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| Marie sketching in Oaxaca |
The working title for this book is: A Gust of Wind. Last February I received an e-mail intended for Marie on my account. It was written in English by Ana, a young Mixe woman that Marie had sketched in the zocalo in Oaxaca in 2002.
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| Ana's portrait on left side |
The following words are taken from the preface that Marie had done for her book proposal:
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| ProOax-Toledo Collage |
In 2002, McDonald’s began
procedures to open a franchise on the zocolo in the city of Oaxaca, one of the
UNESCO World Heritage sites. Oaxaca is the state with the highest percentage of
indigenous population in Mexico, and is known for its strong ties to its prehispanic
roots and traditions, one of which is its culinary tradition. A spontaneous
citizen’s movement began, lead by a community organization, ProOax (Patronato
Pro Conservación del Patrimonio Natural y Cultural de Oaxaca), and spearheaded
by Oaxacan artist and activist, Francisco Toledo. The purpose of this group was
to protect the rich cultural patrimony of Oaxaca. The group organized a tamaliza (a fiesta where tamales are
eaten) in front of the site selected to be the future McDonald’s. Over ten
thousand signatures in opposition to the opening of a McDonald’s on the zocolo
were collected. The end result was a denial of the request and a victory for
ProOax.
On
December 21, 2002, Marie came across an article in the Mexican daily, La
Jornada, about the ProOax victory. She cut out the article and pasted part of
it in her sketchbook. She wrote,”A proof that people can win against cultural
invasion.” Later that day she came upon the graffiti painted on the red wall.
The words were foreign to her, perhaps in Zapoteco or Mixe or another
indigenous language. She went on to comment, “That red terra cotta wall has a
dramatic quality that fits Toledo’s struggle, and I want to believe that
somehow they are connected to what just happened, even though I don’t see the
words “McDonald” or imperialism!
I still clearly remember the first time I went to France
with Marie in 1978. I was very impressed by the French customs regarding their
food. She emphatically told me, “McDonald’s will never set their feet in
France, never!” Despite the fight that many French put up, McDo’s is now
securely rooted in most French cities.
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| Francisco Toledo and IAGO Collage |
She came across another article
about Toledo and the IAGO (Instituto de Artes Graficas de Oaxaca), a cultural
center started by Toledo to make knowledge and art accessible to everyone, not
just the privileged. This was a perfect fit with Marie’s philosophy that we are
all artists, with a small “a”. Voila!
Another collage, filled with the morning greetings of parrots in a tropical
courtyard.
While I was in Oaxaca last spring, I tried to contact Toledo
to give him copies of the collages that Marie had done, but to no avail. So the other day when he passed by me in the La Merced Market, I decided to stop him and
ask how I could get the sketches to him. He kindly took time to listen to me
and told me how to get the sketches to him.
My brief talk with Toledo reminded me that he and Marie have
a lot in common. Besides being very gifted graphic artists and print makers,
they also share a social consciousness that is an integral part of their being.
Oaxaca was always a very inspirational place for Marie. Much like Toledo, she
loved the indigenous culture, the simplicity of the people, their creativity,
and their strength in standing up against the countless injustices they faced
as indigenous people. The inequalities that she saw in the streets, and the unique
personal relationships that her sketching allowed her to form, were often more
than just capturing the moment; they were political statements that she felt
deeply about. The political is part of her aesthetic.
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| Lenguas Indigenas Poem |
The collage to the left includes a poem from a newspaper
that she found on the ground that day as she went out to sketch. The title is:
Las Lenguas Indigenas Van Muriendo (the Indigenous Languages are Dying Out). She
wrote on the periphery of the page about the injustices she saw that morning,
about the incongruence of the tourists passing by and the six indigenous women
sitting on nearby steps, exhausted. She writes, “Where do they sleep? You can
see the reality of their suffering in their eyes.”
We
visited Oaxaca again in 2009, not aware that this would be the last visit that
Marie would make to the city that she so loved. The popular uprising in 2006
had caused her to cancel her planned workshop there that year. She was in
solidarity with the movement, and did not feel it right to bring a group there
in the midst of the social struggle. When we arrived in 2009, the evidence of
the struggle was evident everywhere. Political graffiti art covered many walls
in the Centro Historico. Although things appeared relatively calm, the movement
was still alive and active. It had been four years since Marie had been to
Oaxaca. 
The sketch to the left was
done in November 2004, one day after the death of Yassar Arafat. Marie was in
Oaxaca at the time and she saw his death in a global context of social struggle
and upheaval. Below the image of the Zapatista she wrote, “ In Oaxaca or elsewhere
in the world, here or there, the same duality exists, richness and poverty, war
and peace, beauty and ugliness, and everywhere churches and social
inequalities!
Sketching,
for Marie, was capturing the moment in a social and political context. The
juxtaposition of beauty and ugliness, richness and poverty, was part of her observation,
her perception of the moment. They could not be ignored nor separated. An
article in a newspaper often became juxtaposed on an image that seemed unrelated
to the event. The sketch here done during the war with
Iraq, combines the portrait of Luz Maria, a beautiful, young, indigenous woman accompanied
by a poem by José Angel Leyva entitled, Her
Name is Bagdad.
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| Her Name is Bagdad |
In this poem a young boy asks his father the following
questions: Do
bombs diminish the color of the sun, or do they take people’s shadows away?
Does war fade the color of the heart, or does it only dry up people’s blood?
Papa, how do they kill smiles? How do you call these voices from so far away
that give the order to blow up the world?
Mexicans
were very well informed of the war in Iraq. Not only the well educated, but the
man and woman on the street were aware of what was happening there and very
troubled by the injuries and deaths caused by the missiles and bombs we
unleashed.
Another sketch that showed
this juxtaposition was the portrait of Señora Estela, A bread vendor in one of
the Oaxaca markets. Marie had asked if she could sketch her before, but the
woman had refused. Marie decided to try one more time, and to her surprise, Señora
Estela accepted. As Marie noted at the bottom of the sketch, “She even posed!”
Again the news of the day, December 23, 2002, is reflected in her “capturing of
the moment”. Words like CIA, Saddam Hussein, attack, and United States surround
the stern face of the baker woman.
The sketches that I have shared here are only a few of the many that I am so fortunate to have to work with. As I proceed,
I hope that my words will not weasel nor betray Marie’s sketches. I hope
they compliment them in a way that paints a larger picture, that the sum is
greater than its parts. I have been left with a treasure of images: direct, and
nakedly truthful. I want my words to be the same; Marie’s sketches deserve
that. This book will be a collage of words and images, much like Marie’s
sketchbooks. Her words, my words, our images, all combined to tell our story.
