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.

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

Underwater Museum (MUSA), Isla Mujeres, MX

The process and evolution of the underwater installation off the coast of Isla Mujeres, Mexico, created by British sculptor and diver, Jason deCaires Taylor.

More than 400 hand crafted sculptures stand on the ocean floor and depict everyday people going about their normal lives. Men, women, children are all present, all frozen in time. The installation, part of an environmental conservation project, is constructed as an artifical reef; corals grow and marine creatures feed, continuing the life cycle.

Jason de Caires Taylor’s underwater sculptures create a unique, absorbing and expansive visual seascape. Highlighting natural ecological processes Taylor’s interventions explore the intricate relationships that exist between art and environment. His works become artificial reefs, attracting marine life, while offering the viewer privileged temporal encounters, as the shifting sand of the ocean floor, and the works change from moment to moment. – Formele Capricioase ale Artei

Taylor’s website:  http://www.underwatersculpture.com/

Related articles

• Cancun’s Underwater Museum (aquaworldcancun.wordpress.com)

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.

Beautiful books: Saltillo sarapes

Saltillo sarape, note the Mexican flags used as decorative motifs in the rhombus.

One of the great textile traditions of the world, the magnificent Saltillo sarapes of Mexico have been a symbol of wealth, prestige and rugged individualism for over 250 years. In the second half of the 19th century, beginning with the reign of Mexican Emperor Maximilian, the Saltillo enjoyed a final flowering of artistic achievement.

Sarape Museum in Saltillo, Mexico

The McCormick Gallery in Chicago, Illinois has recently published a comprehensive book on the subject featuring essays by Mark Winter and Thomas McCormick. Winter is the foremost authority on Saltillo Sarapes and McCormick has collected these textiles for 35 years.

Related:

From Smithsonian magazine, click here to read:  The Sarape: Latin America’s Wrap for All Seasons | Articulations.

From the McCormick Gallery

Saltillo Sarape, A survey: 1850-1920 by Mark Winter and Tom McCormick

Previously published work on the Saltillo sarape has primarily concentrated on those textiles classified as Classic, that is to say, weavings produced from the eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries. This is certainly understandable as these world-class weavings are among the most magnificent ever produced in any culture. They have always been costly, a sign of wealth and privilege, and they are rare and expensive to collect today. Mark Winter, the foremost authority on the topic, has written insightfully in his essay about the history and development of the Classic Saltillo sarape.

However, Saltillo sarapes woven in the post-classic period, after 1850 and up to the decline of the indigenous Mexican weaving industry in the early twentieth century, have received considerably less attention. This represents a seventy-five year period in which superb examples were produced with an expanded canon of design concepts and the benefit of newly available dyes and yarns. This was also an era of growing nationalism, when the sarape became a symbol of Mexican pride. Tom Mccormick provides new insight on the weavings of this period.

The book, with 112 pages featuring over 100 color illustrations, is available through the gallery or by visiting www.saltillosarape.com.

Love Story – Historia de un amor

Los Panchos can make a desert weep. Spinning Mexican love ballads and boleros back in the 50s and 60s, they were at their best when American songbird Eydie Gorme came on board. Their intoxicating, syrupy sounds will wrap you in a warm embrace and send you waltzing with the lamp posts.

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)

For a fundamental list of Mexican culture

Mexican Mole Poblano in a traditional "cazuela" (ceramic pot)

What do these things/people have in common?

• Dia de muertos (Day of the Dead)
• Pedro Paramo (a short novel by Juan Rulfo)
• Teotihuacan (an archeological site near Mexico City)
• Mole
• La Dichosa Palabra (a TV Talk Show about education, language, literature, and poetry) and 
• Enchiladas

Answer:  From Fundamental Lists of Mexican Culture, 5 most mentioned elements by readers in order of popularity (10/18/11).

The project, a collaboration between CONACULTA and Este Pais, invites specialists, artists of all kinds, and the public to make lists of Mexican culture. The lists, creating a collective map of the most significant people and works of the nation, will form a guide, particularly for young people, to learn about and appreciate Mexico’s cultural heritage.

In summary, all that Mexicans should know, see, read, listen and learn, with the premise that from these fundamentals, Mexicans’ identity is formed.

To create your own list, visit: http://www.estepais.com/listas/

or just visit this site to find the many and fascinating lists created by others!

Maya M(i)X

Soviet playing cards with Maya-inspired designs

Easily among the most baffling pieces of cross-cultural pollination is the popularity of Maya motifs during the Soviet era in Russia. Case in point: This Maya-inspired deck of playing cards, designed by an unknown Soviet artist in the middle of the 20th century.

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