Posted by duane (not Dwyane from Alberta on February 1, 2016, 1:21 pm
Edited by board administrator February 12, 2016, 8:45 am
¨to kindle the artistic spirit in the youth of La Manzanilla¨
¨The road to hell is paved with good intentions¨
Hi
I usually avoid art walks like the plague, but after barkeep willie told me the game I wanted to watch wouldn't start until six I decided to take the tour.
Many of the venues I visited were in the artists' beach-side homes complete with revenue suites. No starving artists here. Of the 28 artists in the map guide, 3 had Spanish surnames but I could only find one who was Mexican- from Mexico City's exclusive Zona Rosa and the Art Walk's token Hispanic. After taking the tour, I decided the best art in town wasn't in the foreigners' villas, but in the mochilas of the ambulantes from Guerrero.
My beef with the Gringo artists isn't the quality of their work - or lack of it. What I don't like is that these fly in/fly out carpetbaggers on tourist visas are operating businesses that are in direct competition for finite tourist dollars with the native artists from Guerrero and Michuacan and Puebla. They then try to rationalize their sins by throwing a few crumbs and crayons at the ¨deserving¨ poor. If a Mexican tried to do this in the USA s/he would be deported faster than you can say "Ay viene la migra".
And I wasn't aware that Mexico's youth needed kindling by aging yankee new agers. Mexicans were creating monumental works of art when our European ancestors were still using caves as their canvass.
Did I hear someone say cultural imperialism?
bye
887
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