The politics of an exhibit
Stavans, llan
of sheetrock and said, "This is what I'll be doing for the rest of my life." Like me he had arrived at a final flakiness. Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit housing organization which...
...MEXICO'S SPLENDOR THE POLITICS OF AN EXHIBIT A PIECE OF HONEST HYPE ith all its Eurocentrism, every now and then the United States submerges itself in the pleasures of the third world...
...They must also pledge a certain number of work hours either on their own house or on someone else's house...
...This magnificent essay is followed by almost forty brief pieces by other scholars, each examining a particular theme of pre- Columbian, viceregal, nineteenth- or twentieth-century art...
...The headquarters of the organization is in Americus, Georgia, but there are twelve regional centers throughout the United States, and affiliates in every state in the nation...
...It is exceedingly well done...
...But neither the exhibit nor the catalogue was ready to falsify reality...
...When the student massacre of Tlatelolco Square took place in 1968, Paz renounced his post as Mexico's ambassador to India...
...Atl), the three muralists mentioned pre- viously, as well as Francisco Goitia and Rufino Tamayo, could be admired...
...An average Habitat house in the United States costs $25,000, though prices range from $20,000 to $50,000, depending on land cost and materials...
...It is not a synthesis, but the exhibit itself, handsomely bound...
...The exhibit at the Metropolitan was largely paid for by Friends of the Arts of Mexico, a philanthropic institution that has Azc~rraga as its chairman...
...The reasons are political...
...Thus, the exhibit at the Metropolitan was more than just a display of the irrepressive "will for torm...
...Mexico is just the opposite: An example of European dreams gone sour, a mix of races and manners, an instinctive society in which art, once controlled by the state, is now a tool of public relations...
...It takes pride in having built an island of democracy, reason, and hope amid the turbulence of Western history...
...Recipient families are chosen on a nondiscriminatory basis, but they must be earning enough ($600 a month in Appalachia, $1000 a month on Cape Cod) to pay off the mortgage...
...In Mexico, both the exhibit and the volume were perceived as a diplomatic move, too costly for a country with the second largest foreign debt in Latin America...
...In the sixties and seventies Paz had been an outspoken critic of the regimes of Gustavo Dfaz Ordaz and Luis Echeverria...
...The rationale behind the production was clear, however...
...Old and new masters of Mexican art, such as Jose Mafia Estrada, Gerardo Murillo Cornad6 (Dr...
...The result is a con- fused collective identity, introspective and fearless of death, yet one eager to express itself in artistic terms...
...ILAN STAVANS llan Stavans, a Mexican writer, teaches at Baruch College of The City University of New York...
...The true Mexican self is full of history, of a rich, multifaceted past...
...The views propounded in the volume are Paz's...
...He examines the psychological implications of how Hern~in CortEs and his Spanish conquerors mixed with the Indians, creating a new race, while the British Pilgrims in North America, loyal to their Puritan tradition, did not...
...The impressive catalogue that accompanied the show (Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries, The Metropolitan Museum of Art--A Bulfinch Press Book, $75, 712 pp...
...Of course, that is the true Mexico...
...The aesthetic delights of "Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries," is so unique in its juxtaposition of Christian and Aztec motifs, so politically oriented, so revealing of the penury of those defeated by history, that the viewer is left with the feeling that it must have been a joke of God to place the United States and the millenarian Aztec descendants face-to-face...
...All the money is raised by private donation (no government funding) and 10 percent of the money in each locality goes to Habitat International, which builds houses in the third world, each of which costs about $2,500...
...Simultaneously, the Swedish Academy of Letters--after granting the 1989 Nobel Prize in Literature to the Spanish novelist Camilio Jos6 Cela--announced that the 1990 prize would go to Mexico's foremost intellectual, Octavio Paz...
...While President Salinas pushes his free- trade agreement with the United States and the Canadian gov- ernments, Azc~irraga spends his extra money promoting Mexico abroad...
...Eventually Paz became a close friend of the current president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, whose whole political and economic program of openness and free markets is referred to as Salinastroika...
...Which means that, for as much as Mexico is anxious to show a new face, it wants to do it in honest terms...
...And that drive to communicate, that eternal need for self-definition, is what Paz calls the "will for form," a desire to leave a trace of the battles inside the soul...
...Not since Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, the three muralists invited to paint walls at Rockefeller Center in the 1930s, has there been such a craze for the United States' Aztec neighbor...
...has been prodigally illustrated...
...The friendship with the United States, Paz claims in his introduction, will only come out of mutual acceptance, not from false pretenses...
...For more information contact: Rev...
...Harcourt Brace Jovanovich will publish Paz's Convergences: Essays on Art and Literature in March...
...He lives in Blacksburg, Virginia...
...Yet one would think that the ultimate goal of this diplo- matic art display would be to portray the southern neighbor as a friendly, civilized, and stable nation with a hopeful future...
...Interesting public relations move, isn't it...
...Let me explain...
...After all, that is the kind of Mexico the United States is looking for--not a Banana Republic, but a stable business partner...
...Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit housing organization which builds houses for the inadequately sheltered...
...It opens with his philosophical essay on the religious, social, political, and idiosyncratic roots of Mexican civilization...
...The country of George Washington traces its past to the manners, constitution, and civility of England...
...At least fifteen New York galleries did variations on the same theme (woman painters, the young generation, etc...
...The gap dividing them is abysmal, uncrossable--which might not be good for diplomacy, but-is a fascinating fact of life...
...It was also a public relations gesture...
...Several years later, while he was the editor- in-chief of the literary magazine Plural, the Echeverria gov- ernment took over the offices of Excdlsior, the magazine's parent newspaper, and threw Paz and the entire staff into the street...
...The catalogue examines furniture, engravings, trays, stamps, sculptures, ceramics, silver and golden gilts, embroidered silks, rare book editions, and clothing...
...The show was an amazing, unfor- gettable display of artistic energy, spanning from before the Conquest of Tenochtitlfin in 1524-25 by the Spanish knights to the painter Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), who has acquired the stature of a popular idol she did not possess in her lifetime...
...He also built a relationship with Emilio Azc~irraga, a millionaire who owns Televisa, Mexico's only private television corporation, and is the force behind Univision, the largest Spanish-speaking, mass-media chain in the United States...
...while a variety of cultural institutions had readings and lectures by and about personalities, movements, and the styles of Mexico...
...The houses (nor- mally one thousand square feet--three bedrooms, bath, kitchen, dining/living area) are sold at no profit, and with a no-interest mortgage, to families who can afford $150 (Appalachia) or $250 (Cape Cod) a month for their housing...
...J. Frank Devine, S J, Director of Admissions Weston School of Theology 3 Phillips Place, Cambridge, MA 02138-3495 Telephone: (617) 492-1960 Weston School of Theology A National Jesuit Theological Center in Cambridge, MA volumes published by Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica...
...WILLIAM AIKEN William Aiken's essays have appeared in many newspapers and magazines, including the Washington Post and the New York Times...
...House payments are recy- cled within each local affiliate to build more houses...
...of sheetrock and said, "This is what I'll be doing for the rest of my life...
...New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art recently exhibited an ambitious and expensive array of the arts and crafts from south of the Rio Grande, "Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries...
...9 Sabbatical Renewal We invite the col- We also offer: laborative partici- .9Renowned Faculty pation of lay and .9 A Community of Faith religious men and .9 Diverse Student women, in the Body process of develop- .9 Access to The Boston ing and enhancing Theological Institute their intellectual and Financial Aid is Available practical skills in the service of today's Church...
...But his dislike for Mexican realpolitik oscillated in the eighties to a more complacent, submissive attitude toward the Partido Revolucionario Institutional (PRI), Mexico's ruling party for more than seventy years...
...Yet for all its achievements, those on the northern side of the Rio Grande, enchanted with the display of exotic images, missed the struggle behind the curtains...
...40: Commonweal...
...When comparing the visual legacies of his native soil and those of the United States, Paz claims that no two countries sharing one border could be more different...
...Mexico's history is violent, repressive, and chaotic...
...The amazing element in it all is that both the show and the catalogue took pride in presenting Mexico as a paradise of the exotic...
...Among his latest books is a study of the Mexican detective novel...
...Graphic statues of Jesus Christ showered in blood, Mayan and Olmec stone idols, bizarre jade amulets and other religious artifacts, the jocular cartoons of Jose Guadelupe Posada, and the suffering self-portraits of Frida Kahlo longing for Rivera, all of these images nurture the view of a superstitious country, at times barbaric and unscrupulous...
...Paz, the poet and essayist, is the author of more than forty books, including the landmark The Labyrinth of Solitude...
...Those familiar with the poet's rhetoric will notice that most of his argument appeared 25January1991:39 in The Arch and the Lure and The Philanthropic Ogre, and in his many studies on Mexican art collected in 1987 in three DeepenCommitment ThroughLife.long Learning Participate with us Programs for a Life in a dynamic com- of Ministry munity of faith .9Master of Divinity and learning at .9Master of Theology Weston School .9 Master of Theological Studies of Theology, a .9 Licentiate in Sacred national Jesuit Theology theological center...
Vol. 118 • January 1991 • No. 2
