Texturizing the Mexica
By Tim Hazell May 26, 2006

One morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings-
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.

from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers 
-Pablo Neruda,"Third Residence"

Tezcatlipoca held an exalted position among the myriad of Nahua deities. Multiple identities and bizarre zoomorphic forms characterized lords of the Aztec cosmos. The origins of a barbarian influx that migrated south to the valley of Mexico to found its last civilization is purported to have been Aztlan, an ocean of grass in America's western hinderlands.  Tezcatlipoca, whose name became a symbol of good fortune, served as a guide to the Mexica.

Tezcatlipoca's aspects grew ever more complex and impenetrable. Until its last days, the Aztec theocratic elite viewed their empire of city-states as a form of totalitarian union. Government based on the constraint of irreconcilable parts lingered as a dynamic until demands from growing minorities early in the last century took precedent. 

Spain found new opportunities to oppose modernity with the establishment of burgeoning but divided colonies. Inestimable gifts of native traditions and beliefs, along with philosophical and humanitarian literature, became ossified in the wake of 300 years of rigorous suppression by Mexico's clergy. History's gears only began to turn grudgingly again as mounting rhetoric and propaganda called for an end to Christian feudalism.

At various junctures during the emergence of a modern Mexican nation, poets have had to grapple with decisions concerning their art and the needs to address sociopolitical realities. Spain in the 1930s was on its teetering, inevitable journey to civil war. At that juncture, profound schisms within its beleaguered and unprogressive fraternities made a transoceanic crossing to influence the thinking of Mexico's younger generation. Pressures to define emerging currents of cultural expression divided groups into rival factions. Those whose strident voices were heard loudest above the vanguard of sympathizers, estridentistas and muralistas in particular, were quick to proclaim their rights as the only legitimate forces among the avant-garde and monopolize the concept of a unified society. 

Intolerance for other ideas was rife among supposedly free and progressive theorists, along with the doctrine of insurrection as a panacea for all things corrupt. Assumptions about the nature of activism linked it to the nation's needs for masculinity in uncertain and troubled times. "El afeminamiento en la literatura Mexicana ..." (that which is feminine ...) was cited. Chroniclers such as Julio Jiménez Rueda in his 1924 article for El Universal targeted lack of virility as being responsible for Mexico's failure to produce great anarchist drama or narratives that defined the nation and its barrios in turmoil. The country's tabloids crackled with sexual innuendos.
Urban perspectives in Spanish American literature continued to reflect constantly changing themes and preoccupations.

Cosmopolitanism, engendered in part by mid-20th-century surges in ethnic immigrant populations, implied more ephemeral interpretations of community and racial diversity. Futurists championed the idea of the metropolis and its stripped-down architecture as the ideal prototype for a new verdant apocalypse of machines. 

Transitional, or transrational, verse and prose, hybrids created by civic fraternities, capsulized modes of postmodern identity. Forced to endure under the stigma of confident, arrogant yet fecund stainless steel and glass, perception and perspectives changed. As always, changes for better or worse rested with the populace as protagonists. In spite of the potent allure of revolution and coup d'étât, some chose to leave with their diamond memories of Utopia intact, abandoning realities altogether. 

Goodnight friends, lights of the city!
A bullet between your space and mine.
I return to an immense silence,
Leaving your thronged pavements to the unfaithful
Who emerge as always, after the sun has set.
Your mountains surround, but only serve to trap
The stagnant and immobile air. 
The ardent shadows of your towers conceal poisons.
I would rather search bald hills
For veins of silver. 
It has been done before. It can be done again
By wanderers who still cherish the element of surprise.

Romantics traditionally come to the bargaining table with open minds and hearts like apples, but little concern for pragmatism. Enlightened progressives set the tone for young and tenuous nation states. Different groups aspiring to attain hegemony grapple with competing interests that blur the boundaries of processes at hand. In Orwellian scenarios of rebellion with aftermaths of puritanism, new lobbies for power call for the reestablishment of a different but essentially patrician class, strategies that still abide. Whatever the logos and slogans imply, objectives to install a more contemporary version of the bourgeoisie remain blueprints for charting a stable course in fledgling societies. "Welcome to Paradise!" the billboards extol, assuming everyone is willing to join the herd, and that citizens can remain oblivious to the effects of persistent incongruence. On the outskirts of today's cities under siege, shanty towns of refugees and the dispossessed bloom and wither in turn. Only a universal body language of squalor endures, appropriating the vocabulary of famished birds and predators. 

Tim Hazell is a multidisciplinary artist in the areas of painting, music, theater, education, writing and research, specializing in Latin America. He may be contacted at hazel@unisono.net.mx or at his website, www.timhazell.com.