Crises in Mexico have a way of taking on their own unique expression. Indeed, many in Mexico have come to believe that, rather than marking a sharp turning point, crisis is the permanent state of affairs.
There is a long tradition in Mexican literature and the arts that explores this existential condition. Most prominently, Octavio Paz’s The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950) suggested that Mexican culture was trapped in the present tense yet aware of another, more spiritual dimension. In his chapter on Día de los Muertos, Paz explored the rituals in Mexican culture that mock death but also court it, thinking of it at once as a favorite plaything and as a lasting love of mestizos. Samuel Ramos, José Vasconcelos, Carlos Monsiváis, Elena Poniatowska, and others have also written about the mestizo identity, its roots in Indigenous civilizations, and how Mexican culture has always been in a state of constant tension and unresolved uncertainty.
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