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The Murals
The Panamerican Mural:
The Panamerican mural symbolize friendship among North, Central, and South American countries, with notable historic hemispheric leaders (clockwise from upper right): Washington (US), Hidalgo (Mexico), Bolivar (Venezuela), Marti (Cuba), Lincoln (US), and Juarez (Mexico).
Panamericanism became associated with the Good Neighbor Policy, by which the US, under President Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, tried to reassure Latin American governments that it would not intervene in their affairs.
The Landing of Columbus:
This scene portrays a heroic Christopher Columbus planting the Spanish flag in the New World, backed by the Church and Spanish military might.
We learn, for example, that Cueva's heroic portrait of Columbus (at the top of the stairway leading to the third floor) was originally planned as a portrait of the Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortes. Cortes historic reputation had fared poorly after the Mexican Revolution, whose ideals emphasized the achievements of the pre-Conquest native civilizations, and Columbus, at the time, may have seemed a less controversial figure.
Pre-Columbian Mexico:
This scene is dominated by the mythological founding of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitian, now Mexico City, where an eagle with a serpent in its beak perched on a cactus, with the towering temple-pyramids of the city in its heyday in the background and the bearded God Quetzalcoati in the upper left. |