Mauricio Cervantes: The routes of the nopal | XIV Havana Biennial

… Is one of the works that I conceived under the diligent gaze of Dr. Concha Fontenla for the exhibition The Poetics of Void, of which she is the curator. It will take place during the months of March and April 2022, in Factoría Habana. The exhibition The Poetics of the Void is the Number 3 Experience –Return to the Future– of the program of the 14th Havana Biennial, Cuba. The motto for this Biennial is Future and Contemporary.

Factoría Habana is a space attached to the Office of the Historian of Havana; it has been directed by Dr. Fontenla since 2009.

It would be unthinkable to carry out the design, development, and shaping of all the art works that I have done with raw earth, without the support of the most active allies of Matria Jardín Arterapeutico, during the last five years: the organic tissue of bio-constructors that work in Oaxaca. I am particularly grateful to Alejandro Montes González, from the Architectural Advisory Office –COAA– whose skills for networking has expanded this fabric to other latitudes.

I sign all artistic experiences that focus on climate change or agroecology with the seal of Matria Jardín Arterapéútico.

The ecological sense of the art work The Routes of the Nopal Routes is an art work that alludes to the imperative need to ensure the regeneration of soils and seas; the capture of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere depends on it. It touches on topics such as the migratory movements of human groups, their founding myths, as well as the extinction of languages and civilizations.

The work is supported by the thesis that, with soil, with raw earth, it is possible to satisfy the housing deficit in many many corners around the world. Based on the adaptation of vernacular construction techniques, an earth sanctuary will be erected, with a discreet niche on one of its sides, in which nopal leaves (Opuntia ficus indica) will be deposited.

From distant seas up to the facade of the sanctuary arrives a fleet of 13 kayaks. Shaping sculptures with raw earth is a recognition of agroecological practices that emphasize the regeneration of soils. Despite not having a significant environmental impact, in the agave distillers’ regions of Oaxaca, Mexico, there are initiatives that urge local communities to build their houses with raw earth and to use, not drinking water, but stillage that is discarded from distillation.

At some point in the conceptualization of the art work, I considered the idea of flanking the sides of the boats with metal inlays. These would gather the names of indigenous groups throughout the American continent1. The thirteenth vessel would be made with names of languages or extinct civilizations of the same continent. I renounced such incrustations in order not to fall into rhetorical vagaries that would jeopardize the multiplicity of the readings of the art work, probably reducing it to one, in a unique way.

The earth sanctuary will measure 2.10 x 2.80 m at the base and 2.80 m high.

It will be erected on site in Factoría Habana, the venue of the exhibition, with a mesh of wood and branches and with soils from the closest banks to the old quarter of the Cuban capital, ideally mixed with rum stillage and vegetable fibers.

The kayaks are 1:4 scale replicas of boats originally used by Arctic people. They are being made during the second semester of 2021 in my workshop in Oaxaca, Mexico. The longest of them will be close to 1.20 m in length.

The symbolism of the nopal cactus

Printmaking from my series The codex from Calimaya.

Unlike plants such as corn or agave, the nopal does not have a chair in the Mesoamerican pantheons, despite its importance in the founding myth of Mexico - Tenochtitlan. After 200 years of wandering through the lands of Aridoamerica, tribes that one day left Aztlán would find the symbol described in the prophecies to stop their secular march: an eagle standing on a cactus devouring a prickly pear.

According to some linguists tenochtli is a stone prickly pear, while some Mythologists associate it with a bleeding heart that connected with its roots to the underworld, to merge with the essence of the eagle that would devour it. Reductionist views would say that the symbol expresses the supremacy of the eagle, of solar lineage, defeating that of the nopal, of lineage linked to the moon. The incorporation of the serpent –represented in the national coat of arms of the Government of Mexico– proceeds from a period after the conquest and it is difficult to dissociate it from the defeat of evil, expressed on more than one occasion in Christian iconography by the snake.

Beyond the colonizing glances for the explanation of these symbols, the truth is that nopales and prickly pears have populated Mexican landscapes since times when human groups lived by hunting and gathering, many millennia before the first pages of the Mesoamerican cosmogony were written. It was before the recorded periods of history when plants addressed the collectors in the first person to dictate in their hearts, which plants would feed them, which would heal them, or simply to suggest to them the notion that there is water

here.3

Sobre la elección de los kayaks I have reduced to a dialogue of two voices –from two specific regions of the continent– those of all the human groups that have inhabited it, living under the premise of treating all species as equals.

The encounter between Inuit navigators and the flora of Mesoamerican peoples sounds as absurd as the real event –although implausible– of the displacement of solid particles that cross the Atlantic through the air, from the Sahara desert to the Amazon basin.4 It is calculated that the displacement of that dust amounts to 40 million tons per year: four times more than the sediments that the Mississippi River, the largest in North America, moves in a similar period. Saharan dusts transport huge amounts of minerals, such as phosphorus that enriches Amazonian soils and that results from the decomposition of fish and crustacean bones, as well as diatom algae that lived in geological eras prior to ours.

The unusual nature of these displacements leads me to think about naval migrations along the coastlines of our continent or inland waters: migrations, some recorded by history, others by fiction. Of the second order, at the climax of a fictional migration that shapes the art work within this text, navigators of Inuit lineage traveled to the arid lands below the Tropic of Cancer,

that is, to the lands with the highest density of agaves and nopales on the planet (currently included in the Ecological Reserve of Cuicatlán-Tehuacán, Mexico).

This is how I decided to sit in the dialogue, an icon of the Mesoamerican flora in front of groups that were defined continuously for four millennia, based on two of their cultural expressions: the ice houses and the kayaks.

According to the United States Census Bureau, in 2005, indigenous peoples made up 16 percent of Alaska's population, numbering 663,661.5 The image of top-of-the-world people living in igloos today it is practically found in ethnographic or history museums. The kayaks made of sealskin or caribou that covered structures made with pieces of wood polished by the marine waters or with the remains of whale skeletons have largely disappeared.

The most common meaning for kayak (the Inuit word, one of the largest indigenous groups in the Arctic) is reduced to that of a hunter's boat. Although before the industrial production of kayaks there were two or three seats, the ancient kayak belonged to a single hunter, built in a specific way for that single user. It was said that, if an Eskimo went hunting and did not return, it was because he had used a borrowed boat. The mastery of the use of the kayak equated the hunter's personal

development with the strength of his community bond, as well as the degree of relationship with his geography and natural environment, from which he took what was strictly necessary. There is in the conception of this boat, a technological expression that expands the tool to the symbolic notion of greater respect for ecology: nothing could be further from anthropocentric extractive practices.

The dialogue between Inuit technology and Mesoamerican founding myths is condensed in the journey of water. On the one hand, the vital liquid that allows succulents such as the nopal to survive in desert climates with little rains, as opposed to ice, but not that of the romantic vision of the Top of the world 6, but that of the glaciers and seas that are melting in a dizzying way, revealing ancient geological secrets, but also warning about the unstoppable acceleration of climate change.

«In October (2020) the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) declared a state of emergency due to climate change. Alaska Native villages are suffering particularly hard from the effects of climate change. The melting of the perpetual ice blankent, the lack of sea ice formation along the coast, drought, fires and erosion have made some villages uninhabitable… »7

2017 My first canoes: iron and wooden structures covered with layers of raw earth and vegetable fibers.

NOTAS: The sources of the quoted information are in process of translation

1

Cuando se extingue una lengua desaparece una manera de concebir y describir el mundo.

La UNESCO publica informes al respecto en el Atlas UNESCO de las lenguas del mundo en peligro.

«La última edición del Atlas (2010, disponible en inglés, francés y español de Ediciones UNESCO), fue realizada gracias al apoyo del Gobierno de Noruega. En esta edición figura una lista de 2.500 lenguas (dentro de las cuales 230 extintas desde el decenio de 1950). Estas cifras se acercan a la estimación comúnmente admitida, que gira en torno a unas 3.000 lenguas amenazadas en el mundo entero. El Atlas señala para cada lengua, el nombre y el grado de peligro de desaparición que corre, así como el país, o los países, donde se habla.» http://www.unesco.org/new/es/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/linguistic-diversity-and-multilingualism-on-internet/atlas-of-languagesin-danger/ 2

Los planos constructivos de mis kayaks a escala se están desarrollando, con la ayuda del Diseñador Industrial César Rivas.

3

La Secretaría de Agricultura y Desarrollo Rural del Gobierno de México estima que anualmente se producen más de 800 mil toneladas, de nopal y que

el consumo per cápita es de 6.4 kilogramos.

En países como Cuba, se realizan estudios para el uso de la tuna como complemento alimenticio: Perspectivas de la producción de inulina a partir de la tuna (Opuntia ficus-indica), Dr. Isnel Benítez-Cortés, Dr. Amaury Pérez-Martínez, Dr. Reynerio Álvarez-Borroto, Msc. Oscar Collado-García, Msc. Yosvany GonzálezDíaz, Universidad de Camagüey "Ignacio Agramonte Loynaz", Camagüey, Cuba. http://scielo.sld.cu/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2224-61852015000200005

4

Alejandra Martins, BBC Mundo, Del Sahara al Amazonas: 4 fascinantes impactos del polvo del desierto que viaja miles de kilómetros para llegar a América

Latina. https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-45019573

5

De acuerdo a informes de 2019 del Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas del Gobierno de México, en el país 25 millones de personas se reconocen

como indígenas y de ellos siete millones 382 mil son hablantes de una de las 68 lenguas indígenas.

Los datos del Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020 del Instituto Nacional de Geografía y Estadística corroboraron el número de hablantes. https://www.inegi.org.mx/contenidos/saladeprensa/aproposito/2020/indigenas2020.pdf 6

El país de las sombras largas, novela de Hans Ruesch publicada en 1950 es una narrativa que se desarrolla en el Ártico, la cual nos cuenta la historia de un

joven inuit y su pequeña familia. Educado con una cultura donde las costumbres, tradiciones y la naturaleza imperan en la vida de todos los inuit y como la aparición del «hombre blanco» trastoca todas las costumbres de éstos, rompiendo el delicado equilibrio de sus habitantes.

7 Tomado del reporte El Mundo Indígena:2020 | Cambio climático. Publicado en la página web del International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), con sede en Copenhague, Dinamarca. https://www.iwgia.org/es/estados-unidos/3760-mi-2020-estados-unidos.html

Art Work Data Sheet Site specific work: featured by 13 kayaks and one raw earth sanctuary.

THE KAYAKS

Replicas of original 19th century models. The lineal plans are archived at the Canadian Museum of History in Quebec.2 Iron and wooden structures covered with layers of raw earth and vegetable fibers.

KAYAK MEASURES

1.20 x 0.19 x 0.11 m | 20 Kg.

PACKAGING

13 Wooden boxes.

PACKAGING MEASURE

1.30 x 0.25 x 0.21 m | 3.5 kg

NET WEIGHY

305 kg

THE SANCTUARY

Inspired by a sanctuary found in the UNESCO´s Mixteca Alta Geopark, Oaxaca: the region where the clays to shape the kayaks come from and where the fictional story of the finding of a 2,000-year-old kayak´s fossil begins. It will be built on site with a wooden structure and bamboo mashes. Its preparation requires the advice (or collaboration) of Cuban bio-builders, a crew of four masons, a concrete mixer, 300 liters of vegetable fibers (straw, for example), 1 cubic meter of soil and 1,000 liters of water.

b MEASURES

2.10x 2.80 x 2.80 m | Weight ca. 2,000 kg

The kayaks

The model

Each bar in front of the largest block of the model (the sanctuary) represents a 1.20 m long kayak.

Measures of the sanctuary: 2.10 x 2.80 m of base, 2.10 m tall. The sanctuary has a niche at one of its sides, where nopal leaves will be placed. Measure of the niche 40 x 80 cm.