Octavio Paz The Other Mexico: Critique of the Pyramid (1972)
I've had this since 2003, as suggested by a couple of bus tickets preserved between the pages - a return to Tottenham Court Road on Saturday the 2nd of August of that year, so I'm assuming that's when and approximately where I bought the thing. I've been under the impression of this being a book I never got around to reading - which is why I took it from the shelf on this occasion; except I find handwritten footnotes within, and obviously mine, suggesting that I've read it but have no memory of doing so.
Complete crap is probably an overstatement given that it doubtless depends on the source to which Paz was referring. Back in 2003, I tended towards overcompensation when it came to Mesoamerica; plus I'd bought this book because there was a pyramid on the cover and was most likely bewildered by much of it - which probably explains my being unable to remember it.
Now that I'm older, marginally wiser, and living significantly much closer to Mexico, it makes more sense than it probably would have done on the number forty from Tottenham Court Road. Additionally, I'm living fairly close to the border so Mexico's relationship with the United States has become part of the wallpaper of my daily existence, and while this is arguably peripheral to what Paz writes about, it's nevertheless applicable and his insight is astonishing - at least now that I have some frame of reference.
Now that I'm older, marginally wiser, and living significantly much closer to Mexico, it makes more sense than it probably would have done on the number forty from Tottenham Court Road. Additionally, I'm living fairly close to the border so Mexico's relationship with the United States has become part of the wallpaper of my daily existence, and while this is arguably peripheral to what Paz writes about, it's nevertheless applicable and his insight is astonishing - at least now that I have some frame of reference.
The United States, smiling or angry, its hand open or clenched, neither sees nor hears us but keeps striding on, and as it does so, enters our lands and crushes us. It is impossible to hold back a giant; it is possible, though far from easy, to make him listen to others; if he listens, that opens the possibility of coexistence. Because of their origins (the Puritan speaks only with God and himself, not with others), and above all because of their power, the North Americans are outstanding in the art of monologue: they are eloquent and they also know the value of silence. But conversation is not their forte: they do not know how to listen or to reply.
However, The Other Mexico is principally about how Mexico relates to itself rather than to its neighbours, and attempts to reconcile the apparent contradictions of a national politic which abhors the horrors of the conquest while nevertheless celebrating that which was born from the same. We begin with the Tlatelolco massacre of October, 1968 where government troops slaughtered several hundred unarmed student protestors, compared by Paz to something like a mass sacrifice of the kind for which Ahuizotl was famed in the days before the Spaniards turned up. Given the improbability of ever fully explaining anything so horrific as the Tlatelolco massacre, Paz makes as much sense as anyone and he expands his argument with what feels like a certain sort of poetic truth.
Speaking of poetic truths, as I read about the Tlatelolco massacre it dawned on me that it had occurred fifty years ago to the day, and that I was reading about it on the anniversary of its occurrence, by uncanny coincidence; except, of course, I immediately realised my error because the anniversary would have been in 2018, so I was reading about events which had occurred exactly fifty-two years before, and the figure struck me as more significant, being the length of a Xiuhmolpilli by the Mexica calendar; and significant because The Other Pyramid is quite specifically about pre-Colombian systems mapped onto post-conquest reality.
Paz identifies Mexico's colonial and revolutionary systems of government as a continuation of that which the conquest attempted to eradicate and replace - namely what is essentially a one-party state with rulers picked by the governing body rather than the people. It's a convincing argument, and one that seems to go some way towards explaining the Mexican government's peculiar relationship with the drug cartels who, in this model, might be deemed more like a rival tribal group than necessarily criminal or enemies of the state. It's coincidental that I should choose to have read this directly following The Medium is the Massage, but seems fitting given McLuhan's observation that the medium - in this case, Mexico itself - seems to dictate the general thrust of that which is transmitted.
Additionally, it seems fitting that I should find myself reading this on the eve of yet another American Presidential election, given America's apparent descent into what has begun to feel a little like a one-party state policed by what amounts to just another gang; also regarding which:
As my younger, more defensive self noted, Paz was misinformed regarding the prestige, or lack thereof, of Chichimec origins in Mexica society, but pretty much everything else he had bang to rights. This time I'll try to keep it all in mind.
Speaking of poetic truths, as I read about the Tlatelolco massacre it dawned on me that it had occurred fifty years ago to the day, and that I was reading about it on the anniversary of its occurrence, by uncanny coincidence; except, of course, I immediately realised my error because the anniversary would have been in 2018, so I was reading about events which had occurred exactly fifty-two years before, and the figure struck me as more significant, being the length of a Xiuhmolpilli by the Mexica calendar; and significant because The Other Pyramid is quite specifically about pre-Colombian systems mapped onto post-conquest reality.
Paz identifies Mexico's colonial and revolutionary systems of government as a continuation of that which the conquest attempted to eradicate and replace - namely what is essentially a one-party state with rulers picked by the governing body rather than the people. It's a convincing argument, and one that seems to go some way towards explaining the Mexican government's peculiar relationship with the drug cartels who, in this model, might be deemed more like a rival tribal group than necessarily criminal or enemies of the state. It's coincidental that I should choose to have read this directly following The Medium is the Massage, but seems fitting given McLuhan's observation that the medium - in this case, Mexico itself - seems to dictate the general thrust of that which is transmitted.
Additionally, it seems fitting that I should find myself reading this on the eve of yet another American Presidential election, given America's apparent descent into what has begun to feel a little like a one-party state policed by what amounts to just another gang; also regarding which:
When a society decays, it is language that is first to become gangrenous. As a result, social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.
As my younger, more defensive self noted, Paz was misinformed regarding the prestige, or lack thereof, of Chichimec origins in Mexica society, but pretty much everything else he had bang to rights. This time I'll try to keep it all in mind.
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