bartra and the postmexican condition

7/30/2019 bartra and the postmexican condition

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BLOOD,INK ,A N DCULTUREMiseries and Splendors ofthe Post-Mexican Condition

R O G E R BARTRA

Translated byMark Alan Healcy

D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S D U R H A M A N D L O N D O N 2 0 0 2


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I

The Mexican Office: Miseriesand Splendors of Culture

T o hide its nakedness in times of want, Mexican "official culture" has sentits jewels and treasures to New York, the metropolis of the north.1 Itdreams of flaunting the splendors of its art before the stunned eyes of savage mil-lionaires, to warm the cold industrial heart of the United States. And as ever, itaims to affirm its identity by confronting Anglo-American culture, attemptingto shore up the waning legitimacy of the Mexican political system .2

Thi s es s ay was written for a conference ent i t l ed "Mexi co: Here and Ther e" a t Col um bi a U ni ver -s i t y , or gani zed as a cr i ti ca l r es pons e t o t he M et r opol i t an M us eu m of Ar t ' s 1390 exhi bi t i on "Mex-i co: Spl endor s of Thi r t y Cent u r i es . " An ear l i er t r ans l a t i on of t h i s es s ay by Coco Fus co was pub-l ished in Third Text.1. This e ssay is bui l t aro und th e i ronic use of the term s "off ice" and "off icial cu l tur e" in wayssl ight ly unfamil iar to American readers , so a few defini t ions may he in order . As Merr iam-Wcbsterrcminds us, "off ice" refers not only to a place of busin ess but also, and mor e im por tant lyfor our purposes , to "a special duty, charge or posi t ion," to "the proper or customary act ion ofs ome t hi ng, " t o "a r e l i g i ous or s ocia l cer emon i al obs er v ance" ( a r i te l , and t o "a pr es cr i bed f or m ors er vi ce of wor s hi p , " s uch as t he Divine Office, the "off ice for the canonical hours of prayer thatpr ies ts and rel igious say dai ly." Bartra's notion of the Mexican Office refers to al l of these dimen-sions, to the sncrnlizcd r i t ual pr act i ce of cul t ur al ar bi t er s wi t h i n t he Mexi can state"officialculture"setting out t he canoni cal f or ms and nor ms of i Mcxi cannes s . In t h i s s ens e , :h e M e x i c a nOffice could be seen as a cal l ing, a vocat ion in the Webcrian s ens e . The es s ay i s br oken up ac-cording to the hours of the Divine Office and closes with references to the pol icing power of theMexican Office, which recal l those of the Holy Office, belter known as t he I nqui s i t i on. jTrans.]2. Out of the pol i t ical s t ruggle of the revolut ion (ly10-1920] there emerged a s ingle pol i t icalpar t y t hat has come t o domi nat e the Mexican poli t ical system. Firs t formed in 1928, i t has beenk n o w n s i n c e r94& as t he I ns t i t u t i onal Revol ut i onar y P ar t y [ Par t ido Revolucionario I ns t i t uci o-nnl , or rm|. The central concern of this book is the formation of a compl ex web of r e l a t i ons hi ps


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Me x i c a n "o f fi c ia l c u l t u re " i s sh o w i n g t h e w o r l d t h i r t y c e n t u r i e s o f sp l e n d o r . Iw o u l d l i k e t o t a k e t h i s o p p o r t u n i t y t o r e f l e c t o n h o w "o f f i ci a l c u l t u re " i s g e n e r -a t e d . Th e c o n c e p t c a n b e u n d e r s t o o d f ro m t w o a n g l e s . F ir s t , a s a n e t h n o g ra p h e r ,I can confi rm tha t ther e is a cul tur e tha t em ana tes from th e off ices of govern-m e n t a n d sa t u ra t e s t h e e x e rc i se of a u t h o r i t y . Th i s i s a n ensemble o f h a b i t s a n dv a l u e s t h a t m a rk t h e b e h a v i o r o f t h e Me x i c a n p o l i t i c a l a n d b u re a u c ra t i c c l a s s :t h i s sw a rm o f licenciados and leaders share customs and fo lk lore worthy of be-i n g c a re fu l ly c a t a l o g e d t o b e s t o re d a w a y i n m u se u m v a u l t s . P a i n t e r s h a v e a l -r e a d y b e g u n t h i s t a sk : i n h i s c e l e b ra t e d p a i n t i n g The Bone, Co v a r ru b i a s p o r -t r a y e d t h e t y p i c a l Me x i c a n fu n c t i o n a ry w i t h e x t r a o rd i n a ry i ro n y . 3

Second, we f ind tha t those very same government off ices issue a sea l of ap-p ro v a l for a r t i s t i c a n d l i t e r a ry p ro d u c t i o n , i n o rd e r t o r e s t r u c t u re i t a c c o rd i n g t oe s t a b l i sh e d c a n o n s . Th i s p e c u l i a r r e c o n s t ru c t i o n a l so m a k e s u p p a r t of w h a t Ica l l "off ic ia l cu l ture ," but i t should be c learly understood tha t th is does notm e a n that the w r i t e r s a n d a r t i s t s themselves are the off icia l spokes peop le of gov-e r n m e n t c u lt tire (although tha t i s the case for a few). None the les s the re is a c losere la t ion ship be tw een the fo lkways of gov ern me nt off ices and the form the off i-c i a l r e c o n s t ru c t i o n o f Me x i c a n c u l t u re t a k e s : t o g e t h e r t h e y c a n b e se e n a s t h eprac t ice of a Mexican Office.

Just as there is a Divine Office tha t marks off the hours of the canonica l dayw i t h p ra y e r s , p sa l m s , a n d h y m n s , so t h e re i s a Me x i c a n O f f i ce t h a t m a r k s o ff t h edays of the na t ion according to off ic ia l ly establ ished canons. There is a MexicanOffice tha t sings and te l ls of the na t iona l sp lendors. Tha t Mexican Office is the"o f fi c ia l c u l t u re " t h a t s t a m p s i t s nihil obstat o n t h e w o rk s o f t i m e . " Th a t Me x i -c a n O f fi c e i s w h a t d e c re e s t h a t M e x i c o h a s b e e n r e sp l e n d e n t fo r Th i r t y Ce n -t u r i e s .

between the I'lti, national culture, civil society, and ihcdcmocratic opposition, and the transfor-mation of this web during the prolonged political and economic breakdown of the eighties andnineties. Two useful overviews of modern M exican history are 1 lector Aguilar Camin and Lo-renzo Meyer, In the Shadow of the Mexican Revolution: ContemporaryMexican History. 7910-79X9, trans. L uis Alberto Ficrro (Austin; University of Texas Press, 1993I; and Michael C.Meyerand William H. licezley, eds., The Oxfoid History of Mexico jNcw York: Oxford UniversityPress, 2ooo|. [Trans.]3. Miguel Covarrubias (1904-1957) was a painter and exceptionally astute caricaturist whoworked extensively in Mexico and the United S tates. See Adriana Williams, Covarmbias. ed.Dons Ober (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994I. [Trans. |4. Nihil obstat was the stamp that the Holy Office placed on books indicating that they were safefor the faithful's consumption. |Trans. I

4 Blood and In k

M a t i n s

A t t h e d a w n o f h i s t o ry , t h e Olmecs r a i se t h e i r s t r a n g e a n d e n o rm o u s h e a d s t ol o o k u p o n u s . In t h e t r a d i t i o n o f t h e o l d c o u n t e rp o i n t Ro g e r F ry n o t e d a t t h e b e -g i n n i n g o f t h i s c e n t u ry , t h o se f i r s t Me x i c a n s a r e t h e re t o r e m i n d u s t h a t m o d e r -n i t y i s b o rn s t a i n e d w i t h p r i m i t i v e n e ss . 5 Those faces of primeval a r t a re there sot h a t w e , m o d e rn M e x i c a n s , c a n r e c o g n i z e o u r se l v e s i n t h e m a n d se e r ef l e c t ed i nt h e i r o t h e rn e ss t h e b u r i e d a n d h i d d e n p a r t o f o u r n a t i o n a l b e i n g . Th i s i s a n olda n d w e l l -k n o w n t h e m e i n a r t h i s t o ry , b u t i n Me x i c o i t w a s m a d e u se fu l a g a i n b yt h e f r a n t i c se a rc h fo r "Me x i c a n n e ss" t h a t a c c o m p a n i e d t h e p o s t w a r m o d e rn i z -i n g b o o m .

S o t h e o r i g i n s o f c o n t e m p o ra r y M e x i c a n a r t sh o u l d b e fo u n d o n t h e c o a s t of t h eGulf of Mexico , not in the Mediterranean o r t h e Mi d d l e Ea s t . Co n t r a ry t o a p p e a r -ances, i t has been decreed tha t our roots l ie more in the f igures of pre -Columbianc o d i c e s t h a n i n t h e v e r se s o f t h e O l d Te s t a m e n t . Th i s i s a c u l t u ra l d e c i s i o n t h a tfu l ly makes sense only i f we read h istory aga inst the f low of t ime: i t i s f rom ourh e re a n d nowfrom t h e p e r sp e c t i v e o f t h e p re se n t -d a y M e x i c a n statethat th eT h i r t y C e n t u r i e s o f M e x i c a n art have a u n i f i e d m e a n i n g . Re a so n s of s t a t e , w h e na p p l i e d t o c u l t u re , b e c o m e n a t u ra l i z e d . N a t u re i s t h e f ir s t e l e m e n t t h a t g i v e su n i t y a n d c o n t i n u i t y t o c u l t u ra l h i s t o ry . G e o g ra p h y i s t u rn e d i n t o a n i m m e n s el i v i n g f r a m e for h i s t o ry . Th e e a r t h b e c o m e s a fe r t i l e m o t h e r i n w h o se b o d y t h ed e e p ro o t s of n a t i o n a l c u l t u re g ro w . A c c o rd i n g t o this i d e a of n a t u re , v o l c a n o e s ,forests, va l leys, lakes, f lora , and fauna a rc no longer part of geography but havem e t a m o rp h o se d t o b e c o m e t h e a n a t o m y o f t h e l i v i n g b o d y o f c u l t u re . Th a t i sw h y Jo se Ma r i a V e l a sc o a n d D o c t o r Atl a re c o n s i d e re d i n d i sp e n sa b l e e l e m e n t s o fMe x i c a n a r t : t h e y a r c a t t h e sa m e t i m e w i t n e sse s a n d c r e a t o r s o f t h e p a l p i t a t i n gl a n d sc a p e t h a t d e f i n e s t h e o u t l i n e o f t h e n a t i o n - s t a t e . 6

I d o n o t m e a n t o sa y t h a t t h e a w a re n e s s o f a c e r t a i n origin a n d a landscape iss i m p l y a n i d e o l o g i c a l fo rm a t i o n c r e a t e d b y t h e Me x i c a n s t a t e t o t r i c k a d o m i -n a t e d p o p u l a t i o n . Cu l t u ra l p ro c e sse s h a v e a l e g i t i m a t i n g , h o m o g e n i z i n g , a n du n i fy i n g e f f e c t , b u t n o t b e c a u se t h e y a r e m e re " i n s t ru m e n t s" o f t h e ru l i n gc lasses. Even "off ic ia l culture"which does h a v e an i n s t r u m e n t a l character

5. Roger Fry, Vision and Design (London: Chattoaud Windus, 1920).fi. Jose Maria Velasco 11840-191 2] painted idealized landscapes of the Mexican countryside. Dr.Ail |born Gerardo Murillo, 1875-1964) was best known for his series of volcano paintings andhis aerial landscapes. He also was an important intellectual ally of the victorious group in theMexican Revolution, ledby VenustianoCarrania, as well as being the designer of a monumentto Carranza after he was assassinated. [Trans.]

Th e Me x i c a n O f f ic e 5


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cannot he explained except as a function of the complex process that feeds it, andthat process is the creation of an articulated ensemble of myths about Mexicanidentity.

Despite Weber's claims, modern society has not ceased to generate myths.One of those myths is precisely the my th of national character. In Mexico tha tmyth has crystallized into what I have playfully called the axoloil canon. Thatcanon orders and classifies the features of Mexican chara cter according to a basicduality: Mexicans arc amphibious beings who shift between the rural savageryof melancholy Indians and the artificial and playful aggressiveness of urban pe-lados. In my book The Cage of Melancholy, I carry out an anatomical dissectionof that m ythical amphibious c reature, Mexican national iden tity. The results ofthe operation may surprise many sociologists, because it shows that the ratio-nality inherent to the unification of the modern state requires a mythologicalstructure to give it legitimacy. There is no such thing as a purely rational legiti-macy produced by capitalist economic structures and modern bureaucracy. Thelegitimacy of modern political systems generates a m ythology capable of creat-ing the "subject" of the capitalist state. That mythology is developed around thenotion of national culture and, more specifically, around the conception of a na-tional character.LaudsWe can praise the first twenty-five centuries of Mexican splendor that representthe solitary primeval otherness without which national culture apparentlycould not exist. But our praise cannot create a continuity that was broken byconquest and colonization; ancient artistic traditions were annihilated within afew years. Still, some insist on speaking of a cultural con tinuity that would spana bridge over the abyss opened by the conquest, between pre-Hispanic Meso-america and colonial and independent M exico.

We can recognize an intense search by twentieth-century Mexican artists forformal or spiritual values in pre-Hispanic cultures. What they found undoubt-edly enriched their creations, but it is doubtful that it contributed to filling theimmense void left by the destruction of ancient societies. "Official cultu re" hasalso taken a great leap across the centuries to search for the foundations of themodern state in ancient Mesoamerica. 7

7. The archaeological excavation of the Templo Mayor, in thecenter of Mexico City, is an exam-ple of the use of spectacles to connect thepresent with pre-Columbian history.

6 Blood and Ink

Many consider it useless to look to history fort he formal or stylistic com intui-tion of pre-Colum bian art into colonial or modern Mexico. The only real conti-nuity is not usually accepted anywhere but in ethnographic museums: the mil-lions of marginalized indigenous peoples are the only battered bridge left. Theyare a symbolic referent to the past, but they arc usually rejected as an active pres-ence." In his introductory essay to the exposition catalog, Mexico: Splendors ofThirty Centuries, Octavio Paz indicates how the continuity problem has heenresolved: all across an incredible variety of forms, we find the persistence of asingle will, the will to survive in and through form. An attentive and loving lookcan perceive a continuity that is not manifest in either style or ideas, but insomething deeper, in a sensibility.5 This will for form is nothing more than thetransposition of reasons of state onto the Mesoamerican past, an artistic pastwhere the figure, the form, reveals the metamor phoses of a single will.

This game of transformations, of transfigurations, perfectly exem plifies an in-tellectual process that has been used frequently by modern nationalism and intheology is called figural interpretatio n. Elsewhere, I have already pointed outthis curious phenomenon, which goes beyond the imaginative metaphorical re-lationships artists establish between distant epochs and distinct culturalspheres.10 We are facing a delicate and complex process that manages to estab-lish in collective consciousness a structural relationship between two unrelatedcultural dimensions. This structural link operates on two planes simulta-neously: as mimesis on one, and as catharsis on the other. Mim esis finds a simi-larity between ancient cultural features, for instance of the Mexica or the Maya,and colonial or modern history. I am not going to go into depth on this issue, butI would like to men tion some of the theme s in which this meta historica l link isusually found: sacrifice, guilt, cyclical events, baroque exuberance, dualism, theworship of the Virgin, et cetera. We find a transposition of current themes andconflicts onto a more or less imaginary past, where a prefiguration of the mod-ern scene is to be found. This transposition onto an imagined past is similar tothe one that takes place in modern mythology's reconstruction of the Homo

8. For decades, the political actions of the N ational Indigenous Institute have been an exampleof the strange combination of an official policy of exalting "deep Mexico" with a governmentalpractice of burying 'be indigenous people progressively deeper in the mud of modern sociciy.9. Octavio Paz, "The Will for Form," in Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries (New York: Met-ropolitan Museum, 1990), 4.10. Roger Rartra, Th e Cage of Melancholy: Identity and Metamorphosis in the Mexican Charac-ter, trans. Christophe r). Hall [New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,1992).

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rmexicanus, an android whose anatomy must be examined because it will giveus the keys to what 1 call the institutionalization of the national soul. A linereaches from the stooping Indian to the mes tizo pelado, passing through th e ma-jor points of articulation of the Mexican so ul: mchincholy-idleness-fatalism-inferiority I violcnce-sentimentalism-rcsentmcnt-escapism. This l ine marksthe voyage the Mexican must undertake to find himself, from the original Edenof nature to the industrial apocalypse.P r i m eThe spectacle of this cultural simulacrum allows us to indicate the importanceof the other plane, that of catharsis, in the link between real and imaginary di-mension s. The stage set of national c ulture is a space where the feelings of thepeople can be released. That is where na tionalism can achieve its greatest effec-tiveness, by managing to identify politics with culture.

Nationalism is the transfiguration of the supposed characteristics of nationalidentity onto the terrain of ideology. Nation alism is a political tendency tha t es-tablishes a structural relationship between the nature of culture and the pecu-liarities of the state. In our country th e official expressions of nationalism tellus; If you are Mexican, you mus t vote for the institutiona lized revolution. Th osewho do not either are traitors to their deepest essence or are not Mexican. Na-tionalism is, then, an ideology that disguises itself with c ulture to hide its inti-mate m eans of domination. But for this identification of politics with culture tobe successful, a process of sedimen tation mus t have taken place already, separat-ing elements socially held to be national from those that are not specifically heldto be so. This is a complexproccss that cann ot be produced artificially. That is tosay, neither the state nor the ruling class can direct this process from above. Th isis a global process shaped by the interplay of several factors, including the veryformation of the national state. On the basis of this process, the ruling class maybe able to establish its cultural hegemony by using a nationalist ideology. Butthis is not the only way in which a social class can gain hegemony. I would saythat the nationalist path is one of the most dangerous ways for achieving it andcan leadas it has in Mexicoto the institutionalization of a pernicious au-thoritarian system. And this system is all the more pernicious when national-ism produces a collective catharsis, through which it legitimates one w ay of do-ing politics as the only way of being Mexican.

S Wood and In k

TerceWe live in the age of the collapse of great ideological blocs, and because of that,cultural critique b ecomes m ore importan t every day. There are different ways ofconceiving of cultural critique. In Mexico it has been comm on to offer a critiquefrom the perspective of nineteenth-century rationalism, that is, from the per-spective of modernity, w hich says that it is crucial to "mode rnize " Mexican cul-ture to adapt it to the needs of industrialization and mass society. This approachquickly leads to a dilemma: should we remake national culture along the linesof " t rue" popular culture, or should we accept the transnationali zing invasion ofthe new m ass culture? But this dile mm a is soon revealed to be a false one. It isfalse because our present-day national c ulture is precisely the amalgam of thesetwo options, which are therefore complementary. With this I mean to say thatthe moder nization of Mexican cu lture has already taken place. What I call theexercise of the Mexican Office is precisely the result of the modern ization of na-tional culture, and not some archaic and premodern leftover that must be redi-rected, or even destroyed, to open the way to modern culture .

What I am critiquing is precisely the modernity of national culture. It is itsmodernity that oppresses us, since thatis where the authoritarianism that char-acterizes the Mexican system came from. O ur choice at present is therefore notbetween a populist option or a transnational proposal: we need only turn onMexican television to realize that hegemonic culture has already managed toovercome tha t contradiction, by imposing on us a deeply jingoistic culture thatis aggressively aligned w ith U.S.-produced mass culture . By approaching theseproblems from the perspective of postmode rnity, I am suggesting that the divid-ing lines have shifted and the contradiction s have been displaced onto new ter-rain. We can no longer critique Mexican culture in the name of modernity, of aliberal-inspired modernity that raises up the banner of "progress." We have tocritique modernity from the standpoint I call dismodernity, or better yettak-ing a cue from desmadre, Mexican slang for disorder dismothernity. u

Sex tThese observations lead us to conclude that we should distinguish betweenthree phenomena: national identity, political culture, and official cultural pol-icy. In examining the relation ship between these three, wc see that this is a mat-11. Desmadre is slang for excess, chaos, disorder, and tnadrc means mother. [Trans.]

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ter of the tics between the fo rmation of a myth [identity), its insertion into insti-tutional life [political culture], and the ideology that attempts to explain anddirect the process (official culture).

The m yth of national identity is not a merely ideological phenom enon manip-ulated by the ruling class or the government. For the myth to be incorporatedinto political culture in what we migh t call a "natura l" and lasting way, severalconditions arc necessary, which it would be excessive to explain fully here. Suf-fice it to say that this is a matter of the accumulation of a scries of historical mo-ments through which various elements are transfigured and transposed untilpolitical culture becomes relatively homogeneous and coherent. For its part,government cultural policy is an ideological practice that, in addition to manyother tasks, uses cultural expression to legitimate the system. An example: thecirculation of Mexican culture defines the officially national space, yet officialcultural policy only slightly modifies the constitu tion of Mexican political cul-ture. Fotonovelas, commercial television, comics, commercial music, detectivenovels, popular best-sellers, and romance or pornographic novels contin ue to ex-ercise enormous influence. No matter how much they are denounced as "for-eign," they still form an integral part of Mexican political culture. On the otherhand, the myth of the "Mexican soul" has managed not only to successfully sur-vive the avalanche of "foreign" influences but to stake o ut a lasting place in po-l i tical cul ture . n

The "Mexican soul" has held a stable place in political culture precisely be-cause it appears as something non- Western. The myth ofMexican being has con-tributed to the legitimation of the political system, but it has taken on a myth-ical form hardly consistent with the Western capitalist development typicalof the twentieth century's end. Of course, if one wishes to see it this way, themyth did correspond to the peculiarities of a backward, corrupt, and depende ntcapitalism. Hence the contradictions contemporary Mexican culture is livingthrough: the myth of national iden tity is becoming dysfunctional. But this dys-functionality comes in great measure from its "popular" and "anticapitalist"origins. The myth stores up a good dose of protest, bitterness, revolt, and re-sistance: this circumstance explains the popularity of the stereotype of theMexican.

11. On mass cu lture in modern Mexico, see Eric Zolov, Rcfricd Elvis: The Rise of the MexicanCounterculture [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999]; and Anne Rubinstein, "MassMedia and Popular Culture in the I'ostrcvolutionaryEta," in Meyer and Heczley, The OxfordHistory of Mexico. 637-70, [Trans.|

10 Blood and Ink

NoneThe idea of the boundary, the tear, or the border is an impo rtant ingredient in theconstitution of national identity. In Mexico this should be understood in at leasttwo senses. First, as an inne r tear or wound: Mexicanncss split between the de-stroyed ancient autochthonous world and the colonial, Christian, and modernworld. Second, as the great border dividing Mexico from the potentially hostileten itory of Anglo-American culture . Without any doubt, confrontation with thenorthern Other has spurred the definition of Mexican identity. Bui here we comeacross a pious medieval Christian idea: one had to go to the land of the M oors,one had to undergo temptation and suffering, to reaffirm the faith. The border isa permanent danger. The border is a constant source of contamination andthreats to Mexican nationality. The m ere existence of the border is what p ermitsnationalist passions to remain te nse. It permits, we might say, a perma nent stateof alert against outside threats. Clearly this functions mostly on a symboliclevel, since the demograph ic reality of the thousands of Mexicans who com e andgo across the border (more going than coming] generates a soc iocultural processof mcsiizaie and symbiosis that no nationa list discourse could bring to an end.

Although this dialecticbetween Self and Othe rhas been important, we shouldalso recognize that the very long border has also been a wide space of interaction.From a cultural perspective, I do not think that we should be alarmed by whathappens on the border. What is usually called the "Americanization" of borderli fe is no t a particularly damaging and threaten ing process. As an anthropologist,1 cannot conceive of a border territory between two cultures in which transcul-turation processes do not take place. Any attemp t to block this w ould be Utopianat best. Some in the United States are also alarmed by the "Mexicanization" ofborder life: they have the same conservative and reactionary impulses as Mexi-can chauvinists.

This does not mean that there are no problems on the border. But for the m ostpart, these arc political problems of the relationship betwe en two state s. One isa very rich state headed by imperialist governments, and the other a very poorstate monopolized by authoritarian governments. A mechanical transpositionof political problems onto the territory of culture will only manage to deformour understanding of an extraordinarily complex situation.

Every Mexican (and Latin American) who has lived in the United Statesknows that Latin America does not end at the Rio Bravo: the Latin contin ent haspenetrated deeply into the Anglo-American sociocultural world. Within theUnited States, the "Hispanic" sector of society, economy, politics, and cultureis enormous and exercises notable pressure on the American system. Mexican

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nationalism has traditionally refused to recognize this fact, since this "Mexi-canization" of life in the United States is usually seen instead from a differentperspective, as the "Americanization" of Mexicans. As they say, some see theglass half em pty, som e see it half full.

Vespers

On the eve of a new era that will lead us who knows w here, Mexican cu lture isexperiencing tensions that are tearing it apart.1J The Thirty Centuries of Splen-dor fall on the heads of Mexican writers and artists I ike a bewildering avalanche.Yet all around us there is nothing to be seen but an eternal present, collapsedonto itself. It seems as if our cultural context was pu t up yesterday and is on theverge of falling down. In our everyday cultural landscapeas in our urban sur-roundingsthe past barely exists, and we live in the fragility of a dream thatends each morning when we awaken to a miserable and backward reality. Anarmor-plated aesthetic of willful resplen dence chases after cultural creators andhides from them the dark side of the myth. They arc compelled to express anidentity that is not theirs; they are forced into a millenn ial originality that theydo not understand. Everyone must create bleeding from the same wo und, achingfrom the same border, or from the sam e fracture. Everyone m ust be a native ofone and the same landscape, and suffer in the same way from that geography.

On the eve of a drab financial battle tha t should open up to M exico the doorsof the merca ntile paradise of the north ern powers, official culture has adaptedNapoleon's famous speech to the present day: Soldiers of culture, from theheights of these pyramids Thirty Centuries are watching you! This adaptationhas ten centuries fewer than those that w atched over Bonaparte in Egypt in 1798,since it did not seem wise to mention the barbarism of descendants w ho are alltoo close to Tepcxpan man.14 This triumphalist vision of Mexican cultural his-tory seems to follow the old recipes of Orientalism, which often concentratedthe entire history of non-Western peoples into great packages of shining exoti-cism. This is a service in praise of mus eum culture, com posed of the cum ulativesum of great blocks built into monuments of pyramidal splendor in which the13. The "eves" at the opening of these two paragraphs arc plays on the tim ing of vespers, prayedat evening each day, with the coming of dusk. (Trans.]14. Napoleon had spoken of a distance of thirty centuries between the builders of the pyramidsand his soldiers,- the distance from Tepexpan man to present-day Mexico would he more likeforty centuries.

12 Blood and Ink

nuances of individual creation are lost, smothered by the ma ss of symbols: jag-uars, eagles, baroque angels, violently colored tropics, inflamed revolutionaries,and long-suffering women. In the cracks of these great granite symbols, living in-tellectuals are often smothered, intellectuals who inhabit a world whose newsigns they have not yet learned to decode. So writers and ar tists run the risk ofending up trapped in the solitude of a dense jungle of national symbols or em-barked on a war against words, in an effort to lead those words toward the trium-phant splendor of the signs of identity like a flock of sheep.C o m p l i n eThe canonical hours of national identity are complete. The circle of imman encehas closed, the Office has reached its end, and we have had our fill. Nationalismhas invented a Mexican who is the very metapho r of perm anent underdevelop-ment, the image of blocked progress. This devalued being only mak es sense in-side the networks of official political power. He or she is a being who lives onthanks to the state . This individual is seen as an incomple te larval being whosemetamorphosis can take place only in the bosom of the revolutionary state.

But the revolutionary state is coming to an end, and this M exican Office is be-coming an office for the dead. It is not mode rnization that brings on its extinc-tion, but postmode rn ity, that is to say, the tensions provoked by an excess of mo-dernity in a context of weak modernization. Here 1 am making use, hopefullynot in an abusive way, of the literary notion of modernism , translated into politi-cal theory. Modernity is a revolt against the rigidity of the old oligarchic order insearch of political forms that are free although they are circumscribed and uni-fied by national symbolic and imaginary structures . Thus m odernity is a specificform adopted by civil society, a structure of cultural m ediation s that legitimatesthe political system. Modernization is, according to the usual sociological ter-minology, the capitalist transformation of society, based on industry, science,and secular institutions. Modernity is the imaginary country whose legitimat-ing networks trap civil society. Modernization is the actual state of capitalisteconomic and social development.

In Mexico wc have had an excess of modernity, so mu ch that its weight has be-come unbearable: national identity in excess, exorbitant nationalism, revolu-tion beyond measu re, abuses of institutionality, a surplus of symbolism . . . Wehave put up with just sixty years of institutionalized modernity, but it seemslike thirty centuries! By contrast, as the crisis that began in 19S2 has revealed,our modernization is weak and flawed in many ways. The country is crammed

The Mexican Office 13


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full of modernity, but thirsty for modernization. This is the unpleasant para-dox: behind the "Splendors of Thirsty Centuries" we discover the "Miseries ofThirty Centuries."

Even with all its bitterness, postmodern) ly has nonetheless brought us thehope of escaping these smothering metadiscourscs. The experience of a frag-mented Mexicothe Mexico of "Here an d There"and the constant transgres-sion of all borders, political and cultural, is one of the mo st st imula ting signs ofrecent years. Far from closing off the creative impulses of Mexican intelligen ce,this lived experience has on the contrary opened up new vistas. One the most re-freshing effects of what Guillermo Gomez-Pena has called the "borderization"of the world is proof tha t it is possible, wc could say, to be Mexican without beingsubject to a state and a territory.1 ' ' That deterritorialization and destatification ofintellectuals is beginning to shape the outlines of postmodern society. We don'tknow where this trail will lead, but let's hope the only possible future of culturallife is not on a pedestal under glass in a museu m.15. Sec Gui l l er mo Gomcz- Pena, Warrior for Gringostwika: Essays, Performance Texts, and Po -ctry(St. Paul , Mi nn. : Gray wolf 1'ress, 1993I.

14 Blood and Ink

Tropical Kitsch in Blood and Ink

M exico is living through a profound fin desiecle malaise, an unease that Ithi nk mig ht appropriately be described as an attemp t to escape from itscage of melancholy. The war in Chiapas and its dramatic results have shaken theMexican cage with an intensity we had not seen in a quarter century. 1 Manythings about these events are surprising, but I would like to linger over oneaspect that I find especially revealing: w hy did only ten days of war so radicallyThis essay is the product of several years of ref lect ions about the Zapatis ta upris ing in C h i a p a s .The f i rs t sect ion appeared in embryonic form in 1994 as an essay entitled "Kitsch tropical y elcc-cioncs"; a vers ion of the second sect ion was published in 1996 as "La t cnt aci on f undament al i s t ay e! s i ndr ome de ) ezabel " ; a ver s i on of t he t h i r d s ect i on was publ i s hed i n 1997 as "Violencias in-di genas " ; al l t hes e s ect i ons and t he f our t h , "Moby- Di ck i n t he Lacandon Jungle," wete includedi n my 1999 book /.

bartra and the postmexican condition

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