Tunick @ El Zocalo

Sunning Naked at El Zocalo

Famous photographer Spencer Tunick will be taking over "El Zocalo" Mexico City's town square for a historic photo shoot tomorrow morning, May 6, 2007. The town square is know as simply El Zocalo but officially named Plaza de la Constitución. The site measures some 5.7 hectares, well over 10 acres and reportedly can fit some 85,000 standing people.

It's the center of Mexico City and the site of many pre-hispanic sites. The photo shoot will include some 7000 registered participants who will get naked. The historic event requires that participant visit this registration page to register.

The website for the event indicates that is being brought forth via a collaboration between Tunick, the Museum of Science and Arts at the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), which is Mexico's oldest and most prestigious university, the Government of Mexico City, and the Fundacion Murrieta a foundation dedicated to culture and arts.

All participants are required to be at least 18 years old and required to provide proof in the form of an original and official identification card with picture. The event is being recorded for TVUNAM and the images and video will become part of upcoming exhibit at the Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Arte (MUCA) of the UNAM.

What form will the image of thousands of nudes at El Zocalo look like? Daniela of ArteSpain wrote a post (Spanish) which states that Marco Antonio Hernández the Spokesperson for Spencer Tunick in Mexico stated that it will be a sun as it's one of the most significant symbols in Mexican culture.

(UPDATE @ 9:54 a.m., Sunday, May 6, 2007)

Well I'm proud to report that an estimated 20,000 Mexicans took to the Zocalo clad only in their birthday suits for the historic photo shoot by Spencer Tunick. The photo shoot broke the previous record of 7000 participants previously set in Barcelona, Spain. Viva Mexico!\

The following photo was originally uploaded by Senderdelnato. The second photo at the top of the post is also credited to him.

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Thousands Protest on behalf of Millions

Thousands protested across the nation for a Path to Citizenship for Millions of Undocumented Immigrants. In Los Angeles crowds paled in comparison to last years numbers, an estimated 25,000 compared to some 500,000 on March 25, 2006.

In Los Angeles organizers had billed the planned May 1st demonstrations as “La Gran Marcha”, and organizers like activist Javier Rodriguez predicted that “millions ” would turn out.

So what happened?

Some organizers faulted the raids for lowering the turnout of illegal immigrants, but nonetheless claimed success for drawing attention to immigrants’ concerns. “We have already injected ourselves into the national immigration debate,” stated Javier Rodriguez.

The truth is a bit more complicated and is a result of leadership within the coalition's inability to bridge the divisions between themselves, community leaders and radio celebrities on strategy. Absent from todays march were "El Piolin" and El Cucuy, both Spanish radio DJ's who had been instrumental in encouraging people to take to the streets via their radio shows which helped previous marches. These divisions had been surfacing and recently reported by the Orange County Register here .

Despite the low turn out everyone at the march was upbeat and cited various reasons as to why the turn out was low. Some cited fears of the INS raids, being fired from work and others simply stated that low paid immigrant workers could scarcely afford to lose another day of work without pay.

What does this mean for immigration reform? Not much. The organizers will most likely learn from their mistakes and work out their differences. In the meantime the 10+ million or so undocumented immigrants will continue to work, they are our invisible elephant, we may not see them, nor do we always acknowledge them, but we are beginning to understand that it ain't going nowhere.