Palacio Cortes, Diego Rivera Mural

Last week we went to Palacio Cortes which, as you can probably tell by its name, was Hernan Cortes's palace which he built here in Cuernavaca over an indigenous ceremonial site. I dislike Cortes almost more than Ronald Reagan by the way.

It is located on the central square in Cuernavaca called the Zocalo.

It is now a museum which houses a Diego Rivera mural.

The mural is called "A History of Morelos: Conquest and Revolution." The conquest of course refers to when Cortes came in 1519 and the revolution is that which occurred in 1910 with Emiliano Zapata. The mural is really more about the conquest though with just a few references to the revolution thrown in. The bigger portrayal of the conquest is purposeful in that it shows how much of an impact that conquest had on the lives of people today in Mexico.

The mural is amazing and stretches the length of a hallway. It starts on the right end and works its way to the left. It portrays fighting among indigenous peoples and the conquistadores. It portrays sacrifices by the Aztecs, destruction of nature, torturing of indigenous, the Spanish taking gold, jewels, and food from the natives. It shows the Spanish forcing the natives to labor to build Catholic churches upon their ceremonial centers. It shows the horror of the conquest.

I really like Diego River's art.

There are a few representations of Zapata and the Revolution of 1910 which you can see in one of the pictures of the man and the woman opposite each other on one of the beams in the hallway.