Cultural Treasures

Los Angeles has presently in its midst not one but two visual displays of the finest in Latin American culture, treasures from the ancient Maya people and a modern Mexican muralist. The works are not unrelated. David Alfaro Siqueiros believed passionately that “art should not be created for a private audience.” He came from a tradition of public art that had long been reflected in the murals, stone columns and carvings on monumental Maya buildings at sites like Palenque in Mexico and Tikal in Guatemala.

The exhibits’ purposes are not unrelated, either; both aim at least in part at preserving the work of their subjects. The exhibit of Siqueiros’ paintings, drawings and etchings, which continues at Plaza de la Raza cultural center on Mission Boulevard in East Los Angeles through Oct. 31, seeks to generate interest in preserving a mural Siqueiros painted in 1932 on the Italian Hall at Main and Olvera streets. Like much of Siqueiros’ work, it was not subtle in its view of the Indian and the worker as victim. What whitewash has not covered, time has eroded.

Art often makes political statements simply through its creation as well as by bold assertions of a point of view. The stunning jade jewelry, earth-toned pottery and delicate carvings displayed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History through Nov. 10 are more than intrinsically interesting; they also tell onlookers that their civilization, which reached its most classic period between AD 250 and 900, was sufficiently complex to support an artisan class to make these objects and an elite class to wear them and use them. Likewise, Maya writing and calendar systems were intellectual achievements of a population that had time to explore such mysteries.

Not that the Maya mysteries themselves are totally unraveled. The Yucatan sites that so many tourists see at Uxmal, Chichen Itza and Tulum near Cancun were actually centers of a people in decline after flourishing earlier to the south in Guatemala. Was it excessive mercantilism that led to the Maya demise? Rampant militarism? Disease? Drought? No one knows.

The task was made harder by the burning of Maya books by a zealous Spanish priest, Bishop Diego de Landa, soon after the conquest, and harder still by tomb looters over the centuries.

Indeed, Richard Adams of the University of Texas at San Antonio tells of deep trenches cut within the last five years into the ancient graves at Rio Azul in Guatemala. Armed looters stripped 18 tombs there not only of their artifacts but also of the historical knowledge they would have revealed in the hands of archeologists.

Pre-Columbian art is a valuable commodity today, and the current Maya exhibit makes a plea for its protection rather than exploitation. Edna Nunez de Rodas, director of the anthropological institute of Guatemala, wrote in her message in the exhibit catalogue that too many people commonly steal cultural artifacts from countries they consider underdeveloped. “Technological and economic underdevelopment can be overcome,” she added, “but the damage to a culture is irreversible.” The current Maya exhibit shows what is at stake.