approach Trotsky and replicate a crime committed by an agent who had carried a steel rod beneath his clothing, that he used to brain a Soviet ambassador. When Eitingon and Caridad Mercader let Ramón in on the plan, he suggested an ice axe, as it would also help him scale walls.

The new plan faced complications owing to denunciations Trotsky was publishing in the Mexican press that described the attack’s participants with precision, accusing Siqueiros of being its principal orchestrator. Trotsky persisted in his denunciations, publishing an article in which he accused Stalin’s assassins of receiving aid from German agents. He was right: US intelligence services discovered that Nazi spies were working within Communist organizations. Not only had they helped in previous operations, their support would be essential if Trotsky were to be eliminated. The Mexican secret service had become Russia’s principal impediment, but their new Nazi allies maintained numerous connections to Mexican agents and offi cials.

Mexican labor leader Vicente Lombardo Toledano established contact and coordinated meetings between Dr. Christian Zinsser (a high-placed Gestapo official who had served in Guatemala and Argentina) and members of the Mexican government, as well as key players in the conspiracy that culminated in Trotsky’s death.

Zinsser brought photographer Hermann Frederick Erben, a special agent operating in the United States, to Mexico. Erben quickly became one of the Führer’s most important American operatives; one of his principal missions was to expand the German espionage network, and it was he who recruited Errol Flynn as a Nazi agent.

Erben began to collaborate immediately with the Gestapo and with Moscow’s agents. He was to establish a residence in the south of Mexico City, less than three blocks from [Trotsky’s] Coyoacán compound; from there Nazis observed Trotsky and supervised his assassination.

The preparations for the murder included taking numerous photographs of the Viena Street house. The captured images, some perhaps taken by Erben, can be seen in the KGB archives. The photos present an album of the exile’s life with its barriers and bodyguards, as well as images of Trotsky stroking his dog, watering his plants, or sipping tea with friends. It is Trotsky’s intimate life exposed, with the house seen from every possible angle.

There are numerous people who deny Nazi involvement in Trotsky’s assassination. Nevertheless, the Austrian journalist Rudolph Stoiber, in preparation for his book Alibi: The Making of an Uncommon Spy, was able to interview Frederick Erben in 1983. The ex-Nazi agent boasted of knowing all about the murder’s preparation.

The final attack was planned for August 20, 1940. That day, Eitingon and Caridad Mercader escorted Ramón’s car as he left his residence. He had sewn a dagger and an ice axe into the lining of his coat; one of its pockets held a revolver and some writings that Trotsky was supposedly to revise. In another pocket was a letter that declared—in the case of a failed escape—that he had attempted the murder because Trotsky had compelled him to participate in a terrorist network seeking to assassinate Stalin.

When Mercader unleashed the ice ax against the old general’s head, the victim let forth a cry that summoned his guards. A few blocks away, the assassin’s mother and her lover awaited him, and they grew alarmed at the screech of sirens that approached at full speed. The sight of her bleeding son, escorted by Trotsky’s bodyguards, upset Caridad, and Eitingon thought they’d failed again. The lovers set out for Veracruz, where they planned to travel on to Havana: only after they found out the plan had worked did they travel to Moscow. Caridad received a medal of honor in her son’s name, personally delivered by Stalin.

Caridad and Eitingon returned to Mexico to free Ramón Mercader from prison. The operation to rescue Trotsky’s assassin cost nearly twenty thousand dollars, used to buy off the government and prison offi cials who would allow Ramón’s escape.

Leonidas Eitingon was obliged to suspend his activities and return to the United States, where he was charged with dispatching information of vital interest to Moscow: secrets regarding the construction of the atomic bomb, which were delivered to him by Manhattan Project scientists Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Leo Szilard. These builders of the first nuclear weapon believed the Germans would produce an atomic bomb before anyone else; for this reason, and because they understood the threat posed by such a bomb in the hands of just one nation, they shared their research with the Soviets.

After Trotsky’s murder, Leonidas Eitingon became the principal link in secret communiqués to Moscow regarding the Manhattan Project. One route for sending documents to Russia was through Mexico. In fact, the Soviet Union opened its Mexican embassy on 12 June 1943 with the purpose of providing legal cover to the “atomic spies” and the agents who sought to extract Ramón Mercader from Lecumberri prison.

The preparations for Trotsky’s murder were never known to Diego Rivera, in spite of the fact that several years later—when he attempted to rejoin the Communist Party—the painter loudly boasted that his request to offer political asylum to the Red Army’s founder was part of the scheme that ultimately ended the general’s life. Politically speaking, Diego Rivera was never taken seriously by his comrades, owing to his temperamental nature and his inconsistencies, perhaps the greatest of was becoming an informant on Communist activities for Washington, a turn of events that could be considered a betrayal of his leftist ideals. Ultimately, Diego Rivera was right: the Nazi-Soviet alliance, which he accused of numerous operations in Mexico, represented a tremendous threat, one later confirmed both by Nazi atrocities as well as Stalin’s purges and mass murders.

Excerpted from "Los Nazis en México" by Juan Alberto Cedillo, Mexico City: Random House Mondadori, 2007. (Translated and abridged by Michael Parker-Stainback.)

Gritty in the city: DF design scene is hot, says NY Times

margot — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:25:58 -0700

Alexis Okeowo, for the New York Times' The Moment blog comments on Mexico City's vibrant design scene, and its many inspirations, including the environment.

She writes:

"The grittiness of Mexico City, coupled with a cheap, overwhelming abundance of materials, is helping to create a vibrant design scene there. And surprisingly for a megalopolis, it’s not all against nature. 'We’re trying to go down all the way to the forest where the wood comes from,' says Emiliano Godoy, who with his partner, Alejandro Castro, runs PIRWI, a sustainable-furniture firm in Mexico City. 'The city is huge and densely populated with a lot of environmental problems. You can feel that every day and see how things need to be negotiated.'"

Read the full article at http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/in-gritty-mexico-city-a-design-boom/

Artist Close-Up, with George Miller, "Love of photography"

Shauna — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:13:15 -0700

Mexican-Jewish life through a lens

catherine — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:33:34 -0700

Small as the Mexican-Jewish community is, Mexican-Jewish film production is even smaller. But filmmakers believe that those Jewish films that are being made -- seven to date -- are helping to create understanding and acceptance byopening a window on to what has typically been an insular community.

"Many different minority groups live in Mexico but they don't know eachvother very well. We want to create a country that is more open, more tolerant,"says Aron Margolis, a Mexican who studied film in California and director ofMexico's International Jewish Film Festival.

The Jewish Film Festival, which showcases movies with Jewish themes from around the world, celebrates its seventh year in 2009 and will run from October22 to December 2, starting in Mexico City and then moving on to Guadalajara, Monterrey, and Cancún.

"I think film is a very powerful medium in the way that it can movepeople and teach them about worlds that are unknown to them," Margolis says."There are lots of prejudices in Mexico about the Jewish community, and the festival allows people to see that being Jewish is not something black and white, that there are shades of grey."

"The festival allows us to invite the Mexican community into our homes and allows them to get to know our families," he continues, pointing out that the festival audience is only around 50% Jewish, indicating much wider interest than simply from within Mexico's Jewish community.

In two of the most recent Mexican-Jewish films to hit theatres, family plays an important role. In both, a death in the family brings relatives together to set the scene for the filmmakers to show traditional rituals andthe playing out of family dynamics and dark secrets.

Director Alejandro Springall's 2007 film Morirse Está En Hebreo (English title:My Mexican Shiva) deals with the seven-day Shiva, or mourning period,and the familial chaos that ensues after family patriarch Moishe collapses and dies during a party.

"Morirse is a great film in that it shows a mixture ofJewish-ness and Mexican-ness that is particular to this country," says Margolis, pointing to the example of dishes such as gefilte fish a la veracruzana.

But such films can also be seen as problematic by the Jewish community here. Sandro Helphen, director of the documentary Ocho Candelas and director of development at Goliat Films in Mexico City, says "[We] have had a lot of issues with the community because of the types of movies we have been making." Goliat Films has so far produced the Mexican-Jewish films Morirse, OchoCandelas, and El Brindis (a co-production with Chile), although Helphen says their intention is not to confine themselves to films with Jewish themes.

Halphen's documentary Ocho Candelas looks at the lives of Mexicans who have converted to Judaism (a total of some 3,000 over the last thirty years) ina small community in the state of Veracruz. The film captures the Jewish community's rejection of these "conversos," and the sadness it causes to the people who have taken on the religion and way of life.

Of Springall's film, Halphen says, "Morirse seemed to [some]to be making fun of the Jewish community, which in my view is nonsense. But interestingly enough, audiences in non-Jewish communities grew and grew as word about the film spread."

"I think there is a significant difference between what the Jewish community perceives people think about them and what the reality is," he notes.

As the success of Morirse suggests, acceptance of Jewish films as part of mainstream Mexican cinema is growing. At last year's Morelia International Film Festival, the feature Cinco Días Sin Nora by first-time director Mariana Chenillo won the public prize in the feature film section.

Bearing some resemblance to Morirse, Cinco Días is a tragicomedy that deals with the aftermath of the death of Nora. Before taking her own life, she devises a careful plan to make her ex-husband José take care of her funeral and to bring her family together for a Passover meal.

But Nora's tidy scheme, planned to the last detail with Post-It notes, food deliveries, and visiting relatives, does not allow for the fact that life is messy and difficult to control, especially when you are no longer around to keep your secrets.

Much of the film's humor comes from the superb Fernando Luján, in the role of bitter ex-husband and anti-religionist José. His deliberate mischiefmaking -- offering a ham and chorizo pizza to the rabbi or stacking the livingroom with gaudy Catholic trappings-- is malicious, but performed with such glee that you can't help but smile.

Both Cinco Días and Morirse deal with the clash of religions experienced by wealthier Jewish families who inevitably have Catholic Mexican staff working in their houses. In the latter film, the maids are intrigued by the goings-on, watching with a mixture of curiosity, amusement, and even bafflement when the mistress of the house is angered by a cheese and meat plate the maids prepared for guests.

"It's a sin," she says, throwing the offending plate in the bin. "It's a sin to throw away food," shoots back the young servant girl.

Quotidian incongruities like these inspire the dark humor of contemporary Mexican-Jewish filmmakers, who in turn are capturing larger and more diverse audiences and shattering another stereotype.

"Out of those seven Mexican-Jewish films... only one deals with the Holocaust," says Halphen. "And that's important too, because I think people should divest themselves of the notion that all Jewish films are Holocaust-related."

'Barb'-arians at the gate

catherine — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:56:08 -0700

Backed by Mattel,the Museo Franz Mayer put on quite an opening last month. Layers of velvet ropes and security guards opened to edecanes and splashy video projections. Two Miss Mexicos and designer Zhandra Rhodes (all three sportingtitty pink) roamed about, as bottomless flutes of pink champagne floated through the halls of Mexico City's esteemed applied arts museum.

Most notable,however, were the hundreds of attendees--more than I'd ever seen at an "art"opening. The blockbuster? A celebration of Barbie-that perennially well-dressed bit of extruded plastic-on the fiftieth anniversary of her remarkable commercial debut.

The wait to see the dolls approached an hour, as formidable señoras, children, a young gay man, and people more likely to frequent La Merced than the Met queued up without complaint.

Amid this buzzing multitude, for whom a plastic doll is a role model and a fashion and surgery inspiration, I was tempted to lament the city's current cultural ambitions. Earlier that week, Nicolas Sarkozy's state visit to the Senate attracted perhaps ahundred onlookers (even Barbie-like Carla Bruni only gets you so far). An opening of finely executed conceptualist pieces at UNAM's Casa del Lago culledabout fifty guests. A MUNAL lecture, part of its Invención de lo Cotidiano show, attracted a scant twenty arts aficionados, almost half of them from the press corps. But Barbie needs bouncers.

The show's curator, Ana Elena Mallet, likes putting on popular, controversial exhibitions. Unlike many curators she is completely comfortable with art's relationship to commerce. Her Boutique (2001), at the Carrillo Gil, was Mexico's first museum show dedicated to contemporary fashion design; the current Días de Humo, at the Soumaya, explores the allure of smoking and cigarette advertising. Though resistance to her work from traditional "Bellas Artes" circles led Mallet to work as an independent, she's a consummate insider, sharp and sharp-tongued,and the self-described curadora del fango--the "muck curator."

Mattel's sponsorship notwithstanding, she makes an independent reading of the doll and the show. "To me Barbie is just a toy," she says. "I can't say if she teaches girls to be women"--as some fans claim--"or to have eating disorders, any more than, say, images in the media do." When pushed on the tendency for Barbie's young owners to buzz off her hair, roast her in the microwave, or otherwise degrade her, Ana Elena points out these cruelties are less disturbing than what her cousins used to do to their pet baby chicks. "Should we start blaming chickens for our developmental problems?"

Mallet sees Barbie as more cultural object than work of art, making the Franz Mayer an appropriate venue, as she says the museum is a space where "a supposedly meaningless object, however attractive, becomes something that comments on the society that produced it." Another local museum considered hosting, then found the subject too controversial--or superficial. "From the moment there started to be talk abouta Mexico City Barbie show," she asserts, "I knew I wanted to do the curation."

Her interest in Barbie comes not from nostalgia, but from the doll's popularity. "She is an object of universal desire. Girls and women want to look like her, men want to have her, and gay guys secretly want to play with her until they're comfortable enough to buy their own." Even those professing Barbie hate contribute to her doll-world hegemony. That popularity should not be ignored, even if it disquiets high-culture purists. "It brings people into the museum who never consider coming,"she says, adding, "Mexico's traditional museum culture, ‘tyrannized' by Frida and Diego, high modernism, and a narrow ‘art-or-archeology' focus, has made most museums mausoleums."

For Mallet, if mass audiences come in for something "fun" like Barbie, they'll learn that everyday objects have cultural value--are worthy of serious consideration. It might draw that audience into the museum's more "serious" galleries, or might elicit more popular engagement with culture, "high," "low," or otherwise. The habitual museum crowd may reconsider what it dismisses as mass-produced or crassly commercial and the class implications that accompany such attitudes.

If, that is, traditional museum-goers can handle it: Ana Elena is not so sure. Of the opening, she recalls that, "at the same time little girls, feeling glamorous in their pirated Barbie togs--likely purchased at a street tianguis--asked to pose with me because I was ‘the lady on TV who invited everyone to come see Barbie,' I overheard other guests evincing dismay at being in the company of so many queers and working-class people."

Mallet's show is a straightforward affair, based on the joy Barbie affords so many people. Dozens of dolls, new and old, pose, often in ravishing outfits fashioned by world-famous designers. No one seemed disappointed on opening night, though there was some consternation that Barbie's townhouse (complete with elevator) and the jet where she worked in the 70s were not on display.

There could be room, Mallet admits, for other explorations within a more specifically Mexican context that this show does not take on. Take the bootleg Barbies, for example, that allow even poor girls to participate in worldwide consumer culture even if their doll wasn't made by Mattel. Or former Mexican first lady María EstherZuno de Echeverría's 1970s campaign to create a very Barbiesque series of anti-Barbies wearing traditional Mexican costumes, as a rejection of the US doll's globalizing tendencies.

Supposedly liberated, yet habitually mistreated, Barbie has also inspired artists like Warhol and filmmaker Todd Haynes and been subject to sundry "pornographic" portrayals. And then there's that minefield question of why, even though Barbie comes in every hue and nationality, the güera from Malibu is the real Barbie.

Still, Mallet's ideas are persuasive: the opening and the show, easily dismissed as culture in decline, are a manifestation of the public's Barbie love and a challenge to the conception of the museum as high culture's defensive redoubt, exposing the tense relationship between Mexico's elites and the dynamic "naco" culture of its people.

"Mattel can prosecute every pirate," Ana Elena concludes, "but there will always be knockoffs. Museums can put up velvet ropes, but you can't control who gets in. High-culture guardians can't keep Mexico from busting out in unpredictable ways. So I'd rather just invite everyone to the party and see what happens."

Michael Parker-Stainback does not own a Barbie doll. He can be reached at michael@yahoo.com.mx.

Rocking Yiddish

catherine — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:22:30 -0700

On the seventh floor of a Colonia del Valle apartment building in Mexico City, a viola sounds an ancient Jewish mode while bongos pound a Latin beat. The band Klezmerson is rehearsing among African instruments and tangles of amp wires.

Once the song ends, band director Benny Shwartz announced that a folk ensemble refused to play with Klezmerson.

"It's tradition against rock ‘n' roll!" interrupts guitarist Juan Cubas Fridman as he strums his instrument, bobbing his dreadlock ponytail.

Klezmerson identifies more with rock ‘n' roll rebellion than the traditional Hasidic music played by the other band, the only other DF group playing klezmer music, an ancient Yiddish dance genre.

Shwartz, the only band member who is actually Jewish, directs his fellow musicians to the syncopated beats of his ancestors and the swing of son jarocho. He has played the piano and viola since he was old enough to read, performed with the Orquesta Sinfónica Carlos Chávez, and studied composition at The Musicians' Institute in Hollywood, California, and the Centro de Investigación y Estudios de la Música in Mexico City. Despite all his classical training, Shwartz prefers the freedom of Klezmerson.

"I played in the Sinfonía Carlos Chavez for five years, and then I said, ‘That's enough!'" Shwartz says. "When you're in an orchestra, you learn a lot, but it's the life of a soldier. You have to read, read, read." He mimes viola playing with his right hand and page flipping with his left. "I like to compose. I like creativity. I think it's better to write music and do my own projects."

During rehearsal, the lack of orchestrated military discipline is evident. Shwartz sticks his tongue out at the flautist, María Emilia Martínez, and makes her laugh. She slips off her shoes, revealing a butterfly tattoo, and balances on her bare toes. The bassist stares out the window.

Shwartz calls himself a rebel: "I resisted Judaism, so I didn't find Klezmer through religion. I found those roots inside of myself, and that makes it more interesting. Klezmer is a part of my internal exploration. It wasn't a reunion with my parents so much as with my ancestors."

Klezmer music developed during the 1400s in Eastern Europe, experiencing a 1990s revival in Jewish communities in San Francisco and New York. Shwartz discovered the genre while he was playing in a Greek folk music ensemble in 2003. A musician visiting from New York introduced him to it.

When Shwartz listened to his first klezmer CDs he thought, "Greek music is klezmer! It's the same thing!" After that, his Greek band converted their style to a Greek/klezmer fusion. Some members left and new ones joined: Shwartz stayed, and is now the only remaining member of the original ensemble.

"It was exciting," he says. "We looked to the past and brought dead music to life."

Klezmerson recorded their first album in 2004, expecting to give CDs to friends and sell them at concerts. A music producer friend offered to sell it in stores, and within months DJs from Belgium, Africa, and Australia were writing Shwartz and asking for more.

Since their first recording, Klezmerson has retained four band members. Flautist María Emilia Martínez, 29, plays in Cuban, pop, reggae, and children's bands. Guitarist Juan Cubas Fridman plays for son jarocho and rock groups. Bassist Sabino Paz and new drummer Gonzalo Sandoval both hail from Buenos Aires and moved to Mexico City for its vibrant music scene. Shwartz found Sandoval one month ago through Mexico City's "gossipy musicians."

"In the DF, we find musicians through word of mouth," he says. "The whole musician community knows each other. It's like a Jewish community: in those neighborhoods, they say, ‘Hi, what's your last name? Oh, I know your uncle who knows such-and-such who knows such-and-such.' It's the same thing in the musician community. ‘I know a musician named Chetrali.' ‘Oh! I played with him in a kid's rock group!' Everyone's connected."

Their latest album, Klezmerol, fuses the band members' distinct cultural legacies. Cymbals, bongos, and handclaps hint at son jarocho rhythms while melodic lines wail in Eastern European minor modes. Shwartz says son jarocho and Hasidic styles mesh well because both are "simple, honest, from the countryside, and used for entertainment and dance."

"I'm Mexican, Jewish, a pianist, and a violist, so my music is me. When my grandparents moved here and encountered Mexico, they experienced the same fusion. So this music is natural to me.'"

Find Klezmerson at klezmerson.com and myspace.com/klezmerson. They will perform 6 pm, May 16 at the Teatro Ángela Peralta in San Miguel de Allende.

Inside Music with the Klezmerson's

Shauna — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:15:53 -0700

Speaking la jerga loca

sue-ellen — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:40:20 -0700

Spanglish is a hybrid, a hodgepodge of English and Spanish words and phrases leaping between languages. Sometimes entirely new words are created. Which words or phrases get absorbed into Spanglish may seem arbitrary but is often decided by efficiency, or the lack of an adequate equivalent expression in the other language. For example, in Mexican Spanish the word for parking is estacionamiento, a slightly more complicated word than the English word, so in Spanglish, it changes to parquir.

The origins of Spanglish can be traced back to 1848, when the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed and over half of Mexico became part of the US. Suddenly, 80,000 Mexicans found themselves living north of the border. These new Mexican-Americans used Spanish at home, but needed to speak English for business or other public errands. This struggle between English and Spanish eventually led to the birth of the melting pot we call Spanglish.

Spanglish has always been heavily criticized by intellectuals on both sides of the border, such as Mexican writer Octavio Paz, who once famously said it was ”neither good, nor bad, but abominable.” Today, the hybrid language is gaining legitimacy, as a growing number of companies, politicians, writers, and musicians are using it. Hallmark, for instance, has started selling Spanglish greeting cards, and Toyota recently came out with a Spanglish TV commercial for a new model.

For a closer examination of the phenomenon, we talked to Ilan Stavans, Professor of Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College and author of the linguistic study and dictionary Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language.

INSIDE MÉXICO : Ilan, how would you define Spanglish?

ILAN STAVANS: I believe Spanglish is the marriage and divorce of two languages that have been at each other for 150 years, but also the encounter of two civilizations. It’s not purely a linguistic phenomenon, but a form of mestizaje, both cultural and linguistic, that shows that Latinos in the United States are part Latin American, part North American, but neither one or the other. A Spanglish speaker not only speaks Spanglish, but thinks, dreams, and acts in Spanglish. It’s very much a statement of being, in an existential way.

IM: So where is Spanglish today?

IS: Today Spanglish is very cool, very attractive, and very hot. It used to be a form of alienation and marginalization, but today it’s being embraced by companies and corporations, by major sponsors and by television. Now there are textbooks for Spanglish courses, there are entire radio stations that use Spanglish and no other language. A lot of rap, hip-hop, and salsa music is only in Spanglish, and some of the groups and musicians are not even Latinos. They use Spanglish to reach a wider market. And politicians are also using Spanglish.

IM: What about the future of Spanglish?

IS: When compared to other transitional immigrant mixed languages, like the mix of German and English by German immigrants to the US, or Yiddish and English by Jewish immigrants, or Italian and English by Italian immigrants, all of which existed for about twenty to thirty years and then disappeared when English became the dominant language within that immigrant community, Spanglish seems not to be disappearing. Younger people use it, older people use it, and the middle aged are using it in a way that they have never used mixed languages in the past.

IM: What separates Spanglish from other mixed languages that have disappeared?

IS: Spanglish has gone beyond that border, and is a portable, mobile language. You might still be thinking in border terms, but you are living in Chicago or in Minnesota. So you don’t have to be in Tijuana or Juarez to be a Spanglish speaker.

Spanglish is, unlike the other mixed languages, a language of immigration and of acculturation. It’s not based in a particular border town, or a particular border region, like Franglais in the border towns of France and England, or Portunhol on the border of Venezuela and Brazil. And so what the media often says, that Spanglish is a recent phenomenon that has evolved because of recent immigration and that will disappear as soon as immigration stops, is a fallacy. First of all, it’s not recent, and secondly, I don’t think immigration will stop, no matter how tall the wall between Mexico and United States is.

Playing across the border

sue-ellen — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:10:15 -0700

Elena Duran grew up speaking “Spanglish” in her family’s East Oakland, California home. She attended Oakland’s public schools and then Mills College. From there she went on to become one of the world’s great flautists, studying with the likes of James Galway. Her British husband, Michael Emerson, a former president of RCA Records, is also her manager. The couple relocated to Mexico City and has developed a program called “Flautas sin Fronteras (Flutes without Borders).” The idea won the support of both countries’ governments and has been promoted by the Mexican Foreign Ministry, the US Embassy in Mexico, and the (US) President’s Committee for Arts and Culture. Elena describes her program of concerts on both sides of the Mexican-American border as a “lifetime project.” Inside México sat down with Elena and Michael to talk about this program, the border, and identity.

Inside México: How did Flautas sin Fronteras get started?

Elena Duran: We were in a nice hotel in Coahuila. I said, ‘I’m sick about the bad news about the border.’ And Michael said, ‘Why don’t you do something about it?’

Michael Emerson: So we decided that we would do concerts along the border.

Elena: We go where people are living and dying. We’ve played in orphanages, in old age homes, in schools, concert halls, and even a bank in Eagle Pass. At the bank, we were concerned that we weren’t going to play for the people we wanted to play for, but it was a marvelous group that included community organizers and people who don’t usually go into a bank.

When I played at a university in Brownsville, the American consul from Matamoros and the Mexican consul from Brownsville were both there. It was the first time they’d been together. I thought, ‘Why am I in this university?’ Well, it’s a place where Americans and Mexicans could come together.

Michael: What we discovered was that neither Washington nor Mexico City understands the frontera. It’s a third nationality. First of all you have to recognize that this third country exists. The drug runners and the immigrants are just moving through it.

Elena: Not every family aspires to cross the border. Where I’m going [in this project, in her music, and as a person] is more about borders. Economic, political, psychological.

I’ve never said I was American. Always Mexican-American. Hyphenated. I’ve always been a brown definition. I’m a Chicana. Some say that’s too militant sounding. But when I’m [on the border], I’m just Lupita eating her palomitas with her grandmother in Oakland.

Michael: The first time Elena came to Mexico was for Christmas in 1976. Both her parents were born in Mexico, but left when they were two. We were invited to Christmas with a Mexican musician friend.

Elena: It was really luck to have Christmas with him but it wasn’t a real Mexican Christmas like we had back in Oakland. It was more European. [When people left Mexico] they took with them the customs and treasured those things and kept them sacred. I know about the culture, the food, the music, the film. I feel more Mexican than Mexicans.

I hope that in 2010, when Mexico celebrates its 200th birthday, it will include recognition of chicanos and their contribution to the cultures of both countries. There should be a separate fund to support border culture that comes from both Mexico and the US, and recognizes the mythical land of the chicanos. We all have to work really hard [for this to happen].

Michael: We never expected [Flautas sin Fronteras] to be personally enriching, but it is.

Elena: We can all be who we want to be. That’s your choice.

To learn more about Flautas sin Fronteras and Elena Duran go to www.elenaduran.com.

Sounds from the Northern Frontier

sue-ellen — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:53:51 -0700

In the space where the United States blurs into Mexico, the chords of the accordion and the bajosexto (a kind of twelve-string guitar) mix to create the typical sound of the borderlands region: música norteña.

Boots, jeans, leather belt, a plaid or lisa shirt, and of course a sombrero: these are the perfect complement for the fans of these rhythms. They cut circles at public dances, private fiestas, or in the intimacy of the home, turning on the radio and tuning into one of the dozens of stations dedicated to norteña programming.

Even though fronterizos on both sides of the border surrender to the love of these sounds, the music’s origins are little known. Norteña dates back to the colonial period and the popularity of the violin, but after Independence the genre lost none of its favor.

The use of the accordion and the bajosexto in música norteña is owed to Czech migrants who arrived in the borderlands during the second half of the 19th century bringing with them polkas and other dances. The new sound was adopted by other musicians in the region and mixed with the roots of música ranchera.

This sound began to be known as “música norteña” for the geographic location where it was created. After the Mexican Revolution, it boomed with the corridos—songs capturing and reflecting in their lyrics political and social crises in both countries. It was during the mid-20th century that its commercial exploitation increased considerably.

Many confuse musica norteña with Tejano music; even though there are many who mix the genres, the latter shows strong influence from country and jazz music from north of the border. As culture joins the rush to globalization, music has grown commodified and genres come and go. Norteña defends its place and earns popularity as it is exported to the world. As the style evolves, it attracts more and more fans and becomes all but indispensable at celebrations and parties.

Jhovanni Raga is a freelance contributor to cultural magazines and books. He can be reached at jhio.raga@gmail.com.

From Baja to Barney's

sue-ellen — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:59:08 -0700

Velasco Couture founder Rogelio Velasco has traveled far from his childhood in northern Mexico. Today, his stunning dresses sell for upwards of $12,000 USD in his Manhattan atelier and at toney retailers like Barney’s. They’re worn by celebrities and socialites like Janet Jackson, Tribeca Film Fest director Jane Rosenthal, Elisabeth Johnson (of Johnson & Johnson), and actress América Ferrara. A recent Velasco smash was Meryl Streep’s 2006 Academy Awards gown, which got her on People magazine’s bestdressed list: before Velasco, her outfits were routinely labeled dowdy and sexless.

He lives the fashionista good life: awards shows, firstclass travel, and rooms full of breathtaking models. The best part might be that he’s still just unfamous enough to live untrammeled by too much hype— gadding about New York with noncelebrity friends and sticking with the cozy East Village apartment he loved when he was “nobody.”

It all began in Baja California. Rogelio is the thirteenth of sixteen children, born in 1960 to a traditional Mexicali family. Mom was a mom and Dad ran the company that brought garrafones for drinking water to the region in burro-drawn wagons.

The sewing began in the 1970s. One of his sisters was attempting to fashion some “designer jeans,” when Rogelio, then 13, asked to give it a shot. He hasn’t stopped designing since, and at 18 he was doing his own fashion shows (a line of rather brief swimwear was a hit). He became the designer to Mexicali’s grandees, who called on him for everything from gala formalwear to first communion frocks. Commissions also included that most Mexican of fashions, the quinceañera dress, the “haute couture” moment almost every Mexican girl experiences no matter how humble her background.

With a degree in civil engineering— good for cantilevering a strapless or hanging crinolines—Rogelio studied fashion design in the Dominican Republic and hit New York in 1986. After years as right-hand man to Isaac Mizrahi during that designer’s glory days (a long-haired Rogelio is everywhere in the Mizrahi documentary Unzipped), he started Velasco Couture in 2003.

In the Mexicali Rogelio remembers, people looked north. “If you lived on the border in the 70s and 80s, you had a special passport”— long since eliminated—“and crossed back and forth with no hassles. No one locked their doors or worried about drug cartels.” Was it difficult being the Mexicali boy with a talent for dressmaking? Characteristically sanguine, Rogelio says no. Machistas bullied the “artistic” kids with the usual epithets and aggressions, but the designer remembers that after dark many of those same toughs would come looking for less typically macho tenderness.

Rogelio’s mother never demanded explanations or confessions; she seemed simply to understand. “She would have all my friends to the house and cook for them,” he recalls. “Everyone was welcome and everyone was equal.” In those days the “gang” included transsexuals, lots of dancers, and even some really sweet straight kids. In Mexicali, glamour and entertainment trumped moral punctilio.

While Velasco remembers his hometown with fondness, he says it’s a long way from Baja to Barney’s. “Mexicali women also demanded a lot more sex and color in their clothes,” he chuckles. When I suggest that a Manhattan socialite carries a bit of quinceañera on her back when she wears Velasco to her brilliant event, he denies it. “My tastes have changed—refined—unrecognizably. And you won’t find the study and craftsmanship I put into my work at the local dressmaker’s.” He disavows nothing, but his taste and technique have moved beyond the bikinis and bridesmaid dresses of twenty-five years ago.

Upon reflection, he does say the work in Mexicali helps him today. His early days as dressmaker to its grand señoras—no less demanding or interested in social triumph than New Yorkers—attuned him to the imperatives, both spoken and unarticulated, of his clients. Understanding these nuances, Velasco creates the dress he knows is right for the woman. “But the client walks away certain she was always in control,” he says, grinning good-naturedly.

Life on the border has always been provisional, raffish, and informal. Having grown up where social distinctions were less rigid than they are in Mexico City (in Mexicali family and servants ate at the same table, for instance), he feels no need to preen or sneer. “You have to respect everyone,” he says, “from the poorest immigrant seamstress to Queen Rania of Jordan (one of Velasco’s customers).” In a milieu known for megalomania, jealousy, and just plain bitchiness, Rogelio never mentions rivals or enemies.

And he remains patiently polite when pressed on the quinceañera influence. How can you get away from Mexico’s eye-popping bridal shop culture? In next season’s dresses, how about more sequins, or feathers, or a less subdued palette? Maybe matching parasols…

“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with feathers or sequins or color. You just have to know how to use them,” he replies. He says nothing about the parasols.

Michael Parker-Stainback can be reached at michael.parker3@yahoo.com.mx.

Real-life Bordertown

sue-ellen — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:28:55 -0700

The border is a magnet for workers in the maquiladoras, the factories that assemble products for duty-free export to the US. The industry employs more than one million Mexicans; a great number of the workers are young women.

According to Amnesty International, some 400 women have been murdered, and in many cases, raped, in Ciudad Juárez and the city of Chihuahua since 1993. Almost none of the crimes has been solved.

In the 2007 film Bordertown, Jennifer Lopez plays a reporter from Chicago whose editor sends her on assignment to Ciudad Juárez to investigate the circumstances of the hundreds of deaths and disappearances. Antonio Banderas plays a local newspaper editor who teams with her in the investigation. The film was not released in theatres in the US, but debuted in Mexico last month as Verdades que matan.

While promoting the film's release here, Director Gregory Nava (who also directed Selena) told the newspaper Excelsior that he received death threats during filming. Amnesty International and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta presented Jennifer Lopez with its "Artists for Amnesty" award at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2007.

Lopez and Amnesty International raise awareness of these cases through the website www.amnestyusa.org/bordertown/.

Middle Ground

sue-ellen — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:16:03 -0700

About seven years ago there were plans to build a bridge that would connect Ciudad Juárez and El Paso. This would be different from the four international crossings already fastening these cities together: part cultural center, part museum—an homage to the migratory experience that defines these cities. The award-winning architecture firm LAR was approached to design the project.

When the attacks of September 11 abruptly changed the US-Mexico agenda, the bridge was shelved. Fernando Romero, LAR’s chief architect and founder, decided to proceed with a different kind of blueprint. He and a team of researchers set out to examine the conditions that make the US-Mexico frontera what it is. The result is the book Hyperborder: The Contemporary U.S.-Mexico Border and Its Future (Princeton Architectural Press).

Charting the evolution of the US-Mexico map from 1776 onward, situating the border in the context of other international divisions— Israel/Palestine, Russia/Ukraine, and France/Switzerland/Germany—Romero systematically builds his case for the term “hyperborder.” The name describes a line that stretches 3,141 kilometers, shoulders more than one million crossings daily, and is home to 14 million people who live within one hundred kilometers of the line. It is a space between two countries that is larger than many countries.

“Mexico is the only developing nation that shares a common border with a major world power, and this condition has significant migratory implications,” he writes.

Romero spends a significant amount of time on the economics that drive workers away from Mexico, where the average annual wage is $6,000 USD, and toward the United States, where it is $40,000 USD. The hyperborder isn’t just the number of crossings: the region has exploded in urban sprawl, consumption of natural resources, pollution, and criminality. It is crisscrossed by trade routes and shaped by the ever-increasing security on the US side.

Some 12.5 million people—90 percent of the borderlands population—live in the regions’ fourteen sets of sister cities, from Tijuana-San Diego to Brownsville-Matamoros. The level of interdependence is staggering, from shared firemen and ambulances to the formation of the fifth-largest economic region in the world between California and Baja California.

Sitting in his industrial-style Mexico City studio, Romero explains:

“[The border] has grown as development grows, without any planning. It grows according to the forces that interact in the middle and obligate it to evolve in a forced manner… The flow of migration has been restrained by constructing bars, the flow of migration has been restrained with patrols … but it has not been slowed down through healthy planning.

Everything that has been done is a patchwork solution. We make a little bridge here, resolve the little water problem there. There’s not a global vision in the region.”

As border cities continue to draw Mexicans from the countryside, the regional population is expected to reach 24 million by 2020. Water and energy use will continue to rise, “and the limited supplies of both… will likely stall or prevent development very soon,” Romero says. The Tijuana-San Diego region will require 20 percent more water by 2010 than in 1996. Meanwhile “local pollution caused by traffic congestion in the sister cities and border crossing points, as well as toxic waste and other pollutants produced by the maquiladoras” cause a host of environmental health problems like skin cancer, respiratory illnesses, and cardiovascular diseases, that “disproportionately affect” border residents.

The story Romero tells through graphs, charts, and analysis is of a world apart, where local communities meld in an international zone (Ciudad Juárez and El Paso make the largest bi-national urban center in the world). The needs are distinct, but the region lacks both the political and cash capital for major infrastructure. “The ideal scenario is that there be a joint vision, shared between the federal government and the state government… It has to come from above.”

State resources can’t cover the myriad facets of shared infrastructure—from parks and bridges to industrial zones and waste treatment plants—and employment: “everything that implies a better quality of life,” Romero says. Binational regional planning hasn’t topped either country’s agenda and as a result the border “has become something negative, it has become the region with the highest indices of criminality, a region where narcotráfico has turned it into an unstable region in social terms.”

The unstable aspects of the border--drugs, crime, migrant deaths, and an impermanent population of people waiting to cross--contrast with the security measures the US has adopted in its War on Terror. With more than a touch of irony, Romero asks: “Could security issues make it the next North-South Korean border? Or will bi-national accords shape it into an integrated, fluid region like that of the borders between France, Switzerland, and Germany?”

The book explores solutions through education (more than 60 percent of Mexican immigrants to the US are high school drop-outs), job creation in Mexico’s formal economy, and development of renewable energy sources such as solar power in the Mojave Desert. Holistic planning, he suggests, could drastically alter the nature of the hyperborder—for the better:

“By focusing on improving quality of life at the border through city plans… high immigration rates to the US could be greatly reduced. Temporary migrants that make the Mexican side of the border their home while waiting to cross the border would be given the opportunity to stay in a city that provides them with the necessary resources to live the quality of life that they hope the prosperity of the US will bring … a border that would offer open parks, low pollution rates, formal work, and affordable housing and lifestyles would provide a handsome alternative for many—including those who are not considering migration as an option.”

Still, Romero believes there must be a recognition that migration will not stop, and that both countries, starting with the US, must make development plans that take this into account. He doesn’t see that happening soon. The US is focused on presidential elections, while Mexico is absorbed in petroleum reform, and will then look toward its bicentennial in 2010. “The bi-national agenda has been put in a drawer, literally,” he says.

For now the bridge-museum between El Paso and Juárez remains a model of what could be, but exists only on paper: page 278 of Romero’s book.

Inside Art, "Rug making in Teotitlán del Valle"

Shauna — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 06:56:09 -0700

Muralism 2008

sue-ellen — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:58:49 -0700

The populist message of Mexico through the Centuries, Diego Rivera’s mighty mural in the Palacio Nacional, is clear. Members of the indigenous masses leave the sidelines to infiltrate key scenes alongside famous figures: history isn’t written by the few.

This challenge to elitism is the mark of the Tres Grandes of post-Revolution Muralism—out to forge a popular iconography for the new Mexico against the exclusive art culture of the Porfirian past. But by the 1940s, Rivera, Siqueiros, and Orozco were the art establishment: their revolutionary forms, just like the revolutionary government, had become the new norm. Their status secure as the “Mexican School” of painters, they were receiving international commissions and selling works on canvas.

Today’s extensions of Muralism reflect the ambivalence of this history. That the legacy is still being lived is clear, from new commissions on federal facades to fresh Metro station mosaics, to more spontaneous wall art sprayed onto buildings and bridges. But do modern-day manifestations reflect something oppositional or official, popular or privileged? It depends where you look.

Muralism looms as a backdrop to the contemporary Mexican art scene. But the fact that a state-commissioned painter, a digital activist, and a graffiti-writer can all claim descent from the Tres Grandes shows that the meaning of Muralism in Mexico is still being written.

***

When a new mural by Rafael Cauduro was unveiled in the Supreme Court building last winter, the artist cited Siqueiros—in whose former Cuernavaca workshop he’d completed the works. As the ceremonial last mark was made and government functionaries politely applauded, Cauduro thanked national institutions for the chance to work in the “great tradition of the country.”

These most obvious extensions of the Muralist movement of the ‘30s—today’s big public commissions for state buildings—can seem a far cry from the Grandes. Where, today, is the messy passion of Siqueiros, sweating to realize the world’s largest mural on the Poliforum, late in a life that led him in and out of jail and exile and the Spanish Civil War? Where are the principles of Rivera, who famously sacrificed a commission at the Rockefeller Center, refusing to deface his Man at the Crossroads by removing a prominent Lenin?

The artists chosen for today’s official murals—Luis Nishizawa, Ismael Flores, to name a couple alongside Cauduro—boast successful careers and relate comfortably to the establishment of museums and galleries. While themes are still political, if not precisely populist—the Supreme Court commissions revolve around justice—the walls they embellish are not the likeliest to be seen by today’s working class. The events inaugurating them are polite and invoke the past. These modern-day state murals feel like a tribute to a historic form, without the historic stakes. They are an extension of the movement’s form, without the revolutionary pretension. How could contemporary state murals be otherwise, if Muralism’s political charge lost voltage even in the hands of the Tres Grandes? “How do we look at the Mural Movement now?” asks art historian Teresa del Conde. “As a very high cultural and aesthetic enterprise, not as a means to persuade people” (see Perspective interview with del Conde on page 7 of this issue).

***

Today, in light of the muralists’ ascent to become the Mexican School of painters, and a Revolution that became a political party and lasted more than seventy years, it’s hard to think of government-funded painting as being meaningfully activist. But at the beginning of the 20th century, Mexican art was in the grips of the Academy of San Carlos, whose maestros and patrons hyped all that was European and snubbed costumbrista paintings of traditional and rural life. With Revolution, the Academy’s Paris-pandering no longer fit the new Mexican project of unifying the people and reinforcing a national identity. The government called on the Tres Grandes and others to rescue, in images, Mexico’s pre-Columbian past and the daily struggles of its masses. In that context, the fact of the artists' officialness was radical.

In that unique era when Mexico was the Revolution, and vice-versa, state-sponsored Muralism had its day of political utility, affirms former Museo Muros curator Paulina Cornejo Moreno-Valle: “But by the 40s it was flagging and by the 50s it was over.” The revolutionary cause within Mexican art turned against the dominant Muralist School, says Cornejo, citing the stylistically diverse artists of the 1950s Ruptura, who battled the hegemony of nationalist art.

Muralism found new life in marginalized communities, for similar purposes of identity and cause building, but without the government sponsorship. In Zapatista communities in Chiapas, for example, murals continue to be used to narrate the cause of autonomy. Muralism as identity-consecration drew new breath in rougher-edged Tepito with the Tepito Arte Acá movement of the mid-1980s. Led by Daniel Manrique, mural-painting on the walls of the vecindades celebrated the barrio life around and within them: imaging history, raising consciousness, and inspiring enough local solidarity to halt government plans to raze the whole area. Another Manrique mural in Coyoacán’s upscale “Los Pedregales” neighborhood offers this pointed message to the patrons of the community center where it stands: “When the wretched of the earth learn to share among ourselves the products of our own labor, we will live better and we will be free.”

Tijuana-born novelist, activist, and electronic artist Fran Ilich calls himself “very much inspired by Siqueiros.” Not a monumental, or even a painting, his recent piece Fea y Rebelde is a selfproduced, pro-Zapatista telenovela, published on youtube.com—but eventually censored at the behest of Televisa, who charged copyright infringement.

“Fea y Rebelde” was “inspired very much by Muralism and I always mention it as a kind of digital Muralism—that instead of being on the walls on the street is on the walls of the closest thing I found to public space online,” says the artist. Ilich’s latter-day populist impulse led him to re-conceive popular reach in the 21st century, and maybe update Muralism along the way.

Through Ilich we see the nuance of Muralism’s legacy; he is an artist inspired less by the brushstrokes of the Tres Grandes, and their achievement of creating a Mexican art form, than by their commitment to the artist as activist. Moving away from the movement as big public painting and toward its torch of political commitment, we find inheritors everywhere. Tracing the aftermath of the Grandes, critic and Curare editor Karen Cordero cites even the Grupos of the 70s, whose political art was as often poetry and performance as painting.

“It was no longer the rhetorical, figurative style of before, but it was still a gesture to take art into the streets, maybe not on walls but instead into the prisons… It’s the discovery of new relationships between activism and art,” she says.

If post-Revolution Muralism’s true legacy are these newer media experiments in art activism, can we expect no further discoveries in monumental painting itself? A metro trip out to the famous Arnold Belkin mural at the UAM’s Iztapalapa campus gives pause. All along the way, a different sort of mural occupies the embankments, underpasses, and stationary trucks: the newest writing, for interpretation, on the wall.

Might Mexico’s graffiti artists, with their growing mark across key cities, be the latest spin on the Muralist legacy? “In a certain way my work is influenced by the muralists,” says Edgar Nández, aka Saner, one of the more respected graffiti artists working in the DF today. He cites Rivera and Siqueiros as two “great characters” for him. “Muralism is something very strong in the past,” wrote N.a.h.u.a.l, an equally well-known young street art colleague. “Only now there’s no sustainable scene…”

Certainly there are hurdles to accepting these graffiti artists as the new sons of Siqueiros. “We’re Mexican anti-heroes,” posts N.a.h.u.a.l online. Theirs isn’t a ready nationalism like their forebears’. Clearly they operate without state sponsorship, organizing on myspace.com and not through the Education Secretary. If you read their tags as identity narratives, then they are their personal stories, not those of a nation’s people.

If there’s a political message, it’s obscure. “And they won’t tell you about it,” says Arturo Mizrahi, a young promoter of street art and, with partner Liliana Carpinteyro, curator of some of Mexico’s most popular grafiteros at his Condesa urban art center ELABORAtorio. “Today, it’s uncool to be dogmatic.” But is a hesitance to wave explicit banners a sure sign of apoliticism, or a reflection of today’s more complex relationship between art and activism? These new muralists are working after the Ruptura, with its insistence on heterogeneous instead of doctrinaire art, and after the Grupos and their model of grassroots, rather than institutional, political activism—and of “more metaphorical, less rhetorical political interventions.”

To claim a public space is always a political act. In Mexico, taking a public wall for art is also a historic act. The grafiteros’ bold declaration of independence from galleries and museums and avoidance of neat, saleable canvases invokes the muralist tradition, however different the intention.

“What I like about [mural] graffiti,” says Saner, “is that it’s a public art, out there for the people to see, to make of what they will.” In spite of having no public backing, no published Manifesto, no full national revolution in need of iconography, it may be this young crew of street artists leading today’s push for a truly popular form, writing a challenge to institutional “high art” on public walls.

As for where Saner, N.a.h.u.a.l. and the new generation of “oppositional” wall artists will come out relative to the original muralists, it is still unclear.

The grafiteros may go the way of commercialization before any other organization coheres, and more quickly than the Grandes had to. One symbol stands out clearly from a decorative, open-ended new mural by Saner and San Francisco street artist Sam Flores on the market building at Michoacán and Tamaulipas in Condesa: an Adidas logo hovering above the skyline. The wall hosting the painting is manufactured to be removable for sale after its public stint. The mural that was previously in this space, by French artist Fafi, can now be seen in the Adidas Original store around the corner. In the graffiti world, it’s now common for artists to be brand-sponsored and to take commissions from stores and restaurants.

An alternative scenario could be that the grafiteros get co-opted by the more established art world. Projects like the ELABORAtorio gallery have as their mission to “bring the streets into the gallery,” as they sponsor sanctioned street art installations throughout the Cuauhtémoc delegation.

“There’s a debate whether the flurry of interest in graffiti artists in the past few years is about controlling them or promoting them,” says Karen Cordero.

Similar questions could have been raised about the program that supported Rivera, Siquieros, and Orozco. What would have happened to these star artists—and revolutionary personalities—without government oversight? In that revolutionary era, official consolidation came together with the talent to cultivate powerful political art.

Today no single political program unites Mexico’s revolution-minded. No wonder no unified artistic program unites its more rebellious painters. Meanwhile, the clutter of the grafiteros’ spray-painted narratives vying pell-mell for public space may be the truest representation of the noise of a Mexico in transition.

Maybe the times themselves will demand a more coordinated imagery, if not explicit political message, from today’s street artists. Carpinteyro for her part has her eye on these new muralists, seeing in them the potential for something similar to the consolidated pre-Ruptura social engagedness: “We would love to know which would be the ideals drawn up in a Manifesto of the current national urban art,” she writes in a column for the magazine Canvas. “Which values it would hail, which lasting images will emerge from this new collective [imagination]…”

“I for my part would like to see a little more commitment,” says Mizrahi.

Tess Thatcher profiled cabaret performer Astrid Hadad in the March 2008 issue of Inside México.

Melanie Smith: Interpreting Chaos

sue-ellen — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:37:18 -0700

Melanie Smith’s paintings of hazy cityscapes and her installations of fluorescent orange doodads sold by street vendors capture the dizzying lack of urban planning and the loud, kitsch consumerism that people love and hate about Mexico City.

Over the last two decades, the British native has become one of Mexico City’s best-known contemporary artists. Her career here has taken her to major international venues, including London’s Tate Britain museum, the Miami Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

Recently Smith’s work has been changing, her paintings becoming more abstract. Her earlier, strikingly large canvases show smoggy cityscapes. Lately, painting on a smaller scale, the artist is distancing herself from the city’s urban imagery that has dominated her work since she arrived in Mexico.

After finishing art school in Reading, England, Smith wanted to get out of Europe. She and some art school friends came to Mexico in 1989, planning to stay a few months. Smith didn’t really realize what she was getting herself into: “It was sort of awe-inspiring, I had no idea of the size of the city,” she says.

She rented a high-ceilinged studio right in the thick of it, on Licenciado Verdad in the Centro Histórico near the Zócalo. Living downtown, the constant activity, throngs of people, and masses of cheap goods being sold on the streets captured her imagination: “that really got me going,” she says. Smith worked in that studio until 1996, when an earthquake left huge cracks in the walls of the building. “I got scared after that,” she says, and moved from studio to studio around the Roma, Condesa, and Santa Maria la Ribera neighborhoods for several years.

In the mid-nineties, Smith began noticing the color orange everywhere she walked in the Centro Historico. It was “really in your face,” she says. Even on streets where grey concrete overwhelmed everything else, an orange sticker or price tag would find its way into her line of sight. She remembers it as the color of the signs and balloons used by street merchants and shops to try to sell things; but that it was also the color of nylon rope, plastic tubing, and inflatable toys. The color inspired her Orange Lush series of installations; Smith amassed these garish, intestine-like objects and stuck them to wall panels or in large boxes, “to suggest this kind of homogeneity of the way things are sold in Mexico, in big quantities.”

Between 1998 and 2002, Smith took a series of aerial photographs called Tianguis, depicting the improvised street markets that spring up throughout the city. Brightly colored tarps stretch across entire avenues, creating splashes of color in an otherwise dreary urban landscape.

Over the past six months, Smith has been working on a project that, so far, includes fifty small paintings, each one responding to the last. Some of the paintings still make reference to smog-obscured buildings, but the places are indistinct, dreamlike. Trying to be more spontaneous, Smith says, “is a bit torturous but I think you have to play around with the materials to see what comes out.”

On a recent afternoon, Smith welcomed me into her spacious studio on a quiet side street in the San Pedro de Los Pinos neighborhood for a chat over what she jokingly described as a cup of “proper English tea.” She has an easy-going air about her, and is clearly committed to her work and pleased to talk about her successes and struggles.

Last spring Smith bought this 1950s-era house to be her studio getaway from the bustle of activity at her nearby apartment where her two children, Oliver, 8, and Mila, 3, are “still a lot of work.”

The open plan ground floor is painted a clean white, and a wall-sized window swings open onto a patch of sunny garden. “It is quite a domestic place, but I needed something that was multi-functional,” Smith says. Since she has only been using the studio for a few months, she says it still feels a bit empty, without the clutter she’s accustomed to in her workplace.

Her recent works are grouped in clusters on a narrow shelf that runs around the perimeter of the main downstairs room. They are painted on rectangles of wood, cardboard, and fiberboard in mostly browns and grays, with traces of bright colors like green and red.

Someday, Smith plans to display these smaller works as one piece—like a large linear collage—but for now she is concentrating on discovering the threads that link them all together. “I’m interested in creating a loose narrative, letting the work come out as it needs to come out.” Like many people who have spent several years in Mexico City, Smith says she has gone back and forth on whether or not to stay in the megalopolis, but feels its draw each time she leaves.

From 2002 to 2006, Smith and her family lived in Tepoztlán, Morelos, about an hour’s drive south of the city. Just before leaving she collaborated with her husband, filmmaker Rafael Ortega, on a film which was a continuous shot taken from a helicopter coiling higher and higher over the dense city, eventually fading away. Although she didn’t realize it at the time, the film, titled Spiral City, seemed to represent a deliberate pulling away from the city, “almost like that was some kind of separation or a goodbye.”

Smith and her family spent a year in Spain in 2006 before returning to Mexico City last summer. She found Europe this time around to be pleasant but bland, and longed for the stimulating chaos of Mexico City. “When you don’t have it, something’s missing somehow.”

Now, Smith is looking at the motifs of her earlier body of work with a fresh eye. As she layers images of Mexico with textures of memory in the new paintings, she is “grappling with their content,” and trying to just let one painting lead her to the next.

Singing the Veracruz Blues

sue-ellen — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:29:31 -0800

On the rooftop restaurant in Mexico City’s Centro Histórico, pinwheels are dancing in the afternoon breeze and Billy Branch is drinking Pacificos and mescal. To order another round, he clinks his bottle and glass together, saying “por favor” to the waiter. It’s been a busy couple of weeks, and though a stomach bug is slowing him down, it won’t stop him from cupping a harmonica to his mouth tonight for a show at Ruta 61, one of the city’s handful of jazz joints.

Branch has played in Mexico many times, starting in the 1970s, but this time he came to bring his “Blues in Schools” curriculum to children in Xalapa, Veracruz. For two weeks in early February he taught the youngsters the harmonica, the quintessential A-A-B blues refrain, and the genre’s historical context, a syllabus he has honed since he first began teaching the essence of the blues to Chicago-area kids in 1978. He also played four shows in the DF, and caught the Encuentro de Jaraneros y Decimistas, the annual son jarocho music festival in Tlacotalpan, Veracruz.

The Ford Foundation brought Branch here with the idea of pairing him with students and teachers of Veracruz’s native son folk music, a fusion of African, Spanish, and indigenous culture. No one was quite sure what would come of this experiment, inspired by the idea that son and blues are both legacies of the African presence in the Americas, and by the large Mexican population in Branch’s hometown of Chicago.

For Branch and his counterparts—Ramón Gutierrez Hernández and José Tereso Vega Hernández of the group Son de Madera, one of Mexico’s most successful son bands—the arrangement raised questions. Would these two musical forms relate to one another outside the imaginations of the trip’s organizers? More importantly, should they? “The orthodox [son musicians] told me that you cannot combine son jarocho and the blues,” said the towering Ramón. Like Branch, Ramón is both a gifted performer and a music teacher: “I said, why not?”

Son resonates from the farmlands and deltas of Veracruz’s southern flats. The music features string sounds and oft-improvised lines; notes played on the little jarana guitars carry full-throttle vocals and lyrics about animals, the land, and other country-life concerns. Among various percussion instruments, the beat enters on the marimbol, a box-like drum that the drummer sits upon, or the tarima, a wooden plank on which dancers tap and stamp the zapateo. The music is at turns liltingly sweet, intoxicating, and pasisonate.

Branch’s blues were born of the Chicago club scene, which electrified guitar and harmonica with amplifiers and microphones. He caught the ear of the great Willie Dixon, earning an apprentice spot in Dixon’s Chicago Blues All-Stars. Branch went on to form the group Sons of Blues, record with many musicians, including Muddy Waters, and develop the Blues in the Schools program.

For Branch, the historical connection was more obvious than the musical. “The underlying thing was that blues and son share a common origin… both were formed by slavery.”

But the sounds of son made him scratch his head at first. “I’m usually pretty good at adapting to whatever style of music,” said Branch, who taught himself the harmonica at age ten and is considered one of the best players in the world. “I said, ‘Hmmm. I’m going to have to figure this out.’”

Common ground

The only way to figure it out was by playing. As the jarana and the harmonica came together in class, the two sides began to discover some common ground.

Ramón says his and Billy’s teaching methods are very similar: “As I learned—orally.”

Traditionally, son has been passed down through the fandango, all-night gatherings where farmers’ children learn by watching and then imitating the performers.

Billy’s wife Rosa came with him on the trip; together they have developed a curriculum over the years blending audio, visual, and kinesthetic teaching methods to attract and engage students with any learning style. His pupils dance, shake, sing, make faces, and shout refrains, “as opposed to just sitting like little docile students with their hands folded,” Rosa says.

Branch has taught everywhere, to every age group. He adapts to whomever he’s working with: “white ladies” at senior centers whom he has pantomime slaves doing farmwork; a kid in Milwaukee who had burned down the principal’s office; performing arts students in Seattle; and trade school students in Antwerp.

In Xalapa, one student, Gabriela, proved a gold mine: she had taught herself to play the chromatic harmonica as a child and could play three key changes on the melody "I Remember When." She was one of the stars of the class recital, which was widely covered by state and local media.

Guarding a legacy

Billy and Ramón teach so their music doesn’t disappear, so its history is not forgotten.

Ramón and José Tereso worry son is dying. They have a higher profile internationally than in their own country, and say son is little-appreciated in Mexico: its raw, fuerte notes have earned it the label of “unacceptable music,” says Ramón. “People don’t associate son with being agradable … [it’s] the music of the poorest people.”

Branch’s concern has long been to keep alive the memory of blues as a black musical form, one that laid the foundation for rock and hip-hop.

“It’s a drive within him to keep the blues alive,” Rosa says of her husband. “It’s something so deeply satisfying to know your life has a meaning beyond your own.”

For them, teaching is about “sharing the knowledge of that legacy and then letting [the students] experience that legacy as well,” Rosa says. “Ramón has the same passion about teaching young people about the African slave legacy.”

As the afternoon light softened, the pinwheels slowed and the low thump of drums hummed from the Zócalo. The smell of tequila floated across the table. It was getting time for Billy to rest up for his last show of the trip, where he would rock and sway on stage, coaxing chords out of a harmonica with fluttering hands and deep breaths.

Son de Madera and Branch took the stage together at Ruta 61. In lieu of an amplifier, Branch tipped a microphone closer to Ramón’s guitar, whose acoustic notes nearly drowned without it. José Tereso grinned and shook his head as he played a tambourine, the look on his face somewhere between “what am I doing?” and a kind of goofy happiness. The sound wasn’t perfect, but they were figuring it out.

Not until 2:30 did Branch close the show: “Estarémos aqui mañana,” he said in his husky voice, under the red-orange glow of the stage lights. We’ll be here tomorrow.

Inside Art, "Black Pottery"

Shauna — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:37:57 -0800

A Traveler in Mexico

catherine — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:43:17 -0800

Coyoacán has become inextricably linked with painter Frida Kahlo, so what better place to rendezvous with poet, writer, and biographer of Surrealists Rosemary Sullivan? A professor of English at the University of Toronto, Sullivan had just alighted in Mexico City and would soon be on her way to meet with Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington when we met over cappuccinos at the sun-drenched Café Moheli to talk about her latest book.

Villa Air-Bel: World War II, Escape, and a House in Marseille is a page-turner of a deeply researched history about the rescue of artists and intellectuals trapped as the Nazis closed in. This effort, promoted by the New York-based Emergency Rescue Committee and their agent in Marseilles, Varian Fry, managed to save André Breton, Marc Chagall, and Max Ernst, among others, and found refuge for them in the United States. But some came to Mexico, including Russian novelist Victor Serge, his son Vlady, and most famously Surrealist painters Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, who today (along with Frida Kahlo) are among Mexico's most revered artists. For this reason, Villa Air-Bel is a work important to the history of modern art in Mexico.

But the book's connection to Mexico goes deeper.

"Villa Air-Bel started here," Sullivan said. She explained that back in 1995, she came to Mexico City to write about the close friendship of three women artists: Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, and Canadian poet P.K. Page (also known as the painter Pat Irwin), which began in 1960 when Page, already the author of several books and a winner of Canada's prestigious Governor General's Award, arrived with her husband, Arthur Irwin, Canada's then ambassador to Mexico.

Sullivan, just two years out of graduate school, met Page in Victoria in 1974. As Sullivan recalls in her essay "Three Travellers in Mexico," "For me P.K. is one of the searchers, ahead of the rest of us, throwing back clues. She encouraged me to believe I might become a writer." Varo died of a heart attack in 1963, but thanks to an introduction from Page, Sullivan met Carrington in Mexico City.

English-born Leonora Carrington has a harrowing but triumphant story. She was living in France when the Germans invaded: her lover, Surrealist painter Max Ernst, was arrested, first as an enemy alien and then as an enemy of the Nazis. Leonora fled to Spain, where she had a mental collapse and was placed in an insane asylum, a searing experience she chronicled in The House of Fear: Notes from Down Below. Her family got her out, but believing they wanted to put her in another asylum in South Africa, Leonora escaped en route in Lisbon. Ernst miraculously reappeared, but the pair parted ways, Ernst heading to New York with Peggy Guggenheim, and Leonora to Mexico City after a marriage of convenience to Mexican diplomat-poet Renato Leduc. Here she eventually remarried, bore two sons, and produced an extraordinary body of work as a painter, sculptor, poet, and writer. Still active in her 90s, Leonora Carrington attended a February 12 event in her honor at Mexico City's Museo José Luis Cuevas.

In 1995, Carrington showed Sullivan some of Varo's playfully dreamlike and delicately-rendered paintings. Later, while reading Janet A. Kaplan's biography of Varo, Sullivan came upon the story of Varian Fry and the Villa Air-Bel, a château outside Marseille where so many of the people involved either lived or visited. They were in terrible danger and lacked even basics like coal and meat, but when André Breton would host a Sunday open house, leading the residents in Surrealist games in the drawing room, Villa Air-Bel had the spirit of an artists' colony.

During her 1995 visit Sullivan also wrote the short story "Women of the Heart," about which she said: "The man is named Varian, but just because I loved the name. I never imagined I'd write this book! He just sat at the bottom of my mind..." The short story became the nucleus of Labyrinth of Desire, a collection of essays exploring the myths women live out when they fall in love, from Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara ("Don Juan / Doña Juana"), to Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo ("Self-Portrait with Mirrors").

While reading The Quiet American, Andy Marino's biography of Varian Fry, Sullivan saw the image that made her decide to write about the refugee artists and intellectuals and their rescuers. In the photo, like a pair of children, Fry and Consuelo de Saint Exupéry perch high in the python-like branches of a plane tree.

"This was war-time France!" Sullivan exclaimed. "What were they doing in the tree?" They were hanging paintings: "That refusal to be cowed by Fascism... "

But how to tell such a huge and sprawling story? In a flash, Sullivan realized that she could organize it around a year in the life of Villa Air-Bel.

Other than Carrington, few of the refugee artists were still alive. One of the most important sources had to be Vlady Serge, the painter who as a young man had been rescued from France along with his father. From Canada, Sullivan made an appointment for an interview at his house and studio in Cuernavaca. Upon arriving in Mexico, she was told he was not there: Serge had been rushed to the hospital with a fatal stroke. Sullivan had missed him by a matter of minutes; nonetheless he had left her detailed instructions on whom to meet and where to find archives.

Sitting in Coyoacan's Café Moheli, I told Rosemary Sullivan that what struck me most about Villa Air-Bel was the way she described the confusion at the time; how throughout the 1930s people had a sense of normalcy until, as she puts it, "in a moment, the world collapsed like a burnt husk."

"I meant people to read this book in terms of now," Sullivan said. "Because it can always happen."

C.M. Mayo is the author of the forthcoming novel The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire and editor of Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion. She lives in Washington DC and Mexico City. Her website is cmmayo.com, and she can be reached at cmmayo@cmmayo.com.

Sin Nombre: Struggle is Anonymous

catherine — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:26:57 -0800

"A psychic once told me: ‘You'll make it to the United States... but not in the hands of God, rather in the hands of the devil.'"

These words are spoken by Sayra, a young Honduran girl and protagonist in the soon-to-be-released film Sin Nombre. They could serve as its epigram.

The Mexican-US co-production, fresh from triumph at the Sundance Film Festival—picking up prestigious directing and cinematography awards—narrates the tale of Sayra, her father, and her uncle as they attempt to make a perilous and illegal journey to the United States by crossing Mexico clinging to the top of a freight train. It's a journey fraught with risk—"a modern-day exodus," as executive producer Gael García Bernal puts it, one that thousands of Central Americans make each year in the hope of finding a better future.

As if the journey itself weren't dangerous enough, the characters' path soon crosses that of a renegade member of the notorious Mara Salvatrucha gang, on the run from his former mentors who are hell-bent on bloody revenge.

The Maras were born in the ghettos of Los Angeles of Central American immigrants, themselves often victims of civil wars in their home countries. Tattooed and violent, the gangs were exported back to the Central American isthmus, and Sin Nombre shows them operating out of Tapachula in southern Mexico, threatening and stealing from the vulnerable illegal immigrants there.

"I read an article about Central Americans crossing Mexico on freight trains and it really piqued my curiosity," first-time feature director Cary Fukunaga, 31, told me at Sundance. "So I set about learning more about that world and then went to do my own first-person research in prisons, train yards, etc." (See Inside México, December 2007-January 2008).

Riding the trains

Fukunaga, an American of Japanese and Swedish descent, lives in New York. As he was working on the script, his research involved various trips tracing the Central Americans' path north, hanging from the top of freight trains listening to immigrants' stories, and hours talking to current and former Mara gang members, many of whom he visited in Mexican prisons.

His aim was to make the film as faithful as possible to the real-life experiences of the people who attempt the journey north.

"I had a lot of contact with the gangs while I was researching," he explains. "There is no central leadership, no one to ask permission about these things, but I mostly got the impression that if I represented them and their rules accurately then there should be no problems."

"I actually wrote the script in English, but kept notes on specific dialogue and then ran through some of the scenes with the guys I knew in the prisons to make them realistic," Fukunaga says. "I was interested in what were often, to them, strange domestic details, like who did the shopping and what kind of toilet paper they used."

Western or Greek tragedy?

At times a thriller, chase movie, social commentary, and immigration drama, Sin Nombre is hard to categorize. The director calls it a Western: the search for a better life somewhere far, far away. Producer Amy Kaufman prefers to see it as a Greek tragedy: a family imploding on itself.

Either way, the themes of family and loyalty run throughout the story, whether through a family's blood ties, or the gang's "homies," linked to each other through bonds of brotherhood forged in violence.

Although death and violence are ubiquitous, they are not over-dramatized. You come away with the sensation that life is cheap in such desperate situations: death comes quickly and can strike at any time. The title itself refers to the anonymity of death among illegal immigrants.

At the same time, there is no attempt to condescend or moralize. As García Bernal notes, "This film does not try to explain the issues, it just tells you a story that is Cary's very personal point of view."

Filmed on location in Mexico, one of the biggest challenges this visually stunning production faced was the geographical expanse of the story and the fact that so much of the action takes place on top of a train. The cast and crew spent five days filming on top of an actual train, and then built a train to scale on a flatbed trailer to shoot the remaining scenes.

"Cary wrote a big, sweeping script, so the major challenge was fitting so many locations, actors, [and] trains into a relatively small budget," says producer Kaufman.

Paulina Gaitán, already a veteran Mexican actress at age 17, ably carries the role of Sayra, but had other concerns. "The part on the train was the hardest for me because I am scared of heights. The first time I had to climb up on top of the train I was almost in tears."

Speak like a Honduran

Getting the Honduran accent right was also tough, Gaitán remembers. But attention to detail paid off, and this authenticity is one of the film's achievements. While the search for a Honduran actress to play Sayra eventually landed the Mexican Gaitán, the same casting calls turned up Edgar Flores, a young Honduran who plays El Casper, a disillusioned gang member and later Sayra's saviour and travelling companion.

"He had never really acted... before, but he had a look and charisma on camera that was instantaneous," Fukunaga said.

And what will a Mexican audience make of the film? Executive producer García Bernal believes there will be some shock and controversy, but that this story needs to be told. "What I take from this film is an understanding of the plight of these people who risk their lives to get to the United States, and how tough the world [is for them.]"

Backed by Mexican production house Canana and by Focus Features in the United States, Sin Nombre (sinnombrethemovie.com) opens in US cinemas March 20, premieres in Mexico at the Guadalajara Film Festival on March 23, and opens in Mexican cinemas on May 1.

In the meantime, check out the trailer here: video.aol.com/video-detail/exclusive-sin-nombre-trailer/953197286

A Painter's Life

margot — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 22:36:11 -0800

According to Phil Kelly, it's "absurd that all the swimming pools in the world are blue." Tacked to the wall of his Colonia Cuauhtemoc studio is a design scheme to remedy that: nudes in yellow and black.

Kelly paints oil canvasses with his hands and wipes them off on a wall in the back hallway. Piles of newspapers and magazines, jugs of turpentine and linseed oil, and a table covered in Victoria bottle caps, paint tubes, and cardboard boxes stuffed with photos and clippings spill over the room. His CD collection is a heap of discs and cases. The walls are papered with his work. A shower curtain hangs over the window that looks out to Circuito Interior.

The chaos is so artful, such a beautiful mess, that when he says, "I really should tidy the place up sometime," and then pops open a Victoria, you can't believe that he ever would.

Born in Ireland and raised in England, Kelly first came to Mexico in 1982. He lived above a "knicker shop" and taught English at a company located on the road to Toluca. He would wake up at 5 am to cross the city on the bus, edge along the side of the carretera, and arrive by 7.

His city scenes radiate the hecticness of the ordinary: jumbled buildings, blurred crowds, streaming traffic, decaying footbridges. "You make a select poetry out of the everyday," he says.

Kelly cooks (the day after this interview he was going to make roast beef for Nick McCarthy, the bass player for the group Franz Ferdinand), listens to jazz, works in the studio seven days a week, and likes it when other people smoke—even though he himself does not. He is married to Ruth Munguia, has two daughters, and became a Mexican citizen in 1999.

Why did you come here?

I tossed a coin ... I thought if I came here I could either walk north or south and if I didn't find anything on the way I could jump off at the end.

I came here and I had, like, $50 and I spent half of it on a night in the hotel looking through the yellow pages for English schools, and then like the third one that I came across, they said "well, we might have some work and we have somebody that wants to share an apartment."

What was the other side of the coin toss?

Paris ... I spoke a little French, and you know the silly tradition about Paris and painters.

How did you get here?

I flew to Huron, South Dakota.

From?

London. I had a friend there... I'd go out and try and draw, but there's nothing to draw in Huron, South Dakota... I used to go down there and go draw the rail yards. And I did a whole sort of series of paintings about street corners, about the sort of vocabulary of asphalt. Yellow lines and drains—because there's nothing else to draw.

Did you ever think you'd be able to survive off the painting?

Everybody always told me it was impossible... It doesn't actually solve anything, but it helps [the depression]... I have a whole wall out there of, like, sayings to try and alleviate my depression. It doesn't solve anything, but it helps. It's the only thing I've ever found that helps.

In your own work is there, above all, a passion that you have for cities, or is it Mexico City in particular?

If I go somewhere else I draw or paint wherever I go. In general it's a fascination for the movement and the poetry.

What do you think distinguishes the urbanscape of México City from other cities?

It's sort of vibrancy. I spend hours out on that balcony, watching... there always seem to be one element, or little element, that makes you startled. I think Mexico City is its startlingness. It's a bit like the similar thing that Henry Miller had with Paris, accidents and incidents of everyday life.

I used to read books and books and books and books, and then I came to Mexico and I almost stopped reading because you read the streets. You don't actually have to get books. So most of the paintings are about reading the streets. Like "voto por voto."

Do you start your paintings by drawing them first?

There's no specific way, but generally the idea to start with is just to get rid of the white canvas. Sometimes I stain it with whatever's around, sometimes I make some marks ... there's no actual rules. I think I'm actually against rules in general.

Do you think that living in Mexico suits a person who's against rules in general?

I think in Mexico here we're in favor of inventiveness rather than rules. The whole thing is a bit like it's improvisation, and that's what's so wonderful about jazz, you know? It's based on the improvisation.

A Shining Light

sue-ellen — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:49:53 -0800

Jasmin Lopez is tiny, really tiny. She’s twenty-eight, but at barely five feet, wearing jeans and a pink Puma sweatshirt and sandals, she could pass for twenty. She has hair that tumbles over her shoulders in long black curls, and eyes that often seem to be smiling, even when she’s panicking. “I can be kind of a control freak,” says the creator of Project Luz, a photojournalism workshop for marginalised youth in Mexico.

“Photography helps the kids to see things they usually just pass by—the clown that does tricks at the traffic lights, the old lady heating seeds on a comal. It’s about their community, their life,” says Jasmin. “The opportunity to share this with outsiders empowers them.”

A chicana from LA, Jasmin worked as a waitress, catering bar mitzvahs and corporate events to save money to come down to Mexico, which she did in a beatup yellow vocho dubbed “La Pulgita” (little flea), with three photographers, a dog called Oscar, and a cat that slept in a hammock made from a scarf strung between the dashboard and door. She receives no salary, and yet with a budget of just $7,000 USD managed to organise ten international photojournalists to volunteer a week of afternoons to come and run a workshop for twenty teenagers in Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl. She also managed to get hold of twenty digital cameras, begged and borrowed. The money for the kids’ lunches she scrounged together in a last minute email call for donations.

She started the project a year ago in Ejido Hermosillo, a tiny border town in the Baja California-Sonora desert, where her father was born and where she spent much of her childhood. When a family rift blew her life apart at age fifteen, she went from spending every summer in Ejido to not going at all. She lost touch with all the cousins, aunts, and uncles she’d grown up with. Ten years later, she decided to go back, and was shocked by what she saw “They were all struggling, living in poverty. I thought something like [Project Luz] could maybe help them to see things differently.”

It challenged her, she says, to see all that privation, the rubbish, the drug and alcohol problems, in her family’s town. When one of the photojournalists took a photo of her own grandmother sitting in her backyard surrounded by rubbish—and won a prize for it—she didn’t know what to think. She burned with shame for her family, who would think it crazy to publish such a photo, let alone give it a prize. But she could see the value in having people see the picture, and maybe broaden their view of how other people live. So she said nothing. When the project was over and they exhibited the photos in San Francisco, she decided to do it again. This time she chose a bigger, more ambitious project, in Nezahualcoyotl.

Sixteen-year-old Pamela Gonzalez moved to Neza from neighbouring Ixtapalapa three years ago, when her lawyer father bought a house there. “The people here are corrietones,” she says, disapprovingly—loudmouths. We’re bouncing around the back of a white combi van on our way to the Talleres Communitarios cultural centre, where Project Luz is held: a cavernous tin shed with a Che Guevera mural, rows of school desks, boxes of Polveron biscuits for sale, and a stage for community performances. The surrounding streets look like many working-class colonias in Mexico City: potholed roads and painted, flat-roofed houses; graffiti, street stalls, and tangled ribbons of cars and peseros (microbuses) puffing black smoke into the air.

When she leaves school, Pamela plans to study journalism. She’s one of a generation of Neza kids whose parents have surpassed the immigrant dreams of the city’s founders, who started arriving in the 1950s and set up makeshift homes on the dry salt bed that was once part of Lake Texcoco. From a notorious shantytown of ten thousand souls to over three million inhabitants today, Neza is now a fully-fledged city with running water, hospitals, a university and schools, and all the challenges and problems associated with a society that’s yanking itself out of one social and economic class into another. For example, Mexico’s richest man, Carlos Slim, is building a $150 million USD commercial centre on top of one of Neza’s notorious open-air rubbish dumps, with a 178-store shopping mall (to be finished by 2010), causing the garbage piles—which you can smell from all over Neza—to be moved further out toward the edges of the city.

As part of the workshop, Pamela and her group take photos at the dump, where hundreds of people work and live, scavenging for recyclable goods. Mule-drawn carriages offload piles of rubbish while small grey doves and blowflies swarm around the flattened mountain of waste. A heavy wind sweeps toxic dust into the eyes and nose. On the ground are limbless dolls, old magazines, and crushed juice boxes. Coloured plastic bags sprout like moss from the caked piles of decomposing waste. Dogs roam, patches of raw skin glowing through their fur. This is the bottom of the food chain; where the city’s old and unwanted find a home. At first the kids seem nervous, but as they walk around become more confident and start snapping away. “I knew this was here,” Pamela says, afterwards. “But I had no idea the people inside were living like that. I’m learning things about my city I never knew. I’m seeing the raw side of my own colonia.”

For more information on how you can get involved in Project Luz, visit projectuz.org, or email Jasmin@ProjectLuz.org.

Obama, Mariachis, and Me

catherine — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:53:07 -0800

I had a dream... that one day, on one of the most symbolic streets in Mexico City, I would sing and dance with mariachis for the inauguration of the first black President of the United States. We would sing soul songs, celebrating the occasion and commemorating the birthday of a Civil Rights pioneer. I would appear in a special gown: I would be a dark brown woman in bold, sparkly red. The mariachis would wear black.

On January 20, 2009, my dream, like the dreams of many around the world, came true. Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States, and on the corner of Paseo de la Reforma and Río Sena, a stone's throw away from the US Embassy—where demonstrators bid farewell to George W. Bush—my art action "In & Out of Place (MLK & Obama)" occurred.

The event went to the heart of my current Fulbright-García Robles scholarship project: "In and Out of Place: Making Black Feminist Performance Art in Mexico." I am here to create, explore, and share black art—in body and experience—in a different cultural context.

Before a mixed crowd of gringo acquaintances, local passersby, and a surprising throng of photographers, seven mariachis (three violinists, three guitarists, and one trumpeter) played: "Lift Ev'ry Voice & Sing" (the black national anthem); Stevie Wonder's "Happy Birthday" for Martin Luther King Jr.; James Brown's "Say it Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)"; and Nina Simone's "Feeling Good." Although I'm no Aretha Franklin, I sang and danced with them, at moments holding up pictures of my two honorees and trying to hype the crowd.

This wasn't easy. While one African-American woman started to cry at the first notes of "Lift Ev'ry Voice," others had never heard the songs before or couldn't untangle the English. Some seemed quizzical, others removed. A few hurried by. More than a few just stood and watched, their cameras clicking and whirring. Not dancing, not singing, they took in the spectacle of me.

Meanwhile, the older mariachis had given young Fernando Martinez the sole responsibility of singing in English. He had all the lyrics taped to the back of his violin. I'm not sure he understood every word, but he certainly got their feeling. He announced, "It's an honor for us to be a part of this event. Obama's presidency speaks to the possibility of unity for all the races in the world." Not everyone may have bought it, but it meant a lot to me that he did. The aim of all my work is to open up space—not just in art, but in politics, culture, and relationships. Fernando, for one, was with me.

This art action allowed me to feel a part of the Inauguration festivities back home, but also marked my distance from them. As I performed in public, I felt a strange mixture of homesickness and pleasure, isolation and solidarity. I missed my people back home, but it was my honor to play with the mariachis here. This was my tribute to a city which continues to challenge and inspire me as a black woman artist.

Gabrielle Civil is a 2008-2009 Fulbright-García Robles Fellow. Originally from Detroit, Michigan, she is an Associate Professor of English, Women's Studies and Critical Studies of Race and Ethnicity at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her website is gabriellecivil.com.

Snow Patrol

catherine — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:49:33 -0800

Terry Trent loves all things snow. He grew up in Lake Tahoe, has been skiing since he could walk, and was voted “rookie of the year” on the US Ski Team for downhill racing—when he was in his 50s.

“But I never considered snow as a medium for artistic expression,” he says. At least not until he went to the Sapporo, Japan International Snow Carving Competition last February. He returned home with a fresh perspective on snow and a new mission: he would return to Sapporo in 2009 with a snow carving team of his own. There was one catch. His application to enter a US team was denied because there were already too many US teams competing.

I am his sister-in-law and I had fallen in love with Mexico years ago while living in Guadalajara. Naturally, I suggested he recruit a Mexican team. Terry agreed.

On his quixotic quest to find three available and willing snow sculptors, Terry traveled to Valle de Bravo, outside of Mexico City, where he met with a young artist-entrepreneur, Eliseo Pulido. Eliseo is so passionate about the art of ice carving that he has founded a business, Corban Ice Company, in the city of Toluca. He has also apprenticed with internationally known ice sculptor Don Henley in Houston, Texas, and studied ice carving with Japanese sculptor Takeo Okamoto. Every year Eliseo gives an ice sculpting demonstration in the Plaza Gonzales Arratia in Toluca, Mexico.

I signed on to the adventure as Terry’s Girl Friday. Still in need of two more team members, we found architect and sculptor Ulises Moyao Garcia through the Breckenridge, Colorado Snow Sculpture Championships organization. Ulises has competed in six championships at Breckenridge.

“My sculptor friends introduced me to snow sculpture and I won first prize in the juried show the first year I participated. I was hooked after that.”

Though he sculpts in a variety of mediums, he says that he is drawn to snow because, “I like the travelling and teamwork inherent in international snow sculpting events.”

Ulises got two other sculptors on board: Rosa Irela Vazquez Gonzaga and Amalia Benevides Delgado, both graduates of the prestigious National University of Painting, Sculpture, and Printing, “La Esmeralda” in Mexico City.

Rosa has competed in over 78 national and international snow carving events; Amalia has competed in eight. The two teamed up at the eleventh International Snow Carving Competition in Livigno, Italy, in 2006, and garnered First Place.

“I remember that it was very difficult work because it rained the entire day,” says Amalia, recalling the grueling conditions that year.

From February 2-9, Team Mexico will be working in temperatures as low as 27 degrees Fahrenheit on blocks of snow that are ten feet wide by ten feet tall for twelve hours a day to compete against nineteen teams from all over the world.

Debby Adams is excited to share her brother-in-law´s latest adventure. She is usually at her clothing shop, Blisswear, in San Diego, California. Her website is blisswear.com.

Drug Ballads

Shauna — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 08:09:38 -0800

TJ Remixed

Shauna — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:44:00 -0800

Looking Back at México in Photos, by George Miller

Shauna — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 08:21:40 -0800

Inside Art with Project Luz

Shauna — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 12:15:51 -0800

A Gathering of Fugitives

margot — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:32:17 -0800

Diana Anhalt was eight years old when her parents moved the family to Mexico from New York. Active in many left-wing political organizations, they were fleeing the anti-communist persecution that swept the United States in eh 1940s and 50s. In Mexico City, they joined a rag-tag community of like-minded Americans living in political self-exile. Anhalt tells the story of her family and this community in her book, A Gathering of Fugitives: American Political Expatriates in Mexico 1948-1965. This is an excerpt:

"When somebody asks why we've moved to Mexico, you tell them we're here on business," my mother instructed. No other explanation was forthcoming. My parents never discussed their real reasons for moving to Mexico—certainly not with me—and, as I later learned, not with their friends either. But they weren't the only ones to keep a low profile. Many of the others did too—they varied daily routines, avoided discussing sensitive subjects over the phone and, if they did, used Yiddish or some personalized version of "pig Latin." Controversial books were rarely left out in the open. My parents kept theirs in a cardboard box on the upper shelf of their closet. In short, they were always on their guard. Discretion was essential: the same FBI that had placed us under surveillance in the States would continue to do so in Mexico. In addition, the American business community could not help but be aware of our presence.

Ironically, many of these expatriates shared our same sense of dislocation at having to adapt to life in a foreign country. But, generally speaking, this would not draw us together. On the contrary: in time, we would discover we had run straight into the arms of the very people we were running away from: white, middle class, conservative Republicans. Although they lived in Mexico, they continued to inhabit their own little Americas, Americas far less diversified than the ones we had fled, bringing with them their gift for turning everything they touched into everywhere, USA. No matter that we shared a common language and a national identity. Our politics set us apart.

Because of our politics, our whereabouts were routinely recorded, our passports withdrawn without notice, and subpoenas delivered to our doorsteps. The local and foreign press publicized our names and political histories, and some of us lost jobs when pressure was placed upon our employers. Deportations, though less common, also occurred, along with the occasional detention. Such dangers were real and deprived us of the security that planning for the future brings. Indeed, we had little sense of the future, forced as we were to live from one day to the next.

At the beginning, those were the things we shared, and sharing gave us the security of belonging. It drew us together, defreakifying the "I" and making us part of a 'we," an extended family. What we had in common kept us from standing alone. We could be a part of something, and that masked the pain and isolation. Freaks stand alone, but we didn't. Ergo, we weren't freaks.

With time, we glanced less at our watches and idled a little longer over a heavily spiced meal, learned to roll our tortillas and our R's around words like ferrocarril and carretera, to gesture with our hands, and to kiss casual acquaintances on the cheek, to revel in the warmth of Mexico's people and its climate. We learned to adapt. Time numbed the gnawing sense of unease and diminished—though never completely—our sense of alienation.

Mexico City during the 50s had a decidedly rural flavor, despite its more than a million and a half inhabitants, who referred to it as a pueblote, a huge town. Cows grazed, chickens pecked, and corn grew in vacant lots just blocks away from the city center; the surrounding mountains and the snow capped volcanoes Ixtaccihuatl and Popocatépetl were visible most of the year, and on Sunday mornings, charros, Mexico's elegantly clad horsemen, cantered down the Paseo de la Reforma, the wide, tree-lined avenue said to resemble the Champs elysees. Minor drawbacks, of course, were to be expected: American movies took over a year to arrive; a good malted and shoes in extra large sizes were unavailable; drinking the tap water or eating fruit and vegetables like strawberries, lettuce, grapes, and plums was ill-advised; medical and dental care could be careless; and a cloudburst brought the city to a standstill. Such things we took in stride. But reconciling ourselves to widespread poverty, the institutionalized corruption, and the casual disregard for punctuality was more difficult.

Diana Anhalt is a writer and editor who livesin Mexico City. You can purchase A Gathering of Fugitives through Amazon.com, or download it for free at:archer-books.com

Gangsta Wrap

margot — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 15:26:01 -0800

It's lunchtime on a cool Tuesday afternoon in August, and Magda Sayeg is "tagging" a street sign in the middle of a busy Condesa intersection—but not with a can of spray paint. Instead, the Houston-based graffiti artist is wrapping the signpost with a five-foot-long rectangle of hot pink fabric that she knitted herself.

Sayeg is working fast. She stretches the fabric around the post, fastens it with plastic zip ties, and then pushes it up the pole as far as it will go. All the while cars are racing by; a cop on a silver motorcycle checks her out, but decides to move on. "It's unsanctioned art; that's what graffiti is," the petite 34-year-old in a blue cotton minidress says, explaining why police don't stop her. "You don't see it like that ‘cause it's pretty. But pretty is not necessarily any less outlaw."

But pretty is a big part of why Sayeg's collective, Knitta Please, has moved so quickly, from its first spontaneously knitted doorknob in Houston three years ago, to a streetlight in Paris, to Mexico City. Knitta tags aren't high art; they're a clever spin on tired, spray-painted graffiti, a cuter, innocuous alternative to the 3D lettering that owners of walls and building facades have been painting over for decades, which explains why Sayeg is getting away with defacing a street sign in broad daylight in Mexico City.
Sayeg's worldwide tagging spree began suddenly one day when she and a couple of girlfriends spied an abandoned pile of yarn and decided to cover a door handle. Then it dawned on them, Sayeg writes on her Web site, that they could become "a tag crew of knitters, bombing the inner city with vibrant, stitched works of art, wrapped around everything from beer bottles on easy nights to public monuments and utility poles on more ambitious outings."

The original crew was 11-strong, and they took the gangsta rap concept seriously (their name is a pun on the title of an album by the late rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard). Everyone had a moniker: Akrylic, PolyCotN and, for the lone male of the group, MascuKnitity. Their outings became a Tuesday night ritual of heavy beer drinking and girl-gang shenanigans. They donned black hoodies and waited till dusk fell to canvas Houston with their unfinished scarves and sweaters.

The Knittas eventually shrank to three members, but their concept went global. Imitation craft bombers surfaced in England and Australia. The Seattle Monorail commissioned them to wrap a large concrete column. Random House came knocking. These days, Sayeg can't seem to go anywhere without generating a media buzz. The mother of three and co-owner (with partner of fourteen years Dan Fergus) of a boutique, two bookstores, and restaurant in Texas, is wondering if her favorite hobby can become her full-time job.

"Here I am doing Knitta, and it's taken me everywhere," she says. "How can I argue that it's not the most fulfilling thing in terms of profession?"

It's her last day in Mexico, and she and her husband, a soft-spoken guy twelve years her senior who favors T-shirts and sneakers, are wandering around a market off Paseo de la Reforma picking out trinkets for the kids. Conversation turns to what Sayeg is going to do next with Knitta Please.

"How about a convention?" Dan suggests. "We could do it in Japan."

"Yeah," says Sayeg, without a hint of irony. "I like the idea of involving more of the fan base."

They only have thirty minutes to catch a cab to the airport, and Sayeg is feeling bittersweet about leaving. She came here with eighteen tags, but still has three left. Walking down Reforma toward the hotel, she pulls out a nest of fuzzy dark gray yarn from her bag. It's clearly expensive stuff, and Sayeg gives it a wistful look. "One day I'm going to make something practical," she sighs.

The last time she did that was two years ago for Christmas. She made a purple scarf for her seven-year-old niece, who hated it. "I spent two hours knitting!" she says, shaking the yarn. "It's like, ‘Screw it, can I have that back and put it on a pole?'"