Neo Baroque Codex

Codex Espangliensis: Neo-Baroque Art of Resistance
Author(s): Kat Austin, Carlos-Urani Montiel and Victoria J. Furio

Source: Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 39, No. 3, ARTS, CULTURE, AND POLITICS: Part
2: REPRESENTATIONS OF RESISTANCE IN LATIN AMERICAN ART (May 2012), pp. 88-105
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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.
El Codex Espangliensis es un trabajo colectivo centrado en aspectos políticos y

sociales relacionados con la cultura chicana. Presenta una interpretación particular
del mundo precolombino, la conquista, y las transformaciones culturales que resultan
del encuentro entre los mundos occidental e indígena, así como las interdependencias
económicas en la América actual. Este análisis muestra como el uso de conceptos y
estrategias barrocos (que se manifiestan físicamente en una larga hoja con dobleces,
como los códices prehispánicos), la mezcla de periodos históricos, referencias culturales,
y el uso de la fragmentación y la parodia dan lugar a una lectura desafiante y
alternativa que se resiste al flujo de información simbólica utilizado por el discurso
oficial americano.
Keywords: Codex Espangliensis, Baroque, Art, Resistance, Chicano/as, Borderlands
In 1998 Moving Parts Press published the Codex Espangliensis, a collective

work dealing with political and social matters concerning Chicana/o culture.
The Codex, reprinted two years later (Chagoya, Gómez-Peña, and Rice, 2000),1
presents a unique interpretation of the pre-Columbian world, the conquest,
the cultural transformations resulting from the encounter between Europe
and the Americas, and economic interdependence in present-day America. It
juxtaposes fiction and official history and combines artistic styles and
traditions, many of which can be traced to the Latin American art of the
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
Austin and Montiel / CODEX ESPANGLIENSIS 89
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. All of this is articulated in an alternative

discourse that goes against the aesthetic and literary canon and that is adept
at representing dualities and migrations, be they physical or symbolic (Figueroa,
2008: 91). The almost seven meters of the Codex configure a transhistorical
schema that allows for the confluence of eras and spaces while fragmenting
its narrative and unfolding its form.
In this article, we aim to describe this work and its underlying mechanisms
by employing concepts of the baroque. A review of the various uses of this
term allows us to identify research trends that can be used for the practical
analysis of contemporary productions such as the Codex Espangliensis,
productions framed by local situations while containing artistic and social
reverberations common to the historical development of all of Latin America.
The first section attempts to classify the uses of the term "baroque" and the
theories constructed around it, focusing on the strategies or artistic mechanisms
by which critics have drawn an association between a given creative process,
its social context, and the label "baroque" or "neo-baroque." While we do not
place the Codex in this category a priori, in the second section we examine it
in those terms because of the concept's capacity to relate aesthetic categories
to narratives that reconstruct the sociopolitical logic of historical periods
characterized by a dominant ideology, constant propaganda, and increasing
globalization (Vidal, 2005: 20-23).
BAROQUE: USES AND APPROACHES
ESSENTIALIST THEORY
An essentialist theory of the baroque emerged in opposition

Burckhardt's (1979 [1855]) proposal, developed by his disciple Heinrich
(1978 [1888]), of the baroque as an artistic style. The idea found it
exponent in Eugenio D'Ors and his neo-Platonist concept of the
barroco, published in 1935, coincided with the Generation of '27
influential Spanish poets) and the Latin American avant-gard
Catalan philosopher (D'Ors, 2002 [1935]: 68), the baroque was a
cultural constant. Similarly, rierre Kohler (1943: 117) wrote of the
a permanent norm or fundamental state of world culture, while
was a peak reached by some nations at specific moments. In
theory crossed the Atlantic, where Pedro Henríquez Ureñ
seventeenth century as the foundation of Hispanic American
expression. Alejo Carpentier (1966:33) wrote that America was baro
the arrival of the Spaniards and called upon his fellow Latin
novelists to "not fear baroquism—our own art, born of tree
retablos and altars, decadent carvings and calligraphic portr
even belated neo-Classicisms, baroquism created from the ne
name things." These ideas were received with enthusiasm by prop
geographical determinism such as Luis Alberto Sánchez (1978) an
Adoum (1974: 215)—"The baroque has its reason for being in the
Latin America. Its very reality is baroque, from the style of its jungl
Churrigueresque vegetation—to a mode of human behavior."
90 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
HYBRIDIZATION THEORIES
Hybridization—whether ethno-racial (mestizaje), sociocultura

syncretism, creolization), linguistic, or artistic—is the model of rep
in Hispanic America, and it articulates a critical discourse that
Western hegemony and creates autonomy and a sense of identity. T
of the Indies" described by Mariano Picón Salas (1990 [1944]
appropriation of style, a glimpse of emancipation (Acosta, 1985;
1948) within an apparent imitation (Torres, 1993) or distinctiv
(Bechara, 1998). Ángel Guido (1944) spoke of the "art of counter
idea redeveloped in La curiosidad barroca by José Lezama Lima [1957
essays of Gonzalo Celorio [2001]), embracing the idea that, thoug
presence was far-reaching by virtue of its position in the mot
Hispanic civilizations were capable of adapting themselves to the
trends,which they assimilated to the point of "counter-creating
generating something new. Other theoretical discourses on ident
developed (Paz, 1966): cultures in contact, including Moser's (199
"cultural recycling," Zamora's (2006) "image-as-presence," and th
knowledge" of Davidson (2007).
These cultural processes modify the individual's cognitive exp
it is here that we can begin to speak of the "criollo consciousne
Moraña (1988) or the "mestizo thinking" of Serge Gruzinski (1999
subversive aspects of the neo-baroque question the moderni
America (Echeverría, 1994) and serve as an alternative to postmo
Severo Sarduy (1987: 209), to be baroque in the twentieth cent
"threaten, judge, and parody the bourgeois economy" and to attack
language, and symbolic pillars of society that ensure its funct
communication." Here we can locate the folds and the mult
meanings (Deleuze, 1988), the usable pasts, maps, and cultural fo
1996), the philosophy of multiculturalism (Arriarán and Beucho
the pessimistic view of history (Chiampi, 2000).
FORMAL CHARACTERISTICS
Basing their studies on the formal characteristics that have been a

to the baroque style, various researchers outside the Hispanic r
broadened this subject area to include other productions, s
cinematography studied by Omar Calabrese (1987) and recently b
Purgar (2007). Francisco Javier Panera's (2005: 15) list of charac
useful for this purpose: tension, extravagance, imbalance, disorde
excess, horror vacui, visual saturation, exuberance, rituality, ex
wastefulness, the indiscriminate use of materials, simulation, su
Previously, Stephen Calloway (1994:15) had traced a path through
century fashion and interior design: "curious, hybrid, referen
strung and self-conscious baroque—this 'Baroque Baroque'—r
century's one great and whole-hearted affirmation of delight in
and grandeur of things." Ever more common in the visual arts are e
in which the baroque serves as a pretext for bringing together t
various artists, among them "Ultrabaroque: Aspects of Post-Latin
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
The evolutionary theory of the baroque conceptualizes it as

(historical) and style (poetic) that functions as an operative notio
means of reflection. Its starting point is José Antonio Maravall's (1
on the connection between art, society and politics. La cultura d
attempts to explain the sociocultural reality of the seventeenth-centu
urban centers, dominated and controlled by a monarchical-Catholic-ar
regime. The concept of crisis, which is the foundation of Maravall's d
operates in the fluctuations of the economy, has repercussions on the
and development of collective life, and creates states of social di
within the monarchy that can be observed at the end of each cy
society undergoes. Fernando Rodríguez de la Flor (2002: 19), focusin
temporality and the ability to go against the established pur
mentioned by Maravall), created a set of precepts for studying the ba
only of the Spanish empire but of any totalizing enterprise. For Emil
(1975:14), the baroque was an artistic style but one characterized as "so
complex and profound that equally affects thought and life in ge
whose externalization in artistic and literary manifestations does n
imply dynamism, complication, and ornamental overload."
The baroque, then, is the poetics of a particular historical period, an
baroque, according to Gustavo Guerrero (1987: 20), "translates the r
some aspects of those poetics." Here we are dealing with the consc
renewal (Lambert, 2004) of strategies or processes that combine th
discursive practices of the baroque to produce an effect either on the
or on the textual material itself. We concur with Jarauta and Buci-Gl
(1993: 12) idea of studying both baroques from their proximity in
terms. Rather than dwelling on its return or repetition, they are inte
the "procedures that articulate contemporary culture and decide

of representation."
The list of critics belonging to this trend is extensive, so we w
only two studies: that of Roberto González Echevarría (1993) on the
of the baroque in Spanish and Latin American literature and tha
Ross (1993) on the narrative techniques in Sigüenza y Góng
occidental. Ross (1993: 26) argues that the baroque "provided th
express a new culture that was more a mixture of disparate ele
synthesis. Since the aesthetic standard of baroque art did not
measure, or symmetry, but rather complexity and excess, the
America could be well represented through such a style." Rece
Abeyta (2006: 86), speaking of the neo-baroque economies in Car
Terra nostra, mentions that "one of the advantages of the neo
literary strategy is its ability to resist homogenization, its capacity
different cultural values without synthesizing them and ther
them to the mere reflection of pre-established Western values."
NEO-BAROQUE STRATEGIES
Identifying neo-baroque strategies presents a problem of nomenclature,

since they have been described in terms of labels that are sometimes
synonymous. Calabrese (1987), for example, proposes some "symptoms"
of the neo-baroque: limits, excess, details, fragments, rhythm, repetition,
instability, metamorphosis, the knot, the labyrinth, and disorder. Panera
(2005: 31) makes another list of motifs: the picture within the picture,
reality and simulacrum, loop and ornament, allegory and parody, love and
death, torment and ecstasy, fiesta, journey, metamorphosis, and the
grotesque.
Therefore, beyond drawing similarities or opting for one term or another, it
is important to point out the level at which these strategies operate. In other
words, if we analyze them at the moment of their execution, we can trace
ambiguous elements in which a cognitive configuration is confronted by two
or more aspects of reality with different and simultaneous tasks. Though
cognitive responses are exclusive, they promote an economical expressivity
that does not resolve the conflict but places it in the same physical space, in a
communicative object. All of this may take place at the level of format
(materials), micro-structure (substitution, proliferation, condensation), time
space coordinates (fragmentation), perspective (multiple realities), and
traditions and genres (juxtaposition of discourses). Ambiguity is connected to
an arrangement of symbolic elements that serves for accessing the imaginary
and causes instability and uncertainty in the individual (Spitta, 1995: 24). One
kind of ambiguity is inherent in the work and the other is produced in the
receiver. To say that a work is ambiguous assumes a series of processes that
have multiplied the original message and made it unstable and susceptible to
different interpretations according to the context (Suárez, 2008: 68). As René
Wellek (1963: 69) has reminded us, "the history of any term needs to be
decisive for its present-day use," but "a term cannot be returned to any of its
original meanings."
Austin and Montiel / CODEX ESPANGLIENSÍS 93
THE CODEX ESPANGLIENSIS
The 500-year anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the New World s

an intense debate on the colonization of the Americas and the subjugatio
massive genocide of the indigenous peoples. Despite the passage of
centuries, marginalization, violence, and inequality continued to be a
in the border areas of the United States. In response to the quincent
creative thought examined the period of conquest and colonizat
entered into a dialogue between the present and the past, questioni
prevailing history that envisioned the arrival of Columbus as a celeb
occasion.
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
Mesoamerican cultures recorded their vision of the world in what we call

codices, illustrated texts etched on the bark of the amate tree in sheets joined
like folding screens and sometimes covered with deerskin. The Codex
Espangliensis is a combination of codex and book. Unlike Western books, it is
read from right to left and has no separate pages but is made of one long
foldable sheet in the style of the pre-Hispanic codices. While Chagoya supplies
the work with its imagery, Gómez-Peña provides it with textual fragments
that occupy the spaces between the pictures. These texts were not created
specifically for the Codex but drawn from his poems, performances, and
critical writings. In the introduction Chagoya explains that he is not illustrating
Gómez-Peña's text and that Gómez-Peña is not annotating his images. Rather,
"it is more like we are playing a duet with counterpoint." This musical
allusion involves several simultaneous voices moving in independent
directions, complementing each other through a complex layering of musical
lines. Thus, polyphonic interaction between images and text directs the viewer
toward different interpretations. The object is to craft a complex harmony
whose coherence rests in the commonalities of the artists' subject matter.
Chagoya explains that he identifies with the works of Gómez-Peña more than
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
The mixing of fragments from different historical periods was

practice in the Baroque era. In El triunfo de Baco, by Diego Velázquez
appears among seventeenth-century laborers (Figure 3). Time in
Espangliensis is not a continuum but rather a multiple vision that
reader to think of the past while evoking the present and
Nezahualcóyotl, ruler of Texcoco, fights against Superman (Figu
latter accompanies the conquistadors in the massacre of the Azt
(Figure 5), and a U.S. soldier, Batman, and Mickey Mouse help the
in a battle against the Mexicas (Figure 6).
The overlapping of different historical periods negates the concept
as something progressive. The demonstrators in a Guadalupe Posad
mixed with those of the 1968 protest in the Plaza de las Tres Cu
Tlatelolco (Figure 7). Political agitation and demonstrations led in bot
massacres. The actors are different, but the use of violence to q
liberties remains the same. This is most evident in a panel containing
twentieth-century print in which mounted soldiers are beating
workers—presumably a depiction of the Rio Blanco strike—that
modified by Chagoya to include American comic-book character
with the soldiers, blasting the protesters with their ray guns from
moving effortlessly through the air with the aid of their jetpack
episode is televised from a helicopter (Figure 8). Superimposed h
new forms of control at play in the struggle between the dominant
the subordinate segments of society. Using the neo-baroque tec
Austin and Montiel / CODEX ESPANGLIENSIS OS
Figure 1. Altarpiece, Church of the Candelaria, Zurbarán.
Figure 2. Altarpiece by Leroy F. Martínez (image reproduced by permission).
historical citation to speak of present-day circumstances, the panel seems to

point to the use of advanced technologies and the media by developed
nations—the United States in particular—to maintain power over the oppressed.
According to Gustavo Guerrero (1987: 52), "the discontinuous organization
of space seems to be governed by the fragmentary organization of history." In
Figure 3. Diego Velázquez, El triunfo de Baco.
Figure 4. Nezahualcóyotl fighting Superman (Chagoya, Gómez-Peña, and Rice, 200

by permission).
the Codex there is an array of equivalences between a specific im

group of images juxtaposed with texts. The juxtaposition of images
events within the same frame, making history repeat itself. Time is c
as a spiral; though the events repeat, they differ in their details, supe
themselves over each other, fracturing the temporal perspective an
multiple eras simultaneous for the reader to create an atmosphere
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).
Figure 7. Demonstrators in a Guadalupe Posada print and those at a 1968 gather

(Chagoya, Gómez-Peña, and Rice, 2000, reprinted by permission).
Figure 8. Soldiers beating striking workers while American comic-book ch

protesters with ray guns (Chagoya, Gómez-Peña, and Rice, 2000, reprinted b
and uncertainty at the moment of reception. Serge Gruzinski (1991

to the society of New Spain as a "fractal," arguing that this "fr
intermittent reception created a certain sensitivity and dexterity
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."
TRADITIONS AND GENRES
Another foundational element of the Codex is the mixing of refe

belonging to various registers and cultures. For example, the title itself r
to the pre-Hispanic and colonial codices, works that are stored in ar
difficult to get access to, and available only to researchers. There are also
from the nineteenth century such as the political engravings of Gua
Posada, which were widely distributed in printed series. The materia
from different sources: pre-Hispanic, Catholic, colonial engravi
American comic books (Figure 9). There are various reasons for the in
of diverse traditions. One possible one is to communicate a specific world
another is to preserve and revitalize these traditions, and yet another is
an oppositional discourse.
The Codex Espangliensis presents an inclusive world capable of com
disparate elements, producing a broad vision that brings the reader c
the cultural reality of the artists. The Chicana/o worldview exis
intermediate space between various cultures and traditions. By read
Codex, the receiver experiences multiple perspectives and a sen
fragmentation. The artists create spaces of conflict that can be trave
the reader as desired, and by experiencing this world the reader be
comprehend the reality lived by border populations and their artis
political agendas.
The syncretic practices employed in Chicano/a cultural production
the New World baroque practices of colonized subjects. Threatened w
effacement of their traditions by dominant European cultural forms, co
artists and artisans ensured the preservation of those traditio
incorporating their signs into the framework of religious a
architecture, whose inclusive baroque structuring offered enough fle
to accommodate them. Similarly, Chicano/a cultural practices
involve "sustaining elements of Mexican tradition and lived encoun
Figure 9. Images from various sources (Chagoya, Gómez-Peña, and Rice, 2000, re
permission).
recombining "disparate elements such as corridos, images of Walt

Mexican cinema, and mass media advertising, and even Mexican ca
graphics and American Pop art" (Mesa-Bains, 1995:158). Given that
history has yet to be included in the official narrative of the U.S. nati
is an urgent need to document tradition, collective memory, and
experiences.
Finally, the authors invoke various traditions to construct an oppositional
discourse. While the well-versed Mexican or Chicano reader can navigate the
Codex Espangliensis with little difficulty, the general reader may easily become
lost in its sea of unfamiliar images. The Codex not only excludes readers
unfamiliar with Mexican history but consolidates an alternative discourse in
opposition to the official history. Here the marginalized discourse becomes
the privileged one, and the American mainstream is decentered and
threatened. This oppositional stance is evidenced by a crowd of people
criticizing a defensive Mickey Mouse, whose guilt is confirmed by the blood
on his hands, while Don Catarino, a Revolutionary-era comic-book hero,
aims a pistol at the mouse's head and the text protests: "El diálogo debe ser
público" (Figure 10). These are the politics of exclusion, in which groups
lacking power are absent from official dialogue and culture. By providing
alternative discourses in response to the effacing metanarratives of the
nation, the Codex Espangliensis functions in opposition to the official narratives
of exclusion.
PARODY
Parody is an artistic-literary technique in which Text A is include

subsequent Text B (Hutcheon, 1985). What is significant about this is n
the recovery of the earlier text but the critical discussion that modif
reception of it. Parody includes an imitation containing a revision th
have a satirical effect. As Garcia Canclini (1995: 317) maintains, whe
hegemonic order cannot be changed, satire must be employed in ar
masked challenge.
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
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
The various uses of the term "baroque" form a theoretical disco

provides tools for the analysis of cultural areas in tension, such as
zone, and their symbolic productions. The baroque is a compl
cultural organization that affects the individual's perception.
model of culture with its own strategies of representation and the ca
adapt to a new ecosystem or to sociopolitical conditions similar
the historical Baroque. These strategies can be projected transhist
sustain the aesthetic/poetic/identitary position of a comm
contemporary artist. We have examined how the Codex Espangliensis,
its physical form and its mixture of historical periods and cultural r
fragmentation, and parody, provides the reader an alternative r
resistance.
The Codex Espangliensis preserves the format of the ancient Mesoamerican

productions, as well as the experience of a different reading in which images
and text converge. Its textual-visual material comes from pre-Columbian
sources, nineteenth-century engravings, religious and political icons, and
heroes from American comics and creates a fictional space in which the
recurrence of conflictive images of identity and difference make its 15 plates a
cultural space of encounters, tensions, and confusions between indigenous
tradition, American Western culture, and a new element, Chicanismo. This
phenomenon has allowed us to draw a parallel to the baroque strategies of the
colonial period. While these aesthetics and techniques were originally useful
as an instrument for imperialist domination, they also serve the flow of
symbolic information from the American mainstream. And while the
appropriation of these techniques by indigenous peoples, mestizos, and
criollos allowed them to express their rebellion against Spanish domination,
the Codex Espangliensis employs them to challenge the official North American
discourse and its mass media.
NOTE
1. Codex Espangliensis: From Columbus to the Border Patrol (2000) is available for purcha
City Lights Books, http://www.citylights.com.
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Codex Espangliensis: Neo-Baroque Art of Resistance

Author(s): Kat Austin, Carlos-Urani Montiel and Victoria J. Furio

El Codex Espangliensis es un trabajo colectivo centrado en aspectos políticos y

Keywords: Codex Espangliensis, Baroque, Art, Resistance, Chicano/as, Borderlands

In 1998 Moving Parts Press published the Codex Espangliensis, a collective

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. All of this is articulated in an alternative

BAROQUE: USES AND APPROACHES

An essentialist theory of the baroque emerged in opposition

Hybridization—whether ethno-racial (mestizaje), sociocultura

Basing their studies on the formal characteristics that have been a

The evolutionary theory of the baroque conceptualizes it as

the "procedures that articulate contemporary culture and decide

Identifying neo-baroque strategies presents a problem of nomenclature,

THE CODEX ESPANGLIENSIS

The 500-year anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the New World s

Mesoamerican cultures recorded their vision of the world in what we call

The mixing of fragments from different historical periods was

Figure 1. Altarpiece, Church of the Candelaria, Zurbarán.

Figure 2. Altarpiece by Leroy F. Martínez (image reproduced by permission).

historical citation to speak of present-day circumstances, the panel seems to

Figure 3. Diego Velázquez, El triunfo de Baco.

Figure 4. Nezahualcóyotl fighting Superman (Chagoya, Gómez-Peña, and Rice, 200

the Codex there is an array of equivalences between a specific im

Figure 7. Demonstrators in a Guadalupe Posada print and those at a 1968 gather

Figure 8. Soldiers beating striking workers while American comic-book ch

and uncertainty at the moment of reception. Serge Gruzinski (1991

TRADITIONS AND GENRES

Another foundational element of the Codex is the mixing of refe

recombining "disparate elements such as corridos, images of Walt

Parody is an artistic-literary technique in which Text A is include

The various uses of the term "baroque" form a theoretical disco

The Codex Espangliensis preserves the format of the ancient Mesoamerican

Armstrong, Elizabeth (ed.)

Figueroa Sánchez, Cristo

Giovannotti, Micaela and Joyce Korotkin (eds.)

Henríquez Ureña, Pedro

Moreno Villa, José

Orozco Díaz, Emilio

Suárez, Juan Luis

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