Culture

Mexican culture reflects the complexity of the country's history through the blending of indigenous cultures and the culture of Spain, imparted during Spain's 300-year colonial rule of Mexico. Exogenous cultural elements have been incorporated into Mexican culture as time has passed.

The Porfirian era (el Porfiriato), in the last quarter of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century, was marked by economic progress and peace. After four decades of civil unrest and war, Mexico saw the development of philosophy and the arts, promoted by President Díaz himself. Since that time, as accentuated during the Mexican Revolution, cultural identity has had its foundation in the mestizaje, of which the indigenous (i.e. Amerindian) element is the core. In light of the various ethnicities that formed the Mexican people, José Vasconcelos in La Raza Cósmica (The Cosmic Race) (1925) defined Mexico to be the melting pot of all races (thus extending the definition of the mestizo) not only biologically but culturally as well. Other Mexican intellectuals grappled with the idea of Lo Mexicano, which seeks "to discover the national ethos of Mexican culture." Nobel laureate Octavio Paz explores the notion of a Mexican national character in The Labyrinth of Solitude.

Painting

Painting is one of the oldest arts in Mexico. Cave painting in Mexican territory is about 7500 years old and has been found in the caves of the Baja California Peninsula. Pre-Hispanic Mexico is present in buildings and caves, in Aztec codices, in ceramics, in garments, etc. .; examples of this are the Maya mural paintings of Bonampak, or those of Teotihuacán, those of Cacaxtla and those of Monte Albán.

Mural painting with religious themes had an important flowering during the 16th century; the same in religious constructions as in houses of lineage; such is the case of the convents of Acolman, Actopan, Huejotzingo, Tecamachalco and Zinacantepec. These were also manifested in illustrated manuscripts such as the 1576 Florentine codex overseen by Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún. Most art in the colonial era was religious, but starting in the late seventeenth century and most prominently in the eighteenth century, secular portraits and casta painting appeared. Important painters of the late colonial period were Juan Correa, Cristóbal de Villalpando and Miguel Cabrera.

Nineteenth-century painting had a marked romantic influence; landscapes and portraits were the greatest expressions of this era. Hermenegildo Bustos is one of the most appreciated painters of the historiography of Mexican art. Other painters include Santiago Rebull, Félix Parra, Eugenio Landesio, and his noted pupil, the landscape artist José María Velasco.

Mexican painting of the 20th century has achieved world renown with figures such as David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, Joaquín Clausell, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, a generation of idealists who marked the image of modern Mexico in the face of strong social and economic criticism. The Oaxacan School quickly gained fame and prestige, diffusion of ancestral and modern culture. Freedom of design is observed in relation to the color and texture of the canvases and murals as a period of transition between the 20th century and the 21st century. Federico Cantú Garza, Juan O'Gorman, and Rufino Tamayo are also important artists. Diego Rivera, the most well-known figure of Mexican muralism, painted the Man at the Crossroads at the Rockefeller Center in New York City, a huge mural that was destroyed by the Rockefellers the next year because of the inclusion of a portrait of Russian communist leader Lenin. Some of Rivera's murals are displayed at the Mexican National Palace and the Palace of Fine Arts.

Some of the most outstanding painters in the late 20th century and early 21st century: Francisco Toledo was a Mexican Zapotec painter, sculptor, and graphic artist. In a career that spanned seven decades, Toledo produced thousands of works of art and became widely regarded as one of Mexico's most important contemporary artists. Verónica Ruiz de Velasco is a neofigurative painter and muralist. Both Verónica Ruiz de Velasco and Francisco Toledo were students of Rufino Tamayo. Gilberto Aceves Navarro is also considered an important contemporary artist.

Throughout history several prominent painters of different nationalities have expressed in their works the face of Mexico. Among the most outstanding we can mention are Claudio Linati, Daniel Thomas Egerton, Carl Nebel, Thomas Moran, and Leonora Carrington.

Sculpture

Sculpture was an integral part of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican civilizations, (Mayans, Olmecs, Toltecs, Mixtecs, Aztecs), and others, usually religious in nature. From the Spanish conquest in 1521, civil and religious sculpture was created by indigenous artists, with guidance from Spaniards, so some pre-Hispanic features are evident. Since the 17th century, white and mestizo sculptors have created works with a marked influence of European classicism. After independence in 1821, sculpture was influenced by Romanticism, which tended to break the strict norms and models of classicism, while it pursued ideas influenced by realism and nationalism. Religious sculpture was reduced to a sporadic imagery, while the secular sculpture continued in portraits and monumental art of a civic nature. Between 1820 and 1880 the predominant themes were, successively: religious images, biblical scenes, allegories to the symbols of the independence insurgency, scenes and personages of pre-Hispanic history, and busts of the old aristocracy, of the nascent bourgeoisie and commanders of the pre-revolution. During the 20th century, some important exponents of Mexican sculpture are Juan Soriano, José Luis Cuevas, and Enrique Carbajal (also known as Sebastián).citation needed

Architecture

The presence of the humans in the Mexican territory has left important archaeological findings of great importance for the explanation of the habitat of primitive man and contemporary man. The Mesoamerican civilizations managed to have great stylistic development and proportion on the human and urban scale, the form was evolving from simplicity to aesthetic complexity; in the north of the country the adobe and stone architecture is manifested, the multifamily housing as we can see in Casas Grandes; and the troglodyte dwelling in caves of the Sierra Madre Occidental. Urbanism had a great development in pre-Hispanic cultures, where we can see the magnitude of the cities of Teotihuacán, Tollan-Xicocotitlan and México-Tenochtitlan, within the environmentalist urbanism highlight the Mayan cities to be incorporated into the monumentality of its buildings with the thickness of the jungle and complex networks of roads called sakbés. Mesoamerican architecture is noted for its pyramids which are the largest such structures outside of Ancient Egypt.Template:Fcat

Spanish Colonial architecture is marked by the contrast between the simple, solid construction demanded by the new environment and the Baroque ornamentation exported from Spain. Mexico, as the center of New Spain has some of the most renowned buildings built in this style. With the arrival of the Spaniards, architectural theories of the Greco-Roman order with Arab influences were introduced. Due to the process of evangelization, when the first monastic temples and monasteries were built, their own models were projected, such as the mendicant monasteries, unique in their type in architecture. The interaction between Spaniards and natives gave rise to artistic styles such as the so-called tequitqui (from Nahuatl: worker). Years later the baroque and mannerism were imposed in large cathedrals and civil buildings, while rural areas are built haciendas or stately farms with Mozarabic tendencies.citation needed

In the 19th century the neoclassical movement arose as a response to the objectives of the republican nation, one of its examples are the Hospicio Cabañas where the strict plastic of the classical orders are represented in their architectural elements, new religious buildings also arise, civilian and military that demonstrate the presence of neoclassicism. Romanticists from a past seen through archeology show images of medieval Europe, Islamic and pre-Hispanic Mexico in the form of architectural elements in the construction of international exhibition pavilions looking for an identity typical of the national culture. The art nouveau, and the art deco were styles introduced into the design of the Palacio de Bellas Artes to mark the identity of the Mexican nation with Greek-Roman and pre-Hispanic symbols.citation needed

Modern architecture in Mexico has an important development in the plasticity of form and space, José Villagrán García develops a theory of form that sets the pattern of teaching in many schools of architecture in the country within functionalism. The emergence of the new Mexican architecture was born as a formal order of the policies of a nationalist state that sought modernity and the differentiation of other nations. The development of a Mexican modernist architecture was perhaps mostly fully manifested in the mid-1950s construction of the Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico City, the main campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Designed by the most prestigious architects of the era, including Mario Pani, Eugenio Peschard, and Enrique del Moral, the buildings feature murals by artists Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Chávez Morado. It has since been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Juan O'Gorman was one of the first environmental architects in Mexico, developing the "organic" theory, trying to integrate the building with the landscape within the same approaches of Frank Lloyd Wright. In the search for a new architecture that does not resemble the styles of the past, it achieves a joint manifestation with the mural painting and the landscaping.

The Jalisco School was a proposal of those socio-political movements that the country demanded. Luis Barragán combined the shape of the space with forms of rural vernacular architecture of Mexico and Mediterranean countries (Spain-Morocco), integrating an impressive color that handles light and shade in different tones and opens a look at the international minimalism. He won the 1980 Pritzker Prize, the highest award in architecture.citation needed

Mexican architecture is a cultural phenomenon born of the ideology of nationalist governments of the 20th century, which was shaping the identity image by its colorful and variegated ornamental elements inherited from ancestral cultures, classical and monumental forms and, subsequently, the incorporation of modernism and cutting-edge international trends.citation needed

Photography

Mexico has been photographed since the nineteenth century, when the technology was first developed. During the Porfiriato, Díaz realized the importance of photography in shaping the understanding of his regime and its accomplishments. The government hired Guillermo Kahlo (father of painter Frida Kahlo) to create photographic images of Mexico's new industrial structures as well as its pre-Hispanic and colonial past. Photographer Hugo Brehme specialized in images of "picturesque" Mexico, with images of Mexican places and often rural people. During the Mexican Revolution, photographers chronicled the conflict, usually in the aftermath of a battle, since large and heavy equipment did not permit action shots. Agustín Victor Casasola is the most famous of photographer of the revolutionary era, and he collected other photographers' images in the Casasola Archive; his vast collection was purchased by the Mexican government and is now part of the government photographic repository, the Fototeca. After the revolution, Mexican photographers created photographs as art images. Among others, notable Mexican photographers include Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Héctor García Cobo, and Graciela Iturbide.

Literature

Mexican literature has its antecedents in the literature of the indigenous settlements of Mesoamerica. Poetry had a rich cultural tradition in prehispanic Mexico, being divided into two broad categories—secular and religious. Aztec poetry was sung, chanted, or spoken, often to the accompanyment of a drum or a harp. While Tenochtitlan was the political capital, Texcoco was the cultural center; the Texcocan language was considered the most melodious and refined. The best well-known prehispanic poet is Nezahualcoyotl.

Literature during the 16th century consisted largely of histories of Spanish conquests, and most of the writers at this time were from Spain. Bernal Díaz del Castillo's True History of the Conquest of Mexico is still widely read today. Spanish-born poet Bernardo de Balbuena extolled the virtues of Mexico in Grandeza mexicana (Mexican grandeur) (1604); Francisco de Terrazas was the first Mexican-born poet to attain renown. Baroque literature flourished in the 17th century; the most notable writers of this period were Juan Ruiz de Alarcón and Juana Inés de la Cruz. Sor Juana was famous in her own time, called the "Ten Muse." The 18th and early 19th centuries gave us José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, whose The Mangy Parrot ("El Periquillo Sarniento"), is said to be the first Latin American novel. Several Jesuit humanists wrote at this time, and they were among the first to call for independence from Spain.

Other writers include Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, Octavio Paz (Nobel Laureate), Carlos Fuentes, Alfonso Reyes, Renato Leduc, Carlos Monsiváis, Elena Poniatowska, Mariano Azuela (Los de abajo) and Juan Rulfo (Pedro Páramo). Bruno Traven wroteCanasta de cuentos mexicano (A basket of Mexican tales) and El tesoro de la Sierra Madre (Treasure of the Sierra Madre), Luis Spota, Jaime Sabines, Martín Luis Guzmán, Nellie Campobello, (Cartucho), and Valeria Luiselli (Faces in the Crowd) are also noteworthy.

Cinema

Mexican films from the Golden Age in the 1940s and 1950s are the greatest examples of Latin American cinema, with a huge industry comparable to the Hollywood of those years. Mexican films were exported and exhibited in all of Latin America and Europe. María Candelaria (1943) by Emilio Fernández, was one of the first films awarded a Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1946, the first time the event was held after World War II. The famous Spanish-born director Luis Buñuel realized in Mexico between 1947 and 1965 some of his masterpieces like Los Olvidados (1949) and Viridiana (1961). Famous actors and actresses from this period include María Félix, Pedro Infante, Dolores del Río, Jorge Negrete and the comedian Cantinflas.

More recently, films such as Como agua para chocolate (1992), Cronos (1993), Y tu mamá también (2001), and Pan's Labyrinth (2006) have been successful in creating universal stories about contemporary subjects, and were internationally recognized, as in the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Mexican directors Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores perros, Babel, Birdman, The Revenant), Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Gravity), Guillermo del Toro, Carlos Carrera (The Crime of Father Amaro), screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga and photographer Emmanuel Lubezki are some of the most known present-day film makers. Numerous Mexican actors have achieved recognition as Hollywood stars.

Media

There are three major television companies in Mexico that own the primary networks and broadcast covering all nation, Televisa, TV Azteca and Imagen Television. Televisa is also the largest producer of Spanish-language content in the world and also the world's largest Spanish-language media network. Media company Grupo Imagen is another national coverage television broadcaster in Mexico, that also owns the newspaper Excélsior. Grupo Multimedios is another media conglomerate with Spanish-language broadcasting in Mexico, Spain, and the United States. The telenovelas are very traditional in Mexico and are translated to many languages and seen all over the world with renowned names like Verónica Castro, Lucía Méndez and Thalía.

Mexican cuisine

In 2005, Mexico presented the candidature of its gastronomy for World Heritage Site of UNESCO, being the first occasion in which a country had presented its gastronomic tradition for this purpose. However, in a first instance the result was negative, because the committee did not place the proper emphasis on the importance of corn in Mexican cuisine. Finally, on 16 November 2010 Mexican gastronomy was recognized as Intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO. In addition, Daniela Soto-Innes was named the best female chef in the world by The World's Best 50 Restaurants in April 2019.

The origin of the current Mexican cuisine is established during the Spanish colonial era, a mixture of the foods of Spain with native indigenous ingredients. Of foods originated in Mexico is the corn, the pepper vegetables (together with Central and South America), calabazas (together with the Americas), avocados, sweet potato (together with Central and South America), the turkey (together with the Americas) and other fruits and spices. Other Indigenous products are many beans. Similarly, some cooking techniques used today are inherited from pre-Hispanic peoples, such as the nixtamalization of corn, the cooking of food in ovens at ground level, grinding in molcajete and metate. With the Spaniards came the pork, beef and chicken meats; peppercorn, sugar, milk and all its derivatives, wheat and rice, citrus fruits and another constellation of ingredients that are part of the daily diet of Mexicans.

From this meeting of millennia old two culinary traditions, were born pozole, mole sauce, barbacoa and tamale is in its current forms, the chocolate, a large range of breads, tacos, and the broad repertoire of Mexican street foods. Beverages such as atole, champurrado, milk chocolate and aguas frescas were born; desserts such as acitrón and the full range of crystallized sweets, rompope, cajeta, jericaya and the wide repertoire of delights created in the convents of nuns in all parts of the country.

Music

Mexican society enjoys a vast array of music genres, showing the diversity of Mexican culture. Traditional music includes mariachi, banda, norteño, ranchera and corridos; on an everyday basis most Mexicans listen to contemporary music such as pop, rock, etc. in both English and Spanish. Mexico has the largest media industry in Latin America, producing Mexican artists who are famous in Central and South America and parts of Europe, especially Spain.

Sports

Mexico's most popular sport is association football. It is commonly believed that football was introduced in Mexico by Cornish miners at the end of the 19th century. By 1902 a five-team league had emerged with a strong British influence. Mexico's top clubs are América with 12 championships, Guadalajara with 11, and Toluca with 10. Antonio Carbajal was the first player to appear in five World Cups, and Hugo Sánchez was named best CONCACAF player of the 20th century by IFFHS. Rafael Márquez is the only Mexican to have won the Champions League.

The Mexican professional baseball league is named the Liga Mexicana de Beisbol. While usually not as strong as the United States, the Caribbean countries and Japan, Mexico has nonetheless achieved several international baseball titles. Mexican teams have won the Caribbean Series nine times. Mexico has had several players signed by Major League teams, the most famous of them being Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela.

Mexico City hosted the XIX Olympic Games in 1968, making it the first Latin American city to do so. The country has also hosted the FIFA World Cup twice, in 1970 and 1986.

In 2013, Mexico's basketball team won the Americas Basketball Championship and qualified for the 2014 Basketball World Cup where it reached the playoffs. Because of these achievements the country earned the hosting rights for the 2015 FIBA Americas Championship.

Bullfighting (Spanish: corrida de toros) came to Mexico 500 years ago with the arrival of the Spanish. Despite efforts by animal rights activists to outlaw it, bullfighting remains a popular sport in the country, and almost all large cities have bullrings. Plaza México in Mexico City, which seats 45,000 people, is the largest bullring in the world.

Mexico is an international power in professional boxing. Thirteen Olympic boxing medals have been won by Mexico.

Professional wrestling (or Lucha libre in Spanish) is a major crowd draw with national promotions such as AAA, CMLL and others.