ASTU BLOG #1

Isabel Ochoa

“Arts of Resistance”

In this blog I am going to write about a specific piece of art located in the Museum of Anthropology in the “Arts of Resistance” exposition. The name of this work is “The Ayotzinapa Codex” by Juan Manuel Sandoval Palacios and Diego Sandoval Ávila (https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2018/06/01/Angler-Crafting-Art-Resistance/ ). I chose this specific work because the Ayotzinapa case occurred in Mexico, my country, exactly 4 years ago. In short, what happened is that 43 students were going to take (steal) a bus and travel from Iguala, Guerrero to Mexico City on September 26^th, at night. On that night, or the early morning of the 27^th, they had an “encounter” with the police. This was the last time they were seen. Since then there had been many theories about where they could have been, but the thing is that no one really knows. Most of the people think that the government has the blame for it, which would make this a forced disappearance (https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/09/26/ayotzinapa-estudiantes-43-mexico/?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fnyt-es&action=click&contentCollection=ayotzinapa&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection). As a consequence, people have had many protests towards the government about this issue. Many people went to manifest in Downtown Mexico City, many hashtags were all over social media and the local news wouldn’t stop mentioning this event.

The piece of art I mentioned before, is a way of resistance, just like the protests and the hashtags. The setting of this “Codex” is the XVI Century, before Mexico was conquered by the Spanish. Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN) the actual Mexican president, is represented as a viceroy, and the 43 students are “prisoners captured in pre-conquest Aztec warfare” (description from museum). This is describing with sentences and “drawings” the actual situation in Mexico City, from the author’s perspective. The beginning of this tells how the government is mistreating the Mexican people by contaminating their resources, such as rivers, and not making the Mexicans a priority. Then it says about how the government has created a way to “get rid of” the people that are against the government. Finally, it describes the Ayotzinapa case, in which the 43 students went missing.

I can relate the “Ayotzinapa Codex” to Sarah Polley’s documemoir “Stories we tell”. If I could describe this film in a few words, I would use Sarah Polley’s “the vagaries of truth”. Through this film she wants to find out more about her mother’s life (Diane Polley) and who is Sarah’s father. She wants to find the “whole truth” by asking several people that were really close to her mother, however this is not easy because everyone has different perspectives and points of views. This is just like the Ayotzinapa case because everyone has different truths and perspectives. The people blame it on the government; the government keep telling the people that these students just went “missing”. Some theories said that they could be in a pit (https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/09/26/ayotzinapa-estudiantes-43-mexico/?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fnyt-es&action=click&contentCollection=ayotzinapa&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection), most people assume that they are dead now, the fact is that no one has the “whole truth” about this case.