Coyocan, Communism, and tamales Chiapanecos

On the way to Leon Trotsky's one time house and now museum down Linea 2 dirrecion Tasquena, I chanced on the National School of Theater. The metro approached from the north on the side of the broad, blind curve. What I had seen in books and lectures (and more familiar second hand encounters) became suddenly clear. In faceless metropolitan sprawl and amongst inhospitable neighbors of mass transit, here is an object which demands to be remembered and oriented in relation to others of its caliber.
Much larger, not to say grander, than I had imagined it to be (based on 2x2 photos in books and low resolution jpgs), the porch is satisfactorily used as both social and practice space, and the studios seems ample enough. The materials show their age, as does the aesthetic, but it still does what it was intended to do, which for me excuses a lot. Certainly being there makes all the difference, and it was a happy accident as I was not planning on making a special trip for this.In the same complex a few lots down the reigning dean of Mexican architecture makes his cursory contribution to all national cultural institutions. Although lacking the contraposto and flare of Fred and Ginger, this is nevertheless a striking pair (which is probably going to age better anyway) although I have doubts about the comforts of the interior. After the unexpected delay, the long march to Trosky's revealed another familiar feature of this city scape, this time again a grand revelation from Julian's sketches. The natotorium was one of the less tumultuous of '68's olympic venues. It's honesty of expression is a good argument against telling the whole truth in architecture (indeed, the best never do, no matter what they preach). Built some years after Dulles, this rehash is certainly at home among the adjacent concrete roadworks grafted onto a n area which is otherwise quite habitable. So anyway, after a long jaunt (which my foot still remembers these 3 days later), I found the museum that could never happen north of the border: La Casa de Trotsky!Forced into long exile after Stalin finally secured his absolute power in 1928, Trotsky finally found his way to Mexico via Kazahk SSR, Turkey, France, & Norway in 1936. Although he stayed with Rivera and Kahlo at their nearby Blue House (see below) for some time, his affair with the later and quarreling with the former forced him to find his own residence in a quaint villa just a few blocks away. Working tirelessly to the end, he fought hard for what he felt to be the unrealized potential of democratic social revolution in the face of dictatorship, whether pseudo communist, fascist, or capitalist. This is his study, from which he wrote tirelessly (although severe migraines plagued his later years and limited his ability to work). It is also the room in which NKVD agent Ramón Mercader dealt Trotsky his fatal blow with a hammer. Rather poorly delivered, the blow was not instantly fatal and the two men fought rather fierely until the bodygaurds final subdued Mercader. Only at the pleading of Trotsky, Mercader's life was spared, ostensibly because he had 'a story to tell'. Trotsky soon lost consciousness and died a day later. His ashes are interred in the masoleum pictured above, along with those of his devoted wife Natalia. The house still retains the fortifications and partially bricked in windows added by orders of the Mexican president after the first, unsuccessful attempt on his life (note the previous entry)But I would have preferred to stay in this more colorful, aforementioned neighbor. Frida's childhood home became, with a few buckets of paint, the wedding home of herself and her devoted (though never faithful) Diego. Now a museum, it unfortunately features just a handful of their works, though it abounds in paraphenalia and unlabeled curios which may or may not be of significance to them. There are a good number of pre-Colombian sculptures in Diego's likewise bold, simple, & primal studio addition. They are great fun, and included among them is an ancient Urn holding Frida's ashes.
The courtyard features a more elaborate, referential rather than genuine commemoration of la casa's most famous resident. However, the real, much more modest shrine is hidden behind the tableau. And nearby is Plaza Hidalgo, obviously a center of importance for many years before Coyocan became a favorite bedroom village of la ciudad's cultural elite and long before it was absorbed into the never satiated metropolitan edge. There were plaques describing what this place was and why it has some relics which would be more comfortable in the centro historico, but I could not read them , so it shall remain a mystery for now. I do know I found a real hot spot amongst those in the city interested and capable of a little Sunday afternoon leisure. Far from any metro stop, this bustling market square is more like the markets I remember from the states: that is, overpriced, heavy on superfluities and light on necessities, and full of great food. Yes, the streets leading into Hidalgo reminded me a great deal of New England, well past their practical prime but surviving on the pesos of leisure, tourism, and the avidly palatable. Unless I am mistaken, I tried my first tamales here at Hidalgo. After hearing the haunting call to tamales oaxacenos in the streets for these few weeks, the anticlimax of the petite portion I got (I should have know a coffee shop would probably not specialize in tamales) was only rectified by the very generous, mole filled tamale Chiapaneco from the man in the big cowboy hat next to the church pictured above. So far, I have tried nearly all the mexican cuisine I knew only by name before, as well as many others to which I was new, and I am glad to say I can tell many of them apart from each other now.
And on the way home via Linea 3 I found this: holding one corner (though not the entire edge) of a casual residential plaza, the facade of this little church is, like much of Mexican colonial architecture, overlayed with multiple but complimentary symmeteries.

Well, it's late. Hasta luego.

Arte y las Letras (Estudio Diego Rivera & UNAM)

Jaun O' Gorman, a sometimes architect, sometimes muralist, designed this gem for his colleague Diego Rivera in 1929. Diego's studio on the left, while Frida's is paired up on the right. The simple, strong, and highly legible architectural expression given to each eloquently describes their mutual independence while the bridge and structural module shared in common reveals their simultaneous devotion.
Diego's studio embodies the boldness and rhythmic qualities of his art. For me, the western face resembles very much the pre-Colombian sculpture he was so avid about collecting .While Frida's is correspondingly more reserved and straightforwardly composed.The whole complex is based on a very intimate module, which is to say that neither is very large (although the Blue House they shared in nearby Coyocan was rather generous, especially for two ardent Communists). Nevertheless, one never feels hemmed in or cramped (except in the entrance vestibule under Diego's studio, which was no doubt an intentional move meant to suggest how to use and interpret the space).
Quite the opposite of modest although at times intimate, nearby UNAM (the National Autonomous Universtiy of Mexico) is a great argument for how Modernism can succeed if enough people approach it seriously and with optimism. Both traits are more likely to be found in students than subsidized blue collar tenets, true enough, nevertheless, a visit to UNAM takes the body through a carefully calculated total environment of form, surface, and landscape that still leaves enough open to individual interpretation to keep it stimulating, not stifling.The paving strategy in the area adjacent to the central library and the administration tower makes ephemeral democratic expression inevitable. Here is a serious effort at tackling the ground condition so often ignored by Modernist planning. This formal court puts the lower, openended multipurpose fields to the east in counterpoint rather than limbo both to this field and the adjacent buildings. Judging by the heavy use I saw there on what I assume was just a routine Saturday afternoon during a typical semester (that is to say nothing of what happened here in 1968), I'd say the planning effort delivered.Jaun O'Gorman contribution, 25 years older than the Rivera-Kahlo studio and with a much wider color pallette, provides a pivot which does more than creak . It sings the whole history of a people, borrowing from a medium and manner already seen at Teotihucan - simple forms, elaborate murals projecting ideas beyond themselves. Most of the campus is populated by more humble expressions of function...although interest in form is never really lost, nor is the library the only venue for the instructive potential of mural.Unlike a great many Modern complexes, the relationship between objects is never unsure of itself, sometimes even being reinforced by form itself . Sometimes these are very practical , like the covered walks (it rains nearly every day in the summer), and at other times they are highly rhetorical (see below). Surely this kind of gesture does not serve well the student already late for class, but for the casual Sunday ex-pat tourist, it provides a retrospective view of architecture, campus, and , sudden and unexpected, sky.There are random question marks here and there on the campus, enigmatic due to time, ignorance, or unfamiliarity, but then I always liked the way question marks looked on a page...The many faces of a unpretentious machine...
Though more or less graceful, each element uses a common language to tell highly individual tales which all contribute to a rich tableau. The talent recruited for the behemouth undertaking lent itself to the not quite urbanistic reading: witness the mural on the south of the administrative tower. The artist responsible for it had only 14 years earlier tried unsuccessfully to assissnate Leon Trotsky (just 3 months before another got the job done). An aside perhaps, but a nice place certainly.Hasta entonces amigos.

El Centro Histórico

Although celebrated on the closest Monday (which in this year was November 17) the 20th of November is a nationally recognized holiday in Mexico celebrating the overthrow of Porfirio Díaz in 1910 (though not necessarily the 7 years of civil unrest that followed the power vacuum left by the longtime dictator). I took advantage of this liberation, in my case from work, to visit the longtime epicenter of the Basin of Mexico: el centro histórico. Being intensely cultivated by a sophisticated agrarian society for at least 2000 years before the Spanish and Rome imposed their own version of civilization just under 500 years ago, the center is rich in ruins, ruined things, some new things, and absolutely saturated with a vitality lacking in many more staid museum like historic centers (i.e. Olde Europe).
There are old churches galore, as replete with decor as (nearly) anything in Rome. And like Rome, most everything in the old city dwells sunken in stoic demonstration of years of inclement weather and poor infrastructural planning. However, there is much more of a tilt here: built on a swamp, everything, and I mean every last thing, in the old core is sunken off kilter, sometimes dropping several feet from Portal to Altar. For all their orthogonal rigor, the Spanish could not have intended the anthropomorhic dancing of all the blocks in their gridded city.
There are some more recent (less specifically Imperial) bombastic Beaux Arts interpretations of the classical tradition. El Palacio de Bellas Artes, for instance, takes a few superficial cues from the Colonial tradition, yes, but then multiplies it with a typical nationist fevor matched to the Opera of Wagner (a contemporary). Still, it is not without some fire and soul to hold it's own in literally a world of likewise imitators. And a Diego Rivera to boot (which, unfortunately, like all the other murals in the center, is closed to the public on Mondays).
Caddy corner to el Palacio and in an ideological category which is really not so far away as superficial differences may at first appear (afterall, all international styles must have something in common) proudly stands el Torre Latinamerica. This was Mexico, and, as the name implies, Latin America's first stab at Manhattanism. Although a little awkward and a lot dirty, the modest tower makes little boast about it's best feature: el Mirador.

Although home to roughly 25 million people, the entire city is legibly inscribed into a Basin visible in total from a 44th storey, centrally located pearch like el Mirador.And from that height, the hazy horizon is not the only glaringly obvious indication of the problems of a(nother) nation of automobile junkies.

Thankfully the Americans arrived in 1847, 56 years before the invention of mechanized flight, so most of the treasures of the Spanish Colonial city have survived in tact. Despite a sometimes limping stance and the lack of any truly right angles whatsoever in anything over 60 years old, what remains is still marvelous and magical. It is also very telling of a multivalent history which draws as much from North Africa as it does from Teotihuacan. Where time and intention have stripped the plaster finish from some of the older denizens of el centro, one can see how the construction methods of the Mexica were adopted directly to the form making of their European colonizers. The lavastone bulk of this church is laid in a manner identical to the talud-tablero of the Pyramids, and probably mean to be plastered in much the same way (although the Christians preferred to save their colorful exhibitions for the interior rather than loudly shout them to the stars as this unique and brightly one sided example demonstrates: Christ cloistered inside, Mexican god-kings proudly displayed in European style outside).

Recent efforts have revealed the original impetus for the Zocolo, the local fulfillment of the Law of the Indies and arguably the center of the local universe (that is , the Place which embodies a city) with the uncovering of Templo Mayor. This was the pyramid from which the blood of countless thousands must have been shed before the Spanish smashed it to build the neighboring cathedral. As the excavation reveals , it is actually several consecutive pyramids, built one on top of the other (like those Russian dolls), too sacred to destroy even when ambition demanded something bigger, better.
And of course, there is the nearby Zocolo with a flag matched in size only at American gas stations.The cathedral drops two meters (about 6 feet) from the door to the main altar, a difference which despite its immense size is quite perceptable both with the eyes and the feet. As sumptuous on the interior as the exterior, the nave is split halfway by a large chior which , curious to my knowledge of large churches seriously debilitates ones ability to comprehend the spatial certainty of the space (leading to a more urban than architectural experience).
Flanking the east end of the plaza is el Palacio Nacional, a composite background building par excellent which makes no serious effort at symmetry or squareness. Ostensibly the home of the president (I think he actually lives somewhere which is not open to thousands of visitors each day), this is an exercise in democratic architecture (although most certainly not originally planned as such) which demonstrates just how isolated and distant tje monuments of Washington really are. Here again are some great murals I missed (in this case, because of time and an ineptitude of the local lanugauge, at least I think).
Anyhow, it's late, and I have practice tomorrow. Hasta luego.

A Walk in the Park (El Bosque de Chapultapec)

While Saturday took me out the pride of vanished city on the far reaches of the metropolis, Sunday saw quite the opposite. El Bosque de Chapultapec is like Central Park and the National Mall wrapped into one, a vast forest near the center housing the great cultural institutions of the nation. At the original origin of la Reforma (now one of the critical bend in that thorughfare) I was surprised to find the monument to los defensores de la patria 1846-47. I do not recall any monuments in Washington to los invasores de aquel patria 1846-47, but then again, I suppose Manifest Destiny is monument enough.

Just beyond this monument is la loma de chapultapec, from which el bosque derives its name. El bosque is too heavily wooded (hence the name) to have really affored me a picture from the foot of the imposing incline. One can see why the Aztecs made temporary home on this hill when they were still a struggling transitory people in the days before they built an empire from the swamps of Lake Tezcoco. One can also see why los niños héroes could resist for so long the onslaught of the US marines in one of their less glorious endeavors. Today the hill is home to more peaceful, colorful residents.

The scars of battle are invisible today thanks in large part to the fact that Maximillian I also chose this as his residence in one of the few (if only?) instances of a native monarchy in the New World since the arrival of Cortes and Pizzarro. Although short lived, Max really made this place a palace, taking full advantage of the splendid views.

Just outside el bosque their is obvious reference to both the talud-tablero and the colorful natural flaura. Witness Sr. Legoretta's 1971 Hotel Camino Real, replete with 6 up-scale restaurants, a full convention hall, and lots of keys to keep track of. And of course a hefty, fairly regular bill for services rendered by los pinturas.


Back within el Chapultapec and conciously devoid of hue, el Museo Runfino Tamayo is an exceptional surprise. The architects Teodor González de León and Abraham Zabludovsky made concious reference to the talud-tablero, but without the superficial formal play that disregards serious attention. No, here is serious effort on the part of Modernism to utilize the spirit of a tradition (in this case, the 'floating' nature of indeginous Mexican architecture) manipulated by a lack of faith in gravity and spatial certianty (i.e. the X plane turned 90 degrees to become the Z plane).
The collection was unimpressive, being about 2/3 temporary exhibition space (in this case, an exhibition of Chicano art) , 1/4 semi-temporary collection space, and the rest being devoted to the large atrium which serves to both justify the formal solution and give a reason to it's formal reference to tradtional Mexican architecture.
After a brief jaunt at the Tamayo, I headed for the adjacent Nacional Museo de Antropolgia. Along the way I happened upon a demonstration by los Voladores de Papantla. It must be great to just hang out all day....
What I said then and still say now: WOW!

And then there were these guys, mystical and exotic, but not demanding the same kind of astonishment.

The big umbrella covering half the courtyard of the Museum of Anthropolgy did, however, elicit an uncontrollable, audible WOW as soon as I saw it in person. My friend Julian's sketches had given it life in my imagination all those years ago, but never had I realized just how impressive it was...
But then there was the collection: certainly the most complete history of a civilization(or rather civilizations) I have seen anywhere. Terminating the main axis (for all it's Modern heroics, this is a classically disposed building) is the Sun Stone. Mistakenly interprested to be a calendar, it is in fact a more religious than secular piece meant to give some certainty about the actions of a region blessed and cursed respectively by too much and too little (none for many months) rain. Fertility also must have been at the forefront of the concerns of the Mexica. Indeed, it's nothing of which to be ashamed.I vaguely recall this guy from one of the installments of Super Mario Brothers.

And you may remember this Olmec ego from the Simpson basement,

After the museums closed I was compelled by wanderlust and a knowing curiousity about a hotel in Polanco. So in Polanco I found the Distito's answer to the Upper East side: posh, glitzy, and dull. The aforementioned hotel did provide me with a surprisingly delicious glass of Baja California red (a small carafe for only 80 pesos). As I sat appreciating the architecture of that modest modern gem in the company of 3 wait staff and another American preoccupied by his wireless and a salad, I pondered how there can be so many restaurants, many seemingly empty most of the time, surviving in such a competitive market. I carried these thoughts with me on my next novel adventure: the metro. Begun for the tumultuous '68 Olympiad, it is one of the more extensive public transit systems I have seen. Quite reliable and frequent, it is also shockingly quiet coming the earsplitting shame that is the MTA. Indeed, with characteristically dim lights on the train, coupled with the fact that the train and the station are both treated in the same nostalgically oil crisis era orange and it's pleasantly quiet approach, I found myself jumping back in alarm even though I toed the linea amarillo. My ride home in the quite narrow, key lime pie car was quick, pleasant, and uneventful, but for the vendors who practice their craft between every single station in seemingly every car. Oh, and my bright red tan-to-be (see previous post) made only more conspicuous that I was most certainly 100% in the minority in this subterranean domain.
Hasta luego.