Elizabeth Adams's Blog, page 65

Vast

On our last day in the city, we went up 42 floors to the top of the Torre Latinoamericana to take a bird's eye view.

My first, and second, and probably final impression was how vast this city really is. It seemed like a video would show it to you better than any other way, so I took this one, walking slowly around the periphery of the cage at the top of the building. (It shows you a little of adolescent Mexican life, too.) If you use the full screen view you'll be able to see much better.

The Tower is located on the western side of the Centro Historico. The video starts looking north, approximately; the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadelupe is below the hills in the distance. Then it moves to the northwest; the white building in the foreground is the Palacio des Belles Artes, and the beautiful park beyond it is the Alameda. Then we move directly west, toward the business center with its skyscrapers and modern architecture. The video proceeds to the south and zooms into the neighborhood where we were living: Escandon. Finally, we look toward the east. The Zocalo is the large bare rectangle in the center; the Palacio Nationale is on its far side, and the Metropolitan Cathedral is on the north side. The camera moves down Avenue Francisco Madero, which is now for pedestrians only, and then back to the Zocalo.

Looking at this video now, I just want to be back there. I'm kind of amazed to realize how much we've learned about this enormous place in a short time, mainly because of studying maps and Google Earth and traveling around using different modes of transportation. The city begins to make at least some geographical sense to me, whereas at first - flying in for the first time a year ago - it just felt overwhelming. I'm very fond of Mexico City now, and in spite of being one of 25 million souls there, I felt like it welcomed me. Everywhere we went, including this tower, we met and talked to people who were warm, curious, open, and direct. They have made this place, over many centuries, and it reflects them.

We went down in mid-afternoon, walked around the Centro, had something to eat, and came back up to watch the sunset.

 

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Our first day in Mexico was a national holiday as well as being a Monday - the day when most museums and many shops and restaurants are closed. A good time, we thought, to visit the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Villa, as it's popularly called, since the site contains several churches and other buildings, is the most-visited shrine to the Virgin Mary in the world (over 20 million annual visitors) and the most important Roman Catholic pilgrimage site in Latin America -- reason enough to visit. But I wanted to try to understand something deeper about the devotion to "Our Lady" -- this particular apparition of the Virgin Mary -- whose image appears everywhere in Mexico City, and who seems embedded in the hearts of the people, whether overtly religious or not. I wondered what I would feel.

We reached the site after quite a long ride by Metrobus to the northern part of the city, and a walk through a residential neighborhood full of first-floor souvenir shops and small retail stores. Within the walls of the shrine, one finds a huge stone plaza, and around it, the new basilica shown above, and several former basilicas, progressively older from left to right, dating back to the 16th century. Two of these are shown in the picture below; all of these buildings are very large, and suffered considerable damage from the Mexico City earthquake in 1985; one was so slanted that it felt extremely unsafe, but people were still worshipping in it.

On the top of Tepeyac Hill, in the upper right, is yet another church, the final destination of most of the pilgrims who come here.

Here is the official Catholic account of the story.

On the morning of December 9, 1531, Juan Diego saw an apparition of a young girl at the Hill of Tepeyac. Speaking to him in Nahuatl (the dialect of the tribe of the Aztecs) the girl asked that a church be built at that site in her honor; from her words, Juan Diego recognized the girl as the Virgin Mary. Diego told his story to the Spanish Archbishop of Mexico City, Fray Juan de Zumarraga, who instructed him to return to Tepeyac Hill, and ask the "lady" for a miraculous sign to prove her identity. The first sign was the Virgin healing Juan's uncle. The Virgin told Juan Diego to gather flowers from the top of Tepeyac Hill. Although December was very late in the growing season for flowers to bloom, Juan Diego found Castillian roses, not native to Mexico, on the normally barren hilltop. The Virgin arranged these in his peasant cloak or tilma. When Juan Diego opened his cloak before Bishop Zumárraga on December 12, the flowers fell to the floor, and on the fabric was the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Under the revisionist painting shown above, the caption reads "The Conversion of the Indians." You can see the Franciscan friars administering baptism from water held in an Aztec vessel, now serving as a font; above them, the Virgin of Guadelupe appears wreathed in smoke that billows from Popocatepetl. Through the Spanish Requirement of 1513, which was read aloud to the native people in Spanish, the Spanish monarchy had declared its divinely ordained right to take possession of the territories of the New World and to subjugate, exploit and, when necessary, fight the native inhabitants. Resisters were considered evil, in defiance of God's plan for Spain, and were forced to convert to Christianity or were killed. (Diego Rivera's murals in the Palacio Nationale depict what really happened.)

Below the painting is a reproduction of the famous image as it appeared on Juan Diego's cloak or tilma; the original tilma is displayed in the new basilica, above the altar, in an enclosure containing gases to help keep it in a state of preservation. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin became Latin America's first indigenous saint when he was canonized at this site by Pope John Paul II in 2002.

Why, then, did so many native people become attached to Our Lady? Before the Spanish Conquest in 1591-21, Tepayac Hill had been the site of a temple to the Aztec mother goddess Tonantzin. The Spanish destroyed it and built a chapel there in honor of the Virgin Mary. After they were converted to Christianity, the Indians continued to come there, addressing the Virgin as "Tonantzin." Whatever the truth was about the story of Juan Diego -- an indigenous man --  only a decade later, the Indians formed the core of the cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe: a devotion that continues to this day. As we visited the shrines and walked around the site, we saw hundreds of native people who had come with their families. There were very old women, walking with difficulty, supported by a daughter or son, and there were many young woman with newborn babies in their arms, bringing them to meet the Virgin for the first time, or to be baptized at a special building that is part of the Villa.

At the far end of the plaza is a raised area which affords a beautiful view of the entire site. I stood there and watched pilgrims crossing the rough stone plaza on their knees, toward the new basilica.

In the previous picture you can see a sign that reads "Mercado," or "market." Behind the main buildings is a large typical Mexican market  -- a warren of interconnected tents and buildings -- full of souvenirs, and things to eat and drink. We stopped there for lunch: roast chicken with freshly-made corn tortillas.

You can see the roofs of the mercado behind this earliest church, where Juan Diego is interred.

Just above that church is this astonishing larger-than-lifesize bronze tableau of native people presenting gifts to the Virgin; from it, a path leads up the hill through beautiful gardens to the shrine at the top, the "shrine of the roses."

All along the path and through the gardens, people stopped with their families to be photographed.

There were professional photographers with tricky printers that produced large-format photos on the spot. Each of them had a shrine-themed photo-spot, some more kitschy than others. Here we have not one but two Virgins, a Pope, multicolored roses, and every stereotypical Mexican symbol you can think of. At the shrine, Pope John Paul II, "Juan Pablo," seemed second only to the Virgin in popularity; there is a huge bronze statue of him in the plaza. I didn't see a single image of Pope Benedict, but I'm sure Pope Francis will become popular here too.

A view of one of the older basilicas and plaza, as we climbed up the hill.

And some of the beautiful plantings. I loved seeing women carrying their babies in their arms, wrapped in a blanket.

The Shrine of the Virgin of the Roses, at the top of Tepayac Hill. Photography was not allowed inside; it was a simple, very old structure with a small dome, an altar, and some large paintings of the miraculous events.

Finally, we descended, becoming part of the large crowd enjoying a beautiful day, completely at ease in this shrine that clearly belongs to them. They were families on an outing; devotees coming to pray; people seeking some moments of peace and beauty in a crowded city -- but by their manner, their respect was clear: this was not a park like any other.

What did I feel?

At one point, crossing the plaza, I looked down at a stone beneath my feet and saw that, unlike its neighbors, it was covered with Aztec carvings. That is Mexico City: the past coexists with the present. They weigh upon each another in the stones of the buildings, mingle in the faces of the people. Our own past always seems both real and unreal, and so perhaps in this place with its unfamiliar and miraculous history I was able to suspend judgements and simply be present.

Did the Virgin appear to Juan Diego half a millenium ago? Does it really matter?

She is present today on this streetcorner in Escandon, and thousands of other corners, shop windows, tree notches, and public nooks throughout the city; as people pass by, they notice, pause, cross themselves. Her image appears in all the churches, and she is present in nearly every home in a ceramic statue, an image woven of palm fronds, or embroidered on a blouse, or molded into a folkloric retablo. She moves through the city around people's necks, or on their backs, and travels with strangers back to a far northern city: a dim image seen through a tiny crystal set in the cross of a rose-scented rosary.

In the end, I was touched by the beauty of the shrine, and I was moved by the old women, many of whom were probably not much older than me. There was a lot that I didn't understand, because I am neither Mexican nor Catholic, and a lot that I did, because I am human. I'm content to leave it at that.

Back to painting

Avocados and watermelon on a Moroccan plate. Watercolor (detail), 4/2/2014.

The blank canvas or watercolor sheet is just as intimidating as the blank page or screen...it's always hard to get back to either art or writing when I've been away for a while. In spite of all my preparations, i did absolutely no drawing or painting in Mexico; there just wasn't enough "sitting time" for that and it would have been an imposition on J. (plus we wanted to go around together.) However, the colors and vibrant life-energy have stayed with me, and I hope to be able to bring some of that into my work in the months ahead.

 

And Then There Was Food...

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Jumex

The Jumex is a three-month-old contemporary art museum in the Polanco district of Mexico City area, established by Eugenio Lopez, whose family fortune was made through the Jumex fruit juice empire.

Before our recent trip, we had read an excited review of the museum in the New York Times. As longtime readers of this blog will know, modern architecture is an interest of ours, and a big part of why we wanted to see Museo Jumex was to see the building itself and its slightly older neighbor, the art museum of another Mexican billionare, Carlos Slim. Lopez has been collecting since the mid-90s and the Jumex collection now stands at over 2,750 pieces; the museum is the largest contemporary art museum in Latin America and Lopez has said that he intends to eventually donate the building and its contents to Mexico.

Quebec, still mired in nationalistic debates, provincialism, and insecurity about its place in the international cultural scene, might take note of the following:

...[previously] Mexican collectors had mostly stayed within the few socially acceptable categories of pre-Columbian, -Colonial, muralism, and so on, all of which focused on a nationalist past. Lopez instead wanted to position Mexico City to be a part of what he calls “the network,” the intellectual and cultural circuit that connects New York, London, Berlin, Bejing, and other global centers. “I saw an incredible opportunity in doing a collection that was not just Mexican or Latin American,” Lopez says, noting that before him, very few people were doing that. They all had Diego Riveras, Frida Kahlos, but no one bought a Jasper Johns. “I said, ‘I want to do it on an international level.’ ”

A 1997 visit to London’s Saatchi Gallery hatched Lopez’s vision for a Jumex corporate collection that would be open to the public—then, a novel idea in Latin America. The art adviser Patricia Martín, a key mentor, got him to think beyond that trophy mentality to imagine instead a foundation that would not only collect art but also dispense scholarships for arts education, provide grants for young Mexican artists, and fund acquisitions of Mexican art abroad... 

---W Magazine

When we visited, on a Friday, we were told by a cheerful, laid-back attendant in the sign-less lobby that the museum was free that day. He sat at a table with computer cords snaking away from wall sockets, while the room next door was a sleek, minimalistic black cafe; it seemed either like the lobby was unfinished, or had deliberately avoided the designed-to-impress entrance of so many of its peers.

The entire building is clad in a creamy travertine marble, and the use of that material on the interior floors as well enhances the typical Mexican porosity of indoors vs. outdoors. We rode to the top floor in a sleek elevator and worked our way down; on the top level was a curated show of works from the collection, more memorable to me for the spaces themselves than for the works, although I really liked a Basquiat portrait and a floor-to-ceiling graphite "drawing" by Carlos Amorales on one of the exhibition walls itself.

 

 

Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1960-1988, Untitled (Indian Head), 1981.
 

On the floor below was a very fine show about the work of the late performance artist/sculptor James Lee Byars, co-curated by the Jumex Fundación’s Magalí Arriola and MoMA PS1’s Peter Eleey: a travelling collaboration that may be a good indication of Lopez's intentions for the future.

Much of Byars' art was made of paper, linen, silk and gold-leaf; it had a Zen aesthetic and was provocative, intelligent, and often amusing, while avoiding excessive cerebralism.

The museum's internal staircase is unexpectedly brilliant.

But my favorite physical space was the second-floor wrap-around outdoor "porch" which the architect, David Chipperfield of Britain, uses to frame vistas of nearby architecture and far-away horizons, making statements about the Jumex as both a physical and psychological presence within Mexico City. Beyond that, it was simply beautiful: I stayed out there a long time, while the sun went down, and then we finally exited to take some more photographs of the museum's exterior before leaving Polanco and heading back to our hotel.

 

If Carlos Slim's astonishing, shining tile-encrusted hourglass is a statement piece set amid Polanco's tall monuments to corporate success and Mexico's future, then the Jumex, with its straight sides and saw-tooth pate, is an understatement. It sits like a slightly smug, self-contained toy block set down amid much snazzier neighbors, but seems quite well-positioned both to stay, and to be heard.

Woe Are We

 

Or maybe we're just nuts.

That's me, on the left, photographed by Jonathan as we wait for a neighbor, who's been out riding a bicycle, to open the back door to the studio building. The drift was up above my knees, and the wind was howling. I think it was saying, "What the f*%# are you people doing here???"

 A few more shots of the ride to choir rehearsal this morning at 9:00 am. Somebody remind me why I came back from Mexico?

 

The Metropolitan Cathedral

The immense Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary dominates the north side of the Zocalo; we, like so many other visitors, graviate there. Cortez built his original cathedral on the exact site of the main Aztec temple his forces had razed, and although that church was destroyed, the present one was constructed in sections between 1573 and 1813. Of course this complicates the ongoing archaeological excavations of the Templo Mayor and Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, behind and to the right of the cathedral.

You can see the steps leading up to some of the pyramids, in the process of being restored. 

Inside the cathedral, the main sanctuary is flanked by sixteen chapels, dedicated to different saints, and (in spite of the low light inside them) glittering with gold. Here are the organs; the choir of boys and men sings from inside that wrought iron screen.

This year I didn't take many pictures of the interior, but I did make a few videos, thinking they might provide a greater sense of "being there" than a still photograph. (Apologies in advance for the hand-held shakiness.)

The first video is of the exterior and the immediate plaza outside the main doors. The plexiglass inserts in the floor of the plaza allow visitors to look down into the original foundations. The video starts with the noontime ringing of the cathedral bells - which is done by hand - which is superseded by the sound of the ubiquitous harmonium/organ grinder.

On Sunday, we went to the 12:00 Mass, which is presided over by the Archbishop of Mexico, Norberto Rivera Carrera. Later I learned that the Archdiocese of Mexico was founded in 1530, and is the largest in the world. Accustomed to nearly-empty Catholic churches in Quebec, we were surprised to arrive and find no seats at all, so we stood for the whole service. Most of the congregation seemed to be Roman Catholics who were either local or visiting; there were only a few tourists wandering around disrespectfully, not paying much attention. (I'm sensitive to this from what happens in the cathedral where I sing; some tourists act like they're visiting a zoo.) Many people, however, were taking pictures so I felt like it was all right to do that. We did not take communion, but we did make an offering: it was gathered by navy-blue-suited women and men who passed traditional round palm baskets woven by native women.

The first video was taken during the organ prelude as the procession of clergy began. The second was taken during the Mass itself, as the choir sings a litany.

 

Afterward, the Archbishop went over to the left, behind a railing, where he greeted or blessed the people, wearing his mitre and holding his gold crozier, protected by watchful attendants. We went over and waited too, and eventually shook his hand and said gracias.

I'm not sure how I felt. It was definitely an experience, but of what, exactly? Was I a bystander, or a worshipper? I certainly didn't feel like a full participant, removed as I was by language and my non-Catholicism, which meant I wasn't welcome to take communion, but there is more to it than that -- in a Catholic mass as compared to an Anglican one, there is simply less congregational participation and more sense of hierarchical division between the clergy and the people, and also, symbolically, between men and women. I was disappointed by the lack of music; as in most Catholic churches now, the chants were very simple and there were no hymns or performances of the great repertoire of liturgical music that was written for the Mass. In a space like that, with two huge organs, fabulous acoustics and so many visitors every day, it seems like a missed opportunity.

One of my impressions was how different it was to see an entire procession of clergy and servers who were brown-skinned -- and yet this is the majority of the world. How color-blind we are, in northern North American Anglicanism -- how used to white-skinned, mostly Anglo-Saxon priests cut out of similar cloth. No wonder European artists have consistently made Jesus and Mary in that image, but how badly their representations fit the different, larger, and more devout population in the southern hemisphere, let alone in plenty of parts of the northern too. The Spanish high altar and gilded reredos shown above contain "white" images too, but in the front of the Metropolitan Cathedral (below), Jesus is black, and it's at his feet where people come to pray, light candles, and leave flowers.

Then, too, there is the absence of women clergy or other female role-models, which makes me understand even better why devotion to the Virgin Mary is so central to Latin American Catholicism, and why the appearance of Our Lady of Guadeloupe on a hillside to the north of Mexico City, back in the 1500s, created a cult of worship that persists strongly to this day. More on that in a subsequent post.

 

Interlude: Montreal Misery

The winter that refuses to die reared back and took another claw at us this morning.

 

 

People are not happy.

My personal response: I'm wearing bright colors from now until it warms up, even if I have to scrape the bottom of my closet to find them (my winter wardrobe is not heavy on the brights, but times are desperate!)

Conversation in the car this morning, driving up to work:

J: Can you believe a few days ago we were in Mexico, feeling too hot?

Me: (wistfully) Drinking fresh-squeezed juices...looking at the colors...

J:  Sitting around enjoying the sun like everyone else...

Me: (watching a mother dragging her kid across the slush-filled street on a sled) Look at these people! Theyr'e miserable!

J: But down there, your whole world could explode in an earthquake at any moment! Or your garden could be covered in volcanic ash, how would you like that?

Me: (long pause...looking out the window...) I'll take it.

Of course, that's not really how I feel, I mean, I'm tough, I love living in this wonderful climate, it builds character. That's what we keep telling ourselves as we shovel out our cars and slog to work, wrap ourselves in black quilted blankets and fur, clean up the floors where we've tracked in water and snow and mud and salt, and sit under special UV lamps to avoid depression six months out of the year (that we delude ourselves into thinking is only four.) People who live in hot climates are lazy and inferior. Uh-huh.

Neighborhood

Stalls at the weekly market.

Both last year and this year, we stayed in a hotel in a quiet part of the city called Escandon. It's just south of the trendy Colonia Condesa, but is a regular working-class and mixed-income neighborhood with apartment buildings, shops, schools (a primary school and a Montessori school), pharmacies, repair shops, churches. Instead of fancy restaurants, there are the typical taquerias and comidas, bakeries and ice cream shops, run by a single person or a family, and many street vendors selling Mexican food specialties cooked on the spot, fresh juices, flowers, shoe-shining or repairs, clothes and household goods. There are a lot of car repair shops, and these and the other businesses exhibit a fine degree of specialization, almost unheard of anymore in the U.S. There is also an indoor market, open every day, where you can buy vegetables, fruit, meat, spices, household goods and just about anything else, and a lively outdoor market every Tuesday when many vendors come and set up under tarps and tents. All these activities take place on long, busy commercial streets; parallel to them are quiet tree-lined residential blocks with much less traffic.

One of the things we like so much about Mexico is the emphasis on small, independent family businesses -- franchises do exist but they are much less prevalent, and people seem to patronize the person they know who makes fresh juice, or repairs chairs, or does the laundry: we dropped ours off one morning, the proprietor weighed it, and we picked it up and paid for it at 3:00 pm. Each morning we went to the local panaderia and bought rolls or sweet bread; down the street we bought coffee, and then went to the park to have our breakfast while a woman took an exercise class through their salsa-based paces. It all felt very old-fashioned, in a good way.

I didn't take a lot of pictures on the street because I didn't feel comfortable doing that, especially in a place where we saw the same people every day and often interacted with them. I'm sure if I had asked they would have said yes, but I didn't. So these are more general views of what life is like in Escandon. Add plenty of boom-boxes and music and chatter, along with ever-changing smells, and you'll get the idea!

The local pharmacy, open 24 hours a day.

A small restaurant, fancier than most in this area.

 

 

 

 

A bakery.

 

One of the main roads that crosses Escandon. The local streets are smaller than this, with much less traffic, going at a slower speed.

A residential street.

A typical twig broom used for sidewalk-sweeping.

Rooftop laundry.

Coyoacan (2) y La Casa Azul

Perhaps it was fitting to come upon these calla lilies only a block from the home where Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo lived for many years. In spite of all the big murals, with their casts of hundreds, when I think of Rivera I most often think of his monumental images of women and calla lilies:

I love Rivera's work: like its maker, I suspect, the work is warm, big, and generous, and he was a wonderful draftsman too; his charcoal drawings are especially strong:

 

Rivera and Kahlo were married twice; they divorced after Frida discovered Rivera's affair with her sister, but remarried later; they were, I think, meant to be together: two strong, intense spirits, two dedicated artists who shared political views and a great love of Mexio and her history.

I have always liked Frida's work, but I just didn't respond to the cult that's grown up around her; I even knew someone who dressed like her and affected that whole "Frida mystique." Jonathan remarked, as we entered the Casa Azul, that there were three or four times as many women present as men: she has become an embodiment of female strength amid extreme suffering, as well as artistic greatness. But I was much more moved than I expected to be -- the studio and much of the house are exactly the way they were when she died; Rivera must have ordered this. In her studio, the paints have dried forever on her palette, the last painting remains unfinished on the easel, her wheelchair empty before it. Glass-front bookshelves line one wall, filled with books on art, Mexican history, politics, pre-Hispanic art, and the whole house contains the couple's extensive collection of Mexican folk art and pre-Hispanic ceramics and art objects, as well as the whimsical, disturbing, and haunting objects they made themselves. There is a "day bedroom" right next to the studio, where she could lie and rest or draw (a mirror is on the ceiling of the bedstead) and a night bedroom, containing many effigies, puppets and dolls Frida made of herself, sometimes with skulls for heads; on the ceiling of that bed is a framed collection of butterflies.

I was unprepared to see Frida's death mask lying on a pillow on the daytime bed, surrounded by a shawl, and the container for her ashes on the night bedroom's dressing table: it is a large pre-hispanic urn in the motif of a toad - an epithet Diego often used to refer to himself.

Rivera painted the Mexican people in all their monumentality; he showed them to themselves and in doing so, contributed to their sense of identity and national narrative in the same way as great national poets. Frida painted herself: her artistic world was primarily an inner one, and being at La Casa Azul, I felt this more than ever; I was happy that she had had this sanctuary, which she and Diego had made even more beautiful. I didn't want to take many photos there; just a few outside, that perhaps reflect how I was feeling.

 

 

--

Coyoacan is definitely a tourist destination, and you get that vibe much more than in the centro of Mexico City, which is on such a huge scale that even tourists are absorbed in it. The city center contains a very old church, and a large beautiful park surrounded by artisan markets, trendy shops, and restaurants.

 

Finally we walked back to the metro in the shade along one of Coyoacan's oldest streets, Francisco Sosa, which is paved with stone and lined with old trees and graceful old mansions with walls and courtyards.

 

Tomorrow I'll show you the neighborhood where we were staying - neither touristy nor ritzy, but very real.