MEXICAN MURALISM

AHMANSON·MURPHY
A Critical History
FINE ARTS IMPRINT

EDITED BY

Alejandro Anreus, Leonard Foigarait,

THE AHMANSON FOUNDATION

and Robin Adele Greeley

has endowed this imprint

to honor the memory of

FRANKLIN n MURPHY

who for half a century

served arts and letters,

beauty and learning, in

equal measure by shaping

with a brilliant devotion

those institutions upon

which they rely.

(
/

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 CONTENTS

List of Illustrations xi
Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction
Robin Adele Greeley

PART 1. MEXICAN MURAlISM: BEGINNINGS, DEVELOPMENT, IDEOLOGIES,

AND NATIONAL RESPONSES

1. Muralism and the State in Post-Revolution Mexico,

'920-1970 I)

Robin Adele Greeley

2. Los Tres Grandes: Ideologies and Styles )7

Alejandro Anreus

3. "All Mexico on a Wall": Diego Rivera's Murals at the Ministry of

Public Education 56
Mary K. Coffey

4. Siqueiros' Communist Proposition for Mexican Muralism:

A Mural for the Mexican Electricians' Syndicate 75
Jennifer A. Jolly
 5. JoseClemente Orozco's Use of Architecture in the PART 4. CHRONOLOGY AND PRIMARY TEXTS

Dartmouth Mural 93 Chronology'. 283

Leonard Foigarait Alejandro Anreus with Holly Barnet-Sanchez and Bruce Campbell
6. Murales fslridentes: Tensions and Affinities between
Primary Texts 319
fstridentismo and Early Muralism 108
edited by Alejandro Anreus
Tatiana Flores
Manifesto of the Syndicate afTechnical Workers, Painters and Sculptors
7. Young Muralists at the Abelardo L. Rodriguez Market 125
(Mexico City, 1923) JI9
Esther Acevedo Jose Clemente Orozco, "New World, New Races and New Art"

8. Nietzsche contra Marx in Mexico: The Contemporaneos, (New York, '929) 32'
Muralism, and Debates over "Revolutionary" Art in '930S Diego Rivera, "The Revolutionary Spirit in Modern Art"

Mexico 148 (Baltimore, 1932) 322

Robin Adele Greeley David Alfaro Stquelros, "A Call to Argentine Artists"

(Buenos Aires, 1933) 330

PART2. MURAlISM'$ HEMISPHERIC INFlUENCES David Alfaro Slqueiros, "Toward a Transformation of the Plastic Arts"

(New York, 1934) 332

9. Siqueiros' Travels and "Alternative Muralisms" in Argentina
Jose Clemente Orozco, "Orozco 'Explains'"
and Cuba '77
(New York, 1940) 335
Alejandro Anreus

10. Social Realism and Constructivist Abstraction: The Limits Bibliography 339
of the Debate on Muralism in the Rio de la Plata Region Contributors 357

(1930-1950) 196 Index 359

Gabriel Peluffo Unar;

11. Mexican Muralism in the United States: Controversies, Paradoxes,

and Publics 208
Anna Indych-L6pez

PART 3. CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURALISM

12. Murals and Marginality in Mexico City: The Case ofTepito

Arte Ad 229
Leonard Foigarait

13- Radical Mestiza}e in Chicano/a Murals 243

Holly Barnet-$cmchez

'4· An Unauthorized History of Post-Mexican School

Muralism 263
BruceCampbell
 ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATES

Color platesJollow page '7+

1. Fermin Revueltas. Stained·glass mural for the Hospital Colonia de

Ferrocarrileros (r934)
2. Diego Rivera. Distribution oJthe Land, fresco, first floor, south wall, Court of
Fiestas, Ministry of Public Education, Mexico City (1923-24)
3. Fernando Leal. The Feast oJthe Lord oJChalma, encaustic, Antiguo Colegio de
San lldefonso (formerly Escuela Nacional Preparatoria),!Mexico City (r922-23)
4. Antonio Pujol. Com (detail), fresco, Alvaro Obregon Center entrance portal,
Mexico City (r935)
5. Pablo O'Higgins. The Struggle oJthe Workers Against the Financiers (detail),
fresco, Alvaro Obregon Center, Mexico City (1935)
6. Rufino Tamayo. Song and Music, left and center walls, National School of Music
(now the Coordinaci6n Nacional de Arqueologia), Mexico City (r933)
7. David Alfaro Siqueiros. Antonio Berni, uno Enea Spilimbergo. Juan Carlos
Castagnino, Enrique Lazaro. Plastic Exercise, fresco, Don Torcuato, Buenos

Aires (1933)
8. Daniel Manrique, View oflarge mural painting on Florida Street, neighborhood
of Tepito, Mexico City (1984)

xi
 Carlos Almaraz. No Somas EscLavos de la Migra, former All Nations Community 3+ Diego Rivera. The Market/Tianguis, fresco, first floor, north wall, Court of
9 Fiestas, Ministry of Public Education, Mexico City (1923-24) 66
Center, Sotonear 4th Street, Boyle Heights, Los Angeles (1974)
Gustavo Bernal. Detail of mural cyde at the Tlalpujahua mines, Tlalpujahua, 3·5· Diego Rivera. Our Daily Bread, fresco, third floor, west wall, Court of Fiestas,
ro.
Ministry of Public Education, Mexico City (1928) 69
Michoacan (1992)
3.6. Diego Rivera. The Mechanization of the Countryside,
fresco, third floor, west wall,
stairwell, Ministry of Public Education, Mexico City (1926) 72
FIGURES
+I. David Alfaro Siqueiros, [osep Renau, and the International Team of Plastic
LI. Jose Clemente Orozco. Maternity, National Preparatory School (1923) ,6 Artists, Portrait of the Bourgeoisie (original version), detail 80

I.2. Diego Rivera.Creation, National Preparatory School (r922-23) '7 4.2. Josep Renau. Photomontage diagram of 5ME mural's six ideal vantage points

1.3 Ram6n Alvade la Canal. Cultural Mission (r930) 20 (r969) 82

1.4. Lola AlvarezBravo.Untitled (undated) 21 4-3. David Alfaro Siqueiros, )osep Renau, and the International Team of Plastic
Artists. Portrait of the Bourgeoisie (final version), detail 83
I.5· Roberto Montenegro. Busca en la Tierra Tu Alimiento y en e! Libra Tu Libertad
(Search in the Earthfor Your Nourishment and in the Book for Your Freedom) 4+ David Alfaro Siqueiros and the International Team of Plastic Artists. Portrait of
the Bourgeoisie (final version), detail 84
(1929) '3
+5. David Alfaro Siqueiros and the International Team of Plastic Artists. Portrait of
1.6. Diego Rivera.Emiliano Zapata. Palacio de Cortes, Cuernavaca (1930) 24
the Bourgeoisie (final version), detail 85
1.7. David Alfaro Siqueiros. New Democracy, Palacio de Bellas Artes (1945) 28
4.6. David Alfaro Siqueiros, [osep Renau, and the International Team of Plastic
1.8. Rufino Tamayo. Nuestra Nacionalidad ('952) 29
Artists. Portrait of the Bourgeoisie (final version), detail . 87
David Alfaro Siqueiros. March of Humanity, Siqueiros Cu3tural Polyforum
5.L Jose Clemente Orozco. "Man Released from the Mechanistic to the Creative
('965-7') )0
Life," in The Epic of American Civilization, fresco mural painting in the Baker
2.1. Siqueiros, Orozco,and Rivera (left to right) at the time of the creation of the Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire (1932-34) 96
National Mnral Commission (1947) 39
5.2. Photograph of Orozco painting "Man Released from the Mechanistic to the
2.2. Jose Clemente Orozco. Revolutionary Trinity, Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso
Creative Life," detail of Epic (May 1932) 97
(formerly EscuelaNacional Preparatoria), Mexico City ('923-26) 42
5-3. Jose Clemente Orozco. "Hispano-America," detail of Epic 98
Jose Clemente Orozco. The Trench, Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso (formerly
5+ Jose Clemente Orozco. "Hispano-America,' drawing 99
Escuela NacionalPreparatoria), Mexico City ('923-26) . 43
5.5. Jose Clemente Orozco. "Gods of the Modern World," detail,bf Epic 102
Jose Clemente Orozco. The Carnival of Ideologies, Palacio de Gobierno,
Guadalajara ('937-39) 44 5.6. Jose Clemente Orozco. "Gods of the Modern World," drawing '03

2·5· Diego Rivera. Mexico Today and Tomorrow, Palacio Nacional, 5.7. Jose Clemente Orozco. "Modern Industrial Man," drawing for right-hand
Mexico City
('935) . 48 panel 104
2.6. David. Alfaro Siqueiiros. From t h e P orfi nato
. to the Revolutwn,
. 5.8. Jose Clemente Orozco. "Modern Industrial Man," right-hand panel, detail of
central panel,
PalaCIOde Chapultepec, Mexico City (1957-66) . 52 Epic 104

. 0if the Peon, fresco, first floor, south wall, Court of 5.9. Jose Clemente Orozco. "Modern Industrial Man," central panel, detail of
. .' Th e Lib eratum
Diego Rivera
La
bor, Ministry of Public Education, Mexico City (1923) . 58 Epic 105
5.10. Jose Clemente Orozco. "Modern Industrial Man," drawing for central
rt ution: 0if Arms, fresco, third floor, south wall, Court of
3.2. Diego Rivera. The D'tSt'b'
.
Fiestas , Min'15try 0 fp U olilC Education,
. Mexico City (1928) . 59 panel 105
Diego Rivera D fresco, fir st floor, west wall, Court of Fiestas, Ministry 6.!. Manuel Maples Arce. Actual No. r '09
f . . Ma yay,
o Publir Education, Mexico City (1923-24) 65

xii ILLUSTRATIONS xll i

ILLUSTRATION S

77
 6.2. Fernando Leal.Portrait of Manuel Maples Arce, verso of Indian of the Tunas
Antonio Berni. Demonstration, MALBA Fundaci6n Eduardo F. Constantini,
(1922) 114
Buenos Aires (1934) 180
Fernando Leal Indian of the Tunas (1922) "5
Antonio Berni. The Wounded Man (1935) 182
Jean Charlot Massacre at the Templo Mayor, fresco, Antigua Colegio de San
9·3· Siqueiros in front of detail of Allegory of Racial Equality and Confraternity of the
IIdefonso (formerlyEscuela Nacional Preparatoria), Mexico City (19231 "7
White and Black Races in Cuba (1943) 186
6·5· Jean Charlot Psychological Portrait of Manuel Maples Arce, woodcut
904- Mario Carreno. Sugar Cane Cutters (1943) 188
(1922) 118
9·5· Mario Carreno. Afro-Cuban Dance (1943) 189
66 Fermin Revueltas.Allegory of the Virgin of Guadalupe, encaustic, Antigua
10.1. Candido Portinari. A Primeira Missa no Brasil (The First Mass in Brakil)
Colegio de San Ildefonso (formerly Escuela Nacional Preparatoria), Mexico City
(1922-23) 120 (1947) '97
10.2. Joaquin Torres Garda. Arte Constructivo (1943) 198
Fermin Revueltas.Andamios eaeriores (Exterior Scaffolding) (1923) 121
IOJ. Candido Portinari. Retirantes (Refugees) (1945) 202
Antonio Pujol. Mining Tragedy (detail), fresco, Alvaro Obreg6n Center entrance
portal, MexicoCity (1935) 1]2 ILL Diego Rivera. Man at the Crossroads, partially painted mural at Rockefeller
7.2. Center 209
Pablo O'Higgins. The Struggle of the Workers Against the Financiers (detail),
fresco, AlvaroObreg6n Center, Mexico City (1935) 1]4 II.2. Diego Rivera. Preparation drawing for Man at the Crossroads (I932) 21]

Angel Bracho. Vitamins (detail), fresco, Abelardo Rodriguez Market, Mexico Jose Clemente Orozco. Struggle in the Occident, fresco (193') 214
City (1935) 1]6 David Alfaro Siqueiros. Tropical America (With Robert Berdecio standing in
7+ Pedro Rendon, Untitled, fresco, Abelardo Rodriguez Market, Mexico City front) 215
(1935) 1]7 11.5· Olvera Street before 1930 renovation 216
7·5 Marion Greenwood. Industrialization of the Countryside (detail), fresco, Abelardo II.G. Tropical America, whitewashed 218

Rodriguez Market, Mexico City (1935) 1]8

Diego Rivera. Detroit Industry, north wall, Detroit Institute of Arts
Grace Greenwood, Mining (detail), fresco, Abelardo Rodriguez Market, Mexico (r932-33) 219
City (1935) 1]9
II.8. Charles Sheeler. American Landscape (1930) 221
Isamu Noguchi, History as Seen from Mexico in 19]6 (detail), sculpture, mural, 12.1. Untitled, figure of a woman, arms held up, outside of cabinetmaker's
Abelardo Rodriguez Market, Mexico City (1935-36) '4 shop 2)1
8.1. '
Jose Clemente Orozco. Man of Fire, Hospicio de Cabanas, Guadalajara (1938- I2.2. Untitled, a man ofTepito fixing the armor of Don QUixdte, ink on paper
391 '59
(1983) 234
8.2.
Jose Clemente Orozco. Cortes, Hospicio de Cabanas, Guadalajara Untitled, family of three 2]9
(19391 160
Untitled, male figures at work in a machine environment 239
Rufino Tamayo. Landscape in the Night (1933) 161
Detail of Figure 12-4 240
Rufino Tamayo. Song and Music, right wall, National School of Music, Mexico
City (1933) 162 13·1. Antonio Bernal. The Del Rey Mural, left panel, Teatro Campesino Cultural

8·5· Center, Del Rey, California (19681 248

Diego Rivera. Liberated Earth with the Naturai Forces Controlled by Man,
13.2. Antonio Bernal. The Del Rey Mural, right panel, Teatro Campesino Cultural
Autonomous Universityof Chapingo (1926) 16]
86. Center, Del Rey, California (19681 249
David Alfaro Siquei B' I .r . .
nos. una oJ a Worker, Antigua Colegio de San Ildefonso
Willie Herron. The Wall That Cracked Open, alley, City Terrace, Los Angeles
(formerly Escuela Nacional Preparatoria) (1923-24) . 164
(1972) 252

XIV
ILLUSTRATIONS

ILLUSTRATIONS xv
 1)+ Willie Herron with the assistance of Gronk and neighborhood youths. Caras,
City Terrace Park, City Terrace, Los Angeles (1973) 253
13-5. Willie Herron. The Plumed Serpent, alley, CityTerrace, Los Angeles
(1972) 254
·1).6. Carlos Ahnaraz. No Compre Vino Gallo (Don't Buy Gallo Wine), former All
Nations Community Center, Soto near 4th Street, Boyle Heights, Los Angeles ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
(1974) 255
1).7. Carlos Almaraz. United Farm Workers Banner, portable mural (r972) 256
I
Jose Hernandez Delgadillo. La Mujer en la Lucha (for Asamblea de Barrios), I
marble grain on cement, Iztapalapa, Mexico City (1992) 269
Daniel Manrique. Detail of community mural for Centro Cultural de
I
Campamentos Unidos, acrylic on cement, Colonia Guerrero, Mexico City I
(r997) 273
Jose Luis Soto. EI Sepe/io, study for a mural image for the Taller de II
Investigacion Plastica,oil on canvas (1977) 274

OJas de Lucha.Zapatista manta, acrylic on polyvinyl cloth (1994)

275

This book began seven years ago when one of us thought there was a need for a multi-
author volume that dealt critically and from a variety of thematic perspectives with Mex-
ican mural painting: its problems, achievements, failures, and legacy. The idea of such
a book became the project of three editors, contributors, and camaradas, who invited
eight other scholars to join us in this endeavor. We are grateful to Esther Acevedo, Holly
Barnet-Sanchez, Bruce Campbell, Mary K. Coffey, Tatiana Flores, Anna Indych-L6pez,
Jennifer A. Jolly, and Gabriel Peluffo Linari for their contributions to this volume and
their continuing patience and enthusiasm for this project.
In the process of acquiring photographs and permissions we are grateful to: ~The
Carlos Almaraz Estate; Archivo Fotografico Jose G6mez Sicre, Miami; Artists Rights
Society (ARS); Baker Library and Hood Museum, Dartmouth College; Banco de Mexico
Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico City; Lily and Jose Antonio Berni;
The Detroit Institute of Art; Fundaci6n Eduardo F. Constantini, Buenos Aires; Fun-
daci6n Olga y Rufino Tamayo, A.c.; Ida Gonzalez de Carreno, Santiago de Chile; The
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; Willie Herr6n; Instituto Nacional de Bellas
Artes, Mexico City; Fernando Leal-Audirac; Los Angeles Public Library; Daniel Man-
rique; Museo de Arte de Sao Paulo; Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City; Museo Torres
Garcia, Montevideo; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Projeto Portinari. Rio
de Janeiro; The Revueltas Family; The University of Arizona Foundation; Universidad
Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico; SOMAAP, Mexico City; Jose Luis Soto; and EI Teatro
Campesino.

xvi
ILLUSTRATIONS
xvi!
 Colleagues who assisted and supported this project in various and important ways
include: Florencia Bazzano-Nelson, Michelle Bigenho, Richard Brown, Thomas B_F,
Cummins, Jose Falconi, Emilio Kouri, Gilbert Joseph, Diana L. Linden, Claudio Lorn-
nitz, Rick Lopez, Juan A. Martinez, Michael R. Orwicz, Mark Overmyer-Velazquez,
Coral Revueltas, Enrico Mario Santi, Doris Sommer, Megan Sullivan, Joaquin Terrones,
Alan Wallach, StacieWiddifield, Carla Zurian,
INTRODUCTION
At the University of California Press, we owe Stephanie Fay, our first editor at the
press, more than we can express for her support of this book. To Kari Dahlgren, our edi-
tor, and Eric Schmidt, we are grateful for their patience and encouragements in seeing Robin Adele Greeley
this project evolvefrom manuscript to book. At BookMatters, David Peattie and Hope
Steeletook care ofa thousand and one technical details, polished our prose, and clarified
our content. The wonderful cover was designed by Nicole Hayward.
Alejandro Anreus wishes to thank Dr. Nina Jemmott, Associate Vice President and
Dean, and the office of Graduate Studies and Research, William Paterson University.
Lastbut never least, he thanks his mother Margarita Rodriguez Anreus, his aunt Gladys
Anreus, his children Davidand Isabel, and most importantly his wife and best friend
Debra Blehart, who keeps him grounded and happy, She deserves more recognition and
gratitude than he can offerhere.
Leonard Folgarait wishes to thank his two co-editors for pulling together as an exem-
plary collective of collegial purposefulness, Their single-mindedness in shepherding
these essays toward completionwas a marvel to observe. He is honored to have been part
Latin America, it has long been recognized, has experienced modernity differently from
ofthe dynamic that oversawthe quality of the individual essays and the coherence of the
Europe or the United States.' In the region, twentieth- century Mexican mural paint-
thematic matrix. His family in California deserves special mention for their bottomless
ing holds a unique place in the search for an aesthetic form capable of encompassing
interest in what he does, and for their generosity and good will. As always, his wife
that experience at both the national and the hemispheric levels. Through a monumen-
YvonneBoyer receives his deepest gratitude for her bibliographic expertise as Librarian
tal narrative art, epic in scope and size, the artists of the mural movement aimed to
at Vanderbilt University, but even more so for the consistency and depth of her support
make art a weapon in the political struggles of Mexico's peasants and workers during
forthis project and for his life work in general.
the crucial decades of national renovation after the 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution. In
Robin Greeley wishes to thank the following institutions for their support: The How-
ard Foundation' The Hu iti I' " , their search for a project of national renewal in the Revolution's a~te'rmath, those mural
, roam ies nstitute, University of Connecticut: The School of artists deployed a leftist realism that stressed the fundamental importance of'popular
Fine Arts Dean's G t F d Uni , '
ran un, mversrtv of ConnectICut; The David Rockefeller Cen-
ter for Latin Americ n St di H d ' , agency to the functioning of the nation. They not only posited mestizo workers and
a U ies, arvar University, She would also like to thank her indigenous peasants as the true essence of modern Mexican culture, thereby incorporat-
,
mother, [aclyn YaegerGreeley,for all her support and enthusiasm.
ing into modernity those elements previously excluded as uncivilized and archaic. but
they also proposed both new forms of social organization to overcome modernity's crisis
of meaning and new ideas about the structure of the nation-state implementing those
forms. The mural movement thus linked a Marxist-inspired populism to an aesthetic
critique of modernity, so that art would serve simultaneously to regenerate society and
to inaugurate the utopian promise of modernity.
In this way, mural painting was central to envisioning both the distinctiveness of
Mexican modernity and the restructuring of Mexican society from the 1920S onward,
as newly enfranchised groups of peasants, workers, and indigenous peoples grappled
with the state and its intellectuals over how to constitute the nation and its citizens. The

xv!i!
ACKNOWlfDGMENTS

7
 epic sweep of muralism-its resolutely grand and utopian ethos-derived from the
or ethnic communities 'based on long-standing indigenous kinship ties and traditions, -:
impassioned attempts ofmural artists to forge a unified national project out of Mexico's
for example-that had erupted into national consciousness because of the Revolution. .~"'''':' ..;r..:)
diverse experiences of modernity, one that could link in common cause all.the nation's
The history of Mexican mural painting's envisioning the national polity exhibits ~ ,/ -l ~' '"
inhabitants from the most rustic farmer to the most powerful military and political
a continual tension between the murals' ability to foster an unfettered civic dialogue 4~~Q \:" \
leaders. As such, mural painters aspired to bring the critical energies and utopian aspi- ;
that legitimates the public sphere at the national level and the increasingly authoritar-
rations of the aesthetic realm to bear on the realm of the political in order to prompt
public debate on interpretations of the nation and the contours of citizenship. ian state's gradual co-optation o~t~e moVemenjRS part of the n~tion~list mythology ~o
underwrite its own grasp on political culture/Several chapters III this book study this
Howand to whatextentmural painting provided a forum for public dialogue through-
dynamic in the 1920S and 1930s, when mural practices were the most innovative and
out the Western hemisphere on issues of socially committed art, modernity, and the
the state-led program of modernization seemed the most likely to deliver its promise of
modern nation-state is the subject of this book. The men and women who participated in
full citizenship and economic equality for all. Other chapters investigate the effects on
the mural movement, who claimed a central role in constructing a national culture, we
the mural movement of the cold war and subsequent entrenchment of neoliberalism,
argue, proposed a model for the social and political life of the nation and, by extension,
when the state ramped up its use of mass media and control of the burgeoning culture
ofthe Americas as a whole.In positing a monumental public art in the decades following
industry (especially film and radio), and exploited the prestige of murals as a socially
1920, in an overwhelminglyrural country that lacked both a developed bourgeoisie and
committed art form toward new and different political ends." As several authors here
a strong civil society,these mural artists acted in a moment when older forms of national
argue, this produced an ominous schism between official and civic attitudes toward
cohesion were exhausted but new ones had not yet taken shape, and when the need for
mural painting that had deep repercussions for mural practices themselves and for
public debate about the form of that new national identity was greatest.
public debate and civil society. After the 19505, a new generation of artists realized that
By invoking the concept of the public sphere vis-a-vis muralism, this book raises
the only way to recuperate muralism for public debate was to sever its long-standing
the wider issue of civil society in relation to the state in modern society. Habermas,
ties to the state, This is what Tepito Arte Ad did, moving into outright conflict with the
Peter Uwe Hohendahl notes, posited that "the development of political freedom in
party that had maintained national political power since 1929, the Institutional Revolu-
modern Western societies depends on the constitution of a space between the realm
tionary Party (PRI), In so doing, Tepito Arte Aca became a model for a renewed contract
of the state and the private sphere of its subjects or citizens. This is precisely the space
between art and leftist politics, one that was forced, however, to forfeit (at least temporar-
where critical discussion of cultural and political matters can take place.'? The Haber-
ily) its claim to represent the "nation" and to accept the role of representing the "local"
masian Enlightenment ideal may have been one of disinterested individuals democrati-
rather than the idea of the nation, which had been effectively co-opted by the state,
cally engaged in rational debate, but post-Revolution Mexico was deeply suspicious of
In light of such evolutions, shifts, and reversals in mural painting's long history,
European Enlightenment's imperialist foundations-a suspicion that affected Mexico's
the essays in this book account for the actual function of muralism as a public art, less
reception of the democratic ideal. Furthermore, during this period Mexico lacked many
through a Haberrnasian lens than as a set of competing discourses 7fnbedded in condi-
of the classical mechanisms for open civic discussion at the national level.' Whereas
tions of social fragmentation and differentiated, unequal access to public discourse.
nineteenth-century Mexicanpoliticians and intellectuals adhered (at least in theory) to a
liberal Enlightenment definition of the nation as a "rational polity composed offree and
They aim to do this, moreover, without losing sight 6t the real power of the mural
autonomous indivl'd I '.' h " movement's combination of aesthetics and social commitment as a model for civic orga-
ua s, in t e I92.0S and I930S a sharply different attitude toward
nization and national renovation-a model that proved extraordinarily persuasive in
the.nation and national culture developed that rejected liberalism in favor of an official
the Western hemisphere for decades and that posited an experience of modernity alto-
policy of "revolutionary nationalism" embodied visually in the mural movement. S In
part, this policy reflected th I' I" 'iii I' I" I gether different from that of Anglo-Eurocentric culture, which many in Latin America
e ru mg e rte s aggressive e arts to centra ize po inca con- perceived as bankrupt."
trol by discouraging indi rid I 'I .. " " ,
IVI ua or regions mttiativeg while simultaneously promoting
mass participation' k ' Key to this dynamic was the mural artists' use of visual aesthetics to construct that
III wor er unions and peasant cooperatives under state jurisdiction.
Thus Mexico's port' II d space of open, public debate between the state and the heterogeneous citizens newly
I lea ea ers sought both to stave off the dual threat of invasion by
the United States and M ' , f mobilized by the Revolution, even as the movement relied on state,patronage. Muralists,
exico s ragmentation into regional fief dams, and to tie the
masses to the state B t th ffio , at their best, sought to use the semi-autonomous status of art-its aesthetic appropria-
. . u e 0 cial strategy also denoted concessions to popular, non- tion of the world such that the image stands in productive contradistinction to reality-
Habermaslan forms of .
b commumty_rural political communities such as the Zapatistas as an allegory for political conduct. That is to say, they linked an aesthetic imagining
ased On ancient for f . .. .
rna a terntonahty, relIgious communities such as the Cristeros,
to a political critique of modernity, in which the visual shaped the view of reality and

2
INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION 3

7
 reconfigured what was thought possible." A foremost objective of these artists was to
of the Communist Party, but also to the regionally distinct development of Marxism in
overcome the divide between the indeterminacy of the aesthetic realm and the deter- I
Mexico and Latin America.'? Mural artists thus operated at the point of friction between
minacy of the political realm." This problematic issue was at the heart of the famous
utopian Marxist internationalism (which emphasized the proletariat as a class across
Rivera-Siqueiros debates of '935 about the concepts of "collectivity" put forward over
national borders) and the configuring of class within the paradigm of the nation-state
time by different muralist groups, and of the close-if often contentious-relationship
in Latin America and Mexico.
between many artists and the Mexican state. It was also at the center of debates about
Tension between the national and the international also frames muralism's status as
aesthetic autonomy itself. The muralists, for example, were deeply suspicious of the
an avant-garde movement. The mural movement participated in the critique of moder-
arguments of the Contemporaneos for an arte puro as a metaphor for political freedom,
nity by the European avant-garde, but we cannot simply superimpose Europe and the
viewing this concept of art as a self-contained, self-reflexive experience as being too
developments there onto Mexico. Unlike the European avant- garde, for example, the
close to the ideology of bourgeois individuality at the center of both Mexico's failed
muralists were not marginalized by society.;rheir central position meant that they could
nineteenth-century national project and Western imperialism. Yet, as several of the
reformulate the European avant-garde's critique of modernity to address the project of
book's chapters show, in practice (if not always in theory) mural artists often priori.
national revitalization in Mexico and the Americas. That is to say, rather than interrogat-
tized the autonomous aesthetic experience as a space of social critique, and thus could
ing Eurocentrism from within (thus producing a necessarily negative critique, as did
hypothesize new links between that aesthetic experience and indigenous, peasant, and
proletarian agency. the European avant-garde], the muralists' avant-gardism attacked Eurocentrism from
outside and posited the Americas as a positive counter-modernity, a utopian space of
The examination of these arguments and others about the relationship between art
socio-political and cultural renewal against Europe's degenerated modernity. II
and politics is a core element of this book, and its cbapters attend closely to the nature
The Mexican response to these global forces fostered anti-imperialist nationalisms
of visual art as a medium uniquely able to hold conflicting attitudes toward the public
across Latin America. This anti-imperialism was both a reaction to the region's long
sphere, the modern nation, and the political in productive tension. Nevertheless, these
experience of foreign invasions and a progressive force for cultural unification of the
essays also stress the fragility of the dialectic of art and politics, as demonstrated by the
former Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Americas. Muralists articulated the dis.
loss of muralism's early dynamism and its rigidification after World War II. The politi-
tinctiveness of the Mexican nation from its counterparts, the United States and Europe,
callypragmatic Mexican state eventually absorbed the movement's critical attitude. The
as well as a model for Latin American unification.
essaysfurther explore alternative mural practices~such as those ofTepito Arte Ad. and
This regional dynamic, however, was by no means straightforward." Several essays
the Chicanoja murals-that originated in efforts to rethink the utopian aspirations of
in this book explore the link between a social realist aesthetics and political revolution in
early muralism in light of economic and political shifts imposed by the cold war and
neoliberalism. other countries in the hemisphere where social and historical conditions differed from
those in Mexico. Debates about transplanting muralism intact to other countries-to
/ Our book thus reassesses the relationship between art and politics as it played out in
Argentina, for example, which had not experienced a revolution and had no strong
post-Revolution Mexicoand beyoryd.We tie this to two further goals: first, illuminating
indigenous culture, or to Cuba, with different forms of patronage, state structures, and
the mural movement's negotiation of the dynamic between national and international
political cultures-shaped muralist aesthetics outdde Mexico.V So, too, did debates
politicsand culture, and second, elucidating the larger critique of modernity offered by
the movement. about realism versus abstraction as paradigmatic expressions of Latin America's uneven
The question of the nat' . th . h . . relationship to modernity. These debates at times figured as international confronta-
.. IOnm e twenhet century, along WIth the related questions tions (as between Siqueiros and Uruguay's influential abstract modernist, Joaquin
..., of CItIzenship and s bi ti b c
;:. U jec ivity, must e wrmulated in terms of tension with interna-
" tional and global pre . 1 Torres Garcia), and as national disputes with hemispheric implicatio-?s (as was the case
· ',. ssures, parhcu arly those of capitalism. This book explores this ten-
sion vrs-a-vis Mexican m 1" Th with Rufino Tamayo, the Contemporaneos, and Isamu NoguchiyThiS book further
ura Ism. e most Overt pressures in post-Revolution Mexico treats the flip side of the nationalist coin by examining the.diaspora that t~ok muralism/
werethe perceived threat f US . .
· 0 mvaSIOn and the contingent reaction against Eurocen- to the United States, with the sojourns of los tres grandes m el Norte during the 193<l
trism, which led to a str t f . ". .
· a egy 0 economic modernization and mdependence combined and the Chicano movement's later reformulation of rnuralism's precepts during the US
WIthefforts to give the n t· '.
. , a Ion a rnestlzo or mdigenous cultural character. The mural- civil rights era.
ists Marxist·based criti f . I'
. que 0 capita Ism, along with tbeir emphasis on popular agency, All these concerns form muralisrn's larger critique of modernity. In investigating
proved cruClal to thi t t hei
M . s s ra egy. T eir diverse and even contradictory interpretations of this critique, the chapters of this book approach the movement's historical and aesthetic
arXlsrnwere formed i
n response not only to the worldwide effects of the Stalinization particulars with questions about modernity. How (and to what degree), for example,

4 INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION 5

7
 did mural artists give visual form to an emergent historical consciousness in Mexico
heretical Marxist, and Marxist-Leninist) and analyzes how these ideologies manifest
of the country's uneven modernization under the increasingly globalized Onslaught of
themselves in depictions of revolution. A section of this essay focuses on the Rivera-
capitalism? Towhat extent did they expose Western imperialism as the spatial precondi-
Siqueiros polemic of r935 and its effects on the politics of muralism, In the next chap.
tion for modernity? How did these artists link that critique of imperialism to moder-
ter, Mary Coffey analyzes the stylistic eclecticism of Rivera's murals at the Ministry of
nity's hierarchical differentiation between European and non-European cultures? This
Public Education (1923-28). She argues that Rivera at the Ministry created an art rooted
book's chapters further investigate muralism's critique of the commodification of social
in indigenous traditions that reflected the struggles of peasant, worker, and soldier
space under capitalism and the resulting alienated subjectivity of modern life. They
in Mexico's social revolution. I
also explore what the mural movement can tell us about the relationship between that
Next Jennifer Jolly investigates Siqueiros' avant-garde attempt to revise muralism in
Western imperialist projectand modernity's abstract temporality of the eternal "new" in
the 193os, in the artistic culture of the international Popular Front, and subsequently in
which an ephemeral present exists only in a state of "perpetual transition between a con-
the Mexican Electricians' Syndicate mural (1939-40). While Siqueiros' original proposal
stantly changing past and an as yet indeterminate future."!" In treating these issues, we
for the mural argued for collective artistic practice, new technologies, and perspective
argue neither for the outdated model of a singular Eurocentric modernity imposed on
theory to revitalize art's production and reception, the mural's transformation by col-
non-modern regions, nor for the alternative modernities model that, despite its welcome
laborator Iosep Renau suggests the limits of his vision. In Chapter 5, Leonard Folgarait
anti-Eurocentrisrn, too often fails to account for the universalizing aspect of modernity's
poses questions about the architecture rendered in Orozco's murals and easel paintings
project. Instead, we followTimothy Mitchell in "acknowleg[ing] the singularity and uni-
and speculates about how it guided the work the artist completed in the United States. He
versalism of the project of modernity, a universalism of which imperialism is the most
argues that Orozco, in approaching architecture as an agent of expressive content, ulti-
powerful expression and effective means" while at the same time attending to the ways
mately changed the look and meaning of his imagery. Indeed, the metadiscourse of paint.
in which that universalism remains incomplete. J ndeed, modernity's universalizing
ing buildings on buildings allowed Orozco to recast architecture so that it was no longer a
logic "can be produced onlyby displacing and discounting what remains heterogeneous
scene-setting background but an active agent in the narrative. Tatiana Flores examines the
to it," yet this repressed heterogeneity constantly returns both to define and to rupture
IS relationship between the avant-garde movement Estridentismo and the launch of mural.
that 10gic. The Mexican mural movement's greatness, as well as its failures, is at the
ism in Mexico City in Chapter 6. Highlighting artists who worked in both, she argues that
heart of its efforts to overcomethis conundrum.
murals by Leal, Charlot, and RevueItas engaged in a critical dialogue with Estridentismo as
these artists developed a visual language suited to post-Revolutionary Mexico.
Esther Acevedo examines the extraordinary murals painted by a second generation
Wehave grouped the chapters of this book into four parts. Essays in Parts r, 2, and 3
of muralists at the Abelardo Rodriguez Market in one of Mexico City's central working-
address the national and hemispheric impact of Mexican mural painting, while Part 4
class neighborhoods in Chapter 7. She details how these young muralists were caught
offers a detailed chronology and a set of primary texts, several of them translated here
up in the RiverajSiqueiros polemic of 1934-35, debates about how to formulate a "revo-
for the first time. The chapters move from wide-frame overviews to intensive case stud-
lutionary" aesthetic, and investigates the tension between realism and abstraction in
ies and back again and include different readings of significant murals and events, thus
formulating a politicized art. In the final essay of Part r, Robin Greeley looks at the
putting the various parts of the book into dialosue
a . most influential critics of muralism, the Conternporaneos, to raise questions about the
Part 1 looks at the beg" dd I . .
mnmgs an eve opment of the mural movement m MexICO, structure and function of nationalism in Mexico. The Contemporaneos, noting the pro-
examining the ideol gi f the i d thei ".
. 0 ies 0 e Images an their producers, and situating them in the pagandistic tendencies of muralism's Marxist ideologies-which they felt flirted with
nalIonal context In Ch t R bi I' .
. ap er I, 0 In Gree ey considers the muralists' claim that they fascism by dangerously collapsing "nation" into "state"~posited an alternative view of
act as mediators betwe th M .
· en e exican people and the state. Contextualizing this claim national identity. Their Nietzschean version of "aesthetic statism" delineated a psycho-
III the years from the R I .
eVQutron to the 1970s, she dissects the tensions in muralism's logical, existentialist approach to mexicanidad that had strong repercussions afterward.
response to the official I' f" . "
· . po ICy0 revolutIOnary nationalism.' The state courted mural- Part 2 takes up the hemispheric contexts and influences of muralism, re-examining
ISm In a series of ofte dh .
· . n a DC responses to SOCIaland political situations. By exam- well-known histories such as those of los tres gran-des in the United States as well as
mmg muralism's reI f hi
· a IOns Ip to the state. she argues, we can learn much about the exploring episodes little known outside Latin America. In Chapter 9, Alejandro Anreus
lnterweavings of the [i .
mura rsts and their production with Mexico's state formation and argues that Siqueiros' proselytizing trips through the Americas promoted a muralist
modernization In th d
D' . . e secon chapter, Alejandro Anreus places Jose Clemente Orozco, agenda that ranged from critical to opportunistic. Anreus' chapter focuses on Siqueiros'
lego RIvera, and David AlE S. . . .. . '. .
arc iqueiros III their ideological trajectories (anarchist, travels to Argentina (1933) and Cuba ('9431; the work he produced in these countries;

6
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION 7

7
 and his contact with two artists, Antonio Berni and Mario Carreno, along with the work
Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies fOr Entering and Leaving Modernity" trans. Christopher
they produced in response to Siqueiros' challenge. Gabriel Pe1uffo Linari, in Chapter
Chiappari and Silvia Lopez (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995); Miguel
10, takes up the vibrant dialogue between social realism and abstraction in the form of
Angel Centeno and Fernando l6pez-Alves, eds., The Other Mirror: Grand Theory through the
Brazilian muralist Candido Portinari's response to the famous Siqueiros- Torres Garcia
Lens of Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 20m); Mabel Morana, Enrique
debates in Uruguay. Portinari, Peluffo argues, defined a third vector that challenged Dussel, and Carlos A. Jauregui, eds., Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolo-
both Siqueiros' trenchant militant realism and Torres Garcia's ahistorical universal- nial Debate (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008); George Yudice, Jean Franco, and Juan
ist abstraction. Formulated around a "realist aesthetics of sacrifice," Portinari's mural Flores, eds., On Edge: The Crisis of Contemporary Latin American Culture (Minneapolis: Uni-
production in Montevideo defined a new art of public painting that responded to the versity of Minnesota Press, 1992); and John Beverly, Jose Oviedo, Michael Aronna, eds., The
distinct social and political circumstances of the Rio de la Plata region. In the final Postmodernism Debate in Latin America (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995).
chapter of Part 2, Anna Indych-L6pez analyzes the controversies surrounding murals by 2. Peter Uwe Hohendahl, "Recasting the Public Sphere," October, Vol. 73 (Summer
r995): 3r.
Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros in the United States. Rather than satisfy social consensus,
she argues, the murals expressed the mutability of relations and the communicative 3· In this regard, Mexico's post-Revolution public sphere presents less a decline (a la
Habermas) of an Enlightenment ideal (and the subsequent rise of, first, a proletariat public
inefficacy of realism in the urban sphere, as well as a misapprehension of imagery that
sphere and then a mass culture public sphere) than a long-term result of the Enlighten-
was not necessarily shared by the artists, patrons, critics, and viewers.
ment's imperialist underpinnings. See Claudio Lomnitz, "Ritual, Rumor, and Corruption
Part 3 examines contemporary responses to muralism, both in Mexico and else-
in the Formation of Mexican Polities," in Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico. An Anthropology of
where. The three essays examine particular histories of mural painting as it changed
Nationalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001): 145-64.
dramatically during the cold war, the civil rights era, and as a result of neoliberalism. 4· Ricardo Roque-Baldovinos, "The 'Epic Novel': Charismatic Nationalism and the
In Chapter 12, Leonard Foigarait examines the artists' collective Tepito Arte Aca, which Avant-Garde in Latin America," Cultural Critique, No. 49 (Autumn, 2001): 61. On the nine-
began producing mural paintings in Mexico City in the 19708. Tepito Arte Ad is note- teenth century and the Liberal Reforma, see Jan Bazant, "From independence to the Liberal
worthy for working outside established institutions of patronage and locating its paint- Republic, 1821-1867," and Friedrich Katz, "The Liberal Republic and the Porfiriato, 1867-
ings on the walls of residences and commercial buildings far removed from "official" or 1910," both in Leslie Bethell, ed, Mexico Since Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
high- culture venues. In the next chapter, Holly Barnet-Sanchez argues that Chicano/a versity Press, 1991), and Charles Hale, "Jose Maria Luis Mora and the Structure of Mexican

murals painted across the United States from the mid-196os onward embody and for- liberalism," The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 45, No.2 (May, 1965): 196-227.
5· On the term "revolutionary nationalism," see note 8 in Greeley, "Muralism and the
mulate multiple simultaneous and shifting positions of Chicano/a culture. A reading
State in Post-Revolution Mexico, 1920-197°," this volume.
of four early murals demonstrates the strategies of what Rafael Perez-Torrez termed a
"radical me tiz ." th t C ·1· d h . 6. See Carlos Monsivais. "Perststencia de la memoria," in Julio Scherer Garda and
S L aJe a LaCI irate t e Incorporation, integration, and transformation of
Carlos Monsivais, Parte de guerra II: Los rostros del '68 (Mexico City: Nuevo Siglo/Editortal
numerous, varied sources in a specifically Chicano/a mural tradition. And finally, Bruce Aguilar, 2002): 3r-32.
Campbell provides an 0 . f I d . . .
verview 0 mura pro uction SInce the 19605. Post-Mexican 7· The purported decline of European civilization was a theme taken up by a wide variety
School mural producn h d. .
ion, e argues, respon s to SOCIal movements challengmg state of European and Latin American intellectuals, especially after World War I.
power, conflict over control of urban space, and critical interventions in the mass cul- 8. In arguing thus, we seek to position the movement between the pessimism of The-
tural environment The al f hi .
. . mur art 0 t s penod has also been unevenly documented, odor Adorno and the optimism of Jacques Ranciere by tracking muralism's continual nego-
or SImply ignored in favor of the officially Sponsored Mexican School. tiation of the art-politics issue.
Part 4 of the book pre ts h If· . . . 9· I take the term "aesthetic indeterminacy" from David Aram Kaiser, Romanticism,
sen sac rono ogy 0 MeXICan murahsm, providing a context
for the movement by in 1 di I· . Aesthetics, and Natioflalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
. c u mg po itical as well as artistic events. The section ends with
SIXprimary texts. 10. In the T920S, for instance, the Mexican Communist Party (PCM) had three leading
painters (Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Xavier Guerrero) serving on its central
committee; like the theorist Jose Carlos Mariategui in Peru and the avant-garde poet Ruben
NOTES
Martinez Villena in Cuba, these artists were not receiving party dictums but rather formu-
lating social and cultural policies.
1. The literature on thi .
the.F' IS IS vast. Some key texts include Gerardo Mosquera, ed., Beyond II. For a general treatment of this phenomenon in Latin American literature, see Roque-
antashc: Conte.mporar Ate ...
r 6· Y rt ntlclsm from Latin America (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Baldovinos, "The 'Epic Novel': Charismatic Nationalism and the Avant-Garde in Latin
99 ), Walter D Mignolo Th Id if
. ,e eao Latin America (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005); Nestor Garda America," Cultural Critique, No. 49 (Autumn, 20m): 58-83.

8
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION· 9

7
 12. On the ideological repercussions of the Mexican Revolution in Latin America in
the 19205 and 19305, see Pablo Yankelevich, "La Revoluci6n Mexicana en el debate politico
latinoarnericano." Cuadernos americanos. Vol. 19, No. III (2005): 161-86.
13. Space limitations have meant that all manifestations of muralism's hemispheric PART 1
influence could not be treated here. Some, such as the murals of revolutionary Cuba and
Nicaragua, have received documentation-see The Murals of Revolution.ary
David Kunzle.
Nicaragua, 1979-1992 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) and David Craven, Art MEXICAN MU~ALlSM
and Revolution in Latin America 1910-1990 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002)-oth-
Beginnings, Development, Ideologies"
ers, such as the influence of Orozco on Venezuela's realism/abstraction debates of the J9405
and National Responses
and 195os, remain to be fully investigated; see the catalog, Taller Libre de Arte, 1948-1952
(Caracas: Museo Jacobo Borges, '997).
1+ Peter Osborne, "Modernity," in Michael Payne, ed., A Dictionary of Cultural and
Critical Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, '997), p. ]48.
15· Mitchell, Questions of Modernity, pp. xii-xiii. Mitchell pertinently goes on to argue
that "representation" or "the world-as- picture ... is the source of modernity's enormous
capacity for replication and expansion, and at the same time the origin of its instability"
(pp. xiii-xiv].

10
INTRODUCTION
 1
MURALISM AND THE STATE
IN POST-REVOLUTION
MEXICO,1920-1970

Robin Ad/de Greeley

I begin with a problem: throughout much of the twentieth century, the Mexican mural-
ists-especially los tres grandes (Jose Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro
Siqueiros)-claimed to occupy the role of the "voice and vote" of the Mexican national
consciousness.' Purportedly acting as mediators between "the people" and the state, 2

as the "voice of the voiceless.'? the muralists elaborated a legendary visual program
remembered for lauding the worker, the Indian, and the peasant as active agents of
national formation. In so doing, los tres grande: positioned themselves as visionaries
and moral leaders of the new post-Revolution Mexico, acting as (politicallead;Is at the
national level during the tumultuous period of national consolidation and beyond. And
they provided this leadership more than any other visual art movement in Mexico or in
the Americas, to such an extent that Siqueiros could famously claim of muralism "there
is no other way but ours.:"
Countering this view is another arguing that the muralists' self-appointed role as
guardians of the national soul played a reactionary role in Mexico's formation as a
modern nation-state, This alternative view asserts that they did not act as mediators
between the state and the masses to the benefit of those peoples, but instead assisted
in perpetuating a state-sponsored social order that continually marginalized popular
demands. In his 1958 manifesto "The Cactus Curtain," Jose Luis Cuevas compared
muralism's stranglehold on Mexican national culture to Stalinist totalitarianism, echo-
ing earlier criticisms from los Contemporaneos." Anthropologist Roger Bartra has
repeatedly detailed the procedures by which "government bureaucracy gives the seal of

p
 approval to artistic and literary creation, so as to restructure [that creation] in accordance
authoritarian, socialist or developmental capitalist. Examination of such circumstances,
with established canons" of national cultural identity. Thus generated primarily from
in turn, can tell us a great deal about the disjunctive nature of modernization in what
state mandates rather than from any real attention to popular culture, the "myth" of a
Beatriz Sarlo has qualified as the "peripheral modernity" experienced by Latin America."
Mexican "revolutionarynationalism" "carries out an enormously important function
This essay looks at four periods in the development of muralism, beginning with the
in regulating the [national]consensus on which the state is based." In Bartra's view,
immediate aftermath of the Revolution (1920-24) and moving on to nationalist authori-
muralism and other officiallysponsored arts served not as a conduit of popular opinion
tarianism under President Plutarco Elias Calles and the Maximato (1924-34), then to
upward from the masses to their political leaders, but rather as a means of channeling
and neutralizing popular power. socialism under President Lazaro Cardenas (1934-40), and finally to the reversal of
Cardenas' socialist programs and the institutionalization of capitalism under Presidents
What are we to make of such divergent views? How might we evaluate the implicit
Manuel Avila Camacho (1940-46), Miguel Aleman (1946-52), and beyond,
claim of los tres grandes that the mural movement functioned, in the absence of a fully
formed civil society, as a surrogate to safeguard the rights of downtrodden peoples'
What can an interrogation of muralism's trajectory vis-a-vis the state tell us about the
General Alvaro Obregon came to power in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution-a
remarkably intimate relationship in Mexico between culture and political power? My
revolution that launched the country's transition from what Laurence Whitehead has
argument will be that the reality of muralism's role in Mexico's state formation lies
termed an "oligarchic" state to a "modernizing" one.t? The modernizing state, in this
somewhere in between these two views I have just sketched. It has to do in part with the
paradigm, favored the urban bourgeoisie (rather than oligarchic landed colonial families
conditions under which the muralists worked. Mexican artists of the 19205 and 1930s,
based on a semi-feudal agrarian economy); import-substitution industrialization that
in constant interchange with an international avant-garde, radically reconceptualized
sought to diminish Mexico's dependence on foreign investment; state economic interven-
European avant-gardeprecepts in terms of Mexico's specific historical conditions, and in
tionism (instead of laissez-fairs economic policies controlled by an elite few with no gov-
doing so, began J. vibrant exchange regarding the formulation of modernity in nations
ernment regulation); and nationalism based on inclusion of the masses, at least symboli-
beyond Europj!M~ralism's utopian vision of a shared cultural patrimony that interwove
cally (over the Eurocentrism of nineteenth-century nationalisms, which excluded those
the avant·garde with the popular opened up unprecedented space for public debate on
masses). Obregon astutely realized that reconstruction after the Revolution depended not
the character of Mexicannational identity, Yet because there was no strong civil society,
simply on economic recovery from the devastating effects of civil war. Nor did it depend
the muralists depended heavily upon the state not only economically (no thriving art
solely on building a strong, centralized state. It also required the comprehensive manipu-
market existed until well after World War II), but also politically and ideologically, The
lation of symbols of Mexican identity on both cultural and political levels,
shortage of alternative outlets meant that artists-even the politically and aesthetically
The Revolution ruptured entrenched oligarchic circuits of power to open new politi-
renegade Siqueiros-relied on the state to elaborate their utopian aspirations. Mural-
cal opportunities for the middle class, but there was no art market to speak of in its after-
ism's development thus had much to do with the coincidence of those aspiraticns with
math-s-a sign of the weakness of the urban bourgeoisie during this period." Indeed, the
the needs of state consolidation as well as the state's management of the Mexican intel-
state was the primary source of artistic patronage, and Obregon took advantage of this
~ectual community-including the artistic avant-garde, and especially the muralists- {, m 1920 was
, to appoint
'h t e
situation to set up a state-run culture. One of his first moves
IIIthe service of its long 1 c derni 71r' d
-range pans lor rna ermzatzon ..he MeXICan state sponsore liberallawyer.philosopher, Jose Vasconcelos, as Minister of Public Education, Vascon-
muralism I argue not a s: d ' , j
. ' , Sa recuse project WIth a dear goal, but as an ad hoc response celos proposed a cultural program in which the artist-intellectual was a "redeemer" and
to dIverse social and politi I", . .
. I lea srtuattons Reciprocally, muralism developed during a "prophet" for "the oppressed." "Art and knowledge must serve to improve the condition
period when the state, in the early unstable stages of consolidation, was forced to accede
to some of the mural' t ' . . of the people," Vasconcelos exhorted, urging all Mexican intellectuals to "leave their
IS S aspirations and to the essential indeterminacy of art's formal ivory towers and seal a pact of alliance with the Revolution.v'? The cultural messianism
procedures.
of Vasconcelos' program was based on a concept of mestizaje, in which European cul-
An investigation of th b hi h '
e process y W IC muralism became the standard- bearer for ture would rescue the Indian from his "underdeveloped" ways.P Vasconcelos hired the
the official state ideol f" luti
. ogyo revo utronary nationalism" can explain why the muralists muralists to paint this ideology, and his project for Mexico's spiritual renewal through
and their artistic prod ti .
. uc Ion were caught up In the uneven development of modernity high culture affected mural production through 19z3, Indeed, Vasconcelos toed the
III post- Revolution M ' 8 I di id
. exlCO. n IVl uals. movements, and regimes all responded to the obregonista line in that he avoided any direct reference to the violence of the previous
overwhelmmg urge to d
ibl ' war state-sponsored modernization that marked Mexico indel- decade, and he made sure that his muralists did likewise. Thus, Orozco's Maternity at
I y in the twentieth cent "thi , th
ury, t IS IS e case whether the regimes were populist or the National Preparatory School (the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, or Prepa) in Mexico

'4 MEXICAN MURAllSM

MURALISM AND THE STATE IN POST·REVOLUTION MEXICO ;5

7
 FIGURE 1.2

Diego Rivera. Creation, National Preparatory School (1922-23). © 2QIO Banco de MexicoDiego
Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.E/Artists Rights Society (ARS). Photograph:
Bob Schalkwijk/Art Resource

FIGURE 1.1 any reference to the class violence of the Revolution, in order to give art a redemptive,
Jose Clemente Orozco Mater 't N ti IP regenerative role in post-Revolutionary Mexico.
. lit Y, a iona reparatory School (1923). © 2010 Artists Rights Society
(ARSj, New YorkjSOMAAP, Mexico City. Photograph: Bob 5chalkwijk How did such early murals function ideologically/How did they fulfill state needs?
In what ways were they responsive to popular or avarit-garde concerns? Early muralism
was certainly a heterogeneous affair, caught up in tensions between artistic imaginings
City makes no reference to M . 's t I . and the often improvisational nature of Mexico's pre-World War II state formation.
. eXICQS urnu tuous history, instead addressing Italian
RenaIssance painting traditi .h Vasconcelos, for example, clearly knew that public arts such as muralism could help
di I IOns WIt a blonde Madonna-beautiful, but strategically
istant from any indigenous I fi " consolidate a vision of the nation. But he never conceived of muralism as a stand-alone
eu ture ( gure r.r]. RIvera s mural Creation centers not on
a European but on th II . I . project, nor was he (or anyone) able to explain what precise form that vision should
h '. e a egonca mestizo figure "Primal Energy,"14 meant to symbolize
t e uplrftmg blend of i di take. Yet in the immediate aftermath of the Mexican Revolution, Vasconcelos, Obreg6n,
at th . h - n 1genous and European races, while Man and Woman sitting
e ng t and left bases of th I . ' and other state officials sought to use government patronage of muralism to navigate
, . e rnura , reartIculate the mestizo body through a monu-
menta Ilzmg post-cubist st Ii f . between the need to legitimate the state's national base and the need to calm interna-
.
P nman 'J C Y s !CS. Yet the surroundmg allegorical figures still derive
Y rrom Italian B z' . . tional fears. Foreign trade deteriorated in the years after the civil war, largely as a result
erence th b'b]" Y anhne and RenaIssance models, while Man and Woman ref.
e I ical Adam and Ev b f h of clauses in the 1917 Constitution restricting foreign property ownership. Relations
as the pro . lee are t e Fall (figure 1.2). Creation, in fact, emerged
mClpa symbol of V s los' . . with the United States were especially tense, although in the Bucareli Accords of '923
a eonce os mystical nationalism-deliberately omitting
Mexico resolved some grievances of US corporations in exchange for official US recogni-

16
MEXICAN MURAlISM
MURALISM AND THE STATE IN POST·REVOLUTION MEXICO 17

p
 tion of Obregon's government. On the domestic front, Obregon faced armed challenges
to his authority from regional caudillos and peasant groups. He turned to muralism
for three purposes. The first was to signal to the international community Mexico's
transformation from semi-feudal agrarianism to a modern, industrialized nation-state
on par with Europe and the United States. Muralism was the grandest cultural attempt
at countering the international perception of Mexico as barbarous and primitive. The
movement's European-trained avant-garde artists helped raise international awareness
of Mexico's cultural sophistication, and by avoiding controversial themes, the murals
presented an image of Mexico as civilized, modern, and safe for financial investment.
Obregon's second purpose was to use muralism internally to construct an ideol-
ogy of cross-class national consensus. The Revolution had broken apart the narrow,
self-reinforcing political and economic monopolies that characterized the nineteenth-
century Porfinato, and sent the oligarchic hacienda system ofland tenure into decline.
Obregon sought to capitalize on this, not to institute liberal parliamentary democracy
I this decree-an
(as President Madero had envisioned before his assassination in '9 3) but rather to
incorporate Mexico's incipient national bourgeoisie and proletariat, ' along with the
rural sectors, into an increasingly centralized governrnent.P It was hoped that mural.
The structure of the state thus turned from the Porfirian exclusionary model toward
an inclusive ideology in which the state incorporated and modernized all levels of soci-
ety. This model of the state in part resembles its European bourgeois counterpart. But
whereas European modernization was generated through a close collaboration between
European states and a developed bourgeoisie, the post- Revolution Mexican state had
no strong middle class upon which to rely. The state was thus vulnerable to internal
pressures-from latifundio oligarchies and regional strongmen, the rural and urban
masses, the military, and the Catholic Church. It was also vulnerable to external pres-
sures, particularly from the United States." As a result, in late 1923, as the condition,
for recognizing the Mexican government, the United States forced Mexico to guarantee
that it would not nationalize United States-owned industries (the Bucareli Accords).
Obregon, unwilling to risk the continuity of government by holding truly democratic
elections, named Pluta reo Elias Calles as his successor. The military revolted against
event with immediate and harsh consequences for the muralists. Vas-
concelos sided with Adolfo de Ia Huerta's attempted coup d'etat, voicing disapproval of
Obregon's authoritarian tactics and kowtowing to US business interests. But the power

ism would translate this new situation into a visual ideology palatable to all concerned. of the Mexican state itself remained precarious until after World War II, and it could

The movement's early experimentation reconfigured the national patrimony, inspired tolerate no dissent from artists and intellectuals. Vasconcelos was forced into exile in

by an extensive amalgam of pre-Conquest sculpture, painting, and monumental archi- July '924 and Obregon put a halt to virtually all mural projects." In December 1924
Calles took power as Eljefe Maximo (Supreme Leader).
tecture; colonial churches and baroque painting; popular cantina murals; motifs from
traditional pottery, lacquer ware, and weaving; European avant-gardisms from cubism, By late '923, the muralists had radicalized their politics in an effort to distance them-

futurism, constructivism, and beyond. All of these arts afforded Source material for selves from Vasconcelos.'? Their paintings now described contemporary political events
rather than allegories, past histories, or scenes from folklore. Their work developed
utopian visions of a unified, modern nation. Muralists helped demarcate this nascent
sophisticated ideas about class and race that privileged the peasantry and proletariat but
cultural field-transformed by new connections between artists, government officials.
nevertheless advocated populist cross-class alliances with certain sectors of the bour-
unions, and popular movements-as a space of populist nationalism. In so doing, they
geoisie, particularly intellectuals. Through an iconography of workers, peasants, and
opened up new avenues for cross-class dialogue, but also simultaneously provided a
Indians, the muralists shifted their rhetoric, taking a position to the left of Vasconcelos
means for the state to channel mass demand for social justice away from the political
and economic spheres. but remaining within the limits of state-sponsored populism. Rivera's Distribution of the
And third Obregon t d I' Land (r923-24), for instance, celebrates a utopian fiction in which the stale implements
, urne to mura Ism to resolve the monumental problem of the
rebellious peasantry Alth h Z' '. the Plan de Ayala's mandated restitutions of land, while Emiliano Zapata and Otilio
. aug apatista agrarianism had largely been defeated, the
rural masses had step d fi I h Montano look on (see plate 2).'0 Siqueiros painted the powerfully somber Burial oj a
pe rm y onto t e stage of history. Local and regional interests
crucially affected the effi ffc d I I' . Worker (1923-24), one of the earliest murals to portray a Mexicanized proletariat (see
. cacy0 e era po ICym the countryside, and regional rebellions
contmued throughout th t 16 C . figure 8.6). Orozco began his series of drawings, Horrors of the Revolution, translating
e cen ury. ampesmos, who could no longer be ignored, had
to be made to believe th t Ob 6' their raw pessimism into the sublime tragedy of the r926 Prepa murals (see figure 2-3).
. a reg n s government represented their best interests [espe-
CIallyon the land quest' ) d With Calles in power, however, the muralists were tainted by their earlier affiliation
.
WIthefforts to turn M IOn . an. ,at the same time, had to be prevented from interfering with Vasconcelos and their increasing connections to the Mexican Communist Party
cessors thus sought with nto .a modern, profit-making nation. Obreg6n and his sue-
eXICO i
(PCM)." The state, not yet stable enough to control potential threats, tended toward
. - 1 varymg degrees of Success-to incorporate the masses as
symbol into the new nati li h . . coercion and outright repression. Calles banned the PCM in r929 and brought orga-
. ona ist r etonc while at the same time undermining their real
political effectiveness and b di . nized labor unions to heel, subordinating labor to the centralized state apparatus-a
.. su or mating them to the centralized state. Muralism was configuration of state-labor relations that would remain a hallmark of the Mexican state
cruClalto VIsualizing this strategy.
throughout the rest of the twentieth century. Many muralists were prominently involved

18
MEXICAN MURALISM

MURALISM AND THE STATE IN POST·REVOLUTION MEXICO

'9

p
 FIGURE 1.'
Lola Alvarez Bravo. Untitled (Rivera Murals at the Ministry of Education). Posthumous digital repro-
duction from original negative, Lola Alvarez Bravo Archive, Center for Creative Photography. © 1995
The University of Arizona Foundation.

FIGURE 13 "cultural missions" to the countryside." In 1930, Ram6n Alva de la Canal imaged the
Ramon Alva de Ia Canal Cultural Mission (1930). © aorr cultural missions as a positive opportunity that allowed intellectuals to put their utopian
Museo Naciona! de Artejfnstituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y ideals into practice among the peasantry (figure '-3). Yet as Alva de la Canal himself had
Literatura. Photograph: Robin Greeley
lamented the year before, those cultural missions were often isolated from the urban
centers of power and thus made culturally and politically marginal. 27

in PCM leadership as 11 . Even Rivera, although he bad been allowed to continue working on his mural cycle
b d we as in the Party's paper EI Machete." Once the Party was for the Secretaria de Educaci6n Publica (the Ministry of Public Education, or SEr), did
anne , they were fired demo d .
r d d '. ' te , or exiled. Some, such as Fermin Revueltas were so without pay. He produced murals such as the politically vague allegory Mechaniza-
e lice to painting shop si n h " '
Pe g s or ot er menial Jobs.23 Siqueiros and Roberto Reyes tion of the Countryside ('926) (see figure 3.6), which idealizes for an urban middle-class
erez gave up mural paintin to ' ..
with th 14 g engage III political activism and repeated confrontation audience the modernization projects of the Maximato and imagines the nation as a
e state." Orozco had a1 d . .
Mistrusti h h i '. rea y gone mto sdf'lmposed exile in the United States. brotherhood of peasant, worker. and soldier-with "soldier" a code word for the state,
ng ot mstltutlOnalized p Iiti d bl' de', ". "
Oraz·' 0 I lCS an In faith in the revolutionary masses, which was led consistently by military generals. The "enemies of the nation" are not the
co mcreasmgly felt that with th . ,
mental publj '. ' e Maxirnato s turn toward authoritarianism, monu- bourgeoisie, but hacendados and the Catholic Church, struck by a lightning bolt thrown
rc pamtmg provided th I .
radation 2S Oth . e so e possible redemptive stance against human deg- by the Proletariat as a red-swathed allegory." The courtyards with the murals, however,
. er murahsts suffer d i t I"
e In erna exile In the form of government-sponsored once Rivera had finished them, were used for storage and deliberately neglected because

20
MEXICAN MURAlISM
MURAllSM AND THE STATE IN POST·REVOLUTION MEXICO 21
 t heeirrrepres sible
J
Riverahad included explicitly communist rhetoric and scathing cri.
tiques of the bourgeoisie in other panels (figure '-4).

At this point, muralism seems far from being lauded as the visual arbiter of official revo-
lutionary nationalism. Without Vasconcelos as unifier and Calles as supporter, "Mural.
ism" fragmented into "muralisms." Paradoxically, however, political disenfranchise.
ment fostered vibrant ideological and aesthetic diversity, a period of visual innovation
unrivaled in modern Latin America. Aesthetic production became a site of public debate
about the character of mexican.idad, the nature of the Mexican state, and the relationship
between modernity and modernization. Artists dynamically intervened in the public
sphere-writing, engaging in political organizing, teaching (rural and urban), debat-
ing, and producing graphic works (illustrations, posters, pamphlets, etc)-in ways that
complemented muralism while expanding the limits and complexity of civic discourse_
Another set of national crises, however, forced the Mexican state to reassess its cul-
tural policies. Mexicodesperately needed the support of the United States, especially
during the Great Depression. But the country's relations with el Norte remained uneasy.
Muralism was again called on to present Mexico internally as defiantly nationalist, yet
externally as open to foreign interests-especially oil. 29 Particularly in Rivera's hands,
rnuralism began to serve as a "cultural liaison to American industrialists" and bank-
ers.w One such banker, US Ambassador Dwight Morrow, commissioned Rivera in f93
0
to paint murals in the historic dty ofCuernavaca as a means of cementing ties between
the two nations_ Other industrialists SOonfollowed suit: both Henry Ford and Nelson
Rockefeller commissioned Rivera to paint murals in Detroit and New York City. MuraJ-
ism's populism helped the Mexican state present itself at home as independent of el
Norte while continuing efforts abroad to court foreign capital, The state also tried to FIGURE 1.5
use rnuralism to control opposition within Mexico, marginalizing those intellectuals Roberto Montenegro. Busca en ta Tierra lu Alimiento "en el Libro Tu
and artists who did not accept the movement's social realism and nationalist commit- Libertad (Search in. the Earth for Your Nourishment and in tlte Bo~k
ments." Even artists in the mural movement-Siqueiros being the most notorious- for Your Freedom). Mural for Ministry of Education rural education
could be persecuted for defying state political mandates or rewarded for complying." program in Tepecuacuillca, Guerrero, Repr0 duced in El Sembrador
(Mexico City: Secretarta de Bducacion Publica, June 5, 1929),
Muralism also helped resolve another major threat to the stability of the state: the
Cristero rebellion (r926-29), one of the bloodiest episodes between r9 and r95 ,
IO 0
occurred when state-sponsored modernization of the nation's predominantly rural
negro's school mural painted In- 1929 lorc t h e town 0 f Tepecuacuilca, for example,
_ has
population was most rapid. In response to increased antagonism between the Catholic
a stylized cornstalk at the center, emp h asizmg
. - pre- C on quest maize symbolism
, over
Church and the anticlericalism and enforced agrarian policies of the state, many rural
Christian iconography (figure '-5)- T h e mur all' In k sa_ncient indigenous ties
_ to the land
communities rase in revolt,demanding, at gunpoint, restitution oflands and an end to
with state agrarian and educational
. po 1-'
icies, admoms. hing
I its campesmovlewers to find
the state-enforced limits on the Church,3J To combat the Cristero revolt, the state again
freedom in books rather than in religion, .
sought to use muralism to contain the peasantry-with mixed results, which depended
It is also no accident that Rivera's Cuernavaca mural cycle, painted in 1930 In th.e
largely on local circumstances. Whereas urban murals were largely oriented toward city
inhabitants and an - t . I di - . f h immediate aftermath of the Cristero rebe Ilion.
- hi19hi-ig ht e d the oppressive role Catholi-
SEP's rural educat' III "tnationa au renee,
. murals pamted under the auspices 0 t e cism played in the conquest of Mexico. an d in
- th e coun try's subsequent colonial history.
,
IOnprogram were aimed directly at the peasantry, Roberto Monte- Against this history of subjugation,
. RIvera
- paints
. ErruTIan 0 Zapata , the mustachioed

MEXICAN MURAL ISM

MURALISM AND THE STATE IN POST-REVOLUTION MEXICO 23
--n _
 political and moral organization. continually presenting agrarian reform as its "gift"
to the campesinos, rarely presenting it as the realization of Zapatista demands for land
restitution. 36
The Morelos peasantry, however, stubbornly refused to legitimate either this official
view or Obregon's version ofland reform, instead using their moral authority over Zapa-
ta's image to force the state to negotiate. Obregon soon realized that he "needed Zapata's
name to reap the political benefits of his own appeal for land reform," both domestically
and internationally." Because Zapata, unlike Pancho Villa, had never fought the United
States, he could be recuperated by post-Revolution administrations as a national figure
without angering the United States. But in Mexico, Zapata's official image had to be
shifted from that of class enemy of the bourgeoisie to that of national martyr. 38

Muralism was often caught up in this disagreement about historical interpretation

between the state and rural peoples, and Rivera's Zapata was no exception. The artist
claimed of his Zapata, "I took care to authenticate every detail by exact research, because
I wanted to leave no opening for anyone to try to discredit the murals as a whole by the
charge that any detail was a fabncanon."> Such a claim-that "truth" is to be located
in a realist, purely visual iconography outside political concerns-prompts questions
about the appropriation of local heroes to legitimize state authority. "-0 Rivera painted a
highly ideological portrait of Zapata that supported efforts to harness the violent clashes
of the Revolution and the Cristero rebellion for an ideology of national harmony. Rivera
painted Zapata standing to one side of his horse, holding a farmer's sickle (rather than
on horseback, gun in hand-the traditional warrior pose that Zapata readily adopted
for photographers), placing the agrarian leader just above the viewer's eyelevel. Clothed
in mythic campesino white, he seems almost conjoined with the equally mythic white
horse,' his legs superimposed over the horse's back hooves, as though man and animal
were a single luminous being." Rivera places Zapata at the head of a line of peasant
fighters, their faces echoing his. In this image, Zapata stands in unity with his people
FIGURE 1.6 and with the natural world, unlike the capataz (foreman) and conquistadores on horse.
Diego Rivera. Emi/iano Zapata PI' d back elsewhere in the mural, who tower over the indigenous masses. ~ore importantly,
. , a aCID e Cortes Cu (
Rivera Frida Kahlo M ' ernavaca 1930). © 20!0 Banco de Mexico Diego viewers see him just above eye level, so that an imagined camaraderie links us with
useums Trust M . 0 F . .
Schalkwijk ' exico, .. /Arhsts Rights Society (ARS), Photograph: Bob
Zapata's heroic struggle, eliding any cultural differences or class antagonisms. In front
of this mural, we are all Zapatistas."
Here, as elsewhere, the Mexican state repeatedly used the iconic image of Zapata to
hero of revolutionary peasant . fuse the rural masses and the self-proclaimed revolutionary state." But the Cuernavaca
resIstance (figure 6) C . .
los Zapata's h 1. . uernavaca IS the capital of Mare- mural effects that fusion subtly. Visually, Rivera's mural, by placing the revolutionary
' orne state. Topaint Za ata th .
Rivera, its prize a tisf I P ere was to hail the Mexican government (and leader in the final panel, proclaims that history culminates in Zapata. He marks the
r 1St as eaders of the d 34
ably from this uta i ideai: Oppresse. Yet the reality differed consider' defiant resolution to Mexico's long history of oppression-an oppression schematized
p an leal; in Morelos Z ta'
constant struggle b tw ' apa a S Image was-and remains-a site of as primarily colonial, rather than modern. The mural makes all viewers-whether peas-
e een the state and th
After Zapata's assa . . . e martyred peasant leader's rural followers. ant, elite, indio, or gringo tourist-not active historical actors but part of the undiffer-
SSmatronin r919 offi . 1 hi .
and an outlaw 35 Th ' Cia istones at first portrayed him as a bandit entiated mass who are merely implementing Zapata's vision. Thus, the modern state,
. e state, moreover ra hh
' n raug s ad over local communities' modes of although deliberately left out of the mural, is figured through its very absence, in the

MEXICAN MURALISM

MURALISM AND THE STATE IN POST·REVOLUTION MEXICO 25

__ 7 ~
 empty physical space in front of the mural where spectators stand. In that space, view.
ers automatically do what the state commands; they stand passive, whatever their class Cardenas-i-aware that Calles' authoritarianism had masked, rather than resolved,
position, before the mural that asserts the triumph of Zapata's land reform, which the Mexico's volatile social tensions-renewed state support for muralism, which had

caretaker state has purportedly implemented in the ab ence of Zapata himself. Rivera, lapsed during the Maxirnato, as a means to garner social consensus. Despite his legend-

in his mural, defines Mexico's modern state-not its rural peoples-as legitimate heir ary reputation as friend of the campesino, however, Cardenas continued the Maximato's

to Morelos' leader. He helps co-opt and disempower the revolutionary forces that Zapata interventionist modernizing policies in both the countryside and the cities, and, like

represented and-s-much to the dismay of the Maximato-the Cristeros continued." the previous regimes, enlisted the muralists in the effort to industrialize agriculture

The Maximato and subsequent regimes stressed not Vasconcelos' model of mestizaje, and incorporate the peasantry into the national economy. As part of its corporate social-

but a model of indig"'ismo that mythologized the "authenticity" of indigenous and pop- ist plans to organize workers and farmers into federalized unions tied to the state, the

ular cultures as the basis for a national culture. This was a tactic, in part, for producing Cardenas regime sponsored a wealth of murals in proletarian and rural communities;

history. Official views on the nation's history coincided with the muralists' ideas of plate I is an example of this abundance in stained glass. Debates on the role of the
national cultural identity, resulting in the construction of a highly ideological version of peasantry in post-Revolution Mexico centered on the image of the campesino. The state,

Mexico's pastunderthe rubric of mexicanidad. "Culture" and "history" became synony- in creating a coherent sense of mexicanidad, had to contend with the popular. In the
murals, the visual, social, and political elements combined to encourage dialogue about
mous, and the muralists became the most Aamboyant brokers of this relationship. The)'
the nature of citizenship for Mexico's rural peoples.
interpreted the past through the lens of a "revolutionary" present, selectively providing
the grounds for an equally "revolutionary" future. In particular, the muralists con Rated After r940, the Mexican state intensified efforts to industrialize, adopting the devel-
Mexico's pre-Conquest indigenous past with the state's modernization project. so that oprnentalist economic policy of import-substitution industrialization to reduce Mexico's
dependence on foreign investment.
The regimes of Manuel Avila Camacho (1940-46)
the past became the ideological referent for Mexico's indu trialized future. Even the
and Miguel Aleman (1946-SZ) kept Cardenismo's corporate state structure, but rejected
famously pessimistic Orozco would frame his great 1939 Cabanas murals according to
its socialist rhetoric in favor of the full-out, state-sponsored consumer capitalism known
this ideology, although he questions the standard presentation of that future as idyllic.
as the "Mexican Miracle."? In contrast to Cardenas' focus on the peasant and working
His Cortes, an apocalyptic machine·man and a precur Or of the Terminator, combines
classes, these regimes strove to consolidate an urban consumerist bourgeoisie on the
the horror of the Conquest with the distopia of modern technology (see figure 8.2).
US model, linking consumerism to the health of the national economy. so Essential to
This effort to implement a national culture of indigenismo and resolve the problem
this shift was the use of old institutions, including muralisrn, for new purposes. As
of unruly indigenous and rural peoples at the national level, which historian Laurence
historian Alan Knight puts it, "the Aleman ,exenio [six-year presidential term], imbued
Whitehead has called the "federalization of the Indian question," further resulted in
with a modermzing, Cold War ideology, and a get-rich-quick ethic, quarried the rubble
expansion of state powers at the expense aflocal patrones.4S It was also a tactic to gain
of Cardenismo and utilized the material-the corporate party, the mass institutions,
the support of resistant peasants for the state's modernization project, which sought to
mdustrialize Mexico's a' ducn . the powerful executive, the tamed army and subordinated peasantry-to build a new
granan pro uction and subordmate the masses to the state's
single-party regime Duri th d '" Mexico.">! Muralism was furtl1er institutionalized through a series of highly public offi-
e- . mg e r920s an '930s, this tactic did not always succeed,
cial awards, exhibitions, and commissions, and mined for its ability to project a unified
because both muralists and the masses continually te ted the limits of state ideology,'
national ethos as representative of "the struggles and desires of the masses" even as the
When the mural collective, Alianza de Trabajadores de las Artes Plasticas, painted an
ant!Clencal mural in a w ki I h Mexican state programmatically turned its back on those masses."
. sought (b t f '1ord ing c ass sc
collective . 001 that infuriated parents, for instance, the Yet whereas Cardenas and previous regimes had focused on controlling the actual
. u ai e to get) police protection'] In Oaxaca, by contrast, teachers
complamed to the gove b V- murals. the politically pragmatic regimes of AvilaCamacho and Aleman concentrated on
rnor a out a irgen del Perpetuo Socorro that local muralists in
Tezoatlan had painted on th h 1 II ,. harnessing the aura of the mural painters for the Mexican state. Neither president was
heowever, the effect of mur I" sc 'C00 wa . Beyond
. •
such iconography wars over religion, interested in the content of what the muralists had to say, but both wanted to manipulate
was at once to incorporat
a ISms
th rccus on 'the mdlgenous, peasant, and working classes the personas of the painters to serve the state. For this reason they systematically linked
power of the masses to ch eII ose sectors
h h. mto official history and to acknowledge the the mass media cult of personalities to the state, cultivating a few muralists and otbers as
.
SOCiety, . risked aa enge
muralism kern t at h tstory. In mediating between the stale and civil "national" figures. In r943, for example, Avila Camacho founded the prestigious Colegio
workers, But Without that wadienmg
. t e latent revolutionary power of carnpesinos and Nacional de Mexico, with Orozco and Rivera representing the visual arts. He permitted
for : me lation, the state could have been accused of illegitimacy Siqueiros to return from his enforced exile over the Trotsky affair," and in '945, allowed
or 19nonng popular versions of history.
Siqueiros his first state commission since the mid-I920S, on the third floor of the Palacio

26 . MEXICAN MURALISM

MURALISM AND THE STATE IN POST-REVOLUTION MEXICO 2]

A _
 FIGURE 1.7 FIGURE '.8

Rufino Tamayo. Nuestra Nacionalidad (1952). © D.R. Rufino Tamayo/Herederos/Mexico/zo09/

David Alfaro Siqueiros. New Democracy, Palacio de Bellas Artes (1945). © 2010 Artists Rights Society Pundacion Olga y Rufino Tamayo. A.C.
(ARS), New York/SOMAAP, Mexico City. Photograph: Bob SchalkwijkjArt Resource

de Bellas Artes ..AvilaCamacho also used muralism to further Mexico's foreign rela-
nons with prominent capitalist nations, especially the United States. During World War exhibitions at the Colegio Nacional." With his mural New Democracy in the Palacio de
II, the Mexican state acti I . d i d . Bellas Artes, Siqueiros surpassed Orozco and Rivera as Mexico's most highly regarded
ve y Improve Its etenorated ties to the United States. which
had reached an all·time low in 8 C' d ' . . . muralist (figure 1.7),56 Siqueiros used the mural to display his technical innovations to
. 193 over d[ enas nahonalJzatlOn of the oil industrv
Murahsm formed part f thi h full effect, but instead of his usual theme, class warfare, his mural took up the rhetoric
. 0 IS approac ,and the state made sure that works by Orozco
RIvera, and Siqueiros held ro . . ". , . of the government's cold war ideology, which pitted democracy against communism, 57
,eM . P rrunenr positions In the major exhibition Twentu Centuries
OJ eXlcan Art held . h ' By '952, Tamayo's mural Nuestra Nacionalidad signaled yet another shift, marking the
, '. ml940att e Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Aleman contmued thi bli I' ascendancy of abstraction over social realism (figure r.8). Tamayo's abstraction could be
. s pu rc re anons strategy of state patronage calling upon los
ires grandes m '947 t " . , characterized as profoundly Mexican but avoided the communist taint of muralism's
he .' 0 orm a national Commission of Mural Painting. The government
awar d e d t e NatIOnal Art Prize to. social realism and conveniently coincided with the rise in the United States of abstract
Tam b 0 rozco m r946 and to Rivera in '950. In '952, Rufino
ayo ecam- thefourth grande wh h d expressionism as the cultural embodiment of cold war anti-communism." .
BigTh . h en ea ded a mural panel to those painted by the Not until the presidency of Aleman did the fine arts-including muralism-receive
ree In t e Palacio de Bellas Artes.
Thus only in the mid-i h consistent state support, and then it was only at the cost of any earlier socialist commit-
opmentalist t 940s, w en the government decided to embark on a devei- ments. In this period the productive debates about muralisms finally gave way to the
s ,ategy of full ind tri ali . .
artists cease b . ,us 1 12atlOn, did relations between the state and its
officially sanctioned unity of Muralism. The historian Enrique Krauze, looking back on
emg contentlOus For art] t d.
a reduction' di ' IS san intellectuals, the Mexican Miracle meant this period, accused the muralists of capitulating: "The relationship between the gov-
In irect repression th t lasted '
the state enco d . a aste until the 1960s, because the stability of ernment and the intellectuals had returned to the old, palmy days of Don Porfirio ....
urage Its "nurturin " f th
a genuins crin aJ g 0 e arts. But cooperation came at the cost of Converted into national icons, the mural painters ... continued to rely on generous
I IC stance on the part f th .
any true comm't 0 e muralIsts, Rivera, having long abandoned state patronage while they painted the walls of public and private buildings, hotels, the-
1 menr to communism d d h '.. .
cooperation p . t' ,a opte t e antI-fasCIst rhetonc of hemisphenc aters, the homes of artists and high society."" Siqueiros' March of Humanity, produced
, am mg Pan·American U '
wartime detent b . nlty (San Francisco, 1940) in response to the new from 1964 to 1971 under the violently repressive regimes of Presidents Diaz Ordaz and
e etween MexICOand th U .
conferences the U . d e TIlted States and a series of Pan.American Echeverria, is perhaps the most famous example of the situation Krauze describes (fig-
Dlte States initiated t . .
54
Americas, 0mz ' . 0 secure Itself agamst Axis infiltration of the ure 1.9)-'° The mural, housed in the Siqueiros Cultural Polyforum, a conference build,
co s savagepesslmis
m was now safely contained in the series of annual ing on the grounds of the Hotel de Mexico, aimed to signal both the end of Mexico's

28 • MEXICAN MURALISM

MURALISM AND THE STATE iN POST·REVOLUTION MEXICO 29

 movement. Muralism, originally central to the rebuilding of the nation after the Revo-
lution precisely because it provoked public debate, was now thoroughly institutional-
ized, its message of popular consciousness effectively neutralized. The adventure of the
'9208 and '930S had ended; it would be left to others outside the institutional reach of
the state to express a popular national consciousness."

NOTES

1. Diego Rivera, "Manifiesto a los obreros y campesinos de Mexico," (26 May I930),
reprinted in Rivera, Arte y politico, ed. Raquel Tibol (Mexico City: Grijalbo, '979), p. 99. All
translations in this chapter are by the author unless otherwise noted.
2. Two typical examples of the muralists' conception of "the people" might suffice:
Siqueiros characterized muralism's relationship to "the people" thus: "The people follow us,
they surround us. because our movement gets close to the people and lives from them, from
them it extracts it juices and its essences." Siqueiros, "La corrupci6n en el arte" (1969) trans.
Iated in Gilbert Joseph and Timothy J. Henderson, eds., The Mexico Reader: History, Culture,
Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), p. 498. And, in the words of Rivera: "I tried
always to be that which they call an artist, that is, a receiver of the struggles and desires of
the masses and a transmitter that could offer the masses the synthesis of their desires, thus
to serve them as their conscience and aid them in their social organization." Rivera, "La obra
del pintor Diego Rivera," Das Werk Des Malers DiegoRivera (Berlin: Neuer Deutscher Verlag,
FIGURE 1.9 1928), reprinted in Diego Rivera, Textos de arte, ed. Xavier Moyssen (Mexico City: UNAM,
David Alfaro Siqueiros. March of Humanit Si u . '986), p. '3I.
Rights Society (ARS), New York/SOM y, q .elro~ Cultural Polyforum (1965-71). © 2010 Artists 3· Carlos Fuentes invokes this phrase with regard to twentieth-century Mexican intel-
AAP, Mexico CIty. Photograph: Robin Greeley
lectuals generally. Carlos Fuentes, interview, in Jorge Castaneda, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin
American Left After the Cold War (New York: Knopf, '9931, p. r82,
internal social conflicts under the .d 4· David Alfaro Siqueiros, No hay mas ruta que La nuestra (Mexico City: Secretarfa de
of the nation t . ternan gUI ance of the revolutionary state and the openness Educaci6n Publica, 19451.
o In ernatlOnal tourism Th M· .
growing disparity of' . - e exrcan MIracle, however, obscured the 5· Jose Luis Cuevas, "La cortina de nopal," a 1957-59 series-of articles published in Mexico
Income and Increased 1" 1
tion. The go po ttrca unrest among the nation's popula- en La cultura, supplement to Novedades. The most important appeared in No. 468 (2 March
vernment that sponsored Siqueir '
massacre during st d os mural would also carry out a planned '958):1,6; No, 473 (4 April '958)7. Published in English in Evergreen Review No.2 (19591:IU-
u enr protests in Mexic C . 20. On the Contemporaoeos. see my chapter "Nietzsche contra Marx in Mexico: The Contem-
hundred unarmed st d a tty in October '9686! Some three to four
u ents and bystande . 1 di . poraneos, Muralism, and Debates over 'Revolutionary' Art in 1930S Mexico" in this volume.
of the Olympic Ga 61 Th rs, me u lUg chJldren, were killed on the eve
. meso e Tlatelolco M . . 6. Roger Bartra. Oficio mexicano (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1993). pp. 32, 102. I
national Psyche si ifvi assacre remains a wound In the Mexican
. ' igni ymg the abandonment f h' . 7· On state management of intellectuals, see Nicola Miller, In the Shadow of the State:
ment. Slqueiros how ate MeXICan people by their govern-
, ever, not only conti d Intellectuals and the Questfor National Identity in Twentieth-Century Spanish America (Lon-
condemned any eli' nue to accept support from the state but also don: Verso, 19991.
. sruphon of the 01 m ic G 63 '
dIsruption to which h . y p ames. Although he did not specify the 8. "Revolutionary nationalism," declared official policy under President Calles in 1930,
e was refernng he did
Four years later - ,not mean the murderous police. expressed politically the idea that the nation-state embodied popular demands for social
. ' in '972, President Ech ,.
murahsm to be a part fth everrta slgned a law declaring Mexican justice. See Francisco Valdes Ugalde, "Nationalism and the Polity in Mexico," unpublished
o e cultural patri f .
presented as a mea lrnony 0 the natlOn.64 The decree, although paper, Brown University (r999), pp. 4-6, '7.
sure to preserve works fr d . .
was selectively imple d am etenoratlOn, vandalism, and neglect, 9· Beatriz Sarlo, Una modernidad periferica: Buenos Aires 1920 y 1930 (Buenos Aires: Edi-
mente and thus for .
many It marked the death knell of the mural ciones Nueva Vision, 1988).

]0

MURALISM AND THE STATE IN POST·REVOLUTION MEXICO ]1

 I
10. Laurence Whitehead, "State Organization in Latin America since 1930," in Leslie ard Folgarait, Mural Painting an.d SociaL Revolution in. Mexico, 1920-1940. Art of the New
Bethell, ed., Cambridge History of Latin America, vel. VI, part 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), P: 85·
University Press, 1995), pp. 90-9I. 24. Olivier Debroise, "Action Art: David Alfaro Siqueiros and the Artistic and Ideolo.gi-
II. See Christine Prerot. £1 mercado de arte en Mexico, 1950-197° (Mexico City: 'NBA, cal Strategies of the J930S," in Portrait of a Decade: David Alfaro Siqueiros, 1930-1940 (MexICO
1990). City: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1997), p. 29·
12. Jose Vasconcelos, "Dlscurso en 1a Universidad," in Discursos 1920-195° (Mexico City: 2.5. "Painting assails the mind. It persuades the heart." Orozco, quoted in Alma Reed,
Ediciones Botas, 1950), pp. 7-12. Orozco (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 95·
IJ. Jose Vasconcelos, La raza cosmicajThe Cosmic Race, [1925] trans. Didier T. Iaen (Bal- 26. On the cultural missions sponsored by the SEP from 1923 through 1938, see Sec-
timore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 19791, p. 5. retatfade Educacion Publica, Las misiones culturales en 1b27 (Las escuelas normales rurales)
14· Vasconcelos, quoted in Mari Carmen Ramirez, "The Ideology and Politics of the (Mexico City: SEP, 1928); Secretarfa de Bducacion Publica, Las misiones culturales, 1932-J3
Mexican Mural Movement, 1920-1925" (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1989), (Mexico City: SEP, 1933); Misiones culturales: los arios ut6picos, 1920-1938, exhibition cata-
p. 183_Ramirez analyzes the role ofVasconce1os' spiritual messianism in Rivera's Creation. logue (Mexico City: CONACULTAjINBAjMuseo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo.
15· See Whitehead, "State Organization in Latin America since 1930." 1999); Mary Kay Vaughan, Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools H't

16. The Cristero rebellion (1926-29) is the most important episode of post-Revolution Mexico, 1930-194° (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997)·
rebellion, but resistance continued throughout the century, most recently and spectacu larly 27- Ramon Alva de la Canal was convinced that the SEP deliberately sent the most radi-
embodied in the EZLN rebellion in Chiapas. See Jennie Purnell, Popular Movements and cal artists of the jJo-Jo! movement on cultural missions in order to break it up. He wrote to
State Formation in Revolutionary Mexico: The Agraristas and Cristeros of Michoacan (Our. Fernando Leal that he was forced into taking the job of cultural missionary "in order to fill
ham: Duke University Press, 1999). [my] belly with potatoes," Sofia Rosales, "EI an6nimo muralismo de las Misiones Cultura-
17· See Gilbert Joseph, Revolution from Without: Yucatan, Mexico, and the United States, les," in Misiones culturales: los afios ut6picos, pp. 46-7.
1880-1924 (Durham: Duke University Press, 19881, especially Chapter 9; Arnaldo Cordova. 28. Rivera's demonization of the Catholic Church clearly aimed to please the notoriously
La ~deologia de La Revolucio/t Mexicana: La formaci6n del nuevo regimen (Mexico City: Edi- anticlerical Calles.
cones Era, 1973), p. 280. 29. See Lorenzo Meyer, Mexico y los Estados Unidos en el Conflicto Petrolero (1917-1942)
18. Presidential decree, issued August 1924- See SEP Archives, Colecci6n: Personal (Mexico City: EI Colegio de Mexico, 1972) and Nora Hamilton, The Limits of State Autonomy:
Sobresaliente, Sene: Siqueiros, No. de expediente: 52/29 Post-Revolutionary Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 72.
19· In September 1923, Siqueiros led the formation of the Syndicate of Technical 30. Anthony Lee, Painting Oft the Left: Diego Rivera, Radical Politics and San Francisco's
I Workers,. Painters and Sculptors. In response to Huerta's attempted coup, Siqueiros and Public Murals (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 51
the Syndicate published .f . . .
" . a roam esto reiterating their support for Calles against Huerta's 31. On the Contemporaneos. see my chapter "Nietzsche contra Marx in Mexico," this
I" counter-revoluTIonary" "b . "
ourgeois movement. See the Maniftsto of the Syndicate ofTech.ni- volume. See also Miller, In the Shadow of the State, pp. 50-5I.
cal Workers, Painters and Sculptors, this volume. 32. See Anreus, Chapter 2, and Jolly, Chaptes a. this volume,
f 20. The Plan de Ayala, written by Montano and mandated by Zapata, differed sharply 33. In addition Popular Movetrlents and State FormatLon in Revo~utionary
to Purnell,
ro~ ~e agrarian reform envisioned by the 1917 Constitution; the former demanded land Mexico, see Alan Knight, "Popular eulture and the Revolutionary State in Mexico, I9IO-
restitutIons while the latter d d h I 1940," Hispanic American Historical Review VoL 74, NO·3 (19941: 393-444; Jean Meyer,
. " : ecree t at and belonged not to the individual farmer but to "the
nation, whlCh would in effect I d . h r La Cristiada, 1 vols., (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1974); David C. Bailey, jViva Cristo Rey! The
b . " en It to t e larmers. Despite Rivera's rosy picture land distri-
utlOn proceeded slowly under Ob ' d ' Cristero Rebellion and the Church-State Conflict in Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press,
b . . regan, an at an even slower pace under Calles. Cardenas,
y contrast, distributed more land' d . hi . . [974); and Matthew Butler, Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico's Cristero Rebellion.:
. b' in urmg s preSidentIal term than all previous presiden-
CIes com med. See Alan Knight "Th R' d
M' . ' e 1se an Fall of Cardenismo," in Leslie Bethell, ed., Michoacan, 1927-29 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
ex~coSmce Independence (C b'd .
34. See my essay, "Aesthetic Statism and Peasant Resistance: Calles, the Cristero War
Th' am II ge: Cambndge University Press, 1991), pp. 256-64.
21. . e SyndICate began an all· .h h .
. d lance WIt t e rCM In late 1922' by early 1923 artists and Diego Rivera's Cuernavaca Mural" forthcoming .
OCcuple several PCM leadershi . . "
35. JoAnn Martin, "Contesting Authenticity: Battles over the Representation of History
gove p pOSitions. The PCM at first supported Calles (thus the pro-
rument tone of the Syndicate's M· fi
when hi·d 1923 ant esto) but then began to criticize him harshly in Morelos, Mexico," Ethnohistory VoL 40, NO.3 (Summer, 19931:438-65.
s presl ency SOonproved less than radical. 36. John Womack Jr" Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (New York: Alfred Knopf,
22. Barry Carr, Marxism and Co '. .' I970), p. 372; Arturo Warman, "We Come to Object": The Peasants of More/os and the Nat~ona~
sity of Neb k mmumsm m Twentteth.Century Mexico (Lincoln: Univer·
ras a Press, 1992), pp. 35-37- State, trans. StephenAult (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980).
23· Ramirez, The Ideolog and P I' .
y 0 Lt~csof the Mexican Mural Movement, pp. 395-96; Leon- 37· Martin, "Contesting Authenticity," p. 450.

32 MEXICAN MURALISM
MURALISM AND THE STATE IN POST-REVOLUTION MEXICO 33
 38. Zapata's official image changed dramatically between 1919 and the 1930s. S ee Mar.
51. Knight, "The Rise and Fall of Cardenismo," p. 320.
tin, "Contesting Authenticity."
52. Rivera, see note 2 above.
39· Rivera, translated
" in Victor Sorell, "The Photography as a Sour ce s:lor V·rsua I Artists:
.
53. In May 1940, Siqueiros was involved in an unsuccessful first assassination attempt
Images from the Archive Casascla ill the Works of Mexican and Chican 0 A r tiists, ". In The
, , against Soviet revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who had been given asylum in Mexico by
World
'. of Agustm VICtorCasasola: Mexico, '9°0-1938 (Washington . DC·
... Th e Fon d 0 d el Sol Cardenas.
VIsual .Arts
.
and Media
.
Center, 1984), p. '9, quoted in Jane Creighto TI,
"B·Jerce, Fuentes, and 54. The United States organized Pan-American conferences in Panama (1939) and in
the Critique
.
of Readmg: A Study of Carlos Fuentes's Old Gring "S out h Cerurat
0,
. Rev~ew.
Havana (1940).
Vol. 9, No.2 (Summer, 1992):73. This statement seems to relate to both im f Z '
th t R· . d ages 0 apata 55. The exhibitions ran from 1943 through 1948. Raquel Tibcl.jose Clemente Orozco: una
. a ivera pamte at Cuernavaca. The second portrait is painted on th
d I·
e centra pier, oppo- vida para el arte (Mexico City: Fonda de Cultura Economica. 1984), pp. 200~20I.
site In .ependence hero Jose Maria Morelos, and copies the 1914 Brehme photo ra h f h 56. Mary Coffey, The State of Culture: Institutional Patrimony in Post-Revolution.ary Mexico
revolutionary, gpo t e
(PhD dissertation, University ofJllinoisjUrbana-Champaign, '999), p. 167. See also Karen
.. 40. Martin, in "Contesting Authenticity:' develops this interrogation of the he e Cordero Reiman, "Narraciones corp6reas e incorporaciones en los Murales del Palacio de
lung uses of authenticity in detail. She argues that such d· f .. g mon-
d . 11 ". iscourses 0 authentiritv ara- Bellas Artes.' Curare, No. 24 (July-December 2004).
OXlCa y, enable s.ubverslve practices by inviting consideration of the unauthentic al;d b. 57. Knight, "The Rise and Fall of Carden ism 0," p. 316.
encouragmg practices that expose the arbitrary limits of the authentic" (p) )
58. Coffey, The State of Culture, p. 167. See Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea
41 Rivera's j . t h ,441 .
antry' with the ~:;:l::c:;~ ~h~:e t~t~ategiCa11~com~ines. ~apata's advocacy for the peas- of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War (Chicago: University of

r:: d
his body to reside in that of hi hi h Revolutionary 5 spmt, after his assassination, left Chicago Press, 1983).
e 59. Enrique Krauze, Mexico: Biography of Power:A History of Modern Mexico, 1810-1996,
fancy, silver-studded outfit of t~: :a:;o . ~~trast, the historical Zapata adored the
whites. ' e a ar orse, and never donned the campesino trans. Hank Heifetz (New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, r997), p. 589.
60. Diaz Ordaz and Echeverria are overwhelmingly considered responsible for the 1968
42. My use of this phrase echoes with delib .
supporters: "todos somosZapatistas." , erare irony, that chanted by 19908 EZLN Tlatelolco Massacre, described below, and the 1970S Mexican Dirty War. See The National
Security Archive, George Washington University, report on the Tlatelo1co Massacre, www
43· Rogel Bartra, The Cage of Me/anchol . Ide t't
Character, trans. Christoph H II (N Y'. n ~y and Metamorphosis in the Mexican .gwu.eduj-nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB99/ and on the Dirty War, www.gwu.eduj-nsarchivj
p. r6+ er a ew Brunswick ' NJ·, R utgers U··
nrversity Press, J992), NSAEBB/NSAEBBI80jindex.htm (accessed 4 January 2010).
61. Not only was the Polyforum's patron, industrialist Manuel Suarez, a close confidant
44· Rivera's mural pits Zapata a ain (" h ,. .
(like the Cristeros) fought d h g st .at olicism,despite the fact that the Zapatistas of all three presidents, but he also petitioned the government for monies when the project
un er t e banner of Me . ,
Guadalupe Virgin. Alan K . h Th ' XICO S most venerated Catholic image: the ran over budget. Leonard Folgarait, So Farfrom Heaven: David Alfaro Siqueiros' The March
mg t, e Mexican Rev It' l of Humanity and Mexican Revolutionary Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
ants (Lincoln: University ofN b k . 0 u ~on, vo .1: Porfirians, Liberals and Peas-
e ras a Press, 1990), p. 31I 1987), p. 53. This section is heavily indebted to Folgarait's analysis.
45· Laurence Whitehead "Stat 0 .. .
' e rgaruzatIOn in Latin Am' . 6z. The massacre took place in Tlatelo1co Plaza in Mexico City. Under government
4 6 . See Alan Knight "C d . encan SInce 1930," p. 24·
, ar emsmo' Jugge I orders, military and police trapped the peaceful student rally in the plaza and opened fire.
Studies, 26 (1994)'73-107 and St h· rnaut or ]a opy," Journal of Latin American
trialization of Mexico 8 ep en Haber, Industry and Underdevelopment: The [ndus- The exact number of dead is a matter of contr~versy, but most accounts put it around three
,1 90-1940 (Palo Alto· Stan" d U· . hundred, with many more arrested. The government claimed that its forces were provoked
47· Maximo Pacheco inter' . ... or lllverslty Press, 1989), pp. 172-73.
. ' VIew In Cnstma Pach Lid by student fire; not until 2001 waS it proved that snipers from the Presidential Guard had
pmtores y fotogratos (Me. C' eco, a uz e Mexico: Entrevistas con
'< Xlco Ity· Fondo d C I
48. Benjamin Thomas Smit; "An. Ie . u tura Econ6mica, '988), p. 500. instigated the shooting. See Elena Poniatowska, La noche de Tlatelolca (Mexico City: Edicio-

P m d e Leon,
a '
1930-1940 "]
1,
I'
tic encahsm and R . h·
eSlstance: T e DIOcese of Huajua- nes Era, 1971); Julio Scherer Garcia and Carlos Monsivais, Parte de Guerra, TLatelolco 1968:
, ourna of Latm Am.erica St d' documentos del general Marcelino Garda Barragdl'1-(Mexico: Nuevo Siglo/Aguilar, 1999); and
49· On developmentalism d. n u Ie, 37 (August 2005)'469.
Sarah Babb, Managing M . .an lmp~rt.substitution industrialization in Mexico, see Scherer Garcia and Monsivais, Parte de Guerra 1I: los rostros del 68 (Mexico: Nuevo Signol
p . . eXtCO.Economtsts firom N' l' '. Aguilar, 2002).
nnceton Umversity P attOna ~sm to Neohberal£sm (Princeton'
ress, 2001) p .
50. See Julio M ' P·75-105· 63. Siqueiros, Me llamaban el coronelazo (Mexico City: Biografias Gandesa, 1977), p. 592,
C oreno, Yankee Don't Go HI' quoted in Folgarait, p. 27. Siqueiros, who had been at Echeverria's home when the shooting
ulture, an.d the Shaping 01M d . orne. MeXIcan Nationalism, American Business
Car l' P 0 ern Mex~co 1920 (Ch was reported to the future president, firmly supported Echeverria when the latter claimed
o Ina ress, 2003)' and Pet S . h ' -195° apel HilL University of North
Reg' ". ' er mIt ,"Mexico S' 6 not to have been complicit in planning the massacre. Philip Stein, Siqueiros. His Life and
rme, 1ll Bethell, Mexico Si [d IOce194 : Dynamics of an Authoritarian
nce n ependence. Works (New York: International Publishers, 1994), p. 326. Enrique Krauze, however, sug-

34 . MEXICAN MURALISM
MURALISM AND THE STATE IN POST-REVOLUTION MEXICO 3S
 gests
.
that Siqueiroswas deliberately
..
invited to dinner that evening t it ness Echeverria
0 WI
taking the phone call and actmg surprised
.

closely.
. .
to hear of violence in Tlatel I
Biography of Power, p. 726. Siqueiros, it seems, could be relied upon not t
K
0 co. rauze, Mex~co'
. .
a question too
.

2
., 64- "Ley
. Federal sobre Monumentos y Zonas Arqueol6gicos ' A r tfIS tilcas e Histoncos
" . n

Diana Oft"a' de la F'd,raci6n (6 May r9721. .

65· See Olivier Debroise, ed., La era de La discrepancia: arte y cultu ,., .
LOS TRES GRANDES
68 (Th if' , ra vIsua en MeXICO Ideologies and Styles
19 -1997 e Age 0 Discrepancies: Art and Visual Cultur"" in. M·ex,ca'9 68-1997 (M .
. . 0

City: UNAM, 2006), trans. James DIes. exico

Alejandro Anreus

We believe that while our society is in a transitional stage between the

destruction of an old order and the introduction of a new order, the creators of
beauty must turn their work into clear ideological propaganda for the people,
and make art, which at present is mere individualist masturbation, something
of beauty, education and purpose for everyone.

-MANIFESTO OF THE SYNDICATE OF TECHNICAL WORKERS,

PAl NTERS AND SCULPTORS, EL MACHETE, )UN E 1924

The Mexican Mural Renaissance was the end product of multiple historical forces: social
and aesthetic, political and cultural, communal and individual. Without the Mexican
Revolution and the patronage of President Alvaro Obregon's government, the mural
movement as we know it would not have taken place, or at the very least would have been
raclically different. On December 9, '923, the recently organized artists' union, Syndi-
cate of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors, wrote their manifesto as a response
to the de la Huerta attempted coup against the Obreg6n government. An important
early document of the Latin American avant-garde. the manifesto's principal author
was David Alfaro Siqueiros, and its signers were the painters Xavier Guerrero, Fermin
Revueltas, Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, Ram6n Guadarrama, German Cueto,
and Carlos Merida. The manifesto was published in June '924, in the official paper of
the artists' union, HiMachete. The manifesto's content is straightforward; it begins with
a politically charged dedication:

To the Indian racehumiliated for centuries; to soldiers made executioners by the praetori-
I ans: to workers and peasants beaten by the greed of the rich; to intellectuals uncorrupted
by the bourgeoisie.'

MEXICAN MURAl/SM
37
 political maturation from an Italianate nee-primitivist to an engaged social realist, from

3 a humanizing positivist toward a more radical materialist.! For others, these vagaries
reveal Rivera's strategic self-promotion and capitulation to the ideological pretensions of
his state patrons, an increasingly corrupt political regime that cloaked itselfin the rheto-
ric of popular socialism.' These explanations, however, obscure Rivera's sophisticated
"ALL MEXICO ON A WALL" sense of style as an index of politics and history.
Diego Rivera's Murals at the Ministry of Public Education When analyzing this transitional work from the standpoint of the present. we should
not lose sight of the political and economic vulnerability of the new regime; the social
devastation and lack of civil society left in the wake of the Revolution; and the desire
Mary K. Coffey
of politicians, artists; and intellectuals to raise the profile and increase the esteem and
power of Mexico in a racist and economically imperialist international order. In retro-
There are two families of artists: those who define themselves by their negations spect, there is a clear shift from 1923 to 1928, from Obregon's charismatic caudillismo
and exclusions and those who aspire to integrate different manners and styles in to Calles' corporate party system, from Vasconcelos' laissez-faire approach to content
their work. Diego belongs to the second .... in the strict domain of painting, he to an emerging social-realist orthodoxy that privileged Rivera and his followers. The
was not a revolutionary or an innovator; he was an assimilator and an adapter. Like visual and ideological power of Rivera's SEP cycle would play an important role in this
p ., hi ,
oussm 5, IS ec ectictsm was a search for a complete art that would include many
tendencies,
transformation.
This essay analyzes the artist's aesthetic program across the cycle as a whole. Fol-
-OCTAVIO PAZl
lowing Paz's insight, it argues that the different "manners" and "styles" evident in the
SEP murals reveal an intentional integration of "multiple tendencies" in the service of
a "complete art" that could encompass the complexity of Mexico's history, geography,
and people or, as Bertram Wolfe would claim, put "all Mexico on a wa11."4In the differ-
ent visual strategies Rivera employs, we can appreciate both the scope and logic of this
i . frescoes by Diego
To begin , we place twoa icornc . Rivera side by side. The Liberation of the project. As he painted at the SEP, certainly he matured as a fresco artist and his personal
2
Peon (19 3) (figure ).1) represents Rivera the popular-nationalist, the Homer of Mexico's style evolved. But his stylistic changes were also calibrated to appeal to the administra-
VIOlent
. revolution and the ad s
y sey 0fh er In diIan and peasant populations. The Distribu- tors and politicians in the post-Revolutionary state and thereby to win a permanent
tion of Arms
. (1928)
. . (figur e ).2 ) revea I' s Rivera the Marxist propagandist agitating for the place for mural art in its cultural programs. Likewise, by combining different formal
worldwide historical prol tari I . languages. he strove to communicate a vision of the nation that was able to reflect its
th M e anan revc ution to come. The former opens onto a vista of
e esa Central In the f d£ . highly stratified social classes. ,
ki d . oregroun OUI revolutionary soldiers release a degraded dark-
s inne peon, while a haciend lders i . ' The great accomplishment of Rivera's SEP cycle was his successful visualization of
I d a smo ers ill the distance, The latter counters the natu-
ra Ism an agrarian theme of this' .h the ideals put forth by the Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors in its
d .. view WIt a scene of urban unrest relayed through a
ense ccmposinon of overla in f . 1923 Manifesto: to create an ideologically focused art, rooted in "indigenous traditions,"
h 1 PP g orms. A ccmmumst worker rallies his peers to join
a p a anx of campesinos ridin int that reflected the struggles of peasant, worker, and soldier in Mexico's "transition from
g 0 town. Along the proscenium a young Frida Kahlo
passes out weapons, Tina Modotti di .. an old order to a new one.'? In so doing, Rivera also offered the political regime the
joins the r k d file i . asperses ammunition, and David Alfaro Siqueiros
an an le In workIng-class solidarity. appearance of being a "revolutionary" state responsive to the demands of a mobilized
Both panels derive from the . peasantry as well as the growing power of a small but vocal confederation of communist
Iic Ed ti vast cycle that RIvera executed at the Ministry of Pub·
uca IOn (SEPI between I 2 d . and socialist labor organizations. In the cycle, Rivera depicts a cross-class alliance uni-
emphasis t t'f' 9 3 an 1928. The differences in style and ideological
es 1 y to RIvera'sdevelo fied by its common origins in an indigenized popular culture. Thus his SEP frescoes
on the co '. pment as a mural artist over the five years he worked
mnnssron During that . dh offered a vision of national unity at a moment when the state was at war with the Cris-
narrative app h . peno e mastered the fresco technique, elaborated a
roac to archItectural teras and when most elites viewed Mexico's fractured popular classes as, at best, a drag
guage that h b space, and developed an often-emulated visual Ian·
as ecome for many syno . on national development-and, at worst, a guerrilla force ever ready to renew armed
several schola th h . nymous with the Mexican mural renaissance. For
rs, e c anges evident i thi . . . . conflict.
In IS iuxtaposition SIgnal the artist's formal and

56 "ALL MEXICO ON A WALL" 57

 I
I'

FIGURE 3.1
FIGURE 3.2
Diego Rivera. The Liberation afthe Peon, fresco, first floor, south wall,
Diego Rivera. The Distributio/1 of Arms, fresco, third floor, south wall, Court of Fiestas. Ministry of
Court of Labor,Ministry of Public Education, Mexico City (1923).
Public Education, Mexico City (1928). © 20IO Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums
© 2010 Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera Frida Kahle Museums Trust
Mexico, D.F.JArtists Rights Society (ARS). Photograph: Bob Scha~ijk
Trust, Mexico, D.E/Artists Rights Society
, (ARS). Photograph: Bob Schalkwijk

. To be sure, Rivera's SEP cycle offers his own highly ideological take on the Revolu- for whom he claimed to paint would have had virtually no access to his frescoes, and
non, agrarian reform , and SOCIa. I'1St po I'ltICS.
. The artist acknowledged as much when the record of public reception suggests that his actual audience was made up of bureau-
he declared
. . in his 1960 t b' h h
au 0 iograp y t at In . the SEP murals he sought to "reflect the crats and members of the bourgeoisie. Bureaucrats viewed his art as potentially useful
social life
. of Mexico as I saw 1't ,an d t h rough my vision of the truth to show the masses propaganda; the bourgeoisie saw it as incoherent and incendiary. Only a small circle
the outline
"
of the future .tv
"6 Wh
what
f0 II'ows 1S a close reading
. of Rivera's "vision of the ofleftist intellectuals seems to have understood the stylistic gambit Rivera used while
truth
. that pays
. partieul ttenti .
ar a ention to hIS stylistically encoded storytelling. This read- he was working at the SEP. When he completed the cycle, however, the political utility
of his integration of Giotto's Christian humanism, modernist experimentation with
"mg takes
I' " a discursive approach th a t d oes not presume that the mural corresponds with
space and form, and agitprop didactics became evident and Rivera became a de-facto
hrea rty.h Rather, I treat mural a r t as a pro ducti
uctrve material practice that endeavored to
s ape t e real toward specific ideological ends? "state artist."

. AlthoughI Rivera pursued,c "e Iectrcism

" ". In the name of Mexico's popular classes, A paradox of Rivera's accomplishment is that his "vision of the truth" succeeded so
h is mura spoke more di tl h well that it continues to determine public memory of the events and peoples depicted
bli Id irec y to t e urban elite. Rivera's working- and middle·class
pu 1C wou not have perceived or un d erstood his aesthetic synthesis. The peasants in it. As Francisco Reyes Palma notes, with sanguine admiration, mural art responded

58 MEXICAN MURALISM "ALL MEXICO ON A WALL" 59

 to the chaos of the Revolution by effecting a "radical change at the core of the social and a scene depicting fraternity between worker and peasant. The three floors, taken

imaginary" and a "founding order, even at the expense of historical accuracy.:" What together, suggest a hierarchy that replicates the one in Creation. At the National Prepara-
was that "founding order"? How did Rivera's formal and conceptual choices respond tory School, Rivera allegorized spiritual evolution through education in a single image:

to and negotiate the demands of his patrons, the political and social chaos of post- a nude man and woman seated along the mural's base gaze up toward idealized figures

Revolutionary Mexico, his own artistic ambition, and his desire (and that of his peers) who represent theological and cardinal virtues linking the humans to the symbols of
to promote the cause of mural art as a tool for social engagement and change? divine knowledge represented at the top of the composition.

In 1923, Jose Vasconcelos contracted a team of artists to decorate the walls of the In the hierarchy Rivera set up at the SEP, images of peasant and working-class labor,
new SEP headquarters. The building's three stories enclose two large interior patios depicted on the first floor, establish the foundation of the new social order. This floor
with arched passageways that afford nearly '7,000 square feet of wall surface.' Initially, supports a second, decorated with emblems of professional work, implying that intel-
in the collective spirit of the recently drafted Syndicate Manifesto, Rivera worked with lectuallabor is undergirded by the physical labor of the popular classes. The third-floor
a team that included fellow artists Xavier Guerrero, Jean Charlot, Amado de la Cueva, images emphasize political ideals. Painted on the top floor and at the apex of a hierarchy

and the mason Luis Escobar. Within five months, however, Rivera demoted his peers oflabor, these ideals espouse the virtues of work, social equality, and secularized Chris-

and claimed tbe project for himself.I" With the exception of four frescoes on the first tian confraternity. As one moves up the floors, Rivera's imagery argues that the social

floor and the state emblems on the second, the 124 panels of the cycle were conceived, ideals guiding the formation of a new more equitable society originate in the humble

designed, and painted by Rivera. work of everyday people rather than in the endeavors of the educated alone.
In the architecturally challenging corridors Rivera painted an epic narrative that Rivera divided the three sides of the first-floor courtyard into regions: the tropical

unfolds for visitors as they move through the space. On these walls Rivera presents South (north wall), central plateau (south wall), and mineral rich North (east wall).
Mexico's recent revolution as prologue to a proletarian one to come. He visualizes He mixes images of traditional hand labor and industrialized work. In one scene, a

this "progressive" tale in an iconography of Mexican geography and popular tradition campesino holds sugarcane while conversing with Tehuanas-women from the Isth-

that moves from the rural countryside to the city, from exploitation to liberation, from mus of Tehuantepec renowned for their beauty and traditional style of dress-in the

Zapatismo to the death of the capitalist system. Style, too, mobilizes the narrative, as lush landscape of the Isthmus ofTehuantepec. In another, the factory workers process
Rivera shifts from pictorial naturalism to social realism, informed by the lessons of the cane into sugar. Workers stretch in unison to stir vats of sugar or bend to pour the

Cubism. These deliberate stylistic shifts offer the key to interpreting Rivera's political liquid into molds. The theme of the first-floor murals is the virtue of hard work. The
message across the cycle. exploitation and liberation of the worker are likewise depicted, however. With these

The artist signaled his encyclopedic intentions from the outset. At the SEP's inaugu- scenes the political ideology of the cyde comes into focus.
ration in I923, Vasconcelos described the projected cycle as "Concerning the decoration In a sequence of powerful images, peasants enter and exit claustrophobic mines

of the corridor walls, our great artist, Diego Rivera ... plans a frieze ascending along while their employers fleece them. Campesinos lug bags of grain that they have har-
the staircase. Its subject matter starts with the sea level, and its tropical vegetation melts vested to be weighed as the do ineering hacendado' and his accountant watch. Here,

into the landscape of our high plateau and culminates with the volcanoes.v" Over the Rivera demonstrates what he had learned from the Renaissance frescoes in southern

next five years Rivera moved away from the humanist allegory seen in his first mural Italy and Giotto's Arena Chapel cycle (I305-6). In both composition and style, Rivera's
commission (Creation, r923, at the National Preparatory School) and developed a more Entry into the Mines (I923) recalls Giotto's Christ on the Road to Calvary; Leaving the
complex dialectical approach to historical narrative and the use of space. This develop· Mines (r923) invokes his Crucifixion; and The Liberation of the Peon (figure p) evokes
ment was nascent in the project Vasconcelos describes, and the stairwell images, with Ciotto's Lamentation. But Rivera secularizes Giatto's subject matter to craft peasants as
their evolutionary struct ure, re lav i microcosm
ay In . the themes of the larger cycle. Christ-like martyrs, attempting, like Giotto, to use a vernacular style to communicate
with a Catholic public. At the Arena Chapel, the Church liberates humanity; in Rivera's
cycle, the Revolution brings salvation.
THE COURT OF LABOR
By emphasizing the brutalities perpetrated against miners and agrarian workers,
The murals in the first cour ty ar d depict
. peasant and artisanal
. labor in rich earth tones Rivera refers obliquely to the uprising at the Cananea Copper Mines (1906) that helped
on
.
the first floor .
The secan
d fl . d .
oar IS ecorated WIth esoteric symbols related to profes- to mobilize Pancho Villa's Northern Division and the struggle for agrarian reform in

nsai"11e. Th e thorrd floor mcludes

sional work, painted in gri . .
portraits of martyrs, allegoneS, central Mexico led by Emiliano Zapata. The followers of Villa and Zapata, unlike Venus-

60 MEXICAN MURALISM "All MEXICO ON A WAll" 61

 I
tiano Carranza's Constitutionalist army, were from the peasant and working classes.
They fought against the vestiges of colonial feudalism and the abusive practices of for-
eign-owned industries operating along the nation's northern border. Rivera obscures
the factionalism 'of the Revolution, however, sidelining Villa as well as the Constitution,
alist cause in favorofZapatismo and its call for "land and liberty." In Zapata's agitation
for communal land reapportionment, Rivera found an equivalent for the socialist redis-
tribution of wealth. Likewise, as Mari Carmen Ramirez argues, Rivera, in privileging
Zapatismo, reflected the desire of the "Sonoran Dynasty" (the generals who dominated
the post-Revolutionary state) to exploit Zapata's "hero cult" to gain the support of a
recalcitrant peasantry that the fledgling government desperately needed.F
In the Court of Labor,the people are depicted as one with the land. The most ideal-
ized landscapes are located in the South, where the mural locates Mexico's racial and
cultural authenticity in the legendary beauty of the Tehuana. Depicted as emblems of
natural bounty, Rivera's Tehuanas represent the national body-s-a feminized, indig-
enous body-that would give birth, both literally and symbolically, to a new mestizo
nation-one that is racially and culturally mixed. In this way, he included women in
the new society as the reproducers of race and culture. As Adriana Zavala demonstrates,
however, the tendency of post-Revolutionary artists to feminize IndiaJ culture only re-
inscribed a Creole patriarchal authority that endorsed mestizaje (the blending of Spanish
and Indian "blood" and culture) on its own terms."
Images of the Tehuana abound in post-Revolutionary art. Artists represented the
culture ofTehuantepec as matriarchal and as an autochthonous form of socialism. The
Tehuana's distinctive costume, understood as a pre-modern style of dress, was praised
for its purported authenticity and endurance. Miguel Covarrubias, in his book Mexico
South, makes the investment of intellectuals in the Tehuana costume clear: "Economic
differences [among the Tehuanas] do not mean much," but "there is an aristocracy of
citified girls who bob their hair and wear shoes, stockings, and tight fitting modern
dresses, unbecoming in comparison with the stately, elegant, and colorful native cos-
tume"!'
. In th e diff
1 erence between the Isthmus women in "colorful native costume"
and their "citified" sisters who d resse d m
i thee latest
atest iinternational
. .
fashions
Covarrubias
~ou~d a metaphor for the nation's struggle for political autonomy and cultural authentic-
tty In the onslaught of foreign influence and capital.
'" works like Cobarrubias', the Tehuana was an emblem of "Mexico South"; this
native costume was linked th mug h a chaiam 0 f culture and resistance to the radical
socialism of the Yu t d b I . Mexican flapper would irk Covarrubias,
. "15 ' ca an an su a tern MeXICo-what would later be dubbed "deep
MexICO. The Tehuana , in R'ivera 'SEP
s mura Is, authenticates
. and anchors his vision
of popul.ar and proletarian revolution in "deep" Mexico. Thus, his cycle belongs to the
broader Intellectual pro' tt h '
'. Jec a use t e Tehuana s supposed beauty and strength to resus-
crtate Indian culture' tl f .
m ie eyes 0 urban elites. With the "comely" Tehuana offsetting
the specter of armed peasants i hi l'
. ,. . n IS mura s, Rivera presented a reassuring image of
MexICOs mdigenous peoples.
MEXICAN MURALISM
COURT OF FI ESTAS
Inthe second courtyard, Rivera's linking of popular or "deep" Mexico, the agrarian revo-
lution, and contemporary socialism is more explicit. In the Court of Fiestas, he equated
three social sectors-the rural peasantry, the urban working class, and an amorphously
defined popular class-that did not necessarily seek common cause. As labor in the
I
murals gives way to fiestas, a brighter palette replaces earth tones. In the Court of Fies- I·
!
tas,the open vistas and Ciotto-inspired compositions ofthe Court of Labor disappear as
Rivera's frescoes become denser and more clearly modernist. Like the first courtyard,
the second has images dispersed across three of the four sides of the building on all
three floors. On the first floor, Rivera depicts scenes of popular rituals along with three
largesequences painted between '923 and '924: Distribution of the Land (plate 2) (south
wall), May Day (figure 3.3) (west wall), and The Market/Tianguis (figure 3-4) (north wall).
On the second floor, Jean Charlot, Xavier Guerrero, and Amado de la Cueva painted ren-
derings in grisaille of state emblems. On the third floor, Rivera illustrates revolutionary
and proletarian corridos (songs).
As with the Court of Labors, the progression from first to third floor represents a
hierarchy. In the Court of Fiestas, Rivera argues that the political organization and
revolution originate in the spirit of resistance that can be discerned in Mexico's popular
celebrations. This is why the rituals associated with the Day of the Dead are given such
prominence. Like the Tehuana, the Day of the Dead festival is unique to Mexico. Its
features, such as graveside altars, macabre sugar skulls, and the spirit of "laughing at
death" reveal a complex syncretism that blends Mesoamerican and Spanish Catholic
ritual.
On the first floor, Rivera devotes many panels to the rituals associated with the Day
of the Dead, from the explosion of papier-mache Judas figures to graveside offerings at
family plots to the festive boating parties at J,Cochimilco.Interspersed among these pan-
elsare depictions ofzraditional dances such as the Yaqui Deer Dance and the Zandunga.
Although Rivera focuses on distinct culture groups and the popular classes in the pan-
.
els dedicated to traditional celebrations, he also emphasizes social unity regardless of
status. The cultural rituals that bond Mexicans, he suggests, transcend ethnic and class
differences. For example, in Santa Anita ('923-24) a "citified girl" with bobbed blond
hair, "tight fitting modern dress:' and heavy makeup stands among more "elegant" and
"stately" Indian beauties to purchase poppies for the Festival of Flowers. While this
Rivera presents her as a legitimate Mexican,
even if artificiality makes her less comely than the women 'at her side. Rivera peoples
his crowd scenes with dandies. bureaucrats, charros (Mexican cowboys), prostitutes, and
workers purchasing fruit waters, tamales, and sugar skulls from vendors in Mexico's
colorful urban markets.
These frescoes locate us in the street and among the "people." In them Rivera brings
the boisterous world outside Vasconcelos' SEP indoors and affirms it as a source of social
"ALL MEXICO ON A WALL" 63
 progress and historical change. In the three large sequences that anchor the walls of
the first-floor cycle,he shows alliances across classes. With Distribution of the Land, May
Day, and The Market/Tianguis, Rivera asserts parity between the organic social democ-
racy of everyday co-mingling in the street with more formal mechanisms of social
equality: Zapata's agrarian reform and the Communist Party. As Ramirez notes, these
three large sequences mark a temporal shift in Rivera's cycle from an allegorical past
to the historical present and a prophetic future. Likewise, they signal an aesthetic shift
from "the synthetic, symbolic language of the Court of Labor to a form of illustration
based on narrative" that would come to the fore in his execution of the third-fioor cor-
ridos.16 Thus, in these three sequences, style becomes important to Rivera's attempts to
overcome ideological differences between Zapata's agrarianism and the state-endorsed
Communist Party. His visual strategies link those two elements to the popular market
as expressions of a "deep" Mexico still discernible in the vibrant folkways of the people.
Distribution of the Land (1923-24) (see plate 2) stretches across three panels linked
by Rivera's incorporation of the doorframes into the illusionism of the depicted space.
A crowd of white-clad peasants gathers in the open air to witness the partial restitution
oftheir communal lands, or ejidos. In the central panel, Rivera shows pueblo elders
lodging their land claims. Two bureaucrats examine their request as another holds a
map oflocal estates and a third gestures toward the landscape beyond the crowd. By
dedicating a large amount of wall space to this topic, Rivera situates agrarian reform,
and thus Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution, as the major accomplishment of the Mexi-
can Revolution. And by including a posthumous portrait of Zapata, Rivera implies that FIGURE J.J
Diego Rivera. May Day, fresco, first floor, west wall, Court of Fiestas, Ministry of Public Education,
his proposal, articulated in the Plan de Ayala (November 25, '9II), was actualized by the
Mexico City (1923-24). © 2010 Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera Frida Kahle Museums Trust. Mexico,
post-Revolutionary Constitution. In this instance, Rivera takes liberty with the facts and D.F.,IArtists Rights Society (ARS). Photograph: Bob Schalkwijk
deliberately obscures the betrayal of Zapata, crafting the Revolution as an essentially
socialist struggle. Distribution of the Land thus constitutes the peasant equivalent of May
Day, where the workers' rights guaranteed by Article 123 establish the precondition of Rather than depict an organized gathering of workers, in The MarketjTianguis (1923-
proletarian organization that in turn will bring the revolution to its logical conclusion. 241 (figure 3-4) Rivera chronicles a cross-section of Mexicans going about their business
May Day (1923-24) (figure 3.3) also spans three panels. Denim-clad workers gather in the market. "Tianguis" (meaning "market") derives from the Nahuatl language and
before a congested industrial corridor on the left. Tothe right, a peasant-filled landscape refers to the coveredoutdoor markets that have been a staple of Mexican life since before
reiterates the scene of gathered peasants in Distribution of the Land. In the central image, the Conquest. Like the Tehuana costume, the market is a surviving indigenous folkway
proletarian and peasant organizations unite to celebrate the workers' holiday. Over the and therefore represents the ongoing presence of "deep" Mexico in the nation's modern
doorframe two small boys, clad in the costumes of urban and rural labor, hold a red capital. In these scenes, Rivera's mastery of cubist devices comes to the fore. Rivera
banner that proclaims: "Truecivilization will be harmony between men and the earth stacks repeated flat forms to give a sense of shallow space. For example, he duplicates
and among men". The cd' row scenes are agitate d : 1eaders raise
'. their fists and deliver
. wide round sombreros throughout the middle of the composition. While Rivera sug-
speeches while participants wave red flags emblazoned with communist and Zapatista gests a horizon line along the top of the image, the perspective does not recede logically
slogans. This sequence equates the struggle for agrarian reform in Mexico (a metaphor toward a single vanishing point in deep space. Rather, he presents the viewer with
for .the Revolution) with the ba ttl e lor
C
wor kers' .
ers nghts .
everywhere (the cause of the mter- simultaneous points of view-much as Paul Cezanne does in his many still-life paint-
national
. . communist organi ti
mza IOn e th Thi d .
rr International]. Whereas Rivera uses a flat, ings Along the base of the wall, standing figures face us directly. Instead of depicting
simplified natur a 1"Ism III
. D'tStn'b uuow
. of the Land, here he pays homage to the agitprop the stretched canvas shades that cover vending kiosks as thin white lines in profile,
style of socialist propaga nay
db' '. signage and party slogans.
mcorporatmg which would correspond with the spatial logic of the figures, Rivera portrays them as

MEXICAN MURALISM "ALL MEXICO ON A WALL" 65

 , ifices historical accuracy and rationalizes Mexico's violent past by situating
RIverasacn
the Revolution in a progressive narrative in which he interprets popular values that,
for him, prefigure a proletarian revolution yet to come. In the process he Mexican-
, working -class politics and lifts the demand for agrarian reform to international
izes
, if nee as part of the world-historical struggle against capitalism, All the while he
Slgnl ca "
that th ese demands issue from the deep values of the Mexican people, not from
argues
a foreign ideology,
In the third-Boor murals, Rivera reinforces this connection between the agrarian
struggle and a still-to-come proletarian revolution. Rivera illustrates Mexican revolu-
jj j tionary and international proletarian corridos in a visual loop that implies continuity
n:; ~ between one political struggle and the other. The third-floor cycle begins with The Dis-
~
2 .. trib"tion of Arms (1928) (figure 3,2) and reiterates the solidarity between peasant and
proletarian depicted in May Day. This image, however, is set in a prophetic future,
signaled in the lyrics on the red ribbon that frames the vignette: "And so the prole-
tarian revolution will be ... " Subsequent scenes depict the suffering and resilience of
an armed population fighting for their rights, There are views from the trenches and
viewsthat elaborate a post-combat social order in which the poor are fed, the ignorant
educated, and the old social hierarchy overturned, Rifle-bearing peasants and hammer-
and-sickle wielding workers harass and humiliate the elite.
Rivera uses an illusionistic archway to frame each scene of the third-Boor suite and
FIGURE 3.4 toestablish a shallow sense of space, The painted arches conjure the trompe l'oeil tech-
Diego Rivera. The Market/Tianguis, fresco, first floor, north wall, Court of Fiestas, Ministry of Public niques or"cubist paintings as well as Giotto's rendering of the imitation marble veneer
Education, Mexico City ([923-24). © 2010 Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums atthe Arena Chapel. The faux architecture also supports the ribbon of text that directs
Trust, Mexico, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS). Photograph: Bob Schalkwijk
viewersfrom one panel to the next as they follow the narrative around the corridor. Mid-
wavthrough the cycle, the proletarian song ends and a revolutionary carrido resumes.
Thelyrics of this song issue from the mouth of a peasant guitarist. Here, in one of many
trapezoids seen from abovein a bird's eye view that tilts up the composition, as Cezanne instances where Rivera quote£"Mesoamerican imagery, he renders the song-ribbon in
had tilted the tabletops in his canvases. the guise of a Maya speech glyph, Through these references to both Western and non-
Rivera makes other references to the cubist analysis of pictorial space-for example, Western visual techniques, Rivera associates his "social realism" with both European
by slyly invoking Picasso's illusionistic use of chair-caning and wood comb in the cross- and ancient indigenous art.
hatched wooden crates he distributes throughout the composition. The rounded gourds The GDrrido panels bring together some of the styles Rivera employed in the three
painted at the right in the central panel invoke the sphere; pineapples and steel funnels large sequences on the first floor: cubist devices, a simplified naturalism, and agitprop
recall the cone; and the many boxes index the cube. This painted scene is no simplistic realism. This integration of competing formulations of mass culture and politics is
"window onto the world," but a witty demonstration of Rivera's facility with avant-garde precisely the "outline of the future" that Rivera sought to conjure with his "vision of
techniques. The formal complexity of these scenes of social organization also gives the truth." For in these future-oriented vignettes, the social antagonisms generated
them a political inflection. Whereas the images of rural and industrial labor in the first by colonialism and years of armed conflict are slowly overcome as socialism unites
court humanize and sanctify Mexico's popular classes, the sophisticated social realism l erent ethnic groups and classes into a nation capable 0 f par ticrpa
diff icinatimg 1in an interna-
of images in the second court argues for an equally sophisticated political society. tional industrial order vouchsafed by a world-historical proletarian revolution in which
In these three large sequences, Rivera asserts that socialism continues the Mexican Mexico,by implication, takes the lead.
~evolution, itself an organic expression of the egalitarian values of "deep" Mexico and In Some of Rivera's most humorous, dense, and visually economical images he jux-
Its popular culture. This is the ideological argument of the mural cycle as a whole. taposes scenes of capitalist society with prophetic scenes of Mexican socialism. For

66 MEXICAN MURALISM
"ALL MEXICO ON A WALL" 67
example, in Wall Street Banquet (1926) a scene of American monopolists (J. P. Mar-
kefeller, and Henry Ford) makes witty references to the fable of King
l h D Roc
gan,on.
Midas' golden touch." The safe, out of which gilded tickertape streams, resembles a
mechanical ass with light bulbs for eyes and megaphones for ears. Financiers dine on
champagne and stock receipts in the arid atmosphere of a bank vault. Rivera signals ,I
the social decay of US capitalism by distorting the physiognomy of these financiers and
their consorts. Rivera contrasts their greed with images of socialist society.
In Our Daily Bread (I928) (figure 3.5), a dark-skinned communist worker presides
over a humble meal of bread and fruit. The figures seated at the table represent the
young and old, light and dark, working, popular, and middle classes, demonstrating the I
social unity of the new political order. Rivera situates their frugal repast in a productive
landscape of factories and grain silos. A Tehuana bearing a woven basket of indigenous
fruits stands behind the worker, marking the location as Mexican. Behind her, peasants,
laborers, and soldiers gather as participants and guardians in the new social order.
OUI"Daily Bread is hieratically ordered in a shallow pictorial space that recedes as
forms overlap along a vertical axis. The Tehuana's pose echoes the industrial archi-
tecture behind her. In this way Rivera recalls the frescoes from the first floor's Court
of Labor and suggests that industrial modernity will be grounded in the "authentic"
values and culture of "deep" Mexico, which she represents. In this world, social differ-
ences cease to matter because an egalitarian political order and a socially just economic
system enable a hybrid society. Unlike Vasconcelos' spiritually directed racial eugenics,
Rivera's vision of mestizaje is social, with culture as its medium. Just as the tianguis
served as a model for the political organization of the Communist Party, the Tehuana is
equated visually with industry, and her presence insists that "deep" Mexico will not be
sacrificed to technological modernity. Like the Tehuana's costume, indigenous culture
will persevere.
Bertram Wolfe, Rivera'sbiographer, used Rivera's SEP frescoes to illustrate Portrait of
Mexico (1937),his socialist account of the country's post-Revolutionary transformation,
Writer and artist worked closely together on this book, and Wolfe's description makes
explicit the ideological argument encoded in Rivera's cycle. He writes, "Mexico is a
land in transition: it is in the process of changing from pre-capitalist to capitalist, from
handicraft to machinofacture, from local to national-international economy-from a
conglomerate of folks and regions into a nation.t" Modernization, he concludes:

would involve aiding [Indians] to construct a written language, to preserve. , . what is

worthwhile in their traditions and literature and dances and songs and decorative arts,
and to lead to their voluntary incorporation into afree union of peoples on the basis of a com-
mon national, and ultimately international, economy, in which their immediate part in
FIGURE 3.5
the national and world division of labor would flowfrom the climatic-telluric nature of
Diego Rivera. Our Daily Bread, fresco, third floor, west wall, Court of Fiestas,
their regions, the local fauna and flora, their special temperaments and aptitudes, and
Ministry of Public Education, Mexico City (1928). © 2010 Banco de Mexico
the application of the methods of modern science to the development of the possibilities Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D,E/Artists Rights Soci-
latent in each of these factors [emphasis addedj.!"
ety (ARS). Photograph: Bob Schalkwijk

68 MEXICAN MURALISM
 Wolfe's un-self-conscious paternalism toward Mexico's indigenous populations ancy in The Hacienda (plantation). Peasants labor while their lazy boss naps; his pos-
as well as his assumptions about the "natural" relationship among race, culture, and ture echoes the languid figures in Tehuantepec Landscape, emphasizing the original
region typify the fundamentally assimilationist and modernizing rhetoric of the post- inhabitants' dispossession and marking the beginnings of capitalism. Whereas once
Revolutionary discourse on the "Indian problem." And Rivera's SEP murals represent people coexisted in harmony on communal lands, now they are indentured workers in
one of the most powerful and cogent articulations of this period discourse." Particularly a system of private ownership. The sugar hacienda depicted in this scene suggests its
significant in Wolfe's statement is the assertion that preserving "what is worthwhile" in location in the agricultural zone that encompasses the state of Morelos, the birthplace
Mexico's indigenous traditions and folk cultures will enable the country's smooth and of Zapatismo. Just as he had sanctified peasants in the Court of Labor by referring to
inevitable transformation into a modern, industrialized nation-state. The ongoing (but Giotto's figures at the Arena Chapel, Rivera uses an Italianate naturalism in this part
highly circumscribed) presence of indigenized culture, he implies, will guarantee that of the stairwell to humanize the plight of peasants subjected to the abuses of a corrupt
Mexico stays "Mexican" despite the political-economic changes on the horizon. While owner class. But in a dark grove, a campesino patiently sharpens a machete, auguring
this argument is implicit throughout the cycle, in the stairwell sequence it becomes peasant revolt.
explicit. In these murals Rivera weaves the "climatic-telluric nature" of Mexico's regions In The Burial, Rivera renders the interment of a slain peon at dusk as figures gather
and people into a narrative of socio-political development. And his use of style to encode around an open grave. The scene, located in the arid high plateau, recalls Gustave Cour-
ideology is paramount in that accomplishment. bet's Burial at Omans (1849) as well as Giotto's Lamentation. As a secular entombment,
the fresco elevates the death of revolutionaries to martyrdom and prepares viewers for
the social rebirth depicted in the scenes that follow.
THE STAI RWELL CYCLE
The final sequence begins with The Mechanization of the Countryside (figure 3.6).
The stairwell cycle unwinds from the first to the third floors. Visitors ascending the Rivera reintroduces the golden hues from the Court of Labor in a utopian image of
stairs replicate the movement upward in the mural from sea level through tropical veg- Mexico'sindustrialization. At the lower left, a priest, a federal soldier, and a capitalist are
etation and then the high plateau, and finally the volcanoes. 21 These landscapes, in turn. struck down by an allegorical figure of the proletariat wielding a red thunderbolt. At the

narrate the history of the country from a mythical past through episodes of exploitation upper right, a worker, a peasant, and a revolutionary soldier stand in unity. The image
and revolution to the building of a modern and egalitarian society. Thus the ascent is anchored by a kneeling indigenous woman, who holds an ear of corn in each hand.
is a journey of social and political evolution. Although described as early as r923, the She is modeled on statues of the Aztec fertility goddess Xilonen. Behind her we see a
stairwell was painted in I928. dam, airplanes, a railroad, and electrical wires. Here, as in panels such as Our Daily
On the first floor Riveradepicts the coastal waters, with nymphs, a scuba diver, and Bread, Rivera argues that the countryside will be mechanized according to the values
a tugboat. The watery milieu, anthropomorphized clouds, and seminude women call and cultural legacies of "deep" Mexico.
to mind Botticelli's Birth of Venus (ca. r482), thereby reinforcing viewers' sense of wit- The Teacher details the technologically advanced and egalitarian future that socialist

nessing an ancient and divine origin. As we move up the stairs, Tehuantepec Landscape organization promises. A young woman educates students before a functionalist build-
comes into view. Nubile beauties cavort and lie languidly amidst flowering trees and ing under construction. At left, a worker, a soldier, and a peasant have traded their arms
palapas (thatched roof huts). The iconography and style recalls such post-impressionis' for the surveyor's tape and the engineer's-compass. To the right, researchers proffer
bathing scenes as Henri Matisse's Fauvist works or Paul Gauguin's South Pacific idylls. medicine to a mother and her child. While the teacher brings Vasconcelos' educational
Like the remote worlds those artists conjured, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec represents a mission to the rural countryside, men consult blueprints and erect a grade school, a
pre-lapsarian world before Conquest. Next, the visitor confronts Xochipili, the Aztec god reference to one of the SEP's premier architectural projects.
of flowers and spring shown seated in ecstasy within a jungle and surrounded by mys- The cycle culminates with Rivera's self-portrait as an architect gazing at blueprints
terious figures . The see ne evok es Th e Dream (I91O)by the Douanier Rousseau and t h e while a mason and an assistant prepare the wall for fresco. Rivera, by representing the
figures recall both R"ivera s use 0 f a II egory In
. Creatton
, and the symbolist penchant t:Lor three components of mural labor-design, masonry, and painting-in this final image,
Gnosticism.22 They als o spea k to RIvera
. ,s attempts to represent a utopian pre_Conquest endorses the collaborative working-class values of the Syndicate's Manifesto-r-an ironic
world that has been Iost b u t can nonetheless be re-created through progressive SOCIa ' j gesture, given Rivera's monopoly of this commission. And by invoking the Renaissance
change. Shown partici mg iill a sacred ntual,
icrpa tinc . these figures hold the esoteric secrets 0 f concept of the true artist as one equally adept at painting, architecture, and sculpture,
Mexico's indigenous past. Rivera claims to be a modern Michelangelo. Like the Italian artists who enabled the
Farther up the stairs th d' '. rebirth of humanism, Rivera and his cohort are pictured as midwives to the renascent
, e para rse of mdrgenous Mexico is lost to feudal land ten-

70 MEXICAN MURAllSM
"ALL MEXICO ON A WALL"
 During his years at the SEP Rivera aligned himself with the Communist Party and with
a dialectical materialist view of history and social change. He worked to invent a visual
language that could correspond with the different social groups whose unification could
leadto a socialist revolution in Mexico-a mostly illiterate country with a colonial legacy,
deep racial inequality, and a working "class" that was more peasant than proletarian. By
Incorporating "multiple tendencies" and slyly nodding to the utopian politics of avant-
garde experimentation, he tried to offer the public a "complete art," that constructed "all
Mexico" according to his unique insight as a utopian visionary. The SEP murals remain
crucial to analyses of Rivera's art, and of Mexican muralism more broadly, because their
aesthetic, political, and ethical eclecticism demonstrate the complexities and contradic-
tions of putting "all Mexico on a wall,"

NOTES

1. Octavio Paz, "Re/Visions: Mural Painting," Essays on Mexican Art, trans. Helen Lane
(NewYork: Harcourt Brace and Company, r987), p, 124,
2. Jean Charlot, The Mexican Mural Renaissance 1920-1925 (New York: Hacker Art
Hooks, r9791, pp, 269-79: and Bertram Wolfe, The Fabulou, Life of Diego Rivera (New York:

FIGURE 3.6
Stein and Day, r963), pp. r67-81'.
Diego Rivera. The Mechanizatiol'l afthe Countryside, fresco, third floor, west wall, stairwell, Ministry
l Leonard Folgarait, Mural Painting and Social Revolution in Mexico, 1920-194°: The Art
of Public Education, Mexico City (1926). © 20IO Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Muse- of a New Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, '998), pp. 13-26 and pp. 75-85:
ums Trust, Mexico, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS). Photograph: Bob Schalkwijk and Mari Carmen Ramirez, "The Ideology and Politics of the Mexican Mural Movement:
r9w-1925" (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, '989), pp. 247-65,344-54,396-400.
4. "All Mexico Is on a Wall" is Bertram Wolfe's title for his chapter on Rivera's SEP
murals in The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, pp. 167-81.
socialist culture of "deep" Mexico, By placing artistic labor at the top of the stairwell's
5. David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, Xavier Guerrero, Fermin Revueltas, Jose Clem-
evolutionary walk, moreover, Rivera argues that mural art should playa central role in ent Orozco, Ram6n Alva Guadarrama, German Cueto, and Carlos Merida, "Manifesto of the
Mexico's post-Revolutionary transformation. Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptors," EI Machete (1923) translated and
Rivera's stairwell explains the process that will tie the activities depicted in the Court republished in Mari Carmen Ramirez and Hector Olea, Inverted Utopias: Avant Garde Art in
of Labor to those described in the Court of Fiestas. It also demonstrates the stylistic steps Latin America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 46r.
that lead the viewer from the naturalistic scene in The Liberation of the Peon to the dense 6, Diego Rivera and GladY')larch, My Life, My Lift: An
Autobiography (New York: Dover
"A rms. ThiIS fri
cubist one in The Distr'b~ u t'ton oJ neze surveys MexlCO'S, ions an
many regions and Publications, Inc. '960), p. 79,
telescopes its complex po liti
1 icaI hi ,
istory Into sty I"
istically coded scenes that demonstrate 7. For a discussion of the difference between realist and discursive approaches to repre-
the artist's wide knowledge ofW es t ern art an d hiIS commitment to a modern industna . J - sentation, see Mary K. Coffey, "What Puts the Culture in Multiculturalism? An Analysis of
ized, but socialist , future . Fo r J ean Ch ar Iot, R'ivera "s integration, Culture, Government, and Mexican Identity," in Multicultural Curriculums, eds. Cameron
of the painterly values
of the School of Paris imt0 hi 'I ali MCCarthy and Ram Mahalingam (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 37-41.
IS SOCIa re 1Ststyle betrays a bohemian youth spent among
the European avant-garde . R'rvera ,s ertort 8. Francisco Reyes Palma, "Mural Devices," injosi Clemente Orozco in the United States,
. a:
to reconcile .,
certain elements of avant-gar d e
1927-1934, eds. Renato Gonzalez Mello and Diane Miliotes (Hanover: Hood Museum of Art,
plastic experimentation
.
with
1
. I mandate of a public art was not merely evidence
th e SOCla
Dartmouth College; New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2002), p. 220.
of a bohemian's
. first se nous
. po liti
mea 1 engagement. It also signals his innovative attempt 9, Ibid" p. ,69,
to activate the avant-garde's b eliief im th e po I'itical
, ,
SIgnificance of formal experimentatIon' ro. Charlot, The Mexican Mural Renaissance, pp. 269-79.
for the purposes of a public, rather than a private, art.
II. Ibid" p, 254,
12. Ramirez, The Ideology and Politics of the Mexican Mural Movement, p. 256.

72 MEXICAN MURAllSM "ALL MEXICO ON A WALL" 73

 III
IJ. Adriana Zavala, Becoming Modern, Becoming Tradition: Women, Gender and Repre_
sentation in Mexican Art and Culture (College Park: Penn State University Press, in press).
14. Miguel Covarrubias,Mexico South: The Isthmus of Tehuantepec (New York:Alfred A.
4
Knopf, 1946), pp. 252-53.
IS. "Deep Mexico"is Guillermo Bonfil-Batalla's term and is therefore anachronistic for
the period. However,it signifiesan intellectual investment in Mexico's indigenous origins as SIQUEIROS' COMMUNIST
the source of national originality and post-colonial politics. While the term and its attendant PROPOSITION FOR
assumptions aboutindigeneityand authenticity have been critiqued, I use it throughout this
chapter to signal the intellectual discourse on authenticity generated by post-Revolutionary
MEXICAN MURALISM
Indigenismo. Guillermo Bonfil-Batalla. Mexico profunda (Mexico: SEP, 1987). A Mural for the Mexican Electricians' Syndicate
16. Ramirez, The Ideologyand Politics of the Mexican Mural Movement, p. 345·
,
17. Diana BriuoloDestefano,"Aproximaciones al Corrido de La Revoluci6n de DiegoRiver,
Jennifer A. Jolly
en la Secretaria de EducacionPublica," unpublished paper presented at the Reunion Inter-
nacional Re-vision delmuralismo del siglo xx (decadas 20-40): Mexico-Bstados Unidos, El
lnstituto de InvestigacionesEsteticas, UNAM, MexicoCity, August 21-23,2000.
18. Bertram Wolfe and Diego Rivera, Portrait of Mexico (New York: Covici, Friede Pub-
hshcrs. 1937),p. 22.
19· Ibid., p. 25·
20. See Mary K.Coffey,"The 'Mexican Problem': Nation and 'Native' in Mexican Mural-
ism and Cultural Discourse,"in The Social and the Real: Political Art of the 1930S in the West·
em Hemisphere, eds. AlejandroAnreus, Diana L. Linden, and Jonathan Wineberg (College
Park: The Pennsylvania StateUniversity Press, 2006), pp. 43-70. Although David Alfaro Siqueiros came late to Jose Vasconcelos' mural project, from the
21. Charlot, Mexican Mural Renaissan.ce, p. 254.
starthe claimed a key role in defining Mexico's mural movement. That Mexican mural-
22. Renata Gonzalez Mello, "Manuel Carnic, Diego Rivera and the Politics of Mexican
ism should be categorized "a movement" rather than a loose affiliation of individual
Anthropology," RES 45 (Spring 2004):161-85.
artists was not to be taken for granted, and Siqueiros dedicated his career to ensuring
that muralism was sustained and promoted in collective terms. To this end, he traveled
the world developing mural projects, recruiting and training new muralists, writing,
lecturing, and inserting his vision of public mural art-and himself-into the center
ofthe era's artistic and political debates. He defined his project-and muralism in gen·
eral-in highly ideological, confrontational terms. His critiques were directed against
rivalmuralists and non-muralists alike, as the title of one of his numerous tracts asserts:
Ours Is the Only Way.' /
This polemical approach to muralism paired his early immersion in artistic avant-
gardism with a communist political commitment. His artistic and activist identities
were often at odds, as he regularly abandoned successful artistic projects to engage
political action: fighting in the Mexican Revolution (1910-2°) and the Spanish Civil
War (1936-39), organizing workers, operating as a Stalinist agent, and serving jail sen-
tences. In the pre-World War II art world, such a pairing was feasible-even desirable.
He adopted a "citizen-artist" persona, rejecting avant-garde autonomy (theoretically)
in exchange for a public role; he sought to make murals "communist," casting not just
content, but also production and reception, in ideological terms. post-war, this combi-
nation determined his uneven reception: celebrated as a revolutionary artist by many

74 MEXICAN MURAllSM 75
 ibilityat the nationalleve!. Citing a range of writers-from Gide, Benda, and Bergson to

8 Ortega y Gasset and Nietzsche-the

to be the reductivism of muralism's
Conternporaneos criticized what seemed to them
socialist realist premises, as well as its nationalist
focus on the popular classes. They argued, moreover, that muralism's interpretations
of indigenous culture were propagandistic and had little to do with the reality of rural

NIETZSCHE CONTRA MARX existence. And in light of Mexico's long European heritage, they criticized as ludicrous
and unrealistic the muralists' bombastic rejection of European aesthetic influences. In
IN MEXICO defining a modern Mexican identity, the Contemporaneos by contrast sought to mediate
The Contemporaneos, Mum/ism, and Debates between a politicized art and a more autonomous one puro. In sponsoring artists such
over "Revolutionary" Art in 19305 Mexico
asAgustin Lazo, Maria Izquierdo, Julio Castellanos, and Rufino Tamayo they supported
powerful alternatives to the muralists' efforts, and sought to eliminate "all picturesque,
Robin Adele Greeley decorative and ... folkloric elements" in favor of a more complex, "universal" vision of
the Mexican "race and spirit.:"
In response, the muralists reviled the Contemporaneos as unmanly "foreignizing"
I'll tell you why the devil and the work of art are inseparable, why revolution and queers-a telling, if odd-mix of slanders. Jose Clemente Orozco caricatured their fey
poetry are inseparable. There is no poetry other than revolutionary. That is to say,
dandyism; Rivera, while at the Ministry ofPublic Education, painted himself as a soldier
there is none without the collaboration of the devil.
kicking a prostrate Salvador Novo, with donkey ears, who personified the effete influ-
-JORGE CUESTA, "EL DIABLO EN LA POEsIA" (1934)1
ence of foreign cultures. (Novo responded with a long satirical poem, "La Diegada.")
The journal's editors were repeatedly condemned as anti-muralist, anti-nationalist,
anti-Mexican sissies. In 1924, Julio Jimenez Rueda of El Universal ridiculed the Con-
temporaneos as "effeminate," equating patriotism with masculine virility.Zln 1928, El
UniversalIlustrado continued the moral lynching of the "artepuristas," violently attacking
the Contemporaneos for the "anti naturalist," cryptic language of their writing.sIn 1932,
In June 1928, a new journal titled Contemporcineos opened its first issue with a con- JorgeCuesta and others faced spurious legal charges of "outrage to public morality" for
voluted but urgent call for a new "hero" for the new post-Revolutionary era at hand in having published "pornographic" chapters of a novel: the scandal that ensued forced all
9
Mexico. "The hero can be ... a warrior, a man of science, a writer, artist, or politician," the Conternporaneos out of their government posts in education. In 1937, they were
lO
but had to aim for a "new ethical sensibility" In a period full of military, populist, and again attacked, this time from within Cardenas' leftist government.
cultural heroes, such a call was a calculated challenge to the status quo. Indeed, that The Contemporaneos were nonetheless fervent patriots, passionately concerned
same issue of Contemporaneos published a long attack by Gabriel Garcia Maroto on the about the nation's future. Thus their second, more general, concern was to enter the
premier icon of Mexico's developing state culture: Diego Rivera, It so infuriated the pool of intellectuals attempting to use their official positions to shape state policy on
painter that he publicly threatened the magazine's editors, setting the tone for a face- mexicanidad.ll Octavio Paz remarked that it was wrong to accuse the Contempora-
\'1: off between the Contemporaneos and Mexican muralism that would last more than a neos-as many did-of indifference to public affairs.P Torres Bodet served as Minister
~decade.3 While praising Riveraas a masterful "tecnico," Garcia Maroto damned his work of Education (twice) and Director of UNESCO; Jose Gorostiza served as Minister of
for its "facile melody," arguing that Rivera sacrificed true Mexican feeling, reducing "art Foreign Relations; Novo was prominent in efforts by the Ministry of Public Education
[to]a political-social instrument, a mechanical instrument, mechanizing, unrefined:'4 to bring education to the Mexican countryside (hiring VilIaurrutia to help him), and
In 1928 Rivera was just completing his murals for the Ministry of Public Education later emerged as Mexico's foremost public chr'onicler.B And so on. Thus to call the
(the Secretaria de Educaci6n Publica) and had already begun to define a standard for Contemporaneos reactionary anti-nationalists is to misunderstand their project and to
judging state-sponsored cultural nationalism. In attacking the most famous cultural misrepresent their profound influence on both arts and public life in Mexico.
avatar of the state, the Contemporaneos-the famous "grupo sin grupo" ("group without ! Indeed, the ferocity ofthe debates between the two camps raises questions about the

a group") that coalesced around the journal-had two intentions.f The first was to resist '~nstruction and function of nationalism in Mexico's post-Revolution period. On the
what they perceived as increasing political, religious, and-especially-artistic lnfie> Onehand. it reveals the utopian conviction of an emerging intellectual elite-includ-

NIETZSCHE CONTRA MARX IN MEXICO

149
 of former revolutionaries and their transformation into what Paz called "a greedy and
ing both muralists and the Contemporaneos-that it could instigate an authentically
crude plutocracy'v'<-an experience that prompted them to begin defining a crucial
Mexican culture. Works of art would provide alternatives to older historical narratives,
separation between nation and state.22 Opportunities for doing so at the national level
thereby initiating a new historical period. This new national culture, an "aesthetic stat-
were increasingly limited. The state had co-opted many of the means needed to establish
ism" forged in alliances between intellectuals and the state, 14 would function as a model
such a distinction; in the later 193os, President Cardenas would further corporatize the
for the political and social life of the nation at all levels. On the other hand, the debates
relationship among the state, intellectuals, and the masses by institutionalizing ties that
point up the lack of consensus during the 1920S and early 1930S on what mexicanidad
subordinated peasant and labor unions, along with intellectuals as their spokespeople,
would entail or how alliances of intellectual and the state were to be managed.
This chapter treats three broad elements of the debates between the Conternporaneos to state control. 23
Nevertheless, the Contemporaneos. recognizing the lack of a developed civil sector
and muralists. First, the contemporaneos, like the muralists, were situated at the heart
from which to launch their platform, chose to remain tied to the state. From this posi-
of the crisis of formulating Mexico as a modern nation state in the 1920S and 19305.
tion, they made a three-pronged attack on the growing entrenchment of the nationalist
They astutely interrogated the state's efforts to align itself with the concept of "nation,"
model and its cultural component: first, against social realism and its ethos of revolu-
believing that these efforts flirted dangerously with fascism. Second, against mural-
tionary masculine virility; second, against indigenismo as a basis for mexicanidad; and
ism's tendency to racialize and masculinize national identity around tropes of the indio-
third, against Marxism, especially as embodied in the Cardenista state (r934-40)· Each
campesino and the worker-soldier, the Conternporaneos promoted a national identity
part of the attack critiqued the dangerous coll~e of nation into state.
based on melding cosmopolitan modernism with the national, the avant-garde with
In 1924, the Contemporaneos were shocked by the wild popularity of Mariano Azu-
the traditional, and the urban with the rural to effect a "universalism."! They further
ela's realist novel of the Mexican Revolution, LoJ de abajo (The Underdogs). Enthusiastic
attacked the gendered concept of the political that equated revolution with virility. And
critics equated Azuela's realist style with transparent legibility aimed at the uneducated
third, the Contemporaneos advocated a deliberately depoliticized arte puro as a bulwark
masses; here was "revolutionary" art that produced a direct "reflection of reality" and
against the excesses of art in the service of politics, particularly muralism. In so doing,
conjured up an "exact" picture "made of the flesh, the pain and the calamitous destiny of
they offered a psychological, existentialist definition of mexicanidad that had strong
the Revolution.v" Los de abajo, along with muralism, helped cement the Mexican Revo-
repercussions throughout the rest of the century."
lution as the "privileged horizon" by which all social and cultural achievements and all
historical progress were judged, 25 and confirmed the realist narrative as the revolution's
THE CONTEMPORANEOS: A CRITICAL NATIONALISM appropriate cultural embodiment. "Revolutionary" realism was interwoven with calls
from prominent intellectuals, such as anthropologist Manuel Gamio, for a "national"
The Contemporaneos. too young to have participated in the Revolution, did not share
culture that would "reflect ... in intensified and beautified form the pleasures, pains,
the idealism of first-generation muralists.'? Indeed, in Cuesta's assessment, what held
life, and soul of the people."" For Gamio, "the people" meant the rural and indigenous
the grupo sin grupo together was precisely their "critical attitude," their "distrust (and)
populations, and if Mexico was to develop a superior national culture, artists needed to
skepticism.'?" They came of age in the late r920s and '930s, during a time of fragile
reject Europeanized "elitist tastes" in favor of home-grown aesthetic sources "forged"
hope but also of great national and cultural instability. They watched firsthand both
out of Mexico's complex racial heritage." No truly national culture would "flourish so
the rise of a nationalist discourse and the coincident failure of Jose Vasconcelos and
long as we continue to cultivate only foreign modalities of art in place of creating from
tlie Ateneo de la Juventud intellectuals to impose Vasconcelos' model, inspired by Uru-
what is ours."28
guayan philosopher Jose Enrique Rodo, of a continental, pan- Latin American rnlture."
The emphasis on Mexico's popular classes-the indigenous as well as the peasant
The journal itself was founded under the shadow of the multiple political shocks of
and working classes-as the site of national cultural renovation (and the concomitant
1928-29: the assassination of General Obreg6n as he tried to return to the presidency;
rejection of European models) was central to the Manifesto of the Syndicate of Techni-
the subsequent rigged presidential elections that resulted in the defeat of Vasconcelos;
car Workers, Painters and Sculptors, published the same year as Azuela's Los de abajo.29
and Calles' formation of Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR), which obviated the
Written by Siqueiros and Signed by Rivera, Orozco, Xavier Guerrero, Fermin Revueltas,
need to negotiate political alliances and gave Calles personal control over key state deci-
Ramon Alva Guadarrama, German Cueto, and Carlos Merida, the Manifesto associated
sions.?" In this period, moreover, the government failed to quell widespread peasant
the national "soul" with the Indian and the popular. The Revolution replaced the nine-
rebellion (the Cristiada]: the country also faced an economic shock following the crash
teenth-century Reforma and Porfiriato as the nation's key historical event, while Aztec
of Wall Street in 1929. The Conternporaneos, while still young, observed the corruption

NIETZSCHE CONTRA MARX IN MEXICO '5'

'5° MEXICAN MURAllSM
 replaced colonial as Mexico's primary cultural heritage. The Manifi;sto also exhibited
heritage outright (as hardline nationalists wanted) nor indulge in "artificial European-
the stridently militant attitude adopted by the muralists to elaborate their connections
ism" that ignored local bistories (as the Porfiriato had done). "What has been lacking,"
with the popular classes; this was the concept of artist as heroic proletarian/campesino/
he wrote, "is the wisdom to develop that European spirit in harmony with the new
soldier that not only worked well with Azuela's realist narrative style, which so alarmed conditions in which it finds itself."38
the Contemporaneos. but also fueled the condemnation of the Contemporaneos as
Ramos' 1930 essay on Rivera applies these theories to Mexico's premier artist.'?
Frenchified "mariquitas" for their insistence on recognizing Mexico's European hen.
Rivera, according to Ramos, represented the highest achievements of Mexican national
tage.3D Anti-Contemporaneos often couched their hostility in gendered and moralistic
culture, but not for the reasons most (including Rivera himself) claimed. Ramos argued
terms. The polemic of I925 equated "escapist" literature with "sexual eccentricity" and
that Rivera's genius lay in his absorption of European influences-especially cubism-
covertly linked "feminization" to a suspicion of anti-nationalist foreign influence in
and his use of them to revitalize an authentically Mexican indigenous culture long mar-
veiled accusations of homosexuality against Salvador Novo and others. They identified
ginalized and moribund: "Diego discovered an important aspect of our reality, which
"revolutionary" literature and art, by analogy, with virility. 31
no one had seen before even though it was in plain sight. The primitive existence of
The Contemporaneos, in turn, criticized muralism for rejecting Mexico's European
Mexico, of which the Indian is the protagonist, appears suddenly in the painter's fres-
heritage, and for conceiving modernity solely in relation to a politics of the masses.
coes as if emerging from the depths of the earth." Yet Rivera produced this "new vision
This critique, however, stemmed less from an anti-nationalist Eurocentrism than from
of Mexican life" not because he repudiated all things European, but because he united
a concern about the dangers hidden in the "facile path" of constructing a national iden-
"cultivated European man with the barbarous man of the Mexican jungle" to construct
tity from "picturesque, decorative, even folkloric" legacies.? Against what they saw as
a "universal" aesthetics. For b~h Ramos and the Contemporaneos, Rivera's modernist
the muralists' parochial nationalism, the Contemporaneos argued that national culture
universalism gained its power from the painter's clos'e attention to "the plastic form
should serve as a means ofentry into the world community. In addition, they recognized
of things'~O-that is to say, to the formal procedures of modernist painting, not from
that to elaborate Mexico purely as a rejection of Europe was, in effect, to reinstall Europe
subordinating aesthetics to a political message, and not from a fidelity to an imagined
as the arbiter of Mexico's destiny by placing it at the center of the endeavor-something
pre-Conquest past.
all the more dangerous for being unacknowledged rather than out in the open. Further-
Ramos' critique belonged to the Contemporaneos' condemnation of rigid political
more, muralism risked the danger of subordinating aesthetic issues to politics to the
positions, whether right or left. This critique was most acute in Cuesta's 1935harangue
point of lapsing into propaganda. "Painting finds itself here," wrote Villaurruha with
against Marxism: "Marx was not intelligent or revolutionary; neither was he socialist,
refined irony, "as Rivera wishes, at the service of social and political ideas.'~33
but rather counter-revolutionary and mysbcal.?" The ranting title of the essay, published
The Contemporaneos also criticized the politics of class hidden in the aesthetics of
the year of the famous Rivera-Siqueiros debates, echoes Cuesta's frustration with the
"revolutionary nationalism."> The country'S elite, they argued, deployed the concepts
failure of post-revolutionary Marxism as it came increasingly under the combined influ-
of nationalism and anti-imperialism to obscure power inequalities in Mexico. Gorostiza
ence of Stalinism and the Cardenista state. It also reveals Cuesta's perceptive insights
criticized social realist art for hiding class conflict under a veneer of national unity, and
into Mexican Marxism's distinctive relationship to Catholicism.? Particularly alarming,
the urban elite's enthusiasm for it as narcissistic charity to relieve bourgeois guilt over
Cuesta argued, were Marxism's totalizing vision and its religious, anti-rational charac-
the despicable conditions of the poor. 35 And against muralism's-especially Rivera's-
ter: "Marxism wants a world founded in Marxism, not in objective evidence; it wants
powerful denial that the indio as a nationalist symbol differed from the indio as a his-
an ethics founded in Marxism, not in objective moral judgment; it wants an education
torical entity, Tamayo would remark acidly that "the only place where the peasants and
founded in Marxism, not in the nature of objective understanding.?" Far from reject-
Indians ever triumphed was in the scenario of Mexican muralism.r"
ing either Christianity's ritualized character or its doctrine of blind faith in a supreme
Yet this harsh criticism was calculated not to offend nationalist sensibilities but
power, Cuesta argued, Marxism merely transferred those sentiments to the concept of
to respond to the social complexity of the period. The Conternporaneos recognized
proletarian revolution. In his view, Marxism was merely religious mysticism disguised
that the Revolution had not shifted power relations nearly as much as the idealized
as secular rationalism; rather than liberating the populace from the binds of irrational
worker-peasant aesthetic of Rivera's late 1920S murals proclaimed.V Samuel Ramos,
thinking and superstition, Marxism reinforced them.
in his influential '931 essay "La cultura criolla,' argued that, like it or not, high cul-
To comprehend Cuesta's fears, it is important to recognize how much he was inter-
ture remained largely in the hands of the elite minority. Nevertheless, the Revolution
preting Marx through the lens of Cardenismo and its attempts to corporatize the masses.
had forced that minority to recognize the need for wider cultural inclusion. Because of
Rather than foster political discourse independent of the state, Cardenas institutional-
historical circumstances, Ramos contended, Mexico could neither reject its European
ized policies-from the implementation of socialist education and the restructuring

MEXICAN MURALISM

NIETZSCHE CONTRA MARX IN MEXICO 153

 I of PNR to the subordination of peasant and worker unions to the state-to tie public
Nietzsche for solutions to the urgent question of "incorporat(ing) the politically volatile II
life and discourse to the state." These policies helped the state to wrest many of the
and inexperienced masses into the representational logic of the modern state."56 In I

ritual functions away [rom the church and, in turn, ritualize political life in Mexico.s!
sharp contrast to the Contemporaneos, the Ateneo intellectuals interpreted the German
II It was this "religious consecration of power," promoted by the Cardenista state through
philosopher according to their interest in using art to integrate Mexico's diverse cultures
influential Marxists such as powerful union leader Vicente Lombardo Toledano, that
into a unified state project. As Minister of Public Education, Vasconcelos institutional-
II alarmed Cuesta.f He thus identified three interconnected dangers in Mexican Marx-
ized the Ateneo commitment to using art-most notably muralism-as a means of
II ism: the rise of a national socialism disturbingly similar to that of the Nazis; a continu-
educating the masses in the values of citizenship. Indeed, despite their claims to be
,I
ation of Christianity's emphasis on blind faith, shifted in attachment from God to the
above politics, the Ateneo intellectuals sided with the state, seeking to bring to it their
Mexican state; and the subjugation of cultural production to the exigencies of the state. conviction about the unifying function of culture. 57
II Cardenista Marxism seemed to threaten the concept of individual creativity at the heart
of the Contemporaneos' ideology; in Cuesta's view, Cardenismos "politica de las masas"
I served only to institutionalize this anti-individualism, reinforce the ritual nature of NATION VERSUS STATE, THE POLITICS OF AESTHETICS

public politics, and diminish the separation between nation and state."
Against both muralism and the Ateneo models, the Contemporaneos proposed a third
Although historians have shown that Cardenas Mexico was far from following the
paradigm for the nation-one that separated the concept of nation from thatof state.58
Nazi example," Cuesta's fears, at the time he expressed them, might have seemed justi-
In this model, the nation was the repository of complex and ambiguous moral, spiritual, II
fied. He was responding in part to the polarizing effects in Mexico of heated interna-
psychological, and cultural values, whereas the state was the pragmatic, institutional
tional debates about sociallycommitted art by proponents of fascism, communism, and
structure subject to the laws of history. "Unltke Caso and Vasconcelos," Christopher
liberal capitalism. This polarization was evident not only in the I935 Rivera-Siqueiros
Dominguez argues, "Cuesta could separate history frorh morality (and morality from
debates and the vagaries of Vasconcelos' right-wing politics, but also in the growing
philosophy)" and thus could critique the politics of the state without confusing this
ideological dogmatism of cultural organizations such as the Soviet-influenced League
with the "nation."? The Conternporaneos-c-especially Cuesta and Ramos-elaborated
of Revolutionary Artists and Writers (LEAR), composed of artists and intellectuals such
this paradigm in part from reading Nietzsche for his philosophical investigations of
as Siqueiros and the second-generation muralist Pablo O'Higgins." And in the wake of
the morality of ambiguity, rather than (like the Ateneo intellectuals) reading him as an
the polemic against the Contempcraneos in I932, a Committee of Public Health was
apologist for totalitarianism. GOCuesta saw that, for Nietzsche, human thought "lives in
proposed to make sure no one of "dubious" revolutionary quality was given a govern-
search of its opposite; not to annihilate it, but rather to reconcile with it," and Nietzsche
ment post. 50 The proposal-a further step in the widespread leftist equation of revolu-
"deliberately inspired himself with opposing passions" so as to investigate a moral
tion with heterosexual Virilitythat the Contemporaneos heavily criticized-eventually
philosophy of uncertainty and doubt." Nietzsche showed the Contemporaneos how to
resulted in the founding, under Cardenas, of the Autonomous Department of Publicity
characterize truth and knowledge as provisional rather than absolute-an understand-
and Propaganda (DAPPI, a Mussolini-inspired shadow institution to the Ministry of
ing that shaped their concept of statecraft. For them, Nietzsche served as a counterpoint
Public Education, charged with overseeing all forms of "social communication," from
to the authoritarianism the Contemporaneos detected in the political program of the
the mass media to public events and the arts." In DAPP's homophobic tendencies,
Mexican state. They were particularly impressed by the German philosopher's deliber-
aimed at the Contemporaneos, the state dangerously mimicked Charles Maurras' proto-
ate avoidance of instrumental reason. Cuesta, writing to retrieve Nietzsche from the
fascist dictum: "It is nationalism's obligation to defend the nation from foreigners of the
interior. "52 Nazis in r939, noted approvingly that "Reason, for (Nietzsche), is not man, but rather
that which triumphs over man."G2 Ramos expounded upon the Apollonian-Dionysian
Yet while Cuesta and the Contemporaneos rejected Cardenista Marxism, they did not
paradigm of Nietzsche as analogous to social and aesthetic organization; Dionysian
advocate any return to the Ateneo de la [uventud's elitist repudiation of the popular.53
emotional "deliriums" provided a necessary counterbalance to Apollonian rationalist
They realized that the Ateneo, despite its historical importance, had missed its mark. "imagination."G3
Vasconcelos was criticized for his irrational mysticism; Alfonso Caso for his outmoded
Nietzsche thus gave Cuesta, Ramos, and the Conternporaneos tools with which they
and aristocratic academicism; and even their mentor, Alfonso Reyes, for stagnating. 54
could confront the deep-seated problems of Mexican national culture. Like Vasconcelos
The Ateneo (particularly Vasconcelos) was also criticized for its superficial-and thus
and the early muralists, the Conternporaneos conceived artistic creation as a model
rightwwing-reading of Nietzsche.55 As Horacio Legras has argued, the Ateneo read
for the political will of the nation. But unlike either the Ateneo or the muralists, the

154 MEXICAN MURALISM

NIETZSCHE CONTRA MARX IN MEXICO '55
 Contemporaneos argued that the national spirit, like art, would result not from con-
Paz, siding with the Contemporaneos, "is that for them Frenchness was a profession of
fusing nation with the pragmatics of state governance, but rather from a "momentary
universalist faith. For this reason it could coexist with their patr iotism-?v
liberation from the imperatives of reality and logic" that would give rise to new concepts
of being." Reading Nietzsche allowed the Conternporaneos to think how artistic form-
giving might be brought together with political will to strengthen the public sphere as MURALISMS COMPARED, CONTEMPORANEOS
VERSUS MURALISTS
a space for vigorous political debate." In this way, the Contemporaneos used Nietzsche
to appropriate the concept of virility embodied in revolutionary nationalism, redirecting
Yet relations between the two camps over time were far from static, and the Contem-
it away from ideological dogmatism toward rigorous independent thinking. Rather than
poraneos took care to recognize tensions and differences within muralism. Villaurrutia
emphasizing Nietzsche's authoritarian ubermensch, the Conternporaneos stressed his
praised Siqueiros and Orozco for their "discontent" with the "externalizing model that
"will to power" as aggressively mobilizing the human will against conformity to break
Mexican painters, from Diego Rivera to the most humble, have so abused."?' Novo, in
down existing homogeneous structures of power.
his capacity as Undersecretary of Education in 1932, helped organize Siqueiros' first
This mobilization would take place, the Contemporaneos contended, primarily in the
solo exhibition." Siqueiros. in return, soft-pedaled his standard productionist rhetoric,
realm of aesthetics. To this end, they conceived aesthetics as a deeply moral enterprise, a claiming at the exhibition's conference:
militant antidote to the ideological insensitivity of revolutionary nationalism. Gorostiza,
for example, argued that the only way to produce literature that "analyzed" rather than
I am a partisan of the idea that [th arts] serve the proletariat in its revolutionary class
simply "recounted" the profundity of Mexico's history was through rigorous attention to struggle; but I consider the theory of "arte puro\ as the supreme aesthetic goal.... I fight
the "resolution of aesthetic problems." The "severe discipline" such an exercise required for the advent of [communist society] because in doing so I fight for pure art. Equally, I
built a strength of character that could subvert the masculinist rhetoric of revolutionary am of the opinion that [the artist] must not subordinate his aesthetic sense to the tastes
nationalism and resist the "false nationalists" who produced "Mexico for exportation" of the revolutionary proletarian masses, as [those masses] have been poisoned by the
to write a truly Mexican literature.v'' degraded aesthetic sensibilities of the capitalist class."
But aesthetics for the Conternporaneos was more than simply an answer to the cul-
tural dogmatism of the muralists and other revolutionary nationalists. It was, in and
The following month, the Frente Unico de Lucha Contra la Reacci6n Estetica (FUL-
of itself, political-not in the sense of the mechanics of governing, but in the sense
CRE) published a manifesto, written by Siqueiros, against academicism in painting.?'
of an ethical practice. In this regard, Pellicer and Cuesta were especially perceptive.
Among FULCRE's members were Conternporaneos affiliates Novo, Villaurrutia,
Unlike Villaurrutia (who professed to shun politics altogether) ,6' Cuesta recognized the Tamayo, and Castellanos.
Faustian nature of aesthetics conceptualized as an ethical-s-and therefore political-
The Contemporaneos thus continually sought support on a variety of fronts for their
venture. Art itself was resolutely political, fostering an "ethics of responsibility" born of
notion of arte puro-a concept that linked aesthetic individualism to national political
the intellectual endeavor." Yet Cuesta realized the impossibility of disentangling the
freedom. Against art or intellectual production subordinated to political engagement,
mechanics of politics from ethics, and he regarded political engagement as the "devil"
the Conternporaneos collectively argued a different relationship between aesthetics and
that dragged all artists and intellectuals away from that ethics. Art subsumed under
liberatcry politics: "Art is not revolutionary simply because it speaks or exhibits material
the rhetoric of nationalist politics, the Contemporaneos maintained, lost its essential
phenomena of the Revolution: art is revolutionary in and of itself."75 Artistic practice,
freedom of expression.
uncompromised by subservience to any other medium, thus became an allegory for
The Contemporaneos instead upheld artistic and intellectual freedom as a universal political freedom.P' Yet the Contemporaneos insisted on this model as more than a
value, and their cosmopolitanism-often falsely labeled Eurocentrism-must be under-
personal one guaranteeing an individual's liberty; it needed to be instituted at the state
stood in this framework. Gorostiza, for example, advocated a vigorous literary move-
level, to produce an aesthetic statism different from what the Contemroraneos saw
ment that would consolidate national and universal values, integrate popular culture developing around them."
with avant-garde modernity, and consider art to be an end in itself rather than a means
In seeking to define this relationship of art and politics, Cuesta tackled muralism's
of justifying other endsw Thus the Contemporaneos' strong commitment to French
conundrum head-on in his essay on Rivera. Here he attempted to separate the muralist
avant-garde culture, evinced in the journal's repeated references to such examples as
from the aura surrounding him in order to open a serious dialogue on the nationalist
Proust, Gide, Picasso, and the surrealists, signified their search for a universal aesthet- aesthetics being institutionalized by state. Cuesta argued that Rivera marked a new
ics rather than a singular attachment to France. "What indeed is indisputable," writes
Mexican "academy" born of the revolution. Yet Rivera's "classicism" was the result not

MEXICAN MURALISM
NIETZSCHE CONTRA MARX IN MEXICO
'57
 of his bolshevism, according to Cuesta, but of his use of French cubist forms. Indeed,
Cuesta continued, Rivera's bolshevism was irrelevant, a mere "convention," a trap into
which both Rivera's supporters and detractors felL The real power of Rivera's work lay
in its essential "skepticism," derived from his immersion in cubism. Cuesta defined
this as "a skepticism of painting," understood as "a precise consciousness of the rela-
tivity of all perspective, whether moral, political, or religious."?" Cuesta thus saw in
I Rivera's work an effort, like that of cubism, to interrogate the ethics of Western pictorial
I convention. For Cuesta, what legitimated this "skepticism" as ethical critique was its
firm basis in a uniquely modernist attention to an autonomous, self-referential artistic
practice; only such a rigorous self-critique could stand as a model for ethical conduct
in the socio-political realm. Cuesta called up the works of Picasso and Stravinsky as
examples of this model of avant-garde cultural production, which, familiar to us now, I
found itself embattled in 1930S Mexico. The meaning of their works, he wrote, "does not I

depend on certain local and temporal conditions [ ... ]; their value does not depend on
the political and religious convictions of those who contemplate or listen." Instead, he I
argued, they generate a meaning that registers the same for anyone from an "Israelite"
to a "Mason."?'
II
Cuesta reserved his most insightful analysis for Orozco, a favorite of the Contem- I
poraneos. In his essay of 1934 he detected certain similarities between Orozco and the
Contemporaneos, arguing that both chose the most difficult route, the "most sterile of
territories," in order to move beyond facile political ideologies.s? Cuesta's "Nietzschean"
Orozco (like Cuesta himself) used art to expose dilemmas or contradictions, to elaborate
them, to push them to their limits.I' In r938, while Orozco was in the midst of produc-
ing his most existentially anguished work-the Hospicio de Cabanas murals (figure
8.1), Cuesta described Orozco's painting as encompassing the very essence of art itself.
the ability to embody humanity's essential moral torment: "Man carries within himself
the enemy of man. And what must be discerned is the art and effect of that rivalry. It
FIGURE 8.1
must be noted that there is as much ruin for art in the suppression of an enemy as in
Jose Clemente Orozco. Man of Fire, Hospicio de Cabanas, Guadalajara (1938-
[the suppression of] the other. The ruin of art is in the suspension of this struggle. Art
39)· © 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SOMAAP, Mexico City.
needs its enemy."82
Photograph: Art Resource
Nevertheless, Cuesta's fascination with Orozco was double-edged. The artist's pow·
erful reliance on mysticism and symbolism ran against Cuesta's preference for classi-
cism and threatened to undo his concept of aesthetic modernism. "The originality of nal conflicts" of history that gave rise to Mexico's crisis of identity. Foreshadowing Paz's
Orozco [unlike that of Picasso] does not correspond to the modern concept of original- Labyrinth of Solitude (and his key "95r text on Tamayo), the Contemporaneos returned
ity, based in an idea of progress according to which each era is accompanied by a fatal to the long-standing problem of how mexicanidad might, in Benedict Anderson's term,
expression of its ... gradual unraveling." Rather, his genius was an "absolute radical- be "imagined" so as to confront-rather than deny-the inherent instability wrought
ism" but "barren," so that the younger generation of painters could not assimilate it. Upon Mexican identity by the Conquest. The Conternporaneos strove to counteract the
Orozco, in Cuesta's eyes, belonged more to Quattrocento Italy than to post-revolution adoption after the revolution of a triumphalist ideology of indigenismo, which they felt
Mexico, where he was forced to live "artificially." Yetthis internal tension was precisely ignored, rather than resolved, the recurrent existential crisis of a nation continually torn
the source of Orozco's greatness, in that it mirrored history's "internal conflicts."8J between its indigenous and European heritages." To this end, Tamayo offered a psychic
Tamayo also figured centrally in the Contemporaneos' effort to address those "inter- model, different from muralism's socialist realism, of how to suture Mexico's ancient

MEXICAN MURAllSM
NIETZSCHE CONTRA MARX IN MEXICO 159
 FIGURE 8.3

Rufino Tamayo. Landscape in the Night (1933). © D. R. Rufino TamayojHerederosjMexicoj2009/

Fundaci6n Olga y Rufino Tamayo, A.C.

but rather the pathological resurgence of the ancient in the guise of the modem.s? What
Orozco, throughout the '93os, envisioned as apocalyptic histories (figure 8.2), Tamayo
imaged as psychic dramas, "at once refined and savage,"S8 in which the modern turned
FIGURE 8.2
on the uneasy dream memories of previous historical trauma (figure 8-3).
Jose Clemente Orozco. Cortes, Hospicio de Cabanas, Guadalajara (1939).
© 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SOMAAP, Mexico City. By choosing a psychic, rather than historical. model, Tamayo allied himself with
Photograph: Art Resource the Conternporaneos against the muralists, to claim a pure. "universal" attention to
aesthetic practice.s? Arte puro, for Tamayo and the Contemporaneos. was thus a practice
analogous to, but separate from, politics for exploring the dilemmas and contradictions
of modernity." This is evident in Tamayo's first mural, Song and Music, of '933 (plate
past to its modern present. Capitalizing on the Oaxacan painter's purported indigenous
6 and figure 8.4). Painted both to enter into debates on muralism and to influence the
status, the Contemporaneos framed Tamayo as Simultaneously primitive and modern
direction of public arts, it is situated in the stairwell of the former National School of
in a public image that emphasized his "'instinctual," psychological mexicanidad.85 He
Music.?' In it, Tamayo amplified the somber color palette, archaizing stiffness, and psy-
was able, they argued, to conjure visually the aura of the past, not as revival but rather as
chic aura of his easel paintings to monumental scale, to picture a set of massive female
a mode of confronting the uncertainty of the present." Tamayo's primitivism rejected
allegories. In the center panel. a statuesque, white-robed Music plucks a mandolin,
Rivera's anecdotal, folkloric pre-Conquest arcadias as well as the European avant-garde's
surrounded by soaring figures of Intelligence and Intuition and the seated figure of
penchant for alien cultures. Instead, he envisioned the past and its recurrence in the
Humanity. Music, staring solemnly, ignores her surroundings. engrossed in inward
present as terrifying symptoms of a culture·wide psychic anguish. Mexico's crisis of
contemplation. Song, on the left wall, concentrates on her metier, her rounded mouth
modernity, unlike that of Europe, was not the terror of the new unhinged from the past,
mimicked by the cherub floating above her. Two muses oflyric and dramatic song ani.

160 MEXICAN MURALISM

NIETZSCHE CONTRA MARX IN MEXICO 161

 FIGURE 8.4

Rufino Tamayo. $ong and Music, right wall, National School of Music
(now the Coordi~aci6n Nacional de Arqueclogta), Mexico City (1933).
© D. R. Rufino Tamayo/Herederos/Mexico/200g/Fundaci6n Olga y FIGURE 8.5
Rufino Tamayo, A.C. Diego Rivera. Liberated Earth with the Natural Forces Controlled by Man,
Autonomous University of Chapingo (1926). © 2010 Banco de Mexico Diego
Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F./Artists Rights Society
(ARS). Photograph: Bob Schalkwijk/Art Resource

mate the shallow space above her head. On the right wall, allegories of stringed, wind,
and percussive instruments float in a compressed, airless space, organized visually by
the moon's full white orb.
with the full moon above) evoke the traditional and the ancient. And while Tamayo's
Song and Music deliberately distinguishes itself from the principal mural models
references to pre-Conquest visual forms might remind us of an earlyworkby Siqueiros,
on offer in '933· Although Tamayo, like Rivera at Chapingo, takes up the monumental
Burial of a Worker, the Oaxacan painter's figures carry none of the references to contem-
female body as national allegory, his archaizing style deliberately challenges both Rive-
porary social conflict that we see in the Siqueiros (figure 8.6). Nor does Tamayo ihdulge
ra's political narratives and the luxuriant bodies he uses to embody them (figure 8.5).
in Siqueiros' growing propensity for defying the restrictions of the architectural sur-
Tamayo's figures have none of Rivera's sensuality, nor do they take up Orozco's mystical
round (see figure II.4). Song and Music presents a flat, condensed space that adheres to
anguish. Instead, their monolithic forms suggest a solemn grandeur, while the dark.
the spatial dictates of the wall with a starkly modernist concentration. Tamayocombines
earthy tones (offset by the coolwhite of Music's classical drapery or the mandolin paired
a pre~Conquest visual vocabulary of self-contained, sculptural monumentality with a

MEXICAN MURAllSM
NIETZSCHE CONTRA MARX IN MEXICO

FIGURE 8.6
David Alfaro Siqueiros. Burial of a Worker, Antiguo
nal Preparatorta] (1923-24).
Photograph: Art Resource
stringent economy of form that is entirely modernist, to produce weighty, hieratic fig-
ures that bring the severe stylization of Aztec sculpture into the modern era.
gulag. Writing in 1950, Paz extended the Contemporaneos' concept of anguish, arguing
that modern Mexico carried a burden of psychic trauma and repressed rage as a legacy
of the Conquesr.?' History, rather than offer a means of transcending the emasculation
of rape and colonial subjugation. is only repeated endlessly as national destiny, forcing
the Mexican male continually to oscillate between despondency and outbursts of rage
and random violence. In this model, the political violence of the Revolution and its
aftermath resulted from the cyclical psychic violence imposed centuries before, not
from social relations, as muralisrn would have it. Paz, by articulating national identity
as a pathology of violence, took the Contemporaneoe' rejection of muralism's Marxism
further, arguing that individual solitude and anguish were more profoundly Mexican
than the realm of social conflict. In 1951, Paz linked this view of Mexico's afflicted
nature to the aftermath of world war, when he commented that Tamayo "opens for us
the doors of the old sacred universe of myth and images that reveal to us the double con-
clition of man: his atrocious reality and, simultaneously, his no less atrocious irreality.
Twentieth-century man suddenly discovers what, by other routes, was already known by
all those who had lived a crisis, an end of the world.y4 Paz argued that Tamayo, unlike\
the muralists, could embody the chaos of the modern precisely because of his intuitive, I
individualist ability aesthetically to conjure up Mexico's cataclysmic past."
The sophistication, impact, and valid criticisms of Paz's powerful formulation are
,
too complex to analyze fully here. But whereas post-Revolution socialism forced the
Contemporaneos into an embattled minority position, Paz's thoughts took hold after the
Colegio de San lldefonso (formerly Escuela Nacic-
global failure of socialism's utopian project. His model reverberated in post-war Mexico
© 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARSJ, New York/SOMAAP, Mexico City.
as the state "institutionalized" the Revolution, forsaking all but the superficial rhetoric
of socialism for a capitalist model of economic growth. In the atmosphere of the cold
war, the cultural stereotypes Paz had elaborated entrenched themselves so that even
today they remain powerful.
NOTES

THE LEGACY OF THE CONTEMPORANEOS r. Jorge Cuesta, Obras reunidas v. II: Ensayos y prosas varias, ed'S. Jesus R. Martinez Malo,
Victor Pelaez Cuesta, and Francisco Segovia (MexicoCity: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica,
Both Orozco and Tamayo were key figures for the Conternporaneos as they elaborated 20°4), p. 245. All translations by author except where noted.
their ethics of individual creative freedom as essential to the modern Mexican nation. 2. Bernardo J. Gastelum, "Espiritu del heme," Coruempordnecs V. 1. NO.1 (June 1928):2.
Against the state's conception of the nation as a collective defined by a pragmatic logic, 3· See Ermilo Abreu G6mez in Las revisuu literarias de Mexico (Mexico:Ediciones del
into which the individual was subsumed, the Contemporaneos insisted on an aesthetic Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes. 1963), p. 171, cited in E.J. Mullen, "Critical Reactions to
of the intuitive, the melancholy, and the solitary inner experience of the individual that the Review Contemporcineos," Hispania, V. 54, No. I (March 1971):146. )
Villaurrutia would famously describe as a "nostalgia for death."92 4· Gabriel Garda Maroto, "La pintura de Diego Rivera," Coraemporaneos. V. I, No. I
(June, 1928):65.
Despite persecution of the Contemporaneos in the 19205 and 19305, this existential-
ist model of the national soul would have repercussions after World War II. Paz's enor- 5· Xavier Villaurrutia, "Carta a un joven (Edmundo Valades)" Los Contempordneos por si
mismos, pp. xi-xii. Quoted in Guillermo Sheridan, Los Coruempordneos ayer (Mexico City:
mously influential book The Labyrinth of Solitude adapted this paradigm to the anxieties
Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1985), p. 13-14- The core group, which had been publishing
ofa world seeking explanation for the horrors of the holocaust, the atomic bomb, and the
and working together since the early 19205, included Jorge Cuesta, Enrique Gonzalez Rojo,

164 • MEXICAN MURALISM

NIETZSCHE CONTRA MARX IN MEXICO
 Jose, G oros titza, Sa Iv ador Novo, Bernardo Ortiz de Montellano, Jaime Torres Bodet, Xavier to parochial culture as detrimental. While this concept of national culture as a means to full
Villaurrutia, and Gilberta Owen. Tangentially affiliated were Samuel Ramos, Bernardo J. and equal participation in the world community had its contradictions, it still can usefully
Gastelum, and Carlos Pellicer. be characterized as cosmopolitan. My thanks to Joaquin Terrones and Jose Falconi for help
6. Xavier Villaurrutia, Obras: poesta, teatro, prosas varias, crCtica, ed. Miguel Capistran, in articulating this point. See also Pauline Kleingeld and Eric Brown, "Cosmopolitanism,"
Ali Chumacero, and Luis Mario Schneider (Mexico City: Fonda de Cultura Econ6mica, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2006 edition) Edward N. Zalta, ed., URi:
1966), pp. I035, 1036. Karen Cordero Reiman, "Ensuenos arrtstlcos: tres estrategias plasti- <http://plato.stanford.edujentries/cosmopolitanisrn/>; and Timothy Brennan, "Cosmopoli-
cas para configurar la modernidad Modernidad y modernizaci6n en
en Mexico, 1920-I930," tanism and Internationalism," in Daniele Archibugi, ed., Debating Cosmopolitanism (Lon-
el arte mexicano, 1920-1960 (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1991), p. 62. don: Verso, 2003), pp. 4r-42.
7. Julio Jimenez Rueda, "El afeminamiento en la literatura mexicana," El Universal
r6. As will become clear below, I use the term "existentialist" here not in the full Sartrean
(December 21, 1924), n.p. See Victor Diaz Arciniega, QuerelLapar la cultura "revolucionaria" sense of freedom as the "dislocation of consciousness from its object," but in the more lim-
~ (1925) (Mexico City: Fondo de CuJtura Ec~nomica, 19~9) ~or doc.u~,~ntation. . ited sense of "the estrangement of the self both from the world and from itself." that sense
8. See Carlos Monsivais, "La persecucion y la mexicanidad vir il, Salvador Novo. La mar- of alienation and precarity prompted by the "modern experience of a meaningless universe."
ginal en el centro (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 2000), pp. 73-84, for documentation. See Nevertheless, the Contemporaneos" invocation of Nietzsche, which J discuss below, reso-
I
also Christopher Dominguez Michael, "Prclogo. La crftica del demonic," in Cuesta. Obms
reunidas v. II
nates strongly with existentialism's understanding of Nietzschean nihilism as potentially II
liberating. Steven Crowell, "Existentialism,".J:!:e Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter
9. This was Ruben Salazar Mallen's novel, Cariatide, which contained
language. See Guillermo Sheridan, Mexico en 19]2: la polemica nacionalista
rough vernacular
(Mexico City:
zero edition) Edward N. Zalta, ed., U RL: <http://plato.s1fford.edu/entries/existentialism/>. II
17· Carlos Monsivais, Jorge Cuesta (Mexico City: Crea. 1985), p. II; Paz, "Contempora-
Fondo de Cultura Bconomica, 1999), pp. 105-6. neos," p. 94. II
10. Sheridan, Mexico en 1932, p. 106. 18. Jorge Cuesta, "<Existe una crisis en nuestra literatura de vanguardia>" quoted in
I
II. Gastelum indicated this in the first issue of Contemporaneos, stating "Hagamos un Sheridan, Los Contempordneos ayer, p. 12.
nuevo pais dandole, junto a la conciencia
.........
de su articulacion.
["Let us make a new country, giving it, together with a consciousness
el programa de su existencia."
of its articulation, the
19· Before becoming Minister
a prominent member of the influential
of Public Education under
Ateneo de LaJuventud.
Obregon, Vasconcelos was
On Vasconcelos and pan-
I
p~ram of its existence."] "Espiritu del heroe," Contempordneos V. I, NO.1 (June I?28): 14-.
Latinamericanism, see Rick Lopez, "Institutionalizing the Cultural Nationalist Project" in
12. Octavio Paz, "ContelfPoraneos: Primer Encuentro," in Paz and Luis Mario Schnei- Crafters of Nationhood: How Intellectuals, Artisans and the State Created an Ethnicized Mexi-
der, eds., Mexico en la ohm de Octavia Paz v. II: Genemciones y semblanzas (Mexico City: can National Identity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009).
Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, r987), p. 94. 20. The PNR, changing its name in 1946 to the Partido Revolucionano Institucional
13· Novo was the first editor of El Maestro Rural, a journal central to the Ministry of Pub- (PRJ), would remain in power until the end of the century. See Nora Hamilton on the suc-
lic Education's rural education program, which sought to bring literacy as well as technical cesses and failures of Calles to centralize control under his command. Hamilton, The Limits
and cultural education to rural peoples. Forced to quit because of the October 1932 polemic, of State Autonomy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).
Novo nevertheless remained a powerful public figure, writing his famous chronicles of 21. Paz, "Contemporaneos." p. 94.
Mexican life. 22. Nicola Miller, In the Shadow of the State: Intellectuals and the Quest for National Iden-
14· David A. Kaiser, Romanticism, Aesthetics, and Nationalism (Cambridge University tity in Twentieth-Century Spanish America (London: Verso, 1999), p. 151.
Press, 1999) defines the term "aesthetic statism," via Schiller, as the unification of the poLiti- 23· On Cardenas' corporatization of the masses, see Alan Knight, "Cardenismo: Jug-
cal state with the aesthetic realm, universal rationalism with the individual, and a universal gernaut or Jalopy," Journal of Latin American Studies, 26 (r994)73-ro7.
canon with a national culture. See Ana Maria Alonso, "Conforming Disconformity: 'Mes- 24· Carlos Noriega Hope, "'Los de abajo': El Doctor Mariano Azuela y Ia critica del punto
tizaje, Hybridity, and the Aesthetics of Mexican Nationalism," Cultural Anthropology V. I9' y coma," El Universal (February 10, 1925), quoted in Diaz Arciniega, QuereLla, p. 90. That
NO·4 (2004):459-9° for an investigation of aesthetic statism in 1920S Mexico. Los de abajo was co-opted for use against the Contempcraneos in these debates }S ironic,
IS· My use of the term "cosmopolitan" here and below refers not to the strict political given Azuela's long history of trenchant criticism of the hypocrisy of politicos who used
sense of abolishing all existing states, or to the Kantian sense of a moral and legal obli- the Revolution to gain personal power. See Jorge Ruffinelli, "La recepcion crftica de Los de
gation, or to economic cosmpolitanism, which advocates a single global market. Rather, I abajo," in Mariano Azuela, Los de abajo, Edicion critica, coordinador, J. Ruffinelli (Mexico
use it in a looser cultural sense to indicate the Contemporaneos' conviction that national City: Colecci6n Archivos, 1988), especially pp. 204-9.
culture should serve as a means of entry into the world community. As I argue below, the 25· Sheridan, Mexico en 1932, p. 28.
Contemporaneos saw both a slavish devotion to European models and an exclusive adhesion 26. Manuel Gamio, "The Education of the Indo-Hispanic Peoples," in Aspects of Mexican

I
166

J
MEXICAN MURALI$M
NIETZSCHE CONTRA MARX IN MEXICO
Civilization (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1926),p. 52. Translation modified from
Lopez, Crafters of Nationhood, Chapter 4-
27. Camio, "The Educationof the Indo-Hispanic Peoples," p. 52, quoted in L6pez, Craft-
ers of Nationhood; Manuel Gamio, Forjando patria (MexicoCity: Porrua Hermanos, 19(6).
As Basave Benitez and Ana Maria Alonso note, Gamio represented the "indigenist pole"
of mestizo nationalism (Basave Benitez, paraphrased in, "Conforming Disconformity,"
p. 465). That is to say, Gamio argued not for a purely indio nation, but for a national ethos
that "forged" both the Latinand the indigenous races into one.
28. Gamio, "The Educationof the Indo-Hispanic Peoples," p. 52, quoted in L6pez, Craft-
ers of Nationhood.
29. See the appendix in this volume.
30. Sheridan paraphrasing the position of £l Universal Ilustrado during the 1925polemic.
Sheridan, Mexico en 1932,p. 36.
31. El Universal Ilustmdo, quoted in Sheridan, Mexico en 1932,p. 35.
)2. Villaurrutia, Obms, p. 1035. "Folkloric" in this sense refers to the traditional, rural,
and local, or regional (versusthe modern, urban, international, and cosmopolitan).
33. Villaurrutia, Obras, p. 1025.
34- On "revolutionary nationalism," see my chapter, "Muralism and the State in Post-
Revolutionary Mexico,1920-1970," this volume.
35· Jose Gorostiza, "Clasicos para niftos," Excelsior (March 22, 1925), quoted in Diaz
Arciniega, Querella, p. 92.
36. Rufino Tamayo, paraphrased in Rita Eder, "EImuralismo mexicano: modernismo y
modernidad," in Modernidad y modemizaci6n en el arte mexicana, 1920-1960 (MexicoCity:
Museo Nacional de Arte, 1991),p. 70.
37· In this regard, it shouldbe noted that the Contemporaneos distinguished Orozco and
early Siqueiros from Rivera'sutopian idealism, at least until events of 1932.
38. Samuel Ramos, "Lacultura criolla," Contemporaneos Nos. 38-39 (July-August, 1931):
64,63·
39· Samuel Ramos, "El suefio de Mexico-Diego," Contemporaneos V. VI, No. 21 (Febru-
ary 1930):II3-26.
40. Ramos, "Diego,"pp. n8, 119, 121, 124.
41. Cuesta, "Marx no era inteligente, ni revolucionario; tampoco socialista, sino contrar-
revolucionario )' mistico," (1935),in Cuesta, Obras, pp. 324-40.
42. Mexican Marxism's relationship to Catholicism is a complex issue deeply entwined
with Mexico's colonial past, its contemporary nationalism, and the development of its party
politics throughout the twentieth century. Perhaps most compelling in this regard is the
communist militant and writer, Jose Revueltas, whose conflicts with the Mexican Com-
munist Party in the 19405, belief in the revolutionary potential of the common man, and
rejection of Leninism for a more existentialist Marxism were intimately bound up with his
Catholicism. To a degree, Revueltas could be said to have bridged the opposition between
the muralists and the Coutemporaneos: he criticized the Party's dogmatism and its will-
ingness to participate in the Mexican state's "institutionalization" of the revolution, but
without forsaking Marxism. In turn, he emphasized the importance of inner experience
to any concept of social revolution, often couching this experience in religious symbolism.
168 MEXICAN MURALISM
Octavia Paz sympathetically described the "paradoxical character" of Revueltas' writing as
"a vision of Christianity within his Marxist atheism. Revueltas lived Marxism as a Chris-
tian and because of that he lived it ... as agony, doubt and negation." Paz, "Cristianismo
y revoluci6n: Jose Revueltas," in Paz and Luis Mario Schneider, eds., Mexico en fa obra de
Octavio Paz v. II: Generaciones y semblanzas (MexicoCity: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica,
1987), p. 575· Nevertheless, against the Contemporaneos' Nietzscheanism, Revueltas was
clearly committed to the young Marx's Hegelian emphasis on alienation and reappopriation
of our human essence. See Bruno Bosteels, "Hegel in Mexico: Memory and Alienation in
the Posthumous Writings by Jose Revueltas," South Central Review 2I.3 (Fall 20°4):48-49. I
The uproar caused by the I949 publication of RevueItas' Los dias terrenales, a severe critique
of the Mexican Communist Party, reveals how contentious the Marxism-Catholicism issue
II
is not just in Mexico, but throughout Latin America. See Edith Negrin, "Los dCasterrenales a I II
traves del prisma intertexual," and "Recepci6n crftica y pclemica en torno a Los dias terrenales
y HI cuadrante de la soledad," in Jose Revueltas, Los dias terrenales, edicion critica de Evodio
Escalante (Nanterre: ALLCAXX, 1991), pp. 276-91; Roger Bartra, "<Lombardo0 Revueltas?"
Nexos No. 54 (Mexico,June 1982). I thank Jose Falconifor helping me articulate this issue.
43· Cuesta, "Marx no era inteligente . P.325.
44· How successful Card~1l.S was, and the degree of independent agency allowed work-
ers and peasants, is an open debate. See l\Iamilton, The Limits of State Autonomy; Mary Kay
Vaughan, Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1930-1940
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997); Kevin J. Middlebrook, The Paradox of Revolu-
tion: Labor, the State, and Authoritarianism in Mexico (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1995); and Ben Fallaw, Cardenas Compromised: The Failure of Reform in Postrevolution-
ary Yucatan (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001) for a variety of assessments.
45· Claudio Lomnitz, "Ritual, Rumor, and Corruption in the Formation ofMexican Poli-
ties," in Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico. An Anthropology of Nationalism (Minneapolis: Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press, 2001), p. 151.
46. Cuesta, "El marxismo en el poder," Obras reunidas v. II. p. 342. A Marxist intel- II
lectual, Lombardo Toledano was leader of the powerful Confederation of Mexican Workers I
(CTM), closely allied with Cardenas. Although never a member of the Mexican Communist
Party, he was nevertheless a strong supporter of Stalin, especially after his I935 visit to
the Soviet Union. Bartra notes "the almost religious" character of Lombardo's nationalist
adhesion to the state, which differed so dramatically Doth from the Ccntemporaneos and
from Revueltas' faith in the redemptive power of Marxism as an expression of popular will.
Bartra, "~Lombardo a Revueltas?" n.p.
47· Dominguez, "Prclcgo.' p. 31.
48. See Alan Knight, "Cardenismo: Juggernaut or Jalopy," Journal of Latin. American
Studies, 26 (r994)73-107. When Cuesta was writing, the Spanish Civil War had not yet
started, and Cardenas had not yet embarked on his pronounced anti-fascist foreign policy,
which included aid to Republican Spain.
49· On Vasconcelos' fascism, see Claude Fell, Jose Vasconcelos: Los anos del aguila
(Mexico: UNAM, 1989) and Nicolas Cardenas and Mauricio Tenorio, "Mexico1920s-1940s:
Revolutionary Government, Reactionary Politics," in Fascism outside Europe: The European
Impulse against Domestic Con.ditions in the Dijfusion of Global Fascism, Stein UgelvikLarsen,
NIETZSCHE CONTRA MARX IN MEXICO 169
ed., (Boulder: Social Science Monographs; New York: Distributed by Columbia University resolutely separated all these from Marx. On existentialism in the context of this chapter,
Press, 200r). On LEAR, see Lourdes Quintanilla, riga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios see note 15 above.

(LEAR) (Mexico City: UNAM, 1980). 65· The Contemporaneos' reading of Nietzsche, of course, brings up the notorious prob-
50. The i30-30! group, quoted in Carlos Monsivais, Salvador Novo. Lo marginal en el cen- lem of the "aestheticization of politics" in which Nietzsche has constantly been linked o
tro (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 2000), pp. 75-76. critics to Nazism. Martin Jay teases out some of the pros and cons of this issue in "The
51. Sheridan, Mexico en 1932, p. 62. Aesthetic Ideology' as Ideology: Or, What Does It Mean to Aestheticize Politics?" Cultural
52. Charles Maurras, quoted in Sheridan, Mexico en 1932, pp- 71-72. Italics in the Critique N. 21 (Spring, 1992):41-61. It should be said that Cuesta and Ramos were hy far
original. the most sophisticated of the Contemporaneos in understanding both the benefits and the
53- On the Ateneo de la [uventud, see Horacio Legras, "EI Ateneo y los ongcncs del dangers of Nietzsche's thought. See also note 14 above, especially Kaiser, Romanticism, Aes-
estado eticc en Mexico," Latin American Research Review, V. 38, No.2, (20°3):34-60; Juan thetics, an.d Nationalism, on the concept of aesthetic statism.
Hernandez Luna, ed. Conferencias del Ateneo de la Juventud (Mexico City: UNAM, r9841· 66. Jose Gorostiza, "Morfologia de La rueca de aire," Con.temporaneos, No. 25, (June
54. See Cuesta, "Ulises criollo," "Replica a Ifegenia cruel," and "La ensenanza de Ulises." 1930): 243, 245, 242, z47, 248.
collected in Cuesta, Obms vols. I and II. See also Dominguez, "Pr6logo," pp. r6-17· Despite 67· Paz, "Contemporaneos," p. 101.
Cuesta's criticism, however, Reyes continued to act as mentor and collaborator with the Con- 68. Dominguez, "Prclogo," p. 27-
tempcraneos. publishing important essays in the journal. See Sheridan, Mexico en 1932, pp. 69· My paraphrase of Dfaz Arciniega, Querella, p. 92, note II{. Cuesta also attacked

49-55 nationalism predicated not on "Man, but on the Mexican; not on Nature, but on Mexico; not
55. For example, see Cuesta's critique, "Nietzsche y las psicologta." Dbms, p. 484. Vas- on History, but on its local anecdote." He further argued for the necessity of cultural graft
concept of the -abermenech" affected both his and transplant as a necessary part f any strengthening of national character. "La literatura
I I
concelos' unnuanced reading of Nietzsche's
I .
y el nacionalismo," Obras, p. 135.
deprecation of indigenous and popular culture and his later turn toward fascism.
56. Legras. "El Ateneo y los crfgencs del estado etico en Mexico," pp. 49-50. 70. Paz, "Contemporaneos," p. 100. \ I

57- Carlos Monsivais, "La toma de partido de Alfonso Reyes," Nueva Revista de FiloLog{a 71. Villaurrutia, Obras, p. 1°32.
Hispanica 37, No.2 (1989):516, quoted in Legras, "EI Ateneo y los origenes del estado etico 72. In the Galeria del Casino Bspanol. Siqueiros, Palabras de Siqueiros, ed. Raquel Tibol,
en Mexico," p. 5I. (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1996), p. 48.
58. Sheridan, in Mexico en 1932, p. 76, argues that Cuesta proposes differentiating 73· Siqueiros, "Rectificaciones sobre las artes plasticas en Mexico," in Palabms de
between a "national sentiment" and a "national conscience," the first being romantic and Siqueiros, p. Gr. In this somewhat convoluted argument, Siqueiros used this opportunity to
reductive, the second being open to the exterior and congruent with Mexico's mestizo and court the Conremporaneos for support in his growing differences with Rivera.
pluralistic culture. See also Jose Emilio Pacheco, "Jorge Cuesta y el clasicismo mexicano." 74· Published as an unsigned document: "Inrelectuales de vanguardia invitan a los
Revista de la Universidad de Mexico (April, 1965); Dominguez, "Pr61ogo." retrogrades a una lucha ideologies a campo rasa," El Nacional (March 26, 1932):6. Other
59· Dominguez, "Prologo." p. '9· FULCRE members included Silvestre Revueltas, German List Arzubide, Carlos Chavez, and
60. Jorge Cuesta, "Nietzsche y el nazismo" (I939), Obres. I am indebted to Dominguez, Luis Sandi. Ortiz de Montellano, Hector Perez Martinez, Agustin Yanez, Gorostiza, Pellicer,
"Pr610go," for this argument. See also Samuel Ramos' discussion of the Apolonian and Barreda, and Cuesta also expressed support ofFULCRE's manifesto.
Dionysian in Nietzsche. Ramos, Faosof{a de La vida arUstica (Mexico City: Espasa-Calpe 75· Marcial Rojas [a pseudonymn used by various members of the Contemporaneos]
Mexicana, 1950). "Netas de conversacion," Contemporcineos, 18 {November 1929):J35. Quoted in Sheridan, Los
61. Cuesta, "Nietzsche y el nazismo," p. 481; "Nietzsche y la psicologia" (1939), Obras, Coruemportineos ayer, p. 353.
P·484· 76. Tamayo, in particular, would capitalize on this equation of arte puro with individual
62. Cuesta, "Nietzsche y el nazismo," p. 481. freedom during the cold war, in which he allied himself with the anti-communist rheto-
63· Ramos, FilosofCade la vida artistica, p. 27. ric surrounding the abstract expressionists. See James ales, "The Howl and the Flame:
64· Ramos, Filosofta de la vida art{stica, p. 28. Stated this way, the Contemporaneos Tamayo's Wartime Allegories," in Diana Du Pont, ed., Tamayo: A Modern Icon Reinterpreted,
would seem to have much in common with Andre Breton's surrealism and also with aspects (Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2007), pp. 291-315. By the cold war, however,
of existentialism. The Contemporaneos certainly read Breton (and indeed, in his Filosof(a Tamayo had drifted very far from any (doubtful) attachment he may earlier have had to
Ramos ties liberatory release from logic to two surrealist favorites: dreams and drunken- the Contemporaneos aesthetic statism project. See Olivier Debroise, "Reaching Out to the
ness); nevertheless, their notion of human psychology was based much more in Ortega Audience: Tamayo and the Debate on Modernism," in Ou Pont, Tamayo: A Modern Icon
y Gasset, Bergson, and Nietzsche than in Freud; and, in contrast to the surrealists, they Reinterpreted, pp. 379-91, for a sharp assessment of the artist's fashioning of his reputation,

'70 MEXICAN MURALISM NIETZSCHE CONTRA MARX IN MEXICO ']1

 77. Ignacio Sanchez Prado argues similarly that the Contem~ora~eo~ sou~ht to "articu- 93· Literary scholar Joaquin Terrones argues, however, for a fundamental distinction
late a cultural practice that couldsimultaneously operate from an institutionalized structure between Paz and the Contemporaneos: unlike Paz, the latter almost always resolve anguish
and claim intellectual autonomy." Sanchez Prado, "Claiming Liberalism: Enrique Krauze, thro.ugh melancholy and humor. Gorostiza's Muerte sin fin, for example, begins with exis-
Vuelta, Letras Libres, and the Reconfigurations of the Mexican Intellectual Class," Mexican tential angst and the anxiety of drowning within one's skin but ends with a biting "Oh well,
StudiesJEstudios Mexicanos V. 26, NO.1 (Winter, 20IO):p. let's all go to hell then!" Author's personal communication with Terrones, July5, 20IO.
78. Cuesta, "Un mural de Diego Rivera" (no date), Obrcs, pp. 549-51. Dominguez 94- Paz, "Rufino Tamayo en 1a pintura mexicana," Mexico en la cultura No.103 (January
("Prologo," p. 57) notes that the essay was not published during Cuesta's lifetime. 21,1951), quoted in Medina, "Octavia Paz entre Duchamp y Tamayo," pp. 6-7.
79. Cuesta. "Un mural de Diego Rivera," p. 549· 95· As Cuauhtemoc Medina notes, however, for Paz, reactivation of the "sacred" in art
80. Cuesta, "Lapintura de Jose Clemente Orozco" (1934), Dbms, p. 230. was not an invitation to restore ancient civilizations, but rather a chance to share in the sense
81. Dominguez argues that Cuesta viewed Orozco as closest to his own Nietzschean of abandonment provoked by the failure of the communist project. Medina, "Octavia Paz
paradigm. Dominguez, "Prclogo."p. 60. entre Duchamp y Tamayo,"p. 7.
82. Cuesta, "Jose Clemente Orozco: cclasico 0 romantico?" (no date), Dbms, p. 556.
83. Cuesta, "Lapintura de Jose Clemente Orozco," pp. 229, 230.
84- As is well known, this problem had already produced a century of political and cul-
tural turmoil, as Mexico tried to define itself after its independence from Spain. See, for
example, Tomas Perez Vejo, Espana en ei debate publico mexicano (1836-1867): Aportaciones
para una historia de lfl naci6n (Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, 2008). On my use of
"existential," see note 16 above.
85. Xavier Villaurrutia, "Lapintura mexicana actual," Nuestro Mexico (November 1932):
76. Only in 1985 did Tamayofinally refute the myth of his indigenous origins. See Diana
Du Pont, "'Realistic, Never Descriptive': Tamayo and the Art of Abstract Figuration," in Du
Pont, ed., Tamayo. A Modern leon Reinterpreted, pp. 48-5°.
86. Xavier Villaurrutia, "Un cuadro de la pintura mexicana," Ulises V. I, No.6 (February,
1928):5-12; Celestino Gorostiza, "Una exposici6n de pintura moderna," Revista de revistas
(27October 1929):n.p.; Ortiz de Montellano, "La obra expresiva de Rufino Tamayo," Revista
de revistas (1926).
87· Cuauhtemoc Medina argues this point in relation to both Tamayo and Octavio Paz,
although he doesn't mention the influence of the Contemporaneos. Medina, "La oscilaci6n
entre el mito y la crttica': Octavio Paz entre Ducharop y Tamayo," unpublished paper deliv-
ered at The Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio (November 2003):8.
88. Paz, "Repaso en forma de preambulo" (1986) in Paz and Luis Mario Schneider, eds..
Mexico en La obm de Octavia Paz v. III: Los privilegios de la vista, (Mexico City: Fondo de
Cultura Economica, 1987),p. 28.
89· See Tamayo "El nacionalismo y el movimiento pict6rico," Crisci V. 9, No. 53(May I,
'933):275-81.
90. See Anthony Stanton, "Los Contemporaneos y el debate en torno a la poesra pura."
in Rafael Olea Franco and Anthony Stanton, eds., Los Cowemporaneos en ellaberinto de la
crftica (Mexico City: E1 Colegia de Mexico, '994), PP 27-44.
91. Juan Carlos Pereda, "Rufino Tamayo: El canto y la musica, 1933," in Miguel Angel
Echegaray, ed., La pintura mural en los centros de educaci6n de Mexico (Mexico City: Secre-
taria de Educacidn Publica, 2003): 83. Pereda documents the discontent Tamayo's mural at
first provoked among the students of the National School of Music (now the Coordinaci6n
Nacional de Arqueologia).
92. Xavier Villaurrutia, Nostalgia de la muerte (Buenos Aires: Sur, 1938).

'72 MEXICAN MURALISM

NIETZSCHE CONTRA MARX IN MEXICO
'73

______ cc+t _
 12
MURALS AND MARGINALITY
IN MEXICO CITY
The Case ofTepita Arte Aca

Leonard Foigarait

Four men sit on a street curb in the early afternoon. Their attention is fixed on the pass-
ing of traffic through the intersection of Heroes de Granaditas and Florida, ten blocks
north of the old city center in Mexico City. As the vehicles roll to a stop, the four men
run into the throng of cars. As they approach the drivers, the men lift short-handled
hammers and vigorously pound them through the empty air onto imaginary surfaces.
The signal changes to green and the hammer men return to their places on the curb.
This is a ritual of signs, which is1inderstood only in the context of this particular
intersection in Mexico City. Changing traffic signals are understood worldwide, but
here the red light sets off a unique response from the hammer men: they go into motion
on the red signal and stop on the green because only when the traffic is stopped can they
effect their purpose. The people in the cars understand what the hammering means
because it is happening here, in the center of the barrio (ghetto) ofTepito. Were it to hap-
pen elsewhere, the same gesture could produce panic. In Tepito, the behavior is a ritual,
which, when decoded as a sign operating in the code of this barrio, means something
quite particular and harmless.
As Florida Street continues north, the first block on the east side is filled with the
sound of hammers striking metal. The hammers are the same as those of the hammer
men. The wide heads now strike a real surface, that of the bent sheet metal of automo-
bile bodies.

This is a shortened and revised version of an article by the same title published in Art History Vol. 9. No. I

(March I986):S5-Tl-. All translations are by the author. All uses of the present tense refer to 1984.

229
 The function of the hammer men is now clear; to advertise the services of car body
repair shops in the barrio. The fake hammering represents real work, the advertise.
ment necessary to attract customers. A more careful look at the streetside hammer men
reveals their purpose and strategy, for they approach only those cars that need body
repair.

This chain of signification depends on the location of the body repair shops nearby
and on the general knowledge that this place, Tepito, is where one goes for repairs in
Mexico City, ofcar bodies and the entire automotive mechanical system. Tepitenos have
a reputation for being able to repair anything. They are described as fixers, who can put
things together.

The local workshop economy ofTepito, unique to Mexico City, gives it an economic
base coupled with a particular form of social and cultu ral behavior.
Standing on the side of the street where the auto shops on Florida are located and
looking across to the other side of that street, one sees the single mural painting that
covers the surface of a building from top to almost street level and fills its entire width
(plate 8).

The murals of Tepito are created by the group Arte Aca, which intends them to
FIGURE 12.1
function in specific ways. The walls ofTepito that the murals Covermark places where
Untitled, figure of a woman, arms held up,
professional occupations and distinct segments of social life intersect.
outside of cabinetmaker's shop. Photo was
There is a mural on the outside wall of a cabinetmaker's shop (figure 12.1). A single taken by Leonard Folgarait with verbal per-
figure, a woman in contemporary dress, stands, almost twice life-size, in a full frontal mission by the artists, [or inclusion in the
position, swaying slightly from the waist down. first appearance of this essay in Art History.

The woman's arms are held up and palms forward not for reasons of narrative, to Reprinted with permission.

suggest an act of surrender, or to serve any other symbolic function. This pose instead
asserts the flatness of the wall on which the image rests. It points to the materiality of
see both factors of a single sign, where signifier and Signified are both present, engaged
the mural's production as a major part of the content. The slight echo of the woman's
right arm cannot exist in any represented space but only on the flat wall, for this second. in a constant exchange of roles as each is both signifier and signified of the other, and

ary form, ghostly and reduced, can be seen only as a part of a process of imaging. unite in image, material, and purpose to form the second-stage signifier of another
sign, which has as its signified the entire cultural community ofTepito. In the end, the
The pose of the arms not only denotes the flatness of the wall in general, but the
woman is of the wall, but rather tIfa':, become a product of the modernist agenda to fuse
partIcular flatness of the wall as part of a building and the qualities of this specific
image and ground, she is sister to the women of the community who walk past her and
section of the wall. The arms, rectilinear and squared-off, define the space between
are of the wall as much as she is.
the two doorways by pointing to the height and width of that planar area. The perpen-
dicular configuration of the bent arms is a definite structure that refers to the general
rectangularity of architectural structure and also to the grid of the brickwork pattern, TEPITO'S DEFINING MARGINALITY
which is such a strong as t f thi . .
pee 0 IS Image. In this manner the artwork depends on
the available structural mat .. I d h b .' . I To speak ofTepito is to speak of marginality. The barrio has a long and complex history
..
Integnty of Tepito. erra an t ere y displays its dependence on the physica
that has given it a sense of otherness vis-a-vis the rest of the city.' As Cortes began the
The brickwork grid is a sg f II hi . . destruction of the ancient city, Tepito was left intact and allowed to continue as it had
1 n 0 a wa ,w ich IS part of an entire built environment In
which people work and Iiv Th ' bei . fh before the conquest of 1521. Cortes took little notice of Tepito because of its distance
e. e woman s emg IS as one with the wall because 0 er
from the city center and its political insignificance. Thus, from the beginning, Tepito
pose and her figural attitude. lf the wall is about people, then people have to be about the
has been marginal.
wall. The woman tells us about the wall and the wall tells us about the woman. Here we
As the city grew, urban planning projects changed the built environment. Neighbor-

230
CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURAlISM

MURALS AND MARGINALITY IN MEXICO CITY 231

 hoods disappeared and appeared; many residents were relocated or displaced. Tepito,
to an urban one; and of a highly complex relationship between these two conditions,
untouched on the whole by Mexico City's growth, became a common destination of
marked by ridicule and denial.
these newly homeless.
The motives of Arte Aca are geared to these issues, especially to the ever-present
Newly arrived migrants to the city also sought out Tepito as their first base of opera.
and worsening economic crisis in Mexico today that not only increases the already.wide
tions or as a permanent home. The barrio became a microcosm of the nation-a cross-
gap between rich and poor in Mexico, but also, according to Arte Aca, "radicaliz[es] the
section of those seeking shelter, work, and identity. Because all the Tepitenos were dif
cultural contradictions between the privileged people and the others." The Tepitenos
ferent. they were all the same, and this condition of difference and sameness stood as
are "committed to the investigation of strategies for the defense of the barrio and all its
an absolute difference from the rest of the city.
forms of work and life."·
Because of this barrio's unique history, it still has special qualities. It is, for instance,
Anthropologists such as Carlos G. Velez-Ibanez have investigated such issues in
the site of the great flea market of Mexico City. There are other and larger ones in the
another barrio of Mexico City, with results that apply to Tepito.? Although Velez-Ibanez
city, but this one is reputed to have the widest range and greatest availability of common
is correct in claiming that "the causes of marginalization and the factors preventing
and uncommon articles for sale and trade. The Tepito market overflows with used goods
such populations from becoming 'demarginalized' lie outside of and not within the pop-
and new goods, both authentic and black market, and with shoppers native or foreign.
ulations," the Tepitenos have defined themselves as marginal, and that self-definition,
The market and the repair shops have made the barrio a mecca for those in search of
in the end, saved them from a recent imposition from THE OFFICIALWORLD.
goods and services unavailable elsewhere. Mexico City depends on this marginal place,
and the hammer men know it. Another aspect of the self-generated marginality of Tepito is its attitude toward the
Spanish language. Tepitenos consider Spanish a foreign language, from another cul-
Daniel Manrique is the mural painter of Arte Ad .. His words-"In Mexico there
ture within Mexico, that of the mainstream bourgeoisie. They claim to have created a
are two worlds: ... The fictitious world is: THE OFFICIAL WORLD; the true world
new language, which includes such words as "aca" and "fiero"-or as Arte Ad puts it,
is: THE AcA WORLD"'-address the question at hand. By "THE AcA WORLD," he
'words that are understood only here [aca].'" A humorous cartoon by Manrique (figure
means Tepito and all that is like Tepito. Manrique has made marginality the point of
J2.2) shows a Tepito hammer man "fixing" the armor of an exhausted Don Quixote (the
this announcement, but ironically, for him "THE OFFICIAL WORLD" is marginal; it
is "fictitious" to AcA. Spanish language), who leans on the fender of a car, another object to be repaired."
This image insists on the congruence of labor and culture in Tepiro. The hammer man's
A quality of separation is carried by the word "aca." It means "here," or "this place,"
language is full of truncated words whose forms and use slide across and through the
but more idiomatically, "over here," as in "come over here." That ad. implies motion
rules of conventional Spanish.
and arrival means that it locates not only a point of arrival, but also another one left
I Other cultural factors separate Tepito from the rest of the city. The most popular
behind. Aca is an attitude or a behavior valued for its superiority Overthe banal. The
II most closely related English words belong to youth and countercultures: "hip" and "cool"
music heard in the barrio is either from the Caribbean or from the border between the
United States and MexicotNeither of these musical forms is typical of central Mexico,
are close to ad in meaning and in spirit. As Alfonso Hernandez, another member of
but Tepitenos have adopted the music of the geographical fringes of the nation, import-
Arte Ad, explains, the term connotes intimate comradeship, intentionally kept hidden
ing one form of marginality into another. That the art work of Arte Ad. has gained more
from mainstream society. The positions of both Manrique and Hernandez foreground
attention in countries such as France (an artists-in-residence exchange took place with
a marginal relationship to the official world. To apply the term "aca" to a group, to one's
Own group, is to accept otherness as a cultural strategy. the group Populart of Oullins, in 198)-84) and Canada (Arte Ad had commissions for
murals at several universities) than in Mexico gave the group further cause for a detach-
Tepito has long had a reputation for difference, for opposition to conventional society.
ment from their immediate national surroundings. As Arte Ad: writes, "We Tepitenos
Through the r950s and '960s, it had a "black legend" of desperate violence, a "cave of
are What we are because we have learned how to be that way; nobody else taught us."ll
thieves, prostitutes, [and] drug addicts ... and a dangerous Source of social infection."
el nero, as I have mentioned, refers to the collected population only through an indi-
The carriers of "social infection" have been called Tepitenos by outsiders, but to insid-
Vidual. It is never referred to in the plural. Arte Ad makes much of the point that its
ers, they are nero». nero (always in lowercase in Tepiteno usage) is another secret word,
members, ranging in number from four to six, are many people become one, el nero.
a shorthand subversion and disguise of compaFiero, or companion. For the Tepitenos
VeleZ-Ibanez again suggests why: "The Mexican social system ... is not closed to indi-
themselves, "HI nero is a person who was born in 1521 and since then has ridiculed all the
Viduals, but is closed to groups and to the masses of marginalized popuiations/'V This
attempts by the city.dwellers to deny his existence.'~ This self-definition speaks of only
has long been known of mainstream groups also, and most of Mexico's leaders have
one nero, a collective reduced to an individual; of a rural condition implied, as opposed
followed a similar pattern of breaking out of group identity and asserting power through

2)2
CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURALISM

MURALS AND MARGINALITY IN MEXICO CITY 233

 three electoral districts, each of which has nine candidates per election. This condition
p.l'qTt iio"o, 74~ 50si .. o
"". 4&,""'0" of many political mechanisms bearing down on a small population is unique to the city.
'fllo If~hq7tl. Tepito. both at the crossroads and at the edges of geo-political divisions, is all the more
lin .. (0",,,
",/tl4 0.1 marginal and expendable to mainstream politics. In the face of powerful forces of frag-
·$,."';;01_
CCl.f1T·/IIl'"
mentation, the Tepiteilos, so talented at repair, have cobbled together a singular politics
and culture that bypass official entanglements and that resist official marginalization.
Marginality, however, persists as a concept in Tepito. Locals say, for instance, that
"Mexico is the Tepito of the world" and refer to the barrio as' "the little planet Tepito.e"
in each case enlarging the scope and physical size ofTepito, but alwaysin a context that
makes it insignificant and demarcates it from its surroundings.

ARTE ACA AND THE DEFENSE OF COMMUNITY

FIGURE 12.2
Arte Ad. began in 1972 with four members. IS Only Daniel Manrique remains from the
Untitled, a man ofTepita fixing the armor
of Don Quixote, ink on paper (1983). Photo
original group. The current (in '984; see note at the beginning of the chapter) roster
was taken by Leonard Polgarait with verbal consists of four core members, including Carlos Placencia, Alfonso Hernandez, and
permission by the artists, for inclusion in Carlos Ortiz. This group now includes the painter Manrique; Plancencia and Hernan-
the first appearance of this essay in Art dez are writers, organizers, and charged with public relations, and Ortiz is a photodocu-
History. Reprinted with permission. menter and sometime painter.
The group has no headquarters or formal organization, nor do they have a leadership
structure, and there is allegedly no hierarchy of power. Decisions are made according to
an unspoken consensus, a process that they claim typifies political behavior in Tepito
personal charisma. That this rule applies systematically to all groups in Mexican soci-
itself. Group members feel no overriding obligation to official leaders as individuals
ety is a new finding and is entirely to the point in regard to et nero. In the Tepitenos'
but trust in the collective political intuition of the barrio. All of the current members
maneuverings to gain the attention of the regime and to effect their purpose, they have
ofArte Ad are of working-cJass origin, with Placencia and Hernandez the only ones to
habitually, in their political practice in Mexico, represented their collective interest in
the person of the singular nero. have continued their education beyond grade school. Manrique is the only one who has
formally studied his craft, at the Ministry of Public Education School of Painting and
The painter Manrique has said that this barrio is the "consequence" of "Tierra y Lib-
Sculpture in Mexico City, popularly known as La Esmeralda. He attended this school's
ertad (Land and Freedom),"13the battle cry of Emilia no Zapata, leader of peasant armies
Special Studio for Worker.,¥at night. Previous to and concurrently with his Arte Ad
during the Revolution of r91O· The direct connection to Zapata's demands links Tepito
activity, he is a lathe operator by trade.
to the tradition of the exalted revolutionary leader's untarnished heroism and explic-
itly challenges the "rev 1 ti "'. . The formation of Arte Aca was no chance grouping of "artists" around an aesthetic
o U ionary regime currently In power. Manrique can be said to
agenda. It began as part of a strategy by the members to oppose a threat to Tepito's
identify with a mass movement embodied in a dynamic individual, an identification
eXistence. In the year 1972 city officials announced Plan Tepito, a design to demolish
so powerful that it labeled Zapata's every follower a Zapatista. ei Fierowould attempt to
buildings in Tepito and to replace them with high-rise housing. The Tepitenos saw the
duplicate Zapata's representation of his followers. Given the nature of Mexican politics,
Plan as an attempt to displace the barrio with the very model of an appropriated and
this is the only choice available to the Tepitefios. Most important, however, the Zapata
slogan neatly points to 1: ito' '. d ciVillydomesticated neighborhood. What was at stake was the loss of a barrio and of a
epi 0 s two roam concerns-Its physical environment (the Ian
ofTepito) and its freedom-that are worth identifying and defending. unique culture. Arte Aca was formed in reaction to this threat.
The response to Plan Tepito was straightforward. Arte Ad intended to convey to city
Were. It not for the coherence that el nero as the singular Tepitefio gives the barrio,
theoffi 1 Iiti h . . planners the Tepitenos: extreme alarm about the Plan, and to propose a counter-plan for
" CIa po ttics t at govern this area would splinter its identity as a whole. Tepito IS
the improvement, rather than the destruction, of'Iepito. Arte Ad commissioned a study
dIvIded geographically into two major political delegations. It is further segmented into
of the barrio and devised a plan by which to restore and improve the existing structures.

234
CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURALrSM
MURALS AND MARGINALITY IN MEXICO CITY 235
 In 1979, this counter-proposal won honorable mention at a UNESCO·juried urban plan.
purposeful as cultural strategy, rather than in their subject matter. The question is not,
ning competition. The city government shelved its plan, but as of the mid'198os (and
what do the murals depict? but what do the murals do; how do they behave? According
even 2012), the counter-proposal has not been realized.
to Hernandez:
It is fair to say that Tepito is a street culture. Store fronts and workshops spill out the
wares, equipment, a~d activities from the buildings that house them onto the street,
The murals mark a territory, which makes one feel the need and spirit to defend it. The
blurring the distinction between inside and outside. The street surfaces are encroached
murals ... are there, interrogating everyone's level of consciousness, replacing plastic
upon by this behavior. Only on the major boulevards does this activity stop at the curb,
discourse with a dialogue from skin to skin .... a superimposed set of skins covering a
but the hammer men invade even that space. The idea that architecture and the built single heart. ... The reality of the neighborhood is made into an act of presence.
environment define and compartmentalize people and behavior does not operate in .. The art is a pretext for social action. There is a correspondence between the skins
Tepito. Rather, commercial and social behaviors subvert the segregating function of of walls and the skins of people. The murals have an ephemeral quality,but they direct
buildings and streets by crossing through them with a singular and unifying effect. attention to things more important than artY
Tepitenos consider architecture something that, because of "its use, changes its orig-
inal physiognomy by force of necessity"" and strengthens human relations. Buildings
And Carlos Ortiz says, "The mural exists, as does the wall, the space, and the
are for storage and provide shelter in bad weather. Life and work happen outside when.
people.""
ever possible. Alfonso Hernandez maintains that such a culture resists the alienation
Arte Ad does not consider the murals conventional art, art that has a metaphorical
produced by a built environment that functions normally. To him, the life ofTepito is
"in the street, of the street, and with the street."? relationship to its subject matter, distanced by style. For Arte Aca, the murals, instead
of reflecting or repeating the figures they depict, are as one with their subject, sharing
This is the context in which the Arte Ad. murals exist. They attract attention to
the same "skin" because they have a "single heart." At times, "because Manrique paints
themselves as images and at times seem to draw attention away from the wall that is
so fast, one gets the feeling that the figures were always there and that he is waking
their support. Arte Aca has given the walls this flexibility of presence and purpose, more
them.'? Here Hernandez explains how Manrique "fixes" the walls, making them look
reason to lose their materiality and to become one with the flow of sameness of identity
and work as they are intended to, letting them reach their potential. That fixing differs
that travels through and in spite of the walls, and, as Ortiz has said, "changers] the qual.
ity of the attention given to the walls."I8 little from the activity of the auto body menders, finding and bringing forth the original
perfection of form in the dented and bent steel. For Arte Aca, Manrique is not an artist
On the other hand, as the buildings were always neutral backgrounds to the street
but a worker who elicits the best from a given situation.
life in Tepito, as ground against which people move, the painted figures in the murals
Arte Ad intends the murals not to be art at all, but an emphasis on or expansion of
make the wall as supporting ground explicit, in that because these figures are on the
the given context. By reducing the importance of content and style they keep art close
walls, they could not exist without them. Many of the painted figures are modeled after
recognizable Tepitefios, furthering this fusion of painted life and real life. I' ro the street culture and keep the street from becoming a museum, with its passive and
contrQlled audience. For that reason they 'do not title the murals, which are known only
What does Manrique paint and why? Arte Aca answers that question obliquely: "He
by their street adtl'ress, such as Florida 53, assuming an identity given only by designa-
paints a communication with the people"; "one thing is what can be seen, and another
tions of a real place in the community, rather than by some grand title.
is what one can begin to understand"; "it is not important what was painted, only that
it was painted"; and "the significance is the presence of the artistic ac1."20Arte Aca has Arte Aca paints murals on buildings at the request of the owners of shops or of'hous-

chosen not to speak of context or theme, unlike other producers of art and culture.
ing residents. The group is not paid for its work, except for the cost of materials, but on
occasion it accepts goods or services. The murals, as a part of and an extension ofTepito
When Arte Aca explains what the murals are not about, they distance the question of
subject matter but point to a different content, the negation of one cultural position and CUlture,cannot intrude upon or make demands on what they are already a part of; they

the protection of another. Hernandez explains that the murals are "not like the work of can only elaborate Tepito on its own terms. They can make more visible or more present

the great muralists, not about history; they are about presence rather than theme, and what is already there. covering all in a common skin. To Hernandez, muralism has been

they are not located in official places ... [Arte Ad) is against the House of Culture and
for culture in the houses. Manrique wants to demystify the idea of a great work of art
and of a master."21
To Arte Aca, the meaning of the murals is in how the very making of the murals is
the group's "best intervention into the question of cultural space."! The Tepitefios have
to'dCOllSI er muraJlsm,
. as a form of culture, in these terms-not as an aest heti
etic pro duc t ,
but as part of the dynamic of street life. Murals have to be part of the great continuum
of the aca world. In r982, an officer of the Ministry of Culture, noting that the work of
Arte Aca "becomes significant in an explicitly political context,"" recognized the impcs-

236 CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURALISM

MURALS AND MARGINALITY IN MEXICO CITY 237

 sibility of separating the murals' art from their politics. As Arte Ad. has written, "Here
we defend the home, the yard, and the street, because the intimate relationship between
these gives Tepito its consciousness of neighborhood and communirg'w There is one
instance of an Arte Ad. mural painted on a wall that crosses the official border with a
neighboring barrio. It was located there to link communities otherwise officially and
arbitrarily divided within the same cultural geography,

MURALS IN TEPITO: MEANING AND NECESSITY

Two remaining murals replesent aspects of contemporary Tepito, In the first (figure
12·3), a mother and father offer a supportive farewell to their son. The narrative is not
simple, however, and it is unclear that the son will ever leave the class-determined life of
his parents. If we read right to left, from the mother to the son, a different sense of the
story unfolds. The arms of the mother reach out and away from her body in expansive
gestures, implying strength. The father's arms define a smaller space and a reduction FIGURE 12.3 (left)
of motion, his left arm brought in and his right arm downward on his son's shoulder. Untitled, family of three. Photo was
taken by LeonardPolgarait with
Both of the son's arms are brought in and against his body, making him the figure least
verbal permission bythe artists, for
capable of assertively presencing himself There are forces that bring him back to the
inclusion in the firstappearance of
right, to the family. One is the father's grip on his shoulder. The son's own right arm. this essay in Art History. Reprinted
moreover, directs the viewer's eye and his own body back to the right. Also, the son's with permission.
hands are of particular interest. His own right hand is flexed oddly, almost as if strained
unnaturally, and his left one is weighed down by the hammer he holds, anchoring him
to the spot on which he stands. The colored bands of the background wrap around his
head and pull him back to the right.
The fate of the young man is compromised by his condition of vulnerability. His
nudity signals his lack of defense against the world. The only item he "wears," the ham.
mer, carries all the powers of identity needed here. The mural's pessimistic message is
that the class into which the son has been born offers him no preparation to leave it. On
the contrary, it leaves him naked and puts into his hands the sign of the hammer men.
The heavy tool-and all it represents-pulIs his arm down, limits his spatial and class
mobility, and fixes him to this time and place.
The lettering on this wall reads "TEPlTO ARTE ACA-EL NERO EN LA CULTURA,"
the motto of Arte Aca that here also serves as caption for the mural. el nero is born into
this culture and cannot be removed from it. It is known that most Tepitenos never leave
the barrio. It is also known that in no other part of the city can carrying such a hammer
be as meaningful as it is in Tepito. The worker who puts things together also keeps the
social structure together by staying home.

The last mural I consider shows several nude male figures in a scene of large
machine. like forms (figure r2-4). The subject seems to be, simply, men at work. FIGURE 12.4

Steel pipes attached to the wall mark the top of the painted scene. Manrique has Unn·.1ed , male figures at work in a machine environment. Ph oto was ta ken by LeonardFolgarait
. with
extended these real pipes, painting them illusionistically, into the scene of the mural. verbalpermission by the artists, for inclusion in the first appearance of this essay in Art H~story.
Reprinted with permission.

238 CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURAL!SM

 men. The workers are too much like the objects they work on for viewers to imagine
them as separate. Because of this overlap, the machines are humanized and the human
workers mechanized. If one or the other part/party were absent, the system would fall
apart and neither partner would survive. Only the unity of the two in the image gives
them purpose and meaning.
The real sheets of metal that are applied to the wall belong to many places at once,
both literally and figuratively. They are figuratively part of the imaged workers, part of
the illusionary space they occupy, and part of the actual wall. They literally come from a
metal factory and figuratively go to, as their destination (in our notions of what they are
"really for"), a finished metal structure. They are the end point of an imagined trajectory
begun by the real pipes-real material has gone back to real material, sandwiching the
imaged space and labor in-between. The final reality of the metal sheets is in the physi-
cal manufacture of the mural, the labor of Manrique, who applied the metal to the wall.
Manrique is the real worker here, making an image out of wall and paint, and using the
FIGURE 12.5
material put in place by other workers.
Detail of Figure 12·4· Photo was taken by Leonard Polgarair with verbal permission by the artists, [or In this way Manrique as an artist becomes part of the working-class culture ofTepito.
inclusion in the first appearance of this essay in Art History. Reprinted with permission.
He depicts workers putting together pieces of metal, as he works the metal to produce
.
an object. the mural. He becomes what he always was, an artist/war k er.28
And the murals, born there from internal necessity. behave as extensions and asser-
They Connect to parts of the machinery, thereby linking actual objects and systems of tions of a message that was already there in Tepito,

functional and material life to the imaged world worked by the nude laborers. Whereas
the actual pipes drew no notice on the wall before the mural was painted, the pipes- THE TEPITO MURALS, STRATEGIC PLAN AND SURVIVAL
banal objects of everydaylife-are now given a reason to be looked at, rather than simply
seen. Now viewers must consider their purpose and follow the pipes to the interior of Had Plan Tepito been realized, the city planners would have transformed the barrio

these buildings, the workshops and living rooms to which they bring light and power. The completely. The Plan included the razing of six square blocks, demolishing 1,400 build-
pipes become meaningful in the mural, but only because they were already there, on and ings, and placing 400 families in temporary housing. Only 556 structures would have
part of the wall, This wall dictated, because of its specific material properties, what could replaced the old, leaving hundreds of familiJ' homeless. Tepito, as a result, would no

be painted on it. The mural completes and "wakes up' the wall and the people it refers to. longer exist. Nor would its cottage industry account for 55,percent of the local economy,

For this reason the work performed by the men is abstract. Had it been recognizable Or its street merchants for 25 persent, or its storefront shops for 20 percent. Arte Ad
work performed on identifiable machines, its specificity would have detracted from the was successful in stopping Plan Tepito. What role did their murals playin tbeir strategy?
concrete qualities the pipes and the wall had before the mural was painted. The image There is law in Mexico that protects any mural painting from destruction. Thus walls
conSIders the wall(building/community as a bundled whole. It is there to be looked bearing mural paintings in Tepito could not have been torn down. In light of Arte Aca's
through rather than looked at, as something whose meaning, separate from the wall, we cOunter-Plan of Improvement, which was intended to bolster the local economy, improve
should not try to figure outr i t d h ld fi . . housing, and encourage community life, the murals can be seen-in style, content, and
, Ins ea we s ou gure In the Image as a supplement to
the wall and its larger context. function_as a strategic contribution.

Pipes sometimes enter the bodies of these workers and sometimes the body parts The story ofTepito, Arte Aca, and the murals is one of survival. All the players of this

become gray and smoothly machine·like, as in the bowed head of the figure on the right story survived because the artists carefully assessed the crisis at hand and developed

and the fingers of the right hand of the central figure in this detail (figure 12.5). The a strategy that anticipated every contingency. But Arte Ad. went further. Rather th~n

men, rather than work the machines, are part of the machine system. The pipes that import a foreign theory or behavior or change the habits of their culture, they built
feed the machines feed th w k A . . upon what they had and expanded the real power of Tepito with the symbolic power of
e Or ers. s machmes wear no clothes, neither do machine-
the murals. The murals imaged and expanded upon what was already there, because

CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURALJSM

MURALS AND MARGINALITY IN MEXICO CITY

 barrio

13
the .integrity of the would be protected only if no basic chang e was rna d e In
. Its
.
socio-cultural structure. As David Adams writes about barrio culture , "Th e M eXlcan
.
people. . will find solutions to survival, and ... these solutions may not be h
p nners... hd'
~ 'd"m
a In mine. And, as an Arte Ad. poster reads, "tepito 51." wah

RADICAL MESTlZAJE
NOTES
IN CHICANOjA MURALS
M 1. Carlos
8 Ortiz, historian of Tepito and member of Arte Aca ' In . In
. tervi .
erview with author
ay 19 4- Unless otherwise indicated, all of the historical material comes from thi '
2 Daniel Manri
.
. h" "
nnque, m IS Ensayo Pa' Balconear al Mexicano Desde un Punta d V' .
15 Source Holly Barnet-Sanchez
muy A
M . c ,.
a·' III 3:
R'I B .
~Jar Navarro, EI Mexicano-aspectos
e ista
culturales y psicosociales, jrd ed
1 extco
page
CIty: Universidad Nacional AutOnoma de
233.
Mexico
'
1983) ..'
, pp. 201-37, quote IS from

3- el nero en Lacultura, p. 6 . P use

bli h d iIn Mexico City, no date but probably 1984. Here.
after indicated as el nero.
4. el nero, p. 2.
5· el nero, p. 5.
6. el nero, p. 5.
7· Carlos G Velez- Ibanez R'/ I if M . .
Urban Central ~e . 6' .. i ua s 0 argmallty: Politics, Process and Cultural Change in
8 VAl b _ XICO, '9 9- 974 (Berkeley: University of California Press r983)
1
• t; ez-I anez, p. 18. ' .
9· el aero. p. 5. Chicano/a mestizaje has its roots in the historically based and discursively constructed
10. An illustration for el nero, p. 1. mixture that defined the racial, cultural, and national identity for post- Revolutionary
II. el nero, p. 5. Mexico.' On the one hand. it connoted conquest, colonization, subjugation, and racism.
12. Velez-Ibanez, p. 22.
On the other, it set forth the idea of a new people-La raza de bronze (the bronze people),
13· Manrique, p. 232.
a term derived from Mexican philosopher Jose Vasconcelos' 1925 essay, La Raza cos-
14· el nero, pp. 5 and 4.
mica-with concomitant new ways of being that drew from multiple histories and cul-
15· The history of Arte Ad comes from h ,. .
dez and from the pages of el nero. t e author s interviews with Ortiz and Hernan- tures.! Chicano/as expanded their own identity as mestizo/a to include in the mixture

16. el nero, p. 8. their many decades of being American in the United States. They extended their own

17· Interview. complex identities through an acknowledgment of belonging to the greater American
18. Interview. hemisphere.' As literary scholar Rafael perez·Torres' notes, mestizaje in the Americas
19· Convivir, mimeograph self. ublishe '. has become "both a metapho and the precondition for cultural production in the 'New'
20. Hernandez and Ortiz . t P . d by Populart In Ouilins, 1983, p. II.
, In ervrews. World ... a thematic and formal marker of identity."
2 I. Interview. Chicanoja mestizaje. however, moved in a counter-direction from that of the Mexican
22. Interview. version, In Mexico, the process of encouraging mestizaje as a form of social engineer-
23- Interview. ing began in the nineteenth century, in an effort to physically and culturally assimilate
24· Hernandez, interview. the Indian." This same process was re-engaged in the 19205 by the post_Revolutionary
25· Interview.
government, exemplified by the work of Vasconcelos, as Minister of Public Education
26. Convivir, p. I. the
(1922-24), and in his famous essay (19251. Mestizaje, and its corollary, indigenismo-
27· Convivir, p. 4.
theory and practice of privileging ancient indigenous civilizations and traditions in the
28. el nero, p. 3.
national foundational imaginary-served to position the Indian securely in {he past
29· From the foreword to Velez -Ibanez, p. x.;>;

and the mestizo as the new universal man of the future.6 "If, then, mestizaje in Mexico

243
CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES
TO MURAllSM
 of African American artists of the '950s. It set the precedent for the early black civil
represents a flight from the Indian," writes Perez-Torres, "we might think of Chicanalo]
rights murals initiated in 1967 by William Walker and others of Chicago and the
mestizaje as a race toward the Indian.'? Or, as journalist Ruben Salazar wrote in 1970,
early Chicano/a murals in Chicago, Denver, and California." Mexican muralists were
"A Chicano is a Mexican American with a non-Anglo image of himself."
The whole-hearted embrace of mestizaje as the Chicano identity by activists, artists, acknowledged, studied, and sometimes emulated-especially by Chicano/a artists
because of the monumentality of their artistic accomplishments that were perceived as
educators, and philosophers was a double-barreled attack. It fought against the privi-
making a real difference in the reconstruction of a nation after a decade of revolution.
lege and power of the Anglo-European mainstream within the United States, and it
These were understood to be heroic acts. The foregrounding of indigenous peoples and
also rejected the trajectories of their Mexican American elders who chose the route of
assimilation into not only an Anglo-American nation, but also its culture. It was an act mestizos who were peasants and members of the working class in Mexican murals

of profound, if complicated affirmation, moving toward the Indian on the one hand, resonated for artists seeking to help construct the identity, ethos, and ideologies of

while often erasing the existence of contemporary Native Americans on the other." Pur-
chicanismo.14 Mexican murals, therefore, occupy a central position in a critical history
of the Chicano/a mural movement that is well documented but not always adequately
thermore, it served to collapse considerable differences within Chicano/a communities
nationwide. Thus on the one hand, in the early, nationalist period of the movimiento examined. The nature of that centrality is still being analyzed and debated by artists

(1965-72), Vasconcelos' phrase itself-Ia ,aza cosmica-rather than the fullness of its and scholars.
Critics and art historians have frequently used point-by-point comparisons between
implications, became a potent rallying cry for the creation of a vision of a heroic new
Chicano nation, and even for a future led by the bronze continent with Chicanos at the Mexican and Chicano/a murals as the basis for establishing a binary set of measures to

forefront.'? ascertain what Chicano/a murals have achieved or failed to accomplish vis-a-visMexican

On the other hand, most writers, artists, critics, and scholars used mestizaje as a murals." These measures posit the considerable accomplishments of Mexican murals

different kind of construct. Rather than providing a focus on a heroic utopian future, it as the most significant baseline by which to gauge the informal, yet wide-ranging,

became a strategic mechanism by which they could separate themselves conceptually national mural project undertaken by Chicano/a artists. There are no comparable stud-

and practically from the United States mainstream, a means of critical engagement ies available, however, to assess the legacy of Mexican murals for the more far-reaching

with complexity, and with issues of race, ethnicity, class, and gender. It also became a international community murals movement, of which Chicano/a murals are definitely

quotidian practice of self-presentation, a statement of the place from which one views a part. This inclusive community-based framework actually places Chicano/a murals

the world and presents one's self. In murals, it became the base from which Chicano/a at some categorical remove from Mexican murals and provides a sufficiently different

artists operated as Chicano/as; they complicated and radicalized this position by their frame of reference to make it clear that Chicano/a and Mexican murals are as compa-

use of code switching in form, theme, and content to visualize qualities and aspects of rable as apples and oranges.
the Chicano experience." Such a comparison between the Mexican murals of the r9'os through the '940S and
.' f
Radical rnestizajeis, therefore, about the production of new meaning, about the cre- the international community murals movement does, however, renew appreclauon a

ation of a counter-discourse that has the capacity to refuse the erasure inherent in the the fixed nature of those earlier, now official murals; it reminds us that what is now per-

original Chicano and Mexican formulations of the concept.'? Murals stand out as one of mitted in Mexico to be considered a Mexican mural was frozen during those decades."
the predomi nan t manttestattons
.c . 0 f the broad and vaned
. corpus of Chicanoja visual art There has never really beerr'a flourishing Mexican community murals movement or

that both constructs and embodies a radical mestizaje that both takes for granted and the acknowledgment of one, although there have been street murals painted there since
di .' t entions These
privileges mixed-race identities. It romanticizes the past while also offering a critique. It t he early 1970s-as overtly counter-cultural, counter- iscursive ill erv .
foregrounds the deleterious effects of racism on the one hand and the value of Chicano/a murals are now just beginning to be studied in depth.'? As an alternative to approaches
. .' d ts it may be fruitful to
mixed identities and cultures on the other. Through radical mestizaje, Chicano/a murals that see k to compare Chicano/a murals WIth Mexican prece en , ..
.' . b hi h attributes and qualities
c.onnect Mexico to the United States, bring the past into the present, and join the prac- propose t h e concept of a radical mesttzaJe as a process Yw ic
nee of art to political and social activism. Radical mestizaje as practice and trope offers of Mexican murals were incorporated into and transformed by Chicanoja murals, as

us a vehicle to better understand the ways in which Mexican murals have affected both seen in the close readings below. .
.., I l in it t'cularities and vanable
the form and content of Chicano/a murals, and to more effectively tease out how those Chi canota mural painting is national scope, oca In 1 s par I
III ' .
. . ..' 11 h d of murals were painted
influences have been appropriated, transformed, and sometimes, rejected. Overtime and terntory. Beginnmg m 1965, litera y t ousan s .
thr . b d 18 M lists participated ill
The legacy of Mexican murals in both Mexico and the United States inspired the oughout the United States' new ones contmue to e rna e. ura
' I . '. the national Chicano
Works Progress Administration (WPA) of the r930s and '940s, as well as the work th e construction of differing but interconnected co lective actions:

RADICAL MESTIZAJE IN CHICANO/A MURALS

'45
'44 CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURALISM
civil rights and art movements," as well as the international community mural move- Mario Moreno.27 The Teatro created its own pelado transformed into a Chicano." the

ment, as noted above.2oThese artists engaged in both community-based art making and farmworker Don Sotaco, scrappy and victorious against the growers and the Teamsters

art-based community making." Chicano/a artists re-examined and critiqued American in the aetas and in the Maleriado cartoons of Andy Zermeno." Thus several elements of

history by reinserting Mexican muralism into their own contemporary practice and into Chicano/a art are present from these beginnings: a reliance on vernacular and popular

American art history as a legacy of their combined Mexican and American heritage. culture, a grounding in both American and Mexican social mobilizations and cultural

Furthermore, the artists believed that the Mexican American residents of barrios and practices, a belief in the value of the arts as activist intervention.P and an understand-

eolonias (urban neighborhoods and rural communities) deserved their own monumen- ing of the importance of performance to get people'S attention and make a point. Cesar

tal art. In the broad politicized context of the Mexican American experience, Chicano/a Chavez called the march his art form, a concept echoed by Luis Valdez,who wrote of
murals embody the multiple, simultaneous, and shifting positions of Chicanoja cul- the march as theater."
ture formulated by the artists and by writers such as Luis Valdez and Gloria Anzaldua, By r967, the Teatro Campesino separated from the UFW, moved to Del Rey in the
and articulated by scholars such as Rafael Perez-Torres and Ram6n Saldivar, among Central Valley of California near Fresno, and established a cultural center. The fol-
others." A close reading of four early murals demonstrates strategies and qualities of lowing year, the Fresno artist Antonio Bernal painted The Del Rey Mural on the two
radical mestizaje for making both meaning and form within the contexts of the Chicano exterior walls flanking the entrance to the center (figures '3·' and ,pi, one ofthe first
civil rights and arts movements. Chicanoja murals." Although it is frequently cited and reproduced, it deserves a careful
examination to better understand the several connections made by the Chicano/a move-
ment between the ancient Mesoamerican past and the Chicano/a present, and between
MESTlZA)E IN AN EARLY CHICANO MURAL
Mexico's revolutionary legacy and contemporary civil rights efforts in the United States.

In the fall of '965, a number of young farm workers and activist teatristas, including Each mural panel is on a different street of this corner building, so that it is virtually

Luis and Danny Valdez, founded the Teatro Campesino in Delano, California, with the impossible to see or photograph the two walls simultaneously. Nonetheless, they form
full support of Cesar Chavez.P The Teatro's first efforts were announced on November a single triangular mural requiring the viewer to walk around it to experience its full

2, in a leaflet distributed among the farm workers associated with the newly established impact. The halves are brought together by their location, by the activities of the Teatro
United Farm Workers (UFWI and its strikes against growers in the Central Valley of Campesino members in their cultural center, and by the viewer. This very early work of

California. It called for volunteers to participate in a new farm workers' theater designed Chicano/a art brings viewers' attention to murals as performance. In terms of the idea
to be of movement and mestizaje in Chicano/a art, it became apparent that murals' scale and
placement allowed them to function both in and between artistic/social categories and
Of, by, and for the men and women (and their families) involved in the strike .... The practices.
social and human themes emerging from the strike are at least as great and as deep A procession or a loose grouping of pre-Columbian male Maya/Aztec warriors and
as they were during the strikes and social movements of the 19305. It is time the Raza dignitaries led by a young woman occupy the panel \0 the left of the door." The figures
landed the artistic blow it is well capable of giving, as witness the revolutionary arts of are mostly in profile, facing jhe building's entrance, while the woman who faces them
Mexico.>' . 1 ., t fthe ancient
appears to be dancing. The figures are presented m a sty e rermmscen 0
Maya fresco cycle at Bonampak (e. 800)-" If this site was indeed a source for Bernal,
This effort to found a community-bassd improvisational theater is often cited as a it draws ancient murals and performance into similar contemporary forms, thereby

major catalyst for an explosion of Chicano/a arts that was already in preparation.P By creating historical precedents and legacies and giving legitimacy to Chicano/a art forms.
.
1t a 1so demonstrates the relevance of ancient b I' edt' es for Chicanojas as
the early 19605, visual, literary, and performing artists who came to call themselves e iers an prac lC
Chicanoja were looking in their Mexican American homes and communities to see philosophical and theoretical underpinnings specifically of the Teatro Campesino, as
"what we had produced that could be called art,"" and they were traveling to Mexico to we lIe"asror elements
. h d
of the larger CIVIlng ts an
nts 35 Luis Valdez and
arts moveme .
. . .' 1 d philosophy as integral
learn that country's history and to claim their cultural patrimony. oth er participants embraced pre-Columbian poetry, ntua , an .
The Teatro's founders drew upon their antecedents of the '930S as models. They to their Chicano/a spiritual and activist worldview."
· the early poem about
~ehe~on the Carpa (Mexican and Mexican American tent theater) traditions of travel- Per h aps another important source for the De L Rey M ura I IS .'

mg ImprO~iSational troupes, often featuring a character akin to the pelado figure- cultural affirmation, "Yo Soy Joaquinjl Am Joaquin," written as a form of agitprop m
b e J stice in Denver. By
perfected m the movie performances of Cantinflas. the beloved character created by r9 6 7 y Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales, founder of the Crusa de tor u

247
246 CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURAllSM RADICAL MEST!ZA)E IN CHICANO/A MURALS
 FIGURE 13.1 FIGURE 13.2
Antonio Bernal. The Del Rey Mural, right panel, Teatro Campesino Cultural Center, Del Rey, Cali-
Antonio Bernal. The Del Rey Mural, left panel, Teatro Campesino Cultural Center, Del Rey, Cali-
fornia (1968), destroyed. Photograph by Robert Sommer, reproduced with permission of EI Teatro
fornia ([968), destroyed. Photograph by Robert Sommer, reproduced with permission of El Teatro
Campesino. Courtesy or Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino. and Robert Sommer. Campesino. Courtesy of Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino, and Robert Sommer.

March of r967, the Teatro Campesino had adapted the text for a film, released in r969. the Del Rey Cultural Center participated in the marches organized by the UFW and
The poem ties the character of joaquin (the Everyman Chicano protagonist) to the entire other civil rights organizations throughout the United States. As Valdezwrote in r97',
history of Mexico-indio and Spaniard, good and evil. Furthermore, the poem and the "Ademonstration with a thousand Chicanos, all carrying picket signs, shouting CHI-
movie, both affirmative calls to action, tie the ancient indigenous civilizations to their CANO POWER! is not a revolution. It is theatre about the revolution."38If Bernal invokes
conquest, and its resulting mix of Indian and Spaniard as the first mestizaje. This new a march either as activism ,efr as theater, he cites a salient expression of it, considering
people and culture are then connected directly to the heroes of the Mexican Revolution, the figures on the wall to the right of the door and the year in which this mural was
those mestizos upon whom the post-Revolutionary nation was built, and, finally, to the painted, 1968.
present formation of mesuzaje, the Chicano Joaquin. Th ese fi gures, primarily
., . I db
men, are once agam e y a woman.
All faceleft toward the

. ~he .imagery and sensibilities found in this problematic, precedent-setting text and entrance and as though to meet the other procession around the corner. The accoutre-
Its significance both to the Teatro Campesino and to the early Chicano/a movimiento are ments of the leader identify her as Adelita, a mythical composite-based on the women
. d i M' evolutionary-era pho-
relevant to this mural. Although the mural ignores the Conquest entirely and ties Chi- warners and soldaderas (camp followers) documente In eXIcanr
. 'd (b 11 d) nerally incorporated
cano and black civilrights efforts tog e th er, taking ChilCanoja Ideology or chicanismo
..' III a tography. Adelita entered popular culture VIa corn as a as, I
. . I d . en out to customers
new, expanded direction, the overall resonances between the two remain. Perez-Torres into Teatro performances, and commercial calendanos (ca en ars glV
b ' I h t d ready curved sword
cites .the po~m as an example of historical pastiche (with no parodic intent) that must be y restaurants and other businesses). In Bernal s mura s e s an s ,
. . d d h es Pancho Villa and
considered In the context of Chicanoja culture's counter-discursive nature." The mural ralsed, poised to lead a historically mixed group oflea ers an eroes. .
similarly carves out a counter-discursive space. '1'
Emuiane I fth M . n RevolutlOnare now
Zapata follow her. These populist genera s 0 e exrca
hi ki sant dasses)-or, from
We must also consider other sources for the mural. Some of the people who used myt ical heroes of resistance and the plebe (the wor rng or pea

249
RADiCAL MESTJZAJE IN CHtCANOjA MURALS
248 CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURALISM
the perspective of the US government, Hollywood, and Madison Avenue, bandits. Both ing place; the skits become the irresistible draw that pulls the past into the present as

men carry rifles whose verticality parallels that of Adelita's sword; Villa reaches for bul- a few of the most engaged and legendary individuals gather to envision their collective

lets. They are followed by a nineteenth-century Mexican resistance fighter active north future. Theater (and, by inference, the other arts) here is a locus of and catalyst for indi-

of the post-r848 border, perhaps Tiburcio Vasquez, Gregorio Cortez, Joaquin Murrieta, vidual and social transformation. This r968 foundational and performative meeting of

or a mythical composite comparable to Adelita." The fighter reaches for his holstered ancient elite personages, modern historical figures, and contemporary working-class-

gun. These figures are prepared for combat. based Chicano/a and black civil rights activists in the Del Rey Mural establishes multiple

Next in line are two men who represent the philosophical poles of Chicanoja activ- self-Identities for Chicanos as mestizo. This is visible not only in terms both of race and

ism: Cesar Chavez, whose weapon was nonviolence, and the violent Reies L6pez ethnicity, but also of differing class affiliations through time and over territory. Finally,
Tijerina. Chavez undertook his first fast in r968. He is depicted as carrying both the mestizaje is presented here as alliances between political and cultural engagement striv-
UFW banner and a pair of branch cutters, symbols both of the labor movement and of ing for reform and revolution.
actual labor. Lopez Tijerina, who follows him in the mural with a copy of the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo.w was imprisoned in 1968 for storming the courthouse in Tierra
RADICAL MESTlZAjE IN EAST L.A.
Amarilla, New Mexico, in I967 to effect a citizen's arrest of the district attorney. As the
leader of the Alianza Federal de Las Mercedes in northern New Mexico, he was intent on Willie Herron began painting murals with a confidence that came from living around
forcing the US federal government to honor seventeenth- and eighteenth-century royal those who wrote on the walls in the East L.A. neighborhoods and housing projects in
land grants to NuevoMexicano descendants of early settlers. All five MexicanojChicano which he grew up, from his training as a sign painter, and from years of sketching
figures are individuals whose lives (mythic or historic) were closely associated with everything he saw. In '972 and '973, he painted three murals in the EastL.A, neighbor-
fighting for the rights of the campesino (farmworker) and raza (the Mexican American! hood of City Terrace, Two of them-The Wall That Cracked Open (r972) (figure '3·3) and
Chicano people) to own, work, and live on the land. Caras, the untitled curved wall mural of 1973 painted with Cronk's assistance in City
The last members of the procession, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, [r., .intro- Terrace Park (figure r3-4)-are studied together here." The third mural, The Plumed
duce new elements of alliances, mentoring, and parallel engagement. The two men Serpent (figure '3.5), at the other end of the alley from The Wall That Cracked Open and
represent the philosophical poles of the black civil rights movement, echoing those of across from his mother's home, is outside the scope of this study."
the Chicano activists. Malcolm X, incongruously in a Black Panther T-shirt and car- Herron painted The Wall That Cracked Open in the alley behind his home in about
rying the third upright rifle, represents the militant wing of black nationalism: the twelve hours, as a response to his brother's almost lethal attack by rival gang members
Nation of Islam and the Black Panther Party." His hand rests supportively on Lopez at that spot m the late evening46 His mural called for an end to the barrio gang warfare
Tijerina's shoulder. The year, r968, dramatically connected black militancy to Mexico," that devastated everyone in the communities of East L.A. The Wall That Cracked Open
That year also saw racially and politically motivated assassinations in the United States: has become an icon of Chicanoja urban culture and art. Incorporating existing graffiti
of Martin Luther King, [r., on April 4 and Bobby Kennedy on June 5. King marches at and cracks in the stuccoed surface jn his work, Herr6n created a reverberating image
the end of this procession. As the most vocal proponent of nonviolence as a vehicle for that simultaneously breaks into and out of the wall. He foregrounds the surface itself,
social change in the United States, he was an important role model for and ally of Cesar inspired by Siqueiros' diSsolution of walls. Herron makes the violent expressionism
Chavez. of Orozco his own. In the midst of this tough urban present, however, he remembers
Bernal acknowledges that year and those multiple relationships in this panel. Each the ancient indigenous past as part of the Chicano/a worldview, Using a life and death
figure IS connected to the others by his (and her) dedication to causes whose values and mask from the pre-Aztec site of Tlatilco, the Native New Mexican Zia symbol, and the
goals the Teatro Campesino s h are d an d commemorated. There IS . energy, a sense 0 f W ord Az tIan-to ' . 'Ch'! " t,'on"-Herron calls on
denote the indigenous/mestizo Kana a na
- . di h d
ancient In igenous belief systems to heal t e rage an trauma m' an urban hell of insti-
alertness, camaraderie, even preparedness, The slogan for the landmark r966 UFW . .
march from. Delano to Sacramento was "Peregnnacwn,
. . , Penltenna,
.. Revoluci6n" (pilgrim- tutionalizcd racism and gang warfare. Further balm is offered by family and belief III
age, penitence, revolutionj.? Viewers of the two panels of the mural see an unlikely Christianity as embodied in the abuelita (grandmother) presenting her crucifix. This
.
mUraI IS fferi c th coveryof his brother
gathering of diverse peoples from past and present about to join ranks and march from a call to action and a prayer, an ofrenda (0 enng) lor ere
the Cultural Center. and the deliverance of his community.
Each of the figures in the mural pane lIb' .
5 can a so e seen as waiting to be escorted into The power and effectiveness of this mural as well as the City Terrace Park mural
the center as audience pa r tiicipants
. . res It fi . d ts mixed with locally
In one of the Teatro's actos~ The center is the gather- U ISt from Herron's transformation of MeXICan prece en ,

25° • CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURAllSM

25'
RADICAL MEST!lAJE IN CHICANO/A MURALS
 po

fiGURE 13.4
Willie Herron with the assistance of Gronk and neighborhood youths. Caras, City Terrace Park, City
FIGURE 13.3
Terrace, Los Angeles (1973), destroyed. Photograph by Marcos Sanchez·Tranquilino, reproduced with
Willie Herron. The WaLLThat
permission of Willie Herron. Courtesy ofWiUie Herr6n and Marcos Sanchez-Tranqullino
Cracked Open, alley, City
Terrace, Los Angeles (1972),
whitewashed and restored.
Photograph by Marcos Sanchez-
Tranquilinc, reproduced with a powerful and graphically compelling form of communication, legible to those who
permission of Willie Herron. need to read it, but opaque to outsiders. Herr6n and Gronk encouraged the graffiti in
Courtesy of Willie Herron and
these murals-so evidently on top of, rather than inside, the surface of these cement
Marcos Sanchez-Tranquilino.
canvases-to get the youths to participate in painting the mural. The graffiti are like
tattoos on the skin of the murals, on the arms and faces and hands ofthe people, marks
of their imprisonment.
recognizable imagery and meaning; second from what he did to the walls; and third The scale and grandeur of Siqueiros' and Orozco's visions of history and humanity
from the walls' locations. In these two murals the images neither rest on the surface of writ large are brought info the streets of East L.A., and radically altered to express a dif

the walls, nor do they work optically to dissolve the walls, as those of Siqueiros did. The ferent, more local, and specific vision. But the scale does not diminish. These murals
brothers in The Wall That Cracked Open and the faces and hands of the curved wall are do not represent a Portrait of the Bourgeoisie, apocalyptic fires of the conquest, the rise of
embedded in, trapped by, and imprisoned within the walls. They lie beneath the surface, fascism, or the degradations of CatharsisY They create a vision of young men trapped
distorted in ferocious rage or dream-like apathy by Herron's ratcheting up Orozco's L~a small neighborhood of a larger barrio in a megalopolis, desperately fighting for-
nightmarish disgust to almost hateful caricature. This is evident when one looks at what? For a promise of self-determination made visible, which is personal yet resonates
both murals together, and when one stands back from the curved wall. Faces and hands far beyond the barrio. The scale, grandeur, and ferocity of the Mexican murals become
Chi / .' d ing those qualities, he
are smashed against the interior surface; they float in what amounts to a circle of hell. Kana a through Herron's artistry, By absorbmg an transposi
. h . I h . er al In turn, these
Instead of the horrific beauty of the human/machine cyborg in the murals of Orozco talses t e level of tragedy from the local and parncu ar to t e uruv s . .
s I' . . . II d cityparks' with their
and Siqueiros, bespeaking the dehumanizing effects of industrialization, Herr6n arne qua ities metamorphose in their new locations In a eys an '
ne . . dh . th ir different messages
provides the real beauty and horror of graffiti, addressing the limitations of a life that w Iconography of r970s urban anger, [rustration, an ope, e
f di Th t ansformed by the
demands this kind of visual language. Mexican American gang graffiti was (and isl or ra leal change; and the new audiences they address. eyare r

253
252 CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURALISM RADICAL MESTIZAjE IN CHICANOIA MURALS
 FIGURE 13.6
FIGURE 13.5
Carlos Almaraz. No Compre Vino Gallo (Don't Buy Gallo Wine), former All Nations Community Cen-
Willie Herron. The Plumed Serpent, alley, City
ter, Scto near 4th Street, Boyle Heights, Los Angeles (1974), destroyed. Photograph by Eva Cockcroft,
Terrace, Los Angeles (1972), whitewashed
reproduced courtesy the Carlos Almaraz Estate. Courtesy of Elsa Flores Almaraz, Tim Drescher, and
and restored. Photograph by Marcos Sanchez-
tva Cockcroft.
Tranquilino. reproduced with permission of
Willie Herron. Courtesy of Willie Herr6n and
Marcos Sanchez-Tranquilino.
Almaraz, a gifted painter and a graduate of Otis Parsons, was alreadyworking with
the UFW and Cesar Chavez after his return from a year in New YorkCity. In 1972 he
painted a huge portable mural for the annual union convention, incorporating carica-
tured figures of the Teamsters, the State Police, and growers harassing dignified yet
artist's experiences of the community and people as they are, and his belief that young
angry striking workers (figure 13.7). No Somos ... effectively incorporates and alters
Chicano/as must break open the walls of their own imprisonment. The presence of
carefully selected elements and stylistic devices from the murals of Siqueiros, Orozco,
these murals, in turn, transforms and reveals these locations and the people who live
and Rivera. The artist takes certain exaggerations even further, intensifying the vehe-
in them. Radical mestiza)e in these two murals emerges in the imagery but also in the
mence to a level more regularly found at demonstrations and marches. Byrepurposing
performative coll~ctiveact of painting them. Furthermore, the performance is contin-
the band of clenched fists derived from Rivera's Detroit Industry mural of '932-33 to hold
ued by the viewers-those who walk through or stand in the alley, or by those who go
to the park. symbols of different kinds oflabor in California (grapes, a sewing needle, a paintbrush,
the hammer and sickle), Almaraz equates historical industrial manufacture with the
In '974, Carlos Almaraz painted a mural with members of the Third Street Gang
conflict between conttt"mporary agri-business and farm workers, the historical effor~s of
called No Somas Esclavos de la Migra ... (We are not slaves of the INS-Immigration
. . fth FW .. monumental MeXICan
and Naturalization Service; plate 9). It was one of a pair (its mate was No Compre Vino labor unions with the current attempts a e U to un1011lZe,
Gallo· , Don't B uy Ga II0 W·me; fi gure 13.6), located on the exterior of the former All mural masterpieces with Chicano/a art.
. d . d f -r- tro Campesino actos,
Nations Community Center buildings on Soto near 4th in Boyle Heights, a predomi- H e also mtroduces characters that could be enve rom lea
. . d h s: rms These postures
nand:- .Mexican American barrio.48 These murals can be read as giant .billboards or composed usmg Orozco's repetitions and cancature uman 10· .
. .. fl b d t k tages Barbed WHe,
recruitmg posters for the causes of the UFW and Chicanoja activists in a neighborhood ech a the physical movements of the teatnstas on their at e rue s .
. S· . . piredprotestortoa
already blighted with commercial signs. In Chicano/a art there is often a melding of a motlffwm the US-Mexico border, binds the leg of the jquerros-uts
1 . h . th n to pacify the work-
monumental murals as fine art and as forms of commercial or political mass commu- arge dried-up bone: the bone of contention? The bone t at IS row
e ) Th b . 1 ' I ter paintings? The morn-
nication. Located on a bus y cross- t own street, t h e messages of defiance and agitation
. IS. e one that dogs and coyotes fight over In A maraz s a
. . ) I th crudely lendered
of t,he murals are directed to specifically Mexican American, Mexican immigrant, and mg SUIt and top hat of the robber barons (and Uncle Sam co ea. .
b di ent of explOltatlOn.
Chicano/a populations. coyote, wolf, or mouse (a cousin of Mickey, perhaps) as th e em 0 im

2\5
RADICAL ME5T1ZAJE IN CHICANO/A MURALS
254 CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURALISM
 of mestizaje includes their location and the performative aspects of making and view-
ing. The monumental scale of murals and their availability in neighborhoods, painted
on outdoor walls in alleys and near sidewalks in populous areas, solicits interaction
between the mural and artist, the artist and community, the mural and viewers-on
a daily basis. Those interactions through time produce further layers of meaning that
alter as the viewers and their communities change, resulting in a conceptual palimpsest
of the ongoing Chicano/a experience.

NOTES

I. The definition of the terms "Chicano" and the more contemporarily gendered version,
"Chicano/a," "Chicana/o" or "Chican@" is no longer open to debate for the movimiento years
of 1965-85, the period covered in this chapter; the earliest attempts are the ones that are
still in play. "A Chicano is a Mexican American with a non-Anglo image of hi rnself,' and "A
Chicano is a politicized Mexican American. To call oneself a Chicano is an overt political
act." Ruben Salazar, "Who Is a Chicano, and What ls It Chicanos Want?" Los Angeles Times,
February 6, 1970. Santos Martinez, Frontispiece, DaU G~s-Give it Gas! Chicano Art of
Texas (Houston: Contemporary Arts Museum, 1977). It is once again a controversial term as
generations coming of age in the twenty-first century are negotiating their own relationship
FIGURE 13.7. to their Chicano/a elders and the movimiento itself.
Carlos Almaraz. United Farm Workers Banner, portable mural (1972). Photographer unknown, 2, Jose Vasconcelos, La Raza C6smica, Didier T. [aen, translator (Los Angeles: Centro de
reproduced courtesy the Carlos Almaraz Estate. Courtesy of Elsa Flores Almaraz, Tim Drescher, and
Publicaciones, California State University, Los Angeles, 1979 [1925]).
Eva Cockcroft.
3. Luis Valdez, "Introduction: 'La Plebe,'" in Luis Valdez and Stan Steiner, editors,
Aztlan: An Anthology Mexican American Literature (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), p. xxxiv.
Founding statement of the CARA National Advisory Committee, July 1987. Richard Gris-

Humor and acid commentary combine ,as they often do in political cartoons. Word:s wold Del Castillo, Teresa McKenna, YV9nne Yarbro-Bejarano, editors, Chicano Art: Resis-
tance and Affirmation, 1965-1985 (Los Angeles: Wight Art Gallery, University of California,
and slogans are 'pouring out of people's mouths-not quite in cartoon bubbles, but on
the visible rush of air. No Somas Esclavos de la Migra ... with its in-your-face assertion, Los Angeles, '991), p. 27·
4. Rafael Perea-Torrez. Mestizaje: Critical Uses of Race in Chicano Culture (Minneapolis
cartoon figures, and deadly seriousness of purpose, conveys its message through an
and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), p. xi.
unusually abundant, sophisticated, and effective pastiche of Mexican muralism, US
5. Stacie Widdifield, The Embodiment ofthe~ational in Late Nineteenth-Century Mexican
mass and popular culture, Chicano/a activist performance motifs, and Almaraz's own
Painting (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996), p. II. See also Introduction, pp. 3-13,
artistic vocabulary. Furthermore, he ties everything together through composition, and Chapter 3, "Resurrecting the h'st: The Embodiment of the Authentic and the Figure of
color, and effective incorporation of architectural structures.
the Indian; pp. 78-12L
6. Widdifield, '996, pp. 9-13; Pelez-Tones, 2006, pp. '3-22.
7. Perea-Torres. 2006, p. 16. It is not that simple, and the author elaborates further. Nei-
CONClUSION
ther the Mexican nor the Chicano/a muralists or activists completely effaced contemporary
As I wrote at the outset of this chapter, Mexican murals occupy a central but not isolated indigenous people or practices, even if official policies within Mexico (or within certain
position in the history of Chicano/a murals. Their scale and grandeur, the variety of Chicano cultural nationalist declarations) were so directed.
their content, and their perceived relationship to the people and history of Mexico made 8. Ruben Salazar, "Who Is a Chicano, and What Is It Chicanos Want?"Los AI~geles Times,

a profound impact. Those qualities were incorporated, absorbed, and transformed via February 6, '970. .
9. In social mobilization as in art, there were important alliances made between ChI-
a Chicano/a worldview as they were mixed with the local imagery, experiences, and
canos and Native Americans, exceptions to the relegation of the indigenous to the past.
places of Chicano/a lives in the United States. In the case of murals, the radicalization

RADICAL MESTIZAJE IN CHICANO/A MURALS

257
256 CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURALISM
Several murals include references to contemporary indigenous peoples of Central and South this appeared as "Resistance and Identity: Street Murals of Occupied Aztlan," in Goldman,
America, particularly during US interventions in Central America in the 19805 and 19905. '994, pp. ,,8-39·
The Great Wall of Los Angeles, directed by Judy Baca, includes a segment in which a Native 16. One of the remarkable aspects of the canonical heroic murals of the early years is
American young man's braids are cut prior to sending him away from the reservation to that, although they were part of a state-sponsored program of the Ministry of Public Educa-
an Indian School. Luis Valdez and the Teatro Campesino worked directly with contempo- tion, the artists still managed to create murals that functioned both within "the party line"
rary Maya and other indigenous spiritual and performance practitioners. Yolanda Broyles- and as a counter to the burgeoning Institutional Revolutionary Party's real agenda. The best
Gonzales, Ei Teatro Campesino: Theater in the Chicano Movement (Austin: University of Texas of them worked simultaneously with and against the grain.
Press, '9941, pp. 78-127. 17. Shifra M. Goldman's "Elite Artists and Popular Audiences: The Mexican Front of
10. "With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence Cultural Workers," Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, Vol. 4, 1985, pp. 139-54, is the
of our mestizo nation. We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, first documentation of murals of resistance in Mexico. Bruce Campbell's Mexican Murals
before all of North America, before all our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, in Times of Crisis (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, ao og] is the first book-length study.
we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlan." From the Preface, Plan Espiritual de Aztlan, 18. The year 1968 is the traditional date provided for the first Chicano murals, The Del
March, 1969, Denver Youth Conference. Published in Valdez and Steiner, 1972, p. 403. Rey Mural in Del Rey, California, and Metafisica in Chicago. However, Tim Drescher has
"The rise of the Chicano is part of the irrevocable birth of America, born of the blood, documented that a mural-size banner was created for the interior of the Crusade for Justice
flesh, and life spirit of this ancient continent. Beyond the two-thousand mile border between building in Denver, Colorado, in 1965. Manuel Martinez painted murals in 1967 and 1968,
Mexico and the U.S.A. we see our universal race extending to the very tip of South America. also at the Denver Crusade for Justice Headquarters.
We see millions upon millions of bronze people, living in Mestizo nations, some free, some 19. Chicano/a muralism in the 1960s and 1970S developed during the multiple US civil
yet to be freed, but existing: Mexicanos, Guatemaltecos, Peruanos, Chilenos, Cubanos, Boli- rights, student, women's, and anti-war movements, along with similar efforts around the
vianos, Puertoriquenos. A new world race born of the racial and cultural blending of centu- world. Chicano/a art grew directly out of and in support of the Chicano civil rights move-
ries. La Raza Cdsmica. the true American people." Luis Valdez, Introduction, "La Plebe," in ment, an umbrella designation for several distinct yet coinciding attempts to end discrimi-
Valdez and Steiner, 1972, p. xxxiv. natory practices against, improve the living conditions of, and provide future opportunities
II. Rafael Perez-Torres, Movements in Chicano Poetry: Against Myths, Against Margins for Americans of Mexican descent. This movement was never monolithic in its histories,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, '9951, p. 210. values, goals, approaches, or even definitions of the newly self-named Chicano/a people.
12. Perez-Tortes, 2006, p. xi; Ram6n Saldivar, "A Dialectic of Difference: Towards a 20. Perez-Torres, 1995; The Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, The Barrio Murals (Chi-
Theory of the Chicano Novel," Melu, Vol. 6 (Fall 1979):88. cago: The Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, 1987); TimothyW. Drescher, "Afterword: The

13· An entire generation of African American artists between the 19405 and 19805 were Next Two Decades," in Eva Cockcroft, John Pitman Weber, and James Cockcroft, Towards

influenced by Mexican art, particularly murals. See Alan Barnett, Community Murals: The a People's Art: The Contemporary Mural Movement (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico

People's Art (Philadelphia: The Art Alliance P1JSS, r984), p. 24; James Prigoff and Robin J. Press, 1998 [197711pp. 28'-3,2. See also Community Murals Magazine (Berkeley. California,

Dunitz, Walls of Heritage/Walls of Pride; Ajric~n American Murals (San Francisco: Pome- 198r-1987); Timothy W. Drescher, San Francisco Murals: Community Creates Its Muse, ]914-

granate, 2000), pp. 24-25; and Lizzetta Leltalle-Collins and Shifra M. Goldman, In the 1994 (San Francisco: Pogo Press, 19941·
Spirit of Resistance African-American Modernists and the Mexican Muralist School (New York: 21. George Lipsitz, "Not Just Another Social Movement: Poster Art ~nd the .Movi~ien~o
The American Federation of Arts, 1996). Chicano," in Chon Noriega, ed. t.!ust ~nother pos~er? Chicano Graph~cA~ts " C~liforma
14· Ignacio M. Garcia, Chicanismo: The Forging of a Militant Ethos among Mexican Ameri- (Santa Barbara: University of California, Santa Barbara, ZOOI), p. 84· LIpSItz d]scus~es

cans (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997). Chicano/a poster proliferation as "art-based community making" to underscore the. recip-

15· Among those who have worked with this binary structure are Jean Charlot, Shifra rocal relationships between making ~mmunity and making art that occurred in the
Goldman, David Maciel, and Victor Sorell. The two most influential early articles in this Chicano/a movement.
genre were Goldman, "Mexican Muralism: Its Social-Educative Roles in Latin America and 22. Luis Valdez, "E1 Plebe," in Valdez and Steiner, 1972, pp. xxi-xxxiv; Luis Valdez-

the United States," Aztlan: International Journal of Chicano Studies Research Vol. 13, Nos. I
Early Works: Actos, Bernabe, Pensamiento Serpentino (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1990

and 2 (Spring/Fall I98z):III-33; revised and reprinted as "Mexican Muralism: Its Influence [1971)); Gloria Anzaldua. Borderlands/La frontera: The New Mesti2a, and edition (San Fran-

in Latin American and the United States," in Goldman, Dimensions
and Social Change in Latin America and the United States (Chicago:
Press, 1994), pp. 101-17; and Goldman, "Resistencia e identidad:
Aztlan, la ciudad ccupada," Artes Visuales, Mexico City, No. 16 (Winter 1977):22-25,
of the Americas: Art cisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1999). In this volume of essays and poetry, Anzaldua introduced ~er
". b t t "resulting from the Spanish
University of Chicago version of an Aztec concept of Nepantla, or the III etween s a e
. . S "To Live in the Borderlands
Los murales callejeros de Conquest of Mexico, to describe the Chicana/o expenence. ee
47-49; Means You," pp. ZI6-2I7; Ram6n Saldivar, 1979; Rafael Perez-Torres, 1995, 2006.

RADICAL MESTIZAJE IN CHICANO/A MURALS

259
258 CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURALlSM
 23. Broyles·Gonzales, r994, p. IO.
Liberation Conference in Denver, Colorado. Aztlan has become a highly theorized and con-
24. From a copy of the original flyer reproduced in the celebratory large-format booklet tested trope for land, belonging, and collective identity.
produced by ETCfor their twentieth anniversary, EI Teatro Campesino: The First Twenty Years 36. groyles-Oonzalez addresses the Teatro's uses of the pre-Columbian in performance

(San Juan Bautista, El Teatro Campesino, r985), p. 7- and elsewhere: "Furthermore, the Teatro constructed indigena knowledge and science as
25- This is a theater in which community members are the actors as well as the audience. something pertaining equally to the past, present, and future, not just a thing of the past.
26. Oral History Interview of Gilbert Sanchez Lujan by Jeffrey Rangel, Smithsonian The Teatro saw contemporary Chicana/os and Mexicanos as directly rooted in in.digena cul-
Archives of American Art, 1977, p. 25, available at http://www.aaa.si.edujcollectionsjoral- ture and history." Broyles-Gonzalez, r994, p. 121. Although many Chicano/a artists and
writers evoked pre-Columbian imagery and histories as part of their oeuvres, the other early
historiesjtranscriptsjlujan97·htm.
27- Brcyles-Conzales, 1994, pp. 3-77· The term "pelado" is defined as a penniless urban art collective that fully embraced that resource was Los Toltecas en Aztlan, located in San

roustabout, comparable in many ways to Charlie Chaplin's classic character of the tramp. Diego. This collective was affiliated with both the Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa
Park and the land reclamation/mural project of Chicano Park. One of their most active
28. Valdez, 1972, pp. xxix-xxxi.
29. "Aetos" were the skits created by the Teatro Campesino in the fields and on the beds contributing members was the poet Alurista, who grounded his thought and writing in

of pick-up trucks. "El Malcriado" (translated as "the ill-bred") was the official newspaper of pre- Columbian belief systems.
the UFW. It often featured reproductions of Mexican graphic arts; the political cartoons of 37. Perea-Torres, 1995, p. 2°9·
its resident artist, Andy Zermefio; and photographs relevant to UFW actions. 38. Luis Valdez, "Notes on Chicano Theatre," Luis Valdez-Earty Works:Aetas, Bern.abe,
30. Activist intervention was perceived by the early Teatro ensemble members as not Pensamiento Serpentino (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1990 [1971]),p. 8.

only change within the social body but also the decolonization of the individual bodies and 39. Murrieta is the resistance figure called forth in "Yo Soy Joaquin." Goldman, 1990, p-

psyches ofthe Chicano/a. Broyles-Gonzales, 1994, pp. 78-r27- 26. Goldman identifies Murrieta as the man in the mural.
40. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was ratified in r848, ceding the northern half of
31. Interview by the author with Cesar Chavez, summer 1988. See also Luis Valdez,
"Notes on Chicano Theatre," Luis Valdez-Early Works: Aetos, Bernabe and Pensamiento Ser- Mexico to the United States-for a price of US $r5 million.
41. Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965. The Black Panther Party for Self-
pentino (Houston: Arte Publico Press, r990 [197r]), p. 8.
Defense was founded in October 1966, in the wake of and in direct response to his assas-
32. This mural is cited in numerous publications as the first Chicano mural-and as one
sination. The Black Panthers were the model for the Chicano militant organization, the
directly connected to labor and movimiento activism.
33. Shifra Goldman, "The Iconography of Chicano Self Determination: Race, Ethnicity, Brown Berets.
42- During the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, two US black track athletes, Tommie
and Class," Art Journal 49, No.2 (Summer 1990):r68. Goldman correctly acknowledges
Smith and John Carlos, stood with raised fists, black armbands, and heads lowered on the
the remarkable presence of two women placed in roles of action and leadership in this early
awards podium during the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner. They were ejected from the
mural, at a time when women were invisible or anonymous. It should be noted, however,
competition. On October 12, only ten days prior to the opening of the Olympics, youthful
that even while active leaders, they still playa supportive role in the mural.
residents of Mexico City had experienced the wrath of the government during a demonstra-
34. Shifra Goldman, "How, Why, Where, and When it all Happened," in Eva Sperling
tion turned massacre at the Haza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco district, when several
Cockcroft and Holly Barnet-Sanchez, editors, Signs from the Heart: CaLifornia Chicano
Murals (Albuquerque and Venice, California: University of New Mexico Press and Social and hundred (or thousand) student protestors were killed.

Public Art Resource Center, 1993), p. 26. Yolanda Broyles-Gonzales devotes a chapter in her 43. Broyles-Gonzales, r994, p. L
44. Only The Wall That Cracked Open still exists in its entirety. It, too, was whitewashed
book to the "Theater of the Sphere," "a method of performance and life training developed
in the late 199os, but has subsequently been recuperated by the original artist, Willie
by the ensemble between 1970 and 1980, a theory and practice of communicative action
Herron. Remnants of a much-altered Plumed Serpent are still visible; the artist restored its
based on Native American (Maya and Aztec) wisdom and teaching-to develop a decolo-
nized Chicano/a human potentiality or performance energy, one rooted in the Americas." upper portion in aero. covering the 10 er portion with plywood.
45. These two alley murals are the only instances in which Herron prominently featured
Broyles-Gonzales. r994, p. 80. Although this practice postdates the mural by two years, the
or even incorporated pre-Columbian imagery. The Plumed Serpent is deserving of close
artist may include an early kernel of such a humanistic concept of communicative action
based in the Americas. analysis of its several versions, which changed its meaning over time.
46. Herr6n returned to paint the mural after ensuring that his brother was being cared
35· The key pre-Columbian concept for Chicane/a cultural, philosophical, and social
for in the hospital. Herron was twenty-one at the time and a veteran of one other self-diI~cted
mobilization is "Aatlan." This was the originary homeland of the Mexica Aztecs prior to
mural. He was also a participant-with Patssi Valdez, Harry Gamboa [r., and Cronk-m an
their migration south to the Valley of Mexico and the creation of their empire based in
artists' group that would become the performance collective Asco. .
Tenochtitlan (present-day Mexico City]. "El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan,' generally considered
47. These are references to Siqueiros' Portrait of the Bourgeoisie, located in the Electri-
a foundational manifesto of the Chicano Movement, was written during the 1969 Youth

z6,
RADICAL MESTIZAJE IN CHICANO/A MURALS
260 CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURALISM
dans' Syndicate building in Mexico City; to Orozco's Hospicio Cabanas and University
frescoes in Guadalajara; and to his fresco, Catharsis, in the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico
City.
48. BoyleHeights, the first community east of downtown Los Angeles and the LA River,
14
has been home to numerous ethnic populations over the decades, each leaving behind
traces that touch the next group. AN UNAUTHORIZED
HISTORY OF POST-MEXICAN
SCHOOL MURALISM

Bruce Campbell
\

The term "muralism" and its cousin "muraling" (used now by younger public artists)
suggest important characteristics of the mural form: "muralism," a cohesive outlook
with the mural image at its center, and "muraling,' a cultural practice that recurs to
monumental visual aesthetics. These terms suggest that the mural image is not only
a visual object with aesthetic value that displays an artful technique, but also the prod-
uct of an organized endeavor. a practical application of knowledge, and of a coherent
way of seeing and thinking about the world. Art historians sometimes err in isolating
the mural from the muralisrn that produced it. Adequate recognition at late twentieth-
century Mexican muralism requires' that we see latter-day murals as the visual record
of a cultural practice and its rich, ongoing public engagements.
This chapter takes a historically and politically grounded view of Mexican mural
art in the post-Mexican School ~. The more conventional view of mural art, which
focuses on the individual image. tends to obscure much late twentieth-century Mexican
mural production and fails to recognize the aesthetic value of murals not authorized
by the Mexican state.' The official view of Mexican muralism combines a conventional
view of art with the conservatism of the post-Revolutionary Mexican state. A focus on
the practical entanglements of mural art in Mexico with public space, social communi-
cation. and political conflict brings into view a broader and more diverse field of mural
production.

CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURAllSM


MEXiCAN MURALISM AFTER THE MEXICAN SCHOOL
The official storyline of Mexican muralism is well known. In the early 1920S, as revolu-
tionary violence ebbed and public institutions were re-consolidated, Jose Vasconcelos,
Minister of Public Education under President Obregon, convened a group of artists.
Vasconcelos wanted to create a new civic life for the nation by developing Mexican cul-
tural and aesthetic sensibilities. He theorized that aesthetic consciousness was the pin.
nacle of historical development, and that a public arts program could both overcome
the primitive militarism of revolutionary conflict and help Mexico achieve a state of
cultural development surpassing that of the United States, its materialistic neighbor
to the north.' Putting his plan into practice, he commissioned murals for the corridors
of public agencies, hiring the artists Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and lose
Clemente Orozco, along with others less famous than these tres grandes, or "three great
ones." Although Vasconcelos enjoyed only a brief tenure as education minister,
mural commissions over the next three decades set the national standard for public art
and raised the mural's prestige in Mexico and worldwide.
This story usually emphasizes the talent and genius of the artists of the Mexican
School and Vasconcelos' personal vision, the prime movers in bringing art of the high-
est quality to the Mexican demos. In this version of the story, the mural movement ended
as the great artists died off: thus, Mexican muralism, closely identified with los tres
grandes, peaked in value and visibility prior to the death of Diego Rivera in r957, and by
1974, when Siqueiros died, Mexican mural arts had completed their precipitous decline.
Subsequently, the legacy of the Mexican School would be viewed as a beautiful
rather than a practice continued by subsequent generations of artists. The renowned
Mexican poet Octavio Paz described this official view when he wrote in 1979 that "mural
painting belongs to [ ... ] the wax museum of Mexican nationalism.'?
The "decline" of Mexican muralism, however, has an institutional history.
1940S and 19505,successive Mexican governments subordinated mural commissions
state-led modernization, drawing on the accumulated prestige of the Mexican mural in
large public works projects (e.g., the National University, 1950-52) to support an official
image of national identity and progress. Revolutionary politics faded from this image,
and as a consequence the radical presence in mural images of unionists, campesinos,
and so forth was weakened as well. Eventually, the reduction of government
for arts and culture programs reduced the number of official mural commissions
opened the domestic cultural market to greater influence from private investors and
buyers outside Mexico.
At the height of the cold war, abstract expressionism, considered politically "safe,"
became dominant via its embrace by international capital. In Latin America, US capital
from the oil and automotive industries underwrote a de-politicized aesthetic
ism." The altered position of Mexican art in the political economy corresponded with the
infamous "ruptura" of the painter Jose Luis Cuevas in 1956 with the Mexican School'S
264 CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURALISM
socially representative art. Cuevas denounced the revolutionary nationalist model as a
"cortina de napal," or "cactus curtain," like the Soviet Union's "iron curtain." The cold
war political economy set the conditions for Mexican mural production. The fourteen
murals officially commissioned in Mexico in 1969 represented a significant drop from
an annual average of thirty-five for the period between 1920 and 1964.5
The alleged death of Mexican muralism is part of a larger story about the demise of
the social compact that emerged from the Mexican Revolution, institutionalized first in
the 1917 Constitution and later in projects undertaken by the Lazaro Cardenas admin-
istration (1934-40) to support the working class, campesinos, and indigenous com-
munities in exchange for social stability. Official programs provided essential support
to the corporativist politics of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional
Revolutionary Party, or PRI), which channeled and controlled Mexico'surban and rural
workers, campesinos, students, small business class, and indigenous groups through a
official one-party regime pursuing economic modernization. After 1940, the government with-
drew official support for the Mexican School's revolutionary nationalist vision of mural
production and gradually backed away from the state-led model of economic develop-
ment. Siqueiros' final mural commission, the Siqueiros Cultural Polyforum, begun in
the late 1960s, was a privately financed jewel in the crown of a massive international
tourism project. Mexico at the time of Siqueiros' death already had a decade's experience
with transnational maquiladoras operating on its northern border, representing policies
designed to create a favorable environment for global capitalism. Revolutionary workers
and campesinos famously depicted in Mexican School murals were no longer politically
convenient images for a govern,ment that weakened organized labor and lowered rea]
corpse
wages to attract foreign investors.
Tensions emerged between the cultural legacy of revolutionary Mexican national-
ism and the increasingly neo-liberal and authoritarian Mexican state, between Mexico's
popular sectors and the political apparatus that demanded their obedience. The PRI's
In the
corporativist model entered into a long period of crisis, with Mexican youth, campesi-
to
nos, unions, and urban working-class communities testing their autonomy and often
confronting official authority publicly. These were the circumstances in which post-
Mexican School muralism staked out its 'aesthetic fnd political positions. The artistic-
genius version of Mexican mural history ybscures this political context. It also overlooks
much of the extraordinary mural work produced after the deaths of los tres grandes.
funding
During the period when the mural movement is said to have declined, the nation's
and
mural production was in fact going through a popular re alignment and revitalization.
4
To bring the full arc of post-Mexican School mural development into focus, the his-
tory of the art form needs to be situated amid the transformations of Mexican politics,
culture, and society. Late twentieth-century mural history transpired during an intense
process of urbanization and the reconfiguration of urban public space,the development
formal·
of a mass media visual culture, and political crises for the one-party state. post-Mexican
School muralism emerged in conditions that include massive rural-to·urban migration
POST-MEXICAN SCHOOL MURALlSM
and urban industrialization, resulting in greater population density and widespread Moreover, the mea~ing of the mural image within the ~ublic arena was no longer

popular political agitation in Mexico City, the center of political and cultural authority in stable. What emerged In the post-Mexican School period in Mexico were in fact two

Mexico. Meanwhile, television and satellite technologies have transformed the national contentious and opposed relationships to the mural image: one official and the other
indypendent of the state and based in social movements that challenged one-party
public arena, bringing to bear the explicit and implicit ideologies of commercial culture
rule-both vying for control of the mural's public meaning. The official relationship
and putting pressure on Mexico's visual patrimony with television, film, and now digital
to the mural form was institutionalized through selective application of the 1972 law
imagery.
governing cultural patrimony," The Mexican state's relationship to the mural image
Mainstream art historical perspective overlooked much of the recent muralism
reduced muralism to a gallery of conserved images. This official view of the mural sepa-
practiced in plain sight, because this perspective was preoccupied with the completed
rates the aesthetic value of the mural from the social realities or political demands that
artistic works of the Mexican School. But the legacy of los tres grandes and others was
the image makes publicly visible, and thus typically ignores or silences public speech
not solely a body of individual works but also a public cultural practice through which
evoked through the mural form. The independent social movement relationship to the
individual works were positioned in the public arena. By looking at Mexican muraiism
mural form, in contrast, perceives in Mexican murals generally (that is, not only those
as a public cultural practice, we can see that the much-mourned passing of Mexican
protected by the state under the law on cultural patrimony) elements of national iden-
mural arts was in fact only the decline of their official prestige and recogmtion-c-indeed.
tity. Mexican civil society has sought to revivify critical public discourse about Mexican
a restriction of official recognition-and not the end of the meaning-making endeavor
society and the need for social change that mural works visibly place in the nation's
of producing murals, established as an adjunct of the national public sphere in the first
public arena.
half of the twentieth century.
One example of these clashing relationships to the mural image occurred in 2000,
Rivera, Siqueiros, Orozco, et al. not only brought art into the public arena; in an
when student activists were jailed for "destruction of the artistic patrimony of the
important sense they also established visual art as a component of the public arena. To
nation" after they altered a detail of a Siqueiros mural at the National University, adjust-
paraphrase cultural critic Carlos Monsivais, more than producing new art for the public,
ing an open-ended revolutionary date inscribed in the image, "19??,"to read "1999·"
they created new publics for art. Their murals gained prestige and recognition in part
The students wanted to link Siqueiros' mural to the students' protests in 1999 against
from the aesthetic power of the image but also, and more importantly, from the way
tuition hikes and privatization measures that would make a university education less
their mural practice positioned the image in the public sphere.
accessible to most Mexicans. The mural in question was The Right to Culture ('956),
Mexican muralism cannot be reduced to the images alone, for it emerged as a cul-
which depicts students as agents of Mexican history, from Cortes' battles with the Aztec
tural practice of the rtational public sphere (the arena of collective opinion formation
Empire in 1521 through the Revolution of 1910, to the unspecified historical moment
and public discourse) ~ith two key components:
altered in the mural. Another instructive instance occurred two years later, in the 2002

1. It is a representational visual language of sweeping scope that links national controversy over murals from the r940s and '950S destroyed by the US·based Costco
history and the character of the state to aesthetics and modernity; and Corporation following the privatization of the state-owned Casino de la Selva near
Cuernavaca. Citizen organizations demanded that the murals be recognized under the
2. It is also a public discourse whose signifying strategies include speech-making;
country's cultural patrimony law and that the privatization of the Casino be reversed;
pamphleteering; engaging in public provocation and debate; writing for jour-
the Mexican state insisted that neither the murals nor the muralists were specifically
nals, newspapers, magazines and books; participating in marches and protests;
political party militancy; giving interviews to the print media, and so forth. protected under the law. /
The official perspective's segregation of the language of the artistic image from the
language of the public arena, the segregation of aesthetic value from public meaning,
The Mexican School method of "muraling" operated hy linking the artwork, the
resulted hy the '970S in a reduction of the legacy of the Mexican School.The murals of
state, and the general public. The muralist actively mediated these relations by produc-
los tres grandes became jealously guarded features of national identity and culture, but
ing public discourse about the mural image as part of the process of producing the
the public discourse that had given them meaning had become officiallyirrelevant. The
image itself. Changes in the political and cultural circumstances of post- Revolutionary
continued production of murals after los tres grandes was weakened as a feature of the
Mexico required consonant shifts in mural practice. Among the foremost changes was
national public arena by a decline in government funding; an emphasis on the infra-
the loss of the muralist's power to act in the national public sphere, as muralists became
structure of transportation and tourism, policing, and the segmentation of urban space;
marginalized politically vis-a-vis post-Revolutionary Mexican officialdom, and margin-
and less tolerance of opposition politics. Earlysigns of the trend were the official effort to
alized culturally vis-a-vis the media of mass communication.

pOST-MEXiCAN SCHOOL MURALISM

266 CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURALISM
create a tourism-friendly Mexico City for the r968 Olympic Games and the massacre of
several hundred student proteste.rs at Tlatelo1co.These were the practical circumstances
for muralism after the Mexican School.

FROM MURALISM TO MURALISMS

The Mexican state continued to commission murals at all levels, and legatees of the
Mexican School model-important contemporaries of los tres grandes such as Raul
Anguiano, Jose IChavez Morado, and Desiderio Hernandez Xochitiotzin, as well as
younger artists like Adolfo Mexiac, Ariosto Otero, and Patricia Salas-continued to inte-
grate their work into the public sector. But murals lost their prominence in the national
public sphere, and the state no longer made arts funding a priority.' Meanwhile, outside
the sphere of influence of limited government commissions and the increasing domi-
nance of private money and an elite gallery system, Mexican muralism continued with
the public cultural practice of the Mexican School, alive and well and more combative
than ever. Art historians, however, drawn to the highly visible and prestigious mural
FIGURE 14.1
work of previous decades, paid little heed to the broader field of Mexican muralism until Jose Hernandez Delgadillo. La Mujer en la Lucha (for Asamblea de Barrios), marble grain on cement,
some thirty years after the death of Siqueiros.f Iztapalapa. Mexico City (I992). Photograph: Bruce Campbell.
By the '970s, mural artists who sought to continue the puhlicly engaged work of
the Mexican School had developed a counter-official mural practice that was linked to
organized opposition to the one-party Mexican state and its policies. The public mean-
artist-pioneered the revitalization of socially committed muralism by refusing offi-
ing and aesthetics of their mural production was no longer centered in official spaces
cial commissions in favor of working with student radicals in the provinces. Although
and governing discourses. Instead, they moved their new and innovative mural produc-
much of the mural practice of the student protest movement-such as graffiti street
tion to the public arenas of working-class communities. Murals did not disappear-but
messaging or stenciling-was ephemeral and propagandistic, Delgadillo formalized a
many of them became less visible to art historians. Mural practice produced images and
new mural practice, with independent social movements as its center of gravity and a
public discourse for local public arenas, and the muralists experimented with materials.
corresponding visual aesthetics. His early murals for student organizations combined
,

visual aesthetics, thematics, and modalities of production suited to the popular venues,
bold, stencil-like abstract forms with a defiant human figure. By combining abstrac-
a mass cultural media environment, and the aesthetic sensibilities of emergent social
tion with human form he constructed an image of motion that transcended individual
actors. Post-Mexican School mural practice developed multiple strategies for producing
gesture to convey how a collective movement confronted stasis. This visual presentation
publicly meaningful images, connecting mural work to the multiple fronts of political
of dynamic, collective, and popular power continued tdbe as important to his mural
and cultural struggle from the 1960s to the present.
images as his collaboration with protests and radical movements was central to his
The counter-official profile for this new muralism emerged against the backdrop of
mural practice (an example of his dynamic ~esentation can be seen in his La Mujer
the PRJ's growing crisis of legitimacy. In the '960s, students and graduates of Mexico's
en la Lucha, shown in figure 14.1) three decades later. In Delgadillo's mural work, the
arts schools began seeking work outside the official precincts of power. They rejected
image has the sharp immediacy of direct action, as his activist aesthetic pushes hard at
dogmatic adherence to revolutionary nationalist visual aesthetics in the nation's art
the solidity of the wall.
academies, and they also questioned the apolitical individualism promoted by the art
Delgadillo was not alone in taking in counter- official directions the public activism
markets' Students from the arts academies of San Carlos and La Esmeralda produced
inherited from the Mexican School. Another artist who allied himself with the student
visual propaganda for the movement of 1968. The influential novelist and cultural critic
movement was Mario Falcon, who developed monumental political portraits drawn
Jose Revueltas wrote an essay that critiqued Mexican School visual discourse as bour-
from a hagiography of the political left, and put these portraits at the service of an urban
geois nationalism used to legitimize an untenable status quo.1O
insurgent politics. His murals celebrated radical left leadership and commemorated
In this context, Jose Hernandez Delgadillo-a third-generation Mexican School

POST-MEXiCAN SCHOOL MURALISM

268 CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURAllSM
moments of violent repression such as the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre. During a student vecindad or community housing unit, the local mercado or outdoor market. Although

takeover of the National University campus in 1972, Falc6n painted massive images of popular murals in Mexico significantly pre-dated the modern mural movement and

Emiliano Zapata and the guerrilla leader Genaro Vasquez on campus buildings, taking co-existed with it, community murals had been principally an informal, and often corn-

the space visually as student militants took it physically. Falc6n reprised this radical mercial, activity-landscapes and fanciful scenery depicted on the walls of cantinas

approach in murals of the late 19805 in collaboration with striking transportation work- and restaurants, for example, or images of the Virgin of Guadalupe. With rapid urban-

ers in Mexico City.The authorities or their allies destroyed all of Falcon's National Uni- ization at mid-century, however, urban space became politicized, with local housing
and community economic interests engaged in struggles against commercial designs
versity murals; the later murals were protected by union activists' constant vigilance.
and/or government modernization schemes. Barrio-based muralism began to re-invent
Muralists allied with oppositional politics discovered the ephemeral mural as a mon-
the representational function of the mural image and the public discursive practice of
umental public provocation, daring authorities to' destroy it and thereby publicly demo
mural production. Nearly a decade after the birth of the community murals movement
onstrate an official penchant for censorship and a disdain for a national cultural form.
in the United States, murals in Mexico City's neighborhoods began to integrate social
Whereas artists such as Falc6n and Delgadillo were not surprised when their works had
a short life span, other artists-such as Arnold BelkIn-discovered that even official and political themes.
One of the most important producers of barrio-based murals was the arts and culture
commissions could be ephemeral." The growing conservatism of the Mexican state pre-
collective Tepito Arte Ad, founded in r974 and led by the Tepitefio Daniel Manrique.
dictably endangered the production of new murals not aligned with official policies. The
Arte Ad articulated an anarcho-communitarian social vision in mural wactice defend-
ephemeral mural thus became symptomatic of the post- Revolutionary public arena, and
ing the traditional vecindad-a multi-family housing unit with a shared internal court-
a distinguishing feature of the post-Mexican School era. Following the Chiapas upris-
yard-against government plans to modernize the barrio of Tepito. The Ad project
ing of r994, for example, a group of artists in Mexico City (including Felipe Ehrenberg,
remained a powerful actor in the barrio until the mid-robes. and though the group
Rafael Barajas, and Agustin Castro L6pez) formed Resistencia Electrica, dedicated \0
subsequently splintered, Manrique continued to produce murals and to articulate Arte
nonviolent direct action aimed at exposing arid resisting the official deceptive accounts
Aca communitarianism in barrios throughout Mexico City (figure 14.2). The Canadian
of events in Chiapas. The group produced ephemeral murals, rapidly and publicly, and
transplant Arnold Belkin, who had advocated for a revival of Mexican muralism as early
both the production and destruction of the murals became mass media events. Simi-
as the 1960s, also produced community murals. Belkin's early work in the prisons and
larly, Mauricio Gomez and others painted an immense portrait of Emili ana Zapata on
later work in barrio settings (such as the community murals he painted in New York's
the pavement of Mexico City's z6calo, or central public square, to celebrate the historic
Hell's Kitchen in 1972, and in the Magdalena Contreras precinct of Mexico City in the
arrival of the Zapatista indigenous rights caravan at the National Palace in April 2001.
mid-I98os) set him clearly apart from los tres grandes, despite a shared revolutionary
Post- Mexican School muralism is marked also by an affinity of urban youth for
politics and embrace of internationalism. Belkin's widow, Patricia Quijano, logically
mural forms. Although Mexican graffiti art developed late relative to the rebel aerosol
chose local venues-the mercado, restaurants, community centers, and so on-in their
aesthetic in the United States, by the r980s a graffiti sensibility appeared in Mexico
Contreras neighborhood to·build on this direction in Belkin's mural practice from the
City under the influence of US mass culture and the social disintegration generated by
1990S to present, now with a civic-minded localism instead of Belkin's revolutionary
rapid, capitalist urbanization. Roving groups and individuals in Mexico City marked
and historical outlook. Overall, however, mu~h of the myral work undertaken in urban
urban territory with their "tags" and painted the occasional defiant "piece." Flashes
of individual artistic talent and organized social consciousness among aerosol artists
neighborhoods from the 1970S onward went undocumented, produced in near anonym- I '
ity nationally even if the artists were known)p the neighborhoods ~her~ they painted.
presented collaborative opportunities between formally trained muralists and marginal
Independent urban social movements arose after the 1985 MexICOCIty earthquake,
urban youth. By the early r990s, murals were a common product of the student left
providing a unique social laboratory for another generation of mural artists. The earth- I
in the Prepas, or high schools; they were also a common public emblem of rebellious
quake had left thousands dead and thousands more homeless, and when the response
youth culture, often produced in collaboration with formally trained artists. During the
of the government proved inadequate, grassroots organizing in the cities' barrios gave
r990s, the mural work of Alfredo Arcos in Ciudad Nezahualc6yotl, Otto Campbell in
muralism a renewed purpose. Younger artists, often influenced by Manrique's work,
Ciudad Juarez, and Iseo Noyola in Mexico City involved significant collaboration with
developed relationships with urban communities-for example, Felipe Hernandez of
economically marginalized and socially disaffected youth.
the Colonia Morelos in north central Mexico City, Alicia Soto of the Santo Domingo
Another defining change in politically motivated mural practice, the shift to local
area to the south, and Gustavo Chavez in San Juan de Aragon to the north. Some of
public arenas noted above, resulted by the 1970S in mural work taking place increasingly
these younger artists joined forces to produce mural works for communities other than
outdoors and in the social spaces of working-class Mexicans-the calle, the barrio, the

1
POST-MEXICAN SCHOOL MURALISM .27
270 CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURALISM
their own. Chavez and Soto participated in arts collectives formed after the earthquake
(La Cargola and Espiral Urbana, respectively) and produced mural work in a variety of
public settings and neighborhoods, from the northern Azcapotzalco area to Iztapalapa
in the south.
Frequently, the work of these well-trained and highly capable artists shared the walls
in the community with mural images generated by local autodidacts, such as Eduardo
Candelas and his project Plcistica Humana in Colonia Valle Gomez and "Sandino" Cerda
of the Morelos area, and those by anonymous local residents. This proliferation oflocal
muralisms owed some of its impetus to independent social organizations such as the
citywide Asamblea de Barrios, which supported community mural activities to build
political awareness and group identity.
But the proliferation of barrio-based muralisms also represents an appropriation and

I
re-invention of the mural as a medium for conserving and defending Mexican popu-
lar culture and historical memory. In the post-Mexican School cultural environment.
murals served to define and/or commemorate local working-class public spaces and
identities. The working class is made publicly visible in much of the local work of estab-
lished muralists, such as the murals ofTepito Arte Aca (see figure '4.2), Asamblea de
Barrios commissions aimed to identify urban residential communities with the social
movement (see figure 14.1), or even Gustavo Bernal's commemorative mural cycle in the I
former mines ofTlalpujahua, Michoacan (plate IO).
The appropriation of an official cultural form in a broader struggle over the national
cultural patrimony associated with the Mexican Revolution is a hallmark of the post-
I
Mexican School era. The mural practice and aesthetics that emerged marked a shift in
the locus of the work; they also revealed new productive relationships between artworks
and art publics. perha~s the best-known evidence of the changes is the phenomenon
of the grupos in the 1970s, the arts collectives whose collaborative approach to artistic
production and alignment with communities marginal to the "art world" were reflected FIGURE 14.2
Daniel Manrique. Detail of community
in collectively made community murals and experimentation with ephemeral and por-
mural for Centro Cultural de Cam-
table mural forms.
pamentos Unidos, acrylic on cement.
In addition to Tepito Arte Ad, the grupos included the Taller de Arte e Ideologia, a Colonia Guerrero, Mexico City (1997)·
project focused on the critique of dominant ideology and led by the art critic Alberto Photograph: Brute Campbell.
Hfjar, who had studied with Siqueiros; the Taller de Investigaci6n Plastica (TIP), based in /
Morelia, Michoacan, and still extant, a group unique in working closely with campesino
groups and rural communities: the Suma group, which grew out of a workshop at the
Academia de San Carlos; Proceso Pentagono, centered on installations and other three- to the way the social realism of the Mexican School relates to contemporary social, politi-

dimensional works; and the monumental graphics collective Germinal. Although the cal, and cultural realities. One sees this in dramatic form, for example, in El Sepelio,

grupos did not focus all their efforts on the mural form, formal innovations included a '977 mural study on canvas by TIP's Jose Luis Soto (see figure '4-3)· Soto's image

work with the manta, or banner-doth, as a kind of mobile mural that allowed the monu- recapitulates a detail from Diego Rivera's 1926-27 mural cycle at the Autonomous Uni-

mental and visual narrative aesthetics of muralism to be adapted for use in protest versity of Chapingo-e-thc burial of a revolutionary campesino-but Soto overshadows
both the narrated event and Rivera's visual language with icons of capitalist consumer
marches and community assemblies. Many of their experiments with visual language
and community participation had implications for mural work, particularly with regard culture.

POST-MEXICAN SCHOOL MURAL1SM

273
272 CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURALISM
 FIGURE 14.3 FIGURE 14.4
Ojos de Lucha. Zapatista manta, acrylic on polyviyyl cloth (I994)·
Jose Luis Soto. Et Sepe/io, study for a mural image for the Taller de
Investigaci6n Plastica, oil on canvas (1977). Reproduced courtesy of Jose
Photograph: Bruce Campbell.
Luis Soto. /

ence to social and political actors typically excluded by officialdom and unrepresented
The grupos influenced Mexican cultural production a generation later by providing
in the mass media, as with the manta in figure 14-4, where a Zapatista rebel from rural
a model for collective authorship. The group Ojos de Lucha (David Gallegos, Daniel
Chiapas looks eye-to-eye with, and calls to action, the urban viewer in Mexico City,
Camacho, and Cassandra Smithies), formed after the r985 earthquake, worked closely
despite the Mexican state's military containment of the Zapatistas to the southern state.
with the independent Garment Workers Union, emphasizing collective authorship,
The influence of the grupos is also clear among barrio artists. Tepito Arte Ad. enjoys
experiments with a highly referential visual language, and a mobile mural (manta) aes-
a nearly mythic status among urban community muralists, even though the group's
thetics. The group's mantas adapted the narrative imagery of murals to the street tactics
project of collective production fell apart long ago. In general, collaborative "muraling"
and public discourse of social movements, often carefully positioning the viewer in a
remains a widespread practice, manifest from communities in resistance in Chiapas to
kind of dialogue with the political cause. The mantas sought to give public visual pres'

POST-MEXICAN SCHOOL MURALISM

275
274 CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURALISM
community organizations in urban centers. Murals by artists without formal training, CONCLUSION
common in the post-Mexican School period, helped democratize an art form previously
produced for the official culture by elite representatives of the art world. Not only did Mexican muralism continues, in multiple forms, at a broad range of sites and with a

self-trained community muralists become more common, but established figures in the wide variety of themes. Art historical attention to it remains relatively limited. There is

art world also helped to de-professionalize mural production. Mauricio G6mez, founder no book-length study yet published treating the muralism of lose Hernandez Delgadillo,
Daniel Manrique ofTepito Arte Ad, or Jose Luis Soto of the TIP, despite their extensive
of Germinal, co-authored popular education texts in the 1980s that promoted commu-
production and important aesthetic contributions, over more than three decades, to
nity mural practices in Mexico City.u Felipe Ehrenberg, one of Mexico's most distin-
Mexican visual culture. But broader sociographic attention to mural practice is also
guished conceptufl artists and a founding member of Proceso Pentagono, spurred the
needed. Muralism outside government institutions and the formal art world is largely
development of talleres de mum/ismo (mural workshops) in r980 as a project of his arts
undocumented. Conservation of this rich visual record is simply not on the agenda of
and communications workshop Haltos20rnos (Talleres de Comunicaci6n H20). H20
Mexico's arts and culture institutions."
promoted a five-dayproduction schedule for murals in workshops that integrated locals
An examination of the recent history of muralism is instructive for continued
into every aspect of mural production, from site selection to image design and transfer
research. By bringing the mural image into contact with the more sociological observa-
The mural talteres emphasized an amateur artistic authorship and a non-hierarchical,
tion of mural practice-that is, the aggregate of communicative strategies that make
democratic mode of generating images and themes. Ehrenberg estimates that the
a mural possible and publicly meaningful-one begins to see in the image a locus
talleres produced more than a thousand murals throughout Mexico in the 1980s. Iseo
of social struggle, a point of articulation for collective opinion and public space, and
Noyola's Escuela de Cultura Popular (which opened in the early r990s as the Escuela
a moment of aesthetic adaptation to changing cultural drcumstmccs. In addition,
de Cultura Popular Revolucionaria) also operated to introduce muraling and Mexico's
Mexican muralism after the Mexican School continues to be an artistic practice in the
mural traditions to community activists and political militants. Similarly, some TIP
public sphere, despite the reconfiguration of the national public sphere under pres-
projects in rural Nayarit and Michoacan produced murals executed by communities
sures from mass media culture, the neo-liberal political economy, and an increasing
instead of trained artists. In effect, communities have been empowered to appear in
distance between elite discourse and popular experience. Hence, instead of the centrally
mural work not as visual "content," like the indigenous people in the works of Diego
positioned muralism of the Mexican School, the past forty years have been marked
Rivera, but as both social agents and the social reality of the mural.
by multiple local muralisms, deploying themselves as elements of diverse local, often
With the 1994 neo-Zapatista insurgency in Chiapas, mural practice encountered
counter-official, public spheres. Viewed as a locus of social struggle and medium of
new challenges, locations, and themes. Surprisingly, given the almost exclusively
public discourse, mural production affords researchers a special kind of visual record.
urban history of the murr.1 form, muralism began to appear frequently in the coun-
A map of present-day mural practice would reveal nearly all the nodal points of conflict
tryside, grounded In local indigenism. Guided in part by the tactics and concerns of
over public space and public policy in Mexico.
the Zapatista movement, oppositional mural practices now aid in opening channels of
Murals also track the politicization of Mexico's cultural patrimony. Cultural patri-
communication between rural struggles and urban social milieux, and re-invigorate
mony-the forms of symbolic and cultural capital associated with national identity-
local community autonomy threatened by official efforts at control, global market forces,
became a bone of contention as the state moved away fr;6m the revolutionary national-
and commercialized mass culture. Gustavo Chavez has been collaborating in recent
ism of the 1920S and 19305. Developments in the mural arts are significant in this
years with Chiapas communities and has produced mantas for the Zapatisras' national
regard. First, the public profile of the mura{is one instance of this broader cultural
tours-political caravans that travel the country to promote democratic reforms and
conflict, and it pits the emerging independence of social movements against the dead
communicate the interests of indigenous communities to the national public. The neo-
weight of official corporativism in a struggle to determine how mural art is identified
Zapatista movement has energized the indigenous communities with which the TIP
with the nation. Myriad popular muralisms co-habit the cultural field with the mono-
collaborates. The new political energy in these communities inspired the TIP's turn,
lithic but static official profile of the Mexican School. Second, the "content" of murals
since the mid-rocos. to murals made of mosaic tile, rendering the art works nearly
indicates a reshaping of the cultural field. Intriguingly, for example, despite the still
indestructible and thus making difficult conservative efforts to destroy important public
largely masculine domain of mural practice, popular mural images more frequently
representations of the identities and concerns of politically vulnerable local publics.
foreground women as subjects of history and public life than did Mexican School works.
Community murals and mantas painted by artists and/or members of the commu-
In the TIP's work in north central Mexico, and in Chavez's work in Chiapas, indigenous
nity are now a commonplace in public protests, especially those defending local space
communities appear in the image as coeval subjects. Whereas Mexican School im-agery
against privatization or other forms of external appropriation.P

POST-MEXICAN SCHOOL MURAlISM

277
2]6 CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURALISM
involved elite portraiture, Manrique references local histories and personalities whose and Marcela Noriega Melchor, Manual de Mantas (Mexico City: Universidad Autonoma Met-
ropolitana-Xochimilco, 1984); and Mauricio Gomez Morin , Come hac,r un peno"d'ico mura !
public importance is undocumented outside oral narrative and the mural work.
(Mexico City: Universidad Aut6noma Metropolitana. 1987).
In sum, counter-official muralisms oflate twentieth-century Mexico present a visual
13. See my "Mural Production and Public Space in Mexico," in Everyday Life in Urban
and aesthetic record of artistic engagement with social movements, territorial poaching
Mexico, Gareth A. Jones, ed. (palgrave. 20n).
of urban space, delimitation and defense oflocal popular space, transformation oflocal
14. At the Getty Institute's 2003 international symposium on "Mural Painting and
public spheres, and critical intervention in mass culture. The absence of this record Conservation in the Americas," Walter Boelsterly, director of Mexico's National Center for
from the received (authorized) history of the mural represents a challenge for art history. Artistic Patrimony, indicated that documenting murals in popular settings is a prohibitively
As a public sphere phenomenon, the fate of Mexico's mural tradition is a political ques- expensive undertaking given the budget for his office.
tion. The object of study, in this case, beckons the art historian to enter the public arena.

NOTES

1. Bruce Campbell, Mexican Murats in Times of Crisis (Tucson: University of Arizona

Press, 2003).
2. See Jose Vasconcelos, La raza c6smica (Mexico City: Espasa-Calpe, 1994)·
3. Octavia Paz, "Social Realism in Mexico: The murals of Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros."
artsGanada (DecemberlJanuary r979-8o):59·
4. See Serge Cuilbaut's How New York Stole the Idea of Modem Art (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1983); and Shifra Goldman, "Rewriting the History of Mexican Art: The I

Politics and Economics of Contemporary Culture," in Mexico: A Country in Crisis, Jerry R.

Ladman, ed. (EIPaso: Texas Western Press, r986).
5. [uan Acha, Las culturas esteticas de America Latina (Mexico City: UNAM, 1994), p. 162;
and Shifra Goldman, Pintura mexicana contempordnea en tiempos de cambia (Mexico City:
Instituto Politecnico Nacional, 1989), pp. 29-)0.
6. Ley federal de monumentos y zonas arqueo16gicos, artisticos e historicos, Diario Oft-
cial de LaNacion, 1972. I
7. In 1993, in an effort to revive the tradition, a number of prominent muralists created
a professional organization-Creadores de Arte Publico en Mexico-to press for renewed
governmental commitment to public art.
8. Exceptions are Shifra Goldman, Me~'can Painting in Times afCrisis, and Leonard Fol- /
garait, "Murals and Marginality in Mexico City: The Case ofTepito Arte Aca," in Art History
9, No. r (1986):55-72. /
9- See Sylvia Pandolfi, ed., De los grupos los individuos (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional
de Bellas Arres. 1985); Maria Teresa Favela Fierro, "La decada de los sesenta en las Escuelas
de Arte," in the exhibit catalogue Sesenta de los Sesenta (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de
Bellas Artes, 1983), pp. 6-17; and Luz Marfa Abarran Favela, Luisa Fernanda Fernandez
Gonzalez, and Laura Elena Ramirez Rasgado, "Importancia del Salon Independiente en el
desarrollo arttstico y social de Mexico," Master's thesis for the Escuela de Historia de Arte.
Universidad lberoamericana, August 1973.
to. Jose Revueltas, "Escuela Mexicana de Pintura y novela de la revclucion,' in Jose
Revueltas, Cuestionamientos e intenciones (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1978).
II. See Arnold Belkin, Contra la amnesia (Mexico City: Editorial Dames, 1986).
12. Mauricio Gomez Morin, Teresita Gonzalez Carballo, Maria Esther Montes Gonzalez,

POST-MEXICAN SCHOOL MURALISM

279
278 CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO MURALISM
 CHRONOLOGY

Alejandro Anreus with

Holly Barnet-Sanchez and Bruce Campbell

MEXICAN-US BORDER RELATIONS, 1836-54

Texas wins its independence from Mexico and establishes an independent

republic.

The Territory of Texas is annexed by the United States.

The United States, under the leadership of President James K. Polk, invades
Mexico in an effort to settle long-disputed boundary lines and to expand
US territory. with the support of a near-unanimous declaration of war by the
US Congress in May.

Mexico City falls to invading US forces, led by General Winfield Scott on

September r6.

The Mexican War ends with the signing of the Treaty of GLalUpe Hidalgo. It is
signed on February 2 and ratifications are exchanged on May 30. The northern
frontier lands, comprising approximately one-third (one-half, if Texas is included)
of all Mexican territory are ceded to the United States. Land rights, freedom of
religion, language, and education are initially guaranteed to former Mexican
citizens by this treaty; ultimately such provisions are removed from the final
document

The Gadsden Purchase Treaty is signed between the governments of Mexico and
the United States. This ratifies the ceding of the Mesilla Valley (now portions of
New Mexico and Arizona) to the United States for $10 million.
THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICAN AMERICANS, 18S4-1910 MEXICO, EUROPE, THE UNITED STATES, 1910-2003

The Newspaper £1 Clamor Publico is founded in Los Angeles. Francisco l. Madero campaigns against sitting President Porfirio Dfaz, until he is
arrested and jailed. Diaz wins eight terms through electoral rigging. Madero in
The Cortina War is waged, led by Juan Cortina to protest Anglo American exile in the United States. Revolution begins.
mistreatment of Mexican Americans. The first large-scale migration of Mexicans to the United States begins.

At the New Mexico constitutional convention, Mexican American delegates

The US Civil War begins and more than ro.ooo Mexican Americans serve in
succeed in establishing equality of the Spanish and English languages for all
both Union and Confederate armed forces. It ends in r865, legally abolishing
state business.
slavery.
Diego Rivera (1886-1957) returns to Mexico from Paris and exhibits his
Mariano Vallejo's history of California from a Mexican American perspective is European paintings at the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts as part of the
published. celebrations of Mexico's Independence Centennial. Rivera returns to Paris the
following year.
The El Paso Salt War is waged by Mexican Americans when Anglo Texans deny
Mexican Americans their salt rights. Diaz resigns the presidency and goes into exiJe. Francisco I. Madero enters
Mexico City.
,88, The newspaper The Laredo Times begins publication. David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974) enrolls in evening classes at the San Carlos
Academy of Fine Arts. Students at the Academy demand educational reforms and
The first attempt to organize a Mexican American agricultural union happens in go on strike. Among the student leaders of the strike is Jose Clemente Orozco
Texas.
(1883-1949). The Academy doses.

Eusebio Chacon writes EI hijo de la tempestad, one of the first Mexican American Peasants in the southern and northern regions of Mexico demand land reform.
novels. Emiliano Zapata and Francisco "Pancho" Villa attack the provisional government
Francisco I. Madero is elected President
The Alianza Hispano Americana, one of the first mutual-aid (mutualista)
Diego Rivera visits Toledo twice during the year, studying the work ofEl Greco
organizations is formed in Tucson.
and Ignacio Zuloaga.

1900 Ricardo and Enrique Flores Mag6n found the magazine Regeneraci6n in Mexico. General Victoriano Huerta seizes power through a military coup. President
Over 125 Spanish-language newspapers are in circulation throughout the United Francisco I. Madero and his vice-president are assassinated.
States. Alfredo Ramos Martinez (1871-1946) inaugurates the open-air art school in
Santa Anita. The school is attended by Siqueiros, Fernando Leal (1896-r964),
1901 Theodore Roosevelt is elected President of the United States; serves until 1909·
Jean Charlot (r898-19791, Ramon Alva de la Canal (1892-1985), and Fermin
Ricardo Flores Magan founded the Partido Liberal Mexicano (Liberal Reformist
Revueltas (1902-35)· /
Association) as part of an effort to overthrow the Dlaz administration in Mexico.
In Paris, Diego Rivera begins his cubist p~e (r91)-I7I· .
He connected his ideas about revolution in Mexico to working-class struggles in
the United States. Woodrow Wilson is elected President of the United States; serves through World
War I and the founding of the League of Nations, until 1921.
Ricardo Flores Mag6n founded the magazine Regeneraci6n in San Antonio, in
The miner's strike ofI913-14 in Ludlow, Colorado, fails and more than fifty
1905 in Saint Louis, and 1906 in Canada. In 1907 he began Revoluci6n in Los
people, many Mexican Americans, are killed by the National Guard.
Angeles, and restarted Regeneraci6n there in 1908.
Constitutionalist army is organized by Venustiano Carranza with the support of
'9°9 William Howard Taft is elected President of the United States; serves until 191}
Alvaro Obregon. General Victoriano Huerta goes into exile.
Siqueiros joins the Constitutionalist army at the behest of painter Gerardo
Murillo ("Dr. Ad") (r875-1964). Oro2CO joins the Red Battalions of the anarelio-

CHRONOLOGY
284 CHRONOLOGY
 The Johnson Act institutes the first immigration quota in US history, in which
syndicalist Casa del Obrero Mundial together with Dr. Atl. He will draw political
all immigration is strictly limited except from the nations of the Western
caricatures and covers for the battalion's periodical La vanguardia.
hemisphere.
World War I begins when Austria declares war on Serbia.
The National Agrarian Commission implements land reform.
Venustiano Carranza reaches Mexico City. Villa and Zapata break with Carranza
'9'5 Rivera returns to Mexico from Paris. Vasconcelos' mural program begins with
and capture Mexico City, forcing Carranza's withdrawal to Veracruz.
the decoration of the former Jesuit Church San Pedro y San Pablo in Mexico City,
The "Plan de San Diego" is written in San Diego, Texas, calling for a Mexican by Roberto Montenegro (1887-1968) and others. In November, at the invitation
American rebellion in the southwestern United States. of Vasconcelos, Rivera travels to Yucatan to view pre-Columbian sites in the
company of other artists and intellectuals, including poet Carlos Pellicer.
Carranza retakes the Mexican capital; his government is recognized by the U nited
Lopez Velarde writes "La suave patna" shortly before his premature death. The
States. Villa retaliates by attacking US property, provoking an armed intervention
poem will be included posthumously in the 1932 collection m son del coraz6n.
led by General Pershing.
Pellicer publishes Colores en el mar y otros poemas.
Novelist Mariano Azuela publishes Los de abajo; not until 1924 did it receive
widespread acclaim. Jean Charlot "discovers" the work of popular engraver jose Guadalupe Posada
(1851-191)) and introduces it to his fellow artists. Charlot, Alva de la Canal, and
Ramon Lopez Velarde publishes La sangre devota.
Leal take up the woodcut medium.
A new constitution provides for economic and social reforms. Carranza is elected The poet Manuel Maples Arce and the painters Ramon Alva de la Canal, Jean
President of Mexico. Charlot, and Fernando Leal are active in the estridentista movement (1921-28).
Essayist and poet Alfonso Reyes publishes Visi6n de Anahuac. Maples Arce publishes the movement's manifesto, Actual NO.1, "Comprimido

The United States enters World War I. estridentista. "

Warren Harding is elected President of the United States; serves until 192)-
The Flores Mag6n Brothers (Ricardo and Enrique) are found guilty of violating
the US Espionage Act and are sentenced to prison. Mexican Painters and photographers of California, one of the first exhibitions of
contemporary Mexican art in the United States, opens in Los Angeles.
The United States passes the Immigration Act, which requires all immigrants
except Mexicans to pay a head tax and fulfill a literacy requirement. Rivera begins the encaustic mural Creation in the Anfiteatro Bolivar of the
'922
Escuela Nacional Preparatoria {San Ildefonzo). He is assisted by Carlos Merida
Zapata continues his revolt against the Carranza government until he is
(r89r-1985). Jean Charlot. Xavier Guerrero (r896-1974), and Amado de la Cueva
assassinated in ApriL
(189I-l926).
The Mexican Academy of History is founded. Siqueiros visits Europe as the
Charlot and Alva de la Canal experiment with fresco on the walls of the open
Mexican military attache; he meets with Rivera in Paris, and they discuss the
courtyard of the Preparatoria. Together with Revueltas and Leal who will work in
Mexican Revolution and the social role of art.
encaustic, they will paint murals in the building ..They will be joined by Orozco
World War I ends with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. who, working in fresco, will complete the largest mural cycle in the building
(1923-26). Siqueiros returns to Mexico and begins murals th'at he does not
Carranza is unsuccessful in naming a successor. The Revolt of Agua Prieta takes
place. Carranza is driven from Mexico City into the Puebla sierra, where he is complete in the colegio chico of the rfreparatoria.

killed in May. Obreg6n becomes President of Mexico, beginning a period of The Syndicate of Technical Workers. Painters and Sculptors is formed by
stability. Siqueiros. Rivera, Orozco, and others. The union's manifesto, authored

Philosopher Jose Vasconcelos is named Minister of Public Education by Obregon. principally by Siqueircs, will be drafted in r92) and published in '924.

Vasconcelos begins educational and cultural reforms, eventually inviting Mexican Broadsheets printed and distributed by the union become the newspaper

artists to paint murals on the walls of government buildings. E! Machete.

Rivera joins the Mexican Communist Party. Siqueiros will join the following year.
Rivera is in Italy, where he studies mural painting techniques and the work of
Other artists are ideologically close to the Party at this time.
Renaissance painters.

CHRONOLOGY 287

286 CHRONOLOGY
The estridentistas publish the magazine Ser; it will be followed by lrradiador (1923) Rivera, while continuing to paint at the SEP, begins murals in the chapel at
and Horizonte (I926-27)· Chapingo. Orozco resumes work at the Preparatoria and completes the mural
Social Revolution at the Escuela Industrial in Orizaba, Veracruz.
Maples Arce publishes Andamios interiores.
Siqueircs abandons artistic activity in favor of union organizing and political
Villa is assassinated. The Obregon government is behind the killing. activism.
Rivera begins murals at the Secretaria de Educaci6n Publica (the SEP, or Ministry Painter and stage designer Adolfo Best-Maugard (I89I-I964) publishes Metodo
of Public Education). Charlot, Guerrero, and de la Cueva paint seven panels in de disePlocreativo (A Method of Creative Design), which is used to teach drawing
the SEP. Merida and Emilio Amero (I90I-76) paint in the public library annex. throughout the educational system of Mexico.
Eventually Rivera destroys all of their panels, replacing them with his own work,
with the exception of two by de la Cueva and one by Charlot. Orozco departs for the United States in search of mural commissions; he will
reside there until 1934·
Fermin Revueltas paints a fresco panel in the second courtyard of the SEP.
Carlos Chavez composes the ballet H.P.; Rivera designs sets and costumes for it.
Photographers Edward Weston and Tina Modotti arrive in Mexico City. I

Rivera visits the Soviet Union to participate in the tenth anniversary of the
Maria Izquierdo (1902-55) arrives in Mexico City with her husband and children.
Bolshevik Revolution; he will return to Mexico in June of the following year.
Calvin Coolidge becomes President of the United States; serves until 1929.
Fermin Revueltas paints a fresco at the Technical-Industrial Institute in Mexico
Dissatisfied with the policies of the Obreg6n government, Vasconcelos resigns as City.
Minister of Public Education. J. M. Puig Casauranc replaces him. Maria Izquierdo leaves her husband and enrolls at the San Carlos Academy of
Plutarco Ellas Calles, Obregon's handpicked successor, wins the election and is Fine Arts.
inaugurated President of Mexico in December. Leal paints frescoes at the Ministry of Public Health in Mexico City.
Students protest murals at the Preparatoria and deface murals by Orozco and Revueltas paints a fresco at the Technical Industrial Institute in Mexico City.
Siqueiros. Orozco, Siqueiros, and others are dismissed from jobs as mural
La Esmeralda (Escuela Nacional de Pintura y Escultura] opens as an alternative
painters; Rivera is not and continues to work.
art school to the more conservative Academia de San Carlos. Easel painters such
Maples Arce publishes Urbe. as Manuel Rodriguez Lozano 1,897-'97')' Agustin Lazo (,896-'97')' Maria
Izquierdo, Jesus Guerrero Galvan (19IO-73), and Antonio Rufz "£1 Corcito"
Calles de-radicalizes organized labor and brings it into the government.
(1897-I964), who will be the school's director from '942 to '958, will teach
Vasconcelos publishes his essay "La raza cosmica."
there.
Orozco paints the mural Omniscience for a private patron at the Casa de los
The constitution is changed so that Obregon may run for the presidency for a
Azulejos in Mexico City.
second time. President-elect Obreg6n is assassinated by a radical Catholic activist
Rivera resigns from the Mexican Communist Party in order to devote himself
and is succeeded by Emilio Partes Gil as interim president.
better to Marxism through his art. He will be re-admitted to the Party in 1926.
Novelist Martin Luis Guzman publishes Et aguila y la srien.te. ,
Salvador Novo publishes XX poemas.
El Machete becomes the periodical of the Mexican Communist Party.
Mario Carreno ('9'3-99) attends the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts in
The magazine Contemporcineos (I928-31) 'gins publication; its editors;
Havana, Cuba.
contributors are the poets and essayists Carlos Pellicer, Xavier Villaurrutia,
The government enforces constitutional anti- church laws. Religious expression Salvador Novo, Jose Gorostiza, and Jorge Cuesta. Artists committed to easel
is curtailed, with clerical education and dress outlawed. The Mexican Catholic painting such as Agustin Lazo, Julio Castellanos (I905-471, Manuel Rodriguez
Church declares an ecclesiastical strike. Land reform is also an issue, as a Lozano, and Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991) are associated with the magazine.
majority of former followers of Zapata and Villa are practicing Catholics. The Jorge Cuesta edits and publishes Antologia de la poesia mexicana moderna.
Cristero peasant revolt takes place in the north-central western provinces. Civil
Siqueiros visits the Soviet Union.
war lasts until truce is called in 1929.

CHRONOLOGY
288 CHRONOLOGY
Rivera meets Frida Kahlo (1907-541 at one of Tina Modotti's weekly parties. Aggression against communists occurs throughout Mexico. The fascist Gold
Shirts are created in Mexico City.
With Emilio Portes Gil (1928-30), Pascual Ortiz Rubio (1930-32), and Abelardo
Rodriguez Lujan (1932-34) begin three short-term presidencies with Calles Siqueiros is expelled from the Mexican Communist Party. Because of tumultuous
May Day demonstrations in Mexico City, Siqueiros is placed under confinement
governing indirectly.
in the town of Tax co (1930-32). While in Taxco, Siqueiros will execute prints
Daniel Venegas writes the novel Las aventuras de Don Chipote, 0 wando los pericos
(woodcuts and lithographs) as well as easel paintings.
mamen in Los Angeles.
Orozco paints Prometheus at Pomona College. Claremont, California.
Julio Antonio Mella, exiled Cuban communist and lover of Tina Modotti, is
Rivera is forced to resign the directorship of the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts.
assassinated in Mexico City.
He begins the Allegory of California at the Stock Exchange in San Francisco,
The Mexican Communist Party is declared illegal (until 1935)·
California.
Rivera begins a mural cycle at the Palacio Nacional in Mexico City. In April he
Fernando Leal paints murals on the life of Bolivar in the entrance of the
accepts an appointment as director of the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts,
Anfiteatro Bolivar at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria in Mexico City.
proposing sweeping changes in the curriculum. He is expelled from the Mexican
Maria Izquierdo exhibits her paintings at the Art Center in New York City.
Communist Party.

In December Rivera begins a mural on the history ofCuernavaca and Morelos in Argentinean painter Antonio Berni (1905-81) returns to his homeland after
living and studying in Europe since 1925. While in Paris, Berni befriended
the loggia of the Palacio de Cortes in Cuernavaca. The mural is commissioned by
French Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre.
US Ambassador Dwight W. Morrow.

Partido Nacional Revolucionario is created by Calles. After several name and Orozco completes murals at the New School for Social Research in New York
'93'
organizational changes it will become the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (begun in November r930).
(PRI), which will govern Mexico until the end of the twentieth century. Rivera paints The Making of a Frescoat the California School of Fine Arts in San
Rivera marries Frida Kahle in August. Francisco, California.

Vasconcelos campaigns for the presidency and is defeated by Pascual Ortiz In December, Rivera's retrospective (the second in the institution, after Henri
Rubio; Calles will continue to govern behind the scenes until 1934- Matisse's) opens at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Novelist Martin Luis Guzman publishes La sombra del caudillo. Guatemalan poet and art critic Luis Cardoza y Aragon arrives in Mexico as an
exile from the Ubico y Castaneda dictatorship in his homeland.
Maria Izquierdo and Rufino Tamayo (who had been one of her instructors at the
academy) begin a relationship and share a studio (1929-33). Berni joins the Communist Party of Argentina. He will leave the Party the
following year over ideological differences.
Jean Charlot leaves for the United States, where he will live and paint in New
York, Iowa, Georgia, and will eventually settle in Hawaii, where he will die in Cuban painter Carreno arrives in Spain. where he will remain until 1935· He

1979· earns his living as a magazin.e .ill~strator and is close/the Communist Party of
Spain, although he does not Jom It. ~
Rivera organizes Maria Izquierdo's first solo exhibition at the Galeria de Arte
Modemo del Teatro Nacional. Rivera paints a mural, commissioned by,.(dsel Ford, in the courtyard of the
1932
Herbert Hoover is elected President of the United States; serves until 1933. Detroit Institute of Arts.
Orozco travels to Europe for the first and only time; he studies the work of El Greco.
The US stock market crashes and the Great Depression begins.
Orozco begins his mural cycle at the Baker Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover,
Repatriation programs begin. Almost 500,000 Mexicans and Americans of
Mexican descent are returned to Mexico during a five-year period. New Hampshire.
Siqueiros is in Los Angeles. California, where he paints the murals Worker's
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) forms in Corpus Christi,
Meeting (Chouinard School of Art, destroyed), Tropical America: Oppressed and
Texas; Ike L ULAC News begins publication.
Destroyed by Imperialism (The Plaza Art Center), and Portrait oJMexico Today
Mexican American artist Antonio Garcia produces paintings based on pre-
(Dudley Murphy home, Santa Monica).
Columbian themes.

CHRONOLOGY 291
290 CHRONOLOGY
 Fermin Revueltas completes a fresco on the subject of work in the building of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, designed by Adamo Boari, is inaugurated. Rivera

newspaper £1 Nacional. recreates Man at the Crossroads in Bellas Artes; across from it, Orozco paints the
mural Catharsis.
Abelardo Rodriguez Lujan becomes President of Mexico (until 1934).
Fermin Revueltas completes his stained-glass murals at the Centro Escolar
Siqueiros travels to Uruguay and Argentina. He paints Plastic Exercise in a private Revolucicn in Mexico City and the party offices of the Partido Revolucionario
1933
home in Don Torcuato, a province of Buenos Aires, with the collaboration of Institucional in Culiacan. Sinaloa.
Argentinean painters Antonio Berni, Lino Eneas Spilimbergo (1896-1964), and
others. Siqueiros iSrxpelled from Argentina because of his political activism. 1935 LEAR is commissioned by the government to decorate the walls of the newly
renovated Abelardo L. Rodriguez market in the center of the city.Work is
Tamayo paints a mural in the Conservatory of Music in Mexico City. He ends his
executed by both Mexican and US artists (Marion Greenwood and Isamu
relationship with Maria Izquierdo and begins seeing his future wife Olga Flores
Noguchi). Rivera is in charge of approving all designs for the murals. Rivera
Rivas. completes the final stairway wall at the Palacio Nacional, begun the previous year.
Julio Castellanos paints his only mural on the subject of children's games at the
Carlos Chavez composes Sinfonia India.
Melchor Ocampo school in Coyoadn.
In August at the meetings of the North American Conference of the New
Fermin Revueltas paints an allegorical encaustic on the subject of production in
Education Fellowship, Rivera and Siqueircs attack each other, brandishing pistols.
the National Mortgage Bank in Mexico City. In October, Rivera will respond to Siqueiros' accusation that he is a political
Silvestre Revueltas composes ]anitzio. opportunist by issuing a statement explaining his reasons for breaking with the

Rivera begins the mural Man at the Crossroads at Rockefeller Center in New Mexican Communist Party.
York. He is dismissed in May and the mural is covered (it will be destroyed in Fermin Revueltas completes the stained-glass mural in the building of the local
1934) because of Rivera's inclusion of a portrait of Lenin in the work. In July, peasant organization in Hermosillo, Sonora. He paints a fresco at the Gabriela
Rivera begins portable murals Portrait of America at the anti-Stalinist New Mistral school in Mexico City; he dies from alcohol poisoning on September 9,
Workers School in New York. The school's director is his close friend and future before he can complete it.
biographer Bertram Wolfe. In December, Rivera completes two small portable Carreno returns to Cuba and exhibits the production of his Spanish years at the
frescoes for the Communist League of America, a Trotskyite center in New York.
Lyceum in Havana.
Novo publishes Nuevo arnor, a collection of poems charged with homo-eroticism.
LEAR is commissioned by the Union of Graphic Workers of the Nation to
Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected President of the United States. He is elected decorate the main stairway of the union hall in Mexico City. O'Higgins, Mendez,
to office an unprecedented four times, dying part way through his fourth term in and Alfredo Zalce (1908-2003) collaborate on this project, whose theme is union
'945· struggle and the right to strike.
FDR institutes the New Deal in 1933, which establishes the Works Progress In February Orozco and Siqueiros attend the American Artists' Congress in New
Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps. Several federal art York City as the official representatives of LEAR. !
programs are created out of the WPA, based in large part on the Mexican example
In April Siqueiros establishes the Siqueiros Experimental Workshop-A
of federal sponsorship of the arts. A national mural program is established for
Laboratory of Modern Techniques in Art, in New York City. [ackson Pollock is a
commissioning murals for public buildings such as post offices, government
student/assistant at the workshop.
buildings, public schools, and so on.
Rivera paints four panels on the theme of Mexican festivals for the new Hotel
1934 In February Orozco completes the Dartmouth mural and returns to New York Reforma in Mexico City. Panels are repainted and later removed by the patrons
City. He will depart for Mexico in the summer. because of their political and religious satirical content. Rivera files suit and wins,
General Lazaro Cardenas is elected President of Mexico. This is the end of behind- and the panels are eventually sold to art dealer Alberto Misrachi.
the-scenes influence of Calles. A Six Year Plan is adopted by the government. Antonin Maud visits Mexico and befriends Maria Izquierdo. He will write about
Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR, League of Revolutionary her paintings in the August issue of Revista de revistas.
Artists and Writers) is founded in Mexico City by printmaker Leopoldo Mendez In July Civil War begins in Spain. Mexican artists, intellectuals, and the
(19°2-69), painter Pablo O'Higgins (19°4-83), and writer Juan de la Cabada as Cardenas government support the Spanish Republic against the fascists until
part of the Popular Front strategy for opposing fascism and war.

CHRONOLOGY 293

292 CHRONOLOGY
 the conclusion of the war in 1939 with the victory of Franco's forces. Afterward, The Cardenas government nationalizes oil fields and mines.
Mexico will offer asylum to thousands of Spaniards. Andre and Jacqueline Breton visit Mexico from April through the summer. They
Orozco begins his mural cycle in Guadalajara (at the University, the Governor's socialize with the Riveras and the Trotskys and travel together. In the fall Rivera

Palace, and the Cabanas Hospice), which will occupy him until '939· and Breton will sign "Manifesto: For a Free Revolutionary Art," published in
Partisan Review, which was actually written by Breton and Trotsky. By the end of
In September Rivera joins the Trotskyite International Communist League. In
this year, personal and political conflicts develop between Trotsky and Rivera.
November he intercedes with President Cardenas requesting political asylum
for Leon Trotsky. Cardenas grants Trotsky refuge with the stipulation that he not LEAR dissolves in July because of conflicts between Mexican Communist Party
members and anti-Stalinist elements within the organization.
engage in political activity while in Mexico.
In November Frida Kahlo has the first exhibition of her paintings, twenty-five
Mural commissions cease for Rivera in Mexico until 1942.
works, at the julien Levy Gallery in New York City.
Rufino Tamayo and his wife Olga move to New York City, where they will live
until 1954. Tamayo will teach drawing and painting at the Dalton School, the New Rivera denounces Stalin's role in the Spanish Civil War at the Congress of the
Confederation of General Workers in Mexico City.
School for Social Research, and the Brooklyn Academy of Art.

Brazilianpainter Candido Portinari (1903-62) paints murals at the Department Xavier Villaurrutia publishes Nostalgia de la muerie.
of Education and Health in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil The cycle will be completed in Rafael Solana, Octavio Paz, Efratn Huerta, and others begin publishing the
magazine TaUer. It will last until 1941 and it will bring together the two previous
'944-
generations of writers, including Alfonso Reyes and the Contemporaneos.
Cuban painter Carreno travels to Mexico, where he studies with Dominican
painter Jaime Colson, who espouses a return to the neoclassical tradition. In Siqueiros leaves Spain, and on his way back to Mexico stops in Paris where Louis
Mexico Carreno becomes aware of the work of painters Rodriguez Lozano, Julio Aragon arranges for him to lecture on Mexican mural painting.
Castellanos, and Guerrero Galvan. Carreno returns to Cuba the following year. The National Conference of Spanish- Speaking Peoples is organized by Luisa
\
Moreno and Josefina Fierro de Bright. It becomes one of the earliest Mexican
1937 The Cardenas government nationalizes the railroads.
American civil rights organizations.
In January Leon Trotsky and his entourage arrive in Mexico. They will live in
Frida Kahlo and Rivera's Coyoacan home until 1939· 1939 Jose Gorostiza publishes Muerte sinJin.
Siqueiros, after closing the Experimental Workshop in the fall of 1936, travels Frida Kahlo exhibits at the Pierre Colle Gallery in Paris.
to Spain, where he marries Angelica Arenal and joins the 29th division of the Rivera and Trotsky end their personal and political alliance. The Trotskys move to
Spanish Republican Army, where he will achieve the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. their own house on 19 Viena Street in Coyoacan.
At the invitation of poet Pablo Neruda, writers Carlos Pellicer, Octavio Paz, and Rivera and Kahle separate and get divorced by the end of the year.
Jose Mancisidor (a member of LEAR) attend the second Congreso Internacional
Siqueiros paints Retrato de la burguesia, his first mural utilizing Duco paint,
de Escritores en Defensa de la Cultura in Spain.
airbrush, and stencils at the Sindicato Mexicano de E~tricistas in. Mexic~ City.
Silvestre Revueltas composes Homenaje a Garda Lorca. He is assisted by the exiled Spaniard Josep Renau (19°7-82), a paII)ter WIth
Playwright Rodolfo Usigli writes El gesticulador, which will be staged in '947· experience working in photomontage. /

Taller de Crafica Popular (TGP) is founded in Mexico City by Leopoldo Mendez, Argentineans Berni and Spilimbergo paint murals for the Argentine Pavilion
Pablo O'Higgins, and others. at the New York World's Fair. Brazilian Portinari paints mural panels for the
Brazilian Pavilion at the New York World's Fair.
Ramon Alva de la Canal paints in fresco and encaustic the life of Morelos in the
interior of the monument to Morelos in [anitzio, Patzcuaro, Michoacan, Carreno exhibits with Jaime Colson and Costa Rican painter Max Jimenez at the
Bernheim-jenne gallery in Paris. He departs for Italy.
Juan O'Corman (1905-82) paints mural panels in egg tempera for the Mexico
City Airport. These are removed because of the satirical manner in which religion World War II begins when France and Great Britain declare war on Germany.
and politics are depicted.

Carreno arrives in Paris, where he will live until 1939.

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Exposici6n il1ternacional del surrealismo opens at Galeria de Arte Mexicano in Rivera returns to the Palacio Nacional and paints a series of fresco panels on pre-
Mexico City. The exhibit is organized by painter Wolfgang van Paalen and Conquest cultures in the second floor courtyard.
Peruvian poet Cesar Moro. Orozco begins fresco murals on the theme of the Apocalypse in the chapel of the
On May 24, Siqueiros leads an assassination attempt on Trotsky in his Coyoacan Hospital de Jesus Nazareno in Mexico City. The mural will remain incomplete at
house. Siqueiros is arrested and questioned. the time of his death.

Rivera arrives in San Francisco and paints a mural on the theme of Pan-American Siqueiros travels and lectures in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Panama.
1
unity for the Golden Gate International Exposition. Art historian Justina Fernandez publishes Orozco Forma e Idea.
On August 20, Trotsky is assassinated by Spanish Stalinist agent Ram6n Carreno returns to Cuba. He marries heiress and art collector Maria Luisa G6mez
Mercader. Mena.
In September, Kahlo visits Rivera in San Francisco and they reconcile. They will The Sleepy Lagoon Incident, in which twenty-four Mexican American youths are
remarry in December. charged with a gang killing, occurs in Los Angeles; seventeen are sentenced to
Orozco paints frescoes at the Gabino Ortiz Library in [iquilpan, Michoacan. prison until their convictions are reversed for civil rights violations and lack of
evidence.
Composer Silvestre Revueltas dies.
The United States institutes the Emergency Labor Program (the Bracero
20 Centuries of Mexican Art opens at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Program) to import Mexican workers during the labor shortages caused by World
Orozco travels to New York and paints the portable mural Dive Bomber and Tank War II.
at the museum.
WPA-sponsored programs for artists, writers, actors, and musicians ends.
Luis Cardoza y Arag6n publishes La nube y el reloj, where he discusses the work
of Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros as well as easel painters Tamayo, Lazo, and 1943 Jose Revueltas publishes the novel EI/uto humano.

Castellanos. The Colegio Nacional de Mexico is newly formed. President Avila Camacho

O'Gorman paints a fresco mural at the Gertruclis Bocanegra library in Patzcuaro,

appoints Orozco and Rivera as representatives of the visual arts.

Michoacan.
General Manuel Avila Camacho, a practicing
President of Mexico.
Portinari travels in the United States and exhibits
Modern Art in New York. The press dubs him "the Brazilian Rivera."
Carreno arrives in New York.
Roman Catholic, is elected
his work at the Museum
Siqueiros is in Havana, Cuba, where he lectures and paints the murals Nuevo
d{a de las democracias, Dos montanas de America, and ALegoriade Laigualdad y
confraternidad de las razas blanca y negra en Cuba, this last one at the home of
Maria Luisa G6mez Mena and her husband painter Mario Carreno, who assists
of
the artist.
Rivera begins two simultaneous mural projects; one on the history of cardiology
for the Instituto Nacional de Cardiologia, the other in the nightclub Ciro's in the

Rivera finishes the Golden Gate International Exposition mural in San Francisco Reforma Hotel. /
and returns to Mexico. Leal completes a fresco cycle on the history of transportation at the San Luis

Orozco paints a series of fresco murals in the Supreme Court in Mexico City. Potosi railroad station begun the previou~e-ar.

Rodriguez Lozano paints the fresco mural La piedad en el desierto in the Mexico The Zoot-Suit Riots occur in Los Angeles, San Diego, Philadelphia, Chicago, and

City penitentiary. Detroit, when gangs of US servicemen attack Mexican Americans.

Siqueiros flees to Chile as a result of his role in "l'affaire Trotsky." This is 1944 Siqueiros returns to Mexico and paints the mural Cuauhtimoc contra el mito in a
facilitated by the Chilean consul, poet Pablo Neruda, who grants him a visa. In private residence. He founds the Realist Center for Modern Art.
the city of Chillan in southern Chile, Siqueiros paints the mural Muerte al invasor Rivera begins the mosaic decorations of Anahuacalli, his residencefmuseumf
in the library of the Mexico school.
tomb begun in 1942.
Portinari begins murals in the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, which he Leal begins frescoes in the Dominican Order church San Juan de Dios, San Luis
will complete the following year.
Potosi.
Carreno exhibits his work at Perls Galleries in New York City.

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 Miguel Aleman is elected President of Mexico.
The Museum of Modem Art in New York opens the exhibition Modem Cuban
Painters, which includes the work of Carreno. KCOR in San Antonio becomes the first full-time Spanish-language television
station owned and operated by a Mexican American.
Portinari paints murals in the Franciscan church in Pampulha, Belo Horizonte,
Brazil. The building is designed by Oscar Niemeyer. The murals will be President Aleman forms the Commission of Mural Painting, a section of the
1947
completed two years later. Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, consisting of Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros.
Carreno and Maria Luisa Gomez Mena divorce. Carreno travels to New York. Rivera begins the fresco mural Sueno de una tarde dominical en el Alameda Central
for the newly constructed Hotel del Prado.
Siqueiros is given his first public wall since 1939; he paints Nueva democracia and
'945
the side panels Vi'ctimas de la Guerra and Vfctimas del facismo on the third floor of Retrospective exhibition of Orozco is held at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas
the Palacio de Bellas Artes. He publishes his most controversial text, No hay mas Artes in Mexico City.

ruta que la nuestra. Siqueiros exhibits seventy easel paintings at the Palacio de Bellas Artes.
Siqueiros begins the mural Patricios y patricidas at the Santo Domingo Customs The Community Services Organization (CSO) forms in Los Angeles to provide
House in Mexico City. He will complete this mural in 1966. grass-roots political organization for Mexican Americans. This is where Cesar
Rivera paints La gran ciudad de Tenochtitlcin at the Palacio Nacional. Chavez gets his first training.

Maria Izquierdo is commissioned to paint murals in the main stairwell of the Mario Suarez in his short stories published in the Arizona Quarterly in 1947 and
Mexican Federal Government building in Mexico City. The commission is I948 is one of the first writers to use the term "Chicano" in print
rescinded after pressure from Rivera and Siqueiros.
Rivera completes Hotel del Prado mural, which will be kept from public view for
In September, Orozco returns to New York City in the hopes of establishing nine years because of his inclusion of the slogan "God does not exist."
himself and finding an art dealer to represent him. He will remain in the city
Orozco paints murals at the National Teacher's School in Mexico City, and a
until the spring of 1946. portable fresco, Juarez y Mexico lrtdependiente at Chapultepec Castle, which since
Berni paints murals in the dome of the Galerias Pacifico in Buenos Aires. I940 has been the National Museum of History.
Carreno settles in New York City. He teaches drawing and painting at the New Illness causes the right side of Maria Izquierdo's body to become paralyzed. She
School for Social Research and the Brooklyn Museum Art School. will paint with her left hand for the next six years.
Harry S. Truman assumes the Presidency of the United States after Franklin D. Siqueiros begins, but does not complete, the mural Monumel1to a Ignacio Allende
Roosevelt's death; serves until 1953- at San Miguel de Allende.
Thousands of Mexican American soldiers fight in World War Il, receiving the The American G I Forum is founded in Corpus Christi, Texas, to combat
largest number of medals for valor based on the percentage of the population for discrimination and improve the status of Mexican Americans; branches form in
any defined group of combatants. The war ends when Japan surrenders. twenty- three states.
Josephina Niggli publishes ten stories portraying the alienation of being part Carey Mcwilliams publishes North from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People
Mexican, part Anglo in her book Mexican Village. of the United States. It is considered to be the first and is still one of the most
thorough, histories of the Mexican Americefi experience.
Siqueiros is re-admitted to the Mexican Communist Party.
Rivera petitions, for the second time, his re-admission to the Mexican Kahlo is re-admitted to the Mexican Communist Party, but Rivera's petition is
'949
Communist Party, but is rejected. denied for the third time.
. . 11 A . A st
Rivera's first major retrospective opens at the PalaCIO de Be as rtes III ugu
Alva de la Canal completes an encaustic mural on the theme of war and peace at
the Chapultepec Naval Center, and closes in December.
Carlos Merida completes a sculptural mural at a private residence in San Angel,
Leopolda Mendez resigns from the Mexican Communist Party and joins the
Mexico City, followed by a tile mural in the Department of Hydraulic Sources,
more populist Grupo lnsurgente Jose Carlos Mariategui, which will become
the Popular Party. With O'Higgins he paints frescoes in the maternity clinic of Mexico City. Both works are abstract and geometric.

Hospital #1 of the Mexican Institute of Social Security. Octavio Paz publishes Libertad bajo palabra.

CHRONOLOGY 299

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 On September 7, Orozco dies in Mexico City. Earlier in the year he had completed The Bracero agreement between the United States and Mexico is renewed; the
two small murals in the Chamber of Deputies at Guadalajara's Governor's Palace. flow of temporary workers from Mexico continues for thirteen years.

Rivera, Siqueiros, and Chilean poet Pablo Neruda will be part of the honor guard
Rivera paints, on commission from the Institute Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA),
at the artist's funeral. a mural-size oil on composition board on the theme of the nightmare of war and
Leal completes his encaustic mural Las apariciones de Nuestro: Senora de the dream of peace. The work depicts favorably the figures of Stalin and Mao,
Guadalupe in the chapel at Tepeyac in Mexico City. while satirizing the symbols of Uncle Sam, Marianne, and John Bull. The INBA,

O'Gorman begins mosaic murals at the central library of the Universidad under the direction of composer Carlos Chavez, refuses to exhibit the work

Nacional Autonoma in Mexico City. He will complete these in 195I. (which was intended for a traveling exhibit of Mexican art) and removes it from
the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Rivera returns his advance and with the help of the
Carreno returns to Cuba. French Communist Party exhibits the work in Paris. Afterward, the mural will
Edward Roybal is the first Mexican American since 1881 to win a seat on the Los travel throughout Eastern Europe, arriving in China at the end ofI953, where it
Angeles City Council. will be lost.
Siqueiros begins his murals at the Hospital de la Raza and at the Universidad
Rivera and Siqueiros illustrate a limited edition of Pablo Neruda's Canto general.
'950
Nacional Autonoma.
Paz publishes his essay "Ellaberinto de la soledad."
Adolfo Ruiz Cortines is elected President of Mexico.
The Mexican Government awards Rivera the National Art Prize.
Rivera again applies for re-admission to the Mexican Communist Party and is
Rivera designs the scenery for Jose Revueltas' play El cuadrante de la soledad.
again rejected.
Siqueiros returns to the third floor of the Palacio de Bellas Artes and paints the
Tamayo returns to Mexico and begins to paint a mural on the theme of the birth
murals Tormento de Cuauhtemoc and Resurecci6h de Cuauhtemoc. He publishes the
of nationality at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. He will complete it the following year.
magazine Arte PUblico.
Juan Jose Arreola publishes Confabu!ario.
Both Rivera and Siqueiros campaign for the Stockholm Peace Conference, an
anti-atomic bomb gathering sponsored by Communist Parties from all over the Portinari begins murals at the United Nations building in New York City. They

world. will be concluded in r956.

Merida completes a mural on the theme of childhood at a daycare center in '953 Rivera begins a mosaic mural for the facade of the new Teatro de los Insurgentes.
Coyoacan. Mexico City. He will begin his murals on pre-Columbian myths for the Scandal erupts over the depiction of the comedian Cantinfias. who is represented
Juarez Public Housing complex, which will be completed in f952. stealing from the rich, giving to the poor, and wearing the image of the Virgin of

Rosario Castellanos completes her master's thesis, "Sobre cultura femenina." Guadalupe. Rivera removes image of the Virgin from the mural.

which provides the intellectual underpinnings for the future women's movement Kahlo's first solo show in Mexico opens at Lola Alvarez Bravo's Caierta de Arte
in Mexico. Contemporaneo in Mexico City.
The Korean War begins when the United States and the United Nations send Rivera begins a mural on the theme of health and medicire at the Hos~ital de la
military assistance to South Korea. Raza.
~
Car clubs and customized cars appear throughout the Southwest in the 1950s. Juan Rulfo publishes his book of short stories, Eillano en llamas.

Merida completes a mosaic mural on Mayan themes for the Alianza Insurance
, 95' Rivera paints murals at the Lerma Waterworks in Mexico City. Intended to be
builrling in Mexico City.
submerged under water, he utilizes polystyrene and liquid rubber.
Jose Luis Cuevas (1932-) has his first solo exhibition of drawings at the Galeria
Siqueiroa publishes his pamphlet Como se pinta un mural.
Prisse in Mexico City.
O'Gorman begins mosaic mural Alegoria de Mexico in the Department of
Carreno joins the Culture section of the Ministry of Education in the FuJgendo
Communications, Mexico City.
Batista government. Batista has been governing Cuba since his March 10, 1952,
The American Council of Spanish Speaking People holds its founding
military coup.
convention in El Paso, Texas.

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 Dwight David Eisenhower is elected President of the United States; serves until Siqueiros begins his mural Del porfirismo a La RevoLuci6n at the National Museum
of History (Chapultepec Castle). He refuses to sign a petition criticizing the
'96I. invasion of Hungary by Soviet forces.
Operation Wetback is instituted by the US government to apprehend and
Tamayo leaves Mexico for Paris, where he will remain until 1964.
repatriate undocumented workers to Mexico.
The first Mexican American discrimination case to reach the US Supreme Court, Cuevas publishes his anti-muralist manifesto La cortina de nopal in the magazine
Hernandez v. Texas, challenges the jury selection process and gains a ruling in Novedades.

favor of Hernandez. Carreno abandons Cuba and settles in Santiago, Chile, where he will live the rest
of his life.
On July 2, Rivera, Kahlo, O'Gorman, and others participate in a demonstration
'954 Richard Valenzuela takes the name Ritchie Valens and writes and records" La
protesting CIA involvement in the ouster of Guatemalan president Jacobo
Bamba," "Let's Go," and "Donna" in the months before his death.
Arbenz. Kahlo dies of a pulmonary embolism on July fJ.
The Mexican Communist Party, on its r.ath National Congress, re-admits Rivera Siqueiros begins a mural in the vestibule of the Jorge Negrete Theatre. Titled El
as a Party member. arte escenico en Lavida social de Mexico, the work will be controversial because of
Tamayo returns permanently to Mexico. He begins a still-life mural at Sanborn's its depiction of the Mexican Army stomping the Constitution. Siqueiros will be
sued by the Actors Union and the work covered until 1964.
in Lafragua Street in Mexico City.
Carlos Fuentes publishes the novel La regi6n mas transparente.
Cuevas exhibits his drawings at the gallery of the Pan-American Union in
Washington, DC, at the invitation of Jose G6mez Sicre, chief of the Visual Arts Adolfo Lopez Mateos is elected President of Mexico.
Section of the institution. Americo Paredes' book, With a Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and Its Hero, is
The US Supreme Court's 1954 decision on Brown v. Board of Education outlaws published, and influences the development of Chicano/a scholarship.
segregation by race in public schools.
Tamayo paints the fresco Prometeo dando fuego a los hombres at the UNESCO
'959
The First Annual Mexican American Art Exhibition is held in Los Angeles. headquarters in Paris, France.

In June, Rivera is diagnosed with cancer. In August he will visit the Soviet Union Cardoza y Aragon publishes his monograph Orozco.
'955
to receive cancer treatments. He will remain in Moscow until March of 1956. Cuevas wins the international drawing prize at the Sao Paulo Biennial with his
then travel throughout Eastern Europe. He will return to Mexico on April 4, 1956. series Losfunerales de un dictador.
Marl Izquierdo dies in Mexico City. Antonio Villareal publishes his book Pocho, one of the first Mexican American
Rulfo publishes the novel Pedro Paramo. generational novels.
The Mexican American Political Association (MAPA) is founded in Fresno,
In April, Rivera removes the legend "God does not exist" from the Hotel del
California, by Bert Corona and Eduardo Quevedo. They open an art exhibition
Prado mural. Days later, at a press conference at the hotel, he announces "I am
a Catholic" and thanks his friend, the poet and Catholic Carlos Pellicer, for his that same year. /

prayers. In April, novelist Jose Revueltas abando~e Mexican Communist Party, which
Leal begins a mural on the subject of Divine Providence in the church of the he joined in the late 1920S.
same name in Mexico City. Before the mural's completion he is dismissed by Siqueiros is invited by the new revolutionary government of Cuba to visit Havana
patrons and the mural is covered up. and lecture. Back in Mexico he is arrested and imprisoned on August 9 for
Operation Wetback is terminated after deporting more than two million people to "inciting to riot and public dissolution." He will remain in prison until July 13,

Mexico in three years. 1964, when he is pardoned and released by President L6pez Mateos,

O'Gorman begins a fresco on the theme of the war of independence at the

'957 In September, Rivera suffers a blood clot that paralyzes his right arm. He
National Museum of History (Chapultepec Castle).
continues to paint. He dies on November 24 of heart failure in his San Angel
studio. At his funeral, held at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Siqueiros and members Carreno completes his mosaic mural in a geometric style, Homenaje a Pra

of the Mexican Communist Party are part of the honor guard. Angelico, in the Jesuit San Ignacio school in Santiago, Chile.

CH~ONOlOGY 303
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John Fitzgerald Kennedy is elected President of the United States; serves until El Malcriado, the Farm Worker Association's newspaper, begins publication.
November 22, 1963, when he is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. He presides over
Siqueiros begins the final mural project of his career, La marcha de la humanidad
the abortive US invasion of the Bay of Pigs, Cuba, in April 1961; the Cuban
en la tierra y hacia el cosmos, in an annex building, part of the Hotel de Mexico. He
Missile Crisis of 1962; and the creation of the Alliance for Progress between the
sets up a homejstudio in Cuernavaca.
United States and countries of Latin America.
President Johnson sends 267,000 ground troops to Vietnam and removes
President Kennedy approves the first phase of the Vietnam Program, which sends
restrictions on combat support
combat support troops overseas.
Martin Luther King, Jr., leads a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama,
Octavio Paz's The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico is published in
where he delivers a civil rights petition to the governor.
English translation.
President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, eliminating all discriminatory
Mural artist Arnold Belkin publishes an essay, "La pintura mural," calling for
qualifying tests for voter registration.
a revival of Mexican muralism: "If mural painting is being developed with
Malcolm X is assassinated in New York City.
increasing vigor in other countries, how can we allow it to die here?"
The National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) joins the Filipino farm workers
Rosario Castellanos publishes her novel Oficio de Tinieblas.
in the Delano, California, grape strike.
Fuentes publishes his novel La muerte de Artemio Cruz.
The Teatro Campesino is founded in San Juan Bautista, California, by Luis,
Art historian Justino Fernandez publishes E1 hombre (Estttica del arte moderno y Danny, and Socorro Valdez in support of the United Farm Workers Union
contemporrineo). organizing efforts. This is generally acknowledged as the beginning of the

The Farm Workers Association (FWA) is founded in Delano, California, by Cesar Chicano/a art movement.

Chavez and Dolores Huerta. Siqueiros completes murals at Chapultepec and Santo Domingo Customs House.
With MAPA support, Edward Roybal is elected to represent California in the US He receives the National Art Prize from the Mexican government.
Congress. Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta lead farm workers on a goo-mile march from
Delano, California, to Sacramento. The march is considered by many to mark the
O'Gorman paints a fresco on the theme of credit for the International Bank,
beginning of the Chicanoja civil rights movement.
Mexico City.
Writer Vicente Lenero wins the prestigious Biblioteca Breve Prize for his novel Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales founds the Crusade for Social Justice in Denver,
Colorado, from the earlier political organization Los voluntaries. The founding
Los albanites.
of this organization is considered to be one of the markers of the beginning of
Lyndon Johnson assumes the Presidency of the Umited States in November after
the Chicanoja civil rights movement. EI Centro de la Cruzada para la [usticia is
the assassination ofJohn F. Kennedy; serves until 11969.
established and continues as the home of the Crusade for Justice until 1978.
Reies Lopez Tijerina founds the Alianza Federal del Mercedes, an alliance
Reies L6pez Tijerina leads Alianza members to reclaim part of the Kit Carson
dedicated to enforcing the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in Tierra
National Forest in New Mexico.
Amarilla, New Mexico.
The Black Panther Party is founded in Oakland, Califorriia, by Huey ~ewton and
The Taller de Grafica forms in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico, continuing an
Bobby Seale.
important Mexican tradition of printmaking. ,/
Siqueiros receives the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union; he donates its
Siqueiros is released from prison. 25,000 rubles to the Vietnamese people. In August, his retrospective opens at the
Merida finishes a mosaic mural titled Motivos tlatelolcas at the tower of the University Museum of Science and Art in Mexico City.
National Bank in Mexico City. He begins a stained-glass mural for the Cora Fuentes receives the prestigious Biblioteca Breve Prize for his novel Cambia de
Huichol gallery at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.
pie/.
Tamayo returns to Mexico. Cuevas paints his Mural ef(mero on a billboard in the Zona Rosa neighborhood of
Gustavo Dfaz Ordaz is elected President of Mexico. Mexico City.
The Bracero Program ends.

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Novelist Jose Revueltas publishes his essay "Escuela Mexicana de Pintura y Siqueiros refuses to sign a petition protesting the invasion of Czechoslovakia by
novela de la revolucion" (The Mexican School of Painting and the Novel of the Warsaw Pact forces.
Revolution), in which he critiques "Mexican revolutionary painting" as art in the Student movement unrest is felt throughout much of the world: the United
service of bourgeois interests, because it conceals "the bourgeois content to the States, France, Germany, and Mexico.
ruling state regime."
In the autumn, while Mexico hosts the Olympics, students stage a demonstration
The grape boycott, begun in '965, spreads to Canada and Europe. in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco district. Government Secretary
Chicano student activists form the Mexican American Youth Organization Luis Echeverria calls out army troops, who fire on demonstrators, leaving
(MAYO) in San Antonio and the United Mexican American Students (UMAS) in hundreds of students and bystanders dead. The army storms the University and

Los Angeles. arrests student leaders.

David Sanchez founds the Brown Berets in Los Angeles, a militant organization Novelist Jose Revueltas is arrested for participating in the student movement. He

modeled on the Black Panthers. will not be released until 1971.

Reies L6pez Tijerina and Alianza members storm a courtroom in Tierra Amarilla, Paz resigns as Mexican Ambassador to India over the massacre in Tlatelolco.
New Mexico, to free Alianza members held in custody. Chicano high-school students boycott classes in Los Angeles to protest
Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales publishes the epic poem Yo Soy Joaquin!! Am Joaquin. educational deficiencies in the public schools; the boycott is called "the
blowouts" -c-almost 3,500 students stay away from classes for eight days. High-
Quinto Sol Publications, an independent Chicano press, begins publishing in
school students in Abilene, Crystal City, Denver, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Santa
Berkeley, California. One of its first efforts is Et Grito: A Journal of Contemporary
Clara walk out of schools in '968 and 1969.
Mexican-American Thought.
Cesar Chavez begins the first of many fasts to protest violence.
E1Teatro Campesino Cultural Center is founded in Del Rey, California.
Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated in Los Angeles, California.
William Walker and other African American artists paint the Wall of Respect on
the South Side of Chicago. This first outdoor mural painted on the walls of a The first Mexican American studies program in the United States opens at

boarded-up tenement marks the beginning of community murals. California State University, Los Angeles.

Manuel Martinez paints the first Chicano (portable) mural The Dehumanization Chicanos and other Latinos initiate a national boycott of Coors Brewing Company

of Mankind for the interior of the first Crusade for Justice building in Denver, to protest discriminatory hiring practices.
after his return from a four-month visit to Mexico to study the murals of Rivera, The Ford Foundation funds the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education
Orozco, and Siqueiros. ~e was inspired by the social and political messages Fund (MALDEF), which informs Chicanos of their legal rights and prepares civil
he had seen in the murals. During this first trip, Martinez and his traveling rights cases.
companion, a Puerto Rican artist, met Siqueiros who invited them to work on his The Crusade for Justice opens the first Chicanoja art gallery El Grito de Aztlan, at
mural La marcha de La humanidad the following year.
their Centro. It remains open until I972.
Chicanoja artists begin to travel to Mexico to study the murals, visit the Taller de The Del Rey MuraL, possibly the first Chicano mural in California, is painted by
Grafica Popular, and meet with Mexican artists. Antonio Bernal on the front entrance of ElTeatro Campesino Cultural Center
( . I .
in Del Rey. It includes both pre-Columbian and modern Mencan revo uticnary
O'Gorrnan paints a fresco on the subject of Madero at the National Museum of
figures in concert with Chicano and Africafi American civil rights leaders.
History (Chapultepec Castle).

Merida completes a mural in acrylic and gold leaf titled Abstracci6n in the Mario Castillo, a Mexican/Chicano student at the Art Institute of Chicago, .

auditorium of the Aristos Hotel, Mexico City. paints Metafisica- The Wall for Peace, an abstract outdoor mural in the Mexican
American Pilsen District of Chicago, with barrio youth.
Alva de la Canal completes acrylic-an-plastic murals on the theme of the law and
Chicano murals are begun in Austin, Chicago, Crystal City, Denver, Bl Paso,
justice at the law school ofUniversidad Veracruzana in Jalapa.
Houston, Los Angeles, San Antonio, and San Diego.
Siqueiros attends the Cultural Congress in Havana, where he is harassed and
Mexican American Liberation Art Front (MALAF) is organized in Oakland, _
booed by painters Roberto Matta and Wifredo Lam for his involvement in the
. MEt ban Villa and Rene Yanez.
assassination attempt against Leon Trotsky in May 1940. California, by Jose Montoya, MaIaquias ontoya, s e ,

CHRONOLOGY 307
306 CHRONOLOGY
 Tamayo paints an acrylic mural titled Energ{a at the Industrialists Club, Hotel Siqueiros. More than thirteen artists, directed by Juan Gonzalez, paint The Birth
1969
Camino Real, Mexico City. of Our Art for the facade of the Gallery.
While in prison, Revueltas publishes the novel EI apando based on his The Mechicano Art Center is founded-first on Melrose Ave., and then in East
experiences there. Los Angeles, where it will remain open until 1979.

Richard M. Nixon is ejected President of the United States; serves until 1974 Plaza de la Raza-sponsored by the Mexican actress Margo Albert, wife of actor
when he leaves office to avoid being impeached after the Watergate Break-In and Eddie Albert~is opened in East Los Angeles. It is still an active art center, gallery
subsequent scandal. Gerald Ford assumes the Presidency of the United States space, and community park.
when Richard Nixon resigns; he serves until 1977-
1970 Siqueiros donates his easel painting Cristo de la Paz to the Vatican Museum of
Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales and the Crusade for Justice convene the National Modern Religious Art
Chicano Youth Liberation Conference in Denver; over 1,500 Chicanos and
Luis Echevarria is elected President of Mexico.
Chicanas attend. Writers and artists (particularly the poet Alurista and the
muralist Emanuel Martinez) collaborate to write EI Plan Espiritual del Aztlan, Paz publishes a postscript to his earlier Ellaberinto de la soledad,titled Postdata,

considered to be the seminal manifesto of the Chicanoja civil rights and art where he expresses his outrage over the political repression of 1968.

movements. Ohio National Guardsmen shoot four students at Kent State University during an

The Raza Unida Party forms in Crystal City, Texas, under the leadership of Jose antiwar demonstration.

Angel Gutierrez. La Raza Unida Party becomes a national independent party at the Second
National Chicano Youth liberation Conference in Denver, with El Plan Espirituat
The Chicano Coordination Council on Higher Education meets in Santa Barbara,
California, and creates the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) de AztJdn as its platform.

which becomes a national organization with branches in colleges and universities More than 30,000 protestors attend the August 29 National Chicano Moratorium
throughout the country. MEChA issues El Plan de Santa Barbara, a master plan march against the Vietnam War in East Los Angeles; three people are killed by
for the Chicano student movement. the police, including Los Angeles Times reporter Ruben Salazar. No one is charged

Chicano studies programs are established at universities in Arizona, California, with the shootings.

Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, the Midwest, and the Pacific Northwest Murals are The United Farm Workers Union signs contracts with California growers; the
painted in the offices and conference rooms of many of these programs. table grape and lettuce boycott continues.

The Brown Berets organize the National Chicano Moratorium Committee in Los The Midwest Council of La Raza is established at the University of Notre Dame in
Angeles to protest Chicano fatalities and US involvement in Vietnam. South Bend, Indiana.

EI Espejo, edited by Octavio I. Romano, is published and becomes one of the first Chicanas form the Comision Femenil Mexicana Nadonai. lnc., at the Mexican
anthologies of Chicano Literature. American National Issues Conference; they hold a separate caucus at the MAPA

The Rebel Chicano Art Front, later renamed the Royal Chicano Air Force or National Convention.

RCAP, is organized by Jose Montoya, Esteban Villa, and Ricardo Favela at Luis Omar Salinas' book of poetry, Crazy Gypsy, is Itublished.
Sacramento State College, Sacramento, California. The RCAF, with as many as 16 Aztldn: Chicano Journal of the Social Sciences and Arts begins publication at UCLA.
or more members at any given time, executed murals, after-school art programs,
It is still being published. /"
and posters for the United Farm Workers. The RCAF and Jose Montoya in
Art historian Shifra Goldman and film maker Jesus Trevino begin research on
particular are credited with resuscitating interest in the 1940S and 1950S
Siqueiros' Los Angeles mural TropicalAmerica on Olvera Street: in an effort to
Pachuco phenomenon, as an early form of cultural resistance to assimilation, and
get it restored. Trevino's documentary on the mural is released m 1971. As of.
therefore as the precursors to or as the first Chicanos.
2006, the Getty Conservation Institute and the Mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio
The exhibition New Symbols for la Nueva Raza opens in Oakland, California. villaraigosa, announcedplans for its restoration.
The Coez Gallery is founded by the Gonzalez brothers. It operates as a for-profit . . S t F N w Mexico as a mural
Los Artes de Guadalupanos de Aztlan begms ill an a e, e ,
art gallery in East Los Angeles until 1974. Goez opens an extension gallery in . til' rting murals throughout
collective. The group will work together un 1977, pall
Olvera Street, the historic Mexican (and now tourist) section of downtown Los
northern New Mexico.
Angeles, several doors down from the building that houses Tropical America by

CHRONOLOGY 309
308 CHRONOLOGY
Chicano/a activists and residents of the Barrio Logan in San Diego, California, became known for their collaborative and individual mural work. Asco innovates

occupy the land under the recently completed Coronado Bridge whose "no-movies" -movies without the use of celluloid.

construction destroyed several blocks of that neighborhood. The occupation was La Casa de la Raza, Inc.. is founded in Santa Barbara, California. It sponsors
successful, and the land was converted to a public neighborhood park named exhibitions, art classes, and murals throughout the barrio.
Chicano Park. More than one hundred murals have been painted on the bridge
Los Toltecas en Aztlan is founded by artists, musicians, and poets in San Diego,
pylons since the early 1970s, California; it will disband in 1973.
EI Centro Cultural de la Raza is founded in San Diego, California. It is housed in
Guillermo Aranda and Los Toltecas in Aztlan begin La Dualidad, a mural
a transformed water tank, covered inside and out by murals, and is the home of inspired by Siqueiros, both in form and content, on the concave inner wall of the
the Los Toltecas en Aztlan mural collective, the founding location of the Border
Centro Cultural de la Raza. It will be completed in 1979,
Art Workshop, and official sponsor of the mural program at Chicano Park. It is
Murals are painted on the walls of ethnic and Chicano studies centers at colleges
still active.
and universities, including Somas Aztlan at the University of~ashington, Seattle,
The Calerta de la RazajStudio 24 is founded in the Mission District of San painted by Emilio Aguayo, I

Francisco, California. It remains active as an alternative Latino arts space. The

Tomas Rivera publishes his coming-of-age novel y no se 10 trag61atierra. A scholar
billboard outside its building has been used since the late 1970S as a site for
of literature and university administrator, he became the Chancellor of the
rotating, temporary murals that are sometimes connected to the exhibition inside
University of California, Riverside. In 1985, the Tomas Rivera Institute, which
the gallery and sometimes painted as separate works of art. Recently, computer-
focuses on Latinoja issues, was founded in his honor. Currently it is affiliated
generated murals have been added to the repertoire.
with the University of Southern California.
Ray Patlan, assisted by Chicano youths, paints From My Father to Yours in the Sala
de la Raza auditorium at Casa Aztlan, a community center in the Pilsen District La marcha de La humanidad en la tierra y hacia el cosmos is inaugurated by
of Chicago. This mural is influenced by Rivera, Siqueiros, and most prominently President Echevarria. The building is named the "Polif6ru.m Cultural Siqueiros."

by Orozco. It combines themes from the pre-Columbian and Mexican The Tepitc Arte Aca is formed in Mexico City. This is an evolving collective
Revolutionary pasts with images of the Chicano present, including a portrait of of artists and intellectuals, usually numbering around fOUI to six, with Daniel
Cesar Chavez. The exterior of Cas a Aztlan is also covered with murals, based on Manrique as the only mural painter in the group.
pre-Columbian architectural design motifs and roller stamp designs from Jorge
Rodolfo Acuna publishes Occupied America: A History of Chicanos.
Enciso's book on roller stamp designs.
Oscar Zeta Acosta publishes The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo.
Teatros Nacionales de Aztlin (TENAZ), the international Chicano/Latino theater
Luis Valdez and Stan Steiner edit Aztlcin: An Anthology of Mexican American
umbrella organization, is founded. More than one hundred Chicanoja teatros are
formed throughout the United States in the '960s through the 1980s. TENAZ is Literature.
active with theater organizations in Mexico. The Congreso de Artistas Chicanos en Aztlan (CACA) is founded in San Diego,
California. The artists will work together until 1980.
Siqueiros completes the mural La marcha de la humanidad en la tierra }I hacia el
Self-Help Graphics and Art, a screen-print workshop and art gallery, is founded
cosmos. He donates his home/studio in Mexico City to the Instituto Nacional de
by Sister Karen Boccalero in Boyle Heights, East Lbs Angeles. An Homage to
Bellas Artes; it becomes the Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros.
Siqueiros, a reproduction of Tropical Arptrica, will be painted on the outside
Armando Rendon publishes Chicano Manifesto: The History and Aspirations of the
second floor by Eva Cockcroft and others in 1997-98.
Second Largest Minority in America.
Galeria Posada is opened in Sacramento by the Royal Chicano Air Force. It will
Edward Simmen's publishes his edited volume of writings: The Chicano: From
remain active until the early 1990s.
Caricature to Sel}Portrait.
The Con Safo art collective is founded in San Antonio, Texas, from earlier
La Raza SilkscreenjLa Raza Graphic Center begins in the Mission District of San organizations including Tlacuilo (1967-70), Los Pintores de Aztlin (r970), and
Francisco.
Los Pintores de la Nueva Raza (1970-71).
Asco, a Chicano performance collective, is founded in East Los Angeles by Harry
£1 Rio Community Center is founded in Tucson, Arizona.
Gamboa, [r., Cronk, Willie Herr6n, and Patssi Valdez. Herron and Gronk also

CHRONOLOGY 311
)10 CHRONOLOGY
 £1 Centro de la Raza is founded in Seattle. It is still active as a general Latino/a resident gangs at the housing projects prevents muralists from working at both
locations; Willie Herron is the only artist who is able to paint at both sites.
cultural center, sponsoring exhibitions and murals.

Willie Herron paints two murals in an alley in City Terrace, one of the oldest 1974 Siqueiros dies at his home/studio in Cuernavaca on January 6th. His funeral,
Mexican American barrios of Los Angeles. Quetzalcoatl is the first effort. He like Orozco's and Rivera's before him, takes place at the Palaeo de Bellas Artes in
painted ThE Wall That Cracked Open in homage to his brother and as a protest Mexico City.
against gang warfare, including images of gang warfare, graffiti, and the life/ La Brocha del Valle Chicano mural collective is founded in Fresno, California.
death mask from Tlaltico. This has become one of the most reproduced Chicano
Judy Baca, along with several additional artists and numerous young people,
murals.
begin the project of painting The Great Wall of Los Angeles in the Tujunga Flood
Alurista publishes his book of poetry Natiol1child Plumaroja. Control Channel of the San Fernando Valley. Painted over five summers with
over 400 youths, it is currently a half-mile long.
Siqueiros travels for the last time to the Soviet Union. In September he is
1973
diagnosed with cancer. Los Four have the first exhibition of Chicano art in the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art. It features the front-end of a low-rider car, a pyramidal altar,
Dr. Luis Davila, Indiana University, Bloomington, and Dr. Nicolas Kanellos,
selections of the graffiti-based paintings and murals, focusing on Chicano
Indiana University, Northwest, jointly publish La Revista Chicano-Riquena.
popular culture.
Kanellos moves the publication to the University of Houston in 198o.
The Mujeres Muralistas paint Para el Mercado and Panambica in the Mission
Cary Keller founds the Bilingual Review Press in Arizona.
District of San Francisco.
The journal Encuentro Femenil is begun in 1973 by Hijas de Cuauhtemoc, a
feminist group with education of Raza women as its primary goal. The Mission Cultural Center is founded in the Mission District of San Francisco.
'975
It remains active as a gallery, theater, and graphic arts workshop. For the
Jacinto Quirarte publishes Mexican American Artists. The first book on the topic,
past decade, it has housed San Francisco's Rooms for the Dead-installation
it includes a section on Mexican muralists in the United States, focusing on
exhibitions during the Day of the Dead.
the work of Orozco and Rufino Tamayo. No Mexican American muralists are
The Mexican Museum is founded by the artist Peter Rodriguez in the Mission
featured.
District of San Francisco. Created to exhibit the arts of Mexico from pre-
I
The City-Wide Mural Program is begun in Los Angeles with Judy Baca as its
Columbian times to the present, it features both fine and folk art. It quickly adds
director, painting and overseeing numerous murals in Boyle Heights and
Mexican American and Chicano/a art.
elsewhere.
La Pefla Cultural Center is opened in Berkeley. California, by a group of Latin
Los Four, a Chicano ~upo (art collective) is formed by the artists Carlos Almaraz,
and North Americans in response to the military coup that overthrew the
Magu (Gilbert Lujan), Beta de la Rocha, and Frank Romero.
government of Salvador Allende of Chile. It is still active as a center for cultural
Las Mujeres Muralistas is founded in San Francisco. The first women's mural and educational programming. The front of its building is covered by the 1978
collective, it includes Patricia Rodriguez, Irene Perez, Graciela Carrillo, and mural La Canci6n de ta UnidadjSong of Unity, one of the first acrylic, ceramic,
Consuela Mendez. They will work together and with other artists until 1980, and papier-mache collective m.urals ~ea,te~ in the B1YArea. Painted by Osha .
painting murals in the Mission District. Neumann, Ray Patlan, and Bnan Thiele With Anna de Le6n and Joanne Cooke, It

Mural cycles are begun at two federally funded housing projects in East Los was restored in 1986, and again in 19~' It depicts and celebrates the peoples of

Angeles. The Estrada Courts murals are directed by Charles "Cat" Felix, the Americas coming together in song and struggle.
ultimately including more than eighty murals (including the walkway wall Movirniento Artistico de la Raza Chicano (MARCH) is founded in Chicago, by
murals). Artists from the Goez Gallery-including David Botello, who paints Chicano, Mexican American, and Mexican visual artists and poets.
Dreams of Flight-work at Estrada Courts in Boyle Heights in conjunction with Mark Rogovin, Marie Burton, and Holly Highfill publish Mura! Manual, the first
young people from the Courts. Mural painting at Ramona Gardens near Lincoln
guide to painting community murals.
Heights is overseen by artists from Mechicano Art Center, including Wayne
Alaniz Healey who paints Ghosts afthe Barrio in 1974- More than twenty-five Mural artist Jose Luis Soto founds the Taller de Investigaci6n plastica (TIP) in
1976
exterior murals and one interior mural are painted here. Members of Los Four, Michcacan. TIP develops a community-based model for public art productlOll,
including Iudithe Hernandez, paint at Ramona Gardens. The existence of rival

CHRONOLOGY 3' 3
312 CHRONOLOGY
 I
including numerous murals, working with indigenous and campesino The Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center is founded in San Antonio, Texas. It

communities in north-central Mexico. sponsors exhibitions, live theater, art classes (especially printmaking), and
murals.
The Social and Public Art Resource Center is founded by Judith Baca, Christina
Schlesinger, and Donna Deitch. It is still open in the old Venice, California, jaiL It George Vargas and Martin Romero paint the exterior mural CitySpirit in Detroit
has sponsored many citywide mural projects, most notably the Great Wall of Los near the city's border with Canada.
Angeles, Walls Unlimited, Neighborhood Pride, and the World Wall.
1980 Conceptual artist Felipe Ehrenberg initiates a grassroots mural production
East Los Streetscapers, the Chicano mural collective, is started by David Botello project called "HaltoszOrnosjTalleres de Comunicacion," Teams of local
and Wayne Alaniz Healey. participants produce murals in their home communities on a five-day production
[udithe Hernandez paints Chicano Heritage on the exterior of Stoner Recreation schedule, collaborating on site selection, mural design, and image transfer.

Center in West Los Angeles. Organizers estimate that the program produced over one thousand community
murals throughout Mexico in the early 1980s.
1977 Eva Cockcroft, John Pitman Weber, and James Cockcroft publish Towards a
Ronald Reagan is elected President of the United States; he serves until 1989.
People's Art: The Contemporary Mural Movement, with a preface by Jean Charlot.
Mujeres Artistes del Suroeste is founded in Austin, Texas, by the artist Santa Berni paints the portable acrylic mural panels La crucifixi6n and El apocalipsis

Barraza and others. in the chapel of the Jesuit school San Luis Gonzaga in the town of General Las
Heras, province of Buenos Aires. The school's board of trustees rejects it. The
Jimmy Carter is elected President of the United States; he serves until 1981.
apostolic nuncio, Mons. Pio Laghi, intercedes and the mural remains in the
Xicanindio, Inc., Chicano centro is founded in Mesa, Arizona. chapel.
Community Murals Magazin.e begins publication in Berkeley, California, with Mi Raza Arts Consortium (MIRA) is organized in Chicago.
articles covering the international community murals movement. Quarterly
Berni dies in Buenos Aires.
issues will be published for twelve years.
Carlos Tortolero and several other public high school teachers found the Mexican
Movimiento Artistico del Rio Salado (MARS) Artspace is founded in Phoenix, Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago. It will open in the Harrison Park Boat
Arizona. It will continue into the I990s. House in the Pilson District in 1987, featuring an exhibition and catalogue of The
La Cofradia de Artes y Artesanos Hispanicos is founded in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Barrio Murals/Murales del Barrio, with an essay by Victor Sorrell. In 2007 it will
change its name to the "National Museum of Mexican Art."
1979 The first bilingual edition of Jose Vasconcelos' La Raza Cosmica is published by
the Department of Chicano Studies and California State University, Los Angeles. A Traves de la Frontera is the first exhibition of Chicanoja art curated by Mexican
It is illustrated with the 1960s mural La cultura es patrimonio de todas las razas, institutions for Mexican venues. Organized by E1 Centro de Estudios Econ6micos
by the Mexican artist Gonzales Camarena, from the Museum of Anthropology in y Sociales del Tercer Mundo and £1 Instituto de Investigaciones ~st.eticas de
Mexico City. UNAM, the catalogue includes essays by Ida Rodriguez Prampohm, Tomas
Patricia Rodriguez, of the Mujeres Muralistas mural collective, creates a Chicano Ybarra-Frausto, Juan G6mez-Quifiones, ca10s Monsivais, Malaqui~s Montoya,
Studies Reader focused on Chicano art. It includes readings on murals, graphic Lezlie Salowitz-Montoya, and many other Mexican and C?icanO artists, film
arts, poetry, and the movimiento. makers, and scholars. Rupert ~cia and Eva Cockcroft wrote the ess~ys on
Chicano murals, while Shifra Goldman wrote about Mexican and Chicano
Nicolas Kanellos founds the Arte Publico Press in 1979 at Indiana University. He
moves it to the University of Houston in 1980. cultural workers.
The Hispanic Culture Foundation is created in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The
The Chicano Humanities and Arts Council (CHAC) is established in Denver.
Foundation eventually creates the National Hispanic Cultural Center ~at opens
Mujeres Artistas del Suroeste (MAS) organizes one of the first conferences to alogy archive, and literary
as a museum, performing arts center, lib rary, gene
bring together artists, filmmakers, critics, and art historians from both sides
center in 2000.
of the border. This was the first formal encounter among Chicano/Mexican . . T to promote Mexican and
The Mexic-Arte Museum is founded m Austin, exas,
American artists, North American art historians, and Mexican artists and
scholars. Latino art throughout the State of Texas.

CHRONOLOGY 315
314 CHRONOLOGY
 The Taller de Grafica Monumental, founded by Mauricio G6mez Marin and Cuauhtemoc Cardenas is elected mayor of Mexieo City, establishing the political

others as a socially committed graphic arts workshop within the arts curriculum dominance of the opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la

of the Universidad Aut6noma Metropolitana de Xochimilco. begins to document Revclucion or PRD) in Mexico's urban center.

and systematize the production of mantas, or mobile murals on doth. The group Mexican army troops destroy a Zapatista community mural in Taniperla,
authors an important series of how-to publications-including a Manual de Chiapas. Local Mayans had painted the mural under the direction of artist Sergio
mantas {I984)-aimed at activating cultural and artistic practice within the social Valdez Rubalcaba in order to celebrate their declaration of a newly autonomous
movements. municipality allied with the rebel Zapatista movement. The mural, and its
Jacinto Quirarte edits Chicano Art History: A Book of Selected Readings, published destruction by the army, becomes an international symbol of the Zapatista
by the Research Center for the Arts and Humanities and funded by the National movement and the popular demand for democracy, indigenous rights, and social
Endowment for the Arts. It includes key movement manifestos and sections on justice in Mexico.
colonial arts on the borderlands, Mexican muralists, Chicano muralists and the
influence of Mexican murals, and a separate section on Chicano art that focuses 1999 During a prolonged student strike at the UNAM in protest of tuition hikes and

on mural production. other privatization measures, student activists alter a detail of Siqueiros' mural
The Right to Culture-changing the final date in the mural's timeline of Mexican
The Border Arts Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo is founded in San Diego,
revolutionary progress from "19??" to "1999." The students are prosecuted for
California, by artists from San Diego, Tijuana, and Mexico City.
"destruction of the artistic patrimony of the nation."
In the aftermath of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, David Gallegos, Daniel Carreno dies in Santiago, Chile.
Camacho, and Cassandra Smithies form the visual arts collective Ojos de Lucha,
2000 The Partido Revolucionario lnstitucionalloses the presidency for the first time,
which produces mantas for use by social organizations and communities affected
after more than 70 years of rule. Vicente Fox, candidate of the right-wing Partido
by the quake.
de Acci6n Nacional. is elected President of Mexico.
Reconstruction efforts after the earthquake result in the revitalization of the
urban social movements and the formation of the activist organization Asam blea Mauricio G6rnez Marin and several other artists lead some 200 volunteers
2001
de Barrios, or Assembly of Neighborhoods. in painting a monumental, ephemeral mural portrait of revolutionary leader
Emiliano Zapata on the floor of the z6calo in front of Mexico's National Palace.
In a presidential election widely viewed as fraudulent, the official tally names
The mural is estimated to measure 3,750 square meters, and celebrates the
Carlos Salinas de Gortari the newly elected President of Mexico despite the
historic arrival of representatives of the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional
apparent victory at the polls by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, the candidate of a center-
to the nation's central public plaza to promote indigenous rights.
left opposition coalition.

The US-based Costeo corporation purchases the landmark Casino de Ia Selva

The Partido de 1a Revoluci6n Dernocratica is founded by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas 2001-3
in Cuernavaea from the Mexican government and reveals plans to destroy the
and other former members of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional.
building and erect a massive commercial outlet. A broad-based opposition
movement seeks to block Costco's plans, citing, among other concerns, the
1994 The North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA goes into effect. The
Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacicn Nacionalleads an armed uprising in the southern presence of numerous murals inside the Casino painted between the 1.930S and
the 19705. After a political battle lasting nearly two years, Co~tco pr~~ails be.ca~se
state of Chiapas, announcing its opposition to NAFTA and the nee-liberalism of
the Mexican government decides not.-(o enforce legal protecnons of the artistic
the Mexican state.
patrimony of the nation" that opponents argue apply to the Casino murals.
1997 The US Electrical Workers Union and the independent Mexican labor group
Frente Autentico de Ttabajo (FAT) conduct a bi-national "mural exchange" as
part of a cross-border union solidarity program, bringing Mexican artist Daniel
Manrique to Chicago to paint a mural at the Electrical Workers headquarters, and
US artist Mike Alewitz to Mexico City to paint a mural at the FAT headquarters.

CHRONOLOGY 317
316 CHRONOLOGY
 PRIMARY TEXTS

Edited by Alejandro Anreus

\
MANIFESTO OF THE SYNDICATE OF TECHNICAL
WORKERS, PAINTERS AND SCULPTORS

Written on December 9, '923, and published in £1 Machete NO·7 (June 1924), Mexico City

In 1923 the Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors was established in Mexico
City, with David Alfaro Siqueiros as its Secretary General. At the end of that year Adolfo De la
Huerta was proclaimed provisional president of Mexico by General Guadalupe Suarez, against
the legitimate government of General Alvaro Obregon. As a response to this attempted coup,
Stquetrcs authored the Syndicate's manifesto on December 9, '923, which was signed by
him, Rivera, Revueltas, Orozco, Alva Guadarrama, Cueto, and Merida. The manifesto was
published in June of1924 in the Syndicate's official organ, the periodical EI Machete.

To the Indian race humiliated through centuries; to the soldiers converted into hang-
men by their chiefs; to the workers and peasants who are oppressed by the rich; and to
the intellectuals who are not servile to the bourgeoisie:
On the one hand the social revolution, ideologically more coherent than ever, and on
the other, the armed bourgeoisie. Soldiers of the people, peasants, and armed workers
defending their rights, against soldiers of the people, press-ganged by deceit or force by
the politico-military leaders in the pay of the bourgeoisie.
On their side, the exploiters of the people in union with traitors wbo sell the blood of
I
soldiers who fought in the Revolution.

319
 On our side, we are with those who seek the overthrow of an old and inhuman sys- ary personality, more than any other, guaranteed a government that would improve the
tem within which you, worker of the soil, produce riches for the overseer and politician, conditions of the productive classes in Mexico. We reiterate this support in the light of
while you starve. Within which you, worker in the city, move the wheels of industries, the latest politico-military events, and place ourselves at the service of his cause, which
weave the cloth, and create with your hands the modern comforts enjoyed by the para- is the cause of the people, to serve in whatever form is required.
sites and prostitutes, while your own hody is numb with cold. Within which you, Indian We appeal to the revolutionary intellectuals of Mexico to forget their proverbial centu-
soldier, heroically abandon your land and give your life in the eternal hope of liberat- ries-old sentimentality and laziness and join us in the social, aesthetic and educational
ing your race from the degradations and misery of centuries, only for a Sanchez or an struggle we are waging.
Estrada to waste the generous gift of your blood by favoring the bourgeois leeches who In the name of the blood shed by our people during ten years of revolution, with the
strip your children of their happiness and rob you of your land. threat of a reactionary barracks revolt facing us, we urgently call on all revolutionary
Not only are our people (especially our Indians) the source of noble labor but even peasants, workers and soldiers in Mexico to understand the vital importance of the
the smallest manifestations of the material and spiritual vitality of our race spring from impending struggle, and laying aside tactical differences, form a united front to combat
our native midst. So does the extraordinary and marvelous ability to create beauty, The the common enemy.
art of the Mexican people is the highest and greatest spiritual expression of the world We appeal to ordinary soldiers who, unaware of what is happening or deceived by
tradition which constitutes our most valued heritage. It is great because it surges from their traitorous officers, are about to shed the blood of their brethren of race and class.
the people; it is collective, and our own aesthetic aim is to socialize artistic expression, Remember that the ruling class will use the self-same weapons witb which the Revolu-
to destroy bourgeois individualism. We repudiate so-called Salon painting and all the tion guaranteed your brothers' land and livelihood to now tear them.
ultra-intellectual salon art of the aristocracy and exalt the monumental expression of "For the proletariat of the world":
art because such art is public property. We believe that any work of art which is alien
David Alfaro Siqueiros; Secretary General;
or contrary to popular taste is bourgeois and should disappear because it perverts the
Diego Rivera, First Committee member;
aesthetic of our race. This perversion is already almost complete in the cities.
Xavier Guerrero, Second Committee member;
We proclaim that this being a moment of social transition from a decrepit to a new Ferm(n Revueltas, Jose Clemente Orozco,
order, the creators of beauty must invest their greatest efforts in the aim of material-
Ramon Alva Guadarrama, German Cueto,
izing an art valuable to the people, and our supreme objective in art, which is today Carlos Merida
mere individualist masturbation, is to create something of beauty for all, beauty that
enlightens and stirs to struggle.
We are all too aware that the advent of a bourgeois government in Mexico will mean
the natural decline of our race's popular indigenous aesthetic, at present found only in
our working classes but which was, however, beginning to penetrate and purify intel- "NEW WORLD, NEW RACES AND NEW ART"
lectual circles. We will struggle to prevent this happening, because we know that the
victory of the working classes will bring a flowering of ethnic art, of cosmological and
Jose Clemente Orozco
historical significance to our race, comparable to our admirable ancient autochthonous
Creative Art Vol. 4, No·. 1 (January 1929):44-46.
civilizations. We will struggle tirelessly to bring this about.
The triumph for De la Huerta, Estrada, and Sanchez will be, aesthetically and The art of the New World cannot take root in the old traclitions of the Old World nor
b h . s of our ancient peoples.
socially, the triumph of the taste of typists; criollo and bourgeois approval (which is aU in the ancient aboriginal traditions represente d y t e remain . 1
. h alue-human, umversa -
corrupting) of popular music, painting and literature, the reign of the "picturesque," the Although the art of all races and of all limes as a common v . .
. ld . productlOn its
north American kewpie doll, and the official implantation of"l'amore e come zuchero." each new cycle must work for itself, must create, must Yle Its own '
Love is like sugar. individual share to the common good. . t them
ki b t it ruins in order to impor
As a consequence, the counter-revolution in Mexico will prolong the pain of the To go solicitously to Europe, bent on po ng a ou 1 s . f h . di nous
h . the looting 0 t e 10 1ge
people and depress their admirable spirit. and servilly to copy them, is no greater error t an IS ..' ins or its
The membership of the Union of Painters and Sculptors have in the past supported remains of the New World with the object of copying with equal servility Its ru d c-
. . th e may be however pro u
the candidacy of General Plutarco Elias Calles, because we believed that his revolution- present folk-lore. However picturesque and mterestmg es ,

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live and useful ethnology may find them, they cannot furnish a point of departure
the new creation. To lean upon the art of the aborigines, whether it be of antiquity
of the present day, is a sure indication of impotence and of cowardice, in fact, of fraud.
If new races have appeared upon the lands of the New World, such races have the
unavoidable duty to produce a New Art in a new spiritual and physical medium.
for technical devices of bourgeois art, just as it uses bourgeois technical equipment in the
or form of cannon, machine guns, and steam turbines.
Such artists as Daumier and Courbet in the nineteenth century were able to reveal
their revolutionary spirit in spite of their bourgeois environment. Honore Daumier
Any was a forthright fighter, expressing in his pictures the revolutionary movement of the

other road is plain cowardice.
Already, the architecture of Manhattan is a new value, something that has nothing
to do with Egyptian pyramids, with the Paris Opera, with the Giralda of Seville, or with
Saint Sophia, any more than it has to do with the maya palaces of Chichen-ltza or with
the "pueblos" of Arizona.
Imagine the New York Stock Exchange in a French cathedral. Imagine the brokers
nineteenth century, the movement that produced the Communist Manifesto. Daumier
was revolutionary both in expression and in ideological content. In order to say what
he wanted to say, he developed a new technique. When he was not actually painting an
anecdote of revolutionary character, but was merely drawing a woman carrying clothes
or a man seated at a table eating, he was nevertheless creating art of a definitely revolu-
tionary character. Daumier developed a drastic technique identified with revolutionary

all rigged out like Indian chieftains, with head feathers or with Mexican sombreros. The feeling, so that his form, his method, his technique always expressed that feeling" For
architecture of Manhattan is the first step. Painting and sculpture must certainly follow example, if we take his famous laundress, we find that he has painted her with nei-

as inevitable second steps. ther the eye of a literary man nor that of a photographer. Daumier saw his laundress

The highest, the most logical, the purest and strongest form of painting is the mural. through class-conscious eyes. He was aware of her connection with life and labor. In

In this form alone, it is one with the other arts-with all the others. the vibration of his lines, in the quantity and quality of color which he projected upon

It is, too, the most disinterested form, for it cannot be made a matter of private gain; the canvas, we see a creation directly contrary and opposed to the creations of bourgeois

it cannot be hidden away for the benefit of a certain privileged few. conservative art. The position of each object, he effects oflight in th~picture, all such

It is for the people. It is for ALL. things express the personality in its complete connection with its surroundings and
with life. The laundress is not only a laundress leaving the river bank, burdened with
her load of clothes and dragging a child behind her; she is, at one and the same time, the
expression ofthe weariness of labor and the tragedy of proletarian motherhood. Thus
we see, weighing upon her, the heavy burdens of her position as woman and the heavy
"THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT IN MODERN ART"
burdens of her position as laborer; in the background we discern the houses of Paris,
Diego Rivera both aristocratic and bourgeois. In a fraction of a second, a person, unless he is blind,
can see in the figure of this laundress not only a figure but a whole connection with life
The Modern Quarterly Vol. 6, NO.3 (Baltimore: Autumn 1932):51-57. and labor and the times in which she lives. In other paintings ofDaumier are depicted
scenes of the actual class struggle, but whether he is portraying tbe class struggle or
Transcribed here with minor spelling changes and informational additions, which appear
not, in both types of painting we can regard him as a revolutionary artist. He is so not
within square brackets.
" "r h t He did not come from a fao
because he was of proletanan extraction, lor e was no .
f "I hi ". bourgeois he worked for the
trt is a social ~reation. It manifests a division in accordance with the division of social
tory, he was not of a working-class ami y; is cngm was
" . h N h I
bourgeois papers, selling hIS drawmgs to t em. evert e ess,
,
he was able to create art
classes. There IS a bourgeois art, there is a revolutionary art, there is a peasant art, but . 1 . I just as Marx and Engels
which was an efficacious weapon In the revo utionary strugg e,
there is not, properly speaking, a proletarian art. The proletariat produces art of struggle . ., . k hi h serve as the basis for the
but no class can produce a class art until it has reached the highest point of its develop- despite their bourgeois ongm were able to wnte wor s W ic

ment. The bourgeoisie reached its zenith in the French Revolution and thereafter cre- development of the proletarian revolutionary movement. .
The important fact to note is that the man who is truly a thinker, or the ~~mt~r
ated art expressive of itself When the proletariat in its turn really begins to produce its " . "1 t t k any but a position 111
who is truly an artist, cannot, at a given historica moment, a e .
art, it will be after the proletarian dictatorship has fulfilled its mission, has liquidated . f hi time The social struggle IS
all class differences and produced a classless society" The art of the future, therefore, accordance with the revolutIOnary development 0 15 own .
. bi t hich an artist can choose.
will not be proletarian but Communist. During the course of its development, however, the richest, the most intense and the most plastic su Jec w. I-
. "1 t be insensible to such deve
and even after it has COine into power, the proletariat must not refuse to use the best Therefore, one who is born to be an artist can certam y no

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•
II
apments. When I say born to be an artist, I refer to the constitution or make-up of his
eyes, of his nervous system, of his sensibility, and of his brains. The artist is a direct
product oflife. He is an apparatus born to be the receptor, the condenser, the transmitter
and the reflector of the aspirations, the desires, and the hopes of his age. At times, the
artist serves to condense and transmit the desires of millions of proletarians; at times,
he serves as the condenser and transmitter only for small strata of the intellectuals
smaUlayers of the bourgeoisie. We can establish it as a basic fact that the importance
an artist can be measured directly by the size of the multitudes whose aspirations
whose life he serves to condense and translate.
The typical theory of nineteenth-century bourgeois aesthetic criticism, namely "art
for art's sake," is an indirect affirmation of the fact which I have just stressed. According
to this theory, the best art is the so-called "art for art's sake," or "pure" art. One of its
sion of art to serve as a weapon in the class struggle. To take possession or control of
art, it is necessary that the proletariat carryon the struggle on two fronts. On one front
is a struggle against the production of bourgeois art-and when I say struggle I mean
struggle in every sense-and on the other is a struggle to develop the ability of the
proletariat to produce its own art. It is necessary for the proletariat to learn to make use
or of beauty in order to live better. It ought to develop its sensibilities, and learn to enjoy
of and make use of the works of art which the bourgeoisie, because of special advantages
and of training, has produced. Nor should the proletariat wait for some painter of good will
or good intentions to come to them from the bourgeoisie; it is time that the proletariat
develop artists from their own midst. By the collaboration of the artists who have come
out of the proletariat and those who sympathize and are in alliance with the proletariat,
there should be created an art which is definitely and in every way superior to the art

characteristics is that it can be appreciated only by a very limited number of superior which is produced by the artists of the bourgeoisie.
persons. It is implied thereby that only those few superior persons are capable of appre· Such a task is the program of the Soviet Union today. Before the Russian Revolution,

ciating that art; and since it is a superior function it necessarily implies the fact that many artists from Russia, including those who were leading figures in the Russian

there are very few superior persons in society. This artistic theory which pretends to revolutionary movement, had long discussions in their exile in Paris over the question

be a-political has really an enormous political content-the implication of the superior- as to what should be the true nature of revolutionary art. I had the opportunity to take

ity of the few. Further, this theory serves to discredit the use of art as a revolutionary part, at various times, in those discussions. The best theorizers in those discussions,

weapon and serves to affirm that all art which has a theme, a social content, is bad art. It misunderstanding the doctrine of Marx which they sought to apply,came to the conclu-

serves, moreover, to limit the possessors of art, to make art into a kind of stock exchange sion that revolutionary art ought to take the best art that the bourgeoisie had developed
and bring that art directly to the revolutionary masses. Eacn of the artists was certain
commodity manufactured by the artist, bought and sold on the stock exchange, subject
that his own type of art was the best that the bourgeoisie had produced. Those artists
to the speculative rise and fall which any commercialized thing is subject to in stock
who had the greatest development of collective spirit, those who had grouped them-
exchange manipulations. At the same time, this theory creates a legend which envelops
selves around various "isms," such as Cubism and Futurism, were convinced that their
art, the legend of its intangible, sacrosanct, and mysterious character which makes art
particular group was creating the art which would become the art of the revolutionary
aloof and inaccessible to the masses. European painting throughout the nineteenth
. h . 1 ". "th t articular school
century had this general aspect. The revolutionary painters are to be regarded as heroic proletariat as soon as they were able to bnng t at particu ar Ism, a P
. d" h h . taining that while it
exceptions. Since art is a product that nourishes human beings it is subject to the action of art, to the proletanat. I ventured to isagree WIt tern, mam .
was necessary to utilize the innumerable technical developments which bourgeois art
of the law of supply and demand just as is any other product necessary to life. In the
had developed, we had to use them in the same way that the Soviet Union utilizes the
nineteenth century the proletariat was in no position to make an effective economic
machine technique that the bourgeoisie has developed. The Soviet Union takes the best
demand for art products. The demand was all on the part of the bourgeoisie. It can be
. f b .. d d ts itto the needs and
only as a striking and heroic exception, therefore, that art of a revolutionary character technical development and machinery 0 the ourgeOIsIe an a ap
. .. . I tended we must also use
car be produced under the circumstances of bourgeois d.emand. special conditions of the new proletanan regime: In art, con ,
. fb . t b t must adapt them to the
At present art has a very definite and important role to play in the class struggle. It the most advanced technical achIevements 0 ourgeors ar u . .,
hi h bv i 1 it by its accesslblbty,
is definitely useful to the proletariat. There is great need for artistic expression of the needs of the proletariat so as to create an art w c , YIts c ar y, .
h d of the proletanan
revolutionary movement. Art has the advantage of speaking a language that can easily and by its relation to the new order, should be adapte d to t e nee s .
. Id t i .st upon their acceptmg my
be understood by the workers and peasants of all lands. A Chinese peasant or worker revolution and the proletarian regime. But I cou no mSI . .
. . d t d ytbing which many
can understand a revolutionary painting much more readily and easily than he can opinion, for, up to the time of that dISCUSSIon,I ha not crea e an . d
d s were creatmg. I ha
understand a book written in English. He needs no translator. That is precisely the way differed fundamentally from the type of art t h at my comra e c f
.' . . I h d een the failure and de,eat 0
advantage of revolutionary art. A revolutionary painting takes far less time and it says arrived at my conclusion In the following manner. a s ul f
. b vinced was the res to a
far more than a lecture does. the Mexican revolution of 1919, a defeat which I ecame con I
M' roletariat and peasantry.
f h
lack of theoretical understanding on the part 0 t e eXlCanP
Since the proletariat has need of art, it is necessary that the proletariat take posses-

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left Mexico when the counter-revolution was developing under Madero, deciding to go to
Europe to get the theoretical understanding and the technical development in art which
I thought was to be found there.
The Russian comrades returned from Paris to Russia immediately after the Revolu-
tion, taking with them the most advanced technique in painting which they had learned
in Paris. They did their best and created works of considerable beauty, utilizing all the
technique which they had learned. They carried on a truly heroic struggle to make
that art accessible to the Russian masses. They worked under conditions of famine, the
strain of revolution and counter revolution, and all the material and economic difficul-
ties imaginable, yet they failed completely in their attempts to persuade the masses to
accept Cubism, or Futurism, or Constructivism as the art of the proletariat. Extended
discussions of the whole problem arose in Russia. Those discussions and the confusion
resulting from the rejection of modern art gave an opportunity to the bad painters to
take advantage of the situation. The academic painters, the worst painters who had
survived from the old regime in Russia, soon provided competition on a grand scale.
Pictures inspired by the new tendencies of the most advanced European schools were
exhibited side by side with the works of the worst academic schools of Russia. Unfortu-
nately, those that won the applause of the public were not the new painters and the new
European schools but the old and bad academic painters. Strangely enough, it seems to
me, it was not the modernistic painters but the masses of the Russian people who were
correct in the controversy. Their vote showed not that they considered the academic
painters as the painters of the proletariat, but that the art of the proletariat must not be
a hermetic art, an art inaccessible except to those who have developed and undergone an
elaborate aesthetic preparation. The art of the proletariat has to be an art that is warm
and clear and strong. It was not that the proletariat of Russia was telling these artists:
"You are too modern for us." What it said was: "You are not modern enough to be artists
of the proletarian revolution." The revolution and its theory, dialectical materialism,
have no use for art of the ivory tower variety. They have need of an art which is as full
of content as the proletarian revolution itself, as clear and forthright as the theory of the
proletarian revolution.
In Russia there exists the art of the people, namely peasant art. It is an art rooted
in thb soil. In its colors, its materials, and its force it is perfectly adapted to the envi-
ronment out of which it is born. It represents the production of art with the simplest
resources and in the least costly form. For these reasons it will be of great utility to the
proletariat in developing its own art. The better Russian painters working directly after
the Revolution should have recognized this and then built upon it, for the proletariat, so
closely akin to the peasant in many ways, would have been able to understand this art.
Instead of this the academic artists, intrinsically reactionary, were able to get control of
the situation. Reaction in art is not merely a matter of theme. A painter who conserves
and uses the worst technique of bourgeois art is a reactionary artist, even though he
may use this technique to paint such a subject as the death of Lenin or the red flag on
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the barricades. In the same fashion, an engineer engaged in the construction of a dam
with the purpose of irrigating Russian soil would be reactionary ifhe were to utilize the
bourgeois procedures of the beginning of the nineteenth century. In that case he would
be reactionary; he would be guilty of a crime against the Soviet Union, even ifhe were
trying to construct a dam for the purpose of irrigation.
The Russian theatre was safe from the bankruptcy which Russian painting suffered.
It was in direct contact with the masses and, therefore, has developed into the best
theatre that the world knows today. Bit by bit, the theatre has attracted to it painters,
sculptors, and, of course, actors, dancers, musicians. Everyone in the Soviet Union who
has any talent for art is being attracted to the theatre as a fusion of arts. In proportion
with the progress made in the construction of socialism in the SovietUnion, artists are
turning more and more to the theatre for expression and the masses are coming closer
and closer to the theatre as an "expression of their life." The result is that the ?ther arts
are languishing and Russia is producing less and less of the type of art which, in the
rest of Europe, serves as shares on the Stock Exchange.
Mural art is the most significant art for the proletariat. In Russia mural paintings
are projected on the walls of clubs, of union headquarters, and even on the walls of the
factories. But Russian workers came to me and declared that in their houses they would
prefer having landscapes and stilllifes, which would'bring them a feeling of r~stfulness.
But the easel picture is an object ofluxury, quite beyond the means of the proletariat.
I told my fellow artists in Russia that they should sell their paintings to the workers at
low prices, give them to them if necessary. After all, the government was supplying the
colors, the canvas, and the material necessary for painting, so that artists could have
sold their work at low prices. The majority, however, preferred to wait for the annual
purchase of paintings made by the Commissariat of Education when pictures were, and
still are, bought for five hundred rubles each.
[ did not feel that I had the right to insist upon my viewpoint until I had created
something of the type of art Iwas talking about. Therefore, in '921, instead of going to
Russia where I had been invited by the Commissariat of Education, 1went to Mexico to
b . Thi effort of mine had in it
attempt to create some of the art that I had een exa Itmg. 15 --. .
something of the flavor of adventure because, in Mexico, there was a proletarian regime.
There was in power at that time a fraction of the bourgeoisie that had need of demagogy
. 11s and we Mexican artists
as a weapon in maintaining itself 10 power. It gave us wa ,
. d.i fact what we pleased, even
painted subjects of a revolutionary character. We pamte ,Ill I .. •
.. hi h tainly commumstlC 10 charac-
including a certain number of pamtmgs w IC were cer . .
I . ti . the direction of the
ter. Our task was first to develop and remake mura pam mgs III .' .
DC h t h ural pall1trng might
needs of the proletariat, and, second to note the ertect t a sue m
. . th t we could judge whether that
have upon the proletarians and peasants III MexICO,so a
.. t f the proletariat in power. But let
form of painting would be an effectIve mstrumen 0 . di
. ld diti popular art tra i-
me note also another fact. In Mexico there existed an 0 tra inon, a . Thi
th peasant art of RUSSIa. 15
lion much older and much more splendid t h an even e
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 I saw yesterday the work of a lad [Ben ShahnJ-formerly a painter of abstract art-
art is of a truly magnificent character. The colonial rulers of Mexico, like those of the
who has just completed a series of paintings on the life and death of Saccoand Vanzetti
United States, had despised that ancient art tradition which existed there, but they failed
which are as moving as anything of the kind I have ever seen. The Saccoand Vanzetti
to destroy it completely. With this art as background, I became the first revolutionary
paintings are technically within the school of modernistic painting, but they possess the
painter in Mexico. The paintings served to attract many young painters, painters who
necessary qualities, accessibility, and power, to make them important to the proletariat.
had not yet developed sufficient social consciousness. We formed a painters' union and
Here and there I have seen drawings and lithographs of high quality, all by young and
began to cover the walls of buildings in Mexico with revolutionary art. At the same
unknown artists. I am convinced that within the United States there is the ability to
time we revolutionized the methods of teaching drawing and art to children, with the
produce a high development of revolutionary art, advancing upward, from below. The
result that the children of Mexico began producing artistic works in the course of their
bourgeoisie at times will be persuaded to buy great pictures in spite oftheir evolutionary
elementary school development.
character. In the galleries of the richest men there are pictures by Daumier. But these
As a result of these things, when in '927 I was again invited to go to Moscow, I felt
sources of demand are most precarious. The proletariat must learn to depend upon
that I could go, as we Mexicans had some experience which might help Soviet Russia.
itself, however limited its resources may be. Rembrandt died a poor man in the wealthy
I ought to remark at this point that among the painters in Mexico, thanks to the devel·
bourgeois Holland of his day. In spite of his innumerable paintings there was scarcely a
opment of the new methods of teaching painting in the schools of the workers, there
crust of bread in his house when he was found dead. His painting knew how to offend
developed various working-class painters of great merit, among them Maximo Pacheco,
the wealthy Dutch bourgeoisie. In Rembrandt I find a basis of profound humanity and
whom I consider the best mural painter in Mexico.
to a certain extent of protest. This is much more definite in the case ofCezanne.Tt is suf-
The experience which I tried to offer to the Russian painters was brought to Russia
ficient to point out that Cezanne used the workers and peasants of France as the heroes
at a moment of intense controversy. In spite of the fact that it was a poor time for artis-
I and central figures of his paintings. It is impossible today to look at a French peasant
tic discussion and development, Corrolla, the comrade who was formerly in charge of
without seeing a painting of Cezanne.
"Agitprop" work, organized a group, "October," to discuss and make use of the Mexican
Bourgeois art will cease to develop when, the bourgeoisie as a class is destroyed.
artistic experiments. I was engaged to paint by the metallurgical workers who wanted
Great paintings, however, will not cease to give aesthetic pleasure though they have no
me to paint the walls of their club, the "Dynamo Club" on the Leningrad Chaussee.
political meaning fat the proletariat. One can enjoy the Crucifixion by Mantegna and
Soon, however, owing to differences, not of an aesthetic but of a political character, I was
be moved by it aesthetically without being a Christian. It is my personal opinion that
instructed to return to Mexico to take part in the "election campaign beginning there." A
there is in Soviet Russia today too great a veneration of the past. To me, art is always
few months after my return to Mexico I was expelled from the Party. Since then, I have
alive and vital, as it was in the Middle Ages when a new mural was painted every time
remained in a position which is characteristically Mexican, namely that of the guerrilla
a new political or social event required one. Because I conceive of art as a living and not
fighter. I could not receive my munitions from the Party because my Party had expelled
a dead thing, 1see the profound necessity for a revolution in questions of culture, even
me; neither could I acquire them through my personal funds because I haven't any. I
in the Soviet Union.
took them and will continue to take them, as the guerrilla fighter must, from the enemy.
Of the recent movements in art, the most significant to the revolutionary movement
Therefore, I take the munitions from the hands of the bourgeoisie. My munitions are the
is that of Super-Realism [Surrealism]. Many of its adherents are members of the Com-
walls, the colors, and the money necessary to feed myself so that I may continue to work.
munist Party. Some of their recent work is perfectly accessible to the masses. Their
On the walls of the bourgeoisie, painting cannot always have as fighting an aspect as it
maxim is "Super-Realism at the service of the Revolution."* Technically they represent
could on the walls, let us say, of a revolutionary school. The guerrilla fighter sometimes
the development ofthe best technique of the bourgeoisie. In ideology,however, they are
can derail a train, sometimes blow up a bridge, but sometimes he can only cut a few
not fully Communist. And no painting can reach its highest development or be truly
telegraph wires. Each time he does what he can. Whether important or insignificant, his
revolutionary unless it is truly Communist.
action is always within the revolutionary line. The guerrilla fighter is always ready, at the And now we come to the question of propaganda. All painters have been pro:~-
time of amnesty, to return to the ranks and become a simple soldier like everybody else. . G' ropagandist of the spint
gandists or else they have not been pamters. iotto was a P ,
It was in the quality of a guerrilla fighter then that I came to the United States. . I f his time against feudal
of Christian charity, the weapon of the pranciscan mon cs 0 1 .
As to the development of art among the American workers, I have already seen paint- oppression. Breughel was a propagandist of the struggle of the Dutch artlsan petty
ings in the John Reed Club, which are undoubtedly of revolutionary character and at the
same time aesthetically superior to the overwhelming majority of paintings which can . 1 S 't· servia de la revolution.
*Rivera refers here to the title of the Surrealist ]ourna, urrea Isme ClU I
be found in the art galleries of the dealers in paintings.

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 We shall break the narrow and mortal circle of easel painting in order to coura-
bourgeoisie against feudal oppression. Everyartist who has been worth anything in art
geously penetrate the immense field of multi-exemplary painting.
has been such a propagandist. The familiar accusation that propaganda ruins art finds
We shall remove sculpture from the absurdity of the workshop and the movable
its source in bourgeois prejudice. Naturally enough the bourgeoisie does not want art
pedestal and we shall restore it, polychromed. back into architecture and the street.
employed for the sake of revolution. It does not want ideals in art because its own ideals
We shall liberate painting and sculpture from dry scholasticism, fromacademicism
cannot any longer serveas artistic inspiration. It does not want feelings because its own
and the solitary cerebralism of pure art, and take them to the tremendoussocial reality
feelings cannot any longer serve as artistic inspiration. Art and thought and feeling
that surrounds us and that already wounds our foreheads.
must be hostile to the bourgeoisie today. Every strong artist has a head and a heart.
We shall restoreto visual art the only possible system for its teaching,which consists
Every strong artist has been a propagandist. I want to be a propagandist and I want to
in the application of the invariable principle that one cannot teach to paint to engrave,
be nothing else. I want to be a propagandist of Communism and I want to be it in all
except through the participation of the apprentice in the total process of the work as it
that I can think, in all that 1 can speak, in all that I can write, and in all that I can paint.
is being developed and linking it to the daily and concrete facts of this development to
I want to use my art as a weapon.
the corresponding theoretical teachings.
For the real development on a grand scale of revolutionary art in America, it is neces-
We shall remove visual art from the miserable individual attemptand return it to
sary to have a situation where all unite in a single party of the proletariat and are in a
the rational, democratic and collective process used in the corporativeworkshops of the
position to take over the public buildings, the public resources, and the wealth of the
flourishing periods of art. We shall labor in teams, perfecting each daythe coordination
country. Only then can there develop a genuine revolutionary art. The fact that the
of our individualities, in direct relation with the capacity of each ofus, justlike the great
bourgeoisie is in a state of degeneration and depends for its art on the art of Europe
soccer players do. In this way our periodic works will constitute the onlyand formidable
indicates that there cannot be a development of genuine American art, except in so far
public school of visual arts.
as the proletariat is able to create it. In order to be good art, art in this country must be
We shall end with static objects circumscribed by personal and descriptive mod-
revolutionary art, art of the proletariat, or it will not be good art at all.
els, puerile scenes and objects, in order to arrive at new elements that offer us iron
anatomies of moving machines, the thunder of sports with its greatspectacles for the
masses and its ascending social battles in the most exasperating andtremendous fight
remembered in the history of the world,
We shall step out ofthe pleasant darkness of the atelier and the Montpamassc schools
"A CALL TO ARGENTINE ARTISTS"
in order to walk in the plenitude of the light of the human and social realities of factories

David Alfaro Siqueiros and streets, workers' neighborhoods, highways and the vast countrysidewith its tenant
farms and large estates.
Published in the daily Crftica, Buenos Aires, Argentina, June 2, '933· We shall drink from the living fountains of daily facts the conviction that shall be
the impetuous motor of our work, conscious that it was Christian conviction (just one
Painters and sculptors:we are working toward the creation in Argentina and Uruguay
example) that was the dynamo that brought forth the immense popular art of the early

I(perhaps throughout all of South America) of the bases for a visual monumental
ment that is open and multi-exemplary for the large popular masses.
We propose to takethe work of art out of the aristocratic sacristies where it has been
move-
and most exemplary epochs of the Italian Renaissance.
We are particularly concerned with finding the tools and materials that match the
nature of the tremendous work that we are undertaking. We shall find the form that
rotting for the past four centuries. Our fields of operation will be those places where the
corresponds with the content of our visual expression.
greater nucleus of persons attends and the trafficof the people is more intense. We shall
We already have two great antecedents, with two magnificent experiences, which
use the processes that will give our works widest distribution.
give us the initial knowledge of the craft of this new and marvelousprofession of ours.
We shall, then, paint on the most visible walls on the open sides of modern high
I am referring to the primary experiment represented by the MexicanRenaissa~c~,
rises, in the most visually strategic places in working-class neighborhoods, in union
already in process ofliquidation, and the more integrated, more modernexperience InI-
halls, facing public plazas, and in sports arenas and open air theaters. tiated by the Block of Painters in Los Angeles, California, which is in an actual process
We shall bring out of museums-cemeteries-the pictorial and sculptural produc-
of development and perfection.
tion and take these from private hands, and make of them an element of maximum ser- cor establl'shl'ng the principle of
The first one gives us the fundamenta I b ases «
vice for the public and collective good, useful to the culture of the large popular masses.

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supremacy of monumental painting (in interiors) over easel painting. It shows us the
need of modern work to be linked with the great traditions, in particular with the great
American traditions. It gives us the objective knowledge of the procedures of traditional
monumental painting which had been lost since the end of the Italian Renaissance.
Lastly, it demonstrates that all of the great works of the past have been the fruit of social
Our movement is based on critical analysis of the two great contemporary art experi-
ences: the Paris movement and the modern Mexican movement usually known as the
Mexican Renaissance. Both these movements are dis~ntegrating today.
One of our valuable antecedents is the mechanical techniques used by Siqueiros in
the groups he formed in Los Angeles and Buenos Aires; the Mural Painters Group of Los

convictions. Angeles and the Polygraphic team of Buenos Aires.

The second (the Block of Painters) affirms what is worth conserving of the principles
and methods of the Mexican Renaissance, showing us the true nature of its initial
WHAT DO WE WANT?
effort, with all its failures and faults. It opens wide the door to the new world of modern
technique, susceptible to be used in visual production. For the first time in the world it We want to produce an art which will be physically capable of serving the public through

gives us the objective and subjective vehicles that are demanded by large mural paint- its material form. True art forms which will reach far and wide. This art must be com-
ing, that is outdoors and multi-exemplary for the masses, which will exist under the sun mercialized according to the possibilities of each country, in order to avoidthe bourgeois

and the rain, facing the street, in the first case, and in the second case in proletarian elitism of European art and the tourist-oriented bureaucracy of Mexican art. We must rid

homes. It demonstrates the use of cement instead of lime and sand of traditional fresco, ourselves of the European Utopia of art for art's sake, and also of the Mexican demagogic

which are inapplicable to the conditions of modern construction. It shows us the use of opportunism. We must put an end to the superficial folk art, ofthe type called" Mexican

airbrush, of air compressor, of sand blasting, etc. etc. It initiates us in the use of electric Curious" which predominates in Mexico today, and substitute for it an art which is inter-

currents for the coloration of walls through various degrees of crystallization. It shows nationally valid though based on local antecedents and functional elements.
us the technique of collective labor. It shows us the dynamic composition demanded by We must coordinate our abilities and experiences and work together as a technical

.outdoor visual art. The experience of the Blockfrom Los Angeles, California, gives us in team. We must put an end to the egocentrism of modern European art and the false

one word all that we need to produce art for the masses and for the large human masses. collectivism of official Mexican art, with its "socialism." We shall both learn and teach

But this entire program would not come to fruition if we do not proceed in its appli- our new art in the course of producing it: theory and practice win go together. We shall put
cation in an organic manner. This is what the Union of Visual Artists, which has been an end to sterile verbal didactic teaching, which has produced nothing of value in the

recently founded, will do. Therefore it is urgent that all of the producers of visual art, last four hundred years of academism, and which even today is still the only method of

which comprehend the veracity of our principles, lend themselves, as of right now, to teaching art both in Mexico and all over the world.
join our ranks. We must make use of all the modern tools and materials which serve the purpose of

- Translated by Alt:jandro Anreus our art, and put an end to the incredible technical anachronism to be found in Mexico
and Europe. Instead, we shall establish the fundamental premise that art movements
should always develop in accordance with the technical possibilities of their age. Modern
technique and mechanics have made such enormous progress that they can enrich our
creative capacity beyond our wildest imagination. Unfortunately artists today seem to
"TOWARD A TRANSFORMATION
know nothing of the science and technology from which their materials evolve, and
OF THE PLASTIC ARTS"
their knowledge is restricted to knowing in which shop to buy them. Modern industry
f ni
I David Alfaro Siqueiros
. . herni
has made revolutionary changes In the c ermstry 0 plgmen s w
t hich modern artists

know nothing whatever about. .

Translated in Siqueiros, Art and Revolution (London: Lawrence and Wishart, '975), pp. 45-48. We must develop a polygraphic art which will combine both plastic and graphlC art
. . . . A t 0 longer be separated
and provide a great potential for artistic expression. rt mus n
Plans for a manifesto and study program for studio-schools of painting and sculpture, written . . . I· t fi d a new more powerful,
by Siqueiros in New York, '934 Into units, either pure pamtmg or pure scu pture. It mus n ,
. . .' h eu sian and validity as an
more modern language which WIll gIve It muc greater repcr s

Painters, sculptors, engravers, newspaper illustrators, photographers, architects (Mexi- art expression. W
i I lechanical ones. e
cans, South Americans, North Americans, Europeans), we have decided to foment an We must use new, dialectic forms, rather than d ea,d sch a ar y, n
. .. .h h d . or the world today, and we
international movement to transform the plastic arts. must evolve a dynam~c graph~c art III tune Wit t e ynam~sm ~

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must rid ourselves of mysticism, of snobbish "archaeologism," and the other defects of
modern art in both Europe and Mexico.
OUT art must have a real scientific basis. Wemust get rid of the empiricism, and emotiv·
ism which have characterized the art movements of the world until today. For the first
time in history, we shall find scientific truths which can be proved, either physically,
chemically, or psychologically. In this way we will be able to forge a strong connection
all other art materials (to prove the great superiority of modern materials over traditional
ones); descriptive geometry and industrial drawing; the social history of the arts (rather than
anecdotism).
As for publicity, we shall have simultaneous exhibitions (in private buildings belong-
ing to organizations and in public places; at home and abroad); co-ordinated exhibitions
(of multiple painting and photogenic art); we will publish popular monographs (at prices

between art and science. accessible to the people); we shall set up permanent sales posts (in towns and villages,
We must foment the teaching of exterior mural painting, public painting, in the street, in factories, etc.); we will try to make direct sales of personal work (in order to help our
in the sunlight, on the sides of tall buildings instead of the advertisements you see collaborators, etc.). Our workshop schools will have a publicity section which will take
there now, in strategic positions where the people can see them, mechanically produced charge of this commercial program and invent new sales methods, because we feel
and materially adapted to the realities of modern construction. We must put an end to that our economic development depends on our finding a way to commercialize our
tourist-inspired Mexican muralism with its archaic technique, and bureaucracy; murals products in accordance with the possibilities of the masses.
painted in out of the way places and which only emerge from hiding in select mono- -New York, June '934

graphs published for foreign amateurs. We will be preparing ourselves for the society
of the future, in which our type of art will be preferred to all others, because it is the
effective daily expression of art for the masses.
We shall, of course, conserve all the absolute values of the other art movements, "OROZCO 'EXPLAINS'"
because we feel that tradition is an accumulation of experiences on which our work
must be based. This is even more important since our movement is a classical move- Reprinted from The Bulletin oJthe Museum of Modern Art Vol.7, NO·4 (Au,gust1940):2-11.
ment, in as much as it responds to the social and technical realities of the moment in
This text was written by Orozco atthe request of Alfred H. Ba-r, [r., to accompany his portable
which it exists. mural Dive 80mberand Tank, which he painted on the premises of the Museum of Modern Art
We shall give practical form to our theories by creating workshop schoolsoj plastic and as part of the exhibition 20 Centuries of Mexican Art (May through summer, 1940)
graphic art, from which we shall exclude archaic, livid monocopy forms and procedures,
such as easel painting; we shall exclude everything which cannot be reproduced, we This "explanation" was written by Mr. Orozco. The quotation marks in his title indicate his
shall exclude exhibitions in "distinguished" galleries for the benefit of amateurs and
feeling that explanations are unnecessary.
critics, expensive limited editions, in fact everything which can be considered art for
The public wants explanations about a painting. What the artist had in mind when he
the private collector and for a privileged elite. In this way we shall be consequential with
did it. What he was thinking of. What is the exact name of the picture, and what the
our own period of history, and we shall provide an immediate and evident service to the
great masses and to all humanity. artist means by that. If he is glorifying or cursing. If he believes in Democracy.
f h R' I rto kills
In our workshop schools we will develop polychromed engraving (both the traditional Going to the Italian Opera you get a booklet with a full account 0 w Y 19O e
Aida at the end of a wild party with La Boheme, Lucia di Lammermoor and Madame
and, more especially the modern); polychromed lithography (traditional and modern);
large editions oj polychromed posters (mechanically printed); photo-engraving (by experi- Butterfly. .
The Italian Renaissance is another marvelous opera full of killings and wild parties,
mental methods); scenography; applied painting (on standards, flags, posters, curtains
and the public gets also thousands of booklets with complete and most detailed informa-
and commercial art); reproducible polychromed sculpture (made of cement, plaster cement
and all other modern materials); photo-genic painting (all our artwork must be able to tion about everything and everybody in Florence and Rome.
And now the public insists on knowing the plot of modern painted opera, though not
be photographically reproduced); photo-montag', cliche montage (applicable to all kinds . t be tbe illustration of a
of graphic reproduction); documentary photography and cinema; manual and mechanical Italian, of course. They take for granted that every pICture mus .
ld t . . g biography and bnght say-
printing (the problem of printing is fundamental to all popular art); modern mural paint- short story or of a thesis and want to be to t h e enter amm
dd of hero villain and chorus.
ing (on cement, with silicates, using a spray gun and other applicable tools or mechani- ings of the leaders in the stage-picture, the ups an owns , .' f th
. luding quotatIOns rom e
cal means such as electro-ceramics, etc.): the chemical theory and practice of pigments and Many of the pictures actually tell all that an d more even me

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•
Holy Scriptures and Shakespeare. Others deal with social conditions, evils of the world,
revolution, history and the like. Bedroom pictures with la femme Ii sa toilette are still
very frequent.
Suddenly, Madame Butterfly and her friend Rigoletto disappear from the stage-
picture. Gone, too, are gloomy social conditions. To the amazement of the public the
curtain goes up and nothing is on the stage but a few lines and cubes. The Abstract.
The public protests and demands explanations, and explanations are given away freely
and generously. Rigoletto and social conditions are still there but have become abstract,
all dolled up in cubes and cones in a wild surrealist party with La Boheme, Lucia de
Lammermoor and Madame Butterfly. Meanings? Names? Significance? Short stories?
Well, let's invent them afterward. The public refuses TO SEE painting. They want TO
HEAR painting. They don't care for the show itself, they prefer TO LISTEN to the barker
outside. Free lectures every hour for the blind, around the Museum. This way, please.
"The Artist must be sincere," they say. It is true. He must be sincere. The actor on
"THE DIVE BOMBER," OR SIX INTERCHANGEABLE PANELS
A painting is a Poem and nothing else. A poem made of relationships between forms as
other kinds of poems are made of relationships between words, sounds or ideas. Sculp-
ture and architecture are also relationships between forms. This word forms includes
color, tone, proportion, line, et cetera.
The forms in a poem are necessarily organized in such a way that the whole acts
as an automatic machine, more or less efficient but apt to function in a certain way,
-to move in a certain direction. Such a machine-motor sets in motion our senses, first;
our emotional capacity, second; and our intellect, last. An efficient and well-organized
machine may work in very different ways. It can be simplified to its last elementals
or basic structure or may be developed into a vast and complicated organism working
under the same basic principles.
Each part of a machine may be by itself a machine to function independently from

the stage commits suicide to thrill or frighten the public to death. The actor feels exactly the whole. The order of the inter-relations between its parts may be altered, but those

what a suicide feels, and acts the same way except that his gun is not loaded. He is sin- relationships may stay the same in any other order, and unexpected or expected pos-

cere as an artist only. Next week he has to impersonate St. Francis, Lenin or an average sibilities may appear. Suppose we change the actual order of the plastic elements of the

business man, very sincerely! vaults in the Sistine Chapel ..

A linotype is a work of art, but a linotype in motion is an extraordinary adventure
The technique of painting is still in its infancy after ten thousand years of civiliza-
affecting the lives of many human beings or the course of history. A few lines from a
tion, or whatever it is. Even college children know this fact, for abundant literature about
linotype in action may start a World War or may mean the birth of a new era.
the subject is on hand.
It seems incredible that science and industry have not yet provided the artist with -Jose Clemente Orozco
better materials to work with. Not a single improvement through centuries. The range
of colors available is still extremely limited. Pigments are not permanent at all in spite of
manufacturers' claims. Canvas, wood, paper, walls are exposed to continuous destruc-
tion from moisture, changes in temperature, chemical reactions, insects and germs.
Oils, varnishes, wax, gums ~nd tempera media are dirty substances darkening, chang-
ing, cracking and disintegrating all the time.
Fresco painting is free from the inconveniences of oils and varnishes, but the wall
upon which the painting is done is subjected to many causes of destruction, such as
the use of the wrong kind of building materials, poor planning, moisture from the
ground or from the air, earthquakes, dive bombing, tanking or battleshipping, excess of
magnesia in the lime or the marble dust, lack of care resulting in scratches or peeling
off, et cetera. So, fresco must be done only on walls that are as free as possible from all
these inconveniences.
There is no rule for painting al fresco. Every artist may do as he pleases provided he
paints as thinly as possible and only while the plaster is wet, six to eight hours from the
moment it is applied. No retouching of any kind afterward. Every artist develops his own
way of planning his conception and transferring it onto the wet plaster. Every method is
as good as the other. Or the artist may improvise without any previous sketches.

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Siqueiros, David Alfaro, 38-39, 75-77, 8of, 84f, Song and Music (Tamayo), pl. 6 218f,223 Velez-Ibanez, Carlos G., 233

8Sf, 87£, gon8, 177, 202,205, 267; "A Call to Scto, rose Luis, 273, 274f Trotsky, Leon, 27, 79; assassination, 49, 86, via negativa (Orozco), 42, 45, 52
Argentine Artists," 177, 330-32; Allegory of Soviet Union, 46, 325-29. See also specific topics 88,184, 192nn22-23; Rivera and, 39, 48, 50, Vigil (Orozco), 95
Racial Equality an.d Confratemity of the White Spain, 206m2 128, 130, 2II, 220 Villa, Pancho, 40

and Black Races in Cuba, 185, 186E; attempted Spilimbergo, Uno Enea, I78, r83, pI. 7 Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art (exhibition), 28 Villaurrutia, Xavier, 152, 157,164

assassination of Trotsky, 184; Berni and, 178, stairwell cycle, 70-73 Two Mountains of America (Siqueiros}, 187,
r84' 190-91; in Buenos Aires (1933), 184-9°; Stalin, Joseph, 213 194n41 Wall That Cracked Open, The (Herron], 251,
Street Corner (Orozco), 252[
Burial of u Worker, 19, 163, 164f; critique of 95
strikers. See laborers Uccello, Paolo, nf weapons. 38
muralism, 77-79; critique of the popular.
216; death, 190-91, 265; first solo exhibi- Struggle oIthe Workers Against the Financiers, United Farm Workers (UFW), 246, 247, 249, Winter (Orozco), 95
250, 254, 255 Wolfe, Bertram, 46, 68,70
tion, 157; From the Porfiriato to the Revolu- The (O'Higgins}, 134. 134f. pI. 4
United States: Mexican relations with, 22; workers. See laborers
tion, 51, S2f; Getleral Uprising of the Mexican Subway Post (Orozco), 95
Mexican-US border relations (1836-1854), World's Highest Structure, The (Orozco), r05
People Against the Porfirian Regime, 51; in Sugar Cane Cutters (Carreno), 188-89, 188f
283: See also Europe, Mexico, and the United Wounded Man, The (Berni), r8!-83' r8zf
Havana (1943),184-9°; hiding, arrest, and Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters and
exile, 89, 184-85; ideology and style, 50-53; Sculptors: manifesto of, 37-38, 57, 60, 71, States; Mexican muralism in United States;
specific topics "Yo soy Joaqu[n/l Am [oaquin,' 247-48
Los Angeles mural at Chouinard School of 151-52, 319-21
Art, 217; manifesto against academicism in universalism, 6, 50, 149, IS0, 153, 156, 197,
200-201, 206m2 Zapata, Emiliano, 40, 101, !O2, 234, 270, 275,
painting, 157; March of Humanity, 29-30, Taller de Arte e ldeclogfa (TIP), 272, 276, 277
universalist humanism. See humanism 276; agrarian reform and, 18, 19, 24-26.
30£; Marxism and, 51, 52, 199, 200; Me lla- talleres de muralismo (mural workshops), 276
urban social movements. See social movements 61-62, 64, pl. 2; assassination, 24, Hn41;
mahan e! coronelazo (memoirs), 39; Mexican Tamayo, Rufino, Land-
29, 2gf. 158-65, qIn76;
Uruguayan Communist Party (peU), 203 in Cuernavaca, 24, 24£; Morelos and, 24-26;
Communist Party and, 199; in Montevideo, scape in the Night, 161, 161£; Song and Music,
Obreg6n and, 25, 40; Orozco and, 40, ror,
206n3; mural for Mexican Electricians' Syn- I6J, 162f, 163-64, pl. 6 Uruguayan cultural nationalism, 201-3
214; peasantry and, 23-25, 34n4I, 46,62;
dicate (SME), 79-82; New Democracy, 28f, Teacher, The (Rivera), 71 utopianism, 1~2, 4-5,14,73,88,89, I99, 2Il
public image, 24-25, 34°41,62; Rivera and,
29; organized labor and, 217; photograph of, teatristas, 246, 255
19,23-25, 24f, Hn4[, 46, 62, 64; United
39f; Plastic Exercise, 178, pl. 7; RIO de la Plata Teatrc Campesino in Delano, California, 246- Valdez, Luis, 247, 249
States and, 25
and, 199; Rivera and, 38-39, 39f; speeches, 50, 255, 26m36
Valentiner, William, 218
Vasconcelos, rose, IS, 17, 18, 60, 150, 154, 243,
Zapatismo. 60, 62
187; "The Counter-revolutionary Road of Teatro Verdi, 203, 204
Zapatista manta (Ojos de Lucha], 275
Rivera," 49, 130; "Toward a Transformation Tehuana, 61, 62, 68 244,264
of the Plastic Arts," 332-35; Tropical America, Tehuantepec Landscape (Rivera), 71, 72
2°9,215-18, 215f, 218[, 223; Two Mountaitls Tepito, 229-V; defining marginality of, 23r-35
of America, 187, 194n4I; Uruguayan Com- Tepito Arte Ad (Tepito Art Here) movement,
munist Party and, 199; Villaurrutia on, 157. 232, 271, 272; and the defense of community,
See also Portrait of the Bourgeoisie; Rivera- 235-38
Siqueiros debates Tepito murals: meaning and necessity of, 238-
Siqueiros Cultural Polyforum, 29, 89, 265 41; strategic plan and survival, 241-42
SME. See Mexican Electricians' Syndicate Terrones, Joaquin, 173093
social history of the arts, 335 Tianguis, The (Rivera). See Market/Tianguis
social movements, independent, 269-78. See Tibol, Raquel, 49 /
also specific movements Tlatelolco Massacre, 30, 270
social realism, 5, 22, 126, ql, 149, 151, 152; vs. Tolstoy, Leon, 49, 184
abstraction, 29, 140, 141,197-201; Rivera Topete, Everardo, 53n12
and, 46, 57, 6o, 66, 67, '72, 77, 218; in Uru- Torres Garda, Joaquin, 196-202, 198f, 204-5
guay,201-5 tourist-oriented bureaucracy of Mexican art, 333
socialism, 66-68,71-73, 165; of Cardenas, IS, Trench, The (Orozco), 41, 43f
27,28,126,129-31; of Mexican art, 333. See tres grandes, los (The Big Three), 13, 28, 38, 217,
also Court of Labor; laborers; Marxism 264-68. See also Orozco, Jose Clemente;
socialist culture, leftist artists and Rivera, Rivera, Diego; Siqueiros, David Alfaro
220-22
Tropical America (Siqueiros), 209, 215-18, 215£,

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