5 Days in Mexico City 1

On November 13, 2025, I flew from New York City to Mexico City to enjoy five days with my daughter, Rya; she flew in from Los Angeles about the same time. We arrived at different terminals, soon found each other and took a taxi to our small art hotel in Roma Sur, a neighborhood (colonia) located west of the city’s historic center. Our neighborhood turned out to be an ideal place to stay. It was free of the noise and bustle of the center (as well as several other districts of this sprawling, vibrant, complicated city). Roma’s tree-lined streets offered a welcome shade that must really lower temperature in the hottest of months. The colonia is mainly residential, but generously sprinkled with restaurants, bars, small shops and theose ubiquitous, colorful food stands–puestos–and bicycle vendors–vendedores ambulantes or carritos.

In our abbreviated first day, we limited our wanders to Roma and neighboring colonias. The next day–our first full day–we took the subway (el Metro) into the city center. Rya, who had been here before, also was quite adept at manipulating various apps on her i-phone, so I entrusted all navigation to her. She got us where we wanted on the streets, and on the Metro, which I highly recommend using.

And so, I begin this post with photographs and commentary on the subway system, followed by a few unexpected encounters in the city center, and culminating in a visit to two interesting buildings and their contents: a house covered in tiles (Casa de los Azulejos) and the Palacio de Bellas Artes.

 

In contrast to New York City, the Mexico City Metro station entrances are not predictably located on sidewalks at the corner intersections of two streets. Some might be found on a sidewalk but in the middle of a block, not at its curb end. Others, like the one above, might occupy the center of a broad street with no connection to a building or actual sidewalk.  Still others may deposit riders into a plaza separate from any nearby street and sidewalk. This is one of many things that give special character to a specific subway line and neighborhood.

 

 

Mexico City has twelve subway lines, each identified mainly by a color, but also by a number (1-9) or letter (A, B). The very first line–Line 1 or Pink Line–opened to the public in September of 1969. Today, the system transports about 4.4-4.6 million people per day, a figure–interestingly enough–higher than the 3.4-4 million riders on the New York City system.

These two maps show the spread of the 140 mile Metro system. It is the largest in Latin America and second only to the New York Subway. Even so, New York City is quite a bit larger, covering 248 route miles. Here are some quick comparisons between Mexico City and New York: Underground Stations: 115: 275;  Elevated Stations: 26: 153;  Surface Stations: 54: 44. Mexico City also has some deep stations. I recall walking up many stairs in several places before reaching the surface. Still, none compares to New York’s 191st Street station on the 1 Line, which is 173 feet below ground. Mexico’s deepest station is Polanco Station on Line 7 at around 115 feet below street level, making it close to par with the second deepest New York station, the Hudson Yards Station (on the 7 Train), 126 feet below street level.

The big difference between these two subway systems, however is what they tunnel through. The New York City subway system tunnels through a mix of ancient bedrock, chiefly Manhattan Schist and glacial deposits. These aren’t going anywhere, so to speak. The Mexico City subway system is built through ancient lakebed sediments consisting of volcanic ash, soft clays and silt, a vast aquifer, and a complex hydrology of hidden rivers. This makes what is underneath Mexico City much less stable. Unlike New York City, it faces an on-going geological threat, and records show that parts of the city sink close to 20 inches per year.

 

The Metro cars are similar to those in New York, although most are more modern and definitely cleaner.

 

The Mexican Metro is also much quieter. Almost all of its lines employ rubber-tired vehicles instead of steel wheels on steel rails. This system, first applied totally in Montreal, Canada, in 1966, was based on the Paris Métro, which began converting to this pneumatic traction system in 1956.  Instead of steel tracks, these rubber-tired vehicles sit on rollways–concrete surfaces with guide bars. There also is only one rollway in each direction, and so Mexico City has no “express tracks” as in New York.

 

One interesting social benefit that Mexico City has implemented is in designating subway cars for women and children only. The red pylon you see on this platform delineates an area in which only women and children should stand and wait for a train. The doors that open in this area will be for such a reserved subway car. The sign above makes this clear: Area Exclusive to Women and Children.

 

Another social benefit to be found in the Mexico City Metro are displays of art. In the above photo on the Copilco Station platform, we see two of five mural panels installed in 1999 by the artist Guillermo Ceniceros, the series entitled El Perfil del Tiempo (The Profile of Time). Although the New York subway had art from its beginnings in 1901 (as in the ceramic tiles embedded in its walls from designs by Heinz & LaFarge), it only began to commission artists to install larger-scale murals on its walls when the City mandated its percent for Art Law in 1982.

 

 

Upon exiting the Metro at Garibaldi Lagunilla, we were confronted by a boxing match pictured on the stair risers. As I reached the top, I turned around and saw the title which, I suspect, referred to all the visual displays in this station: The Idols of Mexican Boxing.

 

 

On a long corridor above those stairs, iconic photographic scenes of Mexican boxers covered both walls. At each end, these pictured ring encounters are identified. All these boxing photos were installed as a permanent exhibition in 2017. The selection of this station was intentional. It is quite close to the Morelos colonia which includes the barrio known as Tepito.  Tepito, often referred to as barrio bravo by the locals, is also known as the “spiritual home of Mexican boxing.” Fighters like Kid Azteca and Raúl “El Ratón” Macías honed their skills in its neighborhood gyms.

 

Here is a detail from that long corridor, showing Ana María Torres Ramírez fighting Jacqueline Nava Mouett. Both Nava (La Princesa Azteca) and Torres (La Guerrera) are members of the International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame.

 

The Zócalo Tenochtitlán Station deposits us into the very center of Mexico City. We will exit from it into the vast central plaza, the Zócalo or the Plaza de La Constitución. However, we first walk by displays such as that seen above, a scale model of Tenochtitlán as it existed in 1521.  Where we were standing had once–in the early 16th century–been the center of the Aztec Empire. Besides this diorama, there also were some historical murals gracing the walls of this station.

Were I to return to Mexico City, it would necessarily be for more than five days, and I would devote at least one full day riding the subway. I would disembark at most every station to see the art and artifacts on display there. Every Metro station offers something of interest: in one case, an actual pyramid which had been unearthed during the construction of the Pino Suárez station in 1967; in another case, the skeleton of a mammoth uncovered during the Line 4 construction of Talismán station in 1978. I refer you to an article by Peter Davies of the Mexico News Daily for a few other examples (but not all) of this underground wealth.

 

 

These photographs were taken on Friday, November 14, 2025, our first full day in the city. We had hoped to enter that long building seen straight ahead, the Palacio Nacional, which is the executive seat of the Mexican government and the official residence of the President of Mexico…not to say hello to President Claudia Sheinbaum, of course, but to see the spectacular murals painted by Diego Rivera in 1929-1930: The History of Mexico.

This was not to be. You will note that dark wall between the plaza and the Palacio Nacional with words freshly spray-painted on it. This nine-foot high wall of steel separated the plaza (Zócalo) from major buildings on three sides. It’s erection, which was being completed as we entered the Zócalo, was preparation for major demonstrations to be held the following day. The wall confined demonstrators to the plaza and away from surrounding buildings. As we can see, the most prominent of its spray-painted words, NARCO ESTADO (Narco-State), refers to the corruption by which drug cartels influence government institutions. The demonstrations of the following day demanded more government accountability as well as justice for murders carried out by the cartels–the most recent of which was the killing of Uruapan Mayor, Carlos Manzo thirteen days earlier; he had been a fierce critic of the cartels.

Obviously, we were not going to see the Rivera murals Friday or Saturday. In fact, about 100 police officers were injured the next day in anti-government protests. Sunday would be clean-up, and, naturally, the government buildings would also be closed then. Monday, our last day before flying home, turned out to be the 115th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution against the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, so all government buildings remained closed. And so, the Rivera murals will just have to be filed away and added to that possible future visit when I ride the entire Metro.

 

 

One building just beyond the southwest edge of the Zócalo is the Gran Hotel, originally built in 1898 as the Centro Mercantil. Its exposed elevator tower and Tiffany stained glass vault dates from then and exemplifies the modernization and Europeanization that characterized the Mexico of Porfirio Díaz. What had been an elegant department store became a hotel in 1968 in anticipation of the Summer Olympic Games of that year.

Walk two blocks north from the hotel, then turn west on Avenida 5 de Mayo to arrive at the building illustrated below, the Casa de los Azulejos.

 

 

 

This façade and the façade opposite it on Calle Francisco I. Madero were originally two separate houses built in the 16th century. They were later joined after ownership passed to the Counts of the Valley of Orizaba. The tile (azulejos) was added by the Fifth Countess of the Valley of Orizaba in 1737 after she moved from Puebla to Mexico City.

 

 

 

The dark, carved stone pilasters and window architraves set off the brilliance of the Talavera tile. And this corner cornice at the top offers an elegant fillip to the entire ensemble, with its rising volutes almost acting like rampant heraldic figures that support and protect an empty niche. Did someone in the Orizaba family intend to place a figure (or a saint) in that niche? Or, had there been one that was removed at some point in the last two centuries?

 

 

In the later 19th century the Casa de los Azulejos was no longer the residence of the aristocratic Orizaba family. It became the Jockey Club, then the World Worker’s House (Casa del Obrero Mundial), and in 1917 it became the headquarters of the Sanborn restaurant chain, which still operates it, as these photographs show. The Sanborn brothers covered the courtyard with a stained glass roof and commissioned the Peacock mural to surround the original fountain.

 

 

 

 

I was surprised to find a work by one of the great Mexican muralists, José Clemente Orozco, in the building’s stairwell.

Besides the Peacock mural in the main dining room, the Sanborn brothers allowed Orozco to paint a mural on their stairway landing. In his dedication (seen directly above), Orozco tells us that he painted this at the request of his great admirer Francisco Sergio Iturbe. Iturbe was a collector and patron of art, and he also was born in this house. It’s a curious painting; I find it a challenge to understand how Orozco’s five major figures manifest Omniscience: Five rigid figures; on the left, a frontal, standing male confined by the forearm and sword of a larger male figure shown in profile; on the right and balancing this group is a frontal female figure, similarly held in place by the forearm of another larger male figure. These four flank a central male figure, kneeling as if in supplication, or possibly as a recipient of some form of heavenly inspiration. It’s recognizably Orozco in style, yet lacking the clarity of meaning of his many other large-scale murals.

 

Crossing a busy trafficked street known as Lazaro Cardenas (or Eje Central) just due west from Casa de los Azulejos brings us to a large park known as Alameda Central. The park dates back to the late 16th century and is said to be the oldest public park in the Americas. The Palacio de Bellas Artes, on which we soon will focus, occupies the eastern edge of the park. Before turning to it, however, I wish to point out this most curious Metro station located just a few meters west of the palace.

There is no mistaking this particular organic, sinuous configuration of arch and iron railing which frames the subway entrance. This is the work of the Frenchman, Hector Guimard. It dates from 1900, is a classic example of French Art Nouveau, and soon thereafter came to be known by Parisians everywhere as style Métro. What is it doing in Mexico City?

We already know that the STC (Sistema de Transporte Colectivo, or el Metro) was influenced and inspired by the earlier Paris subway system, but why would el Metro install a copy of a century-old French design here, in a Central American city replete with its own artists? The answer: it was installed in 1998 in celebration of 30 years of cooperation between the two capital cities’ Metro companies. France gave Mexico City this replica of the original Guimard design of 1900. In exchange, Mexico gave France a beadwork mural by its famous Huichol artist, Santos de la Torre (El pensamiento y el alma huicholes), which is on display in the Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre Métro station.

 

This is one of four sculptures of Pegasus by the Spanish sculptor, Subirats, that now sit in the the large plaza in front of the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Originally, these sculptures rose over the corners of the National Theater building, a prior occupant of this space. With the decision to replace that theater with the Palacio, the sculptures were temporarily moved to the Zócalo. They returned here in 1933.

 

 

 

All the popular texts on this building, whether found in guide books to Mexico City or through internet searches, refer to the Boari exterior as Art Nouveau. One source modifies this designation by calling it Art Nouveau and Neoclassical, making it partially correct in my estimation. The columns are classical, but not of any specific Greek or Roman Order. So are the flattened piers, or pilasters, on the visible end pavilion. The deep entablature and protruding cornice are also derived from classical elements. But “Neoclassical” signifies a conscious return to the rules that guided Greek and Roman architectural design. That’s not what we see here.

Boari’s much looser approach to classical forms (also Mariscal’s, if he had any hand in this part of the building) should really be called Beaux-Arts. Beaux-Arts architecture treated classical elements more freely and considered Renaissance and Baroque elements as equally relevant. In fact, Beaux-Arts design was the dominant form in the late 19th century, and Art Nouveau was a reaction against its form of “old fashioned” classicism. So, let’s see what a few exterior details tell us about Boari’s design.

 

This figure, whatever she might personify, certainly exhibits the sinuosity for which Art Nouveau is known. However, she is naturally proportioned–not distorted or elongated (as would be the case were she truly Art Nouveau)–and she is simply a traditional bit of representational sculpture.

 

We are told that Harmony, the standing central figure, is surrounded by personifications of Pain, Rage, Happiness, Peace and Love. The entire tympanum, with its doubled columns, their abstracted capitals and the sculptural archivolts rising above and curving around the prominent front arch exemplifies the sort of inventive application of classicism that typifies Beaux-Arts design.

 

Balancing this sculpture on the opposite curve is Bistolfi’s sculptural group titled Inspiration. Both of these sculptural groups are “messy” Baroque invasions onto the more refined “purity” of the arch. Never would this happen in a piece of Neoclassical design. At the same time, the properly proportioned figures have nothing to do with the stylized and elongated forms of Art Nouveau.

 

Here is a wonderfully inventive design that turns the archivolts (the sculptural voussoirs of an arch) into two slithering snakes. Let’s call them coatl, the word for serpent in Nahuatl, because this is Mexico, after all. From ancient times coatl has been a symbol of rebirth, fertility and transformation (appropriate on a building designed to house the arts). Once again, this creativity defies Neoclassical rules.

And then, on the stonework below, we see four courses of rusticated masonry surrounding a keystone that is smooth and polished–ashlar, in other words. This is a playful detail, something alien to the strict principles of Neoclassicism.

 

Again, here is a wonderful bit of rustication, a masonry technique that leaves stone blocks rough and protruding from their recessed joints–a way to suggest weight and strength, particularly at the lower level of a building. It was a device made popular first by Italian Renaissance architects.

 

 

And finally, here, we have two different versions of a dropped keystone, another creative device derived from the Italian Renaissance, or, to be more precise, from the early 16th century Renaissance style known as Mannerism. Again, these features are neither Neoclassical nor remotely connected to Art Nouveau.

Please, let’s call the exterior of the Palacio de Bellas Artes what it really is: a fascinating piece of Beaux-Arts design.

 

 

 

 

Happily, those same popular sources and guidebooks are more accurate in their references to the interior. It dates from the early 1930s, and most definitely is Art Deco in style.

I love, in particular, these stone piers which also serve as vertical light panels. Topped by a capital in the form of an abstracted figure of the Mayan god of rain, Chaac, they are pure Art Deco in their abstraction and in their use of metal as an acceptable material.

 

Now to some of the art on exhibit in the Palacio: Here (above and below) are three paintings by Lilia Carrillo, who was a figurative painter like so many Mexican artists of her generation; but later, she would become one of the first abstract painters in Mexico. These paintings are from a special, temporary exhibit in the Palacio that opened in September.

 

 

 

This large painting was one of ten paintings by Mexican artists that were displayed in the Mexican Pavilion at the Osaka World’s Fair of 1970. Fernando Gamboa, who organized that 1970 exhibit, asked each artist to 1) redefine the Mexican mural legacy in an abstract style, and 2) address themes related to the limits of development and industrial growth. His first request asks these Mexican artists to take their mural tradition in a new direction, beyond that of educating the Mexican population with the social ideals emerging from its recent Revolution. His second request both offers one new direction, that of a more international, world-wide focus, and also intersects with the Expo ’70 theme: Progress and Harmony for Mankind.

 

 

The final paintings we will see are all permanent installations, painted for the space in which they are pictured here. They all are connected to that first Mexican mural legacy, one that emerged from and was inspired by the Mexican Revolution. The murals were an essential part of the official post-war rebuilding process. Their primary intention was to instruct, to educate Mexico’s mostly working-class and illiterate population about its history and its future. Although situated in a museum, these particular murals were intended to be a true public art, an art in the service of the people.

Jorge Camarena was the fifth and last Mexican artist to be honored by an invitation to paint a mural for the Palacio de Bellas Artes. My apologies for not squeezing behind those heavy columns in order to photograph the far left and right sections of Liberación; I’ll describe what cannot be seen. Camarena’s figures are all on the painting’s frontal plane and its spatial depth is extremely shallow. His composition is in three parts, moving from left to right: on the left is a dead peasant whose partially decomposed body is bound by ropes (unseen here) and a nude woman whose body bears denigrating tattoos (seen here); in the center are at least three male figures who are breaking free of their bonds; on the right is a mestizo woman shown frontally and holding up a seed of corn in each raised hand (unseen here).

By prominently featuring a mestizo woman, Camarena promotes Mexico’s mixed-race people to the status of modern hero. Consider this mural an allegory of the liberation of the Mexican people by virtue of their forbearance and self-sufficiency.

 

 

Because of a public lecture taking place in front of the Rufino Tamayo murals, I was prevented from standing in front of these paintings and taking a straight-on shot, so these two extreme raking-angle photographs only serve to give a sense of their monumental scale. Adding to this impediment, Tamayo’s work abandons representation for a more abstract idiom. Therefore, here is a brief interpretation of his two murals. Birth of Our Nationality reveals the Mexican nation as a cultural mix of the Caucasian European male (the Spanish conquistador) and indigenous (Nahua, Maya, Zapotec) female.

Mexico Today, according to the Palacio’s descriptive plaque, also “upholds the idea of mestizaje (racial and cultural mixing)” as the basis of Modern Mexico, which I find challenging to see in Tamayo’s portrayal. But the forms on the far left suggest the ruins of the old civilizations, and on the right an emerging industrial city.

 

 

This is the central panel of a triptych by Siqueiros.  The left panel shows two highly foreshortened figures (Victims of War). The right panel shows a single foreshortened male figure whose back is bruised and deeply cut (Victim of Fascism). These were painted in 1945 after the Allied victory in WWII. The central panel, painted the year before, was intended to be titled Mexico for Democracy and Independence. But as a triptych, the mural assumed the title of New Democracy. Here, too, the central figure is foreshortened, but also definitely alive and catapulting her body towards the viewer. The yellow flower in her left hand is a positive symbol of beauty, birth, growth (or the Palacio plaque tells us of art and science). To our right, below her, lies a dead Nazi soldier painted in grisaille, so contributing even more to her colorful prominence.

She has broken the chains that bound her as she powerfully thrusts outward–all hot flesh in contrast to a cold, industrial, steel-grey background. On her head is a Phrygian (or Jacobin) cap, symbolic of freedom, liberty or of republicanism (in more recent centuries). I resonate to the implication of woman as leading a nation (possibly a world) out of chaos and despair. Siqueiros’ powerful figure is comparable to Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People of 1830 as emblematic of justified revolt against tyranny.

 

 

 

Orozco’s mural jams figures and objects onto the frontal plane, hardly giving them, or the viewer, breathing room. An open safe, a structural steel I-beam, machinery, guns, a laughing prostitute and other people crammed together. The artist titles this Catharsis. But if catharsis is the act of purging repressed emotions, letting ones feelings out, hitting a punching bag, one needs space to accomplish this. Orozco provides no space, and all we can see behind this mêlée are red tongues of fire. The Palacio’s plaque assures us that “the purifying fire…will give rise to a new society.” I don’t believe that Orozco possesses that sort of optimism. He was a pessimist, an anarchist who was deeply anti-establishment and anti-institution of any sort.

This is the ultimate dystopia of the modern capitalist state, its greed, its corruption, its dehumanization, its spiritual bankruptcy. This is also Orozco, through and through.

 

This painting by Diego Rivera is the last piece we will examine. Please note that, in the second of the photographs (below), and again in the fourth, the museum visitors sitting in front of it departed, allowing me to reveal even the bottom edge of the painting. However, I also intentionally chose to show the crowd sitting in front of it so that you would grasp the scale of this remarkable fresco painting. As we see it here, the entire mural measures approximately 15 1/2 feet high by 37 1/2 feet wide.

In 1933, Diego Rivera was completing a slightly larger version of this fresco for the lobby of the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center, having been invited to do so by the Rockefeller Family. Rivera titled his fresco Man at the Crossroads with the intention of revealing the main challenge of the early 20th century world–that of balancing socialism and capitalism. Unfortunately, because Rivera was a revolutionary and a member of the Communist Party (off and on), the conservative New York World-Telegram published an article on April 24, 1933 attacking the painting as promoting anti-capitalist propaganda.

One can imagine the Rockefeller Family dilemma upon reading this headline: “Rivera Perpetuates Scenes of Communist Activity for RCA Walls – and Rockefeller, Jr. Foots Bill,”  Then, a few days later, Rivera added a depiction of Lenin to his mural as a form of protest. This, naturally, did not sit well with John D. Rockefeller, Jr. So, with neither party willing to reconcile, Rivera was paid and dismissed. The mural, being true fresco, was chiseled off the wall and replaced. But that is another story. FYI, here is a recent article providing a brief coverage of this.

Later that year (1933), Rivera persuaded the Mexican government to allow him to repaint Man at the Crossroads on the wall of the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Most of this new mural was the same (aided by the existence of photographs that Lucienne Bloch took for Rivera in New York) but the title of the new, completed version was changed to Man, Controller of the Universe.

 

 

Rivera composed his mural in three horizontal sections. Here, in the center, a workman sits, his gloved hands on the controls of some form of machine. In front of him, dead center, are the foreshortened fingers of a large hand holding a globe. Inside the globe are dials, suggesting that this is a part of the workman’s control panel. Hovering above him is a giant cylindrical form, a clear reproduction of the lower section of the Plaskett Telescope (the second largest in the world at that time). Also note the microscope just above and to the left of the Controller’s right hand.

These two instruments–under his control and in the service of modern science–reveal what we see in those four ellipses (or propeller forms) that radiate out from behind the Controller. The two ellipses in warm colors show cells, bacteria and the teeming microcosm made visible by the microscope. The two ellipses in cool colors show distant stars, nebulae and exploding suns, the vast macrocosm enabled by the telescope. Finally in the center, below the Controller, we see various plants as well as their roots below ground, suggesting that modern man also has the power to control growth and the earth’s natural resources.

 

 

 

Directly above is a detail of what we may call the Communist side of the painting (to the Controller’s left, the viewer’s right).  Here we see Lenin surrounded by workers of several ethnicities, suggesting a global proletariat. The women in white, just above and behind Lenin, are Russian athletes representing the healthy life found in Russia’s socialist utopia. The elliptical form with blue and white spiral forms above Lenin’s head depicts outer space, the macrocosmic scientific discoveries enabled by the telescope.

Balancing Lenin to the Controller’s right (of which I did not take a photo detail) are a group of wealthy American women drinking, smoking and playing cards, oblivious to the unemployed who look on. They represent life under American capitalism, where the wealthy and privileged ignore the plight of the working classes–an antithesis to the “healthy” life pictured on our right.

 

Here, at the top on this (Communist) side, Rivera illustrates a group of workers and citizens of Communist Russia, marching at a May Day parade. Below, we see several standing men. Prominent among them is León Trotsky (glasses and a shock of white hair); he holds a banner that reads, in part, “workers of the world unite.” The two bearded men on the far right are Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx. Russian workers are seated in front of them: three on a pipe and two on a marble head. That head belonged to the large, white classical sculpture–Caesar–who holds a fasces emblazoned with a swastika between his legs. The fasces, an ancient Roman symbol of governmental power, was also adopted by 20th century Fascism.

By beheading the statue, Rivera appears to imply that Communism has replaced European elitism and its classical roots (still embraced in Russia by the Tsars).

 

Here is the parallel detail of the Capitalist side of Rivera’s painting. At the top, we see a different form of marching; Rivera depicts armed soldiers marching with bayonets and gas masks below war planes and led by a flamethrower. This is a reminder of the brutality of WWI and its destructive application of technology. The large classical sculpture on this side, also seated, has lost its hands; its face, however, and the throwing position of its right arm indicate it to be Zeus in the act of throwing a lightning bolt. The Christian cross around Zeus’ neck implies an ideology just as questionable as that of the fascist swastika on Caesar’s fasces. By defacing these classical sculptures, Rivera was attacking the political elites, whether in the USA, Europe, or Russia–elites who justified their repressive power over the common people through association with the glories of ancient Greece and Rome. Note that sign on the far left (by Zeus’ right hip), carried by a demonstrator, which reads “We want work, not charity.” This scene continues at the left knee of Zeus, where we see police with billy clubs, beating up working class demonstrators.

Below this we see Charles Darwin, the bearded man on the far left, surrounded by animals; he represents the science of evolution and our understanding of nature. In front of him sit seven students, as if in a lecture room, and clearly also of different ethnicities as were the workers surrounding Lenin.

As I see it, Rivera’s first title, Man at the Crossroads, implied a choosing between socialism, (or Communism, since Lenin gave us the first communist state), and capitalism, with its emphasis on economic progress. Man, Controller of the Universe, implied something greater and more optimistic. Those broken classical statues of Caesar and Zeus indicate the overthrow of narrow authority and superstitions. The ethnic diversity of the workers surrounding Lenin and the students in front of Darwin indicate a dynamic society of greater creativity and innovation, given the wide range of experiences and perspectives that accompany multiculturalism. These are the gifts of the twentieth century. They provide the fuel that propels his craft forward. Meanwhile, the Controller fixes his gaze outward, to a future that will transcend Western Civilization as we know it.