TEX-VEX (For a Lone Star), 2022 - ongoing
This work reflects on the material effects of political symbols. By collecting archival photos of armed demonstrators in Texas and historical paintings from the Battle of Gonzales—the beginning of Texan independence from Mexico—I hand-sewed the stars depicted in those images and placed them on handmade flags, as a way to explain the death they have caused in Coahuila—my state, which was once united with Texas until its independence. I wrote a poem to the LONE STAR. I read it to it, I touched it, I caressed it, I ripped it. I decided to dress like the ones who bear it, trying to become them to understand what a LONE STAR can do, its historical weight, and how pathetic it is to hold that much heaviness.
*Project carried out in the residency grant program “NI DE AQUÍ NI DE ALLÁ” by Cobertizo.
How to defend oneself from images when there are no innocent images?
In the context of Texan Independence—when Texas separated from Mexico and, therefore, from Coahuila—flags emerged that condensed a sentiment still present north of the border: freedom, even if it runs with blood.
Texan vexillology records among its annals the Troutman Flag, designed by Joanna Troutman in 1836. It depicts a lone star and the phrase “LIBERTY OR DEATH.” Today, it stands as a Texan identity emblem which, together with other icons of similar origin, functions as a symbolic instrument defending the free flow of arms commerce in the United States—a reason that facilitates the illegal entry of weapons into Mexico. Seventy percent of these come from Texas, crossing through what is today the Comarca Lagunera.
LIBERTY FOR DEATH is a steel armor plate useless in material terms, but which operates on a symbolic dimension by posing the following dilemma: whose freedom, at the cost of whose death?
*Project carried out in the residency grant program “NI DE AQUÍ NI DE ALLÁ” by Cobertizo, shown in RASTRO Galería.
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In 1835, during the Battle of Gonzales in the former state of Coahuila and Texas, the Mexican army demanded that the Texan independentistas surrender and hand over a cannon. The Texans responded by raising a makeshift flag that showed a star —as they call themselves “the Lone Star State”—, a cannon, and the phrase “COME AND TAKE IT.” By 1836, the Texans had gained independence from Mexico —with the support of the U.S. government— and separated from Coahuila and Mexico.
This banner has since been adapted to contemporary times and conditions; it no longer shows an old cannon but an AR-15.
Between 2009 and 2013, I lived through the most violent period our region, the Comarca Lagunera, has experienced. This area lies between the cities of Torreón, in Coahuila, and Lerdo and Gómez Palacio, in Durango. At the time, the region was a battlefield between the Sinaloa Cartel and Los Zetas.
During that same period, the Fast and Furious operation was carried out jointly by the U.S. and Mexican governments. That operation consisted of allowing firearms purchased in the United States to flow into Mexico in order to trace arms trafficking routes. One of the findings of that failed operation was that more than half of the weapons illegally trafficked into Mexico come from Texas.
In the two-channel video, an annonymous man, who was displaced by the violence in the region, is the pilot for this drifting performance —a car enthusiast who migrated to the United States in 2010 after his neighborhood was taken over by a cartel. With his Mexican nationalized ’84 American Mustang, he drifts along the dry bed of the Nazas River, which divides the region between the two states. He waves a pair of “COME AND TAKE IT” flags —the insignia of the most conservative sector of U.S. society. With this flag, this group defends its right to buy and own firearms with minimal restrictions, unaware that the exercise of this right causes death beyond its borders.
It’s strange how a Hollywood car fiction can overlap with reality. I don’t believe that the years in which my region’s most violent period occurred, and those of the Fast and Furious operation, were coincidental. I purchased this pair of flags from a Texan I contacted through a far-right Facebook group.
At the same time, a bullet-ridden hood from a Tsuru III serves as the base that holds the flags. I also found this hood on Facebook Marketplace.