Local Mexican folk artist honors murdered or disappeared women

From SWNews4U:

Artist Gabriela Marvan’s ‘Dia de los Muertos’ (Day of the Dead) exhibit at VIVA Gallery in October is dedicated to the “souls of the 10 women who are killed or disappear each day in Mexico.” 

Gabriela Marvan is part of a collective of Mexican artists, which formed in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic to face their struggles together.

“The origin of this idea began when I realized that my artist friends in Mexico were struggling with the pandemic situation. I know how talented they are, and I know that the world would be interested in knowing more about their art. Our goal with this collective is to develop a connection between the Mexican folk artists living in Mexico and the Mexican folk artists living in USA, empowering our art through sharing our process, our towns, our inspiration.”

Skeleton of woman with jewels in her teeth

Skeleton of 1,600-year-old woman with jewels in her TEETH found in Mexican burial ground | Daily Mail Online

Decorating teeth with jewels may be popular among some groups today, but it seems the idea was around in Mexico more than a thousand years ago.

Archaeologists have discovered the skeleton of an upper-class woman whose skull was intentionally deformed and her teeth encrusted with mineral stones.

The type of jewels found in her teeth show the woman was foreign to the region, and her skeleton was more deformed than any found before. 

The body was discovered near Mexico's ancient ruins of Teotihuacan, at a town called San Juan Evangelista.

The woman, between 35 and 40 years old when she died, was buried with 19 jars that served as offerings, the National Anthropology and History Institute said.

Her cranium was elongated by being compressed in a 'very extreme' manner - a technique commonly used in the southern part of Mesoamerica, not the central region where she was found, the institute said.

Continue reading article at Daily Mail Australia

Unusual "Royal" Aztec Burial

From Associated Press:

Mexican archaeologists say they have found an unprecedented human burial in which the skeleton of a young woman is surrounded by piles of 1,789 human bones in Mexico City's Templo Mayor.

Researchers found the burial about five meters (15 feet) below the surface, next to the remains of what may have been a "sacred tree" at one edge of the plaza, the most sacred site of the Aztec capital.

She said Tuesday that when the Mayas interred sacrifice victims with royal burials, they were usually found as complete bodies, not jumbles of different bone types as in this case. And, except for special circumstances, the Aztecs, unlike other pre-Hispanic cultures, usually cremated members of the elite during their rule from 1325 to the Spanish conquest in 1521.

La Malinche - Heroine or Temptress

A small army of Spaniards left Cuba in February 1519 on eleven ships headed for the Mainland. The expedition was led by Hernán Cortés who had been Secretary for the Spanish invasion of Cuba led by Diego Velasquez Cuellar. Velazquez had massacred the native warriors, burned their leader, Chief Hatuey, alive, and secured the island and its people as a Spanish colony. 

The point of the expedition led by Cortés, therefore, was to accumulate as much gold as possible, by trade or otherwise, and to capture slaves. After a resounding Spanish victory over the native warriors of Tobasco, the local High Chief told Cortés of the golden city called "Culua." There, he said, a river of gold ran into Montezuma's beautiful City In A Lake Near the Sky. 

To speed Cortés and his soldiers on their way, the huey tlatolani also handed over a number of slave girls to the Spaniards. One of these, baptized as "Marina", had her own reasons for invading the capital of the Aztecs. This woman, now known as "La Malinche", used her great intelligence, her quick mastery of Spanish, and Cortés and his soldiers to conquer Mexico.

Non-Fictional Accounts of La Malinche:

Feminism, Nation & Myth: La Malinche edited by Amanda Nolacea Harris
La Malinche: The Mistress of Hernan Cortes, From Slave to Goddess by Rodrigue Levesque
La Malinche in Mexican Literature: From History to Myth by Sandra Messing Cypress


Fictional Accounts of La Malinche:

The Treasure of La Malinche (Vols 1 & 2) by Jeffry S Hepple

Feathered Serpent: A Novel of the Mexican Conquest by Colin Falconer
Malinche: A Novel by Laura Esquivel

For more on La Malinche see:

La Malinche - Unrecognised Heroine from Mexconnect

La Malinche - Translator & Companion To Cortes from Mexonline

La Malinche from Wikipedia

Mexico: Pink Only Taxis

From the Latin American Herald:

With astonishment and curiosity, the residents of this central Mexican city are watching 35 pink taxis – driven by female cabbies and picking up only women as customers – travel back and forth on local streets.

Fears about safety – in certain zones of Mexico – has spurred people to begin offering transportation services just for women to avoid inconvenience, harm of one sort or another or, in some cases, even physical abuse of women by male taxi drivers.

In Mexico City, since last year there have existed buses just for women but Metro cars specifically reserved for women in rush hour have existed for quite some time.

Currently, the municipal transportation office in Puebla has invested a total of 5.6 million pesos ($430,000) in the project.

This wonderful service is taking off in many Muslim countries and is proving to be very successful.