Power The Art That Made Mexico: Paradise, Power and Prayers

At the beginning of the 15th century,

this vast pyramid was the largest monument in the world.

It was the heart of the powerful Mesoamerican city-state of Cholula.

But in the space of a day, in 1510,

a force of Spanish conquistadors swept through,

destroying temples and looting treasures.

Thousands were slain in a matter of hours.

The great regional force of Cholula was toppled.

And to emphasise their dominance,

the Spanish built a church on top of the ancient pyramid.

Abrupt and radical change flows through the history of Mexico,

a nation propelled by three main forces...

The struggle for power which has defined this country over millennia.

Land and nature, which have been the source of life

and the cause of conflict and death since the earliest times.

And faith.

In Mesoamerican gods and Christian iconography,

which has been ever-present throughout its existence.

These are the beats, rhythms and currents of Mexico,

and they run through my blood.

As an artist born here, and with roots stretching back generations,

I want to take you on a journey through these three great stories

which have shaped not just Mexican art, but Mexico itself.

Throughout world history, art has always been used

as a tool by those in power.

But for me, Mexico differs in how this incredible relationship

between art and power

can be seen so clearly across the millennia.

In this programme, I'm going to explore

how the artists of this land

didn't only project the power of ancient civilisations,

they also become powerful authors of Mexico's history.

And they continue to give Mexican identity voice and power.

In 1910, on the centenary of independence from Spain,

the foundation stone was laid on what was to be, at 200 feet,

one of the largest ceremonial arches in the world.

It was meant to express the unassailable power

of the most durable dictatorship in Mexico's history.

Porfirio Diaz had ruled here for over 30 years with an iron fist,

the strongest government Mexico had experienced since independence.

Yet less than a year after this stone was laid,

a revolutionary war began

that would leave the Diaz regime in ruins.

And when this arch was completed years later,

it was christened The Monument To The Revolution.

In the 10-year revolutionary war, over a million people died

and the old colonial order was completely overturned.

Mexican civil society was shattered

and traditional power structures eviscerated.

When the shooting stopped in 1920,

a fragile, uncertain new Mexico emerged,

a country that desperately needed a uniting force.

A new national story.

The power to achieve this lay with art.

There was one kind of art

that dominated in the projection of this message -

muralism.

Murals were works of art making a public statement.

They told stories in epic scale,

containing vast sweeps of Mexico's history,

from its ancient past to its revolutionary present.

And they also projected its future.

But the power of murals wasn't simply in what they depicted,

it was in their permanence.

What I love about muralism is that it can't be extracted

from the place where it was made.

It can't be removed from the context of its origin.

The space can change function, depending on who's looking after it,

but since 1922, this has remained the same.

And that's so different to works on canvas

that we see in museums in Europe.

Mexico's most famous muralists were know as Los Tres Grandes.

David Alfaro Siqueiros,

Jose Clemente Orozco

and Diego Rivera.

Together, they made an indelible mark on Mexican history

by explaining its power struggles to the people

and providing a vision for everyone to share.

Where the muralists painted

was just as symbolically important as what they painted.

Here in my hometown of Mexico City are the Colegio de San Ildefonso.

Murals implanted a potent message in the keen minds of young people

who walked these corridors every day.

For 400 years, this building was a school.

I feel very connected to it because my father went to school here,

so he would often bring us when we were children

and tell us about what it was like

to go to school in such a historical place,

surrounded by these murals.

They would walk past them on the way to classes

and sometimes, he said, you know, they would stop and look

and sometimes they would walk past them just like you would any wall

that you see every day.

So I find it particularly interesting to think that

these works of art were actually part of a centre of learning

and what effect, consciously or subconsciously,

they had on the students that walked past them every day.

What my father and countless other people saw painted on these walls

was a defining event of Mexico's past...

..when the Spanish colonisers arrived in the 16th century

and conquered the indigenous people of Mexico.

Millions died, victims of violence and disease.

Rich and complex civilisations, including the Aztecs,

were decimated by a power intent on plunder...

and fired by religious zeal.

The indigenous survivors of the conquest

would be subservient in their own lands for the next 300 years.

This mural was painted in 1926

by Jose Clemente Orozco,

and it contains the story of a woman whose personal experience

lies at the heart of Mexican identity.

She's known as La Malinche, and Orozco painted her

sat next to the leader of the Spanish conquistadors,

Hernan Cortes.

She was a slave gifted to Cortes by the Tlaxcalan people,

who allied themselves with the Spanish against the Aztecs.

La Malinche was his interpreter

and, to this day, is reviled by many

for helping the conquerors defeat her indigenous brethren.

But the relationship had another profound result.

They had a son.

And the mix of Spanish and indigenous blood

created a new ethnicity - the mestizos.

Professor Renato Mello is a leading expert on Orozco

and has studied his work for 30 years.

This mural has always caught my attention

because in so many of others, the indigenous woman

is folded down, she's bent down.

And this one's more complicated than that, isn't it?

Because she is submissive, passive, dominated,

but equally, for 1926, it was quite radical

to give an indigenous woman equal stature like this.

This is a monumental Indian figure appearing on the public building,

and that was just unthinkable 20 years before.

I would say that there are no previous indigenous women representations

that are as strong as this one.

In this mural, Cortes looks like he's been sculpted out of stone

and he's quite...stoic and lifeless and cold.

And she seems to be full of life.

She's fleshy and warm.

Yes, because it is a system of, er...of contraries,

of opposing, er...categories.

So you have the male and the female, but also life and death.

Representing both the colonial condition

and also, the race that is about to mix with the white race,

which is the mestizos.

The mestizos symbolise Mexico's hybrid culture.

The mix of indigenous and European blood,

common to millions of Mexicans to this day, including me.

But Orozco's painting is also a reminder

that the power struggle between the two ethnic traditions

has not been forgotten.

This is a monument to the mestizo.

La Malinche and Hernan Cortes sit surrounded by artefacts

of pre-Hispanic and Spanish cultures.

To me, it's an unremarkable work of art

in the corner of a Mexico City park,

but what's interesting is that this isn't its original location.

People there didn't want La Malinche near them

and insisted she was removed.

For many Mexicans, she remains an immoral traitor.

But for one of Mexico's leading writers,

La Malinche has been maligned for too long.

Laura Esquivel's novel, La Malinche,

portrays a woman who is not only a translator,

but a key mediator

between the indigenous people and the invaders.

The conflict within the Mexican sense of identity continues today.

La Malinche might never be forgiven by everyone,

even as ethnic difference is not only tolerated, but now celebrated.

For 400 years before the revolution, however,

Mexico's growing mixed-race population

was depicted in divisive and demeaning ways.

Artworks known as Casta paintings

reflected official government attempts in the 18th century

to classify people in descending social order.

These popular artworks, often in a set of 12,

reinforced ideas of racial superiority

and a Spanish obsession with purity of blood.

There were the mestizo, of Spanish and indigenous mix.

Mulattos were of Spanish and African descent.

And at the bottom were ahi te estas,

meaning, "stay where you are",

a person born with a mix of Spanish, African and indigenous blood.

But in post-revolutionary Mexico,

everyone was Mexican and equal

in the country's past and present.

This message of inclusion and rebirth

was proclaimed loud and clear

in a vast mural covering the walls of the presidential palace -

the heart of Mexican power.

Thousands of years of history cover 275 square metres.

Events and characters from ancient and modern Mexico

appear in what is nothing less than a new and radical chronicle

of Mexican history in its entirety.

The artist was Diego Rivera,

one of the giants of 20th-century art.

His epic of the Mexican people

is one of the greatest murals anywhere in the world.

The actual experience is quite overwhelming.

-And it really encompasses you as you're walking through it.

-Yes.

VOICEOVER: Art historian Claudia Molina has researched

Diego Rivera's murals extensively.

Diego Rivera was thinking about the eye of the spectator.

Because the normal eye doesn't go from right to left

or left to right, it goes like a circle.

Because we are on the stairs

and all muralism puts the spectator in an active role.

Rivera created his mural as a triptych,

representing Mexican history in three chapters.

On the right, there's the Aztec world, reborn and proud,

rather than crushed and defeated following the Spanish conquest.

The middle wall is called From The Conquest To 1930,

and draws in the subjugation of the indigenous people,

the War of Independence and the revolution.

The left-hand wall is called Mexico Today And Tomorrow,

and features class war,

attacking the exploitative nature of capitalism and the church,

and exalting the revolutionary message of Karl Marx.

Rivera was a committed communist and staunchly anti-religion.

And it was his deeply-held political views

that made him the perfect artist

to express the official line in post-revolutionary Mexico.

This mural reflected Rivera's personal beliefs,

but it was commissioned by the people in power,

the new left-wing government,

determined to control the nation's story.

The government and all the elite

was very much interested in, um...

use art as a tool of power.

Rivera chose a quote from the Communist Manifesto,

"We don't need to reshape our society, we need to create one".

So, it's very much in tune for the Mexican government at the time.

The commission was meant to, of course, show the Mexican history,

but, of course, it was meant to be like

the beginning of a new national identity, born from the revolution.

What's most interesting is that if you interview people nowadays,

they believe this mural is true, it's their history.

So that's what's amazing

because actually, Diego Rivera is not only an artist and a painter,

of course, he's an intellectual

that became the best tool of the Mexican government

to imagine and construct this imagery of Mexico and its history.

That is the power of Rivera's art.

His vision of Mexico, romanticised and ideological,

is now part of our official history.

80 years after its completion,

the mural still carries the weight of authority.

Whenever Mexico welcomes foreign leaders,

the President greets them in front of this panorama.

It's an origin myth and propaganda rolled into one.

The government did a very good job photographing all these murals

and publishing in magazines, newspapers

and, of course, eventually, textbooks.

So that's why all of these became

the official images of national history.

-Not least because the population was illiterate.

-Exactly.

-So they needed images.

-Exactly.

80% of Mexicans were illiterate at the time, by 1921.

So he knew images were the tool to accomplish all these projects.

The grand plan of using art to educate

was the brainchild of Jose Vasconcelos.

He was the minister of education

who believed that the revolution had given power back to the people.

Giving the people knowledge would help reform the country

and secure revolutionary ideals.

And as well as understanding

the revolution's place in Mexico's great story,

he also wanted Mexicans to understand each other.

At the Ministry of Education, Vasconcelos commissioned Rivera

to show the new social and political realities

of post-revolutionary Mexico.

Working 18 hours a day for more than four years,

Rivera and his team of assistants

created an extraordinary tableau called The Very Life Of The People,

over 235 fresco panels.

Rivera painted working people tilling their crops...

..breaking bread together,

and, if called upon, preparing for armed struggle.

Rivera included his like-minded friends,

his soon-to-be-wife, Frida Kahlo

and fellow muralist, David Siqueiros.

Those who didn't understand that power

was now in the hands of farmers and factory workers

were also depicted, drunk and decadent.

Having worked in Europe and the United States during the 1920s,

at the turn of the '30s,

Diego Rivera was a superstar with a global reputation.

And despite being an ardent communist, he became hugely popular

among the rich industrialists of the United States,

where he and Frida Kahlo

had quickly become the darlings of the cultural elite.

In the US, Rivera's power was in his commercial value.

A mural for the Stock Exchange Luncheon Club in San Francisco

was followed by an even more remarkable commission -

one that ended with a very personal power struggle.

In exchange for 21,000 dollars,

Rivera was asked to create a mural

about mankind looking to a better future.

His patron was Nelson Rockefeller, who wanted a Rivera fresco

to adorn the Rockefeller Centre in New York.

The scion of one of the United States' richest

and most powerful families approved Rivera's sketches,

which showed workers, soldiers and farmers

united in optimism about future technology

and its benefit for humanity.

But Rivera was taunted by leftist groups,

who accused him of putting his principles aside for money.

And so he changed the design

and included a portrait of Vladimir Lenin.

Rockefeller was furious.

And when Rivera refused to change it,

he ordered the fresco to be chiselled off the wall.

But Rivera wasn't prepared to surrender his art.

So he decided to come back to Mexico and recreate the same mural here.

And I'm so happy he did because it's absolutely stunning.

Man, Controller Of The Universe,

is an almost identical version of the Rockefeller mural.

On either side of the central figure

are the dominating political ideologies of the time.

Above capitalism, Rivera painted what he believed

was its greatest failure -

the First World War

and the brutalities of machine guns and poison gas.

On the right, Lenin supports the working class

in their revolutionary struggle for power and justice.

Every single inch of it is covered with the politics of the time.

It's so rich in symbolism.

At the centre of the mural, a worker is mastering technology,

sitting at the controls of the mechanical and natural worlds.

Depending on his decisions,

the world could be a socialist utopia,

or it could be dominated by the debauched, rich bourgeoisie

drinking martinis while millions perish.

For the Rockefellers, it was a personal and political attack.

For Rivera, it was a belated demonstration of his own power.

I think he had a crisis of conscience of being commissioned

by one of the...

A family that was the epitome of the capitalist system

that he was so against.

They wanted his art, but they didn't want his politics.

Whilst Rivera was obsessed with the idealistic visions

of a communist future,

other muralists were beginning to reflect the realities

of a fast-changing and threatening world,

where power was emphatically not in the hands of ordinary people.

The Hospicio Cabanas in Guadalajara

is one of the most incredible interiors in world art.

It's been called the Sistine Chapel of the Americas.

Here, Jose Clemente Orozco painted a story of Mexico

that showed he was deeply worried about the future.

As the 1930s went on, fascism spread in Europe,

and Stalin's brand of communism saw millions exiled or executed.

Orozco feared that reactionary forces

could threaten Mexico's revolution and turn back the clock.

I think the energy and drama in his brushstrokes

make his provocative message an urgent one.

All these murals are working towards Orozco's climactic vision.

what many consider his masterpiece.

In the dome of this chapel is Orozco's Man Of Fire.

This figure, engulfed in vibrant red and yellow flames,

is an allegory of the destruction

that technology and progress can bring.

Man is trying to defy external forces as he ascends through fire.

He wants to fly, but, like Icarus of Greek myth, he will fall.

Orozco completed the work in 1939

as right-wing nationalists declared victory in the Spanish Civil War.

This is a statement about individual freedom,

and...that was pretty much at stake...

..at the time.

Many people thought, Orozco amongst them,

that what had happened in Spain,

a reactionary uprising,

a total destruction of the civil institution,

that could happen in Mexico, as well.

Orozco realises that some trends in anarchism,

socialism, fascism,

but also in the democratic discourse, are very dangerous.

Muralism had begun by serving power

and transmitting the values of the revolutionary state.

Now it was confronting power,

warning of the looming threats to the ideals of the revolution.

And the ultimate expression of this fell to the youngest

and most uncompromisingly radical of the big three,

David Alfaro Siqueiros.

For Siqueiros, art and revolution were inseparable.

At 18, he quit art college to fight on the front lines

of the Mexican Revolution.

And in 1936, he fought in the Spanish Civil War,

witnessing the triumph of the Nazi-backed fascists.

When he returned to Mexico,

he painted perhaps the most caustic warning

against not just fascism,

but the acquiescence of democracy

and capitalism in its rise.

Wow!

Dominating a stairwell in the headquarters

of the Electrical Workers' Union in Mexico City,

is A Portrait Of The Bourgeoisie.

The mural is a triptych whose imagery makes no attempt

to hide the anger and resentment

of a man who had witnessed at first hand

fascism defeat socialism in Spain.

It really envelops you in a very...

SHE EXHALES ..claustrophobic sense.

You almost have to take a few steps back.

The mural is a warning to the Mexican proletariat

of the implacable array of forces that confront it.

For Siqueiros, the Mexican Revolution had stalled,

co-opted by the bourgeois middle class.

He shows the ordinary man crushed by stronger powers.

A monstrous machine turns workers' blood into gold.

Figures in gas masks represent Britain,

France and the US on the left,

and Germany, Italy and Japan on the right.

Siqueiros seems to make them equally culpable

for the money machine's grim business model.

Because he was, really, a revolutionary,

and the themes that he's actually painting about were global themes

of America and Europe, in his words,

colluding with fascism,

and the ideals that he stood for falling.

I think this sadness or disappointment came across as anger.

And he took every opportunity to express that.

And I think this is a great example of it.

The values of liberte,

egalite and fraternite burning.

There's nothing ambiguous about that.

The only message of hope is a revolutionary figure

bravely confronting the terrifying scene.

But he's alone, symbolising the isolation

of the Mexican proletariat.

"Don't look to others to help," Siqueiros is saying to the workers.

"You are the only reliable weapons in the revolutionary struggle."

And he carried this message of solidarity

into the technique of the painting,

working with a team of artists

using spray cans to remove the hand of the individual.

What remains might bear only Siqueiros' name,

but it's a call for unity and collective will.

It's amazing to me that it has remained so intact.

It's absolutely flawless.

And also, thematically, it could have been made yesterday.

Ever the activist,

Siqueiros didn't attend the opening of the mural in 1940.

He was in hiding,

accused of an assassination attempt

on Soviet dissident Leon Trotsky in Mexico City.

By the 1950s, the fervent ideals of the revolution had dissipated.

Mexico's leaders wanted to position the country

as a modern, liberal democracy.

HUBBUB

This colossal monolith represented

what the powerhouse behind this modernisation was to be.

It's the library of Mexico's national university.

The building opened in 1952,

part of a huge investment in a new campus.

The idea was that through universal higher education,

the latent power of Mexico's population could be unleashed,

and a prosperous future secured.

The library was designed by Juan O'Gorman,

born in Mexico to an Irish father.

Its monumental modernist form,

mirrored across the campus architecture,

expressed the technological sophistication

that would be key to Mexico's development.

But the true symbolic power of the library

is not in the ways it points to the future,

but in the ways it draws from the past.

The building is windowless, covered in mosaic

with murals rich in Mesoamerican imagery and mythology.

It feels like a glorification of learning and history.

Like the Spanish codices,

the books that chronicle pre-Hispanic life and culture

have been projected on every side of this building's massive facades.

Surrounding the structures are open plazas

designed for everyone to congregate and socialise,

regardless of whether they are students or not.

THEY SPEAK SPANISH

I'm buying raspado, which is basically ice

grated off a big ice block

and then you get all sorts of syrups that you can put on it.

THEY SPEAK SPANISH

So I'm having a tamarind and lemon one.

Avoiding the chilli.

THEY SPEAK SPANISH

Mm! Good. Refreshing.

But to truly understand the thinking behind the spectacular space

and its monumental architecture, you need to go back in time.

This entire campus has been deliberately designed

to project the power of education,

by mimicking the city planning

of the most powerful pre-Hispanic civilisations.

The pyramids and temples of Teotihuacan

more than 2,000 years old,

were designed to inspire awe and wonder among the people.

emphasising the power of the elites

and their evident connection to the gods.

But it's the great city of Cholula

that really underlines how ancient architects and artists

were able to project power in spectacular fashion.

What looks like a hill is, in fact, an enormous pyramid

that covers an area of more than 45 acres,

making it, by mass, not only the largest pyramid in the world,

but also the largest monument ever constructed anywhere,

by any civilisation.

Gabriela Urunuela is Professor of Anthropology

and an expert on the great Mesoamerican site of Cholula.

The designs that they were using

was made to communicate something

to the population, to the viewer.

But it was a tool for the government to, er...express ideas.

It is art, but it had a function beyond being just ornamental.

And what does it say about the civilisation that built it?

You cannot build a monument this big

if you do not have, um...hierarchical society

which designs the monument to manifest its power

-in the building of something this big.

-Exactly.

Over millennia, successive pre-Hispanic civilisations

made the Great Pyramid of Cholula even larger

and ever more imposing.

As the pyramid grew,

so did the influence of the city and its elites.

Cholula became the dominant regional powerhouse.

For 500 years, rulers of other city-states came here on pilgrimage.

It's said that even Aztec princes were anointed by Cholula's priests.

Its dominance as a centre of power made it a clear target

for the invading Spanish in the 16th century.

The rapid conquest of Cholula

installed the Europeans as the new holders of power.

For 300 years, they dominated,

suppressing indigenous culture.

But following the revolution that began in 1910,

the power and significance of Mexico's pre-Hispanic culture

was increasingly recognised.

The Anthropology Museum in Mexico City's Chapultepec Park

houses the world's largest collection of ancient Mexican art.

Before I became an artist, I studied social anthropology

and I've always found this place inspirational.

But it's more than a museum.

It was created with an explicit political purpose -

to draw together the different strands of Mexican identity

and apportion them with equal power.

Anthropologist Sandra Rozental

has studied how the government used pre-Hispanic artistic heritage

for social and political purposes over the decades.

Both the President of Mexico at the time, Lopez Mateos,

and the architect of the museum,

wanted to create a building that people would just stumble upon

when they were going to the park,

when they were participating in other tourist activities around Mexico City.

And so Chapultepec was really the right place for this...for this new museum.

So the idea in the 1960s was to create a space

that would allow for a collection that would show all of Mexico.

Represent all of this diversity that created contemporary Mexico.

So it's a real hybrid. There's a great modernist influence,

but there's also pre-Hispanic influence.

The museum was very carefully planned and designed

to portray two parallel images of Mexico.

On the one hand, Mexico as a modern, state-of-the-art country,

and at the same time, the idea was that the museum would portray

Mexico's authenticity, the exotic nature

of its very own indigenous civilisation.

The architect, Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, really wanted that contrast.

This very sleek, modernist style

combined with something very authentic, very Mexican.

It's very much a centralising project.

The idea was that the courtyard would sort of bring together

all of this diversity into a unity

that was structured around this centre.

This is very much a ritual space.

I mean, we think about it as a museum,

but it's also a ritual space, where, I think,

all Mexicans come at some point in their life, on a sort of pilgrimage

to see and experience what being Mexican entails.

One of Mexico's greatest artists had a profound understanding

of the power of indigenous culture in Mexican nationalism.

Frida Kahlo embodied post-revolutionary Mexico.

Her father was of German descent

and her mother a mestiza.

She wore indigenous Tehuana dresses from the Zapotec region

inspired by the ideal of freedom and strength

that the wearers of the dresses represented.

And she revered Aztec traditions.

My Nurse And I is a reinterpretation of the Catholic pieta.

But instead of the Madonna and child, she portrayed herself

as a baby being breast-fed by an indigenous nurse

whose face is covered by a pre-Hispanic mask.

She's nurtured by Mexican earth.

Her origins rooted in Mexico's soil.

Another painting, The Love Embrace Of The Universe,

shows an earth goddess enveloping her and her husband, Diego Rivera.

Asleep on the left is her hairless pet dog,

of a breed venerated by the Aztecs.

Frida's heart is bleeding,

symbolising the ritual sacrifices of the Aztecs

and Catholic iconography.

Casa Azul is where Frida was born, grew up, and died.

It's an intimate space that I'm often drawn back to.

I remember coming here as a child...

..and being fascinated by this person,

this personality, this figure.

She was almost mythological, and then you came here

and you actually saw her brushes

and her wheelchair.

At the age of 18, a terrible accident

left her to deal with chronic pain for the rest of her life,

and later led to several miscarriages.

I remember being...very moved and quite saddened

when I saw this...

..easel made for her to fit her wheelchair

so that she could really go up to it.

And I remember seeing her plaster casts.

This tiny waist, and it was usually covered in painting.

She spent most of her adult life in casts

and having constant operations.

This place doesn't feel like a monument,

it doesn't feel like a museum.

It feels so full of her.

Full of her art, full of her life.

It feels like everything is as it was.

And that makes it a very moving experience, actually.

What gave Frida's work its ultimate power

was the depth of her convictions.

She made the personal political,

expressing a deeply-felt connection to Mexico through her own struggles.

I think her art is as emotionally charged today

as it was when she created it,

a time when she was just as important as the muralists

in promoting a nationalism rooted in ancient history.

Hilda Trujillo is the director of the Frida Kahlo Museum.

In lending her voice to Mexico's struggle for an independent cultural identity,

Frida expressed her commitment to the country and its people.

But she never followed consensus.

This is a power struggle that's as relevant today

as it was when Frida was producing her work.

But while that fight continues,

arguably, greater strides have been made

to ensure the indigenous voice that Frida championed is heard.

Nowhere is that voice more obvious

than in the state of Oaxaca in the south of Mexico.

Many of its inhabitants are descended from the Zapotec civilisation.

It dates back at least 2,500 years.

Buenos dias, Senora.

The market here in Tlacolula is one of the oldest in Mexico.

So these are made from carrizo, which is a type of cane.

And these baskets are to do your fruit shopping with,

but they're also part of a really important ceremony in Oaxaca,

which is where they share sweets and fruit.

So the woman who's in charge of it that year - every year it's someone else -

puts it on their head and shares fruits and sweets.

So you'd put this on top of your head.

SHE SPEAKS SPANISH

So you'd put it on your head, like that.

SHE CHUCKLES

Oaxaca has the largest indigenous population among Mexico's 31 states.

THEY LAUGH

The power of the indigenous communities,

their political representation

and right to self-determination

is now guaranteed by the Mexican state.

Remarkable, when you think that there are 69 different indigenous languages

and myriad cultures recognised within Mexico.

What I love about these patterns is that they...they're inspired by

the pyramids of Mitla.

So you'll find that the most authentic ones are these geometric shapes,

these diamonds, and these kind of tracings.

So it's pure wool, it hasn't been mixed with anything.

THEY SPEAK SPANISH

I just said, "Where do you get the wool from?"

And she said, "From the sheep."

Gracias.

I'm wearing an embroidered Tehuana top typical of this area,

called a huipil.

And I styled my hair according to tradition

for a special meeting I'm really looking forward to.

The state of Oaxaca is home to Mexico's greatest living artist,

Francisco Toledo.

His outstanding career spans five decades.

Toledo's inspiration comes in part from Zapotec mythology,

and his art contains scenes of identity,

celebrating the culture of his people

and the connection to ancient ancestors.

Oaxaca itself, and his roots here, are very important to him.

But Toledo is an activist, as well as an artist.

For 30 years, he's used his art

to finance campaigns for social justice,

challenging those in power.

While his own work is not overtly political,

he acknowledges a relationship between art and power.

Proximity to power helped the muralists convey the message

of what it meant to be Mexican after the revolution.

And today, proximity to an external power

means there's nowhere more crucial to protect this Mexican identity

than when you're at its borders.

Tijuana, right against the border with the United States,

is one of Mexico's most vibrant artistic hubs.

Art produced by a variety of individuals and collectives

is inspired by the experience of ordinary people

and by everyday politics.

Their artistic statements are commonly known as border art.

Ana Teresa Fernandez's Erasing The Border

is a defiant act of protest against the boundary

separating Mexico from the United States.

Her brush eliminates the border,

perhaps asking questions about the boundaries of national identity.

I think this gets to the heart of how many Mexicans feel

about a border created in 1848

which saw Mexican territory,

including California, New Mexico and Texas,

become part of the United States.

And it also speaks to the issue of migration.

Tijuana is the world's busiest land border crossing,

with 50 million making the journey each year.

They include commuters living in Tijuana

crossing daily to work in San Diego.

Others are undocumented migrants in search of a new life.

An unfortunate few, the victims of human trafficking.

Hazardous journeys and real discoveries by the authorities

have inspired the work of Julio Caesar Morales'

Undocumented Interventions.

I've come to meet an artist who's an integral part

of Tijuana's creative community.

Marco Ramirez, known as Erre.

He feels strongly that artists have a responsibility

to respond to power and injustice, particularly now,

following President Trump's controversial statements

about Mexicans and the border.

Me and the people that think like me and worry about the situation right now,

they need to, like, open their hearts and open their minds

and open their mouth and say the things that need to be said.

Otherwise, we're going to lose things that

took us 100-150 years to gain.

Respect to our rights and equality,

no race is better than the other, stuff like that

that we thought that we had it already understood,

you know, like, we had it controlled.

And now it's going in the wrong direction.

So as a border artist,

how do you relate to this binational existence?

How does it affect your work?

Well, it affects it and provokes it, you know?

Like, I don't know another way of being.

So it's very hard for me to explain it.

You know, I've been here forever.

I do not assume myself just as a border artist,

but I'm not going to start denying something that is embedded in who I am.

The current political situation has propelled Erre

to return to an idea about Mexico's northern neighbour.

I'm, er...trying to age this...

..piece of, er...fence

so it is not that obvious

that it's resembling the American flag.

Stripes and Fence Forever - this the original work -

is a comment about the lure of the United States losing its lustre.

That crossing the border doesn't mean dreams come true.

This flag represents the 50 states and the 30 old colonies.

-And then it's supposed to be a melting pot.

-Mm-hm.

-Seems to me that the pot is melting.

-Yeah. Definitely.

Is what it looks like to me.

Power and the proximity to power

fires a creativity of artists working in Tijuana.

In the 21st century, power and art are as inseparable as ever.

Across a millennia, struggles for power have forged this country.

And artists have been at the epicentre of each one.

From projections of authority that held ancient civilisations together

to creating a new national story

and reinforcing Mexican identity,

artists have themselves been the power brokers in Mexico's story.

In the next episode, I explore how faith across the millennia

has been dominated by art

that underpinned and changed the very nature of belief.