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The Mexican Pentagon 181
(including Wgures for recent spending on education, the military, and foreign
debt servicing)—a presentation continuing the group’s tradition of replacing
art with information. “These Wve walls,” the group explained in the countercatalog,
“exhibit reprocessed information and data which are jealously
guarded by the vaults and walls of the other PENTAGON.” 31
But the real shock came when visitors entered the rooXess pentagon
through one of several doorways: inside, the group re-created one of
the torture chambers routinely used by the Mexican police. Against a wall
there was a chair for the accused (visitors were encouraged to take a seat),
surrounded by cables for the application of electric shocks; next to the chair,
there was a table covered with bottles allegedly containing dangerous chemicals,
including the corrosive acids used by torturers to disWgure their victims;
in a corner, a pile of Mexican newspapers attested to the rising tension between
the Mexican military and various guerrilla groups—whose members,
when captured, were immediately subjected to the type of tortures that surrounded
the visitor to Pentágono. Other elements scattered throughout the
installation “alluded to [Latin American] dictatorships” and to “the imperialist
policies of the United States in Latin America,” as Dominique Liquois
has explained. 32
In the same way that previous projects like “A nivel informativo”
sought to confront Mexicans with the violent reality of the street, Pentágono
confronted the multitude of Biennale visitors with the shocking reality of
Mexican political life. At a time when Mexico used its foreign policy to promote
itself as a champion of human rights and haven for political refugees
from military dictatorships, Proceso Pentágono’s project showed the world—
or at least the art world—the country’s darker side: the torture, “dirty war,”
and disappearances engineered by the ruling party to maintain its hold
on power.
Pentágono was one of the group’s most forceful projects, and one
that could be read as the clearest articulation of the group’s political and
artistic manifesto: this piece embodies the group’s conviction that museums,
galleries, and art spaces should be used as platforms to disseminate information.
The focus on torture illustrated the group’s insistence on confronting
the spectator with the violence that characterized daily life in Mexico. And
Pentágono is the perfect example of how most of the group’s activities were
directed against a single enemy: the PRI, Mexico’s ruling party, and its mystiWcation
of the country’s political reality.
In 1979, Proceso Pentágono created a slightly different version of
Pentágono. The PRI was about to celebrate Wfty years of existence (the party
had been created by Plutarco Elías Calles in 1929), and the government had
planned three days of rallies, conferences, and speeches. Proceso Pentágono