“Mestizaje” is the spanish word for miscegenation, meaning “mixed race”. In the essay “The Race Problem in Latin America” José Vasconcelos is very right about people of mixed race being the “bridge to the future” (Vasconcelos 97) for Latin America. He explains this by saying that a person of mixed race isn’t fully accepted by either of his parents’ races. By not being able to turn to the past for acceptance, he is forced to look forward—to the future.
Orozco’s mural Cortez and the Cross depicts the violence between the Spanish and the indigenous peoples when Cortes came over from Spain.
In the mural, behind Cortes there are burning ships. These are the ships Cortes and his men sailed over to Mexico with. He told his men to burn the ships to show them that they were not returning to Spain—that they would fight, conquer, and stay in Mexico. There is much history of conflict between the Spanish and the Indigenous peoples of Mexico because of Spain sailing to overseas Mexico and reaping all that the Indigenous peoples had. This is why it was so hard for a person of mestizo culture to be accepted by either of the races they come from. In the mural Cortez and the Cross, the pain and suffering of the Indigenous peoples is depicted by the fire in the background, the sombre colours (other than the red fire), the heap of bodies slumped in the bottom right corner, the destruction of objects strewn all over the artwork, and Cortes’s sword unsheathed, ready for battle.
The novel The Underdogs written by Mariano Azuela begins with a quote from Saint-Just, the French revolutionary. It states “Revolutions begin fighting tyranny and end fighting themselves” (Fuentes 1). The Mexican Revolution begins with commoners fighting and trying to overthrow the Dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. His rule came to an end in 1911, where democratic leader Francisco Maderno came to power. Overthrown and murdered by general Victoriano Huerta, dictatorship was promptly restored. This dictatorship was opposed and eventually overthrown in 1925 by the joint efforts of Venustiano Carranza, Alvaro Obregón, and Francisco “Pancho” Villa in the north and Emiliano Zapata in the south. The mestizos are the people who rose up against the old ways of Spanish colonial rule, a feudal-like system called la encomienda. By this time most of the Mexican people were mestizo and they were the commoners who fought for the commoners. People of mestizo culture were taking action for their future.
The Orozco mural Cortez and the Cross depicts the violence between the Indigenous peoples and the Spanish people. It shows their struggle over history. The novel by Mariano Azuela and the essay by José Vasconcelos both agree that mestizo people were the “bridge to the future” (Vasconcelos 97) for Mexico, because of their inability to live in the past and their hopes for the future.
Works Cited
"Hernán Cortés." Biography.com. A&E Networks Television, 08 July 2014. Web. 07 Feb. 2017.
"Mestizaje and Indigenous Identities." Mestizaje and Indigenous Identities. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Feb. 2017.
"The Mexican Revolution: November 20th, 1910 | EDSITEment." The Mexican Revolution: November 20th, 1910 | EDSITEment. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Feb. 2017.