Welcome
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To put in water, to submerge.
Nahuatl. -
Exposed, Naked.
Nahuatl -
To wake someone up.
Nahuatl
Let’s submerge these professions to wash off the constructs and narratives they’ve been covered by. Let’s awake the fire inside you.
The content compiled here is meant to pique your curiosity and test your flexibility by questioning the theories and narratives built around western Education, Architecture, Design, and Urban Planning by unveiling their connection to Colonization, Assimilation, Slavery, Ecocide, Genocide, Gender Constructs, Racism, punitive systems of Justice, and the Global capitalist system in place.
A compilation composed by quotes, text extracts, data and data visualizations, book recommendations, articles, maps, images and designs, analysis, stories, legends, and more.
Only images, illustrations, maps, and visualizations that are not of my authorship will be credited in the caption.
Illustration inspired by real photographs of the church of "the virgen of the remedios” and behind it the Popocatepetl Volcano, both located in what is now called Cholula, Mexico. Underneath the church, the ruins of Templo Mayor, the main temple of the city of Tenochtitlan, and crucial to the Indigenous Cosmo vision, located in what is now called Mexico City.
Templo Mayor and the church of the “virgen of the remedios” are examples of one of the many ways in which spanish colonizers used architecture to erase, impose western ways of living, and assimilate Indigenous Peoples by modifying and reorganizing the landscape.
Sacred and/or religious Indigenous Buildings were partially destroyed to erect Catholic churches over the ruins afterwards; many times, the materials (like rocks) from the destroyed sites were reused to build the churches.
Ixtia | The legend of the Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl Volcanoes |
The legend has different versions as it comes from oral traditions. Those of us who either grew up or our ancestors are from areas near these volcanoes have heard the legend. I will tell the one I learned as a kid.
Iztaccihuatl was the daughter of a powerful man and Popocatepetl was a warrior who fought for him. Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl were in love, but their love was “forbidden”. Popocatepetl was sent to war, and the father promised to let them be together if he returned victorious. False news about Popocatepetl’s death spread around, causing Iztaccihuatl to die from sadness. Upon return, Popocatepetl found out his loved one had died and took her body somewhere far in the valley, where he mourned her death and died from sadness as well.
One of the versions tells the earth moved by this scene embraced them, turning their bodies into mountains and covering them with snow. Explaining the shapes of the mountains, on the left, Iztaccihuatl who lays down with her hair on the far left, Popocatepetl is sadly kneeling right next to her body.
Another version tells that Popocatepetl had with him a torch fired by his love for Iztaccihuatl, promising never let it the torch die out when he went to the valley to die next to her. Explaining why Popocatepetl is an active volcano.