An homenaje to all things wondrous and wild this time of year in our corner of the world --loosely inspired by the folktale of the disobedient young lady seduced by the devil at a community dance. Here, the Lord Mictlán's appearance transcends the centuries. Adorning his skull face is the long hair of a warrior under a classic fedora hat. He is sporting a blood-red pachuco suit. The backdrop is the iconic historical shrine, El Tiradito (The Castaway), often regarded as the heartbeat of Tucson, decorated for El Dia de los Muertos. It is meant to be a dance of male and female magnetism as one of the many primal energies associated with this time of year. Ancient Aztec gods and goddesses rule the moon, pulling the two closer in their embrace. La Virgen de Guadalupe too, looks on -- gtom a ball cap that could have been left by a thankful border-crosser. Nuestra Señora is everywhere all the time here in the Borderlands. As an afterthought, I added a curious little dog, following the couple's trail of marigold petals. A fresh look at La Llorona - the Weeping WomanThe Legend of La Llorona is one of the oldest in the Americas, and there are countless versions of her legend but HERE is a good place to start. Most Latino kids know her as the witch their Mamas warn them about that lives in the arroyos looking for wayward children to eat. The larger legend is the one that she is the eternally damned murderous woman archetype that females the world over labor under. The interpretation that resonates with me is the one by Mexican Nobel prize-winner, Octavio Paz. In his 1950 essay, The Labyrinth of Solitude, Paz describes La Llorona as one of the Mexican representations of Maternity and, as such, she is presented as a symbol of Mexican identity. This identity revolves around Mexicans’ view of themselves as "hijos de la Chingada". Paz explains that "the verb chingar denotes violence, an emergence from oneself to penetrate another by force … La Chingada is the Mother forcibly opened, violated or deceived. The Hijo de La Chingada is the offspring of violation, abduction or deceit." This violation is the Conquest -- the quintessential symbol of which is La Malinche, or Doña Marina-- who, despite having been sold as a slave to Hernan Cortes because of her linguistic skills as a translator, has been painted as a traitor to ‘her people’. This archaic, misogynistic view that lays the blame for the defeat of a civilization at the feet of one disenfranchised woman has remained popular to this day. Indeed, Paz himself states that "the Mexican people have not forgiven La Malinche for her betrayal." La Malinche and La Llorona become one after the former is chosen, used as chattel, then cast out along with her undesirable children. Honestly: what options do the untold millions of modern-day pariahs like La Malinche/La Llorona and their children have? She carries it all... for all of us. My interpretation brings a little redemption to this, just one of the many maligned female archetypes in global mythologies. I place La Llorona along the Santa Cruz River, somewhere south of Tubac. She is framed by mesquite trees and and has lost most of her hair. Her hand has delicate fingers rather than long, gruesome claws. And she is terribly, terribly weary. She is surrounded by a troop of Monarch butterflies on their way to their winter roost in Mexico. They are spirits of children who visit her every year to comfort her on their journey south. I put tiny eyes on the butterflies and colorful spots on their bodies to make them special. I always incorporate owls into my paintings where the veil between the worlds are thin. It is a guardian keeping watch over the ephemeral scene. Owls are sacred birds in many cultures and I adore them. I include also my signature petroglyph boulder alluding to the timelessness of the land. This may be the last in my series honoring asylum seekers for a while. It is an intimate capture of the bond between parent and child. I so loved the ancient classic Maya bone structure of the mother's face... timeless beauty. I wonder if they are still alive-- and together. Our administration will go down in history for crimes against humanity. I must say here that the brutal saga of America's asylum seekers hit a nerve. When reports revealed what "Zero-Tolerance" was doing to families, children, even babies, I'd had enough. I was determined to do something. I saw my niche when the plumbing collapsed at the old Benedictine Monastery, Tucson's primary migrant shelter. A dozen porta-johns were brought in and volunteers built outdoor showers with garden hoses, PVC pipes, pallets, tarps. I and a lovely Catholic lady cleaned all of them daily, and continued to do so until the Casa Alitas Program relocated to their new facility farther south. The refugees were conscientious and always offering to help. The physical stresses they had suffered were evident in what I cleaned, and it was heart-wrenching. These are the ones we depend on to clean OUR toilets and who tirelessly devote themselves to our worst jobs, in the shadows, so that we Americans can have a better life. There were days it was so overwhelming I'd dissolve in my car before I could leave. I felt a need to lift up the humanity of these remarkable "throw-away" people who had suffered so much and come so far. That need gave birth to this series of artworks. |