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.