LACMA

JIM MENDIOLA AND RUBÉN ORTIZ-TORRES JULY 12, 1582 Yucatán, Mexico Fray Diego de Landa, bishop of Yucatán, conducts an inquisition into native "idol worship," tortures those Indians deemed heretics, and sets fire to five thousand Maya codi- ces, the totality of Maya history and language. Only three books survive. Later, based on de Landa's recollection and using the work of two unknown Maya translators, the Franciscan monk will write the definitive book cataloguing the great civilization's ceremonies, language, and culture. He is lauded to this day as one of the key scholars in the decipherment of the Maya language. 16TH AND 17TH CENTURIES The future New Mexico Some of the earliest Hispanic settlers in New Mexico migrate to this "end of the earth" rather than face incarceration, torture, humiliation, and occasionally death at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church's grand inquisitors. Genetic research as well as "unusual customs" suggest that some Hispanic families in New Mexico descend from Sephardic crypto-Jews. DECEMBER 12, 1531 Tepeyac, Mexico The Virgin Mary appears to Juan Diego on a hilltop in a valley of Mexico. The Spanish bishop, eager to convert the natives, commissions Marcos Cipac, an Indian artist trained in the traditions of European painting, to commemo- rate the Marian apparition with an oil painting. Cipac's image of the brown-skinned Virgen de Guadalupe will be duplicated on countless prayer cards, independence banners, tattoos, United Farm Workers signs, Chicano paintings, tortillas, and East L.A. murals in the years to come. His artwork appropriated, its meaning misunder- stood, and his name forgotten by history, Marcos Cipac de Aquino becomes the first phantom sighting. THE TRUTHFUL HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF NUEVO AZTLÁN 218

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