The sacred presences in Taoltsin to nemilis a series created by Mixteyot Vázquez

On the evening of the 28th of September of 2023, Mixteyot Vázquez inagurated his first solo exhibition with the painting series Taoltsin to Nemilis[1]. Mixteyot Vázquez is a Maseual[2] artist from San Miguel Tzinacapan, an indigenous community in central Mexico. His exhibition, Taoltsin to Nemilis featured six oleo paintings in the city hall of his community. Five of the paintings depict scenes from the liturgical dance Danza de los Tejoneros. The Danza de los Tejoneros is a liturgical dance with Mesoamerican origins and still performed today in Tzinacapan. Through dancing and theater performances, the members of the dancing group reenact how corn was given to humanity at the dawn of time. Besides the Danza de los Tejoneros paintings, Vázquez portrayed the sculpture of Tzinacapan’s patron saint, St. Michael Archangel. Larger than the rest of the artworks, St. Michael’s portrait was the main piece on the exhibition.

            In this paper, I examine Taoltsin to nemilis as an actor that allows us to understand how Mesoamerican Religious traditions and Catholicism are intertwined in a contemporary indigenous community. Furthermore, I argue that the paintings encapsulate divine presences from the two religious’ worldviews. Imbued by these divine presences, the paintings were welcomed in the main religious feast of Tzinacapan, as an offering to maintain the balance of the universe and guarantee human and non-human life.  

My exploration of Taoltsin to Nemilis follows Vázquez’ journey to paint the series. In the first part of the paper, I review Vázquez motivation behind painting the series through the lenses of Mircea Eliade’s concept of hierophany. With Eliade theoretical approach, Vázquez art is revealed as a manifestation of the sacred. The production of Taoltsin to nemilis is part of a larger ritual to commemorate corn’s origin myth, a moment of intersection between the divine and mundane. The second part of the paper expands Eliade’s work using Bruno Latour’s Actor Network Theory (ANT) to unveil the sacred presences in Vázquez’ work. For Latour, religious objects are not a product or depositories of the belief of people. They are agents making the present within their own terms, transforming the networks they belong to.

Using the ANT as my theoretical framework, I focus my attention in three moments: 1) the preparation of the materials for the paintings, 2) Vazquez’ live sketching during ceremonial dance rehearsals, 3) and the opening ceremony on the peak of St. Michael’s feast. These three moments, I argue, reveal how Mixteyot Vázquez and Taoltsin to nemilis established a set of relationships with the Tejoneros ceremonial dance, Tzinacapan’s government, members of the local church, elders, and with St. Michael Archangel. In doing so, Vazquez art transcended the act of painting, and it performed the Tejoneros liturgical dance through their visual and material setting. As a result, Taoltsin to Nemilis became a member of Tzinacapan on its own, and an intermediary between the sacred and the mundane.

The fieldwork underpinning my argument includes participant observation on the exhibition opening, an interview in depth with Mixteyot Vázquez about his artwork, and my own experience as ceremonial dancer for 22 years in San Miguel Tzinacapan. 

[1] Mixteyot Vázquez has translated the title of the exihibition to Spanish as “El maíz nuestra vida”, (the corn our life). 

[2] Maseual (singular) or Maseualmej (plural) is how the people of San Miguel Tzinacapan refer to their own ethnic identity. This group is also known as Nahuas or contemporary Aztecs.