Marching into March

It's time to turn the page on the calendar.  For the month of March, my calendar, which features Mexican works of art, has a painting by Diego Rivera, arguably the most famous Mexican muralist.  

Rivera painted a series of murals in Mexico City's National Palace depicting the history of the country.  He began in 1929 and continued work off and on into the 1950s.  He never finished the ambitious project and only got as far as the Spanish conquest. However, the paintings that he did are incredibly rich in detail.

Here is one of the panels from the National Palace depicting the Totonac civilization which flourished along the gulf coast.

In the foreground an Aztec tax collector is receiving tribute from the Totonac chief.  In the background is the Totonac capital of El Tajín, including the city's most important temple, the Pyramid of the Niches.  You also can see the ceremony of "los voladores" (the flyers) in which dancers launch themselves from a tall pole, their feet tied to ropes, and they spiral to the ground.