FLESH LIFE Sex in Mexico City

Joseph Rodríguez
FLESH LIFE Sex in Mexico City

Photographs: Joseph Rodríguez

Text: Rubén Martínez and Pedro Meyer

Publisher: powerHouse Books

96 pages

Pictures: 55

Year: 2006

Price: 30 €

Comments: Hardcover, 25,3 x 19 m, b&w photographs. Inside in very good condition. Cover in good condition, traces of rubbing and marks due to use.

"Let's begin, safely, with an idea. About a cataclysmic fuck-Mexico's big bang. More than half a century ago, Octavio Paz wrote of the "masks" Mexicans have crafted over time, mythic identities whose function is to hide the trauma of la chingada (from the verb chingar, to fuck, both literally and figuratively), that is, the Conquest-the rape of native by conquistador-from which modern Mexico's mestizo identity was born. Not surprisingly, the most common, and powerful, of Mexicans masks are sexual in nature. One can interpret the mask of the macho (hard-working, hard-drinking, hard-fucking) as necessary for Mexican men to regain some sense of manhood after la chingada. Likewise, the obsession with virginity imposed upon and internalized by Mexican women has perhaps been a way to purge the memory of the original violation. The Catholic Church, true to its nature as a patriarchal institution, played an important role in the formulation of both of these constructs. But in the end, a mask is just a mask-it does not necessarily alter what lies behind it, although it can create a tension that results in comic, tragic, and downright surreal performances. In Mexico, a tremendous amount of fear, loathing, and, of course, desire lies behind the masks. The homogenous image that Mexico presents to the outside world (and to itself through "official" culture), that of a uniformly brown and Catholic nation, is itself a mask that hides an exceedingly complex series of divides. Desire is always contradicting itself in Mexico, and it does so on every level: along the lines of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, even religion."

(From the essay by Rubén Martínez)