Till death do us part?

Young Man with a Skull (Vanitas) 1628 by Franz Halls

In Mexican poetry, death’s presence is neither depressing nor cause for putting the book down, often loved ones are depicted in the act of dying, the dead window-shop and go to cafes, and suicide is spoken about as casually as a friend who might drop by on Monday or maybe Thursday.

In Héctor Carreto’s ‘Some Nights My Father Visits Me,’ fidelity to his father and to his memory continues after death.

…I’ll remain waiting,/night after night,/at a crossroads or the foot of a pedestal.

Always at Night My Father Visits Me

Always at night, my deceased father and I/meet on the corner/of Allende and Donceles/or at the long tables in those kitchens/where our grandparent’s lights can’t reach/or under the gas light/of the Rex or some other ruined movie house.

And sometimes he goes with me/to the old socials at the noisy cafés/where he doesn’t drink or join in./But his eyes bite/at the lips of women friends.

No one senses his presence there./No one supposes he’s dead.

Sometimes we cross the thresholds/of grand foyers/and step into that open, without breathing,/into shadows that pass/beside us.

Other nights, many nights,/I escort my father/who keeps hanging on to me/as if he wanted to have/a nice suit or a sailor’s uniform./Also, he’s looking, I’m sure,/for a cape and crown.

Window after window/our feet without any heaviness/pass López, Tacuba, Moneda./The journey won’t let me rest,/but a child must never contradict his parent,/much less if they are dead.

Some moments before he returns/to the grave/my father insists on his last will,/little things I can’t remember/after I’m awake/or he unrolls the treasure map/where his memory confounds the markers.

I know down there in some deep place he searches/for reconciliation./If I give it to him he’ll go back to sleep in peace/and I’ll remain here waiting,/night after night,/at a crossroad or the foot of a pedestal.

What to do with bad photographs?

I had the wonderful opportunity to visit a performance of Mexico City’s Folkloric Ballet Sunday morning.  I packed my camera to record the event, to help me remember the experience, but I was prepared for disappointment. My camera is a poor tool for this kind of work and the results were true to my expectations.  Most of the photographs were out of focus, the colors were distorted, and although I could improve compositions by cropping, a lot of things I couldn’t fix.

So, I decided to goof around with the photographs, altering them freely. Here’s a sampling:

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Reader, what is your opinion of manipulating photos this way?  What do you do when photos have so many problems that standard solutions don’t help?  Do photographs altered this way help preserve memories or provide a real record of events?

Ritual and memory

Dia de los Muertos is rooted in the Mexican belief that there are three deaths. The first death is when the body ceases to function; when the heart stops, the gaze becomes hollow and the physical space we occupy becomes inconsequential. The second death comes when the body is lowered into the ground and returned to earth. The third death, the most definitive death, is when there is no one left to remember us. – Victor Landa

The Mexican… is familiar with death. (He) jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it. It is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love. – Octavio Paz

Neon Day of the Dead fashion

Mexican print and skulls to make The Day of The Dead a danceable affair – from the Holland Resort 2012 Collection.

Dia de Los Muertos – Enrico Martino

Chocolate!

A table lined with all the standard tools for preparing chocolate: a ceramic comal or griddle for roasting the beans, a metate or volcanic grinding table, a molcajete or mortar (upper right) for mixing the cocoa with other ingredients and a molinillo (lower left) used to produce the delicious foam that tops Mexican hot chocolate

The history of chocolate begins in Mesoamerica…

Chocolate residue found on 2,600 yr. old ceramic vessels

Etymologists trace the origin of the word “chocolate” to the Aztec word “xocoatl,” which referred to a bitter drink brewed from cacao beans. The Latin name for the cacao tree, Theobroma cacao, means “food of the gods.”Many modern historians have estimated that chocolate has been around for about 2000 years, but recent research suggests that it may be even older.

In the book The True History of Chocolate, authors Sophie and Michael Coe make a case that the earliest linguistic evidence of chocolate consumption stretches back three or even four millennia, to pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica such as the Olmec.

It’s hard to pin down exactly when chocolate was born, but it’s clear that it was cherished from the start. Cacao beans were a valuable commodity and used as currency by 600 AD.  Around this same time the first Maya cocoa plantations were established in the Yucatan.

Both the Mayans and Aztecs believed the cacao bean had magical, or even divine, properties, suitable for use in the most sacred rituals of birth, marriage and death. At royal banquets frothing chocolate was served in golden goblets with finely wrought gold or tortoise-shell spoons.

Hot Chocolate, Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta (Spain 1841-1920)

Sweetened chocolate didn’t appear until Europeans discovered the Americas and sampled the native cuisine. It didn’t suit the foreigners’ tastebuds at first –one described it in his writings as “a bitter drink for pigs” – but once mixed with honey or cane sugar, it quickly became popular throughout Spain.

By the 17th century, chocolate was a fashionable drink throughout Europe, believed to have nutritious, medicinal and even aphrodisiac properties (it’s rumored that Casanova was especially fond of the stuff).  But it remained largely a privilege of the rich until the invention of the steam engine made mass production possible in the late 1700s.

By 1868, a little company called Cadbury was marketing boxes of chocolate candies in England. Milk chocolate hit the market a few years later, pioneered by another name that may ring a bell – Nestle.

Read more about Cacao and Chocolate in Mesoamerica:  http://whp.uoregon.edu/mesoinstitute/?page_id=759

Related:

Every year since 1977, the small town of San Pedro Atocpan celebrates its most famous dish with a month long festival in October, the Feria del Mole, featuring dozens of types of mole.

Pedro Ramirez Vazquez awarded Fine Arts Medal

Pedro Ramirez Vazquez (Mexico, DF 1919 - )

Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, architect and urban designer, has been awarded the Fine Arts Medal by the National Institute of Fine Arts, the highest award for artistic achievement in Mexico.

National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City, DF

Ramirez Vazquez, a graduate of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, contributed profoundly to Mexico City’s urban panorama during his 6 decade career.  Much of his work is founded on his strong personal beliefs in social responsibility and civil participation.

Upon receiving the medal, he said,

On this day I want to share my reflections with youngsters… practice self-discipline, ecological conservation, and originality,  but keep roots, because these are permanent and do not change over time.

He is one of the most prolific of Mexican architects nationally and internationally.  Some of his projects in Mexico include:

• The National Anthropology Museum (Museo Nacional de Antropologia),
• the Aztec Soccer Stadium (Estadio Azteca),
• the new Guadalupe Basilica (Nueva Basílica de Guadalupe) and the
• Museum of Modern Art (Museo de Arte Moderno) in collaboration with Rafael Mijares

Mi Gran Obra

Ramirez Vasquez also designed a prefabricated school classroom for children, a concept which has been adopted internationally, which he refers to as “Mi gran obra“, his greatest work.  During his tenure on the federal committee of school construction, 30 thousand rural classrooms were built in just 3 years, a classroom every 2 hours it was said.  Ramirez’s design was taken to 17 countries in Latin America as well as Philippines, India, Indonesia, Yugoslavia and Italy. Eventually, an additional 150 thousand units were built in Mexico.

Related:

More information and photographs of of his projects:  Pedro Ramirez Vazquez awarded Fine Arts Medal by the National Institute of Fine Arts (Art Daily Newsletter)

Fantastic creatures parade through Mexico City

Saturday, October 22 at 12 noon
5th Annual Parade and Competition of
Monumental Alebrijes (Monumental Fantastic Creatures)

The parade will begin in the Zócalo and continue down 5 de Mayo, Juárez and Paseo de la Reforma avenues until reaching the Angel de la Independence Monument.

After the parade, competitor’s “creatures” will be on exhibit through Sunday, November 6 on the main sidewalks of Paseo de la Reforma, between the Angel de la Independencia monument and Diana Cazadora monument.

Watch portions of the parade here:

Stream videos at Ustream

Related: 

Information about alebrijes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alebrije

Household saints

Inauguration day of the statue of El Santo in Mexico City, below in a mask like his father, El Hijo de El Santo

Visit David Lida’s post on El Santo:  David Lida » Blog Archive » Household saint.

The sculpture of El Santo, El Emascarado de Plata (The Silver Masked Saint):

The plaza, garden and statue, inaugurated in June 2006, is between the streets Jesus Carranza and Gorostiza in Colonia Peralvillo, Cuauhtémoc, the Barrio Bravo de Tepito in Mexico City.  The sculpture, 3.65 meters tall and weighing 1.5 tons, was created by Edwin Jorge Barrera García, a sculptor and fireman.  The wrestler’s son, who wrestles as El Hijo de El Santo, financed the project.

The unveiling was presided by politicians, son of Rodolfo Guzmán, a.k.a. The Saint, actors and the President of the Lucha Libre Comission of the time.  The wrestler’s son, like his father, wore his mask and did not reveal his identity.  Others attending included sports commentators, retired wrestlers Baby Richard, Pompín y Many Guzmán, legendary masters of the “lucha” like El Perro Aguayo, Ringo Mendoza and Mil Máscaras, and wrestlers Huracán Ramírez Junior, Scorpio, Greco, Charles Bronson, Rebelde Rojo, Blue Panther, Cerebro Negro, Villanos III, IV and V, Dr. Cerebro, Jaque Mate Jr., Solar, Fantasma y Tinieblas, Blue Demon, Jr.  At the event they signed autographs and posed for the camera’s of hundreds of Mexican Lucha Libre fans.

Heroes die but legends continue…I leave the Saint in your care. – El Hijo de El Santo (The Saint’s son) on the day of the innauguration

Information about El Santo released at the event:

Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta was born September 23, 1917 in Tulacingo, Hidalgo.  He began wrestling in lucha libre in 1925 as Rudy Guzmán, Hombre Rojo/Red man, and the Murciélago II/Bat II.  It wasn’t until June 26, 1962 that the referee Jesús Lomelín baptised him as El Santo, the name that immortalized his career.  He was national Welterweight and Middleweight champion in 1943, Welterweight world champion in 1946, Middleweight champion and Cruiserweight (97 kg./210 lbs.) national champion in 1952.  The Saint starred in 58 films, including The Saint and Blue Demon against Dr. Frankenstein, The Saint vs. the Wolves, The Mummies of Guanajuato, The Saint against the Vampire Women and The Saint against the Zombies among others.  He died February 5, 1984.

There is another statue of El Santo in Tulancingo, Hidalgo, birthplace of the wrestler.

Humor: Day of the Dead debacle

Calavera de la Catrina ("La Catrina"), José Guadalupe Posada (1851-1913)

Hi, everyone!

The Mountain Room is gearing up for its Day of the Dead celebration on Friday. Please send in photos of loved ones for our altar. All parents are welcome to come by on Wednesday afternoon to help us make candles and decorate skulls.

Thanks!

Emily

What begins as a seemingly harmless celebration of Day of the Dead in an American pre-school takes some unusual turns as parents and children get involved.  Maria Semple, writing for the New Yorker, takes a humorous look at what can happen, chronicling events in this series of e-mails between a pre-school teacher and parents.

To read the article in the New Yorker’s humor section, Shouts and Murmurs, click here:  Day of the Dead or Halloween? : The New Yorker.

Information about: the graphic cartoon of José Guadalupe Posada:

Posada’s posters and political cartoons depicted members of every social class as calaveras (mischievous skeletons).  La Catrina, the “Calavera of the Female Dandy”, satirizes the life of the upper classes during the reign of Porfirio Diaz.  The humor of the device made his scathing political satire more acceptable.

Well-recognized and enjoyed in its day, Posada’s work gradually faded from popular memory until shortly after the Mexican Revolution.  In the 1920s his work was revived by French artist and art historian Jean Charlot and La Catrina, gaining iconic status as a symbol of uniquely Mexican art, was mass-produced for the public.  When Diego Rivera painted the mural Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda central, he painted himself as a boy holding hands with his depiction of Posada’s Catrina.

Today, José Guadalupe Posada’s work is synonymous with the lively Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico.

Related articles

• ‘Day of the Dead’ expanding in US (boston.com)