#365xlos43

365 por los 43. Hasta las paredes saben

Casa de El Hijo del Ahuizote

México D.F.




Coordinación general: Diego Flores Magón

Museografía y diseño: Giacomo Castagnola, Erik López Rodriguez

Curaduría: Diego Flores Magón, Giulia Iacolutti

Texto de sala: Federico Mastrogiovanni

Autores: Valentino Bellini, Brett Gundlock, Giulia Iacolutti, Mauricio Palos, Heriberto Paredes

Con la participación de Rafael Pineda, Rapé

Apoyo: EFM encuentro fotografico México


La noche del 26 de septiembre de 2014 al menos cinco
autobuses ocupados por estudiantes de la Escuela Normal Rural Raúl
Isidro Burgos de Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, fueron atacados por la policia
municipal de Iguala y por el grupo delinquencial Guerreros Unidos. 43 de
estos estudiantes fueron desaparecidos, tres más asasinados y otros dos
continuan en estado grave de salud.


A un año de distancia, los 43 estudiantes siguen desaparecidos.

La Casa del Hijo del Ahuizote, espacio de archivo y museo en el Centro
de la Ciudad de México, en el domicilio de la antigua imprenta de El
Hijo del Ahuizote, hospedó la muestra fotográfica “365 por los 43. Hasta
las paredes saben”, 365 días evocados por las imágenes de Mauricio
Palos y Heriberto Paredes (México), Brett Gundlock (Canadá), Valentino
Bellini y Giulia Iacolutti (Italia), fotógrafos que han caminado las
huellas de los 43 estudiantes a lo largo de este año.



Para estimular la participación ciudadana y dar voz a las paredes, el
público llevó una de las 365 reproducciones numeradas de las fotografías
en exhibición, o adquirir un mural “instantáneo” para colocar en las
calles (#risograph).



Además de la exposición, el 26 de septiembre 2015, primer aniversario de
la desaparición, marchamos en torno a El Ahuizote Ambulante, una

micro-infraestructura móvil de acción en el espacio
público, desde la que se distribuyó una edición especial de las mismas
fotos para tomar la calle.

La muestra cerró el 17 de octubre con un evento de clausura en la Casa del Hijo de El Ahuizote. #365xlos43



Texto de sala:

“Trescientos sesenta y cinco días separan a los
cuarenta y tres normalistas de Ayotzinapa de nosotros. A partir del 26
de septiembre de 2014 Ayotzinapa dejó de ser un lugar, para convertirse
más bien en una idea, un símbolo.

El 26 de septiembre es ya una de esas fechas que no
necesitan que se especifique el año porque todo el mundo sabe y tiene
que saber de qué se trata. Como el 2 de octubre, que es sinónimo de
represión. O como el 1° de mayo, que quiere decir justicia social.
Desde hace trescientos sesenta y cinco días 26 de septiembre quiere
decir desaparición forzada.


El Hijo del Ahuizote también es un lugar simbólico.
Siempre ha representado libertad de expresión y lucha en contra de la
opresión. La Casa del Hijo del Ahuizote hoy hace propio el llamado a la
participación activa de la sociedad mexicana y de las familias de las
víctimas de desaparición forzada, abriendo sus puertas a una exposición
fotográfica sobre los 43 de Ayotzinapa.


Los fotógrafos Valentino Bellini, Brett Gundlock,
Giulia Iacolutti, Mauricio Palos y Heriberto Paredes, han documentado
con sus imágenes la búsqueda y el dolor, las marchas, la esperanza y la
indignación a lo largo de un año. Pero su trabajo se queda incompleto si
las imágenes no generan conciencia, si no invaden los espacios
públicos, si no se hacen alimento para la mente.La información se vuelve
resistencia. La narración se transforma en herramienta para desarmar la
violencia. El testimonio se hace documento para no volver a ser
violentados.


Retomando su antigua función social y comunitaria de
imprenta, la Casa del Hijo del Ahuizote imprimió 365 copias de 15
imágenes. Las fotos están a disposición para que las agarres, las
reproduzcas, las pegues en las paredes de tu ciudad, para intervenir las
calles, los muros, para que recuperes los espacios públicos, para hacer
uso de tu ciudadanía. Para que no siga imperando el olvido y la
impunidad.


En la marcha del 26 de septiembre el “Ahuizote
ambulante” caminará con las madres y los padres de los desaparecidos,
juntos con todos los que quieren manifestar su indignación y la
exigencia de justicia. El carrito del Ahuizote llevará las imágenes a
las calles, ocupará físicamente el espacio público para que retroceda de
esas mismas calles el autoritarismo y el horror”.


SHOW: Acciones territoriales - Ex Teresa Arte Actual

View from an abandoned building in front of the Monument to the Revolution, one day after the presidential elections. Mexico City, Mexico. July 2, 2012.

La Ley del Monte. Acciones territoriales - Ex Teresa Arte Actual. Mexico City, Mexico.

La Ley del Monte. Acciones territoriales - Ex Teresa Arte Actual. Mexico City, Mexico.

Acciones territoriales - Ex Teresa Arte Actual. Mexico City, Mexico.

Acciones territoriales - Ex Teresa Arte Actual. Mexico City, Mexico.

Acciones territoriales - Ex Teresa Arte Actual. Mexico City, Mexico.

Acciones territoriales - Ex Teresa Arte Actual. Mexico City, Mexico.

Acciones territoriales - Ex Teresa Arte Actual. Mexico City, Mexico.

Acciones territoriales - Ex Teresa Arte Actual. Mexico City, Mexico.

Acciones territoriales - Ex Teresa Arte Actual. Mexico City, Mexico.

TERRITORIAL ACTS*



2014

This curatorial project seeks to explore and set forth some of the ways in which societies, communities, and people have imagined and configured their territories as resistances and responses to a dominant capitalist, neoliberal system. 

Territorial Acts acknowledges the historical implications of Ex-Teresa as a space for artistic experimentation, and thus we include the revision of the curatorial project Terreno peligroso / Danger Zone (Los Angeles-Mexico City, 1995), which echoes the investigations considered in this curatorial project. 

A series of actions have been commissioned, and these respond critically to territorial fundaments in the current crisis, these works connect their practice with other fields of knowledge and collective acts. Two bridges have been created to strengthen these relationships: the Conversationals (Conversatorios), which work as spaces of collective inquiry between the public and social actors; and the Workshops (Talleres), which are open spaces for collective action. 

Territorial Acts is a proposal to explore the concept of territory and resistances through four nodes of investigation: The idea of territory as Nation-State; Resistance through Memory; Accessible and In-Transit Territories; and Everyday life: Imaginaries, Representations, and Language. 

A phenomenon that has been reproduced in Mexico as well as in Latin America and other parts of the world, is the indulgence by which the Neoliberal project has granted the hegemonic State and its alliances with transnational companies, approval to invade and exploit territories by building mines, freeways, and damns without any consideration of the people who inhabit these territories. These excessive uses of power have provoked actions of resistance that try to revert their violent actions. Some of these resistances responded, due to the urgency of the problem, with the same misconception of territory used by the State; others, such as indigenous groups, constantly seek to elaborate a more complex resistance, based on their history, culture, inhabited space and the inclusion of contemporary ideas. 

Territorial Acts is an invitation to dialogue and to find—through other views and territories—further possible ways to understand our current situation, while simultaneously suggesting an invitation to make territorial acts.  



Daniela Lieja Quintanar.  


ARTISTS


Astrovandalistas (MX, BR, USA)

Brian Mackern (Uruguay)

Carolina Caycedo (Colombia)

Claudia del Fierro (Chile)

Enrique Arriaga (México)

Gala Porras-Kim (Colombia)

Hillary Mushkin (EUA)

Juan Caloca (México)

Juan Pablo Macías (México)

Luis G. Hernández (Los Ángeles-Méxicalli)

Los ingrávidos (México)

Mauricio Palos (México)

Oscar Figueroa Chaves (Costa Rica)

Ricardo Díaz (México)

Yollotl Manuel Gómez Alvarado (México)


Territorial acts review by Victor Sulcer in Circulo a.



Look back at My Perro Rano review on FLAUNT Magazine by Karyn Campbell

LA FRONTERA, MAURICIO PALOS

LA FRONTERA, IMAGES OF IMMIGRATION BY MAURICIO PALOS

written by Karyn Campbell

If your name is Juan, or whatever, and you’re deported, or found incarcerated at the El Paso, TX ICE Detention Center, then you’re likely to receive a small tube of Maximum Security Gel Toothpaste and a coloring booklet called American Symbols. In this 8-page librito, you’ll find out the flag of the United States is special, though dubiously, not why. You may also be told what the “first” immigrants to the United States saw, The Statue of Liberty, as if it were built into the natural landscape. And you may be wondering why your family has lived in this borderlands region for centuries, now divided by the border between the United States and Mexico, and regardless on which side you tiptoe, you will always risk falling off the fence.

There stands a statue in Intipucà, a Salvadoran town, commemorating the first migrant to leave for the United States, though whether he’s really the first is of course doubtful. Towns in this area are being drained by immigration and have been for a long time. And so, donning a rucksack, surrounded by awkward turquoise columns, this public monument exemplifies both the glorification of the immigrant, and his forgotten form within the community, as trash gathers round the unkempt rims of his fountain home. Since his departure, thousands more have followed in his footsteps despite the risks of abduction by gangs and police alike (often in cahoots), the loss of limbs, and eternal familial separation. The goal: to reach a state like Arizona, which of late has passed legislation one might liken to Nazi Germany mandates, requiring those in question to prove their civil status upon “reasonable suspicion.” 



In discussions with border-lit expert Pedro Garcia-Caro of the University of Oregon on this matter—within the framework of Mexican photojournalist Mauricio Palos’ photos from his book My Perro Rano, featured herein—he replied, “Even third generation immigrants, children of U.S. citizens, born and raised in this country, will be liable to question and open interrogation with the flurry of racial profiling laws that are going to cascade from Arizona’s SB1070 and Tea Party white supremacist rhetoric. The Arizona Senate Bill invites police racial profiling under the provision: ‘Reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States.’” Oddly still, after years of political and economic oppression from foreign powers, and discriminate initiatives like the one above, the iconography of the United States glimmers with hope for men like the one standing in stone in Intipuca.



Today, an estimated 1,400 Mexican, Central, and South Americans will attempt to cross the U.S.-Mexican border to find family, financial betterment, or to partake of this coveted and similarly criticized land mass that, throughout the course of 300 years, has branded itself the chosen nation. Palos, who photo-documented these journeys throughout Mexico and Central America, describes the results, as well as his relationship to its complex subject matter, as going “beyond merely a physical border and a group of immigrants who jump onto trains, perilously searching for another kind of life.” Those Palos speaks of venture as swimmers, runners, traffickers, and the trafficked. Each faces potential detention or death in the desert. And though many of these men and women make it across la frontera, the American Dream, especially the Hollywood version, remains elusive.



Let’s look at this failed construction. Beyond drug dealers and suave, dominant lovers, mainstream American media allow limited roles for the contemporary Latino man. The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that in 2009, Latinos (in this case, that’s anyone with origins in Hispanic countries of Latin America or Spain) purchased 300 million movie tickets, attending more movies per capita than any other ethnicity. Although Lionsgate and Televisa recently created a joint venture, Pantelion Films, to capitalize on this ballooning market, its first big release, From Prada to Nada, seems to fulfill yet again the many stereotypes of a Latino American community—rich pochas flaunt their money and consider their Mexican side embarrassing before circumstances encourage them to embrace their fuzzy Frida Kahlo history.



So what does the typical hombre resemble in the United States? Does he sell drugs and/or make sweet love to the mamis? Statistics point out that he’s probably working manual labor. For example, the 2004-2005 National Day Labor Study sampled 20 U.S. states and found that 98% of day laborers—people seeking temporary work on a daily basis—were men, 86% born in Mexico or Central America, most in their 20s and 30s. A few years after these illustrative numbers surfaced, The American Public Health Association published a study revealing loneliness as an enormous factor in workers’ migration experience. It also noted that bars and Catholic churches serve as the two primary social spaces for this community. Karaoke after Sunday church hymns is not an unfamiliar musical combo in Central L.A., for instance. Despite the camaraderie found in these venues, loneliness, much of which is contingent on familial separation, continues to cloak the immigrant condition. The California Department of Health Services suggests the Latino migrant worker condition may also put him at a heightened risk of HIV, considering lack of preventative education, language barriers, and a number of additional factors. 



Considering the bleak conditions, how and why, in the past two decades, have so many caballeros, cabrones, y gueys arrived to the land of the free, often alone, in order to do low-paying, hard labor? “Obviously, the economic factor is a migratory impulse in developing countries,” Palos suggests. “Mexico as a government sees immigration as a human right and the U.S. does not. This is a major difference, although the two governments are allied on this issue in many ways. However, the U.S. pushed through NAFTA and the demand for both legal and illegal goods quickly developed, bringing not just more goods, but people across the border with them.” Palos’ theory is widely thought influential in today’s immigration debate. In 1994, when NAFTA went into effect, with the intention of increasing the flow of goods and services throughout North America, the amount of cargo trucks crossing the border greatly increased. Whereas immigrants previously utilized the Caribbean to arrive to the U.S. via boat, this new activity changed the game, resulting in diversified immigrant movement, including Latin, Chinese, and Russian, to and from, across the great divide. As author Eduardo H. Galeano metaphorically states in the introduction to Open Veins of Latin America, a book recently under scrutiny from Arizonan legislators, who redlined the Mexican-American cultural program from Tucson public schools, “The more freedom is extended to business, the more prisons have to be built from those who suffer from that business.”


The same year as NAFTA’s passing, Operation Hold the Line, and Operation Gatekeeper were enforced in El Paso and San Diego, respectively. This saw the construction of hard-to-penetrate walls, which utilized high-tech military surveillance equipment. The result? Instead of immigrants crossing densely populated regions, like San Diego, these policies encouraged border crossers to alternatively walk through deserts, a terrifying reality faced by many of those journeying in Palos’ photographs.



In addition to politics, literature and lore have helped create narratives of identity that both substantiate stereotypes, and conversely undermine them, like the work of Galeano above. Professor Garcia-Caro spoke to the narratives that Palos’ photos invoke, calling the massive, symbolic irony of idealized prosperity met with poverty and bloodshed, a “visual exploration of the ossified, nearly meaningless status of national symbols in an economically depressed, neocolonial region such as Central America.” He further articulated that, “This is the same reality portrayed in the film Sin Nombre [director Cary Fukunaga’s award-winning drama of train-top immigrant journeying]. The train appears as a derelict post-apocalyptic promise of renewal and hope; it is also a reminder of the failed projects of colonial modernity that created the conditions for contemporary poverty and disenfranchisement there.” With Palos’ images, the story of what may be yet to come for its subjects is equally about what has come and gone, or failed to ever come at all, in the hometowns they’ve abandoned. 



If history, narrative, and lore can help us understand migrants’ impulse to flee, they can further help us understand the cross-pollination of Mexican and Anglo male power-figures, and their glamorized, often violent caricatures. Oddly, the same day that Palos showed me his photos, drug lord pawn José Jorge Balderas Garza, “El Jota Jota,” was apprehended by police and subsequently interviewed by television reporter Carlos Loret. The two men, who both embody trope images of masculinity in the Mexican media, sat face to face, quietly chatting as if they were English grannies taking afternoon tea. The interview was met with mockery by the press and the public. The same men trading in gang violence and black market economies (supplying demands often north of the border) are increasingly the buzz of periodismo del corazón, or gossip news, in Mexico.



This cultural fixation with violent and feared male caricatures, however, has long stemmed back to the stories of other violent figures, like el Zorro, who fought the feared, Anglo-savior of the Wild West, the Texas Ranger. Naturally, these stories are historically fueled by political and regional tension: when the U.S. annexed the North of Mexico with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the gold-fevered government forced Californians and Oregonians to either renounce their Mexican nationality or move south. The results saw decades of continuous conflict. And as the interview with El Jota Jota arguably proves, these caricatures don’t seem to be going away. Speaking further to the hotly-debated Arizona legislation, and its affiliate politics, Garcia-Caro stated, “‘Joe six pack’ is a contemporary rendering of John Wayne, the cinematic icon of the Texas Ranger, enforcing expropriation and racial segregation.”



John Wayne is in fact seen in Palos’ photos, standing powerful, photographic guard over Oscar Gramajo, Comandante in the Guatemalan army. This, ultimately, is the underlying sophistication of Palos’ work—juxtaposing frontier comics and movie caricatures with real-life characters. Leafing through My Perro Rano following the Wayne photo, for example, we see a comic book cover showing a Texas Ranger holding a Hispanic babe at gunpoint, which sits next to a close-up portrait of a young Mexican gang member. 



These gun-slinging children we see in Palos’ photos, as well, demonstrate a pre-formed manhood—boys weaned on weapon-wielding power and survival. And like much of the youth across the world, they’re privy to the U.S.’s fastest growing export: popular culture, that same popular culture that propagates the aforementioned myths of who these youngsters are supposed to grow to become. What’s your choice, amigo? Drug dealer or lady-killer? “It is inevitable in this context,” says Garcia-Caro, in response to youngsters’ desires to affiliate with gangs and violent behavior, “that the Latino youth will feel the brunt of a mainstream society that has already codified them as culprits and criminals. Many soon internalize that code and despise their place in society. Who would like to be told they are liars, misfits, dirty, or illegal from childhood play into adolescence? If you add to that the constant economic struggle of parents who work very long hours, in harsh conditions few would sign up for, depressed communities without political representation and few public services, you get a very bleak scenario where social survival, even survival itself, is fragile.”



Flipping through Palos’ photos does indeed leave one with a sense of bleakness. But as he’ll testify, art—for whatever purpose and by whatever means—need not be co-opted or simply exported by the powerful. Expression, music, stories thriving on the fringes will continue to amass across Latin America, over the border, entering the homes of shared histories, mingling where other stories are amassing. Lonely men will sing lonely songs. Joyful men will laugh and tell tall tales. “Success stories” will be internationally swapped over phones.



Meanwhile, the voice of a new generation takes form in the streets of Chicago, the backyards of L.A., the farmlands of Kentucky. It’s not a “Latino” voice, but rather, a voice of generations in flux, able to weave in and out of structured identities, able to exercise cultural flexibility and linguistic versatility. Parents, uncles, abuelos, weathered and toned by journey, reach out to these youngsters with worn but vibrant arms. These figures’ perseverance and unwavering responsibility are the most redeeming and heartbreaking human performances portrayed in Mauricio Palos’ photos. Of course, the reemergence of a Latino culture on this shared continent will spark controversy as a constructed sense of nationality seems under attack. But if the recipe of American-ness has any pinches of lingering inspiration, they are the historic flavors of immigration and innovation. Both involve risk of failure beyond reason.



 

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