Cinco de Mayo

Lots of people use Cinco de Mayo as a great excuse to meet up with friends for margaritas and Mexican food.  I've got nothing wrong with that.  But it does kinda seem like the fact that Cinco de Mayo is really an American tradition more than a Mexican tradition, we might take the opportunity to reflect on our interesting history and connection with Mexico as a borderland and the deeper inherent meaning of that relationship.  Gloria Anzaldua explains that "Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy."

As she points out, the borderland relationship is complex and demands a certain intimacy with one another purely because of location regardless of desire.  DC is an easy place to explore this relationship...especially through the arts since we actually have a pretty rich resource of Mexican culture and arts to be explored through the Mexican Culture Institute, Art Museum of the Americas, and other collections, like the National Museum of Women in the Arts' collection, which has Frida Kahlo's "Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky."  There are likely many others that I'm not aware of.

The Beyond the Labyrinth exhibit at the Mexican Culture Institute (located right near the intersection of Columbia Rd & 16th Street) looks like one of the coolest things happening around town in general right now.  It's too bad the institute's website is down, but I know from other sources that the exhibit features works by many well-known Mexican artists: Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Jose Clemente Orozco, and Rufino Tamayo.  If you want to go, let me know.  I'll be planning to go before it closes on June 18th.  

The exhibit is named after Octavio Paz's book, The Labyrinth of Solitude.  Octavio Paz is someone you absolutely must read if you haven't already.  I'm happy to share one of his poems and would love to hear your reflections:

Entre irse y quedarse
by Octavio Paz 

Entre irse y quedarse dude el día,

enamorado de su transparencia.

 La tarde circular es ya bahía:
en su quieto vaivén se mece el mundo.
Todo es visible y todo es elusivo,
todo está cerca y todo es intocable.
Los papeles, el libro, el vaso, el lápiz
reposan a la sombra de sus nombres.
Latir del tiempo que en mi sien repite
la misma terca sílaba de sangre.
La luz hace del muro indiferente
un espectral teatro de reflejos.
En el centro de un ojo me descubro;
no me mira, me miro en su mirada.
Se disipa el instante. Sin moverme,
yo me quedo y me voy: soy una pausa.

Between Going and Staying

(translated by Eliot Weinberger)

Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can’t be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause