THINK BLUE

EDUARDO SARABIA AT I-20 GALLERY

After six months of hard labor and the aid of state-of-the-art equipment, adventurers from Mexico City ended their quest for Pancho Villa’s gold disappointed and empty-handed. The inscrutable secret code carved into the rocks revealed no further clues–the cherished gold had either disappeared long ago or had never existed at all. However one man, Felipe Sarabia (the artist’s Grandfather) refused to give up the dream. According to his journal, native Mexican Indians ferried over 14 million ounces of gold to the secret location in Mazatlan before being butchered and buried anonymously with the treasure. Returning to the mountain, Felipe copied the symbols inscribed on the rocks, obliterated the evidence, and created what was to become a family obsession. The mystery of the hidden gold and the map showing its location has existed as Sarabia family lore for more than half a century.
Part fact, part fiction, and part wishful thinking, the search for Pancho Villa’s gold has become a major focus and fascination for Eduardo who has transformed the family story into an elaborate exhibition of drawings, sculpture, and video. Drawings of stock certificates from the “Pacific Discovery Group of the Americas”–a company devised by Sarabia to manage and distribute the gold–legally entitle the bearer to a share of the treasure. The gold, however, is buried in Mazatlan in the state of Sinaloa renowned as the drug capital of Mexico, making expeditions to the site extremely hazardous, and forcing the artist and his friends to disguise themselves as a movie crew. It is a an apt ruse in a tale of shifting identities to pose as the chronicler of the story and the protagonist as well, concocting a true-life adventure that evokes the feverish pursuit by the original nineteenth century gold hunters.
Larger-than-life and as brightly colored as holy-day saints, four fiberglass figures stand holding a model of the mountain. Stylistically, little distinction is made among the figures–a Mexican policeman, a dealer from the Tijuana drug cartel, a road bandit, and the artist himself. Despite their occupations, the four men are regarded as equals, portrayed as interchangeable, referencing North American presumptions about race and corruption south of the border. Identified by the particular tool worn like a saintly attribute; carbine, knife, automatic weapon, and shovel, the four men demonstrate their equal rights to the land. The artist is the one with
the shovel, his “Think Blue” t-shirt professing his love of Los Angeles and the Dodgers baseball team. The drug dealer wears ostrich boots and brandishes an AK-47. The figures possess the comedy of the stereotype and the dread of the archetype, becoming devotional figures to whom one may whisper fickle prayers. The contrast between these Mexican stereotypes presented in the manner of religious statuary coupled with evocation of the power of myth and imagination underscores the blurring of official corruption and extemporal governance in Mexico.
The artist again appears, hands clasped in prayer and in the form of a coin bank that imitates the sloppily painted and crudely fabricated kitschy Mexican souvenirs found in the street markets of border towns. Possessing only a coin slot on the top, these banks allow no retrieval of their contents save smashing. Perhaps for this reason Sarabia is praying to the Sinaloa “Narco-Saint,” Jesus Malverde, the bandit hero whose escapades in wealth redistribution led to his being hanged a century ago. Grateful country-folk have honored him with a cathedral and every drug dealer in Northwest Mexico seeks his protection. His saintly face is found on rosary beads and medallions to be shared and handed down among friends–it’s a cardinal sin to buy one. Sarabia’s pilgrimage to the site and prayers to the “Narco-Saint” are documented on video.
A heritage of wealth and history of privilege is suggested by the castle turret that rises on a staff encrusted with gold. A standard of divided loyalty flies from the turret, on one side the bear of California, on the other the deer of Mazatlan with the Sarabia coat of arms. This is a Californian fantasy, and just as the name California came from a Spanish work of magical fiction, The Land of the Califia, it harkens to a history that never existed. The notion of a

family legacy is a powerful attraction, the legend as passed down among the Sarabias is just one aspect of a larger, universal desire; to change the world after we are gone, to influence the lives of future generations, in effect, to live beyond death, and by doing so make strong and evident of the familial connection of the past to the future.
The search for Pancho Villa’s gold is a rich work that not only examines the many guises of Mexico’s complex political identity from the romantic to the corrupt, but also explores the artist’s own Mexican roots and his relationship to the contemporary landscape of Los Angeles. Above all, the work looks at the persistent and spiritual magnetisms that a homeland can hold and the dreams that can possess us all from the exotic and grandiose, to the humble and desperate.

THINK BLUE: THE WORK OF EDUARDO SARABIA, (CATALOGUE) I-20 GALLERY, NEW YORK, APRIL 2003