Oaxaca en la historia y en el mito

Oaxaca en la historia y en el mito (English: Oaxaca in history and myth) is a mural created by Arturo García Bustos (1926-2017). García Bustos was "an artist dedicated to the humanistic struggles and liberal ideals that he expressed profoundly in his art."^[1] He painted the mural between 1978 and 1980 in the Museo de Gobierno in Oaxaca. Today the location is officially known as the Museo del Palacio Universum, but it is commonly referred to as the Palacio de Gobierno. It is located in Oaxaca de Juárez, México, known in English as Oaxaca City.

The mural is a visual history of Oaxaca from prehistoric times to modern times. The images selected in a visual history are key to the final interpretation.^[2] Bustos focused on images of the liberal traditions and reform in his interpretation of the history of Oaxaca,^[3] largely leaving out those who opposed liberal ideas and played important roles in Oaxacan and Mexican history.^[4]

Background[]

Jose Vasconcelos in the middle

José Vasconcelos Calderón (1882–1959) is one of the many readily identifiable individuals portrayed on the mural. José Vasconcelos was a colorful and influential personality from Oaxaca.^[5] After the Mexican Revolution, as the Secretary of Education, he obtained a large budget and generated projects to foster nationalism. The Secretariat of Education sponsored large patriotic murals in public spaces.

As a child, living in El Centro of Mexico City, Arturo García Bustos observed these murals being painted. Later he studied mural painting from the original muralists such as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo who were being funded as part of this nationalist art. He collaborated with Kahlo on murals on a daily basis in the mid 1940s.^[6] The mural Oaxaca en la historia y el mito springs from the roots of muralism and nationalism that José Vasconcelos planted some 50 years before García Bustos painted this mural.

Vasconcelos, a man with deep connections to the past, lived in Coyoacán, a colonial neighbourhood of Mexico City in the home that Hernán Cortés built for his translator-mistress, La Malinche, 500 years ago. Garcia Bustos, always the champion of Mexican history and antiquity, purchased the home from Vasconcelos and lived, and painted there with his wife and artist, Rina Lazo.^[7][8]

General description[]

The mural covers 220 m² (2,400 sq ft) of wall space with some 100 images of objects, people and events, making a semi-circle around a large internal stairwell.^[9] The artist used the encaustic technique. The mural tells the stories of Huaxyacac-Antequera-Oaxaca-Oaxaca de Juárez (0axaca City) in three horizontal layers.

The bottom layer of each panel pictures everyday life. The middle layer illustrates forces and events shaping the history of Oaxaca. The third, or top layer of the mural, represents the ideals and leaders of Oaxaca through the three eras portrayed.^[10] The artist divided the history of the area now known as Oaxaca into three panels, representing different timeframes, in chronological order; Prehispanic, sometimes called the pre-Columbian era, of some 10,000 or maybe 20,000 years ago to 1521, the second era is colonial times (1521 to 1821) and the third panel represents independence and reform (1821 to 1900s and beyond).

Prehispanic panel[]

Prehispanic panel

The central focus of the Prehispanic panel is to illustrate the lives of indigenous people before the arrival of the Spaniards. Images represent the creation story of the Zapotecs and Mixtecs, the crafting and use of codices, the cultivation of maize (corn) and other crops.^[11] One of the city states is represented, either Mitla or Monte Alban^[12] as well as the Mesoamerican "game" of ulama, sometimes called pelota, or the ball game. Also, typical artisans are shown at work making pottery, cloth, and smelting gold.

Cultivating maize (corn) and other activities in the prehispanic era

Gold[]

The image of an artisan working with gold strongly resembles a gold disc^[13] that archeologists discovered in Tomb 3 at Zaachila in the state of Oaxaca. This exemplifies the realism^[14] that characterizes García Bustos' art.^[14]

The gold rush to Oaxaca started after Montezuma told the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés that he obtained his gold from Oaxaca.^[15] Cortés wasted no time in sending troops to conquer Huaxyacac as the Aztecs, or more correctly the Mexicas, called the area (present-day Oaxaca). Cortez, also known as the Marquessate of the Valley of Oaxaca claimed large tracts of land around Oaxaca for himself and his ancestors. The presence of gold in the mural also highlights the motherload of gold objects discovered in 1932 in Tomb 7^[16] at the Zapotec-Mixtec site, called Monte Albán by the Spanish.

An artisan working with gold and another painting a codex in the prehispanic era

Colonial panel[]

The colonial panel covers 300 years, starting with the arrival of Spanish soldiers or Conquistadors, in November,1531 in what was then called Huayacac, shortly after the fall of Tenochitlan. The panel highlights the construction of a Baroque church, using free indigenous labor through the encomienda system. We see a friar, probably the famous Baroque composer, Manuel de Sumaya, leading a choir. The colonial panel devotes considerable space to the manufacture of cochineal, a red dye and also to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, better known as Sor Juana and Miguel Mateo Maldonado y Cabrera, better known as Miguel Cabrera.

Cochineal[]

The colonial panel illustrates a peasant women with a heavy container on her back,^[17] picking insects from nopal cactus to be used in producing bright red cochineal dye. As well, another young woman holds cloth that has been coloured by dye made from Cochineal. This dye made some Oaxacans rich,^[18] including the philanthropist, Manuel Fernández Fiallo de Boralla (1631-1708).^[19]

Manuel Fiallo, Sor Juana and Miguel Cabrera[]

Manuel Fernández Fiallo, Sor Juana, Miguel Cabrera and an angel in the colonial period

Don Fiallo is portrayed wearing clothes evoking the color of nopal leaves. The nopal-green organ depicted in the mural is a stylized version of the baroque organ in San Jerónimo Tlacochahuaya, a town near Oaxaca.^[20] The last testament of Manuel Fernández Fiallo lists 20 churches, convents, schools and orphanages as well as individuals such as his enslaved servant whom he freed and granted money.^[17][21] García Bustos depicts the religious Fiallo drafting a church-like structure. Don Fiallo was a main benefactor for the construction of the following Oaxacan churches San Agustín, La Merced, San Francisco and Santa María del Marquesado.^[22][23] A small dog, like an Xoxo or Xoloitzcuintle, near the left elbow of Don Fiallo evokes symbolism^[24] of the Dominican order, the first to send friars to Oaxaca.

The image of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648–1695) fills the centre of the colonial panel, along with artist Miguel Mateo Maldonado y Cabrera (1695–1768), who painted a renowned portrait of Sor Juana. The presence of an angel just barely visible above Miguel Cabrera and gesturing to him, reveals the sense of humour of the artist,^[25] since, Miguel Cabrera was born the year that Sor Juana died and most definitely Sor Juana never sat for a portrait by Miguel Cabrera as the mural depicts. Nevertheless the rendering of Cabrera painting Sor Juana demonstrates the muralist's commitment to realism^[14] in the sense that the image being painted of Sor Juana is almost a carbon copy of the original portrait by Cabrera.^[17][26]

Independence and reform panel[]

The independence/reform panel

The third and largest panel deals principally with the impact in Oaxaca of^[27] New Spain breaking away from Spain to create Mexico, as well as the development of liberal, Reform Laws. For some commentators, this central panel is best summed up as "representing Mexican patriotism".^[28] The panel depicts the chaos of five civil wars that in a period of 111 years (1810 to 1921) involved the people of Oaxaca. These civil wars are the War of Independence (1810–21), War of Reform (1857-60), the Second French Invasion, (1861–67) the Mexican Revolution, (1910-21) and to a minor extent, the Cristero War (1926–29).

The four large heads at the top of the panel, from right to left are José María Morelos Pérez y Pavón, a major insurgent leader, Margarita Maza Juárez, appearing beside her husband, Benito Pablo Juárez García, President of Mexico from 1858 to 1872, and on the extreme left the artist placed Ricardo Flores Magón, a Communist thought leader of the Mexican Revolution who was born in the State of Oaxaca but died in an American prison.^[29]

Benito Juárez[]

Benito Juárez with 11 men who helped him succeed, along with symbols of conservatism

Benito Juárez shares a prominent place on this panel with people who contributed to his success. Of the seven men on the right hand of Benito Juárez, the first one is General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguin. He famously led the Mexican army of 600 men, at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. This is the origin of the Cinco de Mayo celebrations. The soldier with the hat and sword is General Mariano Escobedo. The sword was given to him by Maximilian before his execution, and the crown that the sword touches, in the center of the panel, is the Habsburg crown of Maximilian who was executed after leading, for three years, the war that France waged in Mexico for six-year war against the administration of Benito Juárez. And the prosthetic leg^[30] belonged to Antonio López de Santa Anna the conservative enemy of Benito Juárez. Santa Anna was one of the several Mexican military leaders who became president, in his case 11 times. Santa Anna was president during the Mexican American War in which Mexico lost over 50% of its territory in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Ignacio Ramírez is next. He is famous for his atheism and contributions to anti-clericalism in Mexico that limited the Catholic Church and was linked to four of the five civil wars.

Of the four men pictured on the left of Juárez, the first man is Melchor Ocampo, with his hand on his heart.  In France he learned about the liberal and anticlerical ideas of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. His radical anti-clerical ideas were incorporated in the Reform Laws and the Mexican Constitution of 1857. The soldier depicted to the left of Benito Juárez is Porfirio Díaz Mori. He supported Juárez in the Reform War and during the French invasion. Later he broke with Juárez and became the dictator-president of Mexico for 34 years. Both Juárez and Díaz were from Oaxaca and attended El Instituto de Ciencias y Artes de Oaxaca where they learned liberal ideas.

Insurgents[]

Insurgents of the Mexican War of Independence

In the bottom left corner of the middle panel, García Bustos placed, among other elements, insurgents associated with the War of Independence in Oaxaca. These insurgents are remembered in Oaxaca and other Mexican towns where streets bear their names and commemorate their roles in Mexico gaining independence.^[31]

Armenta y López[]

Two of these insurgents, apparently the two at the back wearing hats typical of mule drivers, are celebrated in Oaxaca in the street Armenta y López, located near the Palacio de Gobierno.  [es] was a mulero, (a mule skinner or mule driver) when Miguel Hidalgo gave him the rank of colonel and sent him to Antequera, as Oaxaca City was known in the colonial period to foment rebellion. López took Miguel Armenta de Lima as his lieutenant.^[32] Their story illustrates some of the complexities and tragedy of one of the five civil wars fought in Oaxaca.

When they arrived in Oaxaca, locals were suspicious of the two men, but they were able to convince Antequera authorities that they were selling firewood. One story is that they had learned that the mayor was a Creole and they assumed that he, like many other Creoles, including themselves, was a supporter of the rebellion. When the insurgents told the mayor their intentions to start a revolution in Oaxaca, he threw them in jail.

After a trial they were hung in the quarries of Jalatlaco. Their bodies were dismembered and strewn on the road to Etla as a warning to other potential insurgents that the colonial authorities who were in control of Antequera in 1811, meant business.^[33] After José Morelos captured Oaxaca in 1812, he ordered that the remains of insurgents who had been martyred,  [es], José María Armenta, Felipe Tinoco y José María Palacios, be exhumed. Subsequently, they were celebrated in the cathedral as heroes.

Guadalupe Victoria[]

Keeping with his realism approach, the artist pictures Guadalupe Victoria, the first President of the United States of Mexico, throwing his sword to lead his men forward, as his legend accounts,^[34] in the taking of Oaxaca in 1812. There are no images on the mural of the Royalists who defended the city against the insurgents and held the city longer than the 15 months during which the insurgents held it.^[35][36]

Vicente Guerrero[]

Vincente Guerrero, President of Mexico (1829 for 8 months)

President Vicente Ramón Guerrero Saldaña (1782-1831) stands, in the mural, beside the proclamation of the abolition of slavery in Mexico of 1829.^[37][38] Guerrero, with black and indigenous roots, was President of Mexico in an unstable period when Mexican conservatives and liberals were still vying for power. Guerrero was accused of treason, tried in Oaxaca City and executed in what is now called Cuilápam de Guerrero, on February 14, 1831, some 13 kilometers from the Palacio de Gobierno in Oaxaca.

References[]

Further reading[]

• García Bustos, Arturo. "Experiencias vitales y compromisos plásticos". Revistas UNAM. Muralista y grabador: dos formas de comunicación. November 2011: 3. 221.
• Hamnett, Brian (2010), Vázquez, Josefina Zoraida (ed.), "Juárez: La Verdadera Significación de una Presidencia Controvertida", Juárez, historia y mito (1 ed.), El Colegio de Mexico, pp. 17–32, doi:10.2307/j.ctvhn0d9b.4, ISBN 978-607-462-076-4

External links[]

• History of Oaxaca Part 2 – Colonial Era