Digging Deep into the AGN and Striking It Socially and Culturally Rich

     The past week and a half was eyeopening to say the least. First, on Monday, after feeling unfulfilled and frustrated with my limited access to the BNM, my first visit to the Archivo General de la Nacion went splendidly. The staff are extremely friendly, the reference room is a peaceful place to search the archive and look at much of their digital collection, and the colonial archives are accessible and profound, but most empowering is the social capital one builds visiting one of the richest archives in Mexico City. Specifically, I met numerous academ-brities, or highly-influential scholars just by sitting in Galleria 4. Even more, the network of scholars conducting summer- or year-long research trips is a valuable web of interested and helpful people waiting to connect with the lonely investigator. As opposed to the sloggery of Week One, my days have been filled with archival from 9:30am to 4:40pm. (they're open 9-5, M-F--for some ungodly reason I couldn't seem to get there at open, or, for that matter, stay to the bitter end), and I spent most of my nights meeting with individual or groups of researchers.
     As to my work in the archive, their were a few challenges as well as some great successes. Depending on your level of study and experience working with hand-written documents, paleography can be a difficult puzzle, regardless of historical period. For me, I found the manuscripts from the sixteenth century to be, usually, more legible than seventeenth. Handwriting in the eighteenth century returned to more of the clear prose, however each author was distinct. I found that the most helpful trick to pulling apart the inky curved lines on the page to be a fairly quick once-through, disregarding content and focusing on letter formation. Then, after jotting down some brief observations, I would go back through the document line by line, paying close attention to the nous and verbs of the text. I would transcribe in chunks, setting aside the meaning of the classic Spanish connotation for the moment, just to get some words on the page. Finally, when I'd pieced together at least one page of the document, thus allowing me to find its relevance to my project, I would digitally "collect" the entire document for preservation and full transcription later. Some nights (when I wasn't busy social networking), I would open up the files to do a bit more work, but not every free minute. The eyes tend to get a bit sore after hours of concentrating on hard-to-read-writing.
     A second eyeopener, was my visit to the Ex-convento de San Diego's Labortorio Arte Alemeda and the surrounding area. The Labortorio is wild. The exhibit I wandered into was a dark and cold presentation of the Holocaust. As I moved through multimedia stimuli, I wondered about the timesync of that very practice of learning. From the very beginning, that interior was used as a multi-sensory hub for teaching people how to be a proper Catholic and subject to the Crown. Visual, aural, and material cues, like vibrantly painted murals and echoing voices, would inscribe those concepts upon the participant's mind and body. But, were those messages cleanly conveyed? Wasn't it possible for the "inscribed" to individually or in groups wander through their own dark places, and find their own understanding of the didactic environment? Emerging into an even more stimulating environment, the Mexican streetscape, I put personal digressions aside. Next, I had a fantastic time wandering through the street merchants and an even better time gawking at the Monumento a la Revolucion and the museum underneath. It's a beautiful site to behold. the Plaza de la Republica is a comfortable public space. Kids play in the massive fountains and actors and musicians perform for interested passersby.
     In the museum below, visitors explore the chronology of the creative politicking that transformed the country in the early-twentieth century. Interactive touchscreens filled to the brim with digital content greet savvy technophiles, alongside the traditional objects-behind-glass presentation. Visitors are allowed to wander freely, but the flow of the museum pulls one through periodizations of conflict. Visitors plow through a series of brightly lit hallway, all of which are connected at center by an all-white, high-detail, life-sized recreation of campesinos, peasant soldiers from the revolutionary war. We are given the story of revolutionary party integration, in the end.
     The last gallery is reserved for various Revolution-era exhibitions. When I visited it was an exhibit titled "Alvaro Obregon the Caudillo," and although I don't like the man very much, he happens to be one of my favorite socio-political and cultural reformers. As one of the last revolutionary leaders to be assassinated, Obregon's death in 1928 spurred further religious/cultural conflict that boiled long after the pre-PRI war. The assassin, Toral (posing as an artist sketching the president and then unloading his pistol in the man's body), was religiously and politically motivated, and his actions only enriched the power of the next caudillo. I find both his and his protege Plutarco Calles' policies to be the most interesting to come out of the Revolution, specifically because of their attempt to affect education and religion. Happily for me, education weaves its way through a few parts of the overall presentation. In the end, I was too tired to ride the elevator up to the top of the mausoleum, even with its gorgeous views of the city. Regardless, it was a great time.
     Anyway, my time in Mexico City seems unfinished and I already long to come back to work in the archive and see more, but right now I am preparing for my bus ride to Huejotzingo tomorrow. I can't wait to see what I can dig up their.

Just your regular "general" archive, full of general information pertaining to stuff generally about the Mexican nation. Nothing special, really.

The prison for wayward documents. Although intimidating from the outside (oh who am I kidding, it's oppressive from the inside too), accessing the documents and getting around in the archive is a welcoming experience.

Galleria 4 in the AGN. Spend too many hours locked up in this place and of course you get a little creative with the camera.

This blurry picture of the old chapel of the Ex-Convento de San Diego was one of the only rooms bright enough to shoot. The exhibition, Grito en Silencio (Vida Yovanovich) was a mesmerizing display of various media and lighting techniques that left me in awe. In one room, visitors walk between to massive screens with black and white photos of the Mauthausen concentration camp courtyard. Walking towards these screens gives the viewer the impression that the walls are growing taller and closing in. Just overpowering.  

Exterior of the refashioned Ex-Convento de San Diego. The re-purposing of these ancient schools is a laudable goal; however, it would make sense to have a little information about the history of the place, even a miniature museum of sorts.

Just around the corner from the Laboratorio Arte Alameda is the Museo Mural Diego Rivera, which contains this fantastical, and fantastically large, thing: Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central. It's as if Rivera crammed Mexican icons together in the park for an afternoon promenade. Did I say it was massive?

The Soldados campesinos of the Mexican Revolution.

The pistol that offed Obregon

I couldn't get enough of these Yaqui obregonista photos.

A banner used by Cristeros, groups of religioi-political insurgents and/or protesters that fought against anti-clericalism from the 1920s up to the 40s. Not a concerted front, but rather a regionally-based and mixed cultural and political reaction to state politics on the local level, the Cristero Wars were a very visceral outgrowth of the larger attempt at a Mexican cultural revolution from the top-down.

Usually accredited to Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP), the Plutarco Calles regime, and the various presidents and policymakers he empowered after, socialist education was at times inscribed in constitutional amendments and was a cornerstone of re-educating the masses.    

Now that's a monument!

A very fun plaza for people of all ages.

Finishing Up in One Archive and a Weekend of Adventure

     I returned to the Fondos Reservados at UNAM Friday, July 31, and finished with the Molina manual. I then turned to a sixteenth-century volume of five books on architecture, Sebastiano Serlio Bolognese's Il libro d’architecttura, that was once owned by one of the convents in Mexico City (it was not quite clear on which). Serlio included numerous illustrations in each book, Book II especially had these great variations on what he called "comedic," "tragic," and "satirical" city- or townscapes. The "satirical" townscape was telling of what architects of his time found unappealing about rural verdant towns. The small wooden houses with thatched roofs seemed obscured by voluminous trees and overgrown bushes. I can not translate Italian or French (the volume is a side-by-side translation of his work), although I might have teased out something with images later. But, sadly, it was at this point in my time at the BNM that I discovered that I needed a separate request form for each item I wanted to photograph. Surely, the archive needs to protect the use and spread of these precious and rare documents, but a few shots couldn't get them into too much trouble, right?
     Understanding that I would need to transcribe the documents myself, thus adding hours to my study, I was even more frustrated to find the next fascinating document I wanted to consult: a letter written in Spanish, dated November 24, 1643, from the Viceroy to the Franciscan priests of Calpan and San Andrés Cholula, ordering them to let the indigenous celebrate their religious festivals in the convents. This document speaks volumes to the legal and efficacious reach of a couple of small indigenous communities under the Spanish crown and the Catholic religion. I'll have to investigate this further, and, with the valuable help of the archive manager, get digital copies at a later date--the paleography was too difficult to read without being able to zoom in, especially the correspondence that followed the decree. There are still a few other documents that might prove relevant, but that will ahve to wait. In the end, though I found myself frustrated at times during this first investigation at UNAM, I certainly have found helpful items to include in my future studies.

      As to this weekend, I spent Saturday researching, virtually and physically, the best/cheapest route to the AGN, the next, and hopefully more productive archive of this trip. Then, today, I toured the amazing grounds of the Castillo de Chapultepec. What an amazing experience. For all those interested, it's free to the Mexican public as well as students (foreign or domestic) on Sundays. When you finally surmount the hill that once had a placename glyph for the "place of the grasshoppers" or Chapulin ('grasshoppers) tepec (mountain place), you'll encounter amazing architecture, fantastic views of Mexico City, and an seemingly unending gallery (actually galleries) of items of national cultural significance in the Museo Nacional de Historia. Definitely a must see. Only a forest stroll away, the Museo Nacional de Antropologia (MNA) is just as amazing, but takes a good chunk of the day to really get informed. And, though I still haven't been, I want to mention the Museo de Arte Moderno that is also part of the complex. I suggest visiting over two days, but I know people see all three museums and the Castillo in one go, so it's completely doable. Anyway, here are a few of the images from my visit to the Castillo this afternoon.

The fantastic fresco that hauntingly falls upon you as you enter the Castillo. Note the ghastly US flag behind the falling boy hero. "Sacrificio de los Niños Héroes," by Gabriel Flores García (1970).

 

Mexican's love their history. On Sunday "Free day," in the smaller galleries, the crowds were barely tolerable, but their fascination with their history was heartwarming.

I would find this 3' tall snow-globe-looking diorama a bit hard to shake up.

Really making your mark. This relief likely sat on the side of a colonial building, the coat-of-arms would help knowleadgable passersby understand the pedigree of the owner. The interesting corner details (see below) and the plumed ring surrounding it would similarly allude to a pedigree, but one far removed from the other. It's likely that the sculpture was aware of both traditions. 

Corner embellishment, close up. By carving the three ovular shapes and the plumed headband above into the four corners of this slab of stone, the author tied it to an ancient practice of anchoring the centerpiece, in this case the coat-of-arms, in a quincunx, or five-point design. Recent scholarship, including my own, has argued that these corner locatives establish a local or regional cosmogenic map. 

Another relief, this one is dedicated to the Iglesia de San Francisco, according to the script on the band running across the globe at center. The artist has placed this globe, filled with an image of the colonial church, in the place of the cactus that the Mexica-Tenocha Nahuas used as part of their foundation story. 

I love these old cartographic maps of the colonial city. Being a terrible historian, I failed to capture a good image of the script at top right or the information placard, which was likely posted nearby. I'll have to return soon to get a good idea of when this was produced and by whom.

More specifically, I love delving into their contents. Here, at center, the artist depicts the Cathedral Metropolitana, and, in the place of the Templo Mayor of the Mexica-Tenochca, the artist places a tianguis, or Nahua styled market.

Here, at center left (north of the Zocalo), we find the illustrious Colegio de San Francisco Tlatelolco, site of the modern-day Plaza de Tres Culturas. Now, follow me here because this is a stretch (and hard to see on this lower quality image, but the artist has painted a couple of blue-clad figures in the courtyard. Surely, they are Franciscan priests, and the paint has faded for brown, grey, or even black. Or, when we compare the hue to the same color of the vegetation to the right of the courtyard, we can determine that the two figures were wearing green. And, upon examining them closely, the artist appears to have give them feather banners. These figures are in fact wearing indigenous regalia. Makes sense. After all, they're standing in the courtyard of a school built to change them into Catholic subjects of the crown. But, in a way, the artist has frozen their presence their as non-Europeans forever. Perhaps the artist witnessed an indigenous performance there, a traditional expose put on by the Native students under the auspices of the Franciscan priests.   

I really enjoyed this series of 3 portraits of Father Hidalgo. 

He grows whiter and more wizened with each century. Sort of his mythic lot in life.

In the section marked as "Modernity," visitors are confronted with this vision of national technological advancement, the caption reads, "Joaquin Cantollo y Rico and his aerostatic globe [Antonio Gonzalez Orozco], and was painted in first half of the 20th century." That said, the actual use of hot-air balloons in Mexico (or what would eventually become the United States of Mexico) harkens back to at least the 1790s, as seen in late-colonial newspaper articles from the time. 

Justo Sierra, one of the founders of the modern public education system.

The six Hero Boys (Niños heroes) of the Battle for Chapultepec. These statues stand in the area where the boys had their last stand against the US forces.

Where the Boys supposedly fell to their deaths. It doesn't look that far down, but it's certainly far enough to kill someone. I nearly died climbing that behemoth.

While standing before the Hero Boys and contemplating giving up for the day, and beginning to descend without finishing the tour, I noticed this large butterfly sitting on the far right soldiers shoulder. Before I could take a picture, it fluttered off, over the center gallery that segments the two larger galleries. I thought I ought to follow it. Reaching the other side, expecting to have missed this little visitor, I was pleased to find it waiting for me. I'm calling it "warrior's spirit" in an overly sentimental way to connect the Hero Boys to the Nahua belief in butterflies as the energies of recently dead warriors. 

Great cityscapes await you. Here we have La Refroma leading off into the city center.

Grasshopper Mountain. The stained-glass work is really great.

The first Observatorio Astronomico of Mexico.

Agregar leyenda

Diving In

     First on the docket: an original copy of Antonio de Molina's Instrucciones de Sacerdotes, which speaks of the need for priests, among other things, to pay close attention to the use of the church and sacred spaces. This book was published numerous times, beginning in 1609 (the BNM copy is from 1610), and it was likely highly influential for readers from the Iberian Peninsula and their brothers in the convent. The library of the Convent of San Diego en Mexico City (constructed in 1592) branded this copy, and it may have circulated around those halls.
     Fun side note: the Ex-convento de San Diego is now the Labortorio Arte Alemeda, across Alemeda Central Park from the Palacio de Belles Artes. I haven't been to the ex-convent, and I'm thinking a trip there would be well worth the super-cheap Metro ticket.
     Well, tomorrow I'm thinking manuscripts are in my cards...

Oh Yeah, Baby! Research and Wandering the Streets of Mexico!

     After a morning filled with collecting the necessary supplies (splurged [50 pesos] on some gorgeous fotos tamano infantiles--i.e. small enough to fit on a ID card--pictures, picked up latex gloves from the pharmacy, filled out the application for the Fondos Reservados, and had copies of my passport made). I spent most of my time there searching the database to confirm the few documents I knew I wanted to use and others I am excited to get my hands on. Some of the prospective documents are manuscripts from the mid-seventeenth century from the bishopric of Puebla. They seem to discuss the use of the aging convents by the Nahuas and the transition from conventual instruction to secular parochial education. It was a significant time in Puebla and Central Mexico for popular education. For example, Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza of Puebla, and short-lived viceroy of New Spain, has largely been accredited with education reform and secularization. I'm interested to find any discussion of wayward practices and failed attempts to truly convert the indigenous. That, and I think it's a good starting place. Anyway, it was a good start. I'm guessing that tomorrow will bring more success.

Entrance to BNM @ UNAM, 2014. Finally made it! Oh yeah, and the campus is massive.

     Capping off the day, I spent the late afternoon and evening prowling around the once dangerous part of Mexico City, La Romita--the site of the early-colonial community of Nahuas from Tenochtitlan proper. It was hard to fathom that centuries ago the area was an island in a lake, a stopping point on the way from the city center to the great forested area of Chapultepec (I have to take a trip there asap, by the by). The tight winding streets do make the place a distinct part of the otherwise regularized streetscape of Colonia Roma. According to the few reports, and many of them are recent attempts to refashion La Romita's tarnished image, the community has remained apart physically (the small, colonial-era cobblestone streets) and, in a way, culturally, but you wouldn't really know that from the outset.

The bending streets of La Romita. Everyone seemed very pleasant, and I felt comfortable hanging out in the plaza and taking pictures.

Some of the reawakening of artistic expression in La Romita, this jaguar head is an attempt to (re)claim indigenous local identity.

     As the afternoon deluge poured down on the plaza/courtyard, I decided to attend evening Mass in the ancient Iglesia Santa María de la Natividad Aztacalco. I might stop by to take photos of the interior at a later time. They have a fantastic, though small, reliquary. The baptismal font looked interesting. Anyway, as promised, pictures, finally!

The bell tower of la Iglesia Santa María de Natividad Aztacalco nearing sunset. Imagine many times ringing bells have echoed off the walls of Aztacalco, calling for people with regularizing clarity.

The balcony above the small rectangular door, or the Capilla Abierta of the church, depending on the specifics of construction, was the focal point for many indigenous "students." Assembled in the courtyard/plaza, the locals would listen to visiting priests, and likely Native "church people," explain Catholic doctrine.

Mass on the small scale. I'd seen parts of Mass before, but in the small chapel of la Iglesia Santa María de Natividad Aztacalco, the incense enveloped us in smokey sweetness. The interior is very simple, but for such a small structure, the various levels and balconies inside had an odd effect on me. It felt somewhat like the Escher-styled stairway of the Goblin King. I did not check to see if the priests vestments covered a set of Bowie tights. It really was a fantastic service.

The Research Man Stall-eth

My plans to slip right into the Biblioteca Nacional de Mexico at UNAM have been thwarted by a minor detail. They require two "infant-sized" photographs of their researchers before they are allowed to access the Fondos Reservados, or "reserved collection." Not to worry, tomorrow morning I will locate the nearest photography studio and have them done up as soon as possible. Anyway, I spent the day hounding around the neighborhood I'm staying in. Apparently, Colonia Roma has a mixed history, one of a distinct indigenous cultural heritage dating back to the post-Conquest days and the other of a late-nineteenth century to mid-twentieth century eurocentric, nouveau riche veneer of mansions and new Gothic church spires. I need to learn more. For example, I'm enthralled with Aztacalco and La Romita block. I'll have to look into this fascinating community more tomorrow, but it seems to be something I should have had on my radar from the thesis. According to what I've read thus far, it's a community that claims some indigenous heritage linked to the Aztecs, or Mexica Nahuas, from the main island city of Tenochtitlan. At the time of the Tlaxcalan-Spanish invasion, there were small islands doting the surface of Lake Texcoco, and in the decades following contact a group, or groups, of Nahuas moved onto the island. Fray Pedro de Gante, one of the fathers (literally a padre, you know) of colonial education, asked the native to build a chapel within their community. The community was semi-autonomous and determined much of the daily activities in their midst, and, today, the tight streets and colonial architecture supposedly demonstrates the persistence of their distinct mindset. The chapel structure still stands, well not the original, but a variation built by the Aztacalcans in 1530, and it would have been the place for some of the first instances of localized education, away from the Colegio of Santa Cruz in the city proper. Fantastic!

The Research Man Approach-eth
PDX 8:30am

My flight boards soon, but I wanted to get re-started on the ol' (*blows*, *sputters*, and *coughs* as digital dust flies around the room) blogspot. I am heading to Mexico, again (finally!), this time for some serious one-on-one time with the archives and sites I am using for the dissertation. I'm looking to answer questions about the role of education in Spanish/European colonization, especially in the less institutional teaching and learning places away from the formal religious schools. I am most interested to understand the various methods and pedagogies that educators used to reach and then transform their "student body," and the ways that the locals created their own places of learning. I'm studying early colonial documents and material goods, especially a few specific "classrooms." More on this topic as the research progresses.

Anyway, This is my first solo trip (scared much?), and I am hoping to spend a little more time than usually (ahem) on tracking my research and findings. I am very excited to see what I find to help my investigation, but I also want a safe (boring) trip abroad. Stay tuned to see how this crazy adventure unfurls.