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Throwback: The Strange Story of Dr. Atl! · Tales From Aztlantis

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Greetings, dear listeners, and welcome to yet another episode of Tales from Ostlantis.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: We are your hosts, Curly Tlapoyawa.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And Ruben Ariano Tla Katekat.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on, man?
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: How are you?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Trying to beat the heat over here.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, no joke.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a scorcher over here, and apparently New Mexico is heading for another heat wave.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Texas is under what they're calling a heat dome.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not, I mean, most of Texas is horrifying.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's I mean, it's pretty hot.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: In Dallas, we've lucked out a little bit.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we were we're supposed to be having like triple digit temperatures, and it feels hot, but we've had some storms come through and they cool things off during the day for a little bit and then it warms back up in the afternoon, and it's just that's a roller coaster right over here with us.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Tlaloc provides, so make sure you leave some offerings out.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: To bring to bring some of that precious, precious rain.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, heat dome offerings.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: We need to get back to that.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um heat dome, that sounds like the name of a uh Stephen King book.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the heat is uh under the heat dome.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I remember how hot it used to get out there.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I remember the first year that uh Michelle and I moved out there, um the dashboard of Michelle's car melted.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that was pretty wild.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I guess.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And there were uh there were crickets everywhere or grasshoppers.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember, but do you remember that?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was like this mass infestation everywhere and people were talking about the biblical times and the plague, and it's the end of the world, the new millennium, and all this stuff.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh my god.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh Texas.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: And here we are, 2023.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so today's topic, and it's it's an interesting one because we've been wanting to do this one for a while.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Dr.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: At.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, also known as what was his real name?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: I've all I've only ever known him as Dr.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: At.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: His full name was José Murillo Murillo, right?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Murillo.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um Gerardo Murillo.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Andale, Jose Gerardo Murillo.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: No, Jose Gerardo Francisco Murillo.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: There it is.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: At, el Doctor.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: So for the sake of this episode, we're just gonna call him Dr.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: At.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, which means Dr.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Water, which is interesting.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of water, right?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: How appropriate.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: How appropos for this episode.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's funny because I first came across uh the name Dr.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: At um in like 1993 or 94, and it was in one of the uh Mexica movement booklets.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was under a list of like the great Mexican heroes or something, and Dr.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Ott was was listed there, and it only had like a sentence.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: It had his name, and it was like he was a great, you know, Mexican painter who elevated indigenous people through his artwork and blah blah blah, and then that was it.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's all it said about him.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So as we'll see in this episode, it's it's a lot more nuanced, and uh, you know, uh it's it's a little more complicated than just that.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: But that's that's the first time I'd heard about him.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: So there's more going on.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: More than more uh than meets the eye, huh?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: More than meets the water.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: The water.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: So strap yourselves in, dear listeners, as we explore the history and legacy of Dr.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Ott.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: To tell the story of Dr.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Ott, we must go back to the mid-19th century to a time when Mexico was still trying to define itself as a nation.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: The aftermath of the war for Mexican independence in 1821 had produced a need for a unified national consciousness.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: And while the line between so-called mestizos and criollos had been blurred by then, there still existed entrenched social, cultural, and ideological differences among the masses.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Both mestizos and criollos considered themselves members of a single Mexican nation, which also had a significant population of pueblos originarios or indigenous peoples.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: In theory, the Constitution of 1824 had established a common citizenship between all of them, and in the newly founded Estados Unidos Mexicanos or the United States of Mexico, there were to be no citizenship distinctions.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: But however, these democratic ideas did not prevent the rise of regionalism among rural indigenous communities who still viewed themselves in localized communal terms and regional identities.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: These distinctions contributed to the rift that existed between the urban metropoles and the rural provinces.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Among the many changes that were supposed to be brought on by the Mexican independence, one of them was the unification of the country under a common national culture.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: The intention was to bridge the gap between the two distinct social-cultural Mexicos, which were urban, wealthy, and mixed white, versus the rural poor and indigenous peasant.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: This idea was nicely articulated by the Mexican anthropologist Guillermo Bonfield Batalla in his highly influential book El México Profundo, Una Civilización Negada, or in English, México Profundo Reclaiming a Civilization.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: In it, he noted that there exists two Mexicos.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: One is imaginary or synthetic, and the other is profundo or deeply rooted.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: The former is one created by criollo mestizo elites in their emulation of Western European and Anglo-American society, and the latter is one that is deeply rooted in Mesoamerican indigenous thought and culture.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Batalla admonished the consumerism and capitalism that had sullied the primordial character of Mexico and advocated in favor of restoring control to Mexico Profundo.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Arguably, the imaginary Mexico started during the Spanish invasion and colonization in the 16th century.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: But bringing it back to our current topic, we can point to the death of Benito Juarez as a significant watershed moment in the course of Mexican history.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: Juarez was an idealist who favored a liberal democratic form of government like that of the United States of America.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: After his death, the democratic experiment he had envisioned for his beloved country began its slow regression into autocratic despotism.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: In 1877, General Porfirio Diaz assumed the presidency for the first time, although he had effectively controlled the government since his coup d'etat the year before.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: In addition to being a well-seasoned veteran of multiple wars, such as the Guerra de Reforma in 1857, the French intervention of 1862, and other military engagements, Diaz was also a cunning politician who managed to stay in power for three and a half decades.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: This turbulent and highly stratified period of Mexican history is known as the Porfiriato.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: Diaz's dictatorship provided a stabilized government by suppressing civil unrest while championing the economic success of capitalist investors and the landed elite.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Conversely, the Porfirian regime encouraged the excesses of the wealthy and the profitarian by foreign investors, i.e.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Anglo-Americans, British, German, and others, at the expense of the working poor who suffered immensely under this regime.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: To put things into perspective, the situation in Mexico was so bad that it would be as if if a more severe form of the Great Depression had lasted for 30 years and only in the United States.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: The dire situation produced by Diaz's exploitative government was one of the major factors which contributed to the revolt in 1910.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: But it was his assumption of the presidency for an eighth term while refusing to accept Francisco I.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he would powder his face white to like mask his indigenous features.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: So that's uh it's sad.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it's like the perfect I don't know, expression of the uh colonialism, right?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: That that Native Mexicans faced.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's just this this shame that was put on them.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I mean he wasn't a great guy, obviously, but it was interesting that he would hide his indigenous features and go to that extent because if you look at photos of him when he was a young man, he's very dark.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you uh if you look at photos of him later, it's obvious that he's like masking his indigenity.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: So and also, um, for any listeners out there who have not read uh México Profundo, oh yeah, I I encourage them to do so because it's uh it's a really good book.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very, very uh resourceful, foundational, and uh uh useful book for for uh scholars and even just people interested in Mexican indigenity and and this idea of their existing sort of two broad cultures, one that's sort of uh in control and it's eurocentric, and one that is at the bottom of the of the ranks and more in tune with its uh indigenous roots.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: So continuing.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Amid this political turmoil and civil unrest, we find that modern indigenous artists had already started molding and creating the nationalist tropes that would help define the country's identity in the 20th century.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: One of these artists was Gerardo Murillo, who was better known by his artistic name Dr.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Att, which is Nahuatl for water.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: At was a creative storyteller, and his recollection surrounding the origin of his Nahuatl name is emblematic of that talent.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: In an interview he gave to the famed Mexican journalist Jacobo Zubladovsky, the following is what he says about how he got his name.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's Sabludowski.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Zabludovsky?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: What did I say?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Zubludowski.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I think.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: Quote: I made a trip many years ago from New York to Paris, and on the ship I suffered a terrible storm.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: The ship almost sank, which would have given me much pleasure.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Even the captain became seasick.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: So much water, man, and here I am with his name.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to name myself water in some language.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: It seemed to me that there were none beautiful enough for me to have.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Water in French, uh.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: In Spanish too.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm giving to myself in French.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm going to name myself water in Nahuatl I named myself At.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: I arrived in Paris, and with that name I signed my canvases, my commitments, etc.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: I like how he's just like etc.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, etc.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like who says etc.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: in an actual sentence?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: This guy.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently, this soul searching trip occurred in 1896, the same year that At's distaste for the pervasive Spanish influence in Mexican culture started to manifest itself.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: But his naming adventure did not end there.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: In that same interview with Zabludovsky, did I get it right that time?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think so, yeah.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Ott stated that sometime in the early 19 teens, during another stay in Paris, his friend, the Argentine poet Leopoldo Lugones, commented on the simplicity of Ott's name and suggested that he add a title to it.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: That of only Att is unappealing.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't you add a title to it?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: To which I said, title of Prince?
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: King?
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Of what?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, a title.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: Ah, well, I'm a doctor in philosophy.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Ott! Then the next day we called our friends who were many, and in his apartment, which was very nice, they filled a tub with champagne, undressed me, and put me in the tub.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: And they said to me, You are Dr.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Ott.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: And since then, I am Dr.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: Ott.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it just occurred to me, now that you're a doctor, Dr.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Curly, we need to we need to follow this formula.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: We need to undress you, put you in a tub full of champagne, and and uh baptize you, um, Dr.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: Curly.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right on.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Live stream it.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: I am now Dr.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Curly.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Curly.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: With his, well, but can we use like pulke instead of champagne?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Or does it have to be champagne?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, uh, it can be pulke.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Pulke sounds good.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm down.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: With his mock baptism, Dr.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: At inadvertently initiated a naming tradition that continues to be practiced to this day among neo Aztecas.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: He was so enamored with the idea of Nahuat names that he renamed Carmen Mondragon, his lover and also the object of his artistic expression, to Nawi Olin, or four movement.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: The Aztec sign which represents one of the previous ages of humanity, as well as the four basic elements of life, the four seasons and other metaphorical concepts.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: While not as well known as his contemporaries, Dr.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Ack is famous for his landscape paintings of Mexico's volcanoes, and according to the great Mexican muralist Jose Clemente Orozco, Ac was the father of Mexican muralism.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And just a little um admission here.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Not a fan of his landscapes.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I I never liked his landscapes.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, eye of the beholder and all that.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly, exactly.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Jose Gerardo Francisco Murillo, Dr.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: At, was born in 1875 in Guadalajara, Jalisco.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: He came from a comfortable urban middle class background, and the relative wealth of his family afforded him the privilege of attending the Liceo de Barones de Guadalajara, one of the largest institutions of education in Jalisco at the time.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Showing interest in the arts from an early age, Dr.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Ott made his way to Le Havre France.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Franz?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: In 1897.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: I even said it like a question.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Franz?
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: And stayed with Baron Gostkowski.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds like a pro wrestler.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Baron Gostkowski.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: A cosmopolitan aristocrat of Franco-Slavic descent, who spent many years in Mexico, even becoming a citizen, where he was known for his satirical writings.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: During his years in Europe, between attending classes in Rome and showing his work at the Paris Salon, At became radically politicized and well-versed in Marxist and anarchic literature, particularly with the writings of Georges Sorrell and various Italian ideologues.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: The ideas he was exposed to in Europe led to his political involvement in the Mexican Revolution.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: As a close friend of President Venustiano Carranza, At went on to serve as the Minister of Public Education, where he was able to leverage his position through politics, academia, and the arts world.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: His political influence translated into a message that resonated with young and energetic artists, some of whom went on to become Mexico's most renowned.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: Ott graduated with a doctorate in philosophy in 1900.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: So he was a doctor.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, doctor.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: And after a few years returned to Mexico.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: In 1904, he joined the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, ENBA or EnBA, is that EnBA?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think so.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Where he taught paintings and explored early ideas of mural work he had acquired in Europe during his many visits to places like the Sistine Chapel.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: In his autobiography, Orozco recalls that Dr.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Ottl would visit his nightclass and recount his European exploits to the students while they worked.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: He enthusiastically described the Sistine Chapel and Da Vinci and how the great techniques of the ancients, the great murals, the Renaissance, and the Egyptian pyramids had been lost for 400 years.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: That same year of 1904, Dr.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: At was part of a group of revolutionary painters in San Pedro de Tlaquepaque, a neighborhood in the city of Guadalajara, where he organized an exhibition of his paintings.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Other exhibitions included conferences which advanced a clear revolutionary orientation.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it is here where At initiated the Mexican Pictorial Revolution.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Not long thereafter, in 1906, he conducted a painting exhibition put on by the magazine Savia Moderna, a publication of the Ateneo de la Juventud, or Athenae how the hell do you say that?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's Ateneum of Youth.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Athenaeum?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Athenaeum?
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Ath Athenaeum of Youth, which was comprised of young intellectuals disconnected with the direction of Mexico's artistic and intellectual life.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Most members of the Ateneo de la Juventud were under 30 years of age and included Diego Rivera, Jose Vasconcelos, Antonio Caso, and himself.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Holy shit.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: According to Margarita Vera Cuspinera's entry in the Encyclopedia of Mexico, History, Society, and Culture, the purpose of the Ateneo was to formulate an alternative to the medieval rigidity, positivist orthodoxy, and francophile affectation which had defined Mexican intellectual life.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: The very name of the group, the Youth Athenaeum, established a counterpoint to the gerontocracy of Porfirio Diaz.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Ouch.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Burn.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: This exhibition was perhaps the first time the Mexican painters had the opportunity to present their native talent to the public.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: The following year, 1907, Dr.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Ott arranged Diego Rivera's first exhibition to help him raise funds to study and travel in Europe.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Things were moving fast, and by 1908, Att painted his first large-scale mural at the Academy of San Carlos.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: That mural was the first of its kind by a modern Mexican artist, and it foreshadowed the muralist movement that rose to prominence after the revolution.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Administrative officials at San Carlos took issue with the mural's folkloric theme because it broke with the convention of emulating European high art.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: At had grown tired of mimicking Europe and felt that Mexican artists should look inward for expressions of national art.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Despite his displeasure at the destruction of his work and ongoing disagreement with the administration, he continued painting and teaching at the Academy.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Between the years 1906 and 1906, He oversaw the inventory of old paintings that belonged to the Academy, many of which he considered destroying because they reflected the old Eurocentric paradigm.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: This guy.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: His big break came in 1910 when he gathered enough money to help Mexican artists who wanted to present their own version of indigenous art to celebrate the first centenary of Mexican independence.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: The exhibition was a success, and At proposed organizing the new school of artists into a society called Centro Artístico, whose purpose was to get the government to provide walls in public buildings for the young artists to paint.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, the socio-political revolution broke just as the artistic revolution of the group was underway, leaving them no choice but to abandon their projects.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Mexico's avant-garde artists had to wait more than a decade before their vision was appreciated, at which point the post-revolutionary project of nation building coincided with the acceptance of folk and indigenous arts and the rise of monumental mural paintings.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Each artistic vogue has its iconic representatives, and for Mexican muralism, Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueros automatically come to mind, and justifiably so.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: They constitute the leaders of the post-revolutionary vanguard of artists who are rightfully called the masters of Mexican muralism.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've ever stood in front of any of their murals in real life, it's like, holy shit, man.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: You don't even you can't capture that in a photo.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you see their murals in a book, as opposed to standing in front of one, it's mind-blowing.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's a whole different I mean, it's a whole different experience altogether.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: You have to see them in person.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Ott deserved his due in that history as well.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: While it is universally accepted that Orozco and Rivera epitomize the nationalistic aesthetic of the era, they also represent the maximum evolution of Mexican muralism, a medium pioneered by Dr.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Ott.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: His influence cannot be overstated, and to a certain degree, Orozco and Rivera owe their success to him.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Orozco was a student of Otz in the years preceding the revolution, and Rivera's first trip to Europe in 1906 was made possible due to Ott's assistance in selling his artwork to raise funds for his passage.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: At even wrote Rivera a letter of introduction to his friend and fellow artist, Eduardo Chicharro, who became Rivera's teacher during his stay in Spain.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: An internationally renowned painter, At had clout in the art world and beyond.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: But more importantly, Orozco's statement that At was the father of Mexican muralism is incontrovertible.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: The possibility that without him, Mexican muralism might never have existed makes At's influence even more substantial.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Despite At's visionary foresight and rejection of traditional convention, one wonders why he did not continue working in that medium.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Art historian Olga Science asked that same question and arrived at the answer given by Dr.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Ott himself.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: In his written account, Ott narrates with some nostalgia that his large format works were destroyed.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: He refers to the frescoes painted in 1901 in the Via on Via Flaminia 14, Rome.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: In 1908, Murillo painted a large frieze with female figures like nymphs or muses carrying a wreath towards a portrait of Alejandro Luis Olavatierra, who had donated a valuable collection of paintings to the Academy.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Doña Carmen Romero Rubio de Diaz, wife of Porfirio Diaz, ordered its removal because it portrayed the nymph's nude.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, they were always that way.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like these people were always that way.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: Shhesh.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: Offended by the slight uh cancel culture.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Clench my pearls.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, clenching their pearls at the sight of a nude fictional character.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: In addition to the destruction of the work mentioned above, administration officials at the San Pedro y San Pablo Academies ordered the demolition of many of At's murals that decorated the Academy's patio in 1921.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: First, Vasconcelos had the nymphs on the murals altered when he remodeled the Academy to open the hall of discussion, which housed an office that operated his campaign against illiteracy.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: Minister Narciso Basels later had them completely destroyed.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: These incidents soured At to the idea of large-scale murals, and he opted instead for the easel and the canvas.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Nonetheless, Dr.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Ott's affinity for indigenous art and culture and his innovation in muralism launched an artistic movement in Mexico during the post-revolutionary era.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: In Ott's work, the tension between the Hispanic and indigenous traditions came to a head.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Even before the master muralists ever considered adopting folk-style art and indigenous tropes, Ott had already experimented with those ideas as far back as the late 1800s.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Few academically trained artists were doing it then.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Ott's contribution to neo-folk art and romanticized indigenism helps describe the general sentiment at the time.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: The liberal mestizo Eurocentrism that dominated social and cultural life during the latter half of the 19th century was beginning to crack by the end of the century, and young dreamers like Atl, who were tired of that paradigm, were there to exploit the rupture that would soon tear the country apart.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Typical of rebellious youth, these dreamers rejected the culture of their elders and opted instead to create one of their own.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: This new culture was not only oppositional, but it was also one that celebrated the local folkloric traditions of the homeland.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: It is in this transitional and experimental period that a new indigenous narrative emerged and gave rise to Neo-Mexica groups during the cultural revival and ethnicization or Indianization of Mexican nationhood.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: The term ethnicization is used by the historian Rick A.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Lopez in his book Crafting Mexico: Intellectuals, Artisans, and the State after the Revolution, published in 2010.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: In his discussion of the term, he knows he knows.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: I saw Moises coming up.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I mixed notes and Moises because I read with the idea of making things super simple.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: He notes that Moises Science, the leading educational advocate and reformer of education in Mexico during the first half of the 20th century, described this post-revolutionary movement as the Indianization of Mexico's nationality.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Other scholars have called it the browning of the nation.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's what uh the MAGA Trumpers call Mexicans moving into the United States.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's weird to call to call what was going on in Mexico the browning of the nation when the nation is mostly brown.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like the the nation's like 99% brown.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think Indianization is more appropriate, and browning of the nation is a little too.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's something that maybe white Mexicans would say.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: Those who without a doubt.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Elitist uh academic, uh, light-skinned Mexicans who look down on everybody else would probably say that.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: They browning their nation.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: The term ethnicization attempted to capture the fluidity and contested nature of this embrace of indigen indigenousness as part of the national identity.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Even as the Asian and black presence was being erased and prejudice against indigenous people was continually being reframed.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's in this socio-political landscape that romantic indigenism in the shape of neo-Aztecism began to emerge in Mexico City.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was obvious that the Indianization of Mexico would be Aztec.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, their history would be idealized, sensationalized, and fictionalized.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: With the fall of Diaz and his Anglo-Eurocentric reign of power, the post-revolutionary era with all its hopes and dreams was ripe for a cultural transformation and historical confabulation.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good word.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: Confabulation.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Atlantis and Mesoamerica.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: Ott was an educated and cultured man, and like any person of his stature, he would have been well read in the classics and the academic literature at the time.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: It is no wonder that he was fascinated by the legend of Atlantis.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: Ott believed that Atlantis had once existed in the Atlantic Ocean, and he dedicated much of his life to studying and writing about it.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: Ott's ideas about Atlantis were based on the writings of Plato, the Maya Codices, and his own personal research, deducing that Atlantis had been highly advanced, uh had been a highly advanced civilization that was destroyed by a cataclysmic flood.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if he uh had also read um Le Planjon.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I wouldn't I wouldn't um doubt if he I mean I think that's one of the works that was highly influential, so yeah, I wouldn't doubt that he had read it.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think yeah.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because there was another scholar that we need to talk about at some point, Estachio Buena.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: Estaquio Buena, who was writing things also in the late 19th century that was based on a lot of the stuff that I'm not sure if he took I think so he cites LePlan John, so I'm I'm I'm curious to see how much of it was his own original research uh as a Mexican scholar working in Mexico as opposed to Le Plan John who is uh foreigner working in in Mexico uh or Central America.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: So um I think I think he was definitely reading Estachio.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he was probably reading Le Plan John as well.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, fascinating.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: Fascinating.
• 33:18
  unknown: Where was I?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: He also believed that the survivors of Atlantis migrated to other parts of the world, including Mexico, where their culture and knowledge influenced the development of Mesoamerican civilizations.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: A prolific writer and speaker, Dr.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: Ott wrote articles and lectured on politics, the arts, but also on Atlantis, all over the world.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: He published widely on the topic, including a book on the fable entitled Ungrito in La Atlantida, or in English A Cry for Atlantis, published in 1947.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: The following are some of Ott's ideas about Atlantis.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: 1.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: He thought it was a large island located in the Atlantic Ocean near the Azores.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: 2.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was a highly advanced civilization that was destroyed by a cataclysmic flood.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: 3.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: The survivors migrated to other parts of the world, including Mexico, where their culture and knowledge influenced the development of Mesoamerican civilization.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: And four, it was a symbol of a lost golden age of humanity, and that its rediscovery would usher in a new era of peace and prosperity.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: I come in peace.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, um, I'm sure.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know I'm sure there's some uh what was her name?
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: Helena Blavatsky.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: Helena Blavatsky was somewhere on the bookshelf.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: She's looming large over all this.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: In previous episodes, we have discussed the fascination that some early and foundational leaders of Mexicayot had with Atlantis and its supposed connection with Astlan and Mesoamerica in general.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: Hence the name of our podcast.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: While our research is ongoing, Dr.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: Ott appears to be the earliest figure that we've found who is associated with neo-asticism and who advanced the erroneous connection between Astlan and Atlantis.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: This is an interesting uh point here because Juan Luna Cárdenas, who we consider the godfather of Mexicayot or the Mexicayot movement, and his group of followers were becoming active in the 1920s as the muralist movement was underway.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it is almost certain that Dr.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: Att and Luna Cárdenas crossed paths at some point.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: As previously noted, Att not only gave Diego Rivera his start, but he was also associated with Guillermo Kahlo, Frida Kahlo's father, who was a famous photographer in his own right.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: Att and Guillermo collaborated and co-published a book together entitled A Photographic Inventory of Spanish Colonial Church Architecture in Mexico, and this was in 1910, even before Diego Rivera got his start.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, what's more, Diego and Frida were also close friends with Eulalia Guzmán, the Mexican archaeologist credited with helping identify the supposed bones of Gautamok, the last Mexica Tlatwani, in the town of Escatiopan, Guerrero.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: Guzmán was a key member of the Movimiento Confederado Restaurador de la Cultura de Anahuac or the MCRCA, which we've talked about at length here on this podcast.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: Go back and listen to those episodes, especially season one.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: The organization which is the most responsible for spreading pseudo-archaeology and pseudo-history of the Aztecs and the Maya through their neo-indigenous ideology that we call Mexicayot.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: But lest we give the wrong impression of Dr.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: Ott, we should also note that he is known in Mexican history, not only for his art, but also because he was a prominent figure in the Mexican Revolution, as we uh noted earlier.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: Ott was a complex and fascinating figure.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: He was a painter, a writer, a revolutionary, and a theorist.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: He was a passionate advocate for the preservation of Mexico's natural beauty, which can be seen through his art, and his work continues to inspire people in Mexico and around the world.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: I want to say maybe five or six years ago, um the Dallas Museum of Art and then did a uh a show, and I don't remember if it was uh I don't think they focused specifically on Dr.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: Ott's work, but uh his work was prominently displayed in that show.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, really?
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: However, it's unfortunate.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: All that said, it's unfortunate that he is also linked to the hyper-diffusionist idea of Atlantis as the foundational human civilization that spawned all the others, including those of Mesoamerica.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: And well, you know, it's like I always say, nobody's perfect.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: So what you gonna do, man?
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: What you gonna do?
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's perfect, right?
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: And just examining the the life history of Dr.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: Ott was um sort of illuminating to me because I didn't really know a lot about the guy coming into this, like I'd mentioned before.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: I I heard of him briefly, first in uh Rius' book on uh La Virgen de Guadalupe, and I heard of him briefly or read about him briefly in uh an old Mexica movement book where they had listed him as like great Mexican heroes.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so the more I poked into his history, I mean the guy was you know complicated is an understatement.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: He had some complicated beliefs and the way that the trajectory of his belief system went through time.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I do this talk, um, and I I released it as a uh a premium episode for uh our listeners, but I give this talk on what I um refer to as Hispano-white nationalism, and I go into like these this weird history of fascism in Mexico and how it uh has sort of permutated over time.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a group that I talk about, and maybe you already know about these guys, but they were called um Los Dorados, right?
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: The the gold shirts, and these were men who fought in the Mexican Revolution, like they fought under Pancho Villa, and they had you know all this these revolutionary ideals, but after the revolution, uh a lot of them, and I think it was the the result of a combination of things, you know, a lot of these guys were very uh hardcore conservative Catholics, and they had a lot of anti-Semitic views and anti-communist views, and so these men who had fought in the Mexican Revolution under Pancho Villa started like this uh very right-wing movement called uh the uh the Dorados, the the gold shirts, and it led to this uh I don't know, this it sparked this interest in me, uh, which prompted you know my putting this the talk together was like, wow, how did how does that happen?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and sure enough, um Dr.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: Ott kind of you know had this, he flirted with these ideas too for a while.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like he he went down this road uh after the revolution, especially during World War II, right?
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: Where he um he encouraged uh Mexicans to side with the Axis powers.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it was for a combination of reasons, I think.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I I found this paper.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um the name of the paper is Fascism and Sinarquismo: Popular Nationalisms against the Mexican Revolution.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was written by Albert L.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: Michaels.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was published in the Journal of Church and State in 1966.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: So this might be the reason why I hadn't come across this this information before.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was written kind of uh a while ago, but there's an interesting quote in here about Dr.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: Ott uh that I want to read.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it says, The well-known artist, Herardo Murillo, better known as Dr.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: Ott, became another convert to the fascist faith.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: Germany, he said, would defeat both England and France, a victory that would lead to a confrontation between Hitler and the United States.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: The United States, a weak, pacifistic people devoted to pleasure, would then be defeated by Germany.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: Mexicans were urged to renounce the Havana Pact and assert their independence from the United States.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: Only by being on the winning side, he argued, could Mexicans avoid slavery in the future.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: Communism was associated with Judaism, and he blamed the Russian invasion of Finland on the ambitions of Israel.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: So here again we see this um melding of being anti-uh-Semitic and being anti-communist, birthing like this, you know, right-wing leanings in former revolutionaries and former Mexican revolutionaries.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought that was uh an interesting trajectory for Dr.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: Ott to follow.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's really unfortunate to learn this about Dr.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: Ott.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: He was someone who, besides being a painter, a theorist, a philosopher, a politician involved in the Mexican Revolution, all those things that he accomplished.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: You could even say that he was a foundational figure for the Mechikali movement.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: And ideas that he had.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: For instance, like uh being against France might go back to his anti Francophile leanings in the late 19th century.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: When he was sort of responding to the positivist and the uh Eurocentrism that permeated a lot of the the academy and the arts of Mexico, which is something that he was kind of going against.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that that would make sense it's unfortunate that he I mean I guess that this goes back to the old you know a trope of the enemy of my enemy is my friend so in this case you know the enemy of Mexico and according to him from his standpoint you know it's it's France it's also the United States because you know he he was you he emerged at a time uh when Porfirio Diaz was um essentially letting foreigners the United States Germans etc uh which is funny because he doesn't really I mean he's siding with the Germans on this one even though Germans were part of also the Porfiriatos uh uh you know League of foreign investors that were sacking Mexico at the time so it's it's interesting how he picks and chooses who he's going to side with and and who's who he's going to be against so you would think that Germany would be on the list but so the people that would be on the list would be France it would be the United States and Finland I mean like I I don't know like he's defending Finland because the Russians came in and they're communists that's yeah that's kind of strange right like yeah and and he even wrote a book uh that I found online um published in nineteen forty two so like right in the thick of World War II right uh called Los Julios Sobre America yikes yeah this doesn't sound good no please don't say it so Dr.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: Hunt yeah man goddamn Dr it's always right right and that's been the case since the very beginning it it always leads to freaking Nazis for some damn reason with these folks yeah and uh you know it's it's described as a study of the controlling influence Jews have in America and Mexico god damn and then the subtitle is um let's see if I don't butcher this La Casa Blanca convertida in La Casa de Juda y Los Americanos you know question mark so the White House the White House turns into the the Jewish house and the Americans like like what are they gonna do about it right like what is it Yeah exactly like what are the Americans going to do about it and so one one other interesting thing that I found out about Dr.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: Ott while doing research for this episode was that he was No more no more interesting things please he was an ardent volcanologist apparently and it was his love of volcanoes that apparently caused him you know to lose interest in the like the right wing fascistic stuff.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like he he apparently the story goes he was one of the eyewitnesses to the birth of the volcano Piracutin um in uh Michoacan.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: So like witnessing this event was evidently so moving and inspiring that he left behind all of the the political leanings that he was you know flirting with at the time and just became obsessed with volcanoes and star you know was painting volcanoes and even wrote books like sound uh scientific books about volcanology which is like that's a career a a trajectory change in your career if I've ever heard one right there.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: From politician from artist to politician to thinker to writer on Atlantis to uh full-fledged volcanologist apparently man that's something yeah there's this there's this article called The Artist as Volcano written in 2005 by Jesse Lerner and it kind of goes over this and it says uh of the many eyewitnesses to the birth of the volcano Piracutin none was more enthusiastic than Dr.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: At a man whose tireless activities as a landscape painter, political commentator, statesman, novelist, poet, chef, cultural promoter, polemicist, and utopian philosopher all take a back seat to his lifelong obsession with volcanoes.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: In the biography of Dr.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: At, the eruption of Pirakutin has another significance.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: It pulled the painter away from his pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic activities in Mexico, one of several extremist positions he embraced over the course of his life, diverting his attention from politics to volcanology.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you Piracutin for causing this so wait so so what I'm getting from this is that to get rid of Nazism we have to throw him into the volcano is that's what I'm getting here man.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's I think you read that correctly that's what I was getting but this is a pretty interesting um uh essay that this guy wrote because he talks about you know these contradictions that Dr.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ott had and um here's an uh another quote from it that I really thought was interesting.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: It says uh making sense of the multiple contradictions of Ott's life is more challenging how is it that the same author and he's talking about the volcanology stuff is responsible for the careful empiricism is of his volcanological texts and the considerably more speculative not to say frivolous writings like Un grito in La Atlantira which you had mentioned which advances the thesis that the inhabitants of Atlantis spoke Nahuatl god damn it.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: How does one reconcile his leadership role in the Red Battalions and the wobbly influenced House of the International Worker during the Mexican Revolution which is all like very left leaning pro-revolutionary stuff the wobblies with his rabid anti-communist and pro-Nazi writings from the Second World War.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: The answers are at best partial at least part of Ott's support for Hitler seems to be based in probably enough and strangely enough I might add on their shared interest in painting.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: Wow so instead of workers you replace the workers with painters and so it's painters of the world unite painters of the world unite apparently Dr.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: Ott wrote this is a direct quote from from Dr.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: Ott I have read in various English and French periodicals some writers mocking criticism of Hitler's background in art.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a weird thing to hone in on right it's like yeah yeah the whole Jewish thing wanting to take over the world okay but don't criticize his art yeah yeah I draw the line at his art yeah uh they know not of what they speak the painter has above other social types the enormous superiority of his clear vision of things painters are the ones most qualified to govern and to create a society completely different from those that have previously existed god damn it that is an odd hill to die on right there it is like yeah say what you want about the guy but he was a painter and I gotta I gotta go to bat for all the painters that's which is strange because I mean if you're looking if you look at his work at his paint uh his his uh volcanic paintings and all this stuff like uh it's completely different from what Hitler was doing Hitler was doing sort of mediocre classicist paintings and that's why the academy kind of rejected him because they're like what is this I mean you're gonna not a good painter yeah he was just you know copying the same style as before you know given the fact that you had already had all these trends that had innovated the art world for the at least 50 years you know beginning with um people like the suprematists the constructivists and the Russian uh like Rotchenko and and uh Maleevich and those guys uh even before uh Cubism arises uh even some of the theosophical um people who are involved in that movement like they're credited with being the first ones to create abstract art because they were they were painting things that were derived from their ideas called the thought form right and so they would try to translate what that thought was onto a onto a painting and you get these really surreal and very abstract paintings and it is now uh acknowledged that those people that were doing that uh back in the late 1800s be even before the constructivists and those guys and the cubists like they're the ones that that initiated the the modern abstract artistic movement and so by the time you get to Hitler these people are saying like what are you doing man like like this is so passi like we're not looking for this anymore and so Hitler was enamored with this idea of of of a former sort of a grandiose version of society.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah this former glory glory and so you can see it in his paint and you can see that you know after the fact you know hindsight is 2020 but it you can see that his art reflected his sociopolitical leanings and so not that it's understandable that he went from painting to being uh Hitler you know a genocidal maniac but that's a verb now being Hitler but it makes sense it really makes sense and then to have Ott over here defending that that's very strange.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: Very very strange that is weird but you know one thing I've noticed in my life though especially amongst um you know the uh those in in on the activist types especially the ones that are artists uh and poets because they they there's a lot of overlap there like the people you know activists who are artists and poets is they're very susceptible to um just wacky ideas like you know it's you try to have a conversation with some of them and like they're just like I'm so deep like they try to just be so deep that they just they accept everything that sounds like it could be deep and I've noticed a lot of the conspiracists that I've encountered in my life a lot of them I'm not gonna say all of them but a lot of them have some background as like artists and poets.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if there's some connection there.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's it started with Dr.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: Ott DPDs that's what those things are called DPDs yeah you know just you know well you just don't understand things the way I understand things a lot of that kind of stuff you know and and it sounds like Dr.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: Ott was like you just don't know man the painters we got it figured out you know that's we know what's up bro but you um in previous conversations you know when when we were talking about Chicano mural muralism like you you traced you know because if if Dr.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_00: Ott uh inspired Orozco and Siquieros and Rivera and all of these famed Mexican muralists who then in turn inspired the Chicano muralist that's like a an a a weird like what's the word I'm looking for genealogy yeah I think is the word I'm looking for right like that's it's in it's interesting to say the least to pick that apart and be like a lot of these ideas or just the inspiration I not the ideas necessarily but being inspired by someone's art and then finding out that the people who inspired their art was you know writing books like you know Jews over America.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah I mean it's kind of like that old adage right like never meet your heroes or however that goes because you know you have them put up on a pedestal and then you meet them and they come turn out to be complete jerks sometimes and that that seems to be the case here Dr.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: not that he's anyone's hero at least not not anyone that I know would say that they've ever heard of him first of all and consider him a hero but the fact that he's sort of like you could call him the godfather of Mexican slash by extension chican muralism because he's the one that sort of gets all that going back in the the late 1800s he was the first I mean he took those trips to Europe he he studied under some of the greats out there of their time and he he went to uh to the Sistine Chapel and other places out in various parts of Europe and he was you know in awe he was inspired and he was enamored and so even though he was against the Eurocentricity of of Mexican art he understood the value of taking the knowledge of the artistic movements from Europe and bringing those to Mexico but using them in such a way to advance a more indigenous and more uh folkloric uh inspired movement that would um give sort of an artistic voice to to Mexican art you know so that Mexico could could have its own artistic voice its own artistic identity and not just always completely sort of just looking towards Europe and copying and mimicking uh everything that Europeans did you know he won he wanted to enable and foster this idea of a native born indigenous artistic movement even though you're still using the tried and true methods that were developed elsewhere in Europe but you're kind of repackaging them in a way that is going to give uh Mexico uh its own artistic uh element right and so by extension by the time you get to the Chicano movement you know a lot of those early Chicano artists that were uh inspired by the movimiento and because they're artists they were they weren't necessarily activists they weren't necessarily politicians or academics they felt like they could use their own artistic talents uh uh in such a way to to be able to advance the ideals of the movimiento and so they started looking I mean it's it's like going back to the episode that we did on uh the day of the dead right like the the reason why the de los muertos is so huge now internationally and and and it has the flavor that it has of course Mexico and the indigenous communities in in southern Mexico get the credit for maintaining that but but the current iteration of it is something that is born out of Chicano artists that are looking back towards Mexico to try to find ways to reconnect and and and to be part and you know of the movimiento and and and bring some of that that artistic element from Mexico and and infuse it into the into the Chicano communities which were devoid of their own artistic element right before the Chicano movement yeah you had artists that were working for instance here in Dallas um we have um medellin who was originally from San Luis but you know he came to to Texas at a very early age and he ended up in Dallas and he became a foundational artist here in Dallas not just for the Chicano community but in general for the artistic um uh community of Dallas and and he's one of the um the most preeminent art institutes named the art institute of Dallas is something that he started and and he's known for that and in fact the Dallas Museum of Art just had a uh um a show of his you know retrospective of his of his work a lot of it which is inspired by the Mexican Revolution by indigenous uh iconography and also he was uh a Catholic he was uberly Catholic and so he he had a lot of Christian Catholic elements to his work which is fine but the point that I'm trying to make is that you did have people like him throughout the United States but they were very far and few in between and it's not until the Chicano movement that Chicano artists themselves native born in the US right that are saying what can we do to to bring this voice this element of art that our community needs and so who are they going to look at they're gonna look at you know the the same thing that the post-revolutionary um muralists were doing Diego Rivera Segiros Clemente Orozco with the with the grandiose paintings on the wall right to convey messages right the messages of the revolution or the post-revolution was this idea of creating uh a a national identity because before the revolution you had a lot of micro identities regional identities around the country and so the revolution gives people that goal something to look you know forward to this national identity and so they're doing that they're conveying these political messages these cultural messages and if you look at a lot of the art it's a lot a lot of it has indigenous iconography most of it you you could even say has indigenous iconography and that's all because of what you know Dr.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_01: Ott started back in the late 1800s and so going back to to what you were saying about the genealogy of of Chicano art it goes all the way back to Dr.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: R.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's wild because that's something that we see a lot uh we we see it pop up a lot it's a similar theme that pops up a lot in this podcast when we're examining where certain ideas come from right if you if you go back far enough to find out well this idea that we use was influenced by this was influenced by this was influenced by this and when you finally get to the root yeah you know sometimes it's a little uh right right right disappointing where what some of these people thought right and it's like god damn it why you know like like I like you know I like the concept of you know you're the other me right in fact I even like the poem I like the poem in lach etch uh Luis Valdez right wrote that poem great great message but then you go a step back and it's like oh Domingo Martinez Paredes okay and then you go a step back and it's like Le Planjon.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_00: Le Plan who yeah and you start looking at these like where these ideas were birthed it's like oh no god damn it and then what was the name of of that that missionary was it a Dominican missionary or who the one that that uh came up with the was it Hunabku oh yeah yeah he wrote the um the diccionario de Motul what was his name um blanking on his name blanking on his name yeah but uh yeah he he invented the idea of Hunabku because they needed a word in Yucatek Maya that could roughly equate the idea of the Christian God.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right and so then you get these two concepts this and Hunabku and then with the art of the symbol that you know has its own story with the Argues and uh now now you've got people like with it tattooed on their bodies and with this totally distorted understanding of of the origins.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I think it's important that we do the work that we do right like you know it's a bummer when we look back and we see something like God damn it so Dr.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_01: Ott you know wrote some like pro Hitler shit fuck yeah that's I mean that's a bummer I'm not I'm not defending him I'm not apologizing for Dr.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_01: Ott uh oh yeah yeah he recanted you know later in life and um but I'm not sure if I already said this but you know I think it it has a lot to do with with his anti um American sentiments right anti French sentiments that he had and you know because he was also a I'm assuming he was probably a a Catholic and maybe he was an uber Catholic of the the type that we see that um tend to be hold very problematic views let's just put it at that yeah that's put slightly and one of those one of those problematic views that a lot of these really ultra right wing hardcore Catholics have is being anti-Jewish because why because they're the ones that supposedly killed you know Christ right um even though according to their own scripture that was supposed to happen anyway so it's like get it right like which one is it?
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well when I was in Mexico like the first time I was ever in the Socalo I was like taken back because I saw um them selling copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and uh Mein Kampf like translated into Spanish both translated into Spanish were being sold on the street it mixed in with all these history books and stuff like this you know what the solution to that is you know how we can counteravail that we need to translate uh the four disagreements into Spanish and smuggle that into Mexico into the Sócalo into the various tiangis and until hey you know you know here get rid of that junk you got right there no one's buying that crap anymore here yeah nobody believes that shit so push this well some people do that's that's the problem but I was I was stunned and this was back when I was I don't know how old I was I was like 20 I think and just being on the streets of Mexico and being like why is this being sold here?
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is fucking insane but then the more I learn about his you know Mexican history and and like you were saying the ultra-right Catholicism and stuff I was like okay so it's all starting to make sense why this exists here it's all these these problematic views these distorted ideas of history you know there's a reason why why they exist but you know like I said I think that's why what makes what we do here so important is that we're willing to peel back that band-aid and uh yeah even if it hurts when you peel it off yep well you gotta rip rip it off and and you know expose that wound and and treat it right get some good medicine for that and what's what's the medicine what's the medicine that we use it's it's the truth my friend the truth that's right the truth because the truth well it's like medicine it doesn't always taste good but it is always good for you