cuahuitl:

The roots. Colonization is supported by the roots of creation. Tenochtitlan is buried right under Mexico City, yet many fail to recognize. Indigenous blood still runs through the veins of the majority of Mexicans. Coyolxauhqui became the moon. When the moon rises, the end of the day is here. But the end is only the beginning of a new day. The Mexica did not die, they are still living. Their destruction by the Spaniards was the beginning of a new era.

thinkmexican:

Cuauhtemoctzin, Huey Tlatoani

Monumento a Cuauhtémoc

Veracruz, Mexico

elgin-marbles:

Portrait of Juana Inés de la Cruz at age 15

Juana Inés de la Cruz de Asuaje y Ramirez was born in San Miguel Nepantla, near Mexico City. She was the illegitimate child of a Spanish Captain, Pedro Manuel de Asuaje, and a Criollo woman, Isabel Ramirez. Her illegitimacy was due to her mother’s refusal to marry.

She learned how to read and write at the age of three. By age five, she could do accounts, and at age eight she composed a poem on the Eucharist. By adolescence, she had mastered Greek logic, and at age thirteen she was teaching Latin to young children. She also learned the Aztec language of Nahuatl, and wrote some short poems in that language.

In 1664, at age sixteen, Juana was sent to live in Mexico City. She asked her mother’s permission to disguise herself as a male student so that she could enter the university. Not being allowed to do this, she continued her studies privately. She came under the tutelage of the Vicereine Leonor Carreto, wife of Viceroy Antonio Sebastián de Toledo. The viceroy, wishing to test her learning and intelligence (she being then seventeen years old), invited several theologians, jurists, philosophers, and poets to a meeting, during which she had to answer, unprepared, many questions, and explain several difficult points on various scientific and literary subjects. The manner in which she acquitted herself astonished all present, and greatly increased her reputation. Her literary accomplishments soon made her famous throughout New Spain.

She was much admired in the vice-royal court, and declined several proposals of marriage, for in the spirit of her mother, she refused to marry. In 1667, she entered the Convent of the Discalced Carmelites of St. Joseph as a postulant. In 1669, she entered the Convent of the Order of St. Jérôme.

In Juana’s time, the convent was often seen as the only refuge in which a female could properly attend to the education of her mind, spirit, body and soul. It was Juana’s only refuge from marriage. Nonetheless, she wrote literature centered on freedom. In her poem Redondillas, she defends a woman’s right to be respected as a human being. Therein, she also criticizes the sexism of the society of her time, poking fun at and revealing the hypocrisy of men who publicly condemn prostitutes, yet privately pay women to perform on them what they have just said is an abomination to God. Sor Juana asks the sharp question in this age-old matter of the purity/whoredom split found in base male mentality: “Who sins more, she who sins for pay? Or he who pays for sin?” For these works, she is regarded as one of the first feminists.

Foolish men who wrongly accuse women, Without seeing that you are the cause of what you fault them for; You want with unthinking presumption to find in the woman you seek… Either love women for what you force them to be, or fashion them according to what you want them to be.

fuckyeahmexico:

La Santa Muerte de Tepito

thinkmexican:

Mexico: Election 2012

Mexico will hold presidential elections this July 1st in what is gearing up to be a contentious duel between the country’s three major parties.

The three major party candidates (shown above from left to right) are: Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Democratic Revolutionary Party, the PRD; Josefina Vázquez Mota of the Nation Action Party, the PAN; and Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI.

Look for more coverage and discussion on Mexico’s election in the coming months.

See: Polling numbers and analysis by Consulta Mitofsky

Read: Complete breakdown of each party by Daniel Hernández of the LA Times

Photo: amlo.org.mx, enriquepenanieto.com, El Universal

For the unimformed Americans who follow me, here’s a quick guide to the Mexican political parties.

PAN = the Mexican equivalent of the Republican Party

PRI = A centrist party who’s the Mexican equivalent of the Democratic Party.

PRD = the Mexican Socialist Party

fuckyeahdrugpolicy:

Mexico drug war casualty: Citizenry suffers post-traumatic stress | CSM

It’s a new prism through which an increasing number of Mexicans see their world. The fight against organized crime, begun by Mexican President Felipe Calderón when he took office in December 2006, has cost more than 40,000 lives. The government maintains that 90 percent of victims are rival traffickers.

But there is a growing sense – especially as violence spreads to new parts of the country like Veracruz – that there is another kind of victim. Most Mexicans are not direct targets – traffickers, public officials, police, journalists. They do not figure into any official violence tallies, but many feel that they are more than mere bystanders. They have been forced to change how they live: how they commute to work, how they travel, what they do in the evenings, how they dress, and how they socialize.

Even if they are not directly affected, “people are experiencing terror from this world of death and violence,” says Raúl Villamil Uriarte, a social psychologist and anthropologist at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City. “The nation is suffering post-traumatic stress disorder from all this violence playing out.”

[…] In a national survey headed by [Raúl Benitez, a security expert at National Autonomous University in Mexico City], 80 percent of those surveyed say they worry often about drug trafficking violence; 61 percent have stopped going out at night; 30 percent no longer drive the state or national highways because of fear of drug trafficking violence; 22 percent have quit going to public events like concerts or sport events. (Even that poll was affected by the violence: Pollsters were briefly kidnapped in the state of Guerrero.) +

quelola:

claravoyant:

allaboutmary:

Happy feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe!

Today the Church commemorates one of the most famous and loved of all Marian apparitions.

In December 1531 Mary appeared to the Indian St Juan Diego on the outskirts Mexico City. There she revealed herself to be the ‘Mother of the True God for whom we live, of the Creator of all things, Lord of heaven and the earth’ and left an effigy of herself for all to see and revere.

Today the basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe is one of the most visited religious shrines of Christendom.

Not a religious person, but this is one of my favorite Mexican Catholic traditions. I love the atmosphere - singing, flowers, all the light skinned Mexicans dressed up as indigenous people, hot chocolate and pan dulce… it’s a pretty fun evening/morning

As much as I’ve detached myself from my upbringing the iconic figure that La Virgen de Guadalupe is always something I can appreciate.

I use this day as a way to celebrate my indigenous heritage, since it’s something that often gets overlooked in Mexican culture imo. It’s also nice to celebrate a symbol of the combination of indigenous and Spanish cultures that “gave birth” to our Mexican culture.