Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Neo Baroque Codex PDF
Neo Baroque Codex PDF
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
Sage Publications, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Latin
American Perspectives
This content downloaded from 130.192.155.205 on Thu, 04 May 2017 16:53:27 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Codex Espangliensis
Neo-Baroque Art of Resistance
by
Kat Austin and Carlos'Urani Montiel
Translated by Victoria J. Furio
The Codex Espangliensis, a collective work dealing with political and social
matters concerning Chicana/o culture, presents a unique interpretation of the pre
Columbian world, the conquest, the cultural transformations residting from the
collision between Western and indigenous worlds, and economic interdependence in
present-day America. An analysis of the work achieved through concepts of the
baroque shows how it uses baroque strategies, manifested in its physical form (one
long foldable sheet, in the style of the pre-Hispanic codices), its mixing of historical
periods and cultural referents, and its use of fragmentation and parody, all of which
produce a defiant alternative reading that resists the flow of symbolic information
supporting American official discourse.
Kat Austin is a Ph.D. candidate at McGill University and Carlos-Urani Montiel is a Ph.D.
candidate at the University of Western Ontario. Victoria J. Furio is a translator in New York City.
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 184, Vol. 39 No. 3, May 2012 88-105
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X11432134
© 2012 Latin American Perspectives
88
This content downloaded from 130.192.155.205 on Thu, 04 May 2017 16:53:27 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Austin and Montiel / CODEX ESPANGLIENSIS 89
ESSENTIALIST THEORY
This content downloaded from 130.192.155.205 on Thu, 04 May 2017 16:53:27 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
90 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
HYBRIDIZATION THEORIES
FORMAL CHARACTERISTICS
This content downloaded from 130.192.155.205 on Thu, 04 May 2017 16:53:27 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Austin and Montiel / CODEX ESPANGLÍENSIS 91
Art," held at the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art (Armstrong, 2000),
and "Neo Baroque," hosted by the Byblos Gallery of Art in Verona (Giovannotti
and Korotkin, 2005).
Another important aspect of this approach has to do with the codification
and transmission of information through the mass media to promote a
particular ideology on a global scale. The paradigm of this propaganda lies in
the program of the Council of Trent, but it could also be applied to the
American mainstream. Angela Ndalianis (2004: 15) reminds us that "the
contemporary neo-baroque finds its voice within a mainstream market and,
like the seventeenth-century baroque, directs its seduction to a mass audience."
Finally, Timothy Murray (2008: xi) says that "baroque psychosocial enigmas
of analogical disjunction, temporal shifts, spatial simultaneities, and
conceptual impossibilities provide critical frameworks for understanding the
contemporary subject's inscription in the accumulating flow of digital data,
information, and imagery" The effective transfer of information depends on
the ability to adjust to the ecosystem of a given region, but what is gained in
scope or impact is lost in the quality of the message. Therefore, the study of
these information flows makes the baroque a phenomenon of transcultural
organization.
EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
This content downloaded from 130.192.155.205 on Thu, 04 May 2017 16:53:27 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
92 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
NEO-BAROQUE STRATEGIES
This content downloaded from 130.192.155.205 on Thu, 04 May 2017 16:53:27 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Austin and Montiel / CODEX ESPANGLIENSÍS 93
That same year, a new corpus of Chicano codices began to take shape
whose purpose was to "reinstate the indigenous art form of the codex as a
contemporary Chicano artistic medium while symbolically gathering the
dispersed and destroyed pre-Hispanic picture books" (Sánchez-Tranquilino,
1992: 3). The analysis of these pieces, in Damián Baca's (2008: 5) words,
demonstrates how these practices "create symbolic spaces in which it becomes
possible to understand multiple local histories, memories, and rhetorics
coexisting, beyond dichotomous assumptions."
In this context, the visual artist Enrique Chagoya, inspired by the pre
Hispanic and colonial codices, began to design new pictographic books to
give voice to his interpretation of history and the current situation. Six years
later, along with the performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña and the editor
Felicia Rice, he published the Codex Espangliensis: From Columbus to the Border
Patrol (Chagoya, Gómez-Peña, and Rice, 2000)—a response to the Mexican
crisis in California. Below we describe the neo-baroque strategies evident in
this work.
FORMAT
This content downloaded from 130.192.155.205 on Thu, 04 May 2017 16:53:27 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
94 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
with those of any other artist: "We mirror each other s work in different art
languages. The differences in our work are only in form, not in content."
However, since the Codex Espangliensis gives preference neither to the tex
nor to the image, it exists in a liminal state between literature and visual
Erwin Panofsky (1995: 45) speaks of the historical Baroque's abolition of
boundaries between the three arts (painting, sculpture, and architectur
exemplified to perfection in altarpieces such as the one in Zurbarán's Chu
of the Candelaria (Figure 1). The Codex Espangliensis incorporates t
dimensional elements into a three-dimensional object like the portable Ameri
altarpieces that fold to form a work of personal dimensions (Figure 2).
This format has several effects. First, it presents the images simultaneous
invoking an intense visuality. In this way, the Codex Espangliensis is similar
the murals of the Chicano movement which communicated and fostered a
shared ideology and political engagement within a particular community.
Second, it requires the reader to move; it demands active participation.
Manuel Broncano (2006: 140) asserts that the spirit of the composition allows
it to "form a myriad of shapes and patterns which the viewer has to interpret
according to his personal ideological baggage and aesthetic taste. The
elements are the same, but the ways they are organized on the lens can be
infinite." The Codex Espangliensis saturates the senses and engages the reader,
transmitting its political vision—resistance to the power of the American
mainstream.
DISPARATE FRAGMENTS
This content downloaded from 130.192.155.205 on Thu, 04 May 2017 16:53:27 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Austin and Montiel / CODEX ESPANGLIENSIS OS
This content downloaded from 130.192.155.205 on Thu, 04 May 2017 16:53:27 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
96 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
This content downloaded from 130.192.155.205 on Thu, 04 May 2017 16:53:27 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Austin and Montiel / CODEX ESPANGLIENSIS 97
Figure 5. Superman accompanying the conquistadors in the massacre of the Aztec nobility
(Chagoya, Gómez-Peña, and Rice, 2000, reprinted by permission).
Figure 6. A U.S. soldier, Batman, and Mickey Mouse help the Tlaxcaltecs in a battle against
the Mexicas (Chagoya, Gómez-Peña, and Rice, 2000, reprinted by permission).
This content downloaded from 130.192.155.205 on Thu, 04 May 2017 16:53:27 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
98 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
This content downloaded from 130.192.155.205 on Thu, 04 May 2017 16:53:27 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Austin and Montiel / CODEX ESPANGLIENSÍS 99
to cultural practice, a mobility of gaze and perception, a gift for combining the
radically diverse fragments that are displayed so strikingly in the indigenous
art of the sixteenth century."
These sensitivities and practices also pervade the contemporary Southern
U.S. borderlands, where, faced with an adverse environment of multiple and
conflicting cultural referents and ideologies, the Chicana/o mind is constantly
negotiating disparate messages. As Tomás Ybarra-Frausto (1996: 180) sees it,
Chicana/o art presents a visual narration of cultural negotiation. It is perhaps
the very process of negotiating a complex world that constitutes the core of
Chicana/o subjectivity. Gloria Anzaldúa (2007:101-102) sees this interchange
as the self "attempting to work out a synthesis" that involves the formation
of "a new consciousness—a mestiza consciousness." Cultural negotiations
and the distinct consciousness that emerges in their wake constitute the
crucial components of a border identity that may provide the necessary
threads for uniting a diverse community for the purpose of resistance. As
George Yúdice (1988: 221) puts it, "identity is a major weapon in the struggles
of the oppressed."
This content downloaded from 130.192.155.205 on Thu, 04 May 2017 16:53:27 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
100 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
Figure 9. Images from various sources (Chagoya, Gómez-Peña, and Rice, 2000, re
permission).
PARODY
This content downloaded from 130.192.155.205 on Thu, 04 May 2017 16:53:27 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Austin and Montiel / CODEX ESPANGLIENSIS 101
Figure 10. A crowd of people criticizing a bloodied Mickey Mouse while Don Catarino points
a gun at him (Chagoya, Gómez-Peña, and Rice, 2000, reprinted by permission).
Figure 11. A parody of the "All-Powerful Hand" (Chagoya, Gómez-Peña, and Rice, 2000,
reprinted by permission).
The Codex Espangliensis uses the Mexican image of the All-Powerful Hand
but adds elements that criticize and generate humor (Figure 11). Instead of
blood, petroleum comes out of the stigmata, and instead of supporting saints
the fingers point to a skeleton, money, a pistol, a swastika, and a jet—symbols
This content downloaded from 130.192.155.205 on Thu, 04 May 2017 16:53:27 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
102 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
that evoke death, greed, violence, hatred, and technology. This hand
semantic link between petroleum and blood, producing an analogy
the extraction of the resources of other countries by the oil industry (
OIL," a twist on "Texaco" to produce "I take your oil") and drawin
blood. Christian hagiography is replaced by symbols blessing the quest
A parody of this kind can inspire resistance. John Ochoa (2007: 15)
"another important tool for Gómez-Peña's work and one of his
weapons for fighting gringos and ignoramuses is a subtle sense of hum
is perhaps the most accessible aspect of his work and something th
him to touch lightly on profound and disturbing subjects."
Gonzalo Celorio (2001: 102) argues that contemporary Hispanic A
literature articulates a parodie baroque discourse whose aim is to ac
feeling of possessing a culture and demonstrating this through cr
While asserting knowledge of a cultural heritage remains paramou
maintaining a sense of Chicana/o identity and cultural pride, playful cr
constitutes an appealing weapon of resistance whose humor sweete
bitter pill of the message and whose mockery results in evocative de
CONCLUSION
This content downloaded from 130.192.155.205 on Thu, 04 May 2017 16:53:27 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Austin and Montiel / CODEX ESPANGLIENSIS 103
NOTE
1. Codex Espangliensis: From Columbus to the Border Patrol (2000) is available for purcha
City Lights Books, http://www.citylights.com.
REFERENCES
Abeyta, Michael
2006 Fuentes, Terra nostra, and the Reconfiguration of Latin American Culture. Col
University of Missouri Press.
Acosta, Leonardo
1985 El barroco de Indias y otros ensayos. Havana: Casa de las Américas.
Adoum, Jorge E
1974 "El realismo de la otra realidad," pp. 204-216 in César Fernández Moreno (ed.), A
Latina en su literatura. Paris: UNESCO.
Anzaldúa, Gloria
2007 Borderlands: The New Mestiza = La Frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.
This content downloaded from 130.192.155.205 on Thu, 04 May 2017 16:53:27 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
104 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
Ndalianis, Angela
2004 Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Ochoa, John
2007 "Prólogo: el desafío de las fronteras," pp. 9-25 in Guillermo Gómez Peña (ed.), Bitácora
del cruce. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
This content downloaded from 130.192.155.205 on Thu, 04 May 2017 16:53:27 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Austin and Montiel / CODEX ESPANGLIENSIS 105
Yúdice, George
1988 "Marginality and the ethics of survival," pp. 214-236 in Andrew Ross (ed.), Universal
Abandon: The Politics of Postmodernism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Zamora, Lois Parkinson
2006 The Inordinate Eye: New World Baroque and Latin American Fiction. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
This content downloaded from 130.192.155.205 on Thu, 04 May 2017 16:53:27 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms