Chiapas: The End of Silence / El fin del silencio - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0893817724 ISBN 13: 9780893817725

Publisher: Aperture, 1998

Synopsis

Chiapas: The End of Silence is Antonio Turok's striking visual diary of his experiences in this southern Mexican state, which is in many ways a cultural crossroads for the Americas. The region is marked by centuries of conflict between modern society and the indigenous communities--the most recent of which was the uprising in 1994 by the Zapatista Army. With this struggle, which continues today in search of a peaceful settlement, the Maya Indians ended their centuries-old silence, and captured the imaginations of leftist activists around the world.

While they cannot help but reflect the politics of the region, Turok's photographs transcend mere reportage, echoing the rich history of Chiapas. His portraits of the many different lives and rituals--from religious festivals to country funerals, from high society to homelessness--offer a multifaceted view of a social environment so complex as to resemble a hall of mirrors.

There are sixty-four black-and-white images in this book, along with personal commentary by Turok and an introduction by Francisco Álvarez Quiñones, Chiapaneco poet and playwright. Detailed captions in English and Spanish appear at the back of the book.

About this title

About the Author:

Antonio Turok was born and raised in Mexico City. He has photographed extensively throughout Central America and southern Mexico for the past two decades, and has published a book of photographs on Nicaragua. Turok is a winner of the 1994 Mother Jones International Documentary Photography Award and recipient of grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and US/MEXICO Fund for Culture for his work in Chiapas, where he lives today.

Francisco Álvarez Quiñones is a poet, playwright, actor, storyteller, and filmmaker based in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. In collaboration with a nonprofit theater organization whose actors and writers are from Tzeltal and Tzotzil, Maya communities in the highlands of Chiapas, he has written an award-winning series of plays rooted in Maya culture. Quiñones is working on a novel, Bolom, Jaguar Trozista.

Review:

"Antonio Turok's extraordinary work is a poetic testimony of one of the most important human dramas of our times; an epic that begins in the depths of Central America and ends in the Latino barrios of the United States."--Guillermo Gómez-Peña, author and performance artist

"The images that Turok captures represent the suffering, the dignity, and the will of these descendants of the Mayan civilizations over a period of time. Much as photographs by Dorothea Lange captured the essence of the American migrant experience during the Great Depression, Turok captures the essence of a Mexico that is vanishing. These images are not those of a sojourner but of a vecino who has lived for twenty-four years among his protagonists."--Rodolfo F. Acuña, Professor of Chicano Studies at California State University, Northridge

"Chiapas stands at the crossroads of the Americas and, at least since the Zapatista revolt, of several American narratives. There is the romance of the rain forest, of the guerrillas--transfigured as media artists who shot real bullets and bled real blood--but above all of the Indian in revolt against Europe, against oppression, against modernity. It is Antonio Turok's singular achievement to have recorded these narratives without succumbing to them. By living and working in Chiapas for many years, he became alert to what is enduring and changing in a conflict whose realities will scar and resurrect the lives of its participants long after the myth-makers have packed up their camera bags. For his inspired work, Antonio Turok won the 1994 Mother Jones International Award for Documentary Photography."--Kerry Tremain, Executive Editor, Mother Jones

About this edition

• Publisher: Aperture
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0893817724
• ISBN 13: 9780893817725
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 152