[ In this Column of the Americas opinion piece by Patrisia Gonzales, another view of the hurricane Katrina disaster is offered. You can reach the writer, at: XColumn@aol.com ]

Twenty years ago on Sept. 19 at 7:19 a.m., the earth opened up in Mexico City-Tenochtitlan, taking 85,000 lives. Tlalliyollo, Heart of the Earth, the Mexica called earthquake. Tlalliyollo created a social tremor as the people emerged from the ruins, organizing rescue relief and later for government compensation. Y la tierra no se los tragó. For the earth could not swallow them.

The government told them to stay inside their homes (and the government refused international aide, much like our government waited to accept aide), but people did not swallow that. They dug through Mexico City with their bare hands, as they saved many lives. El pulga, a man called the flea, burrowed through debris. From that era, emerged numerous social movements as the corruptness of the government was revealed: from torture chambers to buildings not up to code. The famed Sept. 19 garment workers union was created after numerous women on the early shift were locked inside buildings, having worked the early shift. Machinery was rescued before the women, some of whom escaped on bolts of material and others who were buried alive and were said to have died of madness. Of those who survived, emerged the heroes anonimos or anonymous heroes of Mexico as people united and organized. Some returned to their anonymity of everyday life, others continued in their collective work, most of them faceless before the media or historians. While many of these social movements have gone through the normal cycle of life-and-death, the cumulative impact on Mexican civil society remains.

In the United States, Heart of the Sky has swept our lands. Hurakan, the Maker, the Heart of the Sky, in the Mayan creation story, is the origin of the word hurricane. Hurricane is recognized as a Creator being because as a result of its destructive force land was created from the shifting waters. In Louisiana and Mississippi, despite the vast sense of helplessness when our government failed to protect people in the aftermath, people also banded together and united to survive and in the sheer recognition of their humanness. Some of the earliest responses came from tribal governments who dispatched resources and personnel the day the hurricane hit. Among the Mexican and Honduran communities people organized for food and shelter and security of one another. The ants were said to have balled up together and were spotted floating in the waters en bola. What these communities share are communal cultures with centuries-old legacies of working together. Neither Heart of the Earth nor Heart of the Sky could destroy the very impulse to live, nor the will of life to be. Heart of the Sky has reminded the United States of the interconnectedness of human beings to each other and to the natural world. United Nations officials warn that 17 more Katrinas could transpire if developing nations do not address their policies on emission standards and overdevelopment in costal areas. In the years to come, may we testify to the ability of people to unite and organize and to rebuild their communities.

As the television images clearly showed, African Americans were not simply left to fend for themselves, but it is they who took survival matters into their own hands. Even now, the larger African American community is responding in a way that goes beyond providing critical assistance. There’s a moral lesson at work here… just as the earthquake revealed the role of corrupt and inept government, Katrina has revealed a similar problem here. In the great tradition of participatory democracy, may we all also challenge a society that would create the kind of poverty, lack of environmental protections, and misguided development that made so many people vulnerable. And still, the earth did not swallow them.

[ Patrisia Gonzales is author of The Mud People: Chronicles, Testimonios & Remembrances, which chronicles social movements and indigenous knowledge in Mexico. © Column of the Americas 2005 ]

Named by the Aztecs and long celebrated by Mexican artists, writers and poets, the volcanoes Popocatepetl (poh-poh-ka-teh-peh-tuhl) and Iztacihuatl (is-tah-see-whah-tuhl) stand guard over the valley of Mexico - forming one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. In the nahuatl language, Popocatepetl means Smoking Mountain, while Iztacihuatl means Sleeping Woman. Ancient Aztec lore tells of a time when Tenochitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire, was at war with a neighboring tribe. The empire’s most valiant warrior, Popocatepetl, fell in love with a princess named Xochiquetzal. Deeply in love, the two would marry upon the return of Popocatepetl from battle. The invincible warrior went off to war, but after failing to return for months, Xochiquetzal believed her beloved was slain on the battlefield - lovesick, she drank a potion that put her into a deep sleep.

Soon thereafter Popocatepetl returned victorious from battle, only to be told by the emperor that the princess lay still, her body resting in a temple. The teary eyed Aztec knight took his seemingly dead lover in his arms, and carried her outside of the city and into the high mountains. There he cried and wailed over the lifeless body of his dearest until the Gods took pity over his suffering and sent a deep blanket of snow to cover the two lovers. The pair were transformed into the great volcanoes that look down upon the valley. Since that sad day, Popocatepetl has been waiting for his Sleeping Woman to awaken from her endless sleep, and people say that when Popocatepetl volcano erupts… it’s really the valiant warrior’s passionate heart keeping his true love warm.

On July 31st, 2005, Popocatepetl erupted twice… the moderate eruptions sending a huge column of hot ash a mile and a half into the air, which later rained down upon parts of southern Mexico City.

[ The following article originally appeared on artist Mark Vallen’s Art For A Change web log (link) under the headline of Mural Masterwork: Myth of Tomorrow. His report is reprinted here with kind permission ]


An important antiwar mural painted in Mexico by famed Japanese modern artist, Taro Okamoto (1911 - 1996), has been rediscovered after thirty five years. In Spanish the work is known as Mito del Mañana (Myth of Tomorrow), and in Japanese, Ashita no Shinwa - but like all great works of art, Okamoto’s painting speaks a universal language. The gigantic mural depicts the exact moment of an atomic bomb explosion, with the focus of the work being an anonymous human reduced to skeletal form and burning under an atomic sun.

Okamoto’s mural was originally painted in the lobby of what was to be a high-rise luxury hotel in Mexico City, but the developer encountered financial troubles that prevented the building’s completion. Okamoto’s wall painting, dismantled and put into storage, eventually disappeared - and it remained missing until just recently. In 2003 the mural was found abandoned in a yard for building materials located in a suburb of Mexico City. The Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum in Japan sent a team of restorers to Mexico to evaluate the condition of the artwork, and found that it was suffering minor damage. Calling the piece “Taro’s magnum opus”, the institution obtained the rights to the mural earlier this year. The mural has been shipped to Japan where museum staff and experts began restoration work in July, 2005. Okamoto’s mural will eventually be placed on public display at the end of 2006.

The Taro Okamoto Memorial Foundation for the Promotion of Contemporary Art released a statement that in part read, “Okamoto believed that the myths of the future develop at moments of cruelty and tragedy. This mural speaks from his deepest thoughts, from his heart.” While the world’s first atomic bombing of civilian population centers occurred in August 1945 when the U.S. devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear fire… it would be a mistake to see Okamoto’s artwork as fixated on those terrible events. Rather, his striking mural is a warning to all humanity, and the message is more relevant today than ever before. That we’ve grown accustomed to living with a nuclear Sword of Damocles hanging above us all is really the core meaning of the mural’s title - and our continued apathy only assures that tomorrow is indeed a myth.

Painted between 1968 and 1969 and measuring some 18 feet high by 98 feet long, Okamoto’s artwork is a powerful indictment of war. While it may seem incongruous that such a disturbing and forceful work of art would appear in the lobby of a luxury hotel, one must remember that Mexican restaurants, hotels, commercial and government buildings have often made wall space available for the display of controversial large-scale public artworks. The Mexican Muralist Movement led by greats David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, set the standards for a progressive and internationalist school of art. The radical and populist artworks of these masters and the many others who worked shoulder to shoulder with them, enhance public space all across Mexico. There’s absolutely no doubt that Taro Okamoto was inspired and influenced by the remarkable Mexican school of socially conscious artists, and the discovery and restoration of his mural is cause for celebration.

[ The following article was written by Gina "Mar y Sol" Ruiz, who is a Danzante Azteca, activist, writer, and columnist for Xispas ]

If you’ve ever sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic in line at the Tijuana Mexico/US border for hours on a Sunday afternoon, then you know how hard the street vendors on the Tijuana side work. I used to live in Tijuana and made the border crossing early every morning to my job in San Diego. At 3:00 a.m. the street vendors were there waiting for me with hot champurrado, atole, tamalitos bien calientitos or arroz con leche feeding me and keeping me company on my long wait to cross. On the hottest days or in pouring rain the vendors are there; running back and forth to the cars waiting in line hawking their wares and keeping the drivers entertained with juggling, music and the last chance to buy something Mexican before hitting the US. They go home late at night, often to the poorest of dwellings, to work some more feeding their families, cleaning the house, working on the yard, washing clothes or tending to children. Exhausted though they may be, they wear their dignity like a crown. It is a dignity that comes from hard and honest work. It is the pride of being able to provide for your family.

Enter Tijuana’s mayor Jorge Hank Rhon who has issued a new decree that the street vendors must wear brightly colored costumes to allow visitors to “feel at ease” according to the Associated Press. Wear the costume or leave is the mandate and the vendors have two days to comply or leave. “Que Diablo?!”, I say out loud, startling my youngest son. “What the hell?” I read further, my blood already boiling with my somewhat famous (in my family) temper. Yes, it seems that Mexico, Tijuana in particular, want the pinche tourists to feel more comfortable. Two years ago Mexico City had their policemen don the costume of a charro to make the tourists feel at ease. Yeah uh huh, the tourists need to feel more like they are visiting a foreign and third world country. BULLSHIT! The tourists don’t want to feel comfortable, they want to feel superior and that ass kissing vendido that is the worse Mexican President since Porfirio Diaz complies. Now, I don’t know quite whom or where to rail on first, the choices are so many.

Tijuana and Mexico buy this pile of horse manure that is getting sold to them and perform; or rather force the people to be like an organ grinder’s monkey, falling back on the “it’s our culture” canto, yet get their backs up against the wall over Memin Penguin! It’s all fucked up. No, I’m not going to excuse my language because it is all fucked up. Let’s not pretty it up. It’s our culture? That’s bullshit too. Why is it our culture to dress like we’re still living in the 1800’s in order to make the tourists happy? It’s our culture only when it’s convenient and lucrative, you self-serving little boot licker of a mayor. What about our culture when you have poor indigenous people forced from their lands that live in Tijuana? What about our culture then? Do you hand them a brightly colored costume? Hell, no! Those people you have no pride in. Shit, you can’t hide them fast enough. So what about the tourists? They want brightly colored colonial costumes so they can say “Oh how pretty. Look, Biff we’re in a third world country! How charming, how backward!” Seeing Mexicans as a backward people makes them feel superior, more justified in taking from them and dictating how they should be.

The first terrorists (oops sorry meant to say tourists) came and brought disease, famine, genocide, pollution and colonization to Mexico wrapping it up into a nice little package and calling it civilization of the savages. They were a little more honest about it by calling themselves conquistadors but they used the same argument. To the Spanish, the Indians were backward, uneducated children to be conquered and dominated. Some City officials say that the costumes are no different from something you would see in oh, say Disneyland. Again I say bullshit. If I go apply for a job at Disneyland, I know I’m going to have to wear the mouse suit or some other silly costume. It’s part of the job and it’s my choice to apply there. These people have no choice. Well they do but it’s a shitty one. Wear the silly costume or you don’t have a way to make a living. I’m a danzante, I wear my indigenous costume with pride, but again, it’s my choice. I’m not forced to wear it to work and sit at my desk amid my American co-workers in full regalia and feathers while they stare at the poor Indian. Why should the street vendors have to be outfitted like freaks to be gawked at?

Does Mexico have to put on a fool’s mask to please the United States? Come on Mexico! Remember who you are. We’re better than that. We are a country that produced Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Elena Poniatowska, Octavio Paz, Dr. Atl, Guadalupe Posada, Emiliano Zapata, Hidalgo and so many more, too numerous to list, to brilliant to be forgotten. We are a country who has fought for 500 years against genocide, against oblivion. A war is raging now, however swept under the carpet by government; againstthat very oblivion. Are the tourists so threatened by little Mexico that they feel compelled to push the house of cards that is the government to strip us of our dignity? Some will say I am paranoid, that I see a dark message where there is none. Again I say bullshit. 500 years of colonization gives my so-called paranoia some credence. There is a very sinister message here if you’ll only take a look. Let’s take some action. Let’s not just write about this. We have to stop it. We must say no!

There are a couple of quotes from Rigoberta Menchu Tum that sum up what I am trying to say, perhaps ineloquently, about the situation in Tijuana. “What hurts Indians most is… our costumes are considered beautiful, but it’s as if the person wearing it didn’t exist.” And, “We are not myth of the past, ruins in the jungle or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be the victim of intolerance and racism.”