Often using violence, death, and the structures of power that surround them as her subject for exploration, Mexican artist Teresa Margolles will exhibit a new work that examines the effects of ongoing conflict on contemporary culture. Untitled (2010) features a series of six custom-made concrete benches to be exhibited near the north piazza of the BP Grand Plaza at LACMA. The cement used to construct these benches has been mixed with a liquid that was used to clean corpses in an autopsy room in Mexico – four gruesome fatalities, all products of drug- and gang-related violence. These functional benches, intended for use by the museum audience, take the form of an abstracted human body lying prone on the ground, thus reflecting their content onto the visitors.

Margolles has used this format previously, presenting a set of six benches at Jardín Botánico Culiacán, a Botanical Garden in Culiacán, Mexico. However, while the form is identical, the ideas that infuse this work function as the flipside of those the artist addressed in the preceding group, which were intended to provide spaces of tranquility, monuments to the dead where spectators might find peace in the tragedies. The new works at LACMA, on the other hand, function instead as what the artist describes as “perfect embodiments of the spirit of evil,” asking those that might engage with them to feel the overwhelming energy of aggression that produced the infused material. This work is not merely for shock or political gesture, however, as the elegant, minimal aesthetic of the work, their placement (per the artist’s request) in a beautiful, outdoor space, and their use value as a place of rest and contemplation for a passing viewer, additionally suggest the possibility for brutality and poetry to coexist.

Teresa Margolles was born in Culiacán, Mexico where she studied art, communication sciences, and received a diploma in forensic medicine from the Servicio Médico Forense. Her practice involves the development of social and conceptual artistic strategies on the basis of the use of bodily substances and images of corpses. Margolles’s work, despite its controversial character, has increasingly been exhibited in different venues around the world, including the Liverpool Biennial (2006), the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany (2007), La Colección Jumex, Mexico (2007), and Kunsthalle Krems, Austria (2008). She was the official representative of Mexico at the 53rd International Art Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia (2009 — see the installation here)

This exhibition courtesy of Jardin Botánico Culiacán & CIAC.

Sponsor: American Indian Museum Heye Center. New York

A celebration of the Day of the Dead including hands-on workshops, storytelling with the Colorado Sisters and Michael Heralda, and dance performances by Cetilitzli Nauhcampa (Mexica).

Sponsor: National Museum of the American Indian and National Museum of American History. Washington D.C.

Cultural presentations, food demonstrations and hands-on activities around the celebration for the day of the dead in Mexico and other Latin-American countries.

The Trans-Border Institute (TBI) was created in 1994 with two main objectives: 1) to promote border-related scholarship, activities and community at the University of San Diego, and 2) to promote an active role for the University in the cross-border community. To realize these objectives, the Institute engages in a variety of programmatic activities and initiatives.

The real significance of an attempt to lower the value-added tax, however, has less to do with short-term fiscal responsibility than long-term economic stability.  The bump in 2010 fiscal revenues from higher oil prices and an anemic economic recovery and a very healthy debt profile suggests that Mexico has the capacity to absorb the fiscal impact of an economic stimulus.  More worrying is the broader message this proposal sends:  PRI politicians have not learned from past mistakes and continue to be willing to take economic risks to regain or retain political power.  The logic driving this proposal is disconcertingly similar to the thinking that convinced the Salinas administration to delay devaluing the peso throughout 1994 despite the evident economic risks – a disconcerting development indeed.

Originally published in the Inter-American Dialogue’s Latin American Adviser, 7 October 2010.

Sponsor: Center on Public Diplomacy, Annenberg School, USC.

Ambassador Carlos Pascual will talk about current challenges for U.S. public diplomacy, with a special focus on journalism, human rights, and security.

“But, even if legalization did displace the DTO’s from marijuana production and distribution market in Mexico, they can hardly be expected to take such a change lying down. Rather, they may intensify the violent power struggle over remaining hard-drug smuggling and distribution…Worse yet, DTO’s could intensify their efforts to take over other illegal economies in Mexico, such as smuggling of migrant and other illegal commodities, prostitution, extortion, and kidnapping, and also over Mexico’s informal economy…”

Aunque parte de un proyecto académico, el taller se distinguió por su orientación práctica y participativa. A diferencia de la mayoría de las conferencias, consistió principalmente en mesas de trabajo en los que los participantes aportaban sus puntos de vista y experiencias con el fin de generar ideas y herramientas que sirvirían para los objetivos arriba descritos.

Haga click aquí para la Relatoría Final del Taller!

Haga click aquí para el sitio web del Taller.

Here  is the link:

Oxford Handbook on Mexican Politics:  Elections, Movements, and the Media, featuring papers/presentations by James A McCann; Jorge I. Domínguez; Pamela K. Starr; Sallie Hughes, and Shannon Mattice.

Jorge I. Dominguez, “Mexico’s Campaigns and the Benchmark Elections of 2000 and 2006“.  And the associated charts.

Sallie Hughes, “Democracy in the Newsroom: The Evolution of Journalism and the News Media“.

Pamela K. Starr, “The United States and Mexican Domestic Politics“.

Shannon Mattiace, “Social and Indigenous Movements in Mexico’s Transition to Democracy“.

James McCann, “Changing Dimensions of National Elections in Mexico“.

In 2009, after reporting from the border for many years, Ed Vulliamy traveled the frontier from the Pacific coast to the Gulf of Mexico, from Tijuana to Matamoros, a journey through a kaleidoscopic landscape of corruption and all-out civil war, but also of beauty and joy and resilience.

The Onion on the Mexican security situation.

Sponsor: National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago

An exhibition curated by Dolores Mercado with a selection of art and ofrendas celebrating the Day of the Dead in Mexico.

Sponsor: DuSable Museum of African American History, Chicago.

Curated by Sangrario Cruz of the University of Veracruz and the National Museum of Mexican Art’s Visual Arts Director Cesareo Moreno, this exhibition through paintings, photographs, lithographs and historical texts, highlights the impact that Africans had on Mexican culture and examines the complexity of race, culture, politics, and social stratification.