“Tell me anyway. Maybe I can find the truth by comparing the lies.”

“Life is not an easy matter ... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.” 

― Leon Trotsky [1875-1940], Diary in Exile, 1935

on alcoholism

“I drank to drown my sorrows, but the damned things learned how to swim.”
- Frida Kahlo [1907-1954]

The Wall

"As of this week, the Berlin Wall has been down for longer than it was up."

a plaster cast taken of a dead person's face

"A civilization that denies death, ends by denying life."
- Octavio Paz

"I'd rather die on my feet than live upon my knees."

- Emiliano Zapata

bad boy

"Damien had this idea for a piece where he was going to have his hands surgically removed and then, you know, sewn back on. It was mad but he was dead set on it. We found this doctor in Mexico who was going to do it, but luckily, he decided against it."

- Dave Stewart [born 1952] in the September 2009 edition of Fast Company, pg.73

oldest temple of worship in the Americas

By the wishes of Hernán Cortés, Templo y Hospital de San Felipe de Jesus was constructed in 1524 on Aztec ruins to assist in the treatment of the soldiers who were wounded while fighting in wars against the Aztecs.

An earlier reference to Cortés here.

people were terrible

The Rich Banquet while the Workers Fight, 1923

José Clemente Orozco [1883-1949] also believed people were spiritual.

Tenochtitlán

On one occasion in 1487 the Aztecs sacrificed four lines of prisoners each two miles long. At least 40,000 deaths over four days.

Image source here.

An earlier reference to Tenochtitlán here.

"winning of America"

Unknown Artist, The Conquest of Tenochtitlán* [one of a narrative of eight scenes], 17th Century

Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and his cannon ships, horses and armour, defeated and afterwards repressed the spear-toting, human sacrificing Aztecs in 1519.

The imperial power of the Incas was broken in 1532.

* from the most important historical series in Mexican art

An earlier reference to 1532 here.

the secret to directing

Mexico, 1963

"I do most of my directing in the casting process."

- John Huston [1906-1987]

An earlier reference to Huston here.