The long mural continues... or at least my presentation of it. Just like in my last two submissions to the weekly Street-Art Contest by CCC (here and here), the subject is a looooong wall painting on the wall of the UAM Cultural Center, located on the corner of Gob. José María Tornel and Gral Pedro Antonio de los Santos, in the San Miguel Chapultepec neighborhood of Mexico City.
As always, it is pretty hard to put the whole image into one picture, simply because the wall is so long. This is why I broke it up into several pieces. But in today's post I actually would like to include three things, simply because they belong together. These are the two elite warrior classes of the Méxica people: the Jaguar Warrior and the Eagle Warrior.
This is the Eagle Warrior, wearing the headdress with the eagleś beak and the feathers decorating him. The swirling cloud emerging from his mouth is a pictographic symbol used in prehispanic codexes, symbolizing spoken information. Essentially it is a speech bubble. Looking at the warrior's face, however, I would say that this information is shouted more than spoken. Maybe a war cry?
Talking about codexes, the image between the two warriors is an open book with the face of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, who among many things was also a patron of knowledge and education. Behind him we see a nopal cactus, branching out into a multitude of flowers.
On the left side of the book stands the Jaguar Warrior, characterized by the spotted pattern painted on her skin... because yes, interestingly she is a female warrior. Iḿ not sure how historically accurate it is, but she does look admittedly fierce and powerful. (Sorry about the inopportune moment I took this pic, when the sun and shade were getting in the way.)
I really wanted to keep these two (or three, including the middle image) together in one post, but since I must pick one for the contest, I will submit the eagle warrior. It comes out much clearer in the photo.
If you are interested in tracking down the creators of these images, here are some close-ups of the artist's tags on the bottom: