By Rob Schmidt

War doesn’t prove who is right, only who is left.—Bertrand Russell 

Welcome to the Museum of Amexican History, says a sign at Bert Green Fine Art in downtown Los Angeles.  It looks like a typical collection of artifacts and artwork illustrating a vanished culture—until you realize exactly which culture it is.  Amexica (“not-Mexico”) is the land formerly known as “U-rop” (Europe). 

The occasion is “Smoking Mirror,” an exhibition by Ecuadorean artist Eduardo Villacis.  Villacis’s goal is to examine our society by looking at its mirror image.  What if Mexico had conquered Europe, he muses, rather than the other way around? 

The tongue-in-cheek text tells how the Mesoamericans captured Columbus, duplicated his ships and guns, and set sail for Europe.  Confronted by apparitions resembling angels and demons from the Book of Revelations, the superstitious white men surrendered without a fight.  The invaders imposed their will on the “New World” they had found. 

One section of the exhibit displays objects supposedly crafted by Aztecs:  muskets decorated with leering skulls, cannonballs with horrific faces, serpent-headed armor.  They make the point that weapons are meant to intimidate as much as to harm. 

Vivid paintings take up much of the space.  Villacis depicts the fearsome Aztec ships, the trial of Pope Innocent for blaspheming the one true (Aztec) faith, and Aztec pyramids rising atop the sacred sites of Rome and Paris. 

Other objects demonstrate how archaeologists have to decipher ancient cultures from the slimmest of clues.  A crucifixion with the inscription INRI is evidence that Europeans worshipped a God named Henry, whom they consumed weekly in a cannibalistic ritual.  A fragment of the Sistine Chapel suggests that Europeans engaged in orgiastic bacchanals with homoerotic overtones. 

For Villacis, the centerpiece of the exhibit is a singed and battered book of Shakespeare’s plays.  In his parallel universe, Shakespeare is a forgotten writer of a forgotten language (“Entglitcz”).  It’s a prime example of Villacis’s theme:  that many unheralded people could’ve done great things if only they’d had the opportunity. 

A final group of paintings shows how Indians perceived Europeans when they first met.  The “primitives” were so tall you could climb their spines like a ladder, so white their internal organs were visible, so hairy they resembled apes.  It seems ridiculous … until Villacis informs you that Europeans believed Indians had faces in the middle of their chests. 

Villacis stretches and squishes figures as if they were made of rubber (a Mesoamerican invention).  He describes his sensibility as Monty Pythonesque.  It’s as if we’re seeing Aztec-ruled Amexica by way of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. 

This comical attitude doesn’t always work.  Calling Columbus the first illegal immigrant, comparing the Inquisition to an opinion survey, and having Aztecs ride on the backs of Germans (“the car of the people”) is too joky for this serious subject.  But most of the exhibit hits the mark. 

Villacis’s comic sensibility is also evident in his other projects:  commemorating St. Violentine’s Day on Feb. 13 to acknowledge our society’s violence, and looking back at Ecuador from 500 years in the future, when fútbol (soccer) has become the national religion. 

Villacis first developed “Smoking Mirror” as a grad-school thesis. “Growing up in Latin America,” he writes, “I witnessed since childhood the oppression and humiliation that native cultures suffer.”  Eighty percent of Ecuador’s population is indigenous, he notes.  “In this project I play with the idea of an inverse history of the world.” 

Villacis isn’t saying that the Aztecs were evil and the Europeans good—or vice versa.  We’re all the same, he believes.  Being violent and warlike is human nature. 

Although the exhibit is now closed, Villacis is working on a graphic novel that incorporates his ideas and images.  It will tell the story of a European who has known life only as a slave of the Aztecs.  Pretending to be a dark-skinned Indian, he gradually learns the history of his people.  An old soldier reveals the surprising truth:  that the downtrodden Europeans once ruled a mighty empire. 

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For more information on Villacis and his work, please visit:  www.eduardovillacis.com