‘Culture y Cultura’ Tackles Complex History

The Autry Museum’s current special exhibition is “Culture y Cultura: How the U.S.-Mexican War Shaped the West.” An ambitious undertaking, it raises more philosophical and material questions than it can reasonably answer.

In 1848 the United States, having won the war, annexed half of Mexico’s territory, including California, Texas, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona and parts of New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming. Often seen as essentially an imperialist land-grab, it was hardly America’s finest hour.

At the same time, the formal settlement--the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo--paid Mexico $15 million for the land. This, along with the later Gadsden Purchase, established the present U.S.-Mexican border. In the process, Mexican residents in the acquired territories were granted full U.S. citizenship as well as title to their land.

The originals of these agreements are on view among a rather daunting array of some 200 artifacts ranging from diaries to canon, leather breeches and carpenter’s tools to maps and mantillas. Intrinsically interesting, they also provide a kind of ambient envelope for the exhibition.

At the same moment, the installation design--although workmanlike--isn’t sufficiently deft to provide the right combination of separation and flow required by such a complex array of material. The result is a sometimes-muddled--albeit compelling--presentation.

The problem may be simply a need for more space or a built-in requirement to tailor material to the available galleries. The show attempts to trace events all the way back to the end of the pre-Columbian era with conquistador-style armor that stands near an Aztec carving.

While wondering if that much background is really advisable in the circumstances, one begins to wish for a documentary video introduction to get viewers oriented. Even a catalog would help. Evidently a publication is in the works.

To make matters even more distracting, the exhibition doesn’t quite seem to be about its title. Rather than addressing the larger stated theme of “Shaping the West,” the real subject seems to be the way resident Mexicans were culturally molded by the annexation.

If this were made clear up front, viewers might have an easier time deciphering a visual theme that is otherwise only fitfully apparent. Repeatedly, the exhibition nearly juxtaposes something like a pleasant re-creation of a traditional Santa Fe house interior with, say, military regalia that’s clearly of European origin. This tilts the exhibition in the direction of a mega-theme suggesting an indigenous culture whose ways were forcibly distorted by a powerful alien invader. Seen this way, it’s very moving to contemplate Mexican history as a tragic epic in which the people are twice ravaged, first by the Spanish and then by the United States.

In the interim, of course, Mexico developed a new kind of racially mixed native population. That issue is touched on in a 1763 painting by Miguel Cabrera. Part of a series, it illustrates how the union of a Mexican Indian and someone of mixed Indian and European blood--a mestizo--would result in a child labeled “coyote.” All of which is to recognize--as Octavio Paz did so eloquently--that the Mexican psyche is not uncomplicated.

Sections devoted to the social standing of Mexican Americans after the war clearly take the position that, on the whole, they have suffered unduly from racially biased inequality, a charge largely justified by the record.

To illustrate the point, however, the exhibition employs such artifacts as a 1910 ceremonial uniform from the Masonic Brotherhood, a predominantly Protestant organization that discouraged Catholic--and therefore Mexican--membership.

California orange crate labels are used as evidence suggesting a condescending sentimentalized Eurocentric Anglo attitude to a heritage more often labeled “Spanish” than “Mexican.”

*

Vintage pulp novels and movie ads are supposed to show that Mexican Americans sometimes made folk heroes of real outlaws like Joaquin Murrieta while Anglos stereotyped Mexicans as bandits.

Though all this rings entirely true, there may be some danger of the exhibit’s appearing trivial by making a serious point with such apparently harmless and even well-intended material. Paradox is unleashed. A voice in the mind whispers, “Wait a minute. Anglos love bandits. Look at all those gangster movies.”

A final section is devoted to socially conscious contemporary Mexican American art that grew mainly out of the militant ‘70s Chicano movement.

The anger of the period is most forcibly expressed in a 1981 poster by Yolanda M. Lopez. It depicts an ancient Aztec extending his fist toward the viewer behind the bold caption, “Who’s the Illegal Alien, Pilgrim?”

All finally leading to the enticing, unanswerable question of what the world would be like if Mexico had retained all that precious land.

Christina Ochoa of Self-Help Graphics was curator of the contemporary section. The museum’s Theresa R. Gonzalez organized the main exhibition.

* Autry Museum of Western Heritage, 4700 Western Heritage Way, Griffith Park; through Sept. 7, closed Mondays. (213) 667-2000.