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"Color, Dolor, y Poder": Sketches of Messianic Politics Children clad in neon orange t-shirts clamor for seats on El Gusanito Feliz, an amusement ride of the ricketiest variety. For a couple of pesos, they are promised one minute of escapism and shared sensation. Each revolution around the track elicits squeals of glee and mock horror. Shapes blur into each other, and it seems possible that reality is actually in the process of being rearranged. The moment passes, the ride slows to a stop, the children get off, and not a thing is different. Beyond the merry-go-rounds and the miniature Ferris wheels, the carnival continues along the tent-lined Paseo de la Reforma. An August walk down one of Mexico City’s most important avenues is a trip down the rabbit hole. It is color, movement, noise, and chaos. No sense escapes assault. Stages are set up on nearly every city block. Adolescent chanteuses compete for crowds with blistering noise duos, while mariachis sing about patria. Skinny clowns gesture violently in frantic attempts to attract attention. The ubiquitous tents along the streets house everything from photo exhibits to midway shooting galleries. Street-cart entrepreneurs hawk cotton candy and ears of corn dusted in chili powder, while vendors with baskets weave through the crowds chanting “chicle, dulces, cigarros” with unfailing repetition. If you can make your way through this street fair, you’ll find yourself in Mexico City’s main square, the Zócalo, the true center of the action. In the middle of the plaza’s tents and tarps is the main attraction, the festival’s architect and honoree. His name is Andres Manuel López Obrador. Obrador is the former mayor of Mexico City, the presidential candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and the self-proclaimed savior of the poor and forgotten. A wave of his hand is enough to provoke cheering from the crowd of thousands. For one theatrical summer, he is the ringleader in the circus of Mexican politics. * * * * * The paint is laid thick and heavy. The brushstrokes are loose and imprecise, almost bordering on sloppy. They do not suggest a developing young hand that is simply careless and unrefined. Rather, they seem to belong to the deteriorating and trembling grip of the ancient and infirm, one who has neither the time nor energy for detail. In the top right corner against a backdrop of slate gray, the hand of social justice strangles a modern variation of winged Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. Only, this version is less serpent and more Yankee imperialist (some might cynically say, “same difference”). Instead of an amalgam of bird and snake, the creature is a mix of eagle and American, with the head of Uncle Sam attached to the bird’s bomb-shaped body. Like dead albatrosses, these two bird creatures are the symbolic harbingers of Mexico’s destruction by pale invaders past and present. Below the hybrid beast is a landscape blemished by an atomic dust cloud and streams of blood. Moving toward the left half of the painting, the disembodied head of Karl Marx floats next to a white dove with wings spread wide. A globe exposing the golden-red expanse of the U.S.S.R. and China floats above clear river in the creamy blue heavens: a perfect picture of tranquility. In the painting’s center, the subject-- Frida Kahlo, the artist herself-- is supported tenderly by the hands of socialism. The eye of wisdom peaks from behind Kahlo’s leather corset as she flings away her crutches. Karl Marx serves as a deus ex machina, saving the world from Yankee destruction and saving Kahlo from physical suffering. There is no subtle symbolism in this piece: every element of this narrative painting clearly states that Marxism is the only true savior in this sad, unjust world. To make the message yet more obvious, the painting is bluntly titled “El Marxismo Dará Salud a los Enfermos,” or “Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick.” With a title like that, even a cursory explication might not have been necessary in the first place. This painting hangs in the first room of Kahlo’s Casa Azul, her whimsically garish colonial-style house located in the south of Mexico City. Mangy cats sun themselves on a citrus-color pyramid in a courtyard lined with brightly colored papier-mâché judas. Smiles sneak across the faces of visitors who stop in front of a different painting, a still-life titled, “Viva la Vida.” The vibrant pink of the watermelons and the joyful simplicity of the painting’s message seem to be appreciated by whole families. Yet, this pleasant spectacle cannot fully distract one from Kahlo’s obvious cry for some sort of release from pain. Flowing Tehuana dresses contrast with medical corsets decorated with hammers and sickles, circular mirrors, and tiny illustrations of turtles and birds. While one display case may contain ornate jewelry, the next is lined with an innumerable amount of medicines. One cabinet is a veritable pharmacy: Cellothyl, Floraquin, Drilitol, five 20-mL injectable tubes of Dextrabott, antiseptics, anesthetics, blue and white syringes, muscle relaxants… I stopped counting the number of drugs in this particular display once I hit 78. For every souvenir of Kahlo’s suffering, there exists a painting, book, or simple knick-knack that suggests that she saw Communism as a panacea for her pain. Books by Friedrich Engels and Corliss Lamont share shelf space with those of Marcel Proust and Leo Tolstoy. Portraits of Mao Zedong, Vladimir Lenin, and Josef Stalin hang over her bed, right above propped-up braces and wooden crutches. There is no doubt that she sincerely wanted Marxism to give health to the sick, to save the poor, and to help the forgotten. As years of failed surgeries could not relieve her physical pain, politics could at least provide her a sense of peace. But despite her seemingly fervent belief in the idea that Marxism could in some way save her, Kahlo’s commitment its actual ideology seems superficial, if not suspect. In a flamboyant show of commitment to Marxism, Kahlo and Diego Rivera took Leon Trotsky and his wife into their home after the two Soviets were granted asylum in Mexico. Kahlo initially seemed enamored of Trotsky: he became her piochitas, her “little goatee.” She made him a portrait, and he made it onto her list of illicit trysts. Unfortunately for Trotsky, organizing the Russian Revolution and sounding the battle-cry for a permanent global change wasn’t enough to keep Kahlo’s interest or her respect. Some speculate that Kahlo’s affair with Trotsky might not have meant anything in the first place. It might have just served as a lover’s ruse in the greater goal of exacting revenge against Rivera. At any rate, both Kahlo and Rivera grew tired of him, and eventually Trotsky moved out of their home. Shortly after Trotsky’s assassination with an ice pick at the hands of a Stalinist agent, Kahlo went on to slander his name and to devote herself to his archrival. Although she was aware that Stalin was responsible for the death of her former friend and lover (not too mention millions of Soviet peasants), Kahlo became a fervent Stalinist, buying into his whole cult of personality. His name is scribbled in her diary. His face is featured in her portraits. His politics weren’t wholly relevant: she just needed an icon, a vision of some saint capable of saving her. Wonder if she ever got that peace. She died-- many think it was suicide-- within months of completing “Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick” and “Frida and Stalin.” * * * * * The only thing that drowns out the cries of “chicle, dulces, cigarros” is the persistent chant of “voto por voto, casilla por casilla.” Vote by vote, household by household. Nothing but a full recount will suffice. While a number of people seem to be crawling about the tents out of curiosity or out of an intense desire to watch a dubbed copy of Bad Boys II on a projector screen, the real point of this whole spectacle is to protest election results. The July 2nd contest determined that López Obrador lost by 0.58% to Felipe Calderon, the candidate of the conservative National Action Party. In a country where electoral fraud was the norm for most of the 20th century, an election that close is enough to make the losers raise their eyebrows, whether it’s warranted or not. And so, the leftist opposition coalition literally took it to the streets. For 48 days, protestors donning neon orange PRD shirts camped out along a 12 kilometer stretch of Paseo de la Reforma, effectively shutting the city down. The newspapers estimated that Mexico City faced losses of at least $10 million a day, harming not just the business interests of their opposition, but everyone-- including the voters who supported López Obrador. In the two months following elections, talk of civil war and revolution brewed. Had the left found its savior in this charismatic leader? He promised to attack the problem of inequality vigorously, to provide support for the elderly, to improve education, to reach out to isolated rural areas, and to refuse to let anything stop him from becoming president-- least of all democratic institutions or what the people really wanted. As time wore on, it started to appear that this last promise was the only one of any consequence to him. * * * * * Since the consolidation of statehood in the late 19th century, candy-coated governance has been standard in Mexico. The general policy seems to be speak in the name of the masses, rule in the name of the elite. Cantina conversations about the Mexican Revolution open up a whole pinche bag of skittles. Heroic tales of Emiliano Zapata, the martyr of the agrarian class, are told with spit and fire. Jokes are made about Pancho Villa’s banditry against the United States-- hardly any mention of any stories where the States come out on top, of course. Someone may occasionally take a thoughtful pause and then make boast of how liberal and advanced the Constitution of 1917 was, how it could be seen as a Magna Carta of the laboring class. While it would be nice to think that these romantic memories of the Revolution make up the whole story, a glance at a history book will tell you that Zapata was murdered, Villa was defeated and then assassinated, and the ratification of the Constitution didn’t precipitate any sort of immediate, drastic social change. The true recipients of the power and the glory were the conservative military leaders whose oppression of religious rights and civil liberties made Graham Greene shudder an ocean away. While these caudillos did not take any drastic measures to rectify inequality, they did give the masses something beautiful. Through frescoes and paintings, the government provided a new conception of history. José Vasconcelos, the Minister of Education during the 1920s, sought to bring the nation together through art and through his philosophy of aesthetic monism, his treatment of the world as one cosmic unity. In a move that would do Georg W.F. Hegel proud, Vasconcelos promoted art as a key unifying force and as a way to mold the ideas of the population and strengthen the nation’s institutions. However, his grand project created a grander illusion, by promoting an opiatic art that could foster complacency and inequality. With generous funding from the government and the backing of Vasconcelos, murals sprang up all over Mexico City. Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Jose Clemente Orozco taught the public that the Spaniards were the true-and-very-much-already-defeated enemies, that the workers had successfully organized and gained power against great odds, and that the Mexican people composed “la raza cósmica.” They were one cosmic race, a blend of all diverse elements, a group that transcended destiny. This public art engrained two key ideas into the consciousness of all: everyone was part of the revolution, and the revolution had already won. If the Mexican populace could not turn to God or to leaders who truly stood for the people, they could at least look to art for comfort. * * * * * The carnival packed up and shipped off in mid-September. Most of López Obrador’s disciples lost faith in the belief that he could be their savior. His self-inauguration as president in November was greeted with little fanfare, and most have now accepted that his fight is against apparently clean and fair election results. If anything, López Obrador proved to be their emperor-sans-clothes, not their messiah. The decline of López Obrador did not parallel some drastic rise in the quality of life for the average Mexican citizen. As his protests became increasingly innocuous, gridlocked strikes in Oaxaca erupted into violent conflict. A teacher is stabbed to death with ice picks; a prison guard is roped to a light post as 50 people teach him what vigilante justice is; thousands of federal police struggle to maintain control of a city square that can’t be larger than a football field. Oaxaca’s corrupt and contemptuous governor refuses to resign, and bombs go off in Mexico City as a response courtesy one southern guerilla group. In the state of Michoac·n, drugs lords now communicate via decapitations: the heads of underlings relay certain messages much more effectively than nice stationery. Mexico could still use someone or something to ease these conflicts, to reduce the country’s marked inequality, to give power to the weak, and to provide health to the sick. While August hinted at revolution or at least tangible change, the result was simply color and noise. The supporters of the left had their ride, and of course, once everything was over, not a thing had really changed.
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