totem
n.
1. a natural object or an animate being, as an animal or bird, assumed as the emblem of a clan, family, or group.
2. an object or natural phenomenon with which a family or sib considers itself closely related.
3. a representation of such an object serving as the distinctive mark of the clan or group.
4. anything serving as a distinctive, often venerated, emblem or symbol.
beyond hybrid and fad, neoprehispanic architectures in mexico have been very much about politics. in the form of neoaztec, mayan revival or even officialist state architecture (barroco priísta), neoprehispánico style has shaken pastiche, indigenismo, bloated patriotism, brutalism and a dash of altantic (from atlantis) fantasy in the process of concocting modern-day totems for the nation.
theme-wise, the oman scheme for the torre bicentenario (a pyramid set on top of another inverted one) is just a (too) late, skimmed-down, space-aged, millennium-friendly adaptation of the same architectural bosh that comes and goes every so often in the name of fathom and effigy.
a brief recapitulation of mexicanista neostyles would be fun and in order as a backdrop to this candyland bicentenario brief.
come now, let us visit the prehispanismo of the late 1800s, the messy spillovers of border revival styles, the primitivist fantasies of postrevolutionary experiments, the glories of post-ww2 internationalized aztequismo; hell, we might even get us some 80’s-90’s technotzompantli…
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