In Humanscape 135: #2 Mexican Plate, Casas addresses the growing marginalization of Mexican Americans during the Reagan-era economic boom. Returning to Tex-Mex cuisine, he uses his VistaVision screen to depict the type of mural commonly found in “Mexican restaurants.” Although Diana Kennedy dismissed this regional cuisine as inauthentic and Americanized, it offers Mexican Americans a connection to a past appropriated and standardized for mass consumption. The stereotypical mural reflects an Anglo image of the Mexican as a comic peasant: dressed in a serape and sombrero and seated among cacti and agave. This stock figure reduces Mexican American heritage to a remnant of the Old West, commercialized as a tourist attraction through which visitors can experience another culture and its language “by the numbers.” — Nancy Kelker, Mel Casas: Artist as Cultural Adjuster

“Humanscape 135: #2 Mexican Plate takes the nomenclature and iconography of South Texas food and juxtaposes it with a playful desert tableau. In this piece, Casas simultaneously elevates and harmonizes a culture and aesthetic with the natural world surrounding it. This pairing has an elemental resonance that has proved to be profoundly influential on the self-reflective aesthetics of South Texas. Think of the influence such a piece has had on San Antonio jewel Cruz Ortiz — the ecstatic jolt of declaring you belong, that this is your home and proving it.” - Neil Fauerso, “Mel Casas: Iconic Reality at Ruiz-Healy,” Glasstire