Architecture as Revolution: Episodes in the History of Modern Mexico [1 ed.] 0292721951, 9780292721951

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architecture as revolution

architecture as revolution

by luis e. carranza

Foreword by Jorge Francisco Liernur

episodes in the history of modern mexico

roger fullington series in architecture

University of Texas Press austin

Publication of this book was made possible in part by support from Roger Fullington and a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Copyright © 2010 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2010 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html ∞ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper).

library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Carranza, Luis E., 1968– Architecture as revolution : episodes in the history of modern Mexico / by Luis E. Carranza ; foreword by Jorge Francisco Liernur. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (Roger Fullington series in architecture) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-292-72195-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Architecture and society—Mexico—History— 20th century. 2. Modernism (Aesthetics)—Mexico— History—20th century. 3. Architecture—Mexico— History—20th century. 4. Mexico—History— Revolution, 1910–1920—Monuments. I. Title. II. Title: Episodes in the history of modern Mexico. na2543.s6c35 2010 720.1'0309720904—dc22 2009053617

For Denise Alison Clemente

[La historia hay que leerla] como si se estuviera en reuniones familiares en la cocina al amor de los fogones. Ahí es frecuente que la tradición desfigure la historia para hacer leyendas; que la historia recobre su sentido popular tan olvidado; que las diosas del séptimo arte aparezcan vivitas y coleando y que en las noches de plenilunio se tiemble con la sombra del padre sin cabeza. carmen vázquez mantecón, prologue to sucedió en san ángel: viñetas históricas , by ernesto vázquez lugo

ix

Foreword

by Jorge Francisco Liernur

xiii

Acknowledgments

introduction

2

Mexico, Modernity, and Architecture after the Revolution

1.

if walls could talk

14

José Vasconcelos’ Raza Cósmica and the Building for the Secretaría de Educación Pública

2. la ciudad falsificada

56

The Avant-Garde and the Literary City

3.

colonizing the colonizer

86

contents

The Mexican Pavilion at the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition

4. against a new architecture

118

Juan O’Gorman and the Disillusionment of Modernism

5.

monumentalizing the revolution

Notes

201

Bibliography Illustration credits Index

237

225 236

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english-speaking readers have not had many opportunities to learn about the architectural culture that characterized Mexico as a result of its Revolution. It is not strange, therefore, that the reaction to the book that one is about to read could be similar to that of the anonymous prologue writer of the first book dealing with this theme, now a classic, The New Architecture in Mexico, with wonderful photographs by Esther Born and essays by Justino Fernández. The comments began by noting that “this book shows modern architecture in Mexico, chiefly in Mexico City” and that if “the quantity of it comes as a surprise . . . the energy displayed and the up-to-the-minute quality are doubly astonishing.” In 1961, Max Cetto’s Architecture in Modern Mexico reintroduced some of the buildings known through Born’s book. The focus of Cetto’s book, however, was not much different from that of its predecessor, as it stressed the importance of the built work over the ideas or debates behind it. Through a collection of essays written by various authors covering a period of a halfcentury, Edward Burian’s Modernity and the Architecture of Mexico (1997) provides an opportunity to learn particular aspects of that culture. Among the essayists, Antonio Mendez-Vigatá specifically discusses the impact of the Revolution and its politics on architecture. In 2007 Patrice Elizabeth Olsen released her Artifacts of Revolution: Architecture, Society, and Politics in Mexico City, 1920–1940. In it, the author extracts clues from Mexico City’s urban context and selected buildings that allow her to explain important aspects of the society and politics of the period analyzed. In relation to these earlier works, the present book focuses on Mexican architectural

foreword

production as an expression of the idea of the Revolution. This is at the center of Luis E. Carranza’s reflections and not “What is the architecture of the Revolution?” Instead, and above all, the author asks, “What is the Revolution?” or, more precisely, “What are the complex and multiple expressions of the myth of the Revolution, and how are these revealed in the equally multiple approaches present in the architectural culture of Mexico in those years?” This is an enormous and ambitious effort that, challenging typical discussions of stylistic appearances, goes beyond them in order to discover the intentions and unexpected aspects of the multifaceted character of that myth. Here, Carranza examines the problematic relationships between the “revolution of life,” the “revolution in politics and the state,” and the “revolution in art.” These do not necessarily coincide in aims and even less in time. What is more, the author shows how an occasional happy concurrence of these facets of revolution does not in itself lead to “happy” results for the people or for architecture. The “Mexican” lesson reveals its importance within the historical context of modern architecture in Latin America, given that in no other country can we find such an intense and radical series of architectural positions. In Mexico these not only varied but also opposed each other with similar vehemence. In this way, if indigenist, Hispanist, or avantgardist positions were supported with vigor from the various levels of the revolutionary state, they were also supported with equal rigor from those modernizing sectors that, with no less intensity, saw the United States as a model to imitate. In other Latin American countries, “revolution” was a word that called architects as well as other cultural producers to action. There we can find similar positions to those explored in Mexico. What cannot be found, however, is a similar superimposition of ver-

jorge fr ancisco liernur

architecture as revolution

sions within each country’s unique national environment or the same conviction with which, in any of its expressions, “revolution” was interpreted in architectural terms. Pre-Columbian styles were evoked in the southern reaches of Latin America, especially in places like Peru with a strong indigenous heritage. In those areas the indigenist discourse had advocates such as the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (apra, the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, a leftist political party) and especially José Carlos Mariátegui, the Peruvian socialist credited with addressing the Indian problem. Pre-Hispanic architecture even attracted members of the avant-garde like Flávio de Carvalho in Brazil. In Buenos Aires, it was lucidly theorized by Carlos Ancel. In Cuba, it inspired numerous funerary structures. In none of these places, however, did preColumbian forms achieve the grounding, the political and social interest, and the high degree of exposure that they did in Mexico, particularly in the state of Yucatán. A subdued formal modernism related to “art deco” was applied to monumental forms throughout the continent. The work of Juan Martínez in Chile, notably the Maipo Temple; the Monument to the Flag in Rosario, Argentina; and the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro are expressions of a fervent nationalism that these states adopted as a homogenizing banner in the first decades of the twentieth century. In Mexico, however, this nationalism was articulated through the myth of the Revolution. Throughout Latin America, the radical avant-garde had similar, singular, and amazing expressions, as seen in the role and production of the exiled Russian architect Wladimiro Acosta in Argentina and his militant defense of the principles he learned in the avant-garde environment of Weimar Germany or in works led by Luis Nunes for the “revolutionary” municipality of Recife, Brazil, in the early phases of the government of Getúlio Vargas. It is true that in Uruguay one can find riskier expressions, but these are not linked to the implementation of revolutionary ideals. Instead, they are connected to that nation’s modern, secular, cosmopolitan environment and to an interest in the numerous modernist expressions that circulated worldwide at the time. Significantly, modernism in southern Latin America did not reach the intensity of the Mexican examples; they materialized as attenuated and limited versions or, as one could describe them, with a spirit that at its core was conservative. It is true that renovating state programs developed in countries bordering the Caribbean. These, again, were very different from the radical spirit that at times hegemonized official Mexican culture. From these Caribbean programs, significant modernist works emerged: these include the schools built in Caracas immediately following the overthrow of dictator Juan Vicente Gómez or the layout and buildings of the university in Bogotá. In the Río de la Plata basin, the magnificent modern architecture built in the 1930s constitutes a large part of the landscape of Montevideo and Buenos Aires, as well as of other cities such as Rosario in Argentina. But, as is well known, it was in Brazil where modernism reached extraordinary levels of originality and dissemination. The Brazilian state identified architecture as an expression of its intensions but not as a manifestation of a deep-seated revolution. On the contrary, experiencing convulsions as a result of an increasing urbanization and modernization, southern societies tended, through various means, to avoid or silence any signs of radicalism. For this reason, even in their most important work, Brazilian architects were clear to distance themselves from illusions

x

that a revolution in politics was possible through a revolution in art. On the contrary,

foreword

their work sustained the impossibility that the latter could in some way announce or prefigure traits of the total transformation of the former. In the investigation that Carranza synthesizes in this book, he weaves his argument in a convincing and creative way, combining threads of different sizes, lengths, colors, and textures that shape the rich framework of the early phases of the myth of the Revolution. Among the book’s most important merits is a new, complex, and surprising approach to this process and a plurality and richness of meanings that surely will be welcomed with interest by English-speaking readers and by all those who are fascinated by the history of the Americas south of the Rio Grande.

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it seems inevitable that i would have done this work. after all, some of my most vivid childhood memories revolve around the Monument to Álvaro Obregón. Originally the site of La Bombilla, the restaurant where Obregón was killed after his reelection to the presidency, the monument and park near my grandmother’s house was the site of my family’s constant excursions. Perhaps its attraction was not only that the monument itself served as a giant slide but that inside—with equal parts of terror, fascination, and disgust—we would stare at a medium-sized jar of formaldehyde that contained Obregón’s amputated arm. The monument was an enigma: its interior, clad in rich, dark marbles, exposed the very floor where Obregón had fallen dead; the arm; the monumental yet silent sculptures outside guarding the entry and surrounding its base; and a man at the door—always—guarding something seemingly sacred. It seemed fortuitous that I would encounter the monument again years later in framing a study of the effect of the Mexican Revolution on the country’s modern architecture. This building, the source of childhood angst and pleasure, was a Pandora’s box that unleashed memories of my grandmother and grandfather, growing up in and near San Ángel, my great-uncles Alberto and Ernesto, my great-aunts Guille and Cucú, and my cousins. In conversations I found that the roots of our family were indelibly linked to my research topic: as a child, my uncle met Obregón nearby; my aunt’s high school teacher was the great Marxist labor leader Vicente Lombardo Toledano. In this way, by writing this book, I feel that I am telling a history of my family as much as of Mexico and its modern architecture. I am grateful, then, for all of those people and entities that helped in some way or another to tell these stories. At Harvard University, where this began as a dissertation, I am grateful to my advisors and readers: K. Michael Hays, Ana María Amar Sánchez, and Jorge Silvetti. I was aided by research grants from the Fundación México en Harvard and a Tinker Research Scholarship for Mexico City. Insights, comments, and conversations with faculty, colleagues, and friends at Harvard, mit, and Roger Williams University were invaluable to the work, research, and arguments presented herein. These include Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Neil Levine, Bruno Bosteels, Karin Serman, Andrew Hersher, Mary Lou Lobsinger, Charissa Terranova, Jeff Inaba, Heinrich and Lili Hermann, Hashim Sarkis, Lauren Kogod, José Castillo, Teddy Cruz, Sally Butler, Dean Stephen White, and Provost Laura de Abruna. I am also grateful to Ashley Hyatt and Elizabeth Lessig, my research assistants, who helped with the production of some illustrations. In this vein, my thanks also go to José Juan Jiménez at the Archivo Histórico de la Secretaría de Educación Pública. Josh Comaroff was very much the steady hand of reason and thoughtful commentary that find their way into these pages. I have benefited from all sorts of discussions with Alberto Vázquez Lugo, Guillermina Vázquez Lugo, Álvaro Vázquez Mantecón, Sylvia and Manuel Arceo, Federica Zanco, Emilia Terragni, Will Morgan, Stella Nair, Enrique Norten, Mónica Ramírez Montagut, and Fernando Vasconcelos. For general support I am thankful to the Suárez-Vázquez family, who so kindly welcomed me into their homes and let me fight for a spot at the table on Tuesdays; to Andy and Ariadna Carranza, my brother and sister-in-law, who were generous here and in Mexico with their hospitality and encouragement; and, of course, to my parents, Luis and Gloria, without whose support this would have not been possible. Pancho Liernur, who wrote the foreword to this book, has been an invaluable supporter and counterpoint in many of the discussions that find their form here. I am grate-

acknowledgments

architecture as revolution

ful for his guidance, observations, and commentary. In addition, Pancho, through his scholarship, has defined the parameters of study for a whole generation of architectural historians working on Latin America and is thus the ideal reader of this work. Finally, I am grateful to Diane Ghirardo, who has been like a beacon: it is her convictions that continue to guide much of my research, writing, and teaching. At the University of Texas Press, I would like to thank Jim Burr and Victoria Davis for kindly guiding me and supporting me throughout the complicated process of publishing this book. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to work with copy editor Tana Silva. Additionally, Fernando Lara and Mónica Ramírez Montagut offered invaluable feedback and support in their reviews of the manuscript. Fortuitously, my cousin Jania de Icaza Carranza was instrumental in securing some images and permissions to publish them. I am grateful for all of her help in this. Institutions and their amicable staff members helped as well: at Banco de México, Licenciado Luis Alberto Salgado Rodríguez and Saile Coatlicue Roldán Padilla; at the Museo Nacional de Arte, Roberto Ortíz and Miguel Fernández Félix; at the Museo de Arte Moderno, Luis Miguel León; at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Ramón Vargas Salguero; at the Huntington Library, Jenny Watts; at the Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Institute, Wendy Hurlock Baker; at the Artist Rights Society, Maggie Flemming; at the Albertina Museum in Vienna, Ingrid Kastel; at the gta archiv/eth Zurich, Daniel Weiss; at the Parque Fundidora, Erik C. Jurgensen; and at the Museo Nacional de la Revolución, Carlos Releón Velázquez. I am grateful to the individuals and families who have given me permissions to publish images and works herein presented as well as for the stories and kind notes that went along with them: John Charlot, Mireya Maples Vermeersch, Jorge Ramón Alva de la Canal, Mireya Cueto, Eric List, Maria Elena O’Gorman Carstensen, Perla Valle de Revueltas, Emilio Revueltas Valle, and others. Finally, to Denise, my partner in crime, and to Alison and Clemente I owe the most. They have been thoughtful and patient comrades and accomplices in this experience. They are the reason that this all makes sense. I dedicate this book to them.

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architecture as revolution

introduction mexico, modernity, and architecture after the revolution

wr iting with hindsight in 1950, the poet and cr itic octavio paz best defined the paradox of the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1920. These remarks display the perplexity held for historians, writers, critics—Mexicans or otherwise—about the social and cultural aims, accomplishments, and motives of the Mexican Revolution. The Revolution has been broadly understood as a heterogeneous outpouring of political, economic, and social meanings as well as an armed class struggle. For Paz, the lack of specific understandings of its meaning and effects led artists, politicians, and members of the intelligentsia to create individual theories, beliefs, and objectives—sometimes extremely idiosyncratic—about the goals for the postrevolutionary period and the ways to achieve them. The meaning of the Revolution, in other words, depended on who had a stake in defining it. Furthermore, the continuous transformation of how the Revolution was understood—from its inception under the direction of Francisco I. Madero to its reconceptualization as an armed struggle, through its capitalization by the postrevolutionary governments and its institutionalization in the early 1930s, to the last vestige of a socialist state under President Lázaro Cárdenas—was essential to the historical development of the polemics and directions that the Revolution engendered as well. These conditions are central to understanding the architecture and architectural discourse produced in Mexico after the Revolution, most easily defined as a popular insurrection that removed from power the thirty-five-year dictatorship and regime of Porfirio Díaz. The period following the Mexican Revolution is characterized by Mexican intellectuals and politicians alike exploring the social potential of art, architecture, literature, and other cultural productions in the transformation of Mexican society. It is also a moment when the Mexican state was forced to evolve due to the Revolution’s largely undefined social dimension and its continuous redefinition. Although resting on the Mexican intelligentsia’s ability and freedom to begin a process of reconstruction, this period relied on new cultural paradigms and shifts to (re)construct an ideology and a cultural practice that refocused the importance of the artist or cultural producer in a sociopolitical realm. The politicization of art, in response to and as assembled from European, Latin American, and Mexican aesthetic examples, specifically provided numerous outlets for experimentation in art, literature, and architecture. The Revolution, then, was the catalyst that fomented in Mexico—between 1920 and 1940—an unprecedented experimental artistic production. This so-called Laboratory 1

of the Revolution heightened the effects and complexities of the upheaval by inciting, formulating, and structuring a wide range of aesthetic and ideological responses. The Revolution and its subsequent cultural manifestations strongly affected the production, dissemination, and reception of architecture along with the ideological role of architecture, its producers, and its promoters. Its ambiguous direction and aim specifically affected architectural culture: Different architectural solutions reflected varied understandings of the Revolution’s significance. Within architecture and its allied arts, for example, at least three ideological camps can clearly be demarcated as addressing the perceived aims of the Revolution itself: a socialist or Marxist strain; a nationalistic or Mexican one (sometimes pre-Colombian in character); and one that followed the lead of the European and North American avant-garde. These differences, in turn, manifest the issues, means, and solutions needed in the search for an appropriate architecture for the Mexican people. The multiple architectural variants produced should be seen, therefore, as legitimate

The Revolution began as a discovery of ourselves and a return to our origins; later it became a search and an abortive attempt at a synthesis; finally, since it was unable to assimilate our tradition and to offer us a new and workable plan, it became a compromise. The Revolution has not been capable of organizing its explosive values into a world view, and the Mexican intelligentsia has not been able to resolve the conflict between the insufficiencies of our tradition and our need and desire for universality. o c tavio paz , t h e labyr inth o f so li t u de

architecture as revolution

articulations to grasp and address the direction that the nation was undertaking after this most momentous event. Some of them should be understood as paradigms questioning or subverting the existing modes of production through their entry into the realm of architectural or linguistic autonomy—as work separated from life. Others should be seen as working within the modes of production while using available means to question their hegemony or to improve the living and working conditions of the lower classes—using the very structures in place, in other words, to transform life. Clearly, Mexican architectural production responded to constraints similar to those faced by the European avant-garde. Yet, to a degree equaled only by the Soviet avant-garde, Mexican spatial and architectural manufacture addressed specifically the seemingly utopian call of a realized Revolution. However, it is necessary to accept the concept—put forth in Latin American cultural and theoretical circles—of Mexico’s incomplete modernization. This has been most poignantly defined in Néstor García Canclini’s Hybrid Cultures (1989). At the core is the notion of “exuberant [cultural] modernism with a deficient [sociopolitical and economic] modernization.”2 The realities of that modernization (insufficient or not) ultimately affect the sense and materialization of the urban realm and its architectural developments. As a result, much of the focus of the Mexican avant-garde and its architectural explorations is centered in the site where and through which the traditional avant-garde operates: the modern metropolis. That group’s central characteristic is a condition of continuous transformation working in the service of humanity. As a result of the interdependence of architectural production and its sociopolitical context, the new architecture in Mexico developed out of existing and newly formed links between architects and the literary, philosophical, and artistic avant-garde. Intent on transforming society, the project of architecture was taken up by a large nonarchitectural component of cultural producers searching for the means to influence the masses. After all, architecture reflected the needs, desires, and struggles of society; it was understood as the material expression of that society, as it shows who benefits from it and how; and, finally, it was seen as the most direct means to reach a large audience who experience it daily through apperception. Some prerevolutionary art, such as the work of José Guadalupe Posada, which utilized means of mass reproduction to reach broader audiences, served as a constant precedent. Through inexpensive and readily available printed broadsheets, Posada graphically and textually describes the unrest beginning to develop due to the marked differences in the quality of life between the rich, or those favored by the government, and the poor. Posada’s use of calaveras, or skeletons, in many of his engravings, as in Revumbio de calaveras (A Noisy Gathering of Skeletons, undated), provided an eschatological view of class and national divisions united by a common fate: death. The death theme represents, according to González Ramírez, “the idea of equality: in the face of death all values, all differences, all protestations lose the deceit that social conventions lend to them.”3 Posada’s work portrayed a bitter critique of dishonesty, unfair election processes, and what was known as “dollar corruption,” or the corrosive effects of foreign investors. In Posada’s popular broadsheet titled El mosquito americano (The American Mosquito, 1903), the text describes the annoying “mosquito” that as a tourist is a pest and as a political, industrial, and technical advisor brings dollar corruption with him.

4

Other critical forms of artistic production in both the pre- and postrevolutionary pe-

riods were centered around a process now known as “transculturation.” For literary

introduction

critic Ángel Rama, who advanced the idea of transculturation, Latin America “has had to select the rejected elements of the European and American systems produced in the metropolis, peeling them away from their context and making them their own in a risky, abstract way.”4 Transculturation is a critical and selective process through which Latin American cultural producers take certain elements (or structures) from an admired or colonizing culture and substitute them for their own. Many times, the process combines these foreign elements with selective aspects (or structures) of the producer’s own given culture in new and inventive ways—not always as expected or as proposed by the originating cultures. In most cases, transculturation was enacted as a response to the seemingly unmediated (and at times, imposed) application of European traditions during colonization and later, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century. In Mexico this application was manifested by the governing Porfiriato elite in its obsession with Paris—the proverbial capital of the nineteenth century—and its architecture, urbanism, and forms, as well as through the use of philosophical positivism and literary naturalism. The Díaz government, for example, tried to promote a refined and civilized Mexico, equal to any of the great European countries, through its architecture and urban planning. As such, many of the public buildings of the time primarily reflected French styles. The domestic architecture for the elite predominantly reflected nineteenth-century European architecture, with many choosing French mansard roofs and neoclassical houses. Through it, the Mexican bourgeoisie intended to link itself with the aristocracy and history associated with the old world. Paradoxically, while many of these relied on French architectural and planning techniques such as axial organization and placement as well as on neoclassical or French baroque ornamentation and detailing, their internal organization maintained the typical colonial courtyard typologies. Large avenues and parks were similarly created to echo their French counterparts. Paseo de la Reforma, modified in 1899 by the architects Juan and Ramón Agea, cut through the orthogonal grid of Mexico City and provided axial foci and tree-lined sidewalks similar to those of the Champs Elysées. Within literature, Mexican writers adopted the genres of French realism and naturalism that stemmed not only from their French counterparts but also from the positivist environment that Díaz’ científicos, or intellectual advisors, created. The realist novel permitted the writer to narrate a reality while being outside the work itself as an omniscient presence. Within these novels, however, one can note sharp class distinctions, with the wealthy or those favored by the regime disparaging the lower, less privileged classes. These writers showed a contempt for society as it was but did little to change it through their writings. Around the turn of the twentieth century, a new literary aesthetic began to emerge throughout Spanish-speaking Latin America: modernismo. Its primary intentions were to replace current and past literary production and to thoroughly understand the latest European literary trends. Modernismo in the Mexican context was highly progressive and nationalistic, motivating writers to undertake periods of aesthetic searching and discipline. Within modernismo was a preoccupation with form, as characterized by the literary journal Revista Azul (1894–1896), and a concern with symbolism, exemplified by Revista Moderna (1898–1911).

5

architecture as revolution

Rejecting the Porfirista reality of the day, the modernista artists working at the turn of the century sought imaginary worlds based on a repertoire of Greek or Roman symbolism with the intention of stimulating a culture of beauty and poetry reminiscent of a golden age. In this modernista work we find the traditional fin de siècle motifs assimilated into the Mexican arts. Reactions and feelings associated with the rapid industrialization and metropolization of urban centers are registered in modernista paintings of the early twentieth century as well. Some artists depicted the problems and human misery associated with these newly industrialized environments, and a return to rural simplicity, whether real or imaginary, can be seen as a reaction to them. The work of artists like Saturnino Herrán evokes a nostalgia for the land, the campesino (peasant), and rural traditions. During the last years of the Porfiriato, many artists changed their focus and began depicting the worker—a subject that increases with the Revolution and culminates with the Escuela Mexicana de Pintura (Mexican School of Painting). Again, in reaction to the Europeanizing tendencies of the government, artists turned their gaze toward Mexican popular arts, as these represented for them the most genuine expressions of a national culture and stood as possible models for the arts. As a symbol of the national spirit, the mestizo culture, based on the mixture of races—predominantly the indigenous and the Spanish—and the traditional folk arts served aesthetic and political purposes and corresponded to a new concept of national culture and identity. The artistic intelligentsia sought to fuse this new concept with other artistic, political, and philosophical ideologies. As social and political unrest increased during the last years of the Díaz regime, literary production also experienced uncertainty. A shift toward morality occurred, either through Christianity or regional customs, in many of the works produced. Characteristic of the latter, Mariano Azuela’s early works, such as Los fracasados (1908) and Mala yerba (1909), depict rural life under Díaz. Throughout the Revolution, no profound literary changes took place. Nonetheless, its paradigmatic text is, without a doubt, Azuela’s Los de abajo (The Underdogs, 1915). Through it Azuela examines the qualities of the Revolution as a social event and a force so strong that it drags all the individuals around it into its motion—defining the characters’ actions. The novel, as its subtitle suggests, presents a series of “Pictures of the Revolution” that demonstrate its force and human qualities as they affect the previously static character of Mexican society. In the realm of poetry, most writers remained tied to the prerevolutionary generation of modernista poets exemplified by the tradition of Enrique González Martínez and Ramón López Velarde. Nevertheless, this period was a crucial training ground for those who would later become the leaders of the postrevolutionary literary intelligentsia, including the Estridentistas and the Contemporáneos. In many cases the young writers published their work at the time in small periodicals like Gladios (1916), San-Ev-Ank (1918), and Revista Nueva (1919), whose public life usually lasted only a few issues. Despite the proportionately small amount of work manufactured and published during the Revolution, a great deal of intellectual work had begun that would become the driving force of cultural renovation. This took place, for example, within the Ateneo de la Juventud (Atheneum of Youth), whose members aimed to exorcise the Díaz regime’s

6

philosophy and aesthetics.5 Also part of that cultural stage are Los Siete Sabios (The

Seven Sages), also known as the Generation of 1915, whose social, political, and philo-

introduction

sophical work and ideas would influence a postrevolutionary generation of thinkers.

6

Because of the political and social instability, it is understandable that architectural production dropped dramatically during the Revolution. Since most of the practicing architects of the time were graduates of the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City—the Mexican equivalent of the French École des Beaux Arts—the limited architecture produced during this time continued the stylistic preferences from the Díaz regime. The architectural scene would remain the same for a short time after the Revolution primarily because of the academic backgrounds of practicing architects of the time and the conservative nature of the clients who funded their work. Most of the changes in architectural production were promoted by the new generation of architects exposed to modern international architectural developments but also to the multiplicity of theories and ideas associated with the Revolution. With the fall of the Díaz regime, the artistic intelligentsia turned its gaze toward the social qualities of art and literature in an attempt to vindicate Mexico’s national character after the Revolution. While a variety of tendencies came to the surface, the primary goal was to find an aesthetic that represented the believed or understood cultural aims of the Revolution in a style appropriate for the Mexican people. In disputing, as morally and formally bankrupt, the older European traditions that were central to the Díaz regime and its representation, the postrevolutionary Mexican avant-garde assigned itself the task of addressing issues of identity formation, class and race consciousness, and the role of art in the praxis of life. Paradigmatic yet paradoxical was the turn toward modern international architecture. This signified both a shift away from the architectural eclecticism of the Porfiriato and its ideological underpinnings and a search for an architecture rooted in classless scientific, universalist, and collective ideals. Modern forms, after all, represented a rejection of traditional—considered bourgeois—architecture in favor of a modern, public architecture and space designed through the logic of utility and comprised of programs, materials, and products of its era; these were schools and housing, cement and steel, and radio antennas and smokestacks, respectively. The young architect Juan O’Gorman, for example, read Le Corbusier’s Vers une architecture (1924) as a manifesto for a new type of architecture based foremost on functional requirements. As a result the house he designed for the painter Diego Rivera reflected this as well as Le Corbusier’s own formal explorations (seen, in particular, in the 1922 studio for the painter Amédée Ozenfant). Similarly, in seeking an architecture that eschewed monumentality, O’Gorman, like German functionalists of the time, revealed the structure, services, and constructive materials of the house—leaving the water tanks and electrical wires exposed and the roof unplastered to reveal traces of its construction and arranging cactus plants as a protective fence. In addition, the Mexican avant-garde enacted a semantic rearticulation, or transculturation, of the ideas, forms, and traditions of the historical European avant-garde. This was based not only on the changing historical and geographic contexts but also on the urgency of addressing different audiences and intentions after the Revolution. This is characteristic of the Estridentistas (literally, the Stridentists), who beginning in 1921 created a new “architecture” and “falsified cities” within the space of their poems and graphic work to reflect the vertiginous mentality of modernity itself and of Mexico within that context.

7

architecture as revolution

Clearly, the Mexican avant-garde owed a great deal to the international avant-garde. The Estridentistas in particular relied on the ideas and theories of Futurism, cubism, Vicente Huidobro’s creacionismo (Creationism), and other movements—all ideas that circulated in Mexico at the time. After all, Mexico, like many other Latin American countries, imported large amounts of culture through the mass media and through the exportation and repatriation of many of its intellectuals who trained abroad. This was the case of the painter Diego Rivera, whose formative years as an artist took place in Europe, sponsored by the Mexican government. Finally, working primarily in environments whose modernization, as noted earlier, could be described as “incomplete,” these artists and architects were compelled to call into question the role of new technologies—central to a large part of the European avant-garde—as well as their impact on form. This gave a particular potency in Mexico to the debates between abstraction and representation. This is most clearly seen where architects used a vast amount of aesthetic and constructional knowledge from the past. Here the reliance on traditional models was intended to create a seamless syncretism with new forms and means of production. This architecture was primarily intended for Mexico’s largely indigenous and illiterate audience, whose understanding relied on their lived experience with original historical objects and their collective historical memory. For architects like Manuel Amábilis, the revolutionary potential of this architecture lay precisely in the fact that it addressed people whom the Porfiriato largely ignored and in its ability to stir their historical and cultural consciousness. The problems of communication and legibility, of how architecture and its messages became read and understood by the population, were addressed through the creation of intelligible and monumental art and architecture. It should be noted that the Díaz regime used this type of monumentality to symbolically represent its power to the people. Essentially, the authority of these monumental structures came from their overwhelming scale, their forms, or their allusions to historically specific and recognizable forms. But architects responding to the social needs of the masses after the Revolution also relied on historical or monumental forms precisely because of their symbolic legibility.7 While avant-gardist experiments were intended to radicalize into a new, revolutionary tool the vicissitudes of modernity, monumental architectural forms stood in contrast to the protean condition of modernity. Instead of further alienating the Mexican population, monumental and historically based forms pointed toward a new order and collective sensibility of permanence, historical commemoration, and communicability. It is this logic of visibility and legibility that shaped the mural movement and the creation of iconic structures—such as the Monument to the Revolution (1938)—that were to express the intentions of the postrevolutionary government. The paradox of the turn to monumentality, however, lay in its dialectical condition: either it served to educate and empower the masses through communicative mechanisms that could be experienced collectively (such as architecture, mural paintings, and printed broadsheets), or through similar mechanisms this project could be used as a tool for the ideological reproduction of power. The first politicizes art, and the second, as Walter Benjamin would note of repressive regimes, aestheticizes politics.8 It is ultimately this double condition—of social transformation and ideological manipulation—that presents the biggest challenge and problem for understanding the

8

postrevolutionary period and its architectural developments. As the historian Arnaldo

Córdova has poignantly shown, the Mexican Revolution posed for the state and the

introduction

classes in power the same challenge that its eighteenth-century French counterpart had: how to manipulate this social insurrection—whose purpose was to confront the existing social structure—to its benefit. This meant that after the Revolution the state and the bourgeoisie had to adapt, accept, and internalize the contradictions that engendered these revolts by adopting their social ideals without putting the existing system in crisis. By minimally addressing the demands of the proletariat—such as by ending the system of privilege toward foreign industry enacted during the Porfiriato or by (slowly) expropriating rural lands from large landowners—the post-Revolution government enforced the unhindered development of free enterprise for the political and intellectual leaders of the Revolution. If the political aspect of the Revolution had successfully removed Díaz from power, the social aspect of the Revolution was meant to be an agrarian reform, returning the lands to those who had lost them and returning those lands that were considered public federal land to those who did not have any . . . to guarantee the rights of workers but without endangering the existence of capital that was not only necessary but indispensable to the nation.9 Agrarian reform, then, only returned land to the farmers who had previously owned it without abolishing the structure of private property. Since the impetus of the Revolution was centered on attacking the “privileged few” whose business and economic interests had been “aristocratically” protected and promoted by the Díaz regime, the Revolution—reconstituted by the state—was transformed into the impetus for democracy, free enterprise, and free trade. This reconstitution ideologically reproduced a class structure similar to that of the Díaz regime but without the limitations of privilege, enacting a true laissez-faire economy. In the end, in the words of Vicente Lombardo Toledano, the Revolution created a new form of dictatorship, “neo-Porfirismo,” centered within the political party that embodied the institutionalized Revolution: the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (pri, the Institutional Revolutionary Party). The very necessity of capital for the advancement of the nation, according to Córdova, served as the structure upon which the dominant classes developed a strong federal government. Its aim was to ensure the material development of the nation through any means necessary. The creation of a strong state served to maintain the existing economic structures by justifying them ideologically. This new state could act to organize the masses and serve as their advocate under the guise of improving the social conditions of the country. Proposals such as José Vasconcelos’ educational, artistic, and cultural public school system were seen as tools to appease the masses; the state justified foreign investment with the argument that modernization was urgently needed to improve the social situation of all Mexicans. These goals superseded the socialist aims associated with the Revolution. The state’s task, then, was to accept the autonomy of the masses and incorporate their wishes into the structure of development. The evolution of the postrevolutionary Mexican state therefore follows the structure of the reorganization of capital developed after the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The Italian political scientist Antonio Negri has convincingly shown how the state’s role transformed after that event into an important readjusting force to absorb the demands of the working class, the cause the

9

architecture as revolution

Bolsheviks championed. The state, according to Negri’s seminal essay “Keynes and the Capitalist Theory of the State” (1967), had to become a planning mechanism that equalized or balanced the demands of the workers’ movement with the structure of capitalist production. Moving in that direction, however, caused the state to become highly precarious: “The dynamic of State planning implied acceptance of a sort of ‘permanent revolution’ as its object—a paradoxical Aufhebung of the slogan on the part of capital.”10 Toward this end, the state, as a constantly shifting and redefining entity, had to become a productive force engaged in social production to guarantee and stabilize the future of the economy as one of its primary movers and to balance the power of the working class. The state, in other words, had to maintain the old structures of exploitation and assert the power of capital while at the same time mystifying its social relations with the working class. For Negri, this was the role of Keynesian economics: [T]he task of economic policy is to dictate a continual revolution of incomes and the propensity to consume, which will maintain global production and investment and will thus bring about the only form of political equilibrium that is possible . . . This, then, is how we can sum up the spirit of the theory of effective demand: it assumes class struggle, and sets out to resolve it, on a day-to-day basis, in ways that are favorable to capitalist development.11 The development of the state, therefore, had as its starting point the moment of crisis: It would, as historian Manfredo Tafuri argues, “actually make this ‘negativity’ (the negative of the working class) function as a ‘necessity’ intrinsic to the processes of the system.”12 This transformation, in tune with working-class demands, led to the transformation of ideology into a utopian idea. Through this, the development of utopia—more specifically, the work needed for utopia—went hand in hand with the structures required for the development of the state. Within these structures the role of intellectuals and artists became problematic. Their position was always subject to the systems in place, either within or outside of them. Pointing to this paradox, critic Alberto Asor Rosa identifies the contradiction of being avant-gardist and thus autonomous from the system or working within it: On the one hand, there is the alternative that, directing its concept of the autonomy of art or more in general of culture itself, it easily arrives at the solution of evasion, of disengagement, or, as it is usually told, of the formal and individualizing exaltation of the creative moment. On the other hand, the opposite alternative is one that, directing all of the social commitment of the man of letters, the writer, the poet, the urbanist, and the architect, easily arrives at an integration within the fundamental reason, politically and economically, of development.13 For Asor Rosa, these positions were two sides of the same coin: as work dependent on the political and economic conditions of the system or, by rejecting work itself, as the system’s indispensable guardians. These alternatives, nevertheless, signified intellectual labor’s entry into the cycles of production. As a consequence of this compromise, the utopian proposals that the intellectuals or artists supported would always-already be

10

favorable to the development of the state and of capital in general.

Despite the absolute closure established by this effectively Tafurian critique of ideo-

introduction

logical resignation to the modes of production, the role of avant-garde practice should not be seen as ripe for totalizing or essentializing analysis. After all, Peter Bürger’s basic premise in his Theory of the Avant-Garde (1974) was that the avant-garde negated the autonomy of art through its integration with the praxis of life, placing art in a precarious situation within the cycles of production.14 For Bürger, the transformation of the function of avant-gardist art, the transformation of its production, and the questioning of its reception proposed a semi-autonomy of art that oscillated between the two poles outlined by Asor Rosa. Through this, the work of art denaturalized and questioned, if only briefly, those systems of production until, once absorbed by them, its ineffectuality became a critical point of reference. This semi-autonomous nature, nevertheless, was highly unlikely given that the actual conditions for the production of this work would already be tangled in the “ideological bunches” permeating aesthetic production; among these were the ideologies of patronage, class, work and production, and so forth.15 Without realizing this closure and their complicity, though, many members of the historical avant-garde attempted to overcome the limitations imposed by class structures and the available means of production. Guided by a utopian worldview, these artists attempted to transform the effects of capitalist production—alienation, commodification, reification, and the like—through artistic production. The fragmentation of the subject caused by the division of labor was, for example, one of the issues avant-garde artists countered in order to return a sense of totality to the individual. By reproducing the chaos of the modern metropolis, these artists intended to acculturate their audiences to that identical condition to attain control of it during the class struggle. Again, these positions tacitly fell into the realm of collaborative ideology, defined as false consciousness, and helped reproduce the existing conditions of production; for Tafuri, “To ward off anguish by understanding and absorbing its causes would seem to be one of the principal ethical exigencies of bourgeois art.”16 Despite this, the avant-garde operated through tactics that served briefly at their inception—and until shortly after the realization of their ineffectuality—to put in question the system’s overarching structure.17 From all of these positions, a series of questions develops regarding the role of art and architectural production within the margins of capitalist development in general and in postrevolutionary Mexico in particular. What was the role of the Mexican artistic and architectural intelligentsia vis-à-vis the development of capitalism? Or, more specifically, how was the rule of capitalism developed through artistic and architectural work? What was, in the end, the effect of the Revolution—understood in its broadest sociopolitical and economic sense—on the labors of the artistic and architectural intelligentsia? The links developed between the literary, philosophical, artistic, and architectural avant-gardes point to their complex resolution of the sociopolitical and economic developments after the Mexican Revolution. The manner in which these links materialized within architectural products shows the tactics on which architects relied. However, these links not only point to the ineffectuality of architecture against the ideological manipulation of capital but also to their position within the structure of the postrevolutionary state. Citing Córdova, it could be argued that this state used cultural production in bolstering and strengthening its own organization and development in Mexico. As a result of the paradoxical nature of this cultural production and the mercurial meanings of the Revolution, any analysis of Mexican modern architecture built or con-

11

architecture as revolution

ceptualized in the years immediately after the Revolution must address these conditions. Because of their changing nature, however, a study of this history must preclude a teleological history. Instead of monumentalizing, homogenizing, and reifying history, this analysis must rely on a genealogical model to achieve two ends: first, to acknowledge the complexity of the histories that simultaneously developed around the manufacturing of architecture and that oppose, metahistorically, a search for origins; and second, in a broader sense and as result of the preceding point, to introduce the same discontinuity and instability into the historical discourse present within history itself. Structured in the form of paradigms—which Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno generally referred to as “constellations,” or self-contained clusters of ideas—the historical episodes herein presented are intended to “collide” with each other to present a fuller and more dialectical vision of the history of Mexican modernism. As such, this study is not meant to address all of the aesthetic, social, and political positions fomented by the Revolution, something that would be ideologically suspect. Instead, it focuses on specific architectural explorations engendered by the varying positions on and differing opinions about the Revolution. The choice of these explorations was limited by their avant-gardist intention—as understood by Bürger—to engage art in the praxis of life and put into question the ideological reproduction of capitalist society. The choices also are framed by the nature of the struggles engaged by architectural producers against the status quo and in favor of a reconceptualization of the structure of society. By studying the artistic, literary, and architectural tendencies that emerged after the Revolution, architectural production becomes part of an intertextual response—instead of a divided and reified practice—to its perceived cultural impulse and to the debates and polemics emerging within the European, American, and Latin American avant-garde. At the same time, the choice of paradigms acknowledges the ideological power of capital to co-opt these investigations into the emerging structure of the state as the planning agency defined by Negri and Córdova. The organization of the present study, therefore, follows a set of episodes. These, in turn, abide by a loosely arranged chronological sequence to cohere within the historical development and transformation of Mexico. Although structured in this manner, these episodes do overlap and are intended to be read dialectically against each other and against traditional historiography.18 The episodes are the following. In Chapter 1 I address the headquarters building for the Secretaría de Educación Pública as a representative architectural example for modern Mexico. By exploring José Vasconcelos’ philosophies and influences, the building is seen as a materialization of his vision of the Mexican Revolution and belief in the power of historical and cultural miscegenation as articulated in his book La Raza Cósmica. The building, in its architectural, painterly, and sculptural programs, was an attempt to improve the material conditions of the country through educational and artistic practices to engender a transcendental experience and lead to, in turn, a social utopia for Latin America. In the second chapter I define the relation between the literary avant-garde and the understanding, production, and dissemination of art and architecture. Through a study of the work of the Estridentistas, this chapter elaborates the transformation of ideas imported from the European avant-gardes into the context of modern Mexico. The Estridentistas proposed new and alternate readings of the modern city as the locus of social-

12

ist insurrections to align with the Revolution and further social uprisings. Here, acerbic

avant-gardist mechanisms were employed to transform life and show that art and archi-

introduction

tecture held potential for the social development of the country. The Mexican Pavilion in the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition in Seville, its architect, and his theories are the subjects of Chapter 3. At the core is the architect Manuel Amábilis’ construction of a mythical history of pre-Hispanic Mayan architecture. By relying on the legend of Atlantis, this history was to reconceptualize pre-Hispanic Mayan forms as having a utopian, modern, social value. As a historian, Amábilis articulated his vision of architecture as rooted primarily in the great past and socialist architectures of Mexico. In the post-Revolution context, these forms were not only easily understood by the majority of the Mexican population—indigenous by origin—but their revival served as a rejection of the architecture of colonization and exploitation. The pavilion at the Seville fair represented Amábilis’ ideals as well as a confrontation with Spanish economic neocolonialist and imperialist practices associated with international exhibitions. In Chapter 4 I explore how Le Corbusier’s functionalist propositions were retheorized and radicalized by Juan O’Gorman. By rejecting any aesthetic merits of architecture, he proposed to solve in the most economical and direct way the pressing needs for hygienic housing and schools that the Revolution had made apparent. O’Gorman’s importance in the development and establishment of functionalism in Mexico is described here not only as a social solution to urgent housing problems for the Mexican proletariat but as an ideologically constructed aesthetic and architectural solution by the Mexican cement industries. This chapter concludes by illustrating how O’Gorman’s involvement with functionalism eventually led to his profound disillusionment with architecture and a turn toward realist painting as a direct way to incite class consciousness and revolutionary class struggle. Finally, in the last chapter I discuss the monumentalization of the Revolution as exemplified in the Monument to the Revolution by Carlos Obregón Santacilia and the Monument to Álvaro Obregón (1934–1935) by Enrique Aragón Echeagaray and Ignacio Asúnsolo. The development of architectural monuments is studied in relation to the political transformation of the Revolution in the process of its institutionalization. These shifts in meaning are reflected in the way that art was to work with the architecture. No longer part of the legacy of Vasconcelos to create a public and legible art whose social aim was to empower the masses, the new art and its architectural support were devoid of revolutionary potential and expressive of new forms of ambiguity. All in all, the present investigation is structured to begin cultivating an understanding of the unprecedented searches and challenges encountered in making architecture, space, and art in response to the Revolution and its multiple political and social aims. The formal and material outcomes are as varied as each individual’s or group’s perception of the Revolution as a catalyst of architectural and social change. Ultimately, the study offers a perspective through which to evaluate the role of the Mexican architectural avant-garde in the postrevolutionary cultural and political milieu and to explore the disruptive nature of its challenges and the utopian potential that they engendered.

13

1

if walls could talk josé vasconcelos’ raza cósmica and the building for the secretaría de educación pública

upon josé vasconcelos’ departure as minister of education in july 1924, the aesthetic and architectural program he initiated for the Secretaría de Educación Pública (sep, the federal Department of Public Education) suffered the most radical reevaluation and reinstitutionalization encountered anywhere of an avant-garde proposal for the reintegration of art and life. Initially conceived as a redemptive pedagogical program for Mexico’s uneducated masses, it was quickly converted into a propaganda tool for the dominant elites. The use of legible and locally derived forms as well as contemporary conventions of mass dissemination quickly became the means to appease the masses demanding social change as a result of the Revolution. This problematic transformation of Vasconcelos’ program was due in part to its elusive political and ideological nature—which to this day remains unclear—and the mystical language he used to describe it. Despite this, it was his contention that through a highly specific educational and philosophical system, aesthetic and cultural productions could effect social and political change. This system encompassed eliminating race distinctions, raising class and political consciousness, and empowering the masses through selfdetermination. The clearest materialization of Vasconcelos’ aesthetic, ethical, and philosophical

The myth of paradise subverted is the inexhaustible spring at which Mexican culture quenches its thirst. The presentday definition of nationality owes its intimate structure to this myth.

project is the Secretaría de Educación Pública headquarters (Figure 1.1) and its archi-

ro ger bar t r a , t h e

tectural and artistic program. For Vasconcelos, aesthetics needed to be placed at the

c age o f me la ncho ly

service of social needs. Education would proceed through aesthetic models. These, in turn, became part of the architectural and artistic program of the building itself, which housed the newly reformed Department of Education and stood as a testament to the ideas of Vasconcelos, its first minister. Vasconcelos’ philosophical ideals reverberate through the sculptures of Ignacio Asúnsolo and reliefs by Manuel Centurión, the architectural renovations to the exist-

If we are unable to first free the spirit, we will never be able to redeem matter. jos é va sc once los , la r aza c ó s mica

ing building by Federico Méndez Rivas, and the murals of Diego Rivera, Carlos Mérida, and Roberto Montenegro. Through these works, the building was to become a “total text” and total work of art (gesamtkunstwerk) representing his developing concept of the “cosmic race.” Vasconcelos’ intention was no less than to fuse art and life, to resolve the paradoxical “division of labor” separating art from science, politics, or praxis caused by modernization, its new modes of production, and its new forms of experience. The vitalism of aesthetic knowledge and production would redeem mankind. To understand Vasconcelos’ proposal it is necessary, then, to focus on the issues and problematics central to the material production of the building and its component pieces. Otherwise, one risks falling into the trap of reading Vasconcelos’ proposals and resulting forms as part of a reactionary nationalism intended to isolate artistic or cultural production from any political or ethical imperative and force it to become a means for legitimizing the institutionalization of power, economic expansion, and (continued) political oppression. In this sense, therefore, the utopian Vasconcelos needs to be considered: the Vasconcelos of redemptive thought and Ibero-American cooperation and not the failed and bitter Vasconcelos of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s who used his own theories to justify racist (and, many times, anti-Semitic), cynical, and reactionary political posturing.1 What makes this building worthy of focus in the context of Vasconcelos’ ideas and of international debates is its ability to mediate the denaturalizing ideals of the historical avant-garde—understood as the negation of the autonomy of art—with a didactic and

The goal of education is not discovery, but knowledge, and knowledge not so much to be able to do but to be or achieve being. jos é va sc once los , “de robinson a odis e o”

architecture as revolution

1.1 Secretaría de Educación Pública headquarters, corner of República de Argentina and República de Venezuela Avenues, Mexico City

direct artistic and architectural language whose primary aim was popular legibility. This mediation stemmed from Vasconcelos’ explicit vision of enacting a monumental educational and consciousness-raising campaign in Mexico that was ultimately aimed at all Latin America. Its goal was to challenge the active economic and cultural colonialism of advanced capitalist countries and propose, in its place, a utopia that integrated art and life at all levels. While this utopia reflected Vasconcelos’ aesthetic and philosophical theories within the context of post-Revolution Mexico, it ultimately represented his ideals of racial miscegenation in the creation of a new Latin American state. All these ideals were instrumental in his book La Raza Cósmica (1924). In it Vasconcelos explicitly states his intention for these ideals to become manifest in the sep building. Vasconcelos envisioned and later wrote that the building was to act as a transformative mechanism: an activator of education where architecture and its allied arts were to serve in the transformation of life. For Vasconcelos, these changes were both radical and social.2

vasconcelos’ aesthetic and pedagogic philosophy

Vasconcelos’

ideas leading to the development of the sep building, its foundational theories, and, later, La Raza Cósmica were developed in the first two decades of the twentieth century. His training began in the positivist Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (National Preparatory School), where he realized that positivism and its ideological underpinnings were intimately linked with the Porfiriato’s abuse, injustice, and tyranny. Later, in the Facultad de Jurisprudencia (law school), he maintained an antipositivist position. Here, against the wishes of his teachers, he taught himself philosophy and sociology. As a result of this background, Vasconcelos responded with metaphysics to positivism’s charge of reason. During the Díaz dictatorship, Vasconcelos and other like-minded intellectuals met at small gatherings known as cenáculos in members’ homes or studios to discuss authors and books proscribed by positivism. In 1907 the meetings became the Sociedad de Conferencias (Society of Conferences). Its members organized public lectures on topics 16

such as art and architecture, literature, criticism, and philosophy. The society eventually

became the Ateneo de la Juventud,3 founded in October 1909 by Vasconcelos and other

if walls could talk

young scholars. They gathered in this venue with artists, architects, poets, philosophers, and writers to discuss political issues and intellectual concerns. Its members would later figure principally as part of the post-Revolution Mexican intelligentsia.4 And, in reaction to political injustices throughout the nation, Vasconcelos and others from this group joined the anti-reelectionist movement headed by Francisco I. Madero, responsible for ending the Díaz regime and initiating the Revolution. When Madero became president of Mexico, he appointed Vasconcelos as his envoy to the United States to take charge of establishing diplomatic relations and smoothing over concerns that might arise in the transition of power. Upon his return to Mexico, Vasconcelos refused to accept any political or magisterial post. He did, however, become involved with a group of young intellectuals and scholars who maintained a similar antipositivist and anti-Porfiriato agenda. In 1912, after Díaz’ removal from power, Vasconcelos became the president of the Ateneo and instituted the group’s first truly public educational campaign by founding the Universidad Popular Mexicana (Mexican Popular University). While its structure followed the lecture system organized by the Sociedad de Conferencias and the Ateneo, the university was aimed at educating workers and adults who had neither the resources nor the time to attend school full time. Although to some it was a failed project, it served as the origin of many tenets of Vasconcelos’ later educational system, such as an insistence on public education for the masses, the affiliation of intellectuals of all ranks and professions, and a primary focus on Mexican popular culture.5 In the end, the Universidad Popular was incorporated into the Universidad Nacional (National University) in 1920, when Vasconcelos became its director. Given the importance of culture and aesthetics, two tendencies would characterize Vasconcelos’ educational program: first, an effort to define a national culture and second, the role of aesthetics in disseminating cultural values to a predominantly illiterate public. Primarily responses to the legacy of positivism, the educational neglect of the Díaz regime, and U.S. imperialism, these two positions were based on public education and a national consciousness-raising campaign intended to elevate Mexicans’ confidence and overturn the racist, imperialist biases of foreigners working in Mexico during the Díaz dictatorship. For Vasconcelos, the rejection of foreign aesthetics and concerns was part of an active opposition to cultural colonialism and its simultaneous and programmatic devaluation of Mexican culture. His new educational program, in turn, would seek a utopian synthesis to oppose advancing global capitalism and its effects. The historian Edgar Llinás Álvarez best defined the problem of the nation’s postrevolutionary educational needs: Why did Mexican pedagogues propose, with particular anguish, the need to find an authentic Mexican identity during the revolutionary and postrevolutionary period? The answer is simple: because at the time, a profound philosophical and administrative crisis in education was declared that led to a crisis of identity, which forced educational thinkers to search for the essence of Mexicanness [mexicanidad] on which to base the work of education.6 The incongruous intersection of positivism—the American-European philosophical imposition—and Hispanicism—the desire by many Mexicans for a Spanish cultural

17

architecture as revolution

continuity—caused a crisis of identity. After all, these foreign elements were central within the political, economic, and ideological need to modernize the country and its workforce.7 Three alternatives could be proposed in response to this type of crisis. First, as the Díaz regime had done, the nation could look toward foreign countries for its modern cultural capital. Second, it could look inward at the Mexican reality and its particular educational problems to find solutions.8 The third alternative, chosen by Vasconcelos, was a mediation of the first two that reflected Vasconcelos’ nationalism and the influence of foreign philosophies and theories. The paradoxical condition of the sep building stood precisely at this intersection. It represented the “internationalism” of the Díaz regime, through its foreign philosophical underpinnings, and it directly referenced the Spanish tradition in Mexico, expressed most prominently in the colonial courtyard building typology. Vasconcelos’ philosophical and educational ideas, vis-à-vis a marked nationalist interest, also developed from this mediation. Ultimately, this middle ground became a way for him to use each position against the other. For example, his rejection and critique of European positivism was partly substantiated by the European philosopher Oswald Spengler’s indictment against Western rationality and the resulting decline of Western civilization. Vasconcelos’ positioning within this middle ground, placing him outside the focus of traditional art and architecture historical conventions, shows how his philosophical and aesthetic interests coincided with his political program. José Joaquín Blanco has poignantly defined the middle ground as “the placement of stable points within the chaos, the elaboration of myths, theories, and allegories that, beyond explaining or lessening confusion, only exalt it to combat it. From all of these mixed and disordered ideas and preoccupations his educational and cultural politics would come.”9 It is through this triangulation of philosophical, nationalist, and aesthetic ideals that Vasconcelos’ La Raza Cósmica must be read, as it provides a specifically political meaning to the building that paralleled its ideas. As we will see, La Raza Cósmica was the culmination of Vasconcelos’ philosophical project derived from his aesthetic and nationalistic theories. To see this, however, we must begin to break down these theories and make some general observations about their different components and relations. At the root of Vasconcelos’ aesthetic and philosophical positions was a reaction against the Díaz regime and its intent on modernizing the country through the introduction of a positivist ideology and scientific system.10 Instead of Comte, therefore, Vasconcelos and the members of the Ateneo de la Juventud turned to metaphysics and to the classics to reject positivism, which, for them, served as a justification for power of the ruling elite. Vasconcelos’ understanding of the classics came primarily from his reading of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy (1872). Nietzsche’s book inspired in Vasconcelos the dialectical tension and eventual mediation between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, between rationality and aesthetic culture. In his reading, Greece was an idealized, mystical, and democratic culture whose high spiritual and sensual quality was materially present in architecture, plastic arts, and their integration. Against positivism and Comte’s “law of the three stages,” Vasconcelos developed the “law of the three states of energy.”11 He would use and refine this law in La Raza

18

Cósmica.12 So, while Comte defined the stages of human development as progressing

from the theological through the metaphysical and arriving at the positive or scientific,

if walls could talk

Vasconcelos subdivided the progress of humanity into the warrior, intellectual, and aesthetic states. The lowest one, the warrior, reflected simply material interests obtained through violence and instincts. The intellectual state, whose principal characteristic was egoism, represented interrelations founded on convenience, efficiency, and calculation. The highest state, the aesthetic, was founded on liberty, control over the physical world, lack of conflicts, and disinterest (as in aesthetic experience). The aesthetic state emphasized heroism and had a new sense of rhythm and purpose. Vasconcelos argued that this state was to be paradigmatic of Latin American culture. Ultimately, the final vocation of the aesthetic was the total transformation of life into art.13 Vasconcelos’ educational program had as its goal the attainment of that third state. It is also necessary to understand Vasconcelos’ aesthetic theory, centered in texts he developed during the Revolution, such as Pitágoras: Una teoría del rítmo (1916) and El monismo estético: Ensayos (1918),14 to realize the importance of education (in the pragmatic sense) and its relation to its aesthetic vocation. From his comprehension of Pythagoras’ philosophy, the history of its interpretation, and its (redemptive) possibilities Vasconcelos developed in Pitágoras an aesthetic theory. He notes that “Pythagoras is the first known ancestor of the mystical family—strange and dispersed—of the musical and poetic philosophers; better said, the aesthetic philosophers.”15 In this book he describes how the understanding of the world comes from either an objective sensibility—analytical, intellectual, and scientific—or a synthetic one—an intuitive or, more precisely, aesthetic perception. The latter parallels the final stage of the spirit, in which harmony is created among the subject, his or her immediate surroundings, and infinity.16 Vasconcelos links aesthetic sensibility, ultimately, to the Pythagorean theory that everything has an internal rhythm. Mathematics as a means to explain harmony becomes, according to Vasconcelos, only a type of metaphor that “expresses the rhythm . . . found within things.” For him, Pythagoras’ theory had generated two doctrines: an esoteric one that “was none other than the study of rhythm as a philosophical value in and of itself” and a public one that focused on “the problems of harmony as applied to music and rhythm.”17 Vasconcelos asserted that the true meaning behind Pythagoras’ ideals lay within the notion of harmony—beyond its simple intellectual explication and instrumental application. The essential paradox, however, was to ignore the transformations and interpretations of numerical harmonies by subsequent philosophers while valuing, despite being founded on (mis)interpretations of Pythagoras, their contributions to other branches of aesthetic philosophy. Given statements from Pythagoras’ disciples Aristotle and Philolaus,18 Vasconcelos deduced that what [Pythagoras] showed was that things assume, during aesthetic contemplation, the rhythm of the spirit, independent of their own rhythm. He established that the rhythm of the spirit was appropriate to things and from that observation it is easy to deduce that beauty is produced when things change their expression to the rhythm of the human soul. Or, what is the same, in the aesthetic faculty of the subject resides the secret of one’s communion with things. That is how the spirit operates over matter, through the law of beauty, lowering itself to things to give them a life and superior aspiration. The vision of the artist redeems the ugly, the virtue of the saint guides and corrects the bad, and the philosopher, interpreting the system, is an artist at large.19

19

architecture as revolution

More pragmatically, disinterested contemplation of the exterior world (as Kant argues in his Critique of Judgment, 1790) allowed for a parallel resonance with one’s subjective interior. Implied within this is a union between the subject and the world. After all, Vasconcelos contended, it was instrumental reason that enacted the division of physical from intellectual labor, leading to the alienating split between the world of matter and the world of the spirit. For Vasconcelos, aesthetics provided the only means to cure this malady.20 Beauty became, in the end, “a rhythmic coincidence between the natural movement of the spirit and the already reformed movement of things—no longer casual, but accommodated to the internal and converted to the spirit.”21 Vasconcelos was careful to point out that it is important to study rhythm rather than harmony since, like the spirit, it is ever-changing, dynamic, inconclusive, and constructive. Harmony, on the other hand, as a totalizing and abstract intellectual structure, limits the freedom of the spirit. The artist, in contrast to the Newtonian rhythm of material necessity, has the task of “humanizing matter by converting it to the rhythm of the soul, as well as of purifying the soul by removing it from the law of causality and necessity, thus giving it its own wings to fly away.”22 On the aesthetic side, artistic production can most effectively foreground the rhythmic qualities of the world for the subject to experience and connect with it: Each object and each being has its own internal order; this constitutes its rhythm. The painter, the musician, and the poet guess this rhythm and connect it to the active subject. If these artists are in front of things, they seek to relate them to the human rhythm. If they find themselves in front of people, they propose to discover the way to affinity. Artists work together to achieve the artistic expression of things. The person who intelligently judges art believes it reforms or creates new objects; the artist, however, knows that they are already like that. As intelligence refuses to believe that, the focus will show that things are as the artist expresses them. Arriving at things in the totalizing way of the artist is how we can penetrate their recondite sense.23 At the core of the aesthetic experience, therefore, is the possibility of seeing the world as the artist sees it. The role of the artist is to show the affinity between the artistic and the everyday. In El monismo estético Vasconcelos defines art’s role as productive (arte creador) since it actualizes in the experiencing subject the spiritual vocation of art and of the infinite.24 Vasconcelos contended that the productive sense of art—in terms of a possible praxis—is centered on a highly idealized understanding of the disinterested nature of artistic production and reception. Art provides (after Kant) the possibility of other forms of disinterested experiences; that is, independent of any utilitarian finality. Vasconcelos interpreted this mode of experience as an essential way of communicating with the world, free from sensibility and idea yet linked to the Pythagorean sense of rhythm and therefore to aesthetic experience. In other words, the subject who experiences objects in a disinterested way, Vasconcelos believed, relates to other subjects in the same way, engendering new human relations based on unrequited acts of kindness. These, in turn, would lead to a transcendental state similar to that of aesthetic experience.25 Ultimately, linked to his conception of the highest state of energy, this kind of experience stands

20

in opposition to the instrumental rationality of positivism and, more specifically, the American pragmatism of John Dewey. In Vasconcelos’ view, education was more than teaching what is merely useful; the larger purpose lay in awakening a type of spiritual self-motivation in the student (despertar la conciencia del educando). Such motivation would arise, for example, through an active campaign of publishing and teaching the classics. The publication program of classic works under Vasconcelos to achieve this aim was impressive. In this task, as Mary Kay Vaughan has shown, the influence of the Soviet Commissar of Enlightenment Anatolii Lunacharskii was essential. Lunacharskii edited a series of classic texts intended to instill a motivating sense of heroism in contrast to banal and unsophisticated art.26 Vasconcelos’ model, then, was Homer’s Odysseus as “the traveler who explores and acts, who discovers and creates,” whose creations are tied to discoveries and to traditions of the past. His model was not Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, who embodies John Dewey’s pragmatism and makes his tools without relying on his imagination and serving only a determined utilitarian end.27 In La Raza Cósmica Vasconcelos used the spirit of this critique on Dewey to wage an attack against the pedagogic pragmatism of the United States and its vulgar materialist sensibilities. In contrast, El Maestro: Revista de Cultura Nacional, a magazine published by the sep (Figure 1.2), was patterned

1.2 Cover of El Maestro: Revista de Cultura Nacional,

on Vasconcelos’ ideals. It not only covered news of various departments and provided

1922

information for teachers throughout the country but, as its subtitle suggests, also included essays on Mexican and international culture, sections for children, and classical stories. Vasconcelos opposed pedagogical pragmatism as early as 1910. In his critique of the positivist educational philosophies of then minister of education Gabino Barreda, Vasconcelos showed the limitations of subordination to scientific rationality and the impossibility of fixing anything into stable categories. In this early critique, Vasconcelos also criticized the ideological character of positivist education as reproducing the economic, industrial, and social needs of the dominant classes.28 The direct and instrumental instruction that Dewey advocated, Vasconcelos believed, only produced “well-suited and conforming workers” limited to social and material necessities. These individuals remained in the second state of energy and were unable to transcend into the third: “Dewey, it seems, would like to annihilate in us the focus on excellence, to make us invent the way we should knot our tie every day, the way we clean our room.”29 Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt (1922) represented for Vasconcelos all that was wrong with American education. It produced conforming, “mechanized” subjects by maintaining a constant focus on industrialized production and instrumental knowledge. The educational environment in the United States was the ideological extension of industrialized production that encouraged the student to become acclimated to the mechanized environment of the factory. Instead of awakening curiosity in the student, Dewey’s system of education and production wilted and subsequently subdued the student’s interior consciousness. The end result was something similar to Georg Lukács’ definition of reification: [The Dewey system,] with an appearance of liberty, then, accomplishes the production of millions of human subjects who are apt to take advantage of certain aspects of the 21

architecture as revolution

exterior realm: blind to the disinterested experience, faithful to the flock, and with no other goal than to break records—the same happens in work as in play and enjoyment. In that fashion, free and responsible initiative is resolved in solutions that are apparently fragmentary but that converge to augment the Moloch of industry. That is, freedom in the service of slavery, initiative subordinated to the growth of an organization that deifies, in an overwhelming way, the accumulation of objects.30 In contrast, Vasconcelos saw labor as potentially an exercise in self-improvement in which the worker satisfied his or her corporal needs and earned a living free from exploitation by the privileged classes. In this model of labor, the abstraction caused by the rationality of standardized production is negated through the imposition of a human character and utility that go beyond the object of production.31 Instead of rejecting industrialized labor, as nineteenth-century English art historian John Ruskin had done, Vasconcelos contended that the task of education was to dominate and control the “exaggerated industrialization” and provide the ability of finding within industry the invisible qualities of disinterested experience.32 Art did not become the “ornament or surplus value of labor, as pragmatism seems to believe,” but was instead a specific value given to labor through the education of the subject or worker.33 In El monismo estético Vasconcelos further defined art as outside the parameters of instinct and reason. Here, art is characterized as antirealistic (anti-realista), as an agent provocateur, as rousing “the chills of the sublime,” and as containing the possible and totalizing synthesis with the infinite.34 Art elements like color, form, and sound are only effective, Vasconcelos wrote, if guided by an internal rhythm: “The artist liberates his or her internal strength with a creative impetus that selects, among all of the signs in the world, the most adequate to express his or her mysterious production.”35 Vasconcelos’ description of the importance of rhythm and its relation—through aesthetic experience—to the human soul raises the question of praxis: To what extent is such a theory applicable to a real, material context? What is the role of the Pythagorean theory of rhythm beyond the individual subject’s attainment of this transcendental experience modeled on the tradition of bourgeois sublimation through meditative thought? It is here that Vasconcelos’ aesthetic and educational programs gain a particular significance. Clearly, Vasconcelos was well aware of the problem of how to communicate or enact these types of sensibilities. Nevertheless, the problems of the Mexican people after the Revolution necessitated a model for collective reception that could transmit this redemptive spirit: It is not necessary that the thinker discover. It is enough that he meditate, study, write, or simply think so that the continuity of the ideal life is maintained. With thinking alone, general thought is re-animated and progresses. Mental labor is contagious; the teacher plants the seed, and the souls multiply it and return it variegated with a thousand new tonalities. The collective factor in the mental labor is indeterminable, yet evident; it saves the solitary from fainting, it supports and stimulates thinking, it corrects expressions, it enriches details, it collaborates, it constitutes the environment, it germinates the ideas, it makes them latent to such a degree that the first one who speaks

22

them seems only to be pointing them out, and it frees at one time many souls where

the idea was fighting to be born; one does not know, oneself, if one is the author or only

if walls could talk

a copyist of the group or of the time. There are also very powerful ideas that do not find enough space in a single conscience and search for support in entire generations.36 Although collective, the implication was that reception of the rhythmic was based solely on a contemplative mode of reception. Aware of the incongruence of this to a totalizing educational idea, Vasconcelos made one more determination about Pythagoras that influenced his subsequent pedagogic and aesthetic propositions: “The Pythagorean communities were not only dedicated to contemplation; they believed that life cannot be dedicated solely to thinking while there are many things that remain to be done.”37 The perception of art and architecture in a state of distraction, argued as revolutionary by Walter Benjamin some twenty years later,38 was one of the foundational requirements of Vasconcelos’ program. To enact this philosophical mode, the collective and omnipresent nature of architecture, as we will see, became the vehicle to deliver aesthetic experience. This somewhat indirect communicative approach fit into Vasconcelos’ educational model.39 First of all, art held an important position in his educational theories: [A] new pedagogic method imposes . . . art on us. Not a simple shift in discipline, but rather a different way to take on the specific reality that is contained in the great separation of the aesthetic [ from daily life]. The method of learning here is not activereflexive, as it occurs in the physical; it is not normative-persuasive, as in ethics; but rather, [it is] contagious and revealing. Art does not convince or invite one to take advantage of it; it does not persuade or disturb one’s sense of responsibility; it simply fascinates and engenders delight.40 Art not only provides the knowledge of a disinterested experience; it intimates a knowledge of the eternal and transcendental. In complete defiance to pragmatic educational theories that favored the specific, concrete, or utilitarian, art could generate communion with the beautiful. Art was, in Vasconcelos’ words, “a spiritual exercise and a foyer [antesala] to divine knowledge” that raised the desires and goals of the population.41

race, place, and art in la raza cósmica

In this context, Vasconcelos’ La

Raza Cósmica stood as a possible materialization in post-Revolution Mexico of the third stage of energy. For Vasconcelos, “authentic” Latin American culture was a redemptive element in a struggle to emancipate culture from European and American ideologies and hegemony. In his new conception of the third stage, the mystical Pythagorean thought, the universalizing vision of art, and the resulting spiritual sense became infused with the ideas of racial mixture and the importance of rootedness. These last two ideas expressed a higher cultural and spiritual plane in contrast to the decadence of Europe. Using the discourse of both Ferdinand Tönnies and Oswald Spengler, Vasconcelos demarcated a distinct space of Latin American culture from European positivism and American pragmatism. Jorge Francisco Liernur and Claude Fell have convincingly shown how Vasconcelos’ discourse uses the Tönniesian distinction between Zivilisation and Kultur to redeem indigenous and historical thought.42 “All our precedents,” Vasconcelos wrote, “direct us to prefer the work of Culture over the simply civilizing work.”43 This distinction naturally had repercussions in art: “Culture is poetry to behavior and music

23

architecture as revolution

for the spirit . . . Civilization industrializes agriculture or art.”44 The reliance on this distinction cannot be separated from Vasconcelos’ opposition to pragmatism and reification. The quasi-Spenglerian indictment against Western overrationalization present in his thought likewise should come as no surprise.45 The phenomena Spengler described as paradigmatic of the decline of western European hegemony become, dialectically, positive Latin American traits: civilization in the West was countered by the cultures of Latin America. Culture, according to Spengler, is rooted and given depth in the place it was created. At the moment the perception of place turns reflective, culture becomes civilization. Here, the primacy of the conceptual and abstract, rather than the intuitive and metaphysical, becomes the ruling order. Civilization, in biologistic and organic terms, tends toward inevitable decline. Spengler contended that civilizations blossom and decay like natural organisms. Represented in the intellectualizing abstraction of capitalism and the growth of the metropolis, Europe, then, had reached its zenith as a civilization. Latin America, on the other hand, was still rooted in the telluric, and therefore its creations remained intuitive. Specifically, Spengler noted the developing culture (the “spiritual greatness and soaring power”) of Mexico in relation to the decline of the West.46 Additionally, the emerging nature of Mexico and the life cycle of cultures suggest that Latin America had not yet reached the highest cultural state. For Vasconcelos, Mexican and, more broadly, Latin American culture—because of its history, geography, and people—had the possibility of reaching the aesthetic state, while Europe and North America remained in the materialistic second stage of energy. Inspiration had to be found in the highest stages of culture as Spengler defined them. This explains Vasconcelos’ advocacy of classical philosophy expressed, in particular, with the mystic side of Pythagoras’ theories and, as we will see, the relationship between the Greeks and the Latin Americans via the lost continent of Atlantis.47 His interest in Spengler’s theories also helps explain his turn toward the anti-intellectualism of Henri Bergson and Nietzsche, as well as the importance of the unconventional and nonutilitarian qualities of art. All these stood against Western political and ideological domination while establishing a redemptive quality in Latin America, its peoples, and their cultures. It should not surprise us, then, to find in the prologue to La Raza Cósmica the initial assault against a positivism perceived to have led to decadence. This attack was waged through the vindication of miscegenation against social Darwinism’s imposition of a theory of racial purity. In these few pages Vasconcelos attempted to prove that all great cultures were a result of racial mixture.48 Latin American peoples, because of the Spanish and Portuguese colonization, were racially mixed. As a result, subjectivity and subject formation based on this mixture was advantageous, as it was seen as positive, culturally enhancing, modern—given the new means of communication, transportation, and generalized education—and, most importantly, socially equalizing.49 According to Vasconcelos’ schema, miscegenation in Latin America came at the end of a complex (mythical) history that began with the civilization of Atlantis. This facile historical lineage provided him with the necessary hypothetical foundations for overvaluing the mixture of races and rejecting pure Hispanic or pure pre-Hispanic lineages.50 Having Atlantis at the center of Latin American civilization allowed him to link the origins of pre-

24

Hispanic culture with Greek culture. It also offered an opportunity, through a Spengle-

rian reading of history, to show that “after an extraordinary flowering, after completing

if walls could talk

its cycle, having completed their particular mission, [the Atlantian race] entered into silence and declined until it was reduced to the diminished Aztec and Inca empires, totally worthless in comparison to the old and superior culture.”51 In line with contemporaneous theories of Atlantis, Vasconcelos believed that traces of that civilization spread to other parts of the world and were able to mix with other races, grow, and become great again. This, he argued, was evidenced in the greatness of the Greek (Hellenic) culture, the culture of India, the African (Egyptian) culture, and the Asian (Mongol) culture. The Greek culture, according to Vasconcelos’ reading of history, organized and ultimately transformed itself into the paradigmatic “white” European civilization. The whites, as civilizations had done before them and in a historically cyclical fashion, would conquer and colonize other lands and peoples. Vasconcelos contended that the primary task or “mission” of the white race—the descendants of the Greeks—was not to colonize. Its real responsibility was to serve as a “bridge” between cultures and to allow them to meld into one: “The civilization conquered by the whites, organized by our time, has created the material and moral bases for the union of all peoples into a fifth, universal race, the fruit of previous ones and superior to everything before it.”52 Latin American independence from Spain and Portugal was, for Vasconcelos, a rupture rather than a definitive break with the traditions, history, and culture of those powers. Furthermore, exacerbated nationalism throughout Latin America, ideologically necessary for protecting the cultures and material goods of specific countries, was detrimental to the redemptive possibilities of miscegenation. It further fragmented the continent into smaller pieces instead of uniting them within the transcendental mission of their common “race.” The goals of the different Latin American races were ultimately reduced to the ambitions of the Anglo (white) and Hispanic races. For their part, the whites had destroyed the races that inhabited their region and only allowed intercourse with other whites. Hispanics, on the other hand, allowed the assimilation of different races and mestizaje, “giving us new rights and hopes of a mission without precedent in history.”53 The mixing of Hispanic colonizers with indigenous peoples, in the end, served as a bridge for the mixture of all peoples. The possibilities of this miscegenation, Vasconcelos wrote, could be found in the universalizing and synthesizing qualities of Latin American struggles for independence, the union of Latin American states that Simón Bolívar sought, and the desire of the leaders of Latin American independence movements to proclaim all men as equal. All of these showed the possibility, in other words, of a social and civic equality resulting from the ethnic and spiritual mixture of peoples.54 As Vasconcelos ultimately believed, the mission of the Latin American peoples was to create the fifth and final race: “the definitive race, the synthesis or integral race made of the genius and blood of all peoples, and, because of it, more capable of true fraternity and truly universal vision.”55 The location where this mission would take place became the next subject of Vasconcelos’ theories. Cultures were a direct effect of the regions they inhabited. This could be seen in their material production. Because of its wealth of resources and raw materials, Latin America had all that was needed for the new race to flourish. Even its warm climate was similar to those of the early great cultures of Greece, Egypt, and India. To alleviate the heat, therefore, the new race would parallel the whites’ search for solutions to the cold and its effects:

25

architecture as revolution

The triumph of the whites began with the conquest of snow and the cold. The basis of white civilization is fuel. First it served as a protection in the long winters; later, it was seen to have a force capable of being utilized not only in sheltering cover but also in work; then, the motor was created, and from that fate—from the hearth and the stove—the machines that would transform the world came. . . . The hard fight against the environment forced the white to dedicate his aptitudes to the conquest of a temporal nature, and this is precisely what constitutes their contribution to the civilization of the future.56 The machines and derivative civilization did not equal or rival, in Vasconcelos’ schema, the ancient cultures. Mere technical advances, in other words, do not represent the height of a culture. The mechanization of the world, one of the functions characteristic of the whites, could be redeemed if it could aid in the mixing of the races and provide the technical knowledge and modernity they needed. Material advances and sciences, then, could only be beneficial if they allowed the new race to conquer the tropics. No longer esoteric or the object of a privileged few, science would be the tool to tame and inhabit the powerful South American landscape. Conquering these lands and climates would yield great changes in all aspects of life: [A]rchitecture will abandon its cross-vaults, the vault, and in general, the ceiling that responds to the need for seeking shelter; the pyramid will develop again; colonnades will be erected in useless and ostentatious displays of beauty and perhaps constructions in the shape of spirals because the new aesthetic will try to mold itself to the endless curve of the spiral, which represents the free will and the triumph of Being in the conquest of the infinite. The landscape, full of colors and rhythms, will communicate its richness to emotion. Reality will be like fantasy. The aesthetics of the clouded and gray [northern countries] will be seen as a sickly art of the past. A refined and intense civilization will respond to the splendors of a nature overflowing with possibilities, full of customs, shining in clarity.57 The tropics would become the seat of this new race. Its center, in the Amazon region, would be called Universópolis. From there, armies and planes would be dispatched to “educate people into knowledge” instead of dominating them.58 For Vasconcelos, the opposite of Universópolis was “Anglotown,” which he defined as a metropolis. Spengler used the term “metropolis” to define the material, architectural expression of a civilization at its peak and, therefore, on its way into decline. From Anglotown, colonizing troops were to be dispatched to conquer the world and eliminate rival races. This was clearly a part of Vasconcelos’ critical campaign against American civilization and its meddling in Latin American affairs.59 In Universópolis, on the other hand, everyone would be equal. Its culture would be founded on free will and the metaphysical and mystical qualities of the arts, which Vasconcelos considered superior powers (potencias superiores). At this point in Vasconcelos’ discourse, the law of the three states reappears to validate the aesthetic program of Latin American culture in its shift from the material to the spiritual realm. As mentioned earlier, the search for direction characteristic of the final state was based on aesthetics and creation and not on reason. Seeking revelation, life

26

was to be filled with intensely emotional experiences that responded to the rhythms of

things and the everyday and that were ultimately disinterested (without moral or logical

if walls could talk

needs). Architecture would become the metaphor to define the difference between this stage and the need and logic of the first two: “One understands that one and the other are the scaffolding and mechanics of construction; but the true soul of architecture is the rhythm that transcends machinery and does not know laws other than those of the mystery of divine beauty.”60 In the search for higher pleasures and goals traditionally associated with aesthetic enjoyment, life was to be more like art. The Latin Americans who comprised the foundations of the “cosmic race” were, according to the 1918 El monismo estético, a new and mixed race in the presence of another zone of the world, lovely and virginal. But we possess a higher cultural experience. We possess better technical possibilities than that of the primitive Aryans. As a consequence, we have committed to civilization to give better fruits. . . . We do not have to solve anything, but rather sing and think with sincerity.61 Everything from the reproduction of the species to the institution of marriage would be like a work of art.62 This new stage of life, as a consequence, needed new ideologies and philosophical models to reflect the cosmic race’s needs and desires as well as to direct its members: “Every imperialism needs a philosophy to justify itself . . . [E]ach rising race needs to constitute its own philosophy, the deux ex machina of its success.”63 Vasconcelos rejected previous philosophical models and went as far as questioning science as an ideological or “theoretical edifice,” as he called it, intended to promote control by the whites.64 However, he proposed that philosophy and ideology reflect the “new ethical doctrine of our continental life.”65 Vasconcelos mentioned little about the type of governmental structure that the cosmic race would create. The mixture of races, he said, would be based on the betterment of social conditions—less subject to material or other needs and instead founded primarily on aesthetics.66 He articulated this more explicitly in his statement that the social tendencies of the future were to be based on contemporary trends; the government of the cosmic race, thus, would have its foundations in socialism.67 Most importantly, the cosmic race was to be formed from the mestizaje of Latin American peoples, who were “endowed with malleability, rapid comprehension, and easy emotion—fecund elements for the germinating plasma of the future species.” They were, Vasconcelos continued, “people for whom beauty is the most important thing,” and they possessed “a fine aesthetic sensibility and a love for deep beauty, foreign to all bastard interests and free from conventional obstacles. They have a sense of universality and the beautiful; and they also possess the [essential] territory and natural resources.”68 Latin Americans had, in short, all of the necessary ingredients to create the first truly universal culture. The principles of racial miscegenation, the aesthetic and educational theories, and the mythical history of America were foundational to La Raza Cósmica. Having already positioned aesthetics and education, Vasconcelos faced the crucial challenge of reaching his intended audience, which explains why he advocated a particular form of nationalism. The foundational elements of La Raza Cósmica pointed toward an art rooted in the specific environment of the artist. Dialectically, Vasconcelos placed the autochthonous

27

architecture as revolution

and the spirit of the time—its zeitgeist—as two goals for which the artist should strive. On one hand, the artists were to incorporate existing traditions and, following Spengler, respond to the particular environments where they worked. And on the other hand, the artists were to tap into the emotions, feelings, and beliefs unique to the moment, something similar to Alois Riegl’s notion of kunstwollen. Paradoxically, the end result was to create a vernacular expression with universalizing aims. Vasconcelos considered Latin American artists, particularly those working in Mexico, capable of simultaneously using European methods and models and the inheritance of the colonial period to highlight the region and the actions of their people. As a result, art became representational of an autochthonous landscape without political boundaries or uniformity. The paintings of the Mexican highlands, he noted as an example, were similar to those of the highlands of Peru or Colombia. Characteristic of its particular place, this art would not become part of an idealized and superficial pure Hispanic or archeological pre-Hispanic aesthetic tradition.69 In addition, using European models to depict place did not imply a reliance on the “decadent” (Spengler), “antiquarian” (Nietzsche), or mediocre elements of its culture. Yet, paradoxically, Vasconcelos argued against an original artistic production whenever examples from the past could be used as starting points. By focusing on the autochthonous, therefore, artists represented the syncretic condition of the land, its people, and their traditions as well as the influences of time and past cultures. Ultimately, it was synthesis that Vasconcelos advocated as the appropriate art for Latin America. As early as 1918, in El monismo estético, he developed the notion of a “mestizo” art and culture—an early variant of transculturation.70 Here, Vasconcelos described this art as saturated with primitive vigor, of new themes, combining the subtle with the intense, sacrificing the exquisite for grandeur, perfection for invention; free to choose the best elements from all cultures; synthetic and vigorous in the work, capable of expressing the present instant, but at the same time, rich in prophecies of what the future of the race and the individual spirit will be.71 This art, which he more fully addressed in La Raza Cósmica, was the true expression of the Latin American race, its countries, and its history. This was doubly true, as this mestizo model of art and culture already was expressed in the architecture of structures built at the time of Spanish colonization—the architectural precedent for the schools and other buildings constructed during Vasconcelos’ ministry.72 The syncretic character of Latin America became the guide that Vasconcelos employed to organize his philosophical ideas and their application in the Mexican context. This synthesis of ideas served as the basis for the architectural and decorative program of the sep headquarters and other projects built during his administration. Vasconcelos made this clear in the last sentence of the prologue to La Raza Cósmica: To express [the ideas of the cosmic race] that today I am trying to explain in a quick synthesis, a few years ago, when they were still not well defined, I tried to give them shape in the new Palace of Public Education in Mexico. Without enough elements to

28

make precisely what I wanted, I had to conform to a Renaissance Spanish construction,

with two courtyards, with arcades and walkways that give the impression of a wing. In

if walls could talk

the panels of the four angles in the first courtyard I had someone make allegories of Spain, Mexico, Greece, and India, the four particular civilizations that have the most to contribute to the formation of Latin America. Afterwards, under these four allegories, four large stone sculptures should have been placed representing the four great contemporary races: the White, the Red, the Black, and the Yellow in order to show that America is the home of all and that it needs them all. Finally, at the center of the courtyard, a monument should have been raised that, in some way, symbolized the law of the three states [of energy]: the material, the intellectual, and the aesthetic. All this [is] to indicate that, through the practice of the triple law, we will arrive in America, before any other part of the globe, at the formation of a race created with the treasures of all of the previous ones, the final race, the cosmic race.73 As elaborated by Vasconcelos in La Raza Cósmica, the building and its forms were to have represented, in other words, the synthesis of cultures needed to create one universal culture whose power lay in the “union of our souls with the vibrations of the universe in the rhythm of joy [júbilo].”74

building for the secretaría de educación pública

In 1923, shortly

after being appointed minister of education, Vasconcelos conceived and initiated an ambitious construction plan for the sep: We want to point out to everyone the need to comprehensively develop this program of construction because, without being materially completed, any educational reforms will be completely sterile if they remain on paper. It is not possible to create [fundar] a civilization over ruins and trash heaps, which is what our cities and country have become. This is not only due to the Revolution, which is blamed for everything in the present, but also to one hundred years of independent life during which we have not made any works of importance with the exception of the railroads, [which were] originally the work of foreigners.75 The Ministry of Education thus engaged in a fervent building campaign that included the extensive renovation of a seventeenth-century building to house its headquarters and construction of a multitude of schools, such as the Centro Educativo Benito Juárez designed by Carlos Obregón Santacilia (Figures 1.3 and 1.4) and the Instituto Técnico designed by Wilfrido Massieu, as well as other structures including the National Stadium designed by José Villagrán García.76 Colonial in style and featuring an integration of architecture and plastic arts, the works built under Vasconcelos were to represent his educational ideas. These structures also served as gathering spaces where public festivals and performances took place. While critics were calling for a “sensible” and “cost-effective” design to represent the interests of a post-Revolution Mexico,77 Vasconcelos and his team created buildings that mimicked the ostentation of the Diaz regime; they reflected the formal aesthetics and material concerns of a nineteenth-century eclectic—not to mention European(izing)— architectural tradition.78 The headquarters for the Secretaría de Educación Pública was no different. It was lo-

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1.3 Carlos Obregón Santacilia, Centro Educativo Benito Juárez, 1923–1925, front

1.4 Carlos Obregón Santacilia, Centro Educativo Benito Juárez, section through courtyard

cated in a symbolic and strategic position—near the Palacio Nacional (the National Palace, the symbolic center of the executive branch), the National University (as it stood at the time before its move to El Pedregal, an area in the southern part of Mexico City), and the Biblioteca Nacional (National Library). The original building that would be renovated to house the sep administration was designed by P. Luis Benítez de la Compañía de Jesús and built in 1639 to serve as the Convento de Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación.79 After the Mexican Reform in the nineteenth century that effectively separated church and state and nationalized properties owned by the church, the convent was transformed to house secular pedagogic and governmental programs. As the various programmatic needs grew, adjacent buildings were incorporated into it. On June 15, 1921, the engineer Federico Méndez Rivas, under Vasconcelos’ direction, started renovations and additions on the building, and it was inaugurated as the sep headquarters on July 9, 1922.80 Here, the national offices that were needed to devise, implement, maintain, and disseminate educational activities and programs were housed.81

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Formally, the existing building was outfitted with neoclassical elements that formalized

its hybrid qualities. The resulting building was colonial in plan (Figure 1.5), neoclassical

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in elevation, and modern in its decorative program. Symmetrical in its main façade, its center is marked by a monumental Ionic order topped with a sculptural set by Ignacio Asúnsolo representing Apollo and Dionysus flanking Minerva. The interior courtyards, surrounded by arcades whose walls are mostly decorated by Diego Rivera, feature reliefs in each corner by the sculptor Manuel Centurión. In the first courtyard, known initially as the Court of the Races and later as the Court of Labor (Figure 1.6), Centurión’s reliefs depict four great world cultures that had the most to contribute to the formation of Latin America. The reliefs for the second courtyard, known as the Court of Fiestas, represent the various branches of the plastic arts. Roberto Montenegro’s murals decorated the waiting room and the offices of the minister and assistant minister of education. The waiting room also featured a painting of Simón Bolívar by the Venezuelan Cirilo Almeida

1.5 Plan, Secretaría de Educación Pública headquarters 1.6 Secretaría de Educación Pública headquarters, loggia and Court of Labor

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Crespo. The building’s total cost—the object of countless debates into the 1930s—exceeded one million pesos. It is unclear to whom the authorship of the building’s architecture and renovations should be properly attributed. Méndez Rívas, as head of the sep construction department, supervised its design and construction.82 Working with him were the architects Francisco Centeno, Emilio Macedo y Arbeu, and Fernando M. Davila; the engineers Manuel R. Gómez and José F. Domínguez; and the architectural interns José Villagrán García, Vicente Mendiola, and Luis G. Gutiérrez.83 What is clear, however, is that Méndez Rívas and his team designed and built the first courtyard and its component parts, the main façade, and the northern portion of the building.84 The form and style of the building followed the existing structure’s figure, lines, and proportions. For Vasconcelos, this severely limited the possibilities of the design. Despite these demanding pre-existing conditions and the preferences of a skilled design team, Vasconcelos himself was a powerful influence and active force in both the design of the building and implementation of its aesthetic programs. In Vasconcelos’ inauguration speech for the sep building and throughout his writings, including La Raza Cósmica, we sense—through statements such as “I wanted to express . . .” or his use of the first-person plural in describing the designs and placements of the elements of the building—that he believed himself to be instrumental in its design and execution. Vasconcelos had fashioned himself an architectural dilettante since his youth, and in a brief passage of his autobiography he even described architecture as his “unattended vocation.”85 In various accounts, his zeal to see his design intentions and interests come to fruition led to critiques of his role as an overseer. Architecture critic Alfonso Pallares, writing in the Mexico City newspaper Excélsior in July 1924, for example, complained that Vasconcelos “did not let the architects who worked for him ‘think’ and make, as architects, what their free will as professionals with ideals and aspirations suggested; rather, he always arbitrarily imposed his artistic feelings.”86 Ultimately, Pallares was right: the elements that make up the design were carefully chosen by Vasconcelos and given to architects, engineers, artists, and artisans to execute, guaranteeing at least some of the credit for authorship to himself. Vasconcelos’ personal investment in all aspects of the design, construction, and decoration ensured that the final result emanated from his vision for postrevolutionary cultural production and dissemination and closely reflected his social, political, aesthetic, and philosophical theories. As such, he carefully chose and supervised not only the various elements of the construction and the people hired to design it but also the very influences the artists working under him had, shaped by trips throughout Mexico sponsored or accompanied by him. For Vasconcelos, the choice of using the neocolonial style for this building was essential since it stood as an architectural expression of syncretism characteristic of the cosmic race. In order to ground this style within that line of thought, it is important to understand how his ideas of miscegenation through colonization related to his ideas about colonial architecture. The importance of this architecture was forged early on in the Ateneo de la Juventud and strongly resonated with the polemics raised by two of its members, Jesús T. Acevedo and Federico E. Mariscal. Both architects were interested in vindicating colonial architecture in modern Mexico.87

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Acevedo, one of the most prominent members of the Ateneo, delivered a series of

lectures revolving around three recurring themes on the character of a truly Mexican

if walls could talk

architecture. The first was centered on “the relationship . . . between the structure 88

of human life and the style of its architecture.”89 Architecture, in other words, always represented the race that constructed it.90 As such, colonial architecture in Mexico was paradigmatically Mexican: The fact was that the indigenous people learned the different professions that make up the arts. The following is worth notice: at the moment of translating, with admirable dedication, the foreign designs that served as models for them, something of the native and inaccessible hid within their work, something unknown in the depths that, without mistaking the dimensions or varying the design guidelines, would create a new gesture, unforeseen nuance, or special color. It was, in the end, our Mexico that began to show its idiosyncrasy. . . . Nothing more natural, in the meanwhile, that when the colonizers implanted any style and architectural tendency, these would be modified by that dark current, always latent in the native.91 Second, the evolution of this Mexican architecture was stopped, Acevedo contended, because it did not adapt to “the needs of constant progress.”92 It did not adapt, for instance, to imported or foreign architectural styles such as French neoclassicism, introduced into Mexico by Manuel Tolsá at the end of the eighteenth century. As a result, the relationship between architecture and the people who created it was lost. Acevedo’s third theme was to call on Mexican architects to define a guiding architecture (arquitectura directriz).93 This architecture would not only maintain a continuity with the past but also represent its makers and, through the use of new building materials, its own time. In his advocacy for the revival of colonial architecture, Acevedo criticized contemporary architecture as individualistic and noncollective. He pointed to the impoverishment of modern architecture by doing away with the richness that stood to be inherited from the past. Considered by Acevedo as “hermetically sealed like the egoism of its owners,” the hall and its use in Mexico, for example, rejected nature and the climatic character of the region:94 “To live in our climate in houses without a patio and inside of a hall furnished and decorated by Mosler is to reject a fecund and noble past.”95 In contrast, the colonial style contained the “roots of the Mexican tree whose harvest we must work hard at.”96 Among its benefits, this style recreated a monumental architecture—and a desired return to the monumentality of the past expressed through it—while also instituting different means of production: “The worker, invariably destined to machine labor as a consequence of our sad social regime, must occupy his new position as teacher, as creator, as artist!”97 Acevedo advocated making architecture accessible to even the humblest people. Federico E. Mariscal similarly promoted the resurrection of colonial architecture. By underscoring the immediate correspondence between the “social organism and the different types of architectural works,” Mariscal showed that both the telluric and social were materialized in the national architectural works of art (obras de arte arquitectónico nacional).98 This architecture represented the life and more general customs characteristic of the whole life of Mexico as a nation. The current Mexican citizen who forms the majority of the population is a result of the

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architecture as revolution

material, moral, and intellectual mixture of the Spanish and aboriginal races that populated the Mexican land. As such, Mexican architecture emerged and developed during the three viceroyal centuries that constituted “the Mexican” and has been developing independently ever since.99 Like Acevedo, Mariscal described the evolutionary end of colonial architecture as a result of the importation of foreign architectures, “exotic” and antithetical to Mexican life, as well as the pervasive modifications and destruction of colonial buildings. It was fundamental, therefore, to study and understand the historical period from which the present developed and evolved in order to recreate the monumental legacy of the past and bring about a rebirth of the Mexican architectural art.100 The development of contemporary architecture, in other words, needed to be understood in terms of the mixture described by Mariscal. In a 1916 lecture to the Sociedad de Bellas Artes in Lima, Vasconcelos, echoing Acevedo and Mariscal, proposed that architects would have to search for threads through which [they] could structure [their] development; these are, for example, certain successes of our national inheritance—such as the architecture of the time of the Colony. . . . The three centuries of Mexican architecture . . . are still the best aesthetic realization of the Latin American race and the best architecture of the whole continent.101 In a manner similar to his conception of art, he was not proposing for architecture a tendency toward criollismo, the cult of styles based on pre-Hispanic archeology, or the development of an improvised historically autonomous production.102 His vision for a neocolonial architecture—like Acevedo’s and Mariscal’s—invoked the mixture of the Spanish and indigenous races, ideas, and artistic traditions, in short, an architecture yielding a new aesthetic syncretism. This particular conceptual investment in colonial architecture reflected, as it did in art, the spiritual needs that Vasconcelos imagined for an enlightened culture. Besides the influence of these two architects, there were two other important ideas behind Vasconcelos’ advocacy of neocolonial architecture. The first was the educational tradition embedded within colonial architecture that initially responded to the demands of colonization. Vasconcelos greatly admired the Catholic missionaries who educated, edified, and sheltered the indigenous population through their constructions. For him, the monumental and collectively built architecture represented the best educational paradigm of the American continent. The second was his belief in the power of the artistic environment to transform the individuals who inhabited it. These two themes— although extremely politicized—would carry through the work of the artists and architects working under him. Writing in 1926, Vasconcelos noted the relationship between colonial architecture and its use for pedagogical intentions: [The missionary] would arrive at the desert and begin by building the home. A great man, the missionary did not conform in adapting his needs to the hut, and in the middle of the desert he decided to build walls. The great walls that illustrate the movement of the missionary through the continent are still standing and are the seeds for

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a new style . . .

The hours of the day, in the mission, were used for work in the fields and in the con-

if walls could talk

struction of powerful works, a construction that was rooted; [they were] not provisional timber works of these times that, despite being provisional, they could construct. In the evening or after nightfall, the mission, which had been a beehive of manual labor, would transform into a school: a school of religion, a school of language, a school of art—since drawing, music, and singing were taught. We can only imagine what those schools of labor and art were like.103 In addition to serving as an indexical representation of the autochthonous landscape and its people, architecture could represent the educational mission of the postRevolution government. Because colonial architecture was so common throughout Mexico, its reintroduction, with material and programmatic adaptations to address the present and its needs, would not alienate the population. In this way, neocolonial architecture would be modern and functionally viable while at the same time integrating education into the life of the nation. This architecture would inspire the viewer and user in the aesthetic and disinterested sense that Vasconcelos advocated in art. Vasconcelos was well aware of the possibilities of new materials, such as steel and concrete, to adapt to colonial forms and their successful use in modern public buildings in California.104 This proved to him that it was still feasible to harmoniously build in postrevolutionary Mexico using traditional typologies and morphologies despite the rapid modernization of the building industry and the needs imposed by the modern metropolis.105 It should be noted that Vasconcelos’ interest in the Mexican colonial architecture of the seventeenth century was similar to that of Sylvester Baxter, a North American architectural historian. Baxter saw this Mexican architecture as a potential and appropriate architectural expression for the United States, despite the country’s pragmatic or utilitarian requirements. Its monumentality and character could represent the glory of the culture that produced it as it had done in the past.106 As a New England native, Baxter sought an architecture that provided a counterpoint to advanced industrialization and the increasing metropolitan civilization around him. For Jorge Francisco Liernur, who has acutely defined this connection, Baxter was simultaneously an observer from the modern metropolis and a historian searching for a formal counterreaction to the perceptual indifference, or blasé attitude, caused by the metropolis itself.107 Much like what Baxter sought, Vasconcelos searched for a grandiose architecture applicable to a postrevolutionary Mexican context. He rejected the growing metropolization of Mexico City—evident in the increasing production and importation of metropolitan architectures of Paris—and the positivist program of the Díaz dictatorship. This architecture needed to be a true expression of the Mexican race instead of “conforming” to a style and being “impressionistic.” Nevertheless, as theorized, colonial architecture created a spiritually elevating and inspiring environment that represented the enlightening spirit of education and its tradition in Mexico. Here, Vasconcelos’ famous statement that “only the races that do not think put the ceiling at the height of their heads!”—echoing Acevedo’s criticism of the use of the hall—pointedly characterizes the architecture he was after.108 It was to be grandiose, monumental. It would have abundant light and vast spaces. At the inauguration of the Centro Educativo Belisario Domínguez (Figure 1.7), Vasconcelos described the characteristics of these new forms:

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1.7 Edmundo Zamudio, Escuela Belisario Domínguez, 1923

We can divulge the fact that there exists, in the capital, a modern school of genuinely Mexican type . . . [T]o make it, we have not followed any foreign models: not in the architecture, not in the decoration, not in the organization, not in the spirit of its teaching . . . On the exterior, the architecture is derived from the seventeenth-century colonial Mexican style and shown through the clusters of external ornamentation, niches, and cornices. This happy style of ornamentation, very common in Puebla, Querétaro, and the cities with warm soil, was chosen because the somber tone of the tezontle [stone] has been abused in the capital and we wanted the children to enjoy a well-lit [claro] environment.109 The designs of the schools for the sep were thoroughly colonial in style and meant to be read as Mexican. They were to reinforce an authentic culture based on traditions as well as modern educational needs. They served, too, as a vehicle for and representation of Vasconcelos’ transcendental beliefs: We must continue building in [an architectural style that responds to the old colonial tradition], because we have the obligation to continue to create an autochthonous culture. That requires original and firm bases. We reject the wooden house because it does not adapt to the ideal expression of our race coupled, as the ancients had [done], with the eternal. In this way, we will reject everything that is inferior to the ethnic and 36

aesthetic potential of the Mexican.110

The building to house the headquarters of the Ministry of Education was to embody

if walls could talk

these ideals and serve as a critical counterpoint to the previous regime. Besides the use of a colonial aesthetic, this “Mexican” building needed to be constructed with Mexican materials and labor. This requirement likewise reflected Vasconcelos’ transcendental concerns: it is important to note that the plans, the materials, the execution, everything seen here is exclusively the work of Mexican engineers, artists, and workers. The services of foreign workers were not accepted because we wanted it to be the case that this house was, similar to the spiritual work that it must shelter, a genuinely national enterprise in the broadest sense of the term. National not because it pretends to be blindly enclosed within our geographical boundaries but because it proposes to create the character of an autochthonous Hispano-American culture!111 The sep headquarters building was renovated as a modernized version of the colonial style that reflected the synthetic culture of the cosmic race. This architectural syncretism was based on the stylistic mixture of colonial architecture with modern sensibilities, new materials such as reinforced concrete, and contemporary programmatic elements such as a radio station, studio, and propaganda office. It was clear in Vasconcelos’ inauguration speech for the sep building that his intentions were to make it part, symbol, and activator of the process of post-Revolution reconstruction.112 These concerns even affected the education of architects to reflect the social and educational role of the state; they would work with the government to create a new national architecture.113 In the context of the utopian aesthetic and philosophical theories that Vasconcelos

1.8 Detailed plan, Court of the Races (Court of Labor), sep headquarters

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1.9 Manuel Centurión, Mexican culture relief, Court of the Races, sep headquarters

developed, this synthesis and transformation would be incomplete without the mediating capacity of painting and sculpture, used in a referential and didactic manner, to

1.10 Manuel Centurión, Greek culture relief, Court of

reshape the somewhat self-referential and autonomous qualities of the emerging mod-

the Races, sep headquarters

ernist architecture. These representational, legible, and collective systems were to educate diverse elements of the population about the sociopolitical changes taking place in post-Revolution Mexico. Vasconcelos’ requirements included the sculptural expression of racial miscegenation in the Hispano-American culture. As quoted earlier, Vasconcelos described this clearly in La Raza Cósmica regarding the first courtyard’s representations of Spain, Mexico, Greece, and India and what were to have been statues symbolizing four contemporary “races”—white, black, red, and yellow. Manuel Centurión sculpted allegorical reliefs that were placed in the corners of the first courtyard (Figure 1.8). In the northwest corner an image of Quetzalcoatl represented the Mexican culture; in the northeast corner an image of Plato represented the culture of Greece; in the southwest corner an image of the ship Las Casas represented Spain at the height of its colonial power and as the initiator of a new culture; and in the southeast corner an image of Buddha represented the culture of India (Figures 1.9–1.12). Additionally, Ignacio Asúnsolo was to carve four statues to represent the white, black, red, and yellow races to be placed in the first courtyard. Only one of these statues, that of the white race, was ever modeled in plaster

38

and placed in the building (Figure 1.13); it was later mutilated and removed.114 Because

of the proposed statues, the court was initially called the Court of the Races; it was later renamed the Court of Labor because of the iconography of Rivera’s murals. Vasconcelos

1.11 Manuel Centurión, Spanish culture relief, Court of the Races, sep headquarters

intended for these statues to indicate the racial evolution of humanity.115 They also were

1.12 Manuel Centurión, culture of India relief, Court

to show that “Latin America boasts of possessing the contribution of the four human

of the Races, sep headquarters

types and is preparing to build, with all of these and by demolishing all prejudices, the truly universal type.”116 In the second court Centurión carved reliefs in the corners representing branches of the plastic arts (or eternal themes, as Vasconcelos described them): sculpture in the northwest corner, painting in the southwest corner, music in the southeast corner, and architecture in the northeast corner (Figure 1.14). In the building, Vasconcelos wanted to foreground important Latin American cultural achievements. To show the greatness of the culture, Asúnsolo was commissioned to carve busts of Justo Sierra, Amado Nervo, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Rubén Darío to be placed in vaulted niches in the corners of the first courtyard. The second courtyard was to have busts of four important Latin American prose writers and educators: Domingo F. Sarmiento, Juan Montalvo, Andrés Bello, and José Enrique Rodó.117 Ultimately, the exaltation of these ideas through their architectural placement suggests their prominence in the (symbolic) formation of a new racial and aesthetic culture. The importance of the synthesis of philosophy, race, and art was to be expressed in two other sculptural elements for the building. The first was a sculpture, commissioned to Asúnsolo but unbuilt, to represent Vasconcelos’ third state of humanity, based on his

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1.13 Ignacio Asúnsolo (right), La Raza Blanca, ca. 1923, with assistant Germán Cueto(?)

law of the three states of energy and the developmental process for the cosmic race. It was through the physical manifestations of Vasconcelos’ philosophical concerns that

1.14 Manuel Centurión, architecture relief, Court of

the user of the architecture could position himself or herself within that developing his-

Fiestas, sep headquarters

tory and state. The second sculptural element was Asúnsolo’s set of Apollo and Dionysus beside Minerva atop the main façade (Figure 1.15). Vasconcelos considered this triad symbolic of Mexican culture. The central figure of Minerva stood as an allegorical representation of ancient wisdom, of the Hegelian will to Spirit, and of Mexican culture itself. Apollo and Dionysus characterized educational and artistic proposals.118 The set stood as the mediation of all three figures and signified the balanced integration of the new educational program: We have only wanted to invent and create, but the only ones who can invent are those who know the past and know how to coordinate it with the present in order to forge the future. Something of all this we have wanted to express in this Ministry through the symbolism of the statues. We began by placing on the attic an allegory that recalls Greek tragedy and the eternal conflicts of human nature. On one side, Apollo signifies pure beauty—beauty as image and everything that tends to become fantasy. Placed on the other side is Dionysus, the god of passion and overwhelming force that wants life

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to be a deep drunkenness of the heart and the senses. In the center, Minerva, the God-

dess of Wisdom, arises conciliatory and luminous like the conscience of one who has achieved solving a deep conflict.

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119

As symbols of the redemptive project of the building’s mission, these statues were conceptually modeled after Nietzsche’s ideas of Apollonian and Dionysian art in The Birth of Tragedy. For Nietzsche, Greek tragedy as the highest form of art occurred at the moment when the Apollonian and Dionysian sensibilities united. Vasconcelos as well as Nietzsche, however, saw this moment as superseded by the introduction of rational, instrumental thinking (by figures such as Socrates) that led to the sacrifice of art and tragic life for the optimism of reason.120 Nietzsche contended that the power of Greek tragedy was centered on the fact that the chorus was indistinguishable from the audience, allowing both to take part in the artistic event itself. Its power was that it “presents [images of life to us] and incites us to a thoughtful comprehension of the essence of life dwelling within them.”121 In this sense, art and life became indistinguishable. Vasconcelos sought artistic and architectural creations that would surround viewers in the same fashion. The reference to these Nietzschean ideas reinforces two points addressed earlier: the importance of a disinterested artistic experience for the betterment of life and the need to control instrumental reason and civilization’s pragmatism.

the secretaría de educación pública and the “mexican mural renaissance” In the mural production for the headquarters of the sep, two principal figures—out of the three foreseen by Vasconcelos in his inauguration speech— stood out in materializing these ideals. Roberto Montenegro was to create a stained

1.15 Ignacio Asúnsolo, Apollo and Dionysus flanking Minerva, main façade, sep headquarters

architecture as revolution

glass of an Indian shooting an arrow at the stars. Diego Rivera was to paint feminine figures on the walls of the corridor wearing the regional dress of every state as well as a mural in the stairwell that showed the landscape from the sea toward the volcanoes of the central region of Mexico rising upward. In Vasconcelos’ plan, Adolfo Best Maugard was to have painted murals in the interiors of the rooms.122 In the end, only Montenegro and Rivera completed their part of the work, although not exactly in the way Vasconcelos foresaw in his speech.123 Montenegro was chosen to create a stained-glass piece for the sep because he already had created large stained-glass windows. Produced in 1922 for the San Pedro y San Pablo Church that Vasconcelos had converted into the Sala de Discusiones Libres (Open Discussion Space), they depicted regional scenes and costumes. One showed the járabe tapatío, a regional Mexican dance, and the other a parrot saleswoman the artist saw on a trip to Manzanillo with Vasconcelos. The pieces were well received by critics, and Vasconcelos would hail them as part of his burgeoning educational program: In a nation such as ours, sick with a justified inferiority complex, [words of praise toward local artisans and artists] were part of the task of the educator [who] utilized the triumphs of that incipient renaissance to encourage [the artists] and give them confidence in their own capacities.124 In the same space Montenegro painted the mural Arbol de la vida (Tree of Life). Its theme from Goethe, Acción supera al destino. ¡Vence! (Action surpasses destiny. Conquer!), was imposed by Vasconcelos. This mural was the first to be created under the Ministry of Education (the contract being signed in June 1921) but also the first among postrevolutionary public buildings to incorporate and idealize popular and vernacular motifs and forms in its imagery. It foregrounded autochthonous cultural values and served a didactic function.125 All of these would become characteristic elements of the muralist movement. The inclusion of national elements resulted from Vasconcelos’ campaign in which he, along with painters and poets, traveled throughout the country convincing people of the necessity of a federal education department. During these trips, the artists recorded the landscapes and people. They learned and documented local and regional artisanal techniques, many of which were disappearing. The goal of this aspect of the traveling campaign was to restart or reinvigorate local artistic production through the tutelage of trained artists.126 Vasconcelos’ influence on Montenegro can be seen in the murals he created for the sep headquarters. There, Montenegro completed four interior, private murals located in the offices of the minister and assistant minister and in a waiting room that separated them.127 Their iconography and themes are directly related to Vasconcelos’ interest at the time: philosophies of India (he completed and published his Estudios indostánicos in 1920), religion, autochthonous culture, and the rural family. The models for these included the Chilean teacher and poet Gabriela Mistral and the Argentine singer Bertha Singerman, both of whom Vasconcelos admired highly.128 In the minister’s office, directly behind the minister’s desk, on the north wall Montenegro painted Rito budista (Buddhist Rite, Figure 1.16). The composition is divided

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into three parts in response to the position of a window niche. On the left side we see a

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1.16 Roberto Montenegro, Rito budista, mural, minister’s office, sep headquarters

1.17 Roberto Montenegro, Rito cristiano, mural, minister’s office, sep headquarters

figure of a young Buddha meditating on a lotus flower placed atop an ornate elephant. Behind him a circle radiates from his head. On the right side is a figure of a veiled, dancing woman whose dress appears in full. Next to her, closer to the east wall, an incense holder releases undulating smoke. In the center, above the window jamb, the yin-yang symbol is surrounded by clouds and contains a lotus leaf upon which a closed book sits. From the yin-yang symbol circles with stars of various intensities radiate. Rito cristiano (Christian Rite) was painted on the entry (south) wall opposite the minister’s desk (Figure 1.17). This painting is divided into three parts because of the placement of the door. This mural, however, is more symmetrically composed than its counterpart. At the edge of the door two female figures (Mistral and Singerman) stand in front of a mass of vegetation, flowers, and birds. Behind them, rendered in perspective, Montenegro depicted a piece of land whose edges are cliffs into an abyss, making it appear as if it is floating in space. On the left edge of the mural a kneeling female figure

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architecture as revolution

holds a sphere while staring at the sky. On the other edge a standing female figure holds a paper and appears as if she is about to begin speaking. In the center, above the door jamb, a curving path leads toward the edge of the aforementioned land as well as to a bright Christian cross with a Star of David at its center. From it, like its Asian counterpart, concentric circles of bright color radiate outward. On the upper portion of the two remaining walls, Montenegro painted a frieze depicting intertwined branches and medallions with names of authors and thinkers whom Vasconcelos admired. Montenegro painted a similar frieze showing the heraldic seals of Latin American countries among intertwined branches in the waiting room between the offices of the minister and assistant minister, the Salón Bolívar, which featured Almeida Crespo’s large painting of Simón Bolívar (Figure 1.18). In the office of the assistant minister Montenegro painted intertwined branches as well as statements by Pascal, Jesus, and Confucius (Figure 1.19).129 The assistant minister’s office had only one full mural, on the south wall, while the three other walls were decorated with the frieze. Descanso y trabajo (Rest and Work)

1.18 Salón Bolívar, minister’s office waiting room, sep headquarters

1.19 Assistant minister’s office, sep headquarters

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1.20 Roberto Montenegro, Trabajo, mural,

depicts rural families (Figures 1.20–1.21) and are positioned in relation to a door behind the desk of the minister’s assistant. Their central, upper portion, however, was not granted the importance of the other two murals and, rather, continued the landscape

assistant minister’s office, sep headqurters

1.21 Roberto Montenegro, Descanso, mural, assistant minister’s office, sep headqurters

depicted on the two longer sides of the office. On the right side, in Descanso, an older man stands rowing a boat while a contemplative woman sits restfully by his side. On the left side, Trabajo depicts a young man carrying a basket of fruits with a breast-feeding woman seated at his side. In the background one can distinguish a small colonial town perched on a hillside overlooking a large body of water. The hill rises upward toward its peak, located above the door jamb, and the sun sets behind it. All of the iconography of the painting, such as the dress of the figures, the architecture, and the type of labor, as well as the context in which the elements are placed, give the mural a nationalistic quality. Julieta Ortiz Gaitán notes that this attribute was in keeping with the other murals painted in the building by Rivera and others.130 These themes were not new to Montenegro, however. As we have seen, his interest in autochthonous culture is shown in his 1922 mural and stained-glass windows for the San Pedro y San Pablo Church. For the private office of the assistant minister, Montenegro painted Alegoría del mundo indígena (Allegory of the Indigenous World, Figure 1.22), which shows, on the left, an indigenous woman leaning on a pre-Hispanic stele. Amid a rocky mountain landscape, cactus and nopal plants fill the rest of the panel and serve as the focal image for the right

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architecture as revolution

1.22 Roberto Montenegro, Alegoría del mundo indígena, mural, assistant minister’s office, sep headqurters

1.23 Diego Rivera, mural in staircase, sep headquarters

46

side. At the center, above the window jamb, a low-relief pre-Hispanic carving is painted.

if walls could talk

The remaining three walls—as in the other rooms—have a frieze showing vegetation, in this case native cactus plants. Instead of intertwined branches, the nopales are interspersed with representations of low-relief pre-Hispanic carvings. In contrast to Montenegro’s murals on more secluded interior walls, Rivera’s completed murals on the walls of both courtyards and the stairwell of the first courtyard were accessible to the general public. However, with the exception of the stairwell (Figure 1.23), none of the murals proposed in Vasconcelos’ inauguration speech were painted. Instead, the themes of Rivera’s murals in each courtyard represented aspects of Mexican labor, achievements, and lifestyles.131 Working with Rivera were master mason Luis Escobar, assistant Xavier Guerrero, and decorators Amado de la Cueva and Jean Charlot.132 The murals were done in true fresco. At one point Rivera even experimented by mixing fermented nopal juice with pigments as was done in ancient pre-Hispanic civilizations. Integration of pre-Hispanic or other vernacular systems into modern means of artistic production was investigated, in a variety of ways and media, by other artists trying to utilize the existing Mexican traditions. This can be seen in Adolfo Best Maugard’s book Método de dibujo (1923), describing a teaching method developed for the sep based on traditional forms and systems of representation, and in composer Carlos Chávez’ El fuego nuevo (1921), a ballet commissioned by Vasconcelos based on an Aztec story.133 Although Rivera experimented with materials to tap into the roots of the past, the themes or iconography of his murals did not reflect pre-Hispanic issues or motifs. Rather, they focused on the special characteristics of Mexican life and work. Like Montenegro’s work, their imagery came from his trips to the Mexican countryside, similarly sponsored by Vasconcelos, after his return from Europe.134 In addition to Vasconcelos’ interests and requirements, the murals highlighted social conditions and autochthonous culture in a way that was guided by the manifesto of the Sindicato de Obreros Técnicos, Pintores y Escultores (Union of Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptors) issued in December 1923:135 The noble work of our race, down to its most insignificant spiritual and physical expressions, is native (and essentially Indian) in origin. With their admirable and extraordinary talent to create beauty, peculiar to themselves, the art of the Mexican people is the most wholesome spiritual expression in the world, and this tradition is our greatest treasure. [It is] great because it belongs collectively to the people, and this is why our fundamental aesthetic goal must be to socialize artistic production and wipe out bourgeois individualism.136 This call for a nationalist art echoed the debates regarding architectural syncretism that represented a collective spirit. The very designation of these artists as a “union,” moreover, reinforced their social aspiration to be considered members of the working class and not part of an intellectual, individualized, autonomous elite.137 This impetus for collective production was a driving force in mural production. Because of the resonance of the Sindicato’s ideas with Vasconcelos’ fundamental desire to create a synthetic cultural expression, this mixture of past and emerging artistic traditions, autochthonous culture, and iconography was explored favorably. Furthermore, Rivera expressed an in-

47

terest in the idea of cultural syncretism upon his return from Europe: “It is my wish to study the manifestations of popular art and the ruins of our amazing past with the goal of crystallizing some ideas about art, certain projects that I treasure, and which, if I can achieve them, will give a new and deeper meaning to my work.”138 On the first level of the Court of Labor and following these directives and personal interests in Mexican culture, Rivera depicted various scenes of Mexican industrial and agrarian labor such as El trapiche (The Sugarmill, Figure 1.24), El telar (The Loom), La entrada a la mina (The Mine Entrance), Los alfareros (The Potters), Fundidores rompiendo el crisol (Foundry Workers Opening the Smelter), and El obrero (The Laborer). Some of the labor scenes portray what he saw during his trips to Tehuantepec; one of these is Los frutos (The Fruit Carriers), which shows a woman carrying baskets of fruit in the lush tropical landscape of Oaxaca—in honor of Vasconcelos’ birthplace and sponsorship. Rivera depicted work-related injustices in scenes such as El capataz (The Foreman) and La salida del tiro (The Mine Exit, Figure 1.25). Some of the painted scenes were intended to convey harmony between the rural and urban proletariat; one such image is El abrazo del obrero y del campesino (Embrace of the Worker and the Peasant), which, Rivera said, Vasconcelos only allowed as a compromise after Rivera removed a revolutionary poem 1.24 Diego Rivera, El trapiche, mural, Court of Labor, sep headquarters

from La salida del tiro.139 On the second level Rivera painted forms of intellectual labor such as Los químicos (The Chemists), Los cirujanos (The Surgeons), and La ciencia (Science). On the third level Rivera represented the arts in murals such as La música (Music), La pintura (Painting), and La arquitectura (Architecture). On the first level of the Court of Fiestas, Rivera’s murals show various urban and peasant festivals such as Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), La danza del venadito (Dance of the Deer), and El tianguis (The Market). Despite the manifesto’s call for a collective production, El tianguis covered over murals painted by Jean Charlot and Amado de la Cueva. Rivera did leave intact paintings that stylistically and thematically fit into his vision of the ensemble.140 On the second level de la Cueva and Charlot painted the escutcheons of the states of Mexico.141 Besides the requirement for collective production, the manifesto called for “a monumental art” that because of its scale would be public property. These works would be “ideological works of art for the people” and part of the “aesthetic and educational struggle we are waging.”142 The social implications of the paintings for the sep were obvious even to outsiders. The critic Frederic W. Leighton wrote in 1924 that the monumental integration of art in a public architectural setting had social and political consequences. These were highlighted further by the murals’ references as expressed through direct, legible iconography, which he contrasted to Rivera’s earlier highly symbolic mural La creación (Creation) for the Preparatoria (National High School).143 Leighton identified specific changes: In this new work [ for the sep building] Rivera has simplified his symbolism and has changed his technique. Here the symbolism is more direct and needs no explanation, for the posture of the figures and the expressions on their faces leave no doubt that

1.25 Diego Rivera, La salida del tiro, mural, Court of Labor, sep headquarters

here is a people that has labored hard, a race in which economic slavery has been unable to stamp out the love of beauty, the love of creation and of repose. . . . Rivera is developing among the group of young painters associated with him a spirit

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and sense of the function of the painter as an active element in a healthy society. The

painter is an artisan who plays an indispensable part in architecture. An edifice is not

if walls could talk

complete until the mural decorator and the sculptor have done their parts. . . . But the painter is not only [a] workman and [an] artisan. He is the seer, the dreamer of dreams, and the inspirer of mankind, the one who interprets to a people its own unexpressed wishes and visions. The artist stimulates [the people] to action and contemplation.144 Clearly, Rivera had produced an artistic integration. What is remarkable in Leighton’s account, however, is how closely his description of the work follows Vasconcelos’ mission for the building and utopian notions of art. Rivera developed a communicative art directed toward the illiterate masses. With this, he began solving the problem he set out to solve as early as 1917 when, in criticizing autonomous bourgeois art for remaining in the “ivory tower,” he understood the political importance of art as a communicative tool. For Rivera, as for his maecenas, it was art, regardless of stylistic allegiances, that needed to be legible to all of society and culture.145 This is characteristic of the murals depicting Caperucita Roja, a Mexicanized version of “Little Red Riding Hood” that Carlos Mérida painted in the children’s library in the sep building (Figures 1.26 and 1.27). With this communicative ability, art would have another role, also noted in Leighton’s account. It was to become the instigator of a new, liberating order. For Rivera, art had to serve as the voice of the people, pointing out injustices while simultaneously proposing a new field of action and a new world. Art, in other words, had a greater task than simply reflecting existing conditions. It was to produce change: “The water that runs, produces [hace], and this is better than simple reflection.”146 This task was at the center of Vasconcelos’ muralist program and Rivera’s murals in particular. The art had to work to make the viewer into an author or, more specifically, an actor in the development of history through class and political consciousness and action. The work thus needed to serve as a challenge to the traditional forms of artistic production and distribution. Similar to Walter Benjamin’s thesis in “Author as Producer” (1934),147 the project of muralism would “refunction” (Benjamin used Bertolt Brecht’s word umfunktioniert) the bourgeois infrastructure of art commodification. Because of its public, monumental qualities, its integration into public architecture, and its reliance on forms and themes that were marginalized by the academy, this art was not intended for the art market.148 Instead, the murals served the public in a disinterested way. As seen earlier, Vasconcelos was interested in this quality, although he did not specifically define it in terms of the clear and direct sociopolitical changes that the muralists were after. For him, aesthetic experience moved beyond mere contemplation of the work of art, whether in a state of distraction or not, in order to engender the aesthetic or third period of history. At all levels, Vasconcelos aimed at “democratizing aesthetic experience,” to use a phrase by José Juan Tablada, through the use of public murals (such as the ones at the sep building and in the public schools), the active engagement in art production via the open air schools and art education programs, and the experience of art by the masses in public events. The Estadio Nacional (1924), the National Stadium built for Vasconcelos’ sep, was a good example of a structure intended to meet these objectives (Figure 1.28). It combined the monumental work of muralism and colonial architecture, both examples of cultural syncretism representing Mexico, and addressed an audience that attended public functions such as sporting events in that venue. These events provided the necessary contact with artistic works that Vasconcelos’ aesthetic

49

architecture as revolution

1.26 Carlos Mérida, Caperucita Roja, mural, children’s library, sep headquarters

1.27 Carlos Mérida, Caperucita Roja, mural detail, children’s library, sep headquarters

and educational theories demanded. Their general nature also served to blur the distinctions between art and life by making these accessible in “ordinary” places and life situations.

the building as text The struggle . . . to multiply schools, theatres and opera houses, to make galleries accessible to crowds, the fact that villages and factories which distinguish themselves in the sector of production are awarded with aesthetic and cultural entertainments, show that, once in power, the proletariat tends to establish the reign of beauty and grace, to elevate the dignity and freedom of those who create beauty. antonio gr amsci, “[communism and art]” The headquarters building for the sep stands first and foremost as a material represen50

tation of the post-Revolution needs, desires, and conditions that determined its produc-

if walls could talk

1.28 José Villagrán García, Estadio Nacional, 1924

tion. It also stands as a testament and manifestation of Vasconcelos’ ideology. This is important to remember when addressing a project that was to serve as a catalyst for all of postrevolutionary culture.149 Questions remain, however. How is one to read Vasconcelos’ project in light of the emerging modernization in Mexico following the Mexican Revolution? For those associated with him, how is this project a materialization of what it meant to be building in this moment? Countless volumes and studies have been written about the so-called Mexican Mural Renaissance and its most important protagonists. Here, the mythical, heroic, and revolutionary status of the artists as autonomous producers of culture has been emphasized. Art history has traditionally idealized these artists as individuals who in their work rejected the traditional bourgeois system of artistic production and as constant antagonists to the very institutions that set the “renaissance” in motion. In a similar vein, some art historians have even gone as far as declaring that the works of these painters, as well as those muralists working in the 1930s, were “mere wall decoration”—without grand intentions and without fitting into an overall ideological and philosophical context.150 Little, if any, effort has been devoted to the study of mural production in relationship to Vasconcelos’ theories and ideals and their relation to the architectural structures that held it in place. At the center of this relationship is the existing connection between Vasconcelos’ discourse about the role of art in public education and the utopian role of art in transforming existing structures of self-perception as a way of initiating a transcendental experience. In this way, artistic production was specifically aimed at a collective reception at all levels of the population through a public, governmental, and educational program. Thus, this production questioned traditional modes of art perception and commodification through its didactic qualities, although not necessarily in a pragmatic or instrumental sense. The transformation of the role of artists and mural production described and suggested in Vasconcelos’ educational and philosophical theories became embodied and manifested by both Roberto Montenegro and Diego Rivera in the sep headquarters. The materialization of Vasconcelos’ rhythmic theories and the development of their utopian, theological potential within the direct and practical socialist theories advocated by

51

architecture as revolution

the Sindicato served as the artistic basis to socially transform the conditions of production in post-Revolution Mexico. In his Autobiografía, José Clemente Orozco described Vasconcelos’ educational and aesthetic programs in relationship to mural production: “In 1922, mural painting ‘had its table set’ . . . [as] experienced artists and revolutionary government officials understood their place [in the development of a new artistic stage in Mexico].”151 Vasconcelos’ memoirs make it clear that he considered artists to be central to his educational campaign. When aesthetic decisions were made, even in the case of architecture, he generally turned to artists first. In a response to a polemic written in 1924 about the National Stadium, for example, Vasconcelos described the artists’ impact on production for the sep: Ever since the beginning of the works, I have had at my disposal excellent builders, such as the Engineer Méndez Rivas, who is capable, diligent, and energetic: everything needed so that work is accomplished quickly and solidly. But, naturally, I have not considered giving him architectural responsibility: first, because he is a military engineer; and secondly, because in matters of taste we have never agreed. I have constantly said: don’t bring me engineering drawings, I don’t want sketches done with a straight-edge and compass; break your instruments and use your imagination. That is why I called the artists. On the Department of Engineering I have imposed architects such as Macedo y Arbeu, painters such as Montenegro and Rivera, and sculptors such as Centurión and Asúnsolo.152 The role Vasconcelos assigned to artists reflected his strong belief that it was the state’s task to promote the arts and its creators. In this way, the artists become apostles for the people instead of remaining mere dilettantes.153 Vasconcelos’ belief in the importance of artists in the development of Mexico was evident in the very conceptual framework of the sep. The Department of Fine Arts held equal weight with the sep’s two other main components—the Department of Libraries and the Schools Department. The tripartite division of the sep, developed by Vasconcelos through a theory derived from Pythagoras, not only structured its activities and divisions but also organized the very architecture built for it.154 The Department of Fine Arts was responsible for all programs relating to artistic training, including sculpture and painting, music, singing, and, more specifically, mural production. The status of fine arts as equal to the other branches of study in the Department of Education reinforced two significant directions in Vasconcelos’ concerns. The first was the importance of aesthetics in attracting the attention of students (or viewers) in the “disinterested” sense and thus in triggering a transcendental experience.155 The second, fitting a more pragmatic need, was the focus on the pictorial nature of art (and realism of the muralist program) to teach a large, mostly illiterate audience about itself in order to raise public consciousness. This was especially poignant when the illiteracy rate in Mexico was about 78.6 percent at the beginning of the Revolution in 1910.156 Both concerns were made manifest in Vasconcelos’ aesthetic proposals for the sep— architecture, mural paintings, sculpture, and to some extent the collective festivals and concerts held in schools, the National Stadium, and the courtyards at the headquar-

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ters (Figure 1.29). Here, Anatolii Lunacharskii’s influence on Vasconcelos provided the

strongest direction: members of the intelligentsia needed to submit their energies to

if walls could talk

collective needs and serve, until no longer needed, as leaders. The artist, in Lunacharskii’s view, “organizes, enriches, preserves, and transmits emotional experience, experience of social sensations.”157 In Vasconcelos’ search for artistic forms he proposed new models of artistic distribution and collective reception that were to be linked to his educational ideals and, ultimately, to political change: The whole program of public education was seen in those moments as the first manifestation of consciousness and constructive activity of the Revolution. It occurred to me then to make sure that the national art would become a reflection of the intensity of life at that moment. I called all the painters to ask them to leave their salon-style paintings and portraits and to occupy themselves with great mural decoration. Publicly, I stigmatized all studio art as bourgeois and mediocre, and we began to encourage open-air painting and muralism.158 Vasconcelos, however, distinguished himself from Lunacharskii. While Lunacharskii insisted on the education of the working class to appreciate past artistic practices rather than new ones to raise the cultural level and instigate the creation of a new proletarian culture, Vasconcelos was willing to forgo traditional methods of bourgeois art production and individualized perception through muralism, public open-air art schools, and

1.29 Inauguration festivities, Court of the Races, sep

general art education developed from indigenous and vernacular arts by Best Maugard.

headquarters

architecture as revolution

1.30 Secretaría de Educación Pública headquarters, front façade

Lunacharskii maintained a separation between the artist, as a member of the intelligentsia, and the proletariat.159 Vasconcelos’ position, on the other hand, blurred distinctions between high artistic practice and vernacular folk art; he fostered a turn toward regional traditions that many artists embraced and that materialized in the architecture he commissioned. Furthermore, in its 1923 manifesto the Sindicato sought to soften the distinctions between artistic practice and productive labor. For Vasconcelos, however, the ultimate blurring between art and life came in the educational context. The architecture and art that surrounded the student would dissolve the limits between the active perception of a work of art and one, as Walter Benjamin would define it, “consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction.”160 Moreover, realistic and common representations as well as architectural form, space, and details based on the colonial style and traditions transformed the contemplative character of the art and architectural object to become a didactic tool for transcendental and active change. Art was thought, educationally, to awaken curiosity in its viewers. The sep headquarters that Vasconcelos commissioned was to represent his early philosophical and educational concerns through the integration of specific artistic forms 54

and architectural references (Figure 1.30). At its architectural core, the building’s modi-

fied colonial style stood to represent the syncretic notions of the people it was meant

if walls could talk

to serve. It was a manifestation, in other words, of the culmination of the idea of the cosmic race. The role assigned to mural painting and to architecture in its potential for education and raising class consciousness—especially when read in light of Benjamin’s descriptions of a monumental, public art—would aid in hastening the transformation of the people it served to become members of Vasconcelos’ idealized fifth race. The larger issue of the relationship of the sep and its headquarters building to the emergence of new public structures and modes of production and perception—brought about by expanding capitalism as well as by the metropolis and its material representation—remains unresolved. Nonetheless, the integration of the arts into a synthetic text resonated with the quality of synthesis found in Apollonian and Dionysian art as understood by Vasconcelos. In the sep headquarters building, the aesthetic, or Dionysian, experience was kept in balance with the pragmatics of the communicative message, or the Apollonian, ultimately yielding some transcendental knowledge and experience. At the building’s entrance this intention was made clear by Asúnsolo’s sculptural set: Apollo and Dionysus poised in balance with Minerva, the Goddess of Wisdom.

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2

la ciudad falsificada the avant-garde and the literary city

in a late article about diego rivera’s mural la creación, manuel maples Arce described its importance in reconceptualizing artistic production: “The work of art had changed not only in the manner it was conceived but also in its function: it is taken from the intimate quality of the salon painting to be placed near the public’s gaze.”1 Maples Arce was present in 1923 at the mural’s inauguration. In fact, he spoke publicly about it. There is, however, no record of what he said. Yet, if this more recent writing tells us anything, it is that his talk might well have been about the new role of art. At the time, after all, Maples Arce was deeply interested in this issue as the leader and spokesperson of the literary avant-gardist group the Estridentistas. In the new qualities of Rivera’s mural Maples Arce found parallels with what he was trying to do in his poetry and other writings. Rivera’s mural, its “publicness,” implied art’s detachment from the bourgeois interior. Instead, art found its place within its newly proposed public and social space. Maples Arce’s account of La creación focused on the renewed vocation of art within the public realm: to be part of the praxis of everyday life and aid in the transformation of society. His assessment shows that in Mexico, as in many emerging European and Latin American avant-gardes at the time, the role and status of art and the artist were being questioned. Central to this development was the relationship between art and life. This

I would like to present this character in a different setting. On a different stage. But it is impossible. To present it in another setting, on another stage, I would have to invent them. Then, this history would not be real at all.

relationship, in turn, was centered on the role of modernity in the transformation of

ar q ueles v e l a ,

language and communication to achieve the transformation of the world. As the critic

“ los esp ejos de l a voz ”

Raymond Williams has shown, the new metropolitan centers became the locus of these changes. In “Metropolitan Perceptions and the Emergence of Modernism” (1985),2 he asserts that it is the metropolis that defines and affects the development of the avantgarde’s notion of art, language, and perception. The large modern city provides its inhabitants with a heterogeneity of viewpoints and a multiplicity of traditions. Primarily a result of immigration, the very lack of commonality of language and traditions allows the artists working within this milieu to understand both language and customs to be culturally determined conventions and thus arbitrary and malleable. Also as a result of immigration, the metropolis provides new audiences for the artists in the form of the proletariat and working class. Ultimately, these and the emerging means of production, distribution, and consumption characteristic of new technologies and communication systems (including advertising, media, and so forth) enacted new forms of perception. The effects of the metropolis on the individual were used by the historical avant-garde to generate artistic directions and theoretical strategies. These effects were best described by the German sociologist Georg Simmel in his seminal essay of 1903, “The Metropolis and Mental Life”: the urban dweller suffered from a blasé attitude caused by the intensification of nervous energy and the predominance of an (anonymous) monetary economy.3 Modern means of production and forms of interpersonal relations characteristic of metropolitan life led to the inhabitant’s sense of anonymity, alienation, and lack of individuality. The avant-garde, however, saw the importance of this negativity. For the architectural historian and critic Manfredo Tafuri, fostering or deterring it was at the core of the avant-garde’s formal, ornamental, and experimental programs.4 The key problem of the avant-garde was “how to shake off the anxiety provoked by the loss of center, by the solitude of the individual immersed in revolt, of how to convert that anxiety into action so as not to remain forever dumb in the face of it.”5 The historical avant-garde, in absorbing the logic of the metropolis and in accounting for its effects, was presented

The multidimensional and paroxysmal life of the ‘Metropolis,’ the worker’s explosions that reflect the mirrors of the inverted days, do not paginate themselves with the moonlight. ‘¡Chopin to the Electric Chair!’ Above all, we must delineate the field of aesthetic speculations. “ manifiesto estr identis ta número 3 ”

architecture as revolution

with two possibilities. Both involved presenting a completely exacerbated and reified experience of the metropolitan condition as a way of working through the negativity. The first possibility was that human action, reduced to mechanical reactions to the city as a result of the blasé attitude, could only be incited by shock. This shock is captured, for instance, in the acerbic language of Marinetti’s Futurist manifesto or in Dadaist chaos. The second possibility entailed the assumption that the metropolitan individual was an intellectualized city dweller capable of a higher degree of comprehension (attributed precisely to the intellectualization of emotions and relations determined, according to Simmel, by the monetary economy). This intellectualization is characteristic of the process of abstraction undergone, for example, by De Stijl painters Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg. Simmel’s and Williams’ descriptions of the modern city and its metropolitan effects are based on typical European or North American cities. By the early twentieth century, however, Latin American cities had not developed in the same way. As has been argued before, Latin America suffered from what Nestor García Canclini defined as an “incomplete modernization.” As a result, much of the development of the Latin American avant-garde is not based so much on localized perceived experiences of the metropolitan centers and their effects. Instead, we find the importation of avant-gardist sensibilities as they relate to the European and/or North American modern city. Despite this importation, Latin American artists and thinkers did not wholeheartedly accept these foreign ideas without critically reevaluating them and, in many cases, selecting pieces to incorporate into more local responses—what we have referred to as “transculturation.” In addition, despite the lack of “completion” of Latin American modernity, it would be wrong to assume that its cities did not offer the types of stimulus and perspectives of typical modern metropolises. We find, in fact, complex and rich reactions and developments by Latin American artists to their own urban contexts. Incomplete or not, these metropolitan centers still had the characteristic modern elements and conditions in place, albeit different from those in equivalent European or American centers, and Latin American artists reacted to them. Importation of technology, development of infrastructures, and modernization of important urban centers increased as means to attract foreign investors and capital for factories and the sale of commodities and raw materials. This development model prevailed in Mexico City during the Porfiriato. The urban environment—particularly the metropolis—was the Estridentistas’ principal preoccupation. An environment inhabited by new and nascent modes of production, consumption, and representation, the existing city exhibited sensorial stimuli to which their artistic production responded. As such, this work accepted the logic of the metropolis and metropolitan conditions, its order and its chaos, its mass-reproducibility, and its systems of production and consumption. However, at the same time, their work demonstrates an active search for a comprehensible system to contribute toward a broader legibility of space, place, and time within Mexico’s emergent modernity. For the Estridentistas to achieve such legibility involved a mediation of both the logic of the metropolis and ways to make it comprehensible, centered on translating the existing conditions of the Mexican city—its nascent and incomplete modernity—into an invented version (or “false” version, as they would define it) of the Mexican metropolis. In this way, they would create the “new reality,” a locus of “disorderly humanity”—to use

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la ciudad falsificada

2.1 Germán Cueto, Estridentópolis en 1975, 1925

the words of Jaime Torres-Bodet, a contemporaneous Mexican writer—that became the stimulus for the work of art. The invention of the modern city entailed the creation of a new perceptual apparatus. Through it, they would be able to see, read, and translate the existing conditions in order to enact the social change ultimately demanded by the postrevolutionary context and needs. The “falsified city” of the Estridentistas is an appropriate place to begin to understand this mediation. The paradigm of the Estridentista city was, obviously, Estridentópolis (Figure 2.1). Created in 1925 by the painter Germán Cueto, this image of a city in fact presented a modern metropolis as it would appear fifty years after its initial conception. According to its main advocate, poet and writer Germán List Arzubide, Estridentópolis realizó la verdad estridentista: ciudad absurda, desconectada de la realidad cotidiana, corrigió líneas rectas de la monotonía desenrollando el panorama. Borroneada por la niebla, está más lejos en cada noche y regresa en las auroras rutinarias; luída por el teclado de la lluvia, los soles la afirman en el calendario de los nuevos días; sus ventanas giran hacia los paisajes que decoraron de amplitud Ramón Alva de la Canal y Leopoldo Méndez; las calles trizan contorsionadas de afanes inagurales; por las aceras van viajeros apresados de tiempo; sus arquitecturas se han erigido de líneas audaces avisoras de la existencia; el alba la levanta cada vez más alta y más rígida, flota sobre el momento desenfrentado del medio día, entre el clamor anónimo del tráfico 59

architecture as revolution

que desparrama las avenidas; en las tardes es fastuosa, maquillada de cielos solemnes. Anclada en el abandono de sus edificios que despiertan de luces eléctricas las avanzadas de la noche, se escurre en el silencio; amplía sus avenidas y las liquida de paseantes para que en la soledad formal de las horas abandonadas a los temas ascencionales, los fundadores siembren sus palabras aviónicas.6 In Estridentópolis, a mixture of artistic and literary techniques was used. The conceptualization and artistic expression of this city responded to the changing visions of modern life. The way in which the metropolis and its architecture were aesthetically represented gave rise to an abstract and rational sensibility intended to have collective influence. The peculiarity of Estridentópolis en 1975 lies in the way that by imagining an exaggerated form of the metropolis in Mexico, the author (a non-architect) accurately predicts the morphological development of a typical city in the second half of the twentieth century. And, despite his architectural limitations, its form never materialized into the romantic utopias of architects like Hugh Ferris, Le Corbusier, or even Ludwig Hilberseimer.

estridentismo and modernity

Like other historical avant-gardist groups,

the Estridentista movement began with the publication and public distribution of a manifesto, Actual No. 1 (Figure 2.2). Produced as a broadsheet, in the tradition of José Guadalupe Posada’s work, it was distributed in Mexico City in December 1921. The movement ended in 1927 with the collapse of Governor Heriberto Jara’s government in Veracruz; he was its biggest benefactor, supporter, and promoter.7 While the group was short-lived, the range of its members’ interests and production included poetry, narratives, novels, periodicals, didactic texts, and publication of seminal national texts.8 The Estridentista movement became one of the most important for the incipient Mexican artistic milieu and sensibilities developing after the Revolution. Its members included the poets and writers Manuel Maples Arce, Germán List Arzubide, Salvador Gallardo, and Arqueles Vela. Historian Luis Mario Schneider notes that the strategy of the Estridentista manifestos was to incite “a caustic and iconoclastic diatribe against all that was established: academism, solemnity, religion, national heroes, the literary patriarchs of Nation.”9 Written by Maples Arce, Actual No. 1 was directly influenced by various contemporary literary and avant-gardist currents, such as F. T. Marinetti’s Futurism, Guillermo de la Torre and R. Lasso de la Vega’s ultraismo, Vicente Huidobro’s creacionismo, and the synthetic sense of simultaneity characteristic of French and Spanish cubism. Estrangement techniques common to other literary avant-gardes figured prominently within it. The introduction of the absurd, irrational, and fragmentary, characteristic of Dadaism, for instance, appeared in different guises throughout Estridentista manifestos and work. For the Estridentistas, as for other avant-gardist groups, the relationship between literature and the plastic arts was important. Its members understood and exploited the ways that each medium informed the other. For them, this relationship had the ability to denote certain information but more importantly to connote information beyond the immediacy of the text or image. Estridentista writers, already aware of the power of this relationship, maintained a constant dialogue with plastic artists who, in turn, developed 60

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2.2 Manuel Maples Arce, Actual No. 1, broadsheet manifesto, 1921

formal and pictorial manifestations of literary themes, images, and techniques. Art’s ability to connote innovative imagery and ideals aided in the development of new modes of artistic production resonating with Estridentista ideas and concepts. Among its artists we find the painters and engravers Jean Charlot, Fermín Revueltas, Leopoldo Méndez, and Ramón Alva de la Canal. Their manifestos and publications list as members the photographers Tina Modotti and Edward Weston, the composer Silvestre Revueltas, and the muralist Diego Rivera. Given an all-inclusive relationship between art and literature and their interest in 61

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using both to transform life, the Estridentistas established themselves as part of the historical artistic avant-garde of the 1920s and developed an art intended to change art’s very definition. By this definition, bourgeois artistic styles were rejected. Instead, art was to be accessible to the new postrevolutionary Mexican proletariat masses. Its main field of operations would be, then, the city, its interpretation, and its redeployment in literary and artistic work.

theoretical underpinnings of the mexican avant-garde What remains to be done? Nothing other than destroy the present form of civilization. In this field, “to destroy” does not mean the same as in the economic field. It does not mean to deprive humanity of the material products that it needs to subsist and develop. It means to destroy spiritual hierarchies, prejudices, idols and ossified traditions. antonio gr amsci, “marinetti the revolutionary” Actual No. 1 defines the parameters within which Estridentista’s poetry and literature could act. It expresses the contemporary context and its members’ attitudes to a developing modernity in the post-Revolution context. The material effects of Estridentismo, resulting from its theories, techniques, and worldview, are espoused in Actual No. 1 and in the subsequent work that it influenced. At its core is the Estridentista call for a renovation of literature and art engendered by new ways of understanding modernity and, in particular, the emergent metropolitan conditions in Mexico. Like most contemporary avant-garde movements, Estridentismo focused on altering the perception of reality by introducing a critical and denaturalizing lens on the individual and collective actions of its members and of its audience, on experimenting with artistic forms, and on understanding the role of tradition and, ultimately, human relations. The Estridentistas clearly attempted to challenge the autonomy of art within the praxis of life and, as such, fit into the now commonplace definition of historical avant-garde movements outlined in Peter Bürger’s Theory of the Avant-Garde (1974). Written exclusively by Maples Arce, Actual No. 1 described the problems of contemporary literature and their possible solutions. Divided into fourteen points, it articulated the principal tenet of Estridentismo: an urgent and total change in literature and Mexican poetry to respond to the social and economic shifts brought about by modernity. First, Maples Arce addressed Futurist concerns (such as the idolatry of the machine and its effects on speed and the perception of the world) and demands that, like technology, literature be created from the imagination and not copied from reality. Based on the technical principles of Huidobro’s creacionismo, Estridentismo opposed servile imitation and advocated the “creation” of new worlds through poetic language.10 For Huidobro, a Chilean poet who had been associated with the Parisian avant-garde, the poet was to be like a god. Instead of merely reacting and mirroring the world as traditional poetry had done, Huidobro advocated that the poem create reality itself (“Why do you sing about the rose, oh poets! / Make it flower in the poem”). To do this, the poet would use the allusion of the poetic metaphor by combining disparate elements to create new ideas. Beyond this poetic reformation of language and meaning, a poem was modern because it was based on constructive laws and, like industrial products, was rational. Huidobro would explain in 1921 in Le Corbusier’s important journal, L’Espirit Nouveau, 62

In each one of man’s other creations [such as photography, telephones, gramophones,

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and cinematography], we find the process of artificial selection parallel to that of natural selection . . . The same can be found not only in art but also in industry and in all of man’s creations.11 In the “Epoch of Creation” (1921), Huidobro further defined the generative and modern character of this new poetry: Man must create. He no longer imitates. He invents. He adds to facts of the world, born in the bosom of Nature, new facts born in his head: a poem, a picture, a statue, a steamer, an automobile, an airplane. He must create. This is the hallmark of our times. . . . Poetry must not imitate the superficial aspects of things, but follow the constructive laws which form their underlying essence and, by doing so, set man free from all that he is.12 Based on this lineage, Maples Arce’s poetry and its suggested world would be, first, modern and, then, devoid of traces of the past—in other words, new. Second, through references to Futurism, the Estridentista manifesto called for artistic and communicative techniques to translate, communicate, and fulfill a spiritual function. By quoting Marinetti’s Futurist manifesto, Maples Arce declared the importance of the modern, the arbitrary, and the suggestive as antagonistic toward academic and bourgeois tradition. That is, Maples Arce exalted an admiration for the present in opposition to forms of the past. Expressed through what Maples Arce described as his “trademark”—“Chopin to the electric chair!”—he demanded an elimination of past culture and a self-determination in the present through the susceptibility of all that conveyed the modern metropolitan reality: placards, geometric posters, synthetically represented movement, advertisement, and technology. In the spirit of synthesis but “not through syncretism,” the Estridentista manifesto— the seventh point in particular—advocated the combination of different perspectives. Here, the ideas of avant-garde movements—all contemporary “isms”—would be joined to “totalize all interior emotions and sensory suggestions in multiple [multánime] and poliedric form.”13 Instead of trying to encompass or uncritically use foreign ideas, this combination of theories and tendencies was to be somewhat tangential—or “organic,” in Maples Arce’s definition—and reciprocity would play an important role. In the tradition of transculturation, this reciprocal arrangement would ultimately rely on dialogue between the Estridentistas and other movements, seen throughout their work and in Actual No. 1 in particular as a constant “intertextuality” with the ideas of other avantgardist groups. This strategy served to self-marginalize the Estridentistas as outsiders by their not following conventional definitions of the avant-garde and by their having an identity that was always-already in flux. So, instead of simply copying and using foreign elements, Maples Arce, in the eighth and eleventh points of his manifesto, also proposed the use of emotion. As a primordial force and due to its arbitrariness and uncontrollability, emotion was what he saw as necessary to create pure poetry. Through it, as he posited in the beginning, newer and purer values would develop. Part of this critical acceptance and distance from other groups is Maples Arce’s de63

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tachment from Italian Futurism. Here, as part of an urgent call for cosmopolitanism, he demanded a simultaneous rejection of the past—through attacks on tradition and on conservative and reactionary critics—and of an idealized future. Instead, his manifesto and other Estridentista texts called for work to accentuate and articulate the present through the glorification of the effects of modernity, metropolitan life, and technology. Writing in 1927, Germán List Arzubide, one of its members and its eventual historian, defined the movement in the following way, loaded with Estridentista rhetoric and style: El Estridentismo alzó los campamentos del afán bajo las ramazones eléctricas. Las calles desembocaron en los manifiestos clamorosos que atropellaban el burguesismo metropolitano con sus afirmaciones finales. Los cexanel editaron poemas para ser leídos por las frentes en pie, y corrió por la espina dorsal de los anuncios luminosos el estremecimiento lírico de la nueva literatura. Los teatros anunciaron temas actualistas. Los cines se ahondaron de sombras rectilíneas. Los periódicos rindieron sus columnas al desfile de las palabras agoreras. Las mañanas se deshilachaban de noticias sobre el Estridentismo. El Jazz fué incluído en la estética de las horas sport. Se arrojaron al viento los músculos de los estadios. Se decoraron los edificios, abigarrados de sombras parasitarias. En los banquetes, después de los discursos descarados de los “botones” de la diplomacia, florecía la voz de los dominadores clavando los puños de sus dicterios. Los maestros estratificados en los cenáculos, fueron cesados por la farsa de su ciencia de anaquel. Se hizo el sabotaje del ingenio. Era la llegada. Se arrebataba la cúspide a los que la vendían en los mostradores de la burocracia. Se erguía la voz de la vida ambulante. Las banderas rojas de la lucha, erizaban las manifestaciones de la juventud desequilibrada de ansias y las fábricas del pensamiento en avance, empenacharon de chimeneas el cielo desconectado de la lucha.14 Arqueles Vela, one of its founding members, wrote that Estridentismo “was different from other avant-garde movements because of its present-day position [posición actualista]. It tried to create an art for the present and not for the future or the past. . . . Estridentismo was a circumstantial art and of a prevailing tendency; it was an art of struggle.”15 Its primary goal, then, was the modification of the present and not some utopian future. The movement’s manifestos defined the urgency of dealing with the contemporary moment, its techniques, and its technology. Maples Arce concluded his manifesto by wishing all artists good luck in their desire to become part of the avant-garde. Actual No. 1 ended with a “listing of the avant-garde” consisting of more than two hundred names of individuals associated with the national and international avant-garde. The movement, in short, had at its core the need for art to express the experiences characteristic of modern cities and the need for an international and cosmopolitan point of view. Influenced by Futurism, this understanding was tempered by the importance of technological developments and their impacts on life. These would act, said the critic Federico Schopf, as the “missing literary expression of the revolution.”16 In waging their battle against traditional aesthetic forms, such as the nineteenth-

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century realism and early-twentieth-century modernismo characteristic of the outmoded

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and corrupt Díaz regime, the Estridentistas sought to denaturalize and reconceptualize literature. One of their strategies was the use of humor embodied, for example, in the closing statement of the second manifesto—“¡Viva el mole de guajolote!” (Long live turkey mole!)—which alluded to the regional food of Puebla, where the manifesto was launched and published on January 1, 1923.17 Through estrangement, the Estridentistas intended to subvert the “effect of the real” that was prevalent in nineteenth-century novels. In realist prose, Roland Barthes explains, the “reality effect” was constructed through descriptions that gave the illusion of a direct, unmediated, or objective reference to reality.18 The Estridentistas subverted this strategy by exacerbating the alienated condition of the real as manifested through a heightened use of metaphor, propositions of an imaginary “reality,” and complete fragmentation—metaphorically or typographically—of the text into a nonlinear or coherent work. Such fragmentation was similar to synthetic cubist collages in which elements were juxtaposed without the sense of linear narrative structure. An example of these techniques is found in the beginning of Arqueles Velas’ novel Un crimen provisional (A Temporary Crime): —In what position was the body when you entered into the room? —No, Sir, I am innocent . . . —Why didn’t you report the crime right away? —The man told me that he was here for no one . . . —How long have you known the deceased? —I entered yesterday to render my services . . . 19 The purported crime in the novel was, in the end, false since the “deceased” was simply a mannequin. Through this strategy of nonsensical fragmentation, the traditional and popular police novel genre was subverted. In an insightful study on the syntactic structure of some Estridentista texts, the literary critic and historian Esther Hernández Palacios proposed that their works signify and connote meaning through the use of literary images. To achieve this, she argues by citing Maples Arce, they engaged in a “successive exposition of similar images—[as a] reduction to the absurdly ideological. The multiple animated image.”20 Besides using words that, through their ambiguity, overflowed with meaning, the Estridentistas employed an “anti-poetic” vocabulary—by relying of scientific, mathematical, or medical terminology, for instance, as found in the Futurist poetry of Marinetti—to exacerbate connotation when juxtaposed with other words. Sombra laboratorio. Las cosas bajo sobre. ventilador eléctrico, champagne + F.T. Marinetti = a Nocturno futurista 1912.

21

Through this technique, unexpected images are created in the reader’s mind. Further65

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more, by using metaphors, metonymies, and synecdoches, the writers’ images exaggerated the conversion of denotative images into connotative ones, a typical poetic technique used to generate oblique meanings.22 As in Huidobro’s creacionismo, the often nonsensical juxtaposition of terms and indirect images that can only work through connotation forces the reader’s imagination to develop fresh images of the world. These indirect images are considered free of ideology because they operate on an independent level of language and outside traditional linguistic structures or constraints.23 Such instances, impossible to separate analytically, can be seen, for example, in a fragment of Maples Arce’s poem “Prisma: El silencio amarillo suena sobre mis ojos” (The Yellow Silence Sounds on My Eyes).24 To assign the color yellow to silence and to imply that this “yellow silence sounds” shows his attempt to convert these words into metaphorical images that connote something beyond the denotative meaning of the words themselves. It is obvious here and in other instances that the poem’s language is completely self-referential. The literary images operate and make sense within the structure of the text itself where their own irreducible relations are maintained. The autonomy of the linguistic seme is evident in the following fragment of List Arzubide’s poem El viajero en el vértice: la ciudad falsificada por el amanecer de su pañuelo se derramó en la noche mecánica del tunel desdoblé el diario de mi indiferencia y lei la catástrofe de su nombre25 Here, the initial reference to the city suggests that the meaning (and subsequent imagery) of the poem is an articulation of the qualities of that city (such as falsified or spilled). In it is the anthropomorphic implication of the metropolis—as carrying a handkerchief, for instance. At the close of the connotative circle, because of its self-referential nature, the poem maintains the necessary semantic and syntactic relations that allow for the (somewhat clear) transmission of this idea and, at least, some semblance of sense. Various parts of the poem utilize coherent grammatical structures, forms, and internal relationships that point to an organizing logic despite their abstraction and absurdity. This is seen, for instance, through the use of adjectivized words (such as “falsified”) that define the characteristics of other words or concepts. The poem shows another important trait of many Estridentista poems and texts: the manipulation of typography and the white space around and within it. The legacy of Stéphane Mallarmé’s Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard (1897) appears here, as well as, no doubt, the influence of Marinetti’s subsequent and more contemporary interpretations of Mallarmé in poetic works such as Marinetti’s Mots en liberté (1919). An important contribution in Un coup de dés, typography historian Johanna Druker notes,

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was the use of a “figural, visual, mode. This figuration is a kind of bringing forth, an

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appearance, that is radically anti-grammatical. It does not derive from syntax or the tropes of speech which normally form a figure or image within language . . . [Rather, it goes] against the expectations of normative linguistic order.”26 Mallarmé asserted the essential quality of the typographic alteration and distribution in Un coup de dés: “The paper intervenes each time an image, of its own accord, ceases or withdraws, accepting the succession of others; and, as it is not a question, as it usually is, of regular sound patterns or verses but rather of prismatic subdivisions of the Idea.”27 For the Estridentistas, the transgression of text through its graphic organization on the page mirrored their attack on traditional structures of meaning, poetic form, and syntax. The structure of poetry based on typographic experimentations helped elicit the denotative meaning of words through the simultaneously altered (and, in many cases, more open-ended and flexible) formal relations that they had with each other and the overall space of the text. Revealing Mallarmé’s symbolist roots, the reorganization of the poem on the page graphically and materially allows language to transmit sensations or emotions rather than merely communicating ideas or concepts. While Mallarmé’s typographical experiments in Un coup de dés represented a roll of the dice; the typographic layout of many Estridentista poems allowed them to synthetically reproduce, within the structure of reading, the metropolitan experience of multiplicity and fragmentation. Cubist collage, which shares a lineage with symbolism, similarly employed these techniques where the notion of space and time was aggregated into a single image. This, in turn, was structured by multiple images or fragments of images that received, registered, and accepted changes of meaning yet maintained the collage’s identity as a cohesive totality. In Estridentista poems, the use of technical descriptions imitated these techniques. They amplified the object of the poetic concept (in the case above, “the mechanical night”) while establishing, contextually and stylistically through their fragmentary nature, the work as an effect of the metropolis and, thus, of the modern.

fabricating the literal metropolis

At the center of Estridentista artis-

tic production is a fixation on the metropolitan environment, a protean environment inhabited by technological innovation and exacerbated movement. By employing technological images and the qualities of modernity in their literary work, the Estridentistas mimicked, notes the literary historian Luis Mario Schneider, “the structure of the metropolis, the trepidation of its machines, the phonetic manifestations that these produced, [forcing] the modern inhabitant aesthetically to reproduce these new conditions.”28 What the work of the Estridentistas managed to recreate through literary texts was the lived experience of the metropolitan condition. In Walter Benjamin’s terms, they reproduced artificially the knowledge (Erlebnis) of the authentic experience (Erfahrung) of the metropolis.29 The metropolis was the place of novel sensorial stimuli. Poems like Manuel Maples Arce’s Canción desde un aeroplano and Kyn Taniya’s (Luis Quintanilla’s) Avión, further, describe encounters and ways of looking at the world mediated or made possible through modern technologies.30 Estridentista poems became the progenitors of unfamiliar aesthetic experiences. By substituting traditional poetic imagery with those of technology, modern cities, and machines, the poets intended to immediately communicate their 67

2.3 Germán List Arzubide’s poem Ciudad Número 1 illustrated by Ramón Alva de la Canal, 1928

concepts of modernity and cosmopolitanism, situating the culture that they proposed within a modern yet contemporary context. The manipulation of images can be found in the poem Ciudad Número 1 by Germán List Arzubide (Figure 2.3): Ciudades que inaugura [sic] mi paso mientras los ojos de ella secuestran el paisaje El grito de las torres en zancadas de radio Los hilos del telégrafo van colando la noche y en las últimas cartas regresó la distancia . . .

En las esquinas las muchachas inéditas han encendido los voltaicos y el paisaje metido en los eléctricos va diciendo los nombres retrasados . . . 31 68

Technological referents in the city (towers, radio, telegraph, and so forth) suggest, on

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the one hand, a new urban reality while, on the other, its aesthetic qualities. Maples Arce’s poem Urbe (1924) establishes and defines the position through which this Mexican avant-garde group can be located in relation to the modern metropolis (Figure 2.4). In this poem, three significant aspects of Estridentista manifestos are developed. The first is the impetus for social change, here exemplified in the Mexican Revolution, as the motivating force of the poem. The second is its attack on older literary forms, in particular realism and modernismo. The third is its focus on the city and cosmopolitanism with its Futurist-inspired devotion to machinery and technology but, in keeping with the manifesto, in a strict relationship to the present. The work’s complete title and its dedication to the Mexican workers gives us a first insight into its intention: Urbe: Super-poema bolchevique en 5 cantos (Metropolis: Bolshe-

2.4 Jean Charlot, cover of Manuel Maples Arce’s poem Urbe, woodcut, 1924

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vik Super-Poem in 5 Cantos). Through the poem’s title and content, Maples Arce established a clear parallel between the Russian and Mexican revolutions. By insinuating the allegiance of new literatures—new ways of thinking and producing artistic products— to social change, he linked the ideology of social revolutions to literary changes and innovations: He aquí mi poema brutal y multánime a la nueva ciudad. Oh ciudad toda tensa de cables y de esfuerzos, sonora toda de motores y de alas. Explosión simultánea De las nuevas teorías . . . Los pulmones de Rusia soplan hacia nosotros el viento de la revolución social. Los asalta braguetas literarios nada comprenderán de esta nueva belleza sudorosa del siglo . . . 32 First of all, the poem compromises and co-opts the reader as part of a collective (the “us” to whom the winds blow) and as members of the working class.33 In so doing, the poet attacks the bourgeoisie as pilferers of the people. The proletariat is shown to benefit from the social success of the revolution and the immense possibilities of the burgeoning metropolis.34 Finally, Maples Arce’s reference to Russia’s influence indicates his understanding of the Mexican Revolution’s social(ist) character. The descriptions of modern cities and industrial technologies suggest an attack against previous literary forms as well. In the poem, Maples Arce redeploys Creationism as a way to forge an imaginary concept of the world ungrounded in descriptive or anecdotal elements. The influence of ultraismo is visible in the descriptions that, as defined by Jorge Luis Borges, are composed through “a series of metaphors, each of which has its own suggestive potential and which comprises an unprecedented vision of some fragment of life.”35 Beyond reconceptualization of the role of the metaphor, Maples Arce mobilized metaphors throughout Urbe to dissolve any possible effect of the real. By generating a sense of simultaneity of imagery, the poem forces relationships between objects or technologies that did not have any type of mutual coincidence outside the page of text, as is evident in this fragment of Urbe:

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Los ríos de blusas azules

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desbordan las esclusas de las fábricas, y los árboles agitadores manotean sus discursos en la acera. Los huelguistas se arrojan pedradas y denuestos, y la vida, es una tumultosa conversión hacia la izquierda.36 To define the workers as a “river of blue shirts” shows the poet’s rejection of realist description. We also see Maples Arce’s refutation of the preferred elements of modernista poetry. In its wording, for instance, we do not find rich impressionist descriptions, verbal and linguistic refinement, or expression based on sensations. Its structure and phrasing, similarly, avoid musicality. Typical of the literary avant-garde, the rejection of past literary styles and tropes reflects a broader reaction against the bourgeoisie that transformed and betrayed the function and position of the artist within society. Modernista artists were accused of taking part in bourgeois masquerades that “not only through their interiority resembled the intérieur of bourgeois living rooms but, in this way, would separate the private spaces from the public ones.”37 This shift represents a protest against the doctrine of l’art pour l’art that denied any social function of art and rendered the artist ineffectual within the praxis of life. Instead, Maples Arce’s intention and that of the Estridentistas generally was to move the location of art and its production from a private one to one that allowed for public production and collective reception. Schneider has called Urbe a “glorification of the revolutionary struggle that had as its counterbalance the exaltation of the metropolis as an object of vanguardist beauty”; the poem proposed the movement of artistic reception from the bourgeois residence to the public space of the city.38 Its focus shifted from the naturalization of traditional bourgeois social and individual experiences and environments to the glorification of the masses, collective experience, and appropriation of the metropolis—in this case, throwing stones (similar to the Futurist exaltation of war and riots) and a conversion toward “the left.” The direction that Maples Arce’s poem took to define these new masses was centered on the cosmopolitan and technological possibilities of the metropolis to alter social relations. The meeting place for the masses was no longer confined within limits enacted by artists working for the bourgeoisie but instead was located at the intersection of the crowds with the large city, the venue of possible social revolutions: Los paisajes vestidos de Amarillo se durmieron detrás de los cristales, y la ciudad, arrebatada, se ha quedado temblando en los cordajes. Los aplausos son aquella muralla. —Dios mío¡ 71

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—No temas, es la ola romántica de las multitudes. Después, sobre los desbordes del silencio, la noche tarahumara irá creciendo. Apaga tus vidrieras. Entre la maquinaria del insomnio la lujuria, son millones de ojos que se untan en la carne. Un pájaro de acero ha emprorado [sic] su norte hacia una estrella39 In the poem, the city is glorified and aestheticized. The masses are its sole inhabitants. The descriptive terminology connotes the changes of the means of production and the dissemination and enduring influence of products and ideas. At the moment when the poem reconceptualizes the city into the nucleus of a sense of modernity, the modern and industrial technologies acquire and impart upon the metropolis a futurist quality filled with the latest materials and incessant movement: He aquí mi poema: Oh ciudad fuerte y multiple hecha toda de hierro y de acero Los muelles. Las dársenas. Las grúas. Y la fiebre sexual de las fábricas. Vrbe: Escoltas de tranvías que recorren las calles subversistas. Los escaparates asaltan las aceras, y el sol, saquea las avenidas. Al márgen de los días tarifados de postes telefónicos desfilan paisajes momentáneos por sistemas de tubos ascensores.40 Maples Arce describes technological qualities or environments common to industrial and modern architectures. In keeping with its “present-day” quality, we do not find in the poem new architectural forms or utopias such as the Citta Nuova developed in 1914 by the Futurist Italian architect Antonio Sant’Elia—a hypermechanized reality filled with program types of hydroelectric plants, airports, and experimental housing. In fact,

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2.5 Jean Charlot, illustration in Urbe, woodcut, 1924

the woodcuts created by Jean Charlot for Urbe, including the cover and illustrations of a contemporary metropolis, present formally simple, window-covered volumes suggesting early-twentieth-century skyscrapers (Figure 2.5). The “presentness” is reinforced through the poem as it addresses the reader in the present tense using the familiar tu—no temas (don’t be afraid) and apaga tus vidrieras (turn off your window displays). Following Marinetti, Maples Arce used bellicose terminology (“escorts,” the “march” of the landscape) and images of aggression (“stealing,” “robbing”) throughout the poem to describe metropolitan forms of beauty. Charlot’s imagery represents, in the abstract, the masses who populate the city. Like Estridentópolis, the metropolis of Maples Arce’s poem is an invention. Designed to demonstrate the vitality of the modern city and its ability to transform the public, it is a utopian ideal in which the alienating or reifying conditions of industry and the modern 73

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world no longer exist. Machines and city are animated by social forces and by the interaction with humans. Still partisan to traditional poetic devices, Maples Arce informally addresses the city and distinguishes it from the poem through “ode-like” allusions such as He aquí mi poema (Here is my poem). Yet, Urbe dematerializes and unites descriptions of the city, technology, and the masses into one. The poem, in other words, does away with the typical separation of the masses from technologies and environments. Ultimately countering the effects of the division of labor and the separation of art and life, the poem induces an organic relation and totality among the poet, the city, its inhabitants, and its industrial machinery—relationships necessary in the universal aspiration for utopia.

manufacturing representation

As the city and its architecture became

the media that registered the changes imposed by modernity and industrialization, the Estridentistas focused their effort and work onto representing the urban environment and its aesthetic possibilities. As the Argentine critic Beatríz Sarlo has acutely observed, for the Latin American avant-garde “the new urban landscape, the modernization of the means of communication, [and] the impact of these processes on traditions [were] the frame and the point of resistance through which the intellectuals articulated their responses.”41 The Estridentistas articulated these tensions throughout their work in the opposition between modern sensibilities and concerns and the traditional images or vernacular techniques that they employed or (sometimes) produced. The predominant themes of their work were definitive of modernity and its effects on the metropolis. These effects could be centered on human or proletariat subjectivity, modern industry and its factories, the forms of the modern city and its buildings, and, as a result, the sensations produced by these fast-changing environments. As we have seen, early in the life of the movement, Estridentista writers allied themselves with plastic artists. This should not be seen as the union of two disparate groups but as a fusion of two groups with similar ideas working together to expand the definition of the movement. By using each other’s techniques, both writers and artists expanded the representational potential of each other’s theories and ideas. Graphic depictions of their invented cities, for example, visually materialized their elements and characteristics. Germán List Arzubide found in Estridentista art, like its literary counterpart, an articulation of the metropolitan reality. Writing in El movimiento estridentista, he described the group’s first art exhibition, held on April 12, 1924 (Figure 2.6), at the Café Europa (which they renamed the Café de Nadie): Se realizó la primera exposición estridentista en el Café de Nadie, una tarde iluminada de carteles. 5,000 boletos vendidos con diez días de anticipación aseguraban el éxito; subterráneamente los políticos preparaban sus porras compradas de lance en la desvergüenza para atacar a los expositores; la realidad frustró sus afanes; palidecieron ante la multitud que llenó de hurras a los presentistas y aplaudió la irreverencia de los introductores de los gritos. Se exhibieron los cuadros agarrados al clamor colorista, de Ramón Alva de la Canal, Leopoldo Méndez, Jean Charlot, Rafael Sala, Emilio Amero, Fermín Revueltas, Xavier González, Máximo Pacheco. Las máscaras estridentistas donde Germán Cueto 74

descolgó el gesto de los precursores, abultando el carácter formidable sobre su muro

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2.6 Invitation to Estridentista exhibition at Café de Nadie, 1924

reaccionario. Esculturas de Ruiz, selladas de precisión, arquitecturadas de fuerza, compendiaban la síntesis de todos los complejos subitáneos, inmóviles en el hombre. Y luego, bajo la sanción humorista del té, se leyeron los poemas fértiles y avisores: Maples Arce, list arzubide [sic], Salvador Gallardo, Luis Felipe Mena, un capítulo de “el cafe de nadie”, de Arqueles vela [sic], todo entre el aguzado silencio de la compresión.42 A description of the art exhibited describes its main themes and concerns: Los cuadros fueron muestra estupenda de nuestro paso. Fábricas levantando el brazo ardiente de sus chimeneas, afirmales y robustas en sus muros de sudor y de esfuerzo, presentadas por Fermin Revueltas. Colores asomados a la ventana de una forma intencionada, medularmente equilibrada, que exhibió Ramón Alva de la Canal. Serenidad disgregada de la línea que eran entonces los ensayos formales de Jean Charlot. Muscu-

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2.7 Ramón Alva de la Canal, cover of Germán List Arzubide’s poem El viajero en el vértice, woodcut, 1926

laturas de verticales obreras, ansiedad de hacer dibujo la gráfica del momento, que ha sido el centro de inquietud de Leopoldo Méndez.43 Characteristic of early Dadaist art shows and performances, the exhibition was really the result of interests already articulated in Estridentista manifestos. Their second and third manifestos, for instance, defined more carefully the function of plastic arts within the new metropolitan reality. Artistic and literary production was to represent and materialize the political, historical, and economic context. Like the contemporary European avant-gardes, the graphic artists aggressively altered the perception of modern spaces and environments into radical, subversive, and dissident weapons against past literature and artistic production and against bourgeois life. Schneider contends that to the Estridentistas, art “became the principal action of human life and it [was] believed 76

in, not so much as liberty in the creative process but also as the only liberating system

for the human race through which norms, moral prejudices, and dogmas [could] be destroyed.”

la ciudad falsificada

44

The second manifesto determined the direction of their art in opposition to contemporary art practices and, in particular, to modernismo and realism: [Afirmamos] la posibilidad de un arte nuevo, juvenil entusiasta y palpitante, estructuralizado novidimensionalmente, superponiendo nuestra recia inquietud espiritual, al esfuerzo regresivo de los manicomios coordinados, con reglamentos policiacos, importaciones parisienses de reclamo y pianos de manubrio en el crepúsculo.45 In the second manifesto, contemporary practices are described as totalitarian and oppressive. Instead, the manifesto calls for artists to separate themselves from techniques and styles of the past. By using images that technically and aesthetically represented a heightened modernity, they would separate their art from bourgeois artistic practices. Additionally, the manifestos called for techniques that allowed for collective dissemination and reception of art and ideas, such as Maples Arce’s printed broadsheet manifesto, in order to direct their art toward the urban proletariat masses. In this way, the graphic vignettes incorporated into their poetry or narratives were used to pictorially illustrate and articulate poetic ideas and the “falsified” metropolitan world. We see this in Charlot’s cover and page illustrations of Maples Arce’s Urbe, Ramón Alva de la Canal’s woodcuts in List Arzubide’s poem El viajero en el vértice (Figure 2.7), and the magazines of the group, Irradiador and Horizonte, which were filled with illustrations, photographs, and woodcuts by Leopoldo Méndez, Tina Modotti, Alva de la Canal, Fermín Revueltas, and others. The Estridentistas mobilized techniques considered autochthonous because of their pervasiveness throughout Mexico, such as the use of broadsheets and woodcuts based on the tradition of social and political critique exemplified by the work of José Guadalupe Posada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Estridentistas used other means of mass (re)production as well, such as engraving, photography, and printing. And, as we have seen, they appropriated the practice of public murals and public art. Diego Rivera, Jean Charlot, and Fermín Revueltas, it should be noted, were included in the listing of the avant-garde in the first manifesto and in the roster of its members. Because of their scale and public presence, murals offered the possibility of collective reception, in contrast to the limited accessibility of easel painting. All in all, these techniques relied on the use of clear and legible pictorial means that allowed Estridentista art to be understood by a large audience that in turn could institute social and political change.46 Many Estridentista literary concepts were incorporated or translated into the visual arts to transform and denaturalize the image of reality. As a result, Estridentista artists had to artistically represent and describe the modern or metropolitan reality but do so in ways that criticized traditional painterly and artistic techniques. Thus, as with their literature, we find modified traces of Futurism and cubism. These influences are apparent in their representations of mechanical labor, geometric formalism, and planimetric decomposition and in their collapse of time and space. As a result, many Estridentista vignettes represent the metropolis as an accumulation and agglomeration of repetitive flat surfaces interrupted by the rhythmic seriality of windows and openings and a rejection of Cartesian space through the exaggeration of perspectival lines and the elimi-

77

nation of curved forms. The Estridentista cities seemingly are composed of volumes that appeared to be industrially manufactured and forms that created visual labyrinths. These techniques, in turn, paralleled those used by the writers: accumulation and simultaneity, self-referentiality, irreducible imagery, and fragmentation. Industrial and factory-inspired imagery was used to unravel cultural differences. In her book on technological imaginaries, Beatríz Sarlo describes how the avant-garde transformed the meaning of this imagery and its cultural use in Latin America: technology and industry “are there because of what is missing and, because of their presence, one can see, on the one hand, the repercussion of their possible absence and, on the other, the legitimacy of a nontraditional reorganization of culture.”47 For the Estridentistas, this translated into the invention of new industrial landscapes to suggest an emerging cultural and environmental condition. Both Germán List Arzubide’s poem El viajero en el vértice and its illustrations by Ramón Alva de la Canal represent precisely, as the vertex, the newly industrial world and its effects on traditional modes of artistic production. The poem and illustrations present the conditions of modernity as dramatic effects of technology: the modern city and vertiginous change. Technology, in other words, is seen as beauty and the generator of aesthetic experiences, as Huidobro prescribed. And 2.8 Ramón Alva de la Canal, Postes, illustration in El viajero en el vértice, woodcut, 1926

while these representations did not directly reflect their lived reality, the poet and artist did take existing conditions and alter or exaggerate them. The woodcut Postes (Poles, 1926, Figure 2.8), for example, appears as a formal, abstract graphic until seen in relation to the poem: yo puse mi boleto hacia todos los horizontes y la ciudad se desgranó por telégrafo tanteamos con nuestros brazos incendiados el muro de los túneles . . . las calles encajonadas de silencio quebraron de sombra nuestros pasos antiguos el silencio ensanchó las avenidas con sus voces insomnes48

2.9 Ramón Alva de la Canal, Chimeneas, illustration in El viajero en el vértice, woodcut, 1926

The abstraction of the image through the use of simple vertical elements alludes to the sky and the street. The repetitive quality expresses the sense of silence of a medium that might transmit large amounts of information yet appears mute since neither the cables nor the posts express their communicative function. At the same time, however, the angled perspectival lines of vision, which point toward the infinite horizon, suggest the presence of a dynamic, invisible force. In this way, the avenues and streets described in the poem take on a graphic life. Similarly, the woodcut Chimeneas (Smokestacks, 1926, Figure 2.9) by Alva de la Canal suggests a repetitive, infinite, and rationalized industry, to which these poems also alluded. Visual images of individuals, as in the literary texts, are similarly mediated through

78

the lens of the metropolitan experience. As such, subjects are understood and present-

ed as fragmented, mechanized, or industrialized. Alva de la Canal’s painting El Café de

la ciudad falsificada

Nadie (1924, Figure 2.10) shows the psychic fragmentation described by Arqueles Vela’s novel of the same name. In it, Vela not only identifies the fragmented conditions of modern subjectivity but also shows the cafe to be a place that—like the town Comala of Juan Rulfo’s novel Pedro Páramo (1955)—appears to be inhabited by ghostly, disappearing figures. By using both analytic and synthetic cubist techniques, Alva de la Canal fragments the space around the central figure of the painting, in this case Maples Arce. Here, fragments of newspapers, advertising, and other texts are collaged onto the painting’s surface. The collaged text appearing next to Maples Arce is cut to appear as a caption or speech bubble common to comic strips to suggest his speech. Movement, and thus time, are suggested through the repetition of figures or blurring of elements, a quality of cubism as well as Futurist paintings. These techniques make the figure of Maples Arce appear indeterminate relative to the space where he sits while also producing the effect that, through time, the figures accompanying him are only fleeting impressions that disappear. Cesar Moro’s portrait of the Chilean avant-gardist writer Armando Zegri (ca. 1925, Figure 2.11) constructs the face from industrial fragments. Similar to many portraits by the Russian painter and architect El Lissitzky—for example, The Constructor (1924) and Tatlin Working on the Monument (1921–1922)—Moro’s portrait of Zegri connotes the manufacture of the subject by technical means: the eyes, for example, correspond to the arc of a compass. Through these techniques, the subject becomes reified and emblematic of the modern forces and means of production. As the city was central to Estridentista literary production, architecture and space be-

2.10 Ramón Alva de la Canal, El Café de Nadie, oil painting and mixed media, 1924

came the focus of the artists’ painterly and graphic investigations. In Viñeta estridentista

2.11 Cesar Moro, Armando Zegri, ink drawing, ca.

(ca. 1925, Figure 2.12), Alva de la Canal translates literary techniques into an exceptional

1925

architecture as revolution

graphic composition that completely subverts traditional perspectival representations. Through the rhythmic and seemingly mass-reproduced windows on the volumes of its modern skyscrapers, it creates a complex visual labyrinth. This effect, like the cities, exacerbates the multiplicity of views, fragmentation, and density of forms. It is an attempt, in short, to reproduce the dynamism of the metropolitan experience. The radicality of these types of representations is even translated into vernacular architecture. The July 1926 cover of Horizonte by Leopoldo Méndez shows a typical courtyard building in a town covered with tile roofs (Figure 2.13). Méndez’ image, however, estranges this commonplace scene by showing it from a high vantage point and by distorting the perspectival organization. This last technique not only creates a very angular and dynamic composition but also heightens the sense of fragmentation and simultaneity of the view. However, through this technique, the traditional is placed under the “metropolitan lens” and thus radicalized. By altering the perception of the vernacular as something potentially revolutionary, the image becomes paradigmatic of the broader Estridentista agenda, as it demonstrates their interest in reconceptualizing visuality, something akin to the photographic project undertaken by Aleksander Rodchenko. The illustration Radiópolis (ca. 1925, Figure 2.14) by Alva de la Canal exemplifies

2.12 Ramón Alva de la Canal, Viñeta estridentista, ink drawing, ca. 1925

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2.13 Leopoldo Méndez, cover for Horizonte

Estridentista falsification. Here, one finds the synthesis of the modern with the Mexican

magazine, woodcut, 1926

autochthonous or vernacular. The image juxtaposes new technology—manifested as

2.14 Ramón Alva de la Canal, Radiópolis, woodcut,

radio towers—with a building that combines the pre-Hispanic pyramid, massive stair-

ca. 1925

cases, and Mayan corbel vaults. The synthesis creates a hybrid “radio monument” that underscores the value of the original culture through the application of contemporary technological features. It similarly represents the Estridentistas’ interest in communication to the Mexican masses through a broadcast medium and traditionally through the legibility of the historical forms. Alva de la Canal exploits the technique of woodcut printmaking to give the building a vernacular character while carving expressionist lines into the sky to suggest or register the invisible energy and communications that emanate from it. Furthermore, like Estridentópolis en 1975, the Radiópolis image suggests the building as emblematic of the city where modern technologies determine the life of its citizens. Through the use of images, symbols, objects, and sensations produced by the modern metropolis, the pictorial art of the Estridentistas was intended to move, shock, and awaken its viewers—politically and spiritually—toward the existential conditions of their present (Figure 2.15). Art, according to a later text of Maples Arce, has the function of enriching the “vision of a modern life, [contributing] directly to expressing it and [showing the vision itself ] as its result. . . . Generally speaking, all aesthetic manifestations adjust themselves to a new rhythm, a new conception, in sum, to a new sensibility.”49 Clearly, the proposal defined here was about simultaneously representing and inventing the image of the modern city. And while in many cases the Estridentistas’ work operated under parameters of abstraction, it was intended nevertheless as a form of “graphic realism” in line with their concerns about communicability (Figure 2.16).

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architecture as revolution

2.15 Ramón Alva de la Canal, cover of Germán List Arzubide’s El movimiento estridentista, 1927

2.16 Cityscape, El movimiento estridentista, ink drawing, 1927

estridentismo beyond estridentismo

Estridentismo, despite its short life,

was tremendously influential in the development of contemporaneous and subsequent avant-gardes. The cultural contribution of the Estridentistas can be seen in the way that its members essentially changed the Mexican literary and artistic culture surrounding them. Their work, for example, influenced the writer Mariano Azuela, author of the famous account of the Revolution Los de abajo (1915). His later works La malhora (1923), El desquite (1925), and La luciérnaga (1932) exhibit Estridentista techniques. Maples Arce wrote that Azuela’s La malhora was a small masterpiece whose novelty and technical originality identify the author with the new aesthetic experiences. It is also a quintessential Mexican work because of the spirit that animates it and the context in which the protagonists wander.50 Through their literary techniques and themes, Azuela’s estridentista works express the 82

nervous and animated qualities of the modern metropolis. As such they became exem-

plars of “urban neorealism,” which in turn is aligned with the dual interest in moderniza-

la ciudad falsificada

tion and the communicability of the “graphic realism” of Estridentista plastic artists. Surely, these types of transformations demonstrate the influence of Estridentismo as a literary vanguard with repercussions in the different spheres of cultural and artistic practice associated with it. This impact is most apparent in the groups that it spawned: the Grupo ¡30-30! and, to a certain extent, the Liga de Artistas y Escritores Revolucionarios (lear). These two groups reincarnated associations between artists and writers and did so through the participation of many former Estridentistas.51 The established connection between the earlier avant-garde group and its offshoots also manifested in their communications media. The Grupo ¡30-30!’s very name—a strident reference to the .30-30 rifles used by the revolutionary soldiers—showed its debt to Estridentismo and the role of art in society. Like its predecessor, the Grupo ¡30-30! began with the publication and distribution of a printed broadsheet; the first manifesto appeared in July 1928 as a critique of the artistic status quo. By the end of the group’s brief existence in 1930, it had distributed eight broadsheet manifestos. The manifestos’ primary contents—critical attacks on the art academy, its professors, and its teachings—were executed through woodcut and print effigies and caricatures.52 Like the Estridentista manifestos, the Grupo ¡30-30! broadsheets advocated the social role of art and artists in the transformation of modern society. This goal is reflected in the group’s periodical through articles devoted to art in postrevolutionary Mexico.53 It is reflected also in the group’s collective exhibitions, which were meant to be accessible and legible to a larger proletarian public. The group’s agitprop exhibition in the Carpa Amaro (Amaro Circus Tent) was housed in a movable tent placed in popular areas of Mexico City. The Grupo ¡30-30! differed from the Estridentistas in its members’ lack of interest in representing metropolitan space. Choosing instead to focus on vernacular themes and genres, they generated a large part of their production on easily reproducible woodcuts. Partly intended to critique high art—the mass-reproduced medium, to use Benjamin’s terms, obviously eliminated its aura through the removal of its singularity—they were legible to a larger population. Although similar in strategy to the Estridentistas, the later group employed a more realist graphic vocabulary. This is most clearly seen in how the Grupo ¡30-30! carried some specific architectural elements over from Estridentismo and modified them. Ramón Alva de la Canal’s image of Radiópolis was reused as an illustration and model for the 1928 article “Pastelería y Arquitectura” (Pastries and Architecture) in ¡30-30! Organo de los Pintores de México (Figure 2.17).54 Alva de la Canal’s image, along with a picture of the stadium of Jalapa in Veracruz, serve as examples of the necessity for clarity and logic within architecture to be expressed through clean lines and forms.55 While the structure is the same, the expressionist lines characteristic of the early woodcut version—representing both the nervous metropolitan life and the communicative power of the radio antennas—are gone in the 1928 watercolor version. This image, in turn, is a more subdued architectural representation. With the accompanying article, the later version of Alva de la Canal’s image became part of an attack on the stylistic ornamentation of buildings that resembled cake decorations. The article by Martí Casanovas exemplified the group’s entry into the debates on functionalism and national architectural expression taking place in Mexico. The other group emanating from Estridentismo and its members, lear (1933–1938),

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architecture as revolution

was a more institutionalized artistic group actively involved in politics. Through its material and intellectual resources, its members worked to organize conferences and publish the magazine Frente a Frente (1934–1938).56 This periodical became a critical vehicle to massively distribute prosocialist tenets, proletariat literature, and artistic and architectural debates, as well as to wage virulent attacks on government injustices and European fascism. Through its provocative use of woodcuts, images of murals, photographs, and photomontage, the magazine became a clever and direct means to mediate, in relation to current events and politics, artists’ concerns with those of the general public.

estridentismo’s continuing legacy

Although Estridentismo formally

lasted only six years, it had a lasting influence on artistic production and dissemination, the role of the artist in society, the role of mass production in reaching a broad audience, and the mediation of modern expressions and development with autochthonous concerns and aesthetics. This influence was, more precisely, the negotiation of modernity 2.17 Ramón Alva de la Canal, Radiópolis, in ¡30-30! Organo de los Pintores de México, watercolor, 1928

84

with the collective interests of the population and within a highly developed cultural

la ciudad falsificada

milieu. It was through a foray into the metropolis that the Estridentistas intended cultural production to reconceptualize visuality and to position themselves within international avant-gardist circles and concerns. And, like many parallel and similar avant-garde movements did in their own countries, the Estridentistas set out to respond to the socioeconomic and political situation in postrevolutionary Mexico. As avant-garde artists and writers, their response meant confronting dilemmas created by the bourgeois state with the very elements of that state. To reconceptualize modernity, in other words, they had to, paradoxically, use the models developed by industrialization while radically reshaping them into elements of a utopian society. This effort was evident in their use of the negativity of the metropolis as means to reach audiences through evolving systems of communication. What is more, the Estridentistas manipulated, or falsified, the effects of modernity to criticize the artistic forms of the past in order to change the culture of their present. We have seen, for example, how the Estridentistas used fragmentation in their work to express a fragmented subjectivity and to show how the world had changed through industry, urbanization, and subsequent social reification. The images of technology and its accompanying effects reflected the notion that any search for a holistic worldview would be relegated to ineffectuality, given the uncertainty of constantly changing paradigms that resulted from planned obsolescence and the rapid development of new technologies. Yet, the Estridentistas’ use of technological imagery only represented a modernized present. There was to be, however, some hope for a more nearly utopian future through the denaturalization of traditions and culture. By actively searching for legible and culturally appropriate elements and communicative media, the Estridentistas turned seemingly formal and effete investigations into political tools to raise class consciousness and form revolutionary identities. The tension, the messianic spirit, and the sense of renovation in the Estridentista production would be carried through to those writers, artists, and architects whose goal was to institute a new Mexican society. As the first internationally oriented movement in Mexico after the Revolution, Estridentismo’s influence cannot be overstated. After all, the Estridentistas played an important part in the formation of later cultural and architectural developments. Its members, who became central to artistic circles for many years afterward, continued their initial explorations and interventions while adapting them to increasingly complex cultural conditions and polemics. These subsequent investigations yielded forms and imagery based on the earlier theorizations of the metropolitan experiences and identities as well as on ever more complex notions of subjectivity and communicability. In some cases, the forms they fashioned were used to represent the revolutionary character of the Mexican people within a modern context. In other cases, they showed dialectical exchanges that were possible with Mexico’s venerable traditions. Ultimately, by yielding and mediating the international and the local, the Estridentistas constructed a new avant-gardist system to transform the function of art and revolutionize the city.

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3

colonizing the colonizer the mexican pavilion at the 1929 ibero-american exposition

in 1928 the third and definitive competition took place to choose the design of the Mexican Pavilion for the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition to be held in Seville, Spain. Within the context of the exposition itself, the invitation for Mexico to participate created a strong reaction against the typically imposed colonial structures of international expositions. The location of this exposition furthermore provided Mexico with an outlet to react against three centuries of Spanish domination. After multiple attempts to find a design that conveyed the accurate image of the Mexican nation abroad, the project titled Itza by Manuel Amábilis was chosen (Figure 3.1). The building’s design was pre-Hispanic in style with Mayan architectural elements derived primarily from the Puuc region. Following the continuing effects of the Mexican Revolution, the project was ideologically nationalistic, addressed the reevaluation of the pre-Hispanic past, and confronted contemporary issues of social justice and economic equality. The Mexican Pavilion, then, reflected the problematics inherent in the exposition and in postrevolutionary architectural investigations in Mexico. These latter are embodied in Amábilis’ beliefs about Mexican national culture, its relation to the pre-Hispanic, and, ultimately, to the denunciation of colonialist practices. The pavilion also expressed a particular form of historically derived socialism, based on pre-Hispanic traditions, that advocated class equality. Through the pavilion, Amábilis sought to reject the typical objectification and stereotyping of cultures common to international exhibitions and to propose a postRevolution modern architecture for Mexico.

ibero-american exposition, 1929

As it is well known, international expo-

An indigenous revolutionary consciousness will probably take time to develop. However, once the Indian has made his the idea of socialism, he will support it with a discipline, tenacity, and force that few proletarians of other fields will be able to surpass. josé c ar los

sitions like the Expositions Universelles of Paris were complex instruments for the

mar iátegu i , “ e l

production, representation, and reception of foreign cultures. By creating artificial en-

problema de l a s r a z a s

vironments in which “civilized” countries were symbolically juxtaposed with colonies

en amér ica l at ina”

or “barbaric” countries, these expositions validated the colonial enterprise by demonstrating that underdeveloped nations needed intervention by “enlightened” ones. The exhibitions signified imperialist forms of hierarchy and power through the architectural juxtaposition of cultures and products on display. Zeynep Çelik and Leila Kinney have found that the expositions increased

Every age sees in a past culture that which it wishes to see because it speaks in kindred accents. wilhelm wor r inger ,

the persuasive mechanisms of previously established accounts of other cultures; the expositions were more powerful than pictorial, literary, or journalistic descriptions because they presented simultaneously a physical, visual, and educational discursive field, organizing a range of perceptual responses to a global hierarchy of nations and races.1 By placing the most important pavilions near the main axes and thoroughfares, the planning of the exhibitions emphasized these power relations. Here, certain displays’ notability was heightened, while other nations’ pavilions or colonized cultures’ exhibits were marginalized as sideshows and generally focused on resources and raw materials that colonizers exploited. Thus, exhibitions represented colonies through their physical wealth rather than through accurate depictions of their cultural or historical backgrounds. More significantly, the rationalization, objectification, and categorization of the various colonies or “lesser” countries through the organization of the fairgrounds displayed the dominance of the host country. In other words, the physical ordering of

egyp tian ar t

architecture as revolution

the pavilions reflected the host countries, in terms of hierarchies of information and knowledge, as well as of economic, political, and military power. The segregation and separation of colonies or underdeveloped nations further stereotyped these cultures as equals among themselves—economically, politically, culturally, and religiously—despite their differences. This is seen, for example, in the homogenized grouping of Muslim cultures in most nineteenth-century European exhibitions. In short, colonies represented at exhibitions were radically oversimplified and caricatures of their true selves. To avoid any subversion of their authority, colonial powers usually created cultural dynamics not only within the occupied countries but also within the organization and structures of exhibitions. This included the obliteration of distinct national cultures. For colonial theorist Frantz Fanon, the colonizer made every effort to bring the colonized person to admit the inferiority of his culture which has been transformed into instinctive patterns of behavior, to recognize the unreality of his “nation,” and, in the last extreme, the confused and imperfect character of his own biological structure.2 Fanon contended that national cultures were systematically devalued or destroyed under colonial domination. The colonized were made to believe through these methods that “if the settlers were to leave, they would at once fall back into barbarism, degrada-

3.1 Manuel Amábilis, Mexican Pavilion, IberoAmerican Exposition, Seville, 1929

88

tion, and bestiality.”3 The organization of the exhibition grounds not only isolated colo-

nial states but also presented them, through the architecture and exhibits, as primitive

colonizing the colonizer

and unenlightened. Through manifold techniques of representation, the colonial power ideologically reproduced the framework of its own domination to its citizens as well as to the colonized subjects. By organizing exhibits and shows presenting stilted views of the colonized cultures, the colonial powers exerted a prohibition of heterogeneity that was directly linked to their political control. The colonized culture, at the exhibition and at home, would be epistemologically limited by the structures of domination imposed on it by the colonial culture. The 1929 Ibero-American Exposition, intended as a gathering of Spain and countries in the American continent, was no different from earlier expositions despite the fact that most of the countries represented were no longer Spanish colonies. The attempt, nevertheless, was to create a relation between the American continent and Spain in which the pre-Hispanic heritage was rendered obsolete. Spain’s enlightening role vis-à-vis its previous colonies was, in turn, emphasized. In the exhibition’s official brochure, Spain and the exposition were described in the following manner: Seville, center of centuries of Spanish culture, has invited Portugal and the countries of North and South America, which owe their birth to the intrepid spirit of Spain’s early maritime adventurers, to come and congratulate with the Mother of Nations the progress made in their history, their art, and their cultural advancement.4 As the first statement in the brochure, this provided the viewer with the (c)overt aims and intentions of the exposition. It suggested that American countries building pavilions were subject to the politics of cultural debt for Spain’s “discovery” of America and its colonizing mission. Their identity and cultural, political, and economic achievements was a de facto result of colonialism, an assistance that transformed the “barbarian” cultures to “civilized” ones, to borrow Domingo F. Sarmiento’s terminology. Similarly, by inviting these countries to display their cultural progress with the “Mother of Nations” implied their lack of culture before the Conquest. According to this myth, Spanish “maritime adventures” allowed these countries to become cultured and to progress. The obvious oversight, of course, was that these countries already had advanced forms of cultural production before the Spanish colonization. The planning of the fairgrounds, in keeping with traditional exhibition planning, reflected the politics of power and cultural debt. The exposition grounds were located in the Parque María Luisa, site of royal gardens given to the city of Seville in the nineteenth century and redesigned by the French landscape architect Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier. In the planning of the exposition precinct, the principal area was ceded to the Plaza de España, giving the Plaza de América secondary stature (Figure 3.2). The latter plaza lay to the south of the larger one and on a secondary axis blocked by the Spanish Palace of Antique Art. One might have expected that an Ibero-American exposition would project egalitarian, or at least proportional, relation between its two sets of participants. This, however, was not the case. Architecturally, the Plaza de América was flanked by buildings that did not represent the American continents programmatically or architecturally. These included the Royal Pavilion, built in the Gothic style; the Palace of Antique Art, built in the Mudejar style; and the Renaissance Palace, built in the Plateresque style.5 Tellingly, the Plaza de

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3.2 Layout, Ibero-American Exposition fairgrounds, 1929. 1. Plaza de España, 2. Plaza de América,

América featured no pavilions by American countries. They were relegated instead to

3. Mexican Pavillion

the edges of the Parque María Luisa. Of the pavilions built by American countries, only two showed pre-Hispanic architecture: the Pavilion of Guatemala designed by the Spanish architect José Granados de la Vega and the Mexican Pavilion designed by Manuel Amábilis, an architect from Yucatán, Mexico. Other pavilions designed by architects from the American continent were based on or influenced by colonial architecture.6 The Mexican Pavilion, in the end, was the only one whose designer attempted to truly and accurately represent the original architecture of the American continent.

beyond style, the cultural logic of pre-hispanic traditions

The

goals for the Mexican Pavilion in the context of this exposition were closely tied to the contemporary cultural climate regarding nationalism. The building’s objectives were centered on the architectural debates about an appropriate architectural style to represent Mexico and Amábilis’ own writings on the potential of pre-Hispanic architecture. Amábilis’ book El Pabellón de México en la Exposición Ibero-Americana de Sevilla (1929) defines the crystallization of the debates in the pavilion. Ultimately, these issues were a result of the Mexican Revolution, which sparked cultural changes regarding the preHispanic past and were exemplified in Manuel Gamio’s book Forjando patria (Forging Nationhood, 1916). Manuel Gamio was an anthropologist who served as director of anthropology in the federal Department of Public Works and Agriculture from 1917 to 1924, years that in90

clude both the revolutionary and reconstruction periods, alongside Vasconcelos and Ál-

varo Obregón. Forjando patria—published during the Revolution—became an essential

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text to the development of Mexican national culture and the symbolic importance of preHispanic traditions in that cause. Gamio argued that social equality could be achieved through education and changes in social relations between the indigenous population and the rest of Mexican society. Central to such equality were the transformations taking place in Mexico as a result of the Revolution: “Today, it is the duty of the Mexican revolutionaries to grab hold of the mallet and tighten the iron worker’s apron so that, from the miraculous anvil, the new nation can emerge made of a mixture of steel and bronze.”7 For Gamio, there were three elements that made a country strongly nationalistic: its people were members of the same race, spoke the same language, and shared the same culture or cultural manifestations. Most importantly, its people had a shared past. This determined what they valued in the present as well as what they understood about their country in political, social, and ethical terms. Gamio postulated that by unifying the different races and classes, language and cultural barriers would disappear. Thus, a coherent and homogeneous race and culture would arise. Art was one field in which cultural barriers could be removed. Gamio understood that in order to redeem and create a shared national culture—one of the bases for a strong nationalism—a melding of aesthetic tastes needed to take place. A common aesthetic would unite the preferences of Mexico’s indigenous people, who valued pre-Hispanic traditions, with that of the middle class, whose preferences were based on European traditions. The amalgamation of these tastes would hybridize the nation’s indigenous, pre-Hispanic, and European elements. At the core of his proposal was Gamio’s desire to create an appreciation or understanding of pre-Hispanic art despite more modern and Western sensibilities. In this regard, he posed challenging questions such as: Can an object that does not awaken any type of emotional response according to present understandings truly be considered art? Gamio argued that to appreciate pre-Hispanic art, one needed to know the culture that had produced it. Furthermore, it was unfair to judge pre-Hispanic cultural artifacts through a European lens, as the needs and conditions for their creation were unique to those who created them. By not considering their historical context, modern critiques of pre-Hispanic art were unsubstantiated. Also, cultural production meant to emulate the pre-Hispanic by simply copying its forms and styles would only create a confused and desolate hybrid.8 In the end, the Mexican art historian Justino Fernández has noted, Gamio developed criteria with which to judge indigenous and pre-Hispanic art: Gamio’s experience properly ended the aesthetic conflict of ancient indigenous art as seen in relation to the modern tradition of the West. Since [the latter] judged the works according to classical standards, which served as the basis for acceptance or rejection, he showed Western tradition as an inadequate and narrow-minded standard that not even Romanticism could transform. Gamio was right when he asked for a new and proper starting point in which the aesthetic synthesis was understood as a conjunction between the signifier (the form) and the signified (the content).9 By using a general system for the study and appreciation of pre-Hispanic culture, the art and architecture produced in Mexico at any given point could similarly be studied

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in relation to issues of intent and content. At the time of Forjando patria’s publication, Gamio contended that Mexico was not producing a legitimate art because a truly Mexican art had to be “its own; it had to be national; it had to reflect in an intensified and embellished way the joys, the sorrows, life, the soul of the people.”10 So, the need to understand the culture was not only a key element for the appreciation of any work but also for its production. For him, the means to achieve the full understanding of present Mexican culture was materializing in the Revolution, as it was providing the necessary tools to begin the hybridization of Mexico’s races and classes. The Revolution was, then, the pivotal event that could set in motion the means to improve the nation and its culture. It allowed the country to overcome two historical handicaps: the Conquest and the character of the Spanish domination, which motivated the following unfavorable social phenomena: economic imbalance between social classes, heterogeneity of the races that constitute the people, difference of languages, and divergence or antagonisms of cultural tendencies. These phenomena are at the same time the obstacles that oppose national unification, the embodiment of the country, the production and conservation of the general well-being.11 The Revolution provided the means to remove the impediments preventing the general well-being of the population. Gamio considered it the transcendental event that supplied the goals and options to constitute Mexico as a powerful nation with a coherent and defined sense of nationality. At its core, the Revolution allowed for “the fusion of races, the convergence and fusion of cultural manifestations, linguistic unification, and economic equilibrium between the social groups.”12 As an interpreter of the Revolution and its effects on the Mexican people, their culture, and their history, Gamio saw the redemptive qualities of the pre-Hispanic in the creation of a nationalist conception that would empower and equalize Mexicans. And while some artists and architects were developing a syncretic art—backed by Vasconcelos under the Ministry of Education, for example—others followed Gamio’s beliefs and explored the possibilities of cultural production based on pre-Hispanic ideals. This difference of opinion became central in debates regarding nationalism in art and architecture of the 1920s and 1930s. It would be incorrect, however, to say that there was no type of artistic investigations into the notion of a pre-Hispanic Mexican nationalism prior to the Revolution. During the Díaz dictatorship, in fact, we find numerous manifestations of pre-Hispanic art and architecture, that is, an amalgam of various pre-Colombian forms and styles. At the time, colonial architecture was not considered a nationalistic expression; that occurred during the first years of the Revolution and reached its apex, as we have seen, when Vasconcelos identified it as signifying the synthesis of races and used it extensively for the Secretaría de Educación Pública. The Porfiriato, however, primarily used the preHispanic style ideologically. Creating public buildings or decorating public festivals in this style allowed the government and classes in power to transform and mystify the style’s relations with the proletariat, whose ranks were made up primarily of indigenous peoples. In their Porfirian reappropriation, pre-Hispanic elements,

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empty of their original significance, were produced as a response to superstructural

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changes. In accordance with the historical moments and among other functions, [this reappropriation] served to bring prestige to an elite in power . . . [With the systematic proletarianization of the indigenous peoples] the construction of a stylistic repertoire that incorporated pre-Hispanic cultural characteristics, at the hands of the elite, expressed a clear message of manifest destiny: the greatness of the past was on the side of the powerful of the present.13 Any redemptive connection of pre-Hispanic art and architecture with the indigenous population did not come until after the beginning of the Revolution, as was the case with Gamio. Until that time, the work done using this style benefited a small handful of people in power. Early uses of pre-Hispanic architecture also can be found in Mexican pavilions for international expositions. The first Mexican pavilion in this style was for the Exposition Universelle of 1867. Authorized by Emperor Maximilian, the pavilion was a replica of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl at Xochicalco; its author was the French archeologist Désiré Charnay.14 The entry, despite representing Mexico, was not officially backed by the Mexican government. Instead, as it was created in the last year of French intervention in Mexico, it can be seen as a characteristic colonial representation of Mexico and as a justification of its invasion. In seeing this pavilion, the average visitor would have believed that Mexico was a country whose cultural achievements remained limited to the pre-Hispanic past. A similar representation of Mexico can be seen in the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Twenty-two years after the Maximilian pavilion in Paris, the first officially sanctioned Mexican pavilion was built for the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in Paris (Figure 3.3). Similar to the 1867 pavilion, this structure relied on an eclectic pre-Hispanic style. The interior, however, reflected a somewhat more realistic and modern expression of Mexico. Here, a covered courtyard was created using iron structures that included the staircases and columns surrounding the interior atrium, as well as glass skylights and marble detailing typical of the time (Figure 3.4). Because of Mexico’s previous political problems with France (including the execution of the Emperor Maximilian), the designers, architect Antonio M. Anza and archeologist Antonio Peñafiel, projected Mexico as a peaceful country that had progressed economically, both characteristics needed to attract foreign investors.15 The pavilion, however, was at the center of much debate. Critics at the time objected to its combination of styles and traditions from different regions and historical periods. Much critique was centered on its not reflecting the true architecture of the Americas. Archeologist Leopoldo Batres complained that the pavilion had “fallen into an error of fantasy that happened commonly when an attempt was made to reconstruct ill-studied and unknown architecture.”16 Similarly, architect Francisco Rodríguez complained about the incongruent use of elements that decorated its façade: “Intending to make it Aztec, architectural elements, however, were taken from [all] ancient civilizations without scruples, making them function differently than originally and rationally intended.”17 In defense of the project, Luis Salazar, a member of the losing team for the pavilion’s design and commission, saw the need to revive pre-Hispanic architecture as a national obligation: 93

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3.3 Antonio M. Anza and Antonio Peñafiel, Mexican Pavilion, exterior, Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1889

3.4 Antonio M. Anza and Antonio Peñafiel, Mexican Pavilion, interior, Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1889

Mexico, in the past, has seen the birth and death of its own architecture, an architecture of true originality, full of beauty and simplicity in construction, and with ornamental opulence. It is important that, with a mature field of ideas, one find inspiration in the monumental archeological constructions around us in order to move into the field of action so as to create a modern national architecture.18 The pavilion, nevertheless, responded to both tradition and modernity. Ironically, it stood more closely aligned with the ideals of Tepoztecaconetzin Calquetzani, a fictional author penned by the architect Francisco Rodríguez, who vehemently attacked its design. In “Bellas artes: Arquitectura y arqueología mexicanas” (Fine Arts: Mexican Architecture and Archeology), he argued that architecture was a material and formal expression of its time. The issues of the past were no longer important. Instead, contemporary 94

designers needed to understand those issues and translate them to their time. They

also needed to learn how early civilizations evolved their art and apply this knowledge

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rather than uncritically imitate the past. In the end, as the pavilion stood to resolve the 19

contradiction between modernity and tradition, it could not have been anything within the context of that exposition but simultaneously exotic and industrialized. Although highly debated, the acceptance or not of the pre-Hispanic as central for the creation of a national architecture was an issue that continued after the Revolution. By providing an exalted nationalist fervor, the overthrow of the Díaz regime—motivated by a strong rejection of social and economic injustices—established a conducive environment through which indigenous cultures could be vindicated. With the Revolution, an awakening in the arts, on the part of not only artists but also political leaders, took shape with unprecedented strength and momentum. As we have seen already, groups claiming revolutionary backgrounds and goals appeared and directly influenced the production of art in Mexico. Gamio’s writings advocated research and understanding of pre-Hispanic forms and traditions in order to incorporate them in the practices of the present, eventually evolving to a hybridized style that offered architecture a necessary source for nationalism. Manuel Amábilis, the architect for the 1929 Mexican Pavilion in Seville, was a devoted follower of this belief.

manuel amábilis, yucatecan architect

Born in Mérida, Yucatán, in 1883,

Manuel Amábilis was educated at l’École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris. In 1913, upon his return from Europe, he became director of public works for the state of Yucatán. The early phase of his work included mainly private residences constructed in the French classical style. Throughout his life, however, his public work was primarily inspired by the pre-Hispanic, and more specifically, the Mayan style. This is seen, for example, in the early Templo Masónico in Mérida (1915), the Parque de las Américas (1945), and the Monumento a la Patria in Mérida (1950s). Besides the pavilion for the Ibero-American Exhibition, Amábilis designed the Mexican Pavilion for the 1925 International Fair in Mexico.20 Academically, Amábilis served as a professor of architectural theory in the School of Architecture at the National University in Mexico City.21 Amábilis wrote extensively on pre-Hispanic architecture and began publishing articles in 1923 for the magazine El Agricultor. His most important writing on the topic was La arquitectura precolombina de México, which appeared at the same time that he was working on the design and construction of the Mexican Pavilion in Seville. For this study Amábilis received the gold medal from the Spanish Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando). The award was for a competition in 1927 to advance the study of pre-Hispanic art and architecture. Amábilis’ work was highly valued since it narrowly defeated Ignacio Marquina’s now seminal Estudio arquitectónico comparativo de los monumentos arqueológicos de México.22 Amábilis investigated the ethnic origins, beliefs, cultures, and spirit of the Maya, whom—based on the theories of the scholar W. Scott-Elliot—he erroneously concluded to be the Toltec. According to the bulletin of the academy, Amábilis argued that “the ancient American art (from Yucatán) was being summoned to a new flowering, being brought to life by the unfinished revolution, to be capable . . . of expressing the ideals that now disturb humanity.”23 Amábilis’ study of pre-Hispanic architecture consisted of establishing and supporting a theory that ancient American civilizations descended

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from the mythical peoples of Atlantis. He substantiated this claim through a careful study of the evolution of primitive monuments and their reliance on proportional systems similar to those found in Greek and European architecture. It was in the introduction of La arquitectura precolombina de México that Amábilis most clearly articulated his true intentions and beliefs concerning the importance of pre-Hispanic architecture for postrevolutionary Mexican reconstruction. Amábilis established the idea that a renaissance of pre-Hispanic architecture was linked not only to contemporary nationalistic intentions of creating a legible and known architectural language for the indigenous population but also to an opposition to and critique of the elitist academic establishment.24 For Amábilis, the Mexican Revolution had transformed the meaning and role of art. Here it is useful to quote at length: [The Revolution has] opened new channels to the life and thoughts of [the] country, has included in its vast radii all activities of mankind, coordinating them so that they contribute to the general well-being. In the expanding art fields, [the Revolution] has shown a new direction; it has opened to artists many horizons that are more Christian, more humanitarian. The philosophy created by the Revolution rationalizes the aesthetic in the following manner: until now, the enjoyment of the beautiful has been the resource of the rich and the educated, while the people have lived in desolate, morbid, and ugly environments that have diminished their capacity to enjoy life. . . . [T]he Revolution needs to transform Art into an apostle whose mission is to make the people become fond of what is beautiful and to banish ugliness from the popular environments. These new concepts will eliminate the artists who are protected inside their ivory tower, forcing them to descend and to mix with the people, to whom they would donate their love for the noble and beautiful. From their vibrant souls, the artists will learn the people’s ingenuity and kindness, their feelings and idiosyncrasies, their decorative instincts and their pantheistic intuition. This continuous contact with the popular classes will allow Mexican artists to know intimately the joys and sorrows of these classes, their every feeling; the artist would teach them how to express themselves through these feelings. That is why the artists need to express themselves in an intelligible artistic language that is accessible to the people, that is to say, [in a language] that is appropriate for the American idiosyncrasy and soul. This will only be achieved by going back to traditions, to legends, to the customs of our people, and becoming inspired by the surrounding nature.25 Echoing Gamio and the manifesto of the Sindicato de Obreros Técnicos, Pintores y Escultores, as we have seen, Amábilis created a paradigm for the study and implementation of a new artistic and architectural direction. The Revolution, as a catalyst for social change, had an impact on artistic practices. By understanding the needs of the people, a popular national art could develop. For Amábilis, like Vasconcelos, pre-Hispanic architecture was one way for the artist to establish a strong relation to the people and the land. The architecture of the ancient Mexicans was an interpretation of the rhythms and harmonies of nature. By tapping into it, contemporary Mexican architects, instead of starting anew, could take advantage

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of their ancestors’ experience. Transcendental philosophy suggested that existing pre-

Hispanic buildings and the people who inhabited the land were together in the present

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for some specific yet unknown reason. Therefore, Amábilis postulated that it was in the interest of a greater cosmic order to interpret and translate these primitive forms into the present civilization.26 The nationalistic sensibility, however, was really at the core of Amábilis’ book. By establishing the need for a national culture, the Revolution opened up a search for a particular lineament or cultural manifestation to encompass the direction of the Revolution’s goals. By studying the past, one could find and understand the character of the Mexican people that, Amábilis wrote, was based on their pre-Hispanic roots. The study of pre-Hispanic arts had uncovered the way in which [the pre-Hispanic people] interpreted and experienced life: how they forged their eurhythmic dwelling with the environment that surrounded them; which system of elimination and abstraction they used in order to achieve a synthesis of their rhythms and make them harmonious, expressing movement and natural life with forms that are not natural, that is to say, with forms not copied from nature; how they threw themselves into the open, into the middle of nature, to copy the movement or life of everything beautiful that surrounded them; and how they used objects and material beings to express the life that lives in them, interpreting them through this life and never through their materiality. They taught us that it is necessary to introduce painting into sculpture and architecture because nature is polychromed par excellence. They taught us that the diagonal symmetry genuine to these arts is the one that best expresses our exuberant American nature and not the vertical or horizontal symmetry of the European, which we must abandon. And [they taught us] many other concepts, part of the majestic monuments that they bequeathed to us—as a result of centuries of civilization—and that constitute, today as they did yesterday, the undisputed characteristics of the Mexican arts.27 For Amábilis, the innovative experiments of the European avant-garde, which largely consisted of looking at foreign cultures and was exemplified in cubists’ interest in African crafts, did not have to be copied in Mexico since it possessed the culture that Europeans were seeking elsewhere. Furthermore, pre-Hispanic peoples’ ability to abstract nature into architectural forms without literally copying them proved two things: the common root of all cultures and the universal impetus toward abstraction. Amábilis found that European and pre-Hispanic cultures shared a common origin. Specifically, his studies showed that Greek and Mayan civilizations descended from Atlantis. The tradition of explaining America’s ancient inhabitants, and more specifically the Maya, as successors of the peoples of the lost continent was not unique to Amábilis or, as we have seen, to Vasconcelos. In fact, these propositions were part of a broader interest at the time. In Ignatius Donnelly’s Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882), Augustus Le Plongeon’s Queen Móo and the Egyptian Sphinx (1896), and Lewis Spence’s Atlantis in America (1925), for example, we find proofs that the mythical land of Atlantis had, in fact, existed.28 Aided by comparative studies of traditions or legends, cultural practices, art and architecture, language and linguistic structures, and botanical and geological evidence of the American, European, and African continents, these scholars showed that any formal, cultural, and natural similarities were based on the possibil-

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3.5 Diagram of regulating lines in Mayan architecture after Manuel Amábilis’ cover of La arquitectura precolombina de México, 1956

ity of shared lineage with a people who inhabited a land located in the Atlantic Ocean that had been destroyed by a cataclysm. Architects like Amábilis or a contemporary, the British architect Robert Stacy-Judd working in California, followed those scholars who argued specifically that the Maya were the direct descendants of the peoples of Atlantis. They argued that because of this heritage the Maya had the same cultural background as the great European civilizations.29 Amábilis used the theories of W. Scott-Elliot, a popular Atlantis scholar, to describe the similarities in architecture, religion, and general cultural practices found in various regions of the American continent and some European and African examples.30 Scott-Elliot’s theories of Atlantis were foundational for much of Amábilis’ thought. In particular, Amábilis’ (mis)understanding of the Mayas and Toltecs was derived from Scott-Elliot’s assertions about the noble and civilized Toltec race of Atlantis and its descendants in Mexico and Peru. Amábilis, nonetheless, sought to prove the links with Atlantis by showing that the proportional systems of both Western and Mayan architecture were based on the Golden Mean. Through this proof, he maintained that pre-Hispanic art and architecture reflected the true features of ancient European art and architecture that, at the time he wrote, were in a state of decay.31 To substantiate his convictions, Amábilis studied all aspects of pre-Hispanic architecture, including the sculpture, ornamentation, and painting associated with it. Following Ad quadratum, Macody Lund’s investigation on the Golden Mean as applied to architecture, Amábilis specifically looked at the regulating lines in many Mayan buildings, 98

sculptures, and relief carvings (Figure 3.5).32 These regulating lines, Amábilis concluded,

demonstrated a similar manifestation of geometrical procedures and knowledge attrib-

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uted to a shared lineage: [D]emonstrating the same geometric compositional procedures that were used throughout the Eastern [orientales] and Western [occidentales] art of antiquity, which were the same ones that the Toltecs [Maya] used . . . reveals to us the common origin of all human knowledge that has flowered on earth.33 Amábilis was the only scholar of Mayan architecture who used these systems to prove the theory of Atlantis vis-à-vis artistic and architectural products. Instead of relying on scientific or structural evidence, most of the aforementioned Atlantis scholars relied primarily on general or formal similarities in art and architecture for proof of the existence of a link between the continents. Through his investigations, Amábilis established the shared lineage of the European and pre-Hispanic cultures by basing his conclusions on the deep structural relations of proportions and regulating lines as opposed to simply shared formal constitutive elements. Beyond that shared lineage, Amábilis found that the Maya, like the Europeans, were able to abstract nature and thus fell into the general progressive tradition of universal abstraction. Both the Mayan and Greek civilizations showed what Marc Antoine Laugier argued in Essai sur l’architecture (1753) about Greek architecture: an ability to interpret nature and the environment, as expressed and materialized through the “primitive hut,” without directly copying them into architecture. Like Laugier, Amábilis saw the primitive hut as the element that best demonstrated this relation. By tracing the development and use of the primitive hut, he found that the ancient Mexican and Greek civilizations employed and abstracted an ideal or typological structure throughout their architectures. The difference between the Greeks and the Maya, however, was that the latter reproduced the form or silhouette of the hut in stone and not the structural details, as the Greeks had done. This reconceptualization of the hut was what Amábilis believed the Maya considered “beautiful”: [W]hile the Greek was following a method, an analytical spirit in its formation of architecture, using the hut as a source of inspiration, the Toltec [Maya] proceeded with a synthetic spirit or method in the creation of his architecture, and inspired by the same source.34 What the Maya were able to understand and carry out was more complex than simply reproducing the “first hut.” Instead, in order to reproduce a sense of movement and natural life, Mayan architecture and art interpreted and abstracted nature by understanding its rhythm and harmony.35 In 1933 Amábilis was one of a number of architects and professors of architecture at the Universidad Nacional who participated in a conference—Pláticas sobre Arquitectura—organized by the Sociedad de Arquitectos Mexicanos (sam, Society of Mexican Architects) to respond to the growing interest in radical functionalism and to determine a new direction for Mexican architecture.36 In his presentation of November 9, 1933, Amábilis referred again to the pre-Hispanic ability to abstract nature. Present within preHispanic architectures, he said, was their makers’ knowledge as an “archive of modes

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for aesthetic abstractions” (acervo de modalidades abstractas de estética). As they held the same principles of abstraction characteristic of modern European architecture, he proposed that architects study the ancient architecture of Mexico to understand its logic and characteristics in order to respond to the historical needs of the Mexican people through modern means.37 In response to the debates regarding functionalism, Amábilis reiterated that functional needs were based not on the monuments or machines of the engineers—“pretending that the house must be a ‘machine for living’”—but on the spiritual laws of nature.38 The beauty of nature was “not formed by small tacked-on things (decoration), but instead [resulted] from eurythmy among lines, surfaces, volumes, and structures; from proportion; from exquisite coloration.”39 These, along with artistic expression, inspiration, and a common human goal, were the same elements that affect architecture. The objective of architecture, then, was to respond to the spiritual chaos that existed in Mexico due to the Revolution. The architecture and functionalism of the postrevolutionary era, as the material expression of its context, reflected that spiritual chaos and confusion. To understand and respond adequately to the collective ideal, Amábilis contended that architects needed to tap into all of the advances of modern civilization, art, and philosophy as well as to understand the social problems of the masses. But to truly be effective, they needed to study and imitate the customs, traditions, forms, and regulating lines of their own culture.40 If Pláticas sobre Arquitectura reflected the social concerns to be addressed through architecture in a “functional” and direct way, it was in Donde (1933) that Amábilis waged an articulated opposition to radical functionalism and to the international style. First of all, the appropriation (or imposition, during the time of the colony) of foreign architectural forms resulted in the destruction of the autochthonous material and spiritual culture. Given the necessity for reproduction (material and ideological) of class and power structures, indigenous or traditional culture was rejected in favor of European culture; in turn, the latter was reproduced through the ideological state apparatus of architectural education, publications, and state commissions. The task of archeology was, therefore, not to simply document and isolate the everyday objects of the past but to “include into the present civilization all of those usable and noble elements of past civilizations.”41 For Amábilis, it was the task of the post-Revolution government to transform and question class structures and introduce the Mexican people to traditional Mexican art forms in order to raise class consciousness, to place in front of the people all of the social values, so that by knowing what they are capable of doing they can rekindle within their soul, upon conjuring its past greatness, the creative impulse characteristic of the Mexican race. . . . [By awakening it from] its long sleep, a resurgence of Mexican art, well adapted to our present conditions, will take place.42 Art served a second function as well in Amábilis’ scheme: to oppose the blasé attitude caused by the modern capitalist metropolis. The “desolating, morose, and ugly environment” of modern cities had the power to intensify “moral debility” and diminish “mental forces.”43 By rejecting a nationalist art, the bourgeoisie reproduced a class structure and relations of production that denied the indigenous masses the possibility

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of redemption. By using foreign and international modern architecture, the bourgeoisie

limited the architectural comprehension of a large part of the Mexican population. The

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introduction of “European arguments,” in other words, only served to reinforce the notion of the inferiority of the Mexican people. Amábilis articulated this position through an attack on the international style that he saw as dominating Mexican architectural debates: Shielding themselves with the mask of physical youth, which is arguable, our modernist architects are suffering from an indigestion of internationalism with its salsa de yanquismo [Yankee sauce] and liberation from functionalism and even nationalism. . . . They pretend to give up the great privilege of distinguished artists, of great creators in the real sense of the word, that is to say, emulators of the life that creates all things that are, above all, beautiful. They claim to dismiss architecture as an art in the slavish spirit of imitating engineers. Instead of being avid artists of the ideal, they want to become manufacturers of constructions whose only goals are economy and utility. . . . They attempt to transform these wishes of avarice into the ideals of Architecture. They intend to transform these concepts, enemies of art throughout the ages, so that they are called Beauty. And [they do so] because the bourgeois classes have been the only ones that have, up to the present, enjoyed Art and Beauty. Now, those new architects who call themselves revolutionaries, proclaiming only to build for the masses, attempt to take away their right to beauty, denying them the existence of beauty. . . . Showing ineptitude and only ineptitude, they want to be the molders of the beauty that our times demand. This beauty is one that must shine in the constructive synthesis resulting from the most recent scientific knowledge and working for the race and region that it inhabits.44 The task of the architect was twofold. First, he or she had to find, within the immediate context, the history of the past. Second, the architect needed to develop forms of beauty that resulted from the synthesis of nature and modern scientific concepts and that possessed a forward-looking vision for humanity. Amábilis argued, not unlike Vasconcelos, that it was the task of the Mexican people, given their high artistic sensibilities and ideals, to inspire the transformation of the world through art.45 Amábilis codified this position in his Mística de la Revolución Mexicana (1937). According to this book, the Mexican Revolution was the first to liberate “the Mystical Ideal that will redeem the masses without churches, creeds, clergy, and rituals” and the first to elicit “the Mysticism of Action that will be in accord with the science of our times.”46 The mystical ideal was based on the care of one’s body and on humans’ capacity to imitate and perfect nature through creative means. These traits, Amábilis wrote, were part of the legacy of the ancestors that needed reinforcement through a socialist educational system. Through action, the Mexican Revolution introduced these ideal elements in order to create a more “noble, equitable existence for the people; in this way, strengthened with an infusion of vigor, the proletariat will be ready to make the next step toward the definitive redemption of the Mexican people.”47 Viewed overall, Amábilis’ historical and theoretical explorations reflected a vision of Mexican tradition and heritage, permeated with a revolutionary sensibility and deep historical roots and in possession of the components needed to serve in the “collective labor of humanity.”48 It was up to Mexican artists and architects to actualize such

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a vision. And, immediately, questions arise: How was Amábilis’ own work, the Mexican Pavilion in Seville, to serve this collective labor? What were the theoretical premises and revolutionary ideals that Amábilis aspired to express in his design? How were they transformed and materialized architecturally?

the mexican pavilion

In 1926 the Mexican government organized a competi-

tion for the Mexican Pavilion in the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929. The primary requirement for the pavilion, besides traditional programmatic stipulations of exhibit spaces and meeting halls, was that it represent a national architectural style with a budget of 300,000 pesos. In what would turn into three rounds of competition, the winner at first was Ignacio Marquina, whose comparative study of pre-Hispanic architecture in the Spanish Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando competition in 1927, as we have seen, came in second after Amábilis’ study on Mayan architecture. The secondplace winner in the initial round was the architect Carlos Obregón Santacilia.49 Shortly after the winners were announced, two types of protests were lodged. The first critiqued the involvement of engineers as participants in an architectural contest. The second criticized the contest’s imposition of predetermined styles to be used.50 The requirement that the pavilion be designed in a national style, based on either the preHispanic or colonial style due to an ambiguous clause in the competition rules, elicited the response that “to impose in 1926 pre-Colombian or colonial ‘lineaments’ on a building that was destined for a modern exposition demands the use of absurd architectural [styles].”51 Deeply rooted in stylistic debates was the question of how the national style was decided by the competing architects or the standing competition committee. After all, how was a national style to be determined if there “was not a strong Mexican race or a group of Mexican realities that [would] naturally and simply yield a Mexican architectural style”?52 Writing under the pseudonym Alarife Blas Miya, Amábilis also criticized the competition and its results. He protested the competition’s structure and organization for favoring wealthy architects of “good families” while ignoring architects with fewer economic resources. Next he admonished the competition’s imposition of a colonial style that made all of the entries look like miniature churches. It was inappropriate, he wrote, to send Spain a “churrigeresque architecture that was dressed like a charro [cowboy] or a china poblana [typical style of dress from Puebla].”53 Then he critiqued the jury for not having enough knowledge of pre-Hispanic architecture to choose an appropriate example to send to the exposition as representative of Mexican architecture. Because of this limited knowledge, the jury had selected a project that simply imitated the Mexican Pavilion for the Paris exposition of 1900, in which pre-Hispanic motifs were used inaccurately in a haphazard and purely decorative way. Finally, Amábilis denounced the jury for awarding the remaining winners, who had petitioned for commendations, with “charity awards.” For him, this represented architecture’s growing bureaucracy—demanding awards for architects to adorn their “sterile indolence.”54 Due to these protests and other changes in the program, a second contest was convoked on June 15, 1926. The program remained the same with the exception of the requirement that the pavilion be constructed as a permanent structure to hold consular offices after the exposition. The style of the building was left open to the choice of the 102

participants.55 In light of the previous criticisms, the structure of the jury was changed to

reflect various interests and classes.56 The official publication about the pavilion by the

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Department of Industry, one of the parties responsible for its construction, stated that the earlier contest had been nullified because the winning project was “temporary” and could not be used permanently.57 It was apparent, however, that the reformulation of the jury and stylistic requirements of the competition reflected more profound motivations to enact a second contest than simply issues of programmatic inadequacy. Regardless, the contest was popular: the number of submissions almost doubled, from fifteen entries in the first competition to twenty-six in the second. In writing about the proposals, Luis Prieto y Souza commended the participants for adequately solving the difficult task of integrating a precise and modern program within the developing national aesthetic form. The difficulty lay, he wrote, in solving the relationship between the plan and the exterior forms of the building. Nevertheless, the proposals reflected five interests and investigative lines regarding the formal direction that modern Mexican architecture could follow: the pre-Hispanic, the Mexican colonial, the pure colonial style that tended toward a modernist aesthetic, the universal style influenced by international modern forms, and the stereotypical “exotic” Mexican style.58 Between the two contests, participants employed three different styles to signify and express a national style. The first was the neo-indigenous or pre-Hispanic revival—used in the project of the team of Ignacio Marquina, Alberto Mendoza, and Manuel Obregón Escalante and in the project of Alberto Mendoza, working alone. Also in a pre-Hispanic style was Amábilis’ project. The second was the neocolonial—represented by the project of Carlos Obregón Santacilia and Carlos Tarditti and by the project of the team of Ignacio Marquina, Salvador Vértiz Hornedo, and Agustin García. The third, which the architectural historian Israel Katzman called the “transition style” between the pre-Hispanic and the colonial, was featured in the project of Vicente Urquiaga and Juan Segura and in José Villagrán’s entry.59 Of the pavilions designed in the pre-Hispanic style, Marquina, Mendoza, and Obregón Escalante’s was directly influenced by the Mayan architecture of Uxmal. Alberto Mendoza’s entry was a hollowed-out, stepped pyramid, similar to the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán.60 On August 11, 1926, the jury of the second competition declared it null and void, stating that none of the entries fully solved the programmatic necessities and that none of the proposals represented Mexico in a dignified way, especially given the permanence of the proposed building. Despite this declaration, out of twenty-six projects, four received commendations. Because a building still needed to be built and ready by the middle of 1928, a third and final competition for the design was convoked. To expedite the process, the competition was closed to those architects awarded prizes in the first contest and those commended in the second. Because of these limitations, the competition received only eight entries and virtually no attention by the press. Itza, Amábilis’ project, was finally chosen as the winner of the competition (Figure 3.6).61 Regardless of the polemical debates taking place in Mexico at the time, Amábilis remained faithful to the character and quality of the pre-Hispanic architecture that he had advocated and extensively studied. Ultimately, his beliefs about ancient Mexican societies and their importance for the present were carried through in the design of his pavilion and are explained in his book about it, El Pabellón de México. As his collaborators Amábilis chose the sculptor Leopoldo Tommasi López and the painter Victor M. Reyes.

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3.6 Manuel Amábilis, perspective, Mexican Pavilion, Ibero-American Exposition, Seville, ca. 1928

3.7 Manuel Amábilis, site plan, Mexican Pavilion, Ibero-American Exposition

3.8 Manuel Amábilis, ground-floor plan, Mexican Pavilion, Ibero-American Exposition

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In his chapter on painting in La arquitectura precolombina de México, Amábilis refers to

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Reyes, who was an expert on Mayan painting, as a researcher, restorer, and artist: Reyes expressed the indigenous art’s “noble qualities in his own personal work—infused with the Toltec [Maya] spirit and whose very modern expressions suggest the great possibilities for present-day Mexico.”62 Both the sculptor and painter were, like Amábilis, from Yucatán and educated abroad. Ideologically, the similarity between Amábilis’ books—one on pre-Hispanic architecture and the other explaining the pavilion—demonstrate his dogmatic position, which he would express in the pavilion itself. After all, the study and the pavilion were produced approximately at the same time, and thus the same arguments are repeated in the book dedicated to the pavilion. These positions include Amábilis’ historical understanding of the evolution of Mayan architecture as derived from an ancient source, although in this book he does not mention Atlantis specifically, and seen in the development of the primitive hut and the continuity of proportional systems. To understand Amábilis’ intentions, however, it is necessary to closely analyze the relationship between the book and the pavilion. The pavilion is a reinforced-concrete building whose appearance bears traces of preHispanic Mayan architecture in Yucatán. Its layout is a two-story Greek cruciform plan with a double-height central hall lit by skylights (Figures 3.7 and 3.8). The entrance is located at the crossing of the axes and the access to the second floor located directly opposite it. And while the exteriors closely follow pre-Hispanic models, they are not exact

3.9 Rear façade, Mexican Pavilion, Ibero-American Exposition

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3.10 Rear façade cornice detail, Mexican Pavilion, Ibero-American Exposition

3.11 Front façade cornice detail, Mexican Pavilion, Ibero-American Exposition

reproductions of known work but reinterpretations in the quality of light and shadow, ornamentation, and sculptural details (Figures 3.9 and 3.10). The pavilion did have, however, replicas of Mayan sculptures, such as two variations of chac-mool on the parapet of the front façade and the “Mayan,” or feathered-serpent, columns (Figures 3.11 and 3.12), similar to those of the Temple of the Warriors and the Temple of the Jaguars at Chichén Itzá. All in all, the pavilion’s influences were derived from various sources: the Governor’s Palace and the House of the Turtles at Uxmal; the three-story building at Sayil; the Church, the Temple of the Three Lintels, and the Nunnery at Chichén Itzá; and structures at Labná. Except for the Temple of the Three Lintels and the buildings at Labná, all of these are identified in Amábilis’ La arquitectura precolombina de México. The pavilion’s entrance vestibule was accentuated by the “Jamb of Race”: 106

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3.12 “Mayan” columns at entry, Mexican Pavilion, Ibero-American Exposition

3.13 Manuel Amábilis, ground-floor “Mayan” furnishings, Mexican Pavilion, Ibero-American Exposition

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Mother Spain. Because in my fields you lit the light of culture and in my soul the devotional lamp of your spirit, now my fields and heart have flowered.63 The central space, which Amábilis called the “covered patio,” immediately followed the vestibule. For this space, Amábilis designed furniture in a Mayan style, a common feature of the neo-indigenous and pre-Hispanic architectural trend (Figure 3.13). The double-height space of the room was enhanced by arches whose profile was based on the corbel vault, a typical element of Mayan construction. What suggests the space as a modern expression of the Mayan form is the contemporary use of reinforced concrete to create an open system of corbel-shaped arches that in the traditional pre-Hispanic construction would have been built solid with stone masonry (Figure 3.14). This transformation from the solid vault to the open framework also reflected the theories of the late-nineteenth-century structural rationalist movement and of French architectural historian and architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc. Through a rationalization of the structural system, Amábilis, like his French counterpart in Gothic construction, dematerialized and reduced the historical architectural form to its framework in order to apply some of the principles of the past and achieve some of its qualities. The arches over the central hall (Figure 3.15) were supported by columns whose proportions were derived from the Temple of the Bearded Man in Chichén Itzá. The interior exposition rooms radiate from the centralized space at the crossing of the two axes. Opposite the entrance stood the grand staircase leading to the mezzanine on the second floor and its attached exhibition spaces.

3.14 Manuel Amábilis, transverse section, Mexican Pavilion, Ibero-American Exposition

Decorating the interior space were sculptures and low-relief carvings by Tommasi and mural paintings, frescos, stained-glass windows, and ceiling paintings by Reyes

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3.15 Corbel arches over central hall, Mexican Pavilion, Ibero-American Exposition

(Figure 3.16). The goal of the decorative art was to “develop themes which allude to the origins of [the Mexican] nationality, [its] uses and customs.”64 Tommasi’s work, inspired by Mayan carvings, was considered an expression of the feelings and thoughts of the Mexican people in a language developed by their own ancestors (Figure 3.17). The themes of many of Reyes’ pieces were intended to capture the qualities of Mexico, its people, and their life, work, traditions, and popular culture. His color palette represented the hues of Mexican flora and tropical light. Many of his murals and windows illustrated working scenes devoid of class distinctions. Some even depicted, although not overtly, socialist iconography. This is clear in El trabajo (Labor), a stained-glass window showing a worker holding a hammer and sickle (Figure 3.18). Amábilis described Reyes’ work as inspired by the art and politics of Diego Rivera, who attempted in his own

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3.16 Ground floor, Mexican Pavilion, Ibero-American Exposition

3.17 Leopoldo Tommasi López, low-relief carvings, Mexican Pavilion, Ibero-American Exposition

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3.18 Victor M. Reyes, El Trabajo, stained glass, Mexican Pavilion, Ibero-American Exposition

3.19 Victor M. Reyes, murals in main staircase, Mexican Pavilion, Ibero-American Exposition

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murals to return art to the people and to represent the proletariat in ways that elevated working-class viewers’ self-esteem. In his figurative scheme for the pavilion, Reyes pursued those intentions as well (Figure 3.19).65 The bulk of the ideological description concerning the pavilion can be found in Amábilis’ chapter on Mexican art, particularly under the subheading “Concepto” (Concept).66 Here Amábilis addresses issues central to his other books, such as the relationship of the art of ancient Europeans and Mexicans, the socialist aims of the Revolution infused into Mexican art, and the nationalist qualities of the pre-Hispanic style in contemporary production. In El Pabellón de México, however, he brought such questions from the conceptual realm to the material one as they actually influenced the creation of the built form. Amábilis argued that the contemporary use of pre-Hispanic forms represented the artistic production of the ancient Mexican peoples as an “inalienable reminder of the race.” During the Conquest, the period of colonization, and the Díaz dictatorship, European art was imposed on the Mexican people, but the Mexican temperament and ethnic roots prevented that imposition from succeeding. The Revolution “shook the foundations of all social organisms in Mexico, and [its] most righteous claim has been the improvement of our popular art; [with the triumph of the Revolution] there was an inaudible national flowering, full of enjoyment and well-being.”67 Mexican artists who were taught to undervalue their own cultural ancestry in comparison to the European could now use the perceived aims and principles of the Revolution to solidify the Mexican race and its autonomy and to raise the autochthonous to new heights of prominence. By informing their art with nationalist roots, the artists, working for the people, would display the vast knowledge inherited from their forebears. It was Amábilis’ hope that even European artists would be informed by this new production in Mexico—as expressed through the pavilion—and find it useful for their own goals. The Mexican Pavilion in Seville served for Amábilis this purpose, as well as to “show that [the] Archaic National Art can solve modern construction problems, without losing any character, [by] adapting itself to all types of structures and the needs of our modern comfort.”68 Did Amábilis foresee, though, that the pre-Hispanic art and architecture would carry a social message? A parallel question concerns the new architecture: Why did he not choose a more self-referential, economical, and scientific architecture such as the socially inspired functionalism? To understand Amábilis’ investment in the social value of pre-Hispanic architecture, it is important to understand his context prior to the design of the pavilion. From this vantage point it is clear that he envisioned the pre-Hispanic style working throughout the Western world and in any regional context. By relying on the myth of Atlantis, he predicted that the pre-Hispanic forms of Mexico would be legible throughout the Western world because they were derived from the same root. Socially, the art of the ancients reflected their civilization’s classless structure.69 For Amábilis, the Mexican Revolution unmasked the sense that the architecture and art of the past were popular expressions. The revival of pre-Hispanic forms as both popular and reflective of classless ideals, then, was intended for the majority of the people although specifically directed toward the indigenous Mexican proletariat. Similar notions about the indigenous population and its relationship to social revolutions were discussed throughout Latin America. The most prominent expression of this

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discourse can be found in the work of Peruvian writer José Carlos Mariátegui, called the

“father of revolutionary indigenismo.” By using Marxism as an analytical tool, Mariátegui

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provided a description and interpretation of the social problems plaguing the Peruvian Indian. He first established that the problem of the Indian was really the problem of the majority of the Peruvian population and, therefore, of the nation. Thus he proposed that the Indian must be seen as a necessary participant in the national revolution. Secondly, he emphasized that the main problem of the indigenous people was tied to issues of landownership. Mariátegui contended that colonization brought in a feudal structure that took the land away from the Indians and forced them into servitude. The social and governmental structure of the time, moreover, maintained this feudal system by mobilizing cultural and political ideologies to further exploit the indigenous population. The mechanisms inherent in such a system centered around labeling “the indigenous problem” as a matter of governmental administration and a set of ethnic, religious, pedagogical, and moral concerns instead of an economic one. Mariátegui proposed that the Indian must be aided by the proletariat. The working class, he argued, was the only group that could help the indigenous population achieve class consciousness and, in so doing, lead it to revolutionary action. The job of the avant-garde was, furthermore, to give the indigenous masses an organized, systematic, and well-defined character in order to ally them to the socialist revolution. Toward this end, Mariátegui’s writings and those of his followers exalted the Indian as a means to reconstruct the indigenous population’s customs, habitats, and present needs—mostly pointing out that the white race had intentionally engendered the impoverished conditions in which Indians lived.70 Amauta, a literary magazine founded by Mariátegui and his group, linked indigenist issues with the structure of a leftist avant-garde.71 But most importantly for our study, Mariátegui, like Amábilis, demonstrated the socialist tradition inherent in pre-Hispanic civilizations and, particularly for Mariátegui, the Inca. The possible act of remembering, or the possibility of this latent memory coming to light, was the missing link needed to awaken within Indians the desire to return to a socialist state. If the pre-Hispanic forms worked on a larger Western and Latin American scale, the regional one of Yucatán shows their immediate potency. As mentioned earlier and as Mariátegui also had seen within his own context in Peru, the ruling elites—prior to the Mexican Revolution—had turned autochthonous art and architecture into tools that maintained their political hegemony over the indigenous population. Popular art and pre-Hispanic forms were seen, in light of bourgeois Europeanism, as exotic and primitive manifestations. This impression was used for political aims or for local and regional events. With the advent of the Revolution and after new leadership was appointed, the view of Mexico’s pre-Hispanic heritage changed. In Yucatán, the shift meant that the regional population regained an art and culture denied to it since the Conquest. The administration of Governor Salvador Alvarado, a member of the Socialist Party of Yucatán for whom Amábilis worked upon his return from Paris, called for the production of architecture that reused regional Mayan forms for nationalist and populist aims. With his successful bid for governor in 1922, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, also a member of the Socialist Party, declared his to be the first genuinely socialist government on the American continent. Historians José Francisco Paoli and Enrique Montalvo note that Carrillo Puerto, as the leader of the Southeastern Socialist Party, successfully mobilized popular traditions to win a majority of the votes: 113

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The Plaza Grande was full, [and] Felipe Carrillo Puerto talked to the Mayas in their own language. No governor had ever done this before. Language, as in science, culture, technology, and education, had functioned as another medium for the domination of the exploited. The exploiter knew the language of the dominated. The exploited ignored the language of that [dominant] group. Now, the Maya language was a means for liberation. In that language, the hopes, worries, ideology, and popular truths were transmitted.72 It was through the leadership of Carrillo Puerto that a regional identity was forged to improve the conditions of the indigenous people.73 By transforming cultural signifiers previously co-opted by the ruling elite, his government returned to the indigenous population, in their own language, the culture of their ancestors. Through the creation of a cultural agenda, Felipe Carrillo Puerto and his government clearly saw that the enslaved Maya people were losing their cultural roots, their identity as a group, their way of life. He gave himself the job of encouraging the reconstruction of these cultural bases. He understood that the deplorable reality of the conquered and beaten indigenous people could be contrasted with the existence of the great Maya culture signified by the great pyramids at Uxmal and Chichén Itzá. One part of his strategy involved giving the working people, alienated by those people with Spanish origins and mixed race, a reason to have pride in the glorious Maya past.74 This program employed people like Amábilis, Tommasí, and Reyes to create public works whose elements were based on Mayan culture. Historian Juan Antonio Siller finds that Amábilis’ embrace of pre-Hispanic forms and details encouraged the integration of all plastic arts—as had been done by the ancient Mexicans—in favor of a nationalist identity that rejected European and other foreign cultural influences.75 To add to Siller’s assessment, this rejection of foreign cultural influence also signified, as we have seen, the rejection of bourgeois cultural production and dissemination. In short, the turn toward a uniquely national culture was what most postrevolutionary Mexican socialist artists, such as the members of the Sindicato and lear, advocated. Thus the design of the Mexican Pavilion was imbued with a nationalist and socialist, or perhaps a “socially nationalistic,” philosophy. What would be the consequences, though, of making such a philosophy manifest in an international exposition? How was the relationship of colonizer and colonized affected, regardless of the independence of Mexico? In other words, were the design and construction of Amábilis’ pavilion seen as fundamentally subversive to the “Mother Land”?

reactions to spanish neocolonialist aspirations

The 1929 Ibero-

American Exposition in Seville has been described as an ideologically established exposition under an “unconscious pretension of establishing the old colonial exchange of [Seville]-America”76 Part of the hispanoamericanismo of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship in Spain, the exposition furthered efforts to create a reconciliation between the Spanish and countries on the American continent, especially the old Spanish colonies. Spain’s 114

attempt to reach out across the Atlantic was also a response to growing North American

neocolonialist tactics and economic imperialism in Central and South America. What

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the de Rivera government wanted was to create insoluble ties with the American continent based on linguistic and racial descent from Spain.77 Hispanoamericanismo was seen as a means to establish Spanish economic expansion into the American continent by “promoting and financing the creation of foreign businesses that would employ or sell Spanish products or use Spanish services.”78 The exposition, in other words, was a direct materialization of this neo-expansionist ideology. Amábilis, whether aware or not of these intentions, responded independently to them by building a pavilion for what had been the colonizer of his people. The Mexican Pavilion could be seen, therefore, as denouncing colonialist practices, as rejecting the objectification, stereotyping, and exotification of a diverse national culture, and as advocating class equality. By creating a pavilion that was built in a national style, Amábilis first rejected the influence that Spain had exerted on Mexico. Instead of using a style that incorporated the colonial architecture of the Americas, as most architects for the American pavilions had done, he highlighted the culture that existed before colonization. In his two books discussed here—but in particular the one on the pavilion—he articulated the advancements that ancient Mexicans had achieved, including, as we have seen, Amábilis’ speculation on the similar origins of the indigenous Americans and the Greek culture, the “cradle of Western civilization.” He wrote, “Our ancestral Architecture clothed in our Popular Arts, full of the vital dynamism that is the heartbeat of the Nation immersed in Western culture, has allowed us to express, in Mexican, the feelings and thoughts of that true Western Civilization.”79 Furthermore, placing a pavilion in Seville that was completely foreign to the city’s sensibilities yet utilized Spanish labor and materials was intended to represent an intrusion similar to that enacted during the colonization. That is, the pavilion forced the acceptance of a foreign culture without giving the host country a choice in the matter. The pavilion indirectly alluded to and critiqued the destruction of culture under the Spanish. By using styles or decorative elements present in pre-Hispanic Mexico that had vanished because of the Conquest, Amábilis pointed to Spain’s religious dogmatism and its resultant cultural obliteration.80 We find similar assaults on Spanish tradition throughout Latin America, such as the rejection of high Spanish by writers like Jorge Luis Borges and Roberto Arlt, who, by writing the spoken word, imbued their writings with an opposition to the written purity of the Spanish language. Borges undertook the projects of criollismo and cocoliche (for example, in El idioma de los argentinos), and Arlt wrote in lumfardo (a popular form of Argentine slang); both writers attempted to capture the phonetic quality of Argentine Spanish.81 Mariátegui’s brand of indigenismo likewise incorporated into the vocabulary pre-Hispanic forms and words to subvert acceptable Spanish and to accentuate the destruction of the ancient indigenous culture. In architecture, critiques based on similar issues also could be found. Leopoldo Tommasí López, one of Amábilis’ collaborators, attacked the production of modern architecture in Mexico in a 1931 article on national architecture by claiming that the new architecture was merely an adulteration of the frivolous styles of Spain. . . . Let us not forget that our national architecture must be made with horizontal and parallel lines and masses; that we

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must decorate the surfaces of our buildings, and in some way we must take advantage of the rhythm, the plasticity, and the chromatic qualities of our pre-Colombian architecture.82 The lesson from the pavilion was that the pre-Hispanic forms showed Mexican culture alive and undisturbed despite Spanish intrusions. By representing the Mexican culture as highly advanced and as producing pure yet innovative cultural artifacts, Amábilis also rejected the exoticism typical of international expositions. Instead of depicting Mexico as an exotic civilization whose cultural production did not equal the European, as the 1867 pavilion at the Exposition Universelle in Paris had done, Amábilis’ pavilion was a materialization of personal and rigorous studies of pre-Hispanic architecture and art that showed a filial relation to Greek culture. By submitting the pre-Hispanic art and architecture to various ancestry tests in order to prove it, he showed the complexity of the Mexican artistic production that earlier appeared as exotic or indecipherable. Amábilis’ use of these elements therefore charged the pavilion with an extremely complex and advanced architectural system inherited from Atlantis, the same ancestors as the Europeans’, through the Maya. Finally, in light of European fascination with “other” cultures because of their abstract and innovative formal qualities, the Mexican Pavilion demonstrated that forms copied and radicalized by the European avant-garde were native to Mexican culture. Ultimately, for Amábilis, these Mexican artistic forms represented the fundamental qualities of Mexican life. Through the Revolution, the reincorporation of the indigenous in architecture represented a return to popular art. The influence of artists such as Diego Rivera further emphasized the importance and the socialist qualities of autochthonous art and its popular dissemination. Through art, the working class and indigenous people could achieve class and race consciousness. Pre-Hispanic art would act similarly while emphasizing the extensive achievements of the past. All in all, this self-recognition was

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to orient the masses in their material and spiritual emancipation.83 In the context of the

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exposition in Spain, the transmission of these goals and ideas would occur primarily through legible artistic and architectural representations in the pavilion. The depiction of working and popular scenes, many imbued with universally recognized socialist iconography, was intended to force the viewer to make dialectical comparisons between his or her current culture and its possible socialist counterpart. Whether it was through this iconography, the rejection of exotification, or the denunciation of colonialist practices, Manuel Amábilis’ Mexican Pavilion for the 1929 IberoAmerican Exposition subverted the traditional forces working within the logic of international expositions. Instead, he sought to represent the desires of the Mexican people as they searched not only for a nationalist cultural identity but also for a sense of who they were, what they stood for, and what they would become after the Revolution. This was Amábilis’ goal:84 For the construction of the Mexican Pavilion in Seville, we have only contributed the teachings of the archaic monuments of our country, cloaked with a deep love for our land and with our modern Western culture. Therefore, if our project achieves success, the three artists who created it reverently offer it to the memory of our ancestors, the distinguished builders of those monuments. Seville, March nineteenth 1

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J. M. AMÁBILIS Architect

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4

against a new architecture juan o’gorman and the disillusionment of modernism

by 1952, after completing his “primitive cave” house in el pedregal (Figures 4.1 and 4.2) and the mosaic decorations for the library of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (unam, National University, Figure 4.3), Juan O’Gorman had reconceptualized his personal crisis regarding the appropriateness and need for functional architecture in Mexico. Yet, still present in the various self-critical documents about the work of the 1950s is O’Gorman’s dissatisfaction with the inability of architecture to speak to the Mexican proletariat masses about their self-identity and revolutionary potential as well as their ideological manipulation through modern architecture. O’Gorman, as he had seen earlier, understood architects to be “managers of building production” whose own economic and class interests required them to maximize their profits at the expense of an architecture that could integrate art and life in modern Mexico.1 This integration, O’Gorman wrote, “would serve as a shout of protest in favor of a humanism within the mechanical desert of the ‘marvelous civilization’ in which we live, and whose aim is to destroy all expression that has as its base the humanist nature of mankind.”2 This position, however, was a complete reversal of the functionalist propositions O’Gorman favored in the late 1920s and early 1930s when, as a young architect, he publicly called for a strictly rationalist and functional architecture to solve the architectural needs of a large working-class and rural population. As a young student, he found within the experiments of the international avant-garde the impetus to solve the most pressing architectural problems with a minimum of economic expenditure and waste. His work and writings exemplified a strong commitment to a socially minded, functionalist architecture: from the construction of his first house in 1929 to the last house of his functionalist period in 1936; through the foundation and organization of the School for Construction Technicians; and especially in his architectural work for the Department of Education. O’Gorman sought an architecture that shed its pretentious transcendental aspirations and solved the squalid living and working conditions of the Mexican poor in a precise and direct way. For him, architecture’s social role was as simple as the dialectic of “architecture that serves mankind or architecture that serves capital.”3 In 1938, however, O’Gorman’s functionalist practice came to a virtual end when he turned to realist painting and mural making, forcing us to reevaluate this dramatic disillusionment, shift, and rejection after a nine-year period of architectural production. What were the reasons for this sudden end to what appeared to be a promising architectural method, especially in light of the highly successful social practice of his work for the Department of Education or of his friend Juan Legarreta?4 What prompted O’Gorman to wholeheartedly abandon functionalism for its almost pictorial opposite, realist painting?

(development of) functionalist architecture in mexico [M]ankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the master more closely, it will always be found that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for the solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation. k arl marx, preface to a critique of political economy The early development of functionalism in Mexico evolved out of two seemingly opposed paradigms: the economic and the aesthetic. Within these two, which later collided in a point of crisis, the social, artistic avant-garde stood for an architecture that

[T]he once supposedly autonomous subject [is] emptied of any content, until it finally becomes a mere name with nothing to denominate. The total transformation of each and every individual realm of being into a field of means leads to the liquidation of the subject who is supposed to use them. This gives modern industrialist society its nihilistic aspect. ma x hor kh e imer , ec lip se o f r e a so n

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4.1 Juan O’Gorman, Juan O’Gorman House, El Pedregal, exterior, 1948

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4.2 Juan O’Gorman, Juan O’Gorman House, El Pedregal, interior, 1948

4.3 Juan O’Gorman, Gustavo Saavedra, and Juan Martínez de Velasco, Biblioteca Central, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1950–1951

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solved contemporary architectural problems through efficient, economic means—an architecture that “sacrificed” aesthetic aspirations for the good of the collective. The other, somewhat opposed to the solutions proposed by this group, was the position advocated in the institution or profession of architecture. Through varying degrees of forcefulness, its proponents proclaimed both the autonomy of the profession, vis-à-vis engineers and builders, and its dependence on the aesthetic dimension of architecture. Both positions, however, took a stance in relation to the Mexican Revolution and its role in the development of architecture. Through this, these two directions have influenced the debates that, even to this day, elicit fierce responses regarding the role of modern architecture in Mexico. This is not the place, however, to exhume all of the histories and polemics of functionalism in Mexico. That task is too large for the project at hand, given that the trend effectively began in the late nineteenth century under the influence of the French theoreticians studied in the Academia de San Carlos and whose ideas reappeared in the 1920s and 1930s after the Revolution. Instead, it is important to understand the specific developments that were analogous to and had direct repercussions for Juan O’Gorman’s intellectual and social development. David Alfaro Siqueiros, in one of the earliest public forays into architectural discourse by a member of the artistic avant-garde, waged a virulent critique against the architecture developing under José Vasconcelos. Writing in May 1924 for El Machete, the official publication of the Sindicato de Obreros Técnicos, Pintores y Escultores, he explained the architectural production of the day as a consequence of the ruling bourgeois order. Siqueiros’ criticism of architecture focused specifically on its ideological manipulation. For him, even the dynamist tendencies of the avant-garde, such as Futurism’s idolatry of the automobile, was a misunderstanding of true scientific developments. Instead, this modern dynamism, co-opted by the bourgeoisie, was a commercial force that had as its aim the creation of architecture “in the least possible time, with the least possible investment, to obtain the most earnings.”5 This economic argument for such architecture became thematic in O’Gorman’s early functionalist production that he later renounced as problematic. Siqueiros instead insisted that architects create a “logical” architecture based on “the geographic order and the physical laws of the materials used.” Architecture in Mexico, he argued, should not be created by “stealing from architecture books and magazines styles from countries with the most remotely and radically different subsoil and geographic characteristics . . . or [by] making, with reinforced concrete, colonial-style buildings with imitation tezontle.”6 Instead of building lasting architecture based on logic, solidity, and balance—which would result in aesthetically beautiful work—architects were wasting money by constructing an “arbitrary architecture” that had little to do with the true needs of a post-Revolution Mexico and its people and much to do with the ideology of the bourgeoisie. The solution lay, therefore, in activating the social revolution in order to demolish the ruling bourgeois order and the mercantilism that corrodes everything that has made out of architecture the most ignoble means of exploitation . . . [It had to] cut at its roots that which is superfluous, improvised, hollow, and every piece of junk that has been invented by the rich to exploit the poor: [by doing so] it will introduce the

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solid, the transcendental, the definitive, pure science, and the perfect manual labor.7

Given the socially limited scope of the Revolution, Siqueiros called for architects and

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their state patrons to rely, for the time being, on collaboration with technical specialists and on a rejection of the superficial qualities of building. O’Gorman followed a similar path while working for the Department of Education through the creation of “engineered buildings” whose whole design was based on logical and functional requirements while rejecting all aesthetic considerations. Siqueiros’ position, although clearly dialectical in nature, remained at the level of an impasse: backing a rationalized functionalism as the only socially viable solution to the current state of architectural production yet simultaneously criticizing it as ideological. In the end, failing to provide any type of materialist solution, Siqueiros turned to metaphysical, “transcendental goals” with no specific directions or requirements. Another type of discussion on functionalism with similarities to and repercussions on architectural production that appeared in the late 1920s and early 1930s in literature and poetry was the tendency described as poesía pura (pure poetry) or socialized poetry. One of its main promoters, Gustavo Ortiz Hernán, described it in the following way: Pure art and socialized art are an exact reflection of battling forces within the economic and social field. Both interpret life in their own distinct way. . . . Pure art responds to an economic and social past that is being eradicated, while the collective art attentively keeps an eye on the new panoramas.8 The strategy of poesía pura was centered on emptying poetic metaphors of meaning believed to be loaded with bourgeois ideology. Through this operation, these empty vessels could be filled with socialist and collective ideas and values. The architectural equivalent would be the use of new forms that had not been already co-opted by the bourgeoisie in order to give them a social(ist) valence; this, generally speaking, was done with scientifically based architecture, or functionalism. The problem with this strategy, however, as Jesús S. Soto would articulate in “Arte y revolución” (1929), was the incomprehensibility of this poetry and literature to the proletariat and indigenous masses. He contended that they desired a populist and legible language to express their objective interests. Soto, nevertheless, proclaimed this new work as paradigmatic of the changes taking place in Mexico as a result of the Revolution and praised Mexican writers’ attempt to eradicate and transform signs associated with the old regime. This new work represented the influence of the Revolution in developing a “constant desire for renovation in methods, norms, and spiritual content.”9 Ortiz Hernán materialized these ideas in his novel Chimeneas.10 He wrote that all works of art “have class meanings and a high ability to become instruments of revolutionary struggle.”11 These new and revolutionary works needed to denaturalize the oppressions of the past and the barbarism of the present. If Siqueiro’s article represented the entry of the artist into the realm of life and Ortiz Hernán’s poesía pura reflected the impact of the Revolution in foregrounding the question of ideology within artistic production, then the involvement of the architectural profession in the realm of postrevolutionary “reality” was to serve as a catalyst or generator of new forms and concerns. Expressed through some of the major architectural publications in Mexico of the 1920s and 1930s, the concerns highlighted the debates and polemics regarding the role of modern architecture in Mexico and the ideological shift that

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it would undertake. In these publications we can find the influence of the Revolution in transforming architectural production, the significance of the reception and importation of forms and concepts from the international architectural avant-garde, and the debates centered specifically on functionalism as it related to these issues. The importance of the Revolution in architectural thought first crystallized in professional architectural journals in the early 1920s. Here, as a reaction to Vasconcelos’ architectural programs, the Revolution was used as a pretext to shift the discussion regarding the use and production of architecture to align with new social ideals. In an article of 1923 written by José Gómez Echeverría, the zeitgeist argument of producing an architecture reflective of the times was transformed into a specifically Mexican problematic: in the same way that there has been a social and economic readjustment, there should also be, in our case, a manifestation of readjustment between style and modern needs, between style and new construction procedures, and, lastly, between style and modern taste variegated by impressions and undefined by agitated modern living.12 Reflected in the first “readjustment,” the Revolution provided the impetus for a shift in material production, architectural styles, and modern needs. Although he attributed the necessity of change to the Revolution, this position was by no means radical. Rather, what Gómez Echeverría presented was the need for a move into a new mode of production: industrialized capitalism. This transformation reflected the needs of consumption and production whose “agitated” effects, similar to those described by the German sociologist Georg Simmel, were the basis of an impoverished sensibility determined by an abstract monetary economy.13 Even in 1930 we find the importance of the Revolution in the transformation of society, architecture, and construction. The unnamed writer of “Ahora más que nunca” (Now More than Ever) called for a national reconstruction based on the principal “spiritual and ideological” tenets of the Revolution: [N]ow more than ever, given [aforementioned] reasons of an economic order, the present moment is favorable for the construction of: —works for agricultural and manufacturing industries —buildings for lodging and tourism —mercantile and residential houses —streets and roads14 For Mexico to prosper economically and socially, in other words, construction of infrastructure and industry needed to embody the social principles of the Revolution. A similar air of renovation pervades the programmatic goals for the second season of El Arquitecto. Defined in “Nuestra meta” (Our Goal) and through the trajectory of the magazine itself, the editorial board enlisted the journal in a discussion of the architectural future of Mexico. This future was plainly one in which “ideological liberation” was to be found by rejecting European architecture.15 By insisting on a true study of Mexican civilization and responding with an appropriate architecture, this position was allied with revolutionary thinking by merely rejecting the Díaz regime’s symbolic and ideologi-

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cal use of architecture. It opposed the importation of European styles and architects to

design and build the most important governmental work, as had been done before the

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Revolution. The rejection of European models in the first half of the 1920s appears paradoxical, given the number of examples throughout Mexican architectural magazines that show an emerging concern with trends of European modernism. After all, how do we reconcile the first, facile rejection of an academic classical language that used an image of modernity based on Paris, as the capital of the nineteenth century, with the second, wholehearted acceptance of the well-established European modernist currents? Why, in other words, does the integration of new modes of architectural production and spatial experience based on European models become acceptable in this particular moment while historical, “institutional” architecture became quickly discredited? Part of the answer can be found precisely in the formal and theoretical investigations by architects associated with Vasconcelos’ neocolonialist movement. Their rejection of “imported” forms—specifically the architecture created under Díaz—favored a truly Mexican architecture. The visual economy and economic synthesis of Carlos Obregón Santacilia’s Centro Escolar Benito Juárez (1923) for the Secretaría de Educación Pública could be seen as the Mexican version of an unornamented architectural vocabulary found in various international examples, most poignantly in the work of Irving Gill in California or that of Adolf Loos in Vienna.16 This formal simplicity was related to the Revolution throughout architectural publications. In “La Revolución y la arquitectura” (The Revolution and Architecture), the critic Alfonso Pallares posited the work of Obregón Santacilia as showing the “young spirit, animated by the new currents of modern architectural art,” while its rejection of foreign influences, “imposed through a dictatorship,” was linked to the “recent social commotions.” The Centro Escolar Benito Juárez represented an “attempt to fuse the simpler forms of our Colonial Architecture with the forms that modern Architecture demands.”17 In addition to the aesthetic sense of building, there was also a large-scale influx of new methods of construction, most importantly the use of reinforced concrete. In the case of the Centro Escolar Benito Juárez, this overdetermined historical condition forced the reworking and simplification of the colonial architectural language and served to “purify” architectural form. It echoed some of European modern architectural explorations and concerns as well, including those of security (fire and earthquake protection) and hygiene (abundance of light, ease of cleanliness, and comfortable temperature).18 However, it was precisely the Mexican cement industry that fiercely promoted European architecture through its official publications. The magazines Cemento and Tolteca were founded as mouthpieces to advocate the use of concrete and the proliferation of the concrete aesthetic. Cemento, published monthly, was founded in 1925 under the auspices of the “committee to propagate the use of portland cement” and had as its editor Federico Sánchez Fogarty.19 By January 1928, the beginning of the magazine’s second season, its bimonthly print run was 12,000 copies.20 In 1929 Sánchez Fogarty became the editor of the bimonthly magazine Tolteca, which was published exclusively by the Tolteca Portland Cement Company from 1929 through 1932. According to the architectural historian Israel Katzman, Cemento (and here we can assume a similar strategy for Tolteca) was sent free-of-charge to even the clergyman of every town; so, it is irrefutable that

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it served not only as an important vehicle in the diffusion of the new materials, but as the first medium through which a nonspecialized public became familiarized with contemporary European architecture and its first Mexican examples.21 The two industry publications, besides having a wide nonprofessional readership, became a communicative mechanism for the architectural profession.22 They published images and evaluations of contemporary European architecture created, designed, or at least in appearance built with reinforced concrete.23 These magazines published pertinent Mexican examples—such as the work of Vicente Mendiola and José Villagrán García—that showcased the formal possibilities and contemporary uses of reinforced concrete in Mexico. And these publications emphasized the importance of continuous research and familiarity with contemporary architectural publications as a prerequisite for the development of an appropriate modern Mexican architecture.24 Toward this end, they served as “relay points” for foreign architectural publications such as The American Architect, Journal of the American Institute of Architects, Moderne Baukunst, Actividad contemporánea (the journal of gatepac, the Grupo de Artistas y Técnicos in Spain), and others. Cemento and Tolteca disseminated technical information about reinforced concrete, and they articulated and made normative the connection between the use of concrete construction and the avant-gardist social propositions associated with it. The editors, for example, delineated how some needs of modern living could be solved through the use of concrete.25 The simplicity and lack of ornamentation typical of concrete work, they noted, responded to the contemporary “emotive receptivity” of the present “hyperactive age,” a proposition presented with images of the Siedlung in Stuttgart.26 Many articles pointed to the social possibilities of cement, such as in the mass-produced “Inexpensive Houses” of the engineer Modesto Rolland.27 Articles in Cemento also articulated early functionalist theoretical positions, describing Villagrán’s Instituto de Higiene as “having the simplicity and perfection of a machine” and advocating for the contemporary requirement “to give the maximum of beauty, strength, and expression with the minimum possibilities available to the artist.”28 By 1930 Tolteca became the most decisive proponent of strict architectural functionalism. In “Utilidad” (Usefulness), its author—probably the editor, Sánchez Fogarty— defined modern architecture as based on the “appropriate expression of the needs of the owner and [made] with the procedures, machines, and materials that the artist—in this case the artist-builder (artista constructor)—has already experimented with and has access to.”29 Vague in its representation of the architectural program, the article’s author continued by itemizing the specifics of utilidad in the twentieth century as Spaciousness within a small piece of land Light and ventilation Permanent walls, floors, and roofs: that can resist time, fire, earthquakes that can isolate from the exterior sound, cold, heat. Bathrooms and kitchens with all of the most modern mechanical and electrical equipment Comfort with beauty.30

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The use of concrete was highlighted as a requirement to fulfill these needs.

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It was “Ahora más que nunca,” however, that most poignantly articulated the social component of modern architecture with its now “normative” myth of concrete construction. The article exalted the paradigmatic shift caused by the Mexican Revolution in all fields, particularly in construction. Now, the result of this transformation was the social need to build for the betterment not only of the individual and the Mexican people but, most importantly, of the nation as a whole. To accomplish this, its author insisted on more construction utilizing materials produced in Mexico—specifically, concrete—as a means to strengthen the national economy.31 These articles did mobilize social concerns and modern forms to further the use of cement. Nevertheless, the magazines pretended to maintain a tone of objectivity in their accounts of what the ideal modern architecture should be like, look like, and serve. The relationship between cement and modernity, however, had been carefully crafted so that the use of cement was to be seen as central in attaining these social, economic, and aesthetic objectives. Given the need for creating rational and efficient work, the discourse on the production of architecture and architectural ornamentation was strictly governed by the logic of efficiency and “profit.” It should come as no surprise, therefore, to find an article reexamining the contemporary concern of architects about the use of machines in craft production. Surely, this interest coincides with early-twentieth-century architectural discussions of the relation of arts and crafts to the machine. Characteristic of this position is Frank Lloyd Wright, who in “Art and Craft of the Machine” (1901) posited the machine as offering not only a respite from the dreariness of repetitive production but also the ability to reconceptualize art by allowing one to focus on the simplicity of materials and their qualities as aesthetic products. Ultimately, the new machine art would express the age and spirit of the moment: “the principle of organic growth working irresistibly the Will of Life through the medium of Man.”32 In “Arte a máquina” (Machine-Made Art), the rationalization of architecture was set forth vis-à-vis the constitutive parts of the building and not, ironically, its decoration. The Tolteca article did note, however, that a demand existed for an aesthetic sensibility that matched the rational logic of machines and that reflected the conditions of the modern metropolis: We are surrounded by machines, trains, elevators, cars; by large stacked and rectilinear masses that obstruct light; by straight lines that crash into angles, horizontal, angular, and vertical lines; by wheels that spin incessantly. The environment of the deafening clamor of tic-tacs, shrieks, and thunder dominates. But within all this, there is a rhythm: a rhythm of enormous controlled forces that has become lodged into our fine arts, which, nevertheless, should express the classical principles that structure handdrawn compositions of rubbings, leaves, and flowers, as well as designs of bars, cubes, or circles done by machines.33 This understanding, similar to that expressed by Simmel, led the author to conclude that from both economic and artistic points of view, “it is preferable to use ornamental elements that only the machine can provide.”34 If ornament was to be used, in other 127

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words, it needed to reflect the metropolitan condition: a force determined by economic forces striving for the abstraction inherent in modernity. The logic of economy as the motor force for the reconceptualization of architecture was to be associated with a strictly rationalist and functionalist concrete-built architecture. It provided the foundation from which to attack traditional architecture. By making morally suspect and intellectually bankrupt the servile imitation and production of historical ornamentation, functionalist advocates argued in these publications for cost-effectiveness, an instrumental definition of architecture based on efficiency and economy, and architecture’s social direction by linking the economy of construction and elimination of the inessential to the “humanitarian labor of architecture.”35 The ideological intentions of the cement companies and their publications are confirmed in a 1932 editorial whose stated focus was on addressing human needs by solving the problems of shelter. Doing so, however, was contingent on solving those utilitarian requirements efficiently, hygienically, and in a structurally sound manner.36 The editorial concluded by pointing directly to the virtue of cement and the Mexican company that promoted it: [A]t tolteca, as the national makers of cement—the soul of modern architecture—, we have imposed on ourselves the principal mission [of solving those utilitarian requirements] to provoke the interest and to invoke social cooperation so that architects and engineers in our country can adequately realize the ideals of contemporary, functional, and universal architecture: economic, solid, and hygienic houses and buildings.37 Here, the congruence of modern architecture’s commodity form and its concrete manufacture became explicit. The social project of modern architecture was transformed to a well-crafted marketing device by the cement industry and its representative mouthpiece. Advertising by the Tolteca Cement Company maintained this ambiguous social commitment. By using statements that foreground the need to solve housing problems, the ads implied, for example, that it was the working class who “profited” from such interventions: so whenever you build build in a modern way because there is a need for houses and modern buildings because in this way you will make a permanent investment38 Another strategy was the cement industry’s use of modern advertising strategies and forms. In particular, European architectural images or avant-gardist pictorial traditions such as photomontage were employed to obfuscate the patently crass marketing tactics as well as to legitimize, behind a veil of visual ambiguity, the cement industry’s ideo-

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logical project. These ads, it should be noted, were not limited to Tolteca and Cemento

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4.4 “Cement in the Construction Revolution in Mexico,” Tolteca Cement Company advertisement, 1934

but could be found in other trade journals, such as the Revista Mexicana de Ingeniería y Arquitectura. With a caption of “Cement in the constructive revolution in Mexico,” one advertisement of 1934 linked cement construction and its industry to the Revolution itself (Figure 4.4). In the ad, the new aesthetic of photomontage and modern architectural forms reflected a break with the old Porfirian order. Its pictorial and textual references to the work of the Mexican avant-garde also served as a testimonial for cement, seen here in the functionalist public school built by Juan O’Gorman in 1932. The advertisement made visual references to the European avant-garde as well, by referring to the built work of engineers, in this case grain silos and the dam. These represented Le Corbusier’s ideas regarding the primary forms that engineers constructed based not on aesthetic decisions but on calculation and mathematics.39 The ad invoked the Revolution through the

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aforementioned overt statement but also through the images of a peasant holding a bag of Tolteca cement and of the primary school built by O’Gorman, obvious references to the vindicating quality of modern construction to the poorest sectors of the Mexican population. In other examples, O’Gorman’s name and the names of other contemporary architects were used as a testament of their use of cement.40 The work of European architects like Julius Jirasek was used as a reference for modernized architectural production to promote the use and aesthetic of portland cement.41 The 1932 edition of Anita Brenner’s Your Mexican Holiday, a travel guide to Mexico, described the development of modern architecture as growing out of intelligent pro-modern propaganda carried on by the Tolteca Cement Company, which holds art contests and publishes a magazine, art, esthetics, architecture, engineering; to teach the proper comprehension and use of modern materials, chiefly, of course reënforced [sic] concrete. Several private homes interesting result [sic]; outstandingly best example of modern architecture in Mexico, the Tolteca plant.42 If these cement magazines were able to promote the use of cement in aesthetic and social realms, it was due in a large part to the work of their editor, Federico Sánchez Fogarty. In the 1935 edition of Your Mexican Holiday, Brenner attributed the contemporary state of architecture in Mexico to his efforts, asserting that residential areas of Mexico City displayed the smartly simple concrete and glass of the so-called “functional” house. This style, born in the U.S. and nursed in France, Germany and Holland, is nevertheless still a novelty almost everywhere except in Mexico, where it is now so completely acclimated that it is taken for granted. It is worth recording, with a smile, how that happened. First, the Tolteca Cement Co. had concrete to sell and happened to command the services of an indefatigable and sophisticated advertising manager, Federico Sánchez Fogarty, who stormed the town with art contests, magazines, lectures, and all sorts of restless, intelligent pro-modern propaganda.43 To Brenner, the use of concrete was associated with a modern promotional apparatus linked to the dissemination of the social possibilities of concrete construction as well as to European avant-garde aesthetics. The imitation of European models challenged the old architectural order and proposed a new aesthetic direction for architecture in Mexico.44 In this discussion of the ideological aspect of concrete construction, the educational apparatus must be considered, too, for its part in encouraging the tendency to build with concrete. Specifically, as professors in the School of Architecture of the National University, Guillermo Zárraga and José Luis Cuevas were tremendously influential not only on the young O’Gorman and his production of functionalist architecture but also on the subsequent generation of architects. Zárraga, trained under the classicist French architect Maxime Roisin (who, in turn, was brought to Mexico to work on the Palacio Legislativo of the Díaz regime), severely

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criticized the neocolonial-style pastiche of the early twenties as “cheap archeology.” As

a professor of architectural theory in the early to mid-1920s, until replaced by Manuel

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Amábilis in 1926, he “insist[ed] on the adequate solution of the utilitarian aspects of architecture as well as the principle of [architectural] sincerity.”45 Zárraga, a staunch antitraditionalist, railed against the imitative forms of the Díaz regime. O’Gorman recalled that Zárraga, his first-year architectural theory professor, encouraged him to look at the work of European architects and insisted that a contemporary architecture must be a specific and sincere realization of the architectural needs of [the] country, building with the new methods of construction and with the structural systems that modern engineering has developed. In the meantime, we should forget the classic orders and attempt to create a functional architecture.46 José Luis Cuevas, an engineer by training, held a similar position. His use and teaching of the possibilities of concrete construction as a statics professor in the National School of Architecture in the 1920s, O’Gorman would recall, taught him the importance of the technical knowledge of architecture and construction.47 In 1932 O’Gorman would call on Cuevas and his expertise to cofound the new School for Construction Technicians because of his ideological and pedagogical position. The aesthetic and economic imperatives present during the 1920s, in all their articulations, played a decisive role in the formation of O’Gorman’s views of architecture. It is also important, however, to situate O’Gorman work within his own personal context by describing the influences that the work by the first generation of post-Revolution architects had on him, his earliest work, and the development of his architectural principles up to 1933, when he would deliver his seminal lecture on functionalism to the Sociedad de Arquitectos Mexicanos.

development of juan o’gorman

Because O’Gorman began his architectur-

al education in 1921 at the Escuela Nacional de Arquitectura of the National University, he was placed at the center of the nationalist debates described earlier.48 Besides Zárraga (in architectural theory) and Cuevas (in statics and mathematics), his professors included José Villagrán García, Carlos Obregón Santacilia, and Pablo Flores (in design and composition). In O’Gorman’s description, all of these professors were intent on transforming the architectural educational system by introducing “new ideas that in Europe were already the germination of a complete architectural renovation.”49 O’Gorman continued his education at the National University until 1925. As a student, he worked for Villagrán and Obregón Santacilia, two of the most important and influential architects at the time. Before describing the work of these architects during O’Gorman’s employment and its possible repercussions, it is worth noting that O’Gorman was also introduced to the possibilities of concrete during his first year of architecture school through his work. He was employed by a manufacturer that specialized in fiberglass-reinforced concrete sheets, water tanks, and tubes, elements whose fabrication represented the most modern and efficient means of production.50 In his practice, O’Gorman would make them part of the functionalist architectural vocabulary, articulating and prominently exposing them throughout his designs. The formal and structural possibilities of concrete construction, seen in the diverse forms of these products, also influenced O’Gorman to

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experiment with concrete; this is seen, for example, in the helicoidal stairs of many of his functionalist houses. As a second-year student O’Gorman began working in the office of Carlos Obregón Santacilia, where he would remain until 1925. During this time, Obregón Santacilia was working on various projects, including the Centro Escolar Benito Juárez (1923–1925) and the Edificio Santacilia at Avenida Madero 32 (1925, Figure 4.5). These projects were important because they articulated a search for an appropriate architectural language for modern Mexico, but also because they represented formal experiments duplicated in O’Gorman’s own work. The Centro Escolar Benito Juárez reflected the search for a purified Mexican architectural language that, as described earlier, inadvertently echoed European architectural investigations of the same period. It was one of the first largescale projects to be built primarily out of reinforced concrete and whose constructional method was at once touted as safe, clean, and efficient. The Edificio Santacilia used the same material, yet its formal articulation was completely different. It was a rectangular office building with an open and adaptable floor plan of rectilinear bays. With the exception of the second floor, the building expressed the structural logic of its gridded system through its unadorned exterior. Its large glazed opening allowed the structural capabilities of concrete construction to be fully expressed—in the tradition of French architect Auguste Perret’s Garage Ponthieu (1905). In addition, the Edificio Santacilia had massproduced, industrial sash windows.51 Any ornamentation was limited primarily to a stylized entry and art deco ground-floor canopy made of a cantilevered concrete awning. 4.5 Carlos Obregón Santacilia, Edificio Santacilia, Avenida Madero 32, 1925

4.6 Juan O’Gorman, student project published in Forma, 1927

It was these qualities that Obregón Santacilia described in 1927 as being a paradigmatically Mexican response to the changing needs and production of architecture. Specifically, the new necessities included

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4.7 José Villagrán García, Granja Sanitaria building, 1925

[t]he economy, the exigencies of the machine, Standardization, the changing ideals of society, everything needed for the functioning of today’s city: the gathering of multitudes of people and activities in reduced land sizes, the various modern, sanitary, lighting, etc. installations. Expression has necessarily been achieved with other elements that are not the ornamented ones; structures, lines, and volumes have been made expressive by themselves.52 The influence Obregón Santacilia and the Edificio Santacilia had on O’Gorman is apparent in his fourth-year project. Published in the art journal Forma, the project served as an illustration for Obregón Santacilia’s aforementioned 1927 article (Figure 4.6). O’Gorman designed a commercial building that reflected some of the qualities of the Edificio Santacilia: concrete-frame construction that was articulated on the façade, a large open span on the entry, cantilevered concrete awnings, and industrial sash windows. O’Gorman’s project demonstrated a rational compositional strategy that rendered the office building into a mass-producible standardized type. Likewise, the young architect demonstrated his understanding of the material limitations and possibilities of reinforced-concrete construction as well as a judicious elimination of ornamental motifs—limited to the cornice and the ground floor. The remaining decorative elements were no longer purely representational but abstract and geometric in form. As a student O’Gorman also worked in the office of José Villagrán García, who at the time was involved in the design of the Granja Sanitaria (1925, Figure 4.7), an early foray into buildings for the health industry, in this case for the development of vaccines. This project has been described by the architectural historian and Villagrán scholar Ramón Vargas Salguero as one of the most important modern projects in Mexico because it was the first to establish the relationship between modern architecture and the well-being of society. Through a reading of Alberto Pani’s book La higiene en México (1916), Vargas Salguero has convincingly shown how, through formal proposals and changes, a refor-

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mation occurred in architecture to make it more hygienic as a means to improve society. The search for sanitary architectural forms led to the rational refinement of architecture, programmatically intended to control and reduce the unwholesome conditions of the country as a whole.53 For Villagrán, the Granja Sanitaria project expressed the direct relationship between architectural form and its programmatic and functional needs—here, the production of medicine and vaccines. Perhaps more importantly, the project showed the possibility of establishing forms of hygiene through architecture and its spaces. These relationships and possibilities allowed him to formulate an architectural theory of a pragmatic functionalism in which the form and the function were intimately related, thus addressing and responding to the societal needs of Mexico at that time. Villagrán’s development and desire for a modern, functional, and healthful architecture should be considered as closely linked to the utopian work of the French architect Tony Garnier. Many formal similarities exist between the Granja Sanitaria and Garnier’s Cité industrielle project published in 1917, including the extensive use of reinforced concrete; the articulation of the wall surfaces, awnings, and concrete details; the plain volumetric forms with decorative motifs around the openings; the monolithic and cubic quality of the concrete forms; and the simple treatment of exterior spaces that demarcated clear zones of grass and paving and featured axially placed fountains within small courtyards. Alberto Pani’s specific suggestions to improve the sanitary conditions of living and working spaces, central to Villagrán’s conception, are analogous to Garnier’s interests, such as the replacement of straight corners with curves, the use of large openings to allow light in, and the use of concrete. The similarity of both authors’ proposals is extraordinary. Garnier, for example, advocated the following: For housing, bedrooms ought to have at least one window to the south, big enough to light the entire room and allow direct sunshine. . . . On the interiors of the homes, the walls, floors, etc. are of smooth materials with rounded corners.54 This can be compared with Pani’s description for the needed changes in Mexican architecture for it to be hygienic: [I]t is necessary that the placement and size of the windows be able to guarantee complete lighting; that the angled intersection of walls and of walls with floor and ceiling be replaced with interlocking curved surfaces; that the ornamentation of these, as with the floors, be completely flat—to prevent the accumulation of dust and to allow for their cleaning; that the floors should also be resistant, impermeable and nondecaying [imputrecibles], as well as not cold, nor hard, nor too loud, etc.55 The central similarity shows a mutual concern with solving social and health problems through architecture. Villagrán’s and Garnier’s protofunctionalism represented the utopian aspirations by Europeans and Mexicans alike to link, from this moment onward, architecture with a perceived opportunity for social change.56 O’Gorman’s brief involvement with the development of Villagrán’s project rendered three results: the use of reinforced concrete construction as an agent to solve hygienic

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and social problems; the importance of the programmatic and functional requirement

of architecture—which, on the one hand, meant that architects dealt with programs

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that were intended for the people (such as hospitals and housing) and, on the other, that the architectural form reflected and aided in the function to be carried out; and, finally, the introduction of contemporary French architectural theories and precedents into Mexico. This last influence is paradigmatically seen in the power that Le Corbusier’s Vers une architecture (1923) had on O’Gorman as he encountered it as a student. According to his biographers and his own autobiography, O’Gorman found the impetus for functionalism and a rejection of academism through reading Le Corbusier’s influential text. After receiving a copy sometime between 1924 and 1926, O’Gorman, like many other architects at the time, read the book as a manifesto for architecture: I bought this book and read it a few times, each time with more interest. It then occurred to me that it was necessary to create, in Mexico, an architecture that was completely functional, removed from academic architecture and without an orthodox or aesthetic sectarianism in order to create an architecture that was exclusively functional (engineering of buildings).57 His reading of this book focused mainly on the more avant-garde propositions: the notion of the “house as machine” and the importance of rational works of engineering on architecture. At the time, however, O’Gorman did not acknowledge, or perhaps realize, the problematics inherent in Le Corbusier’s somewhat reactionary and ideological positions regarding the aesthetic beauty of engineering, his deep attachment to French architectural traditions, or the elitist position that his architecture reflected, issues that O’Gorman would severely criticize in his later writings. Nevertheless, in one of his earliest recorded interviews, O’Gorman expressed his wholehearted acceptance of Le Corbusier’s ideas and aesthetic propositions, ascribing to them meanings that revolved around the issues of his own postrevolutionary context. The production of ornamentation, for example, became a form of surplus value frozen within the houses of the bourgeoisie while the needs of the working class remained ignored even after the Revolution.58 In Le Corbusier’s work O’Gorman found the “silence” of a self-referential, autonomous architectural modernism whose pure formal language was devoid of tradition and, therefore, of class values—an interest analogous to that of the poesía pura movement. In the rational logic of mass production and the work of engineering O’Gorman found the material means to solve the urgent architectural needs of the country in an efficient and economic way. For O’Gorman, the Revolution had already taken place. The country now needed architecture to respond to Le Corbusier’s dictum of “architecture or revolution.” As a student O’Gorman began to design and build his own projects, influenced by Le Corbusier’s book and by his own experiences in practice. While still working for Obregón Santacilia, O’Gorman designed a house for the engineer Ernesto Martínez de Alba in 1927–1928 (Figures 4.8 and 4.9). Although O’Gorman made no reference to it in any of his writings, this house was protofunctionalist in appearance: made of simple volumes that intersected to create an asymmetrical composition.59 The house represented a testing ground for some of the principles O’Gorman learned from his mentors. The simple and volumetric exterior surfaces—with articulation restricted to the windowsills and

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roof edge—appeared to be influenced by the simple construction of Villagrán’s Granja Sanitaria as well as by some of the German modern architecture of the time. The use of mass-produced, metal-sash windows emerged as the legacy of Obregón Santacilia’s Edificio Santacilia. The exposed exterior stair linking the second floor with a roof garden appeared to be the legacy of Le Corbusier, both in its articulation on the exterior as a signifier of function and in the creation of a rooftop terrace. His second project, the Cecil O’Gorman House (1929, Figure 4.10), was a house for his father in the San Ángel Inn area. Touted by O’Gorman as the first functionalist house in Mexico—although, as we will see, this was not necessarily the case—the house was a building whose form was derived completely from its utilitarian function. The systems, electrical and sanitary, were left visible. Unplastered concrete block. Only the walls made with terra cotta blocks and bricks were made smooth. The water tanks were left exposed on the roof. There were no parapets on the roof, and the construction was made with the minimum amount of work and expense. . . . [I]t was a purely functional house. The minimum of expense and work to achieve the maximum efficiency was

4.8 Juan O’Gorman, Ernesto Martínez de Alba House, front, 1927–1928

4.9 Juan O’Gorman, Ernesto Martínez de Alba House, side and rear

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4.10 Juan O’Gorman, Cecil O’Gorman House, 1929

the theoretical basis for constructing this house of three [bed]rooms, two bathrooms, a living room, kitchen, servants’ quarters with a bathroom, garage, and covered terrace on the ground floor, and lastly, a cantilevered helicoidal stair that accessed a studio on the upper level.60 Although seemingly ostentatious in description, the house was quite modest in scale (Figure 4.11). Besides its innovative construction and theoretical underpinnings, the house itself followed the principles that both Cuevas and Zárraga advocated: a correctly engineered solution to the problem of shelter using the newest materials and taking advantage of the local climatic conditions. On a more formal and technical level, the building had industrially produced sash windows (which, in the studio, could be completely opened), and the helicoidal stair was placed on the exterior (Figure 4.12), a seeming counterbalance to the orthogonality of the house form—a Corbusian play of forms. O’Gorman, by this point, had developed an architectural vocabulary that semantically expressed the function of the elements and, when placed together, made the building read as functional and modern. The elements that served toward this end included a formal articulation of distinct programmatic elements, the industrial windows, stairs placed or articulated on the exterior, exposed wiring and piping, exposed water tanks and other services, an honesty to materials such as concrete, and an orientation that took advantage of sunlight and prevailing winds.

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4.11 Juan O’Gorman, ground- and first-floor plans, Cecil O’Gorman House

O’Gorman used this vocabulary in his next important work—the house and studio for the muralist Diego Rivera and painter Frida Kahlo (1931–1932, Figures 4.13 and 4.14).

4.12 Juan O’Gorman, Cecil O’Gorman House, studio

Rivera awarded him the commission after seeing O’Gorman’s venture for his father.

and stairs, 1929

O’Gorman wrote that Rivera aesthetically liked the house very much. The opinion of the master was a surprise, given that the house had been built to be useful and functional. Diego Rivera, in that instant, formulated the theory that architecture created through the strict process of scientific functionalism was also a work of art. Given the maximum efficiency and minimal cost, a greater number of buildings could be built with the same effort, which was of enormous importance for the quick reconstruction of our country, and, as such (according to Rivera himself), [these qualities] made the building beautiful.61 Rivera’s dialectical view of functionalism appeared in the structure of the new art curriculum that he imposed as director of the Academia de San Carlos upon his appointment in April 1929. In particular, he wanted to establish a relation between art and factory work; this influence came from his experiences in the Soviet Union in 1927–1928

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and were articulated in the October group’s manifesto of 1928.62

Although it is unclear how dogmatic O’Gorman was regarding the claim that func-

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tionalist architecture was devoid of aesthetic qualities, Rivera argued that architecture created using scientific functionalism was art. This position paralleled that of “rationalism” in architecture as defined by the German architectural historian Adolf Behne in The Modern Functionalist Building (1923, published in 1926). Behne, in an attempt at establishing a historiography of modern functional architecture, distinguished rationalism from mere functionalism. He described the functionalist architect as interested in the creation of architecture that responded strictly to the purpose, function, or necessity of the building. By expanding the purpose of the building to a broader or more general sense, the rationalist architect, on the other hand, created a building that transcended its mere functionality and that was historically adaptable. Behne ultimately favored rationalist building since it contained “an element of compromise,” preventing a totalitarian dogmatism of function or, as the work of Le Corbusier proved to him, of mere formalism.63 In Rivera’s observations about O’Gorman’s 1929 house, the functional building was given a certain degree of flexibility of function: the purely conceptual way the build-

4.13 Juan O’Gorman, Cecil O’Gorman House

ing served the collective need for new construction maintained a compromise between

(foreground) and Diego Rivera Studio (background), 1929–1932

4.14 Juan O’Gorman, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Studio, San Ángel, rear, 1931–1932

4.15 Juan O’Gorman, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Studio, San Ángel

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the societal needs for simple forms and the material and functional requirements of

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architecture and construction. This was the balance that O’Gorman tried to achieve in the Rivera Studio. Obviously, the building was formally influenced by Le Corbusier’s Ozenfant House and Studio (1923) for the painter Amédée Ozenfant, published in Vers une architecture.64 O’Gorman’s design stood as a mirror image of Le Corbusier’s project and included the sawtooth roof and the spiral stair on the exterior. But more subtle was O’Gorman’s adaptation of the Maison Citrohan, also published in Vers une architecture. For this project, Le Corbusier theoretically emphasized the need to meet the functional requirements of the housetype and described the house as “a machine for living in.” Aside from the loaded language that Le Corbusier used to define it, the Citrohan project exhibited the formal precursors for O’Gorman’s design for Rivera and Kahlo (Figure 4.15). Le Corbusier raised the primary living spaces of the Maison Citrohan from the ground level through the use of columns (pilotis). Although O’Gorman placed the house for his father on columns as well, the more public spaces—living room, dining room, kitchen, and so forth—were placed on the ground level. In contrast to this and similar to the Corbusian reference, the Rivera Studio had an open, paved terrace on the ground floor and, programmatically, only a bathroom. The bulk of the house and studio program was raised on columns over that terrace. The double-height studio space of Le Corbusier’s Citrohan project also was reproduced in the Rivera Studio space. Sectionally, it separated the more public space of the studio from the more private space of the bedrooms above. O’Gorman limited the services—such as bathrooms—to the lower level and rear of the structure, the more private spaces of the building. Finally, as in Le Corbusier’s project, O’Gorman restricted the window openings to the front and back of the building, leaving the sides as solid walls (Figures 4.16–4.21). While engaged with formal issues, O’Gorman also maintained the functionalist expressiveness of his earlier projects and expressed these in the Kahlo House and Studio, as well: the industrial windows, circulation articulated on the exterior, exposed wiring and piping, exposed water tanks, tectonic and material clarity, and correct solar orientation (Figure 4.22). By 1932 O’Gorman’s work began to receive the attention of the architectural press. It is unclear, however, why the acclaim arrived at that particular moment. Why, in other words, did the house that he built for his father not attract attention as the “first functionalist house in Mexico”? The article published on O’Gorman in Tolteca in March 1932 is more a response to his winning the contest to portray the state-of-the-art Tolteca cement plant than to the work O’Gorman had completed thus far as an architect.65 The house for his father, for example, appeared in the same issue as the 1932 article, three years after its construction. The competition, which was widely announced throughout newspapers and professional journals, was the brainchild of Federico Sánchez Fogarty. As the editor of Tolteca, he wanted to artistically represent the aesthetic possibilities of the newly erected industrial complex—through drawing, painting, and photography— but also, as a marketing strategy, to promote its products and factory as an architectural icon. For the jury he gathered Mariano Moctezuma (director of the National School of Engineering), the architect Manuel Ortiz Monasterio (whose work in concrete had been extensively illustrated in Sánchez Fogarty’s magazines), Diego Rivera, and himself.66 The March 1932 publication featured the earliest published articulation of O’Gorman’s architectural ideas on functionalism. Here, he declared that “creative human forces,

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4.16 First-floor plan, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Studio

4.17 Second-floor plan, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Studio

4.18 Third-floor plan, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Studio

4.19 Fourth-floor plan, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Studio

4.20 Longitudinal section, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Studio

4.21 Cross-section, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Studio

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4.22 Juan O’Gorman, Frida Kahlo Studio, San Ángel, side, 1931–1932

in order to solve any problems, never begin with (or care about) the external form of things.”67 Exteriors would naturally result from a careful architectural response to the functional necessities of the program. Instead of focusing on aesthetic concerns, architecture had to solve the needs of the largest number of people through a developed and economically viable type. The task of architecture disappeared when, according to the article, “good taste” (what O’Gorman refers to as sentimentality) appears, because it is the worst enemy of reason, of logic, of function, of the true function and not of theatrical function. . . . “Good taste” prevents houses from being perfect and economical as well as prevents their enjoyment by a larger number of people.68 The pejorative designation of “good taste,” or sentimentalism, was an attack on an architectural profession focused on style and ornamentation as something that limited

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architecture to its external form—and, ultimately, appearance—rather than its internal functioning. The reference to theatrical function alluded to the use and application of elements, icons, and forms to represent a function and modernity that did not exist in the project. Instead of creating architecture by turning to past styles, modern architecture had to respond, first and foremost, to the functional and social necessities of the moment and, secondly, to the modern means of production available. It was here that the social and functional program of O’Gorman’s position became integrated with the ideological requirements of Tolteca—of the purported socioeconomic benefits of cement. Instead of wasting money and materials (in this case, cement) on the stylistic and decorative, O’Gorman contended that the investment should be made on the structural portion of the house: [I]t is preferable that the cement [intended for decorative purposes] be used for or added to the foundations and to all of the mixtures intended to strengthen the construction. In that way, the layout, the services—in other words, the architecture—of that house will be useful to those who occupy it and will remain solidly standing. and the money invested in it will earn more interest and will be more secure.69 Ideologically, O’Gorman believed that the low cost and permanence of concrete-built functionalist architecture was the means to solve the problems of adequate shelter for the urban and rural proletariat. His words reveal a radical shift from his initial belief that functionalist forms and modern materials were capable of solving the pressing needs of the public at large to the determination that architecture was, as it had always been, an investment intended to (re)produce capital. And if capital was only created through labor and the extraction of surplus value, as Marx had posited, then the elimination of the aesthetic and the simultaneous rationalization of use and construction was a means for the further development and rationalization of the capitalist system. In the case of functionalism, the initial labor that was invested in the construction of a building was already optimized for profit making, given the low cost of its production and the possibilities of yielding high profits through its selling and/or renting. To add to that, concrete construction guaranteed the longevity of architecture as a profitable venture. Ironically, it was this position that provided O’Gorman with one of the most important commissions of his life and of the development of Mexican architecture: the design of low-cost public schools in marginalized areas of Mexico City for the Secretaría de Educación Pública.70 At Diego Rivera’s insistence, Narciso Bassols, the minister of education from 1931 to 1934, hired O’Gorman to work as chief architect for the building department of the sep. Bassols, according to O’Gorman and as evidenced in his own writings, was interested in the economic and pragmatic advantages of functionalism. Under Bassols’ direction, O’Gorman built or renovated a total of fifty-three public schools in one year (1932) with a total budget of only one million pesos.71 The schools were intended to accommodate 30,000 children in Mexico City who were without adequate educational facilities.72 Of the twenty-five schools they designed, O’Gorman and his small team relied solely on the functionalist dictum of “logic and economy,” which reiterated Bassols’ intent to

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“not to waste one ray of sunlight.” Guided by a “truly scientific basis, by the moderniza-

tion of [the sep’s] methods, and by a new social direction, a new human sense, and a

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new concrete and transcendental plan in the transformation of the national reality and of Mexican consciousness,” according to Alonso Aguilar and Manuel Mesa, these new schools represented Bassols’ socialist educational reforms.73 A lawyer by training, Bassols was a member of the leftist intelligentsia who maintained that reforming the educational establishment needed to incorporate the social ideals of the Revolution. As minister of education, he proposed changes centered around cultivating a collective sensibility, fostering equality among individuals, equitably distributing wealth, and scientifically orienting education.74 In the words of Jesús Silva Herzog, “Beyond the technical reformation based on pedagogy was the ideological renovation as well as the change of purpose and educational goals.”75 The utopian value placed on architecture was expressed through Bassols’ description of the state of Mexican education in 1932, quoted here at length: In dealing with primary education—besides the gradual extension of educational services due to the increasing population and the total reform in its social orientations and pedagogical methods that primary education requires—the most urgent need is to establish an intense and comprehensive work of constructing educational buildings because the million and a quarter inhabitants of the Federal District only have a few adequate buildings for the education of children. These buildings remain scarce and small; the remaining schools are established in houses that, besides not having been built especially for that purpose and not having, therefore, the most elemental hygienic and comfortable conditions, represent an immense and constant expenditure [desembolso] because of their rental . . . In order to begin this program of school construction, we were lucky, at the beginning of the year, to [be able to] count on the effective and very laudable cooperation of the Department of the Federal District, which allocated the sum of one million pesos to be used in the construction of the educational institutions . . . It is necessary at least briefly to emphasize the characteristics that can be found in the nearly completed buildings. Because of the novelty of their architectural style and because of the contrast that they exhibit [when compared] to the traditional educational building types and, even more so, to the ordinary architecture of the country, they are described, at the moment, as provoking a sense of strangeness and nonconformity. . . . Beginning with the premise that the economic resources of the country are and will be very limited for a few years, it was decided that a type of school building would be adopted that represents the least expense, the most stability, and guaranteed durability given the construction materials used. . . . [T]he politics of constructing school buildings, such as [those] followed in the Federal District this year, are justified in the subordination of any possible sumptuousness and so-called architectural beauty to the precarious and uncertain resources of the state . . . Besides the previous economic considerations, the Department of Public Education designed the school buildings with their present architecture because it believes that even if it had sufficient resources to erect lavish buildings of greater cost than those that strictly require that they perform their required function, it should not do so. A sumptuous architecture would stop children—who receive their first and most

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important moral notions in primary school—from challenging the tendencies to use wealth uneconomically and from challenging the superfluous consumption inspired by vanity or in false artifice, especially when human societies still have a majority of their members immersed in the most offensive and painful of miseries. The Department of Education considered how much it should educate children through primary school, through the education of its teachers, and throughout the children’s lives, in places where not one meter of land, or the value of one peso, nor one ray of sunlight is wasted. Undoubtedly, once the resistance caused by novelty is defeated, the great economic and spiritual advantages of the adopted type of construction will be appreciated. In ten years, every school center in Mexico, big or small, will be built [as] inspired by the same ideas.76

4.23 Juan O’Gorman, Escuela Pro-Hogar, front, 1932

4.24 Juan O’Gorman, Escuela Primaria, Coyoacán, side, 1932

against a new architecture

4.25 Juan O’Gorman, Escuela Primaria, Colonia Portales, side, 1932

Bassols’ description of the need for functionalist architecture reflected two important and pervasive ideas ascribed to architecture after the Revolution. The first was that architecture should respond to a series of social requirements in the most direct and economical way; it should directly address the massive needs for clean shelter and usable spaces for the urban and rural proletariat rather than the landowning bourgeoisie. To maximize the outreach of this desperately needed architecture, it was imperative that it be economically feasible and functionally effective. The schools, therefore, were built out of reinforced concrete, efficiently planned on a three-meter grid, and fitted with fixtures and architectural elements that were not only standardized and mass-produced but also placed at the scale of the users.77 Ornamentation, which added extra expense to the building and did not contribute to the social transformation of society, was abolished (Figures 4.23–4.27). The second idea linked architecture as part of the broader ideological state apparatus. For Bassols, the architecture of the primary schools served to educate the students socially. Bassols followed the general line of post-Revolution thinkers who understood the role of the educational system as the site of class struggle and as the site where, ideally, the ideology of the ruling class could be overthrown and supplanted by a scientific and socialist one. The overhaul of the educational apparatus and, more specifically,

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4.26 Juan O’Gorman, Escuela Primaria, Xochimilco, front, 1932

of the educational environment was anticipated as one of the most effective means to massively disseminate revolutionary ideology in order to secure class consciousness and the future of the country under socialism.78 In this sense, functional architecture’s economy of materials and means of production, as Bassols contended, ideologically “educated” the students to view unnecessary expenditure as adversely affecting humanity. Anything added to the architecture that appeared to be nonfunctional or ornamental (paint, art, sculpture, and so forth) therefore needed to didactically express the social aims of the functionalist building (Figure 4.28). These restrictions to what could be done to the architecture guided all subsequent ornamental programs for the schools. They were painted in what O’Gorman referred to as “strident” colors. The use of the vivid colors—Apache red, electric blue, orange, Mexican pink, like those used in Diego Rivera’s studio—had the double function of preventing glare and heat reflections as well as to estrange the users and viewers of the architecture (as implied through O’Gorman’s reference to the Estridentistas) into becoming aware of its novelty and its importance. They all had “Escuela Primaria” either painted on them or as part of the ironwork in their main gates (Figure 4.29). Artists

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were occasionally commissioned to paint murals in the schools. They were friends of

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4.27 Juan O’Gorman, Escuela Técnica Tres Guerras, stairway, 1932

4.28 Juan O’Gorman, axonometric, Escuela Técnica Tres Guerras, 1932

4.29 Juan O’Gorman, Escuela Primaria, Peralvillo, 1932

4.30 Gonzalo de la Paz Pérez, El fascismo y el clero contra la cultura (Fascism and the Clergy against Culture), mural, Escuela Socialista, Centro Escolar Revolución, 1936

O’Gorman or associated with the socialist avant-garde, usually through the Sindicato de Obreros Técnicos, Pintores y Escultores. Among these painters were Máximo Pacheco, Julio Castellanos, Roberto Reyes Pérez, Jesús Guerrero Galván, Pablo O’Higgins, and Ramón Alba Guadarrama. The theme of the murals was generally at the artists’ discretion. This freedom of aesthetic and thematic expression was a trade-off for the modest payment the muralists received for these commissions.79 Most of the painters reproduced the general social and political tenets of the Bassols regime in their murals. Representative of these ideals and of the socialist school are, for example, the murals at the entrance of the Centro Escolar Revolución (1934, Figure 4.30). 150

During his functionalist period, O’Gorman designed workers’ housing (1929) along

against a new architecture

with private homes such as the house for Frances Toor (1934)—an American who edited the magazine Mexican Folkways—and the house and studio of the painter Julio Castellanos (1934). He worked on projects for labor groups, for instance, in the headquarters for the Cinematographers Union (1934) and the Confederación de Trabajadores de México (ctm, Mexican Labor Movement, 1940), and he allied himself with lear. Along with other members of the leftist intelligentsia, he demanded an investment in architecture to provide for the housing needs of all Mexicans and worked toward the generalized class struggle.80 In 1932 under the direction of Bassols, O’Gorman organized the School for Construction Technicians to establish the functionalist and socialist architectural system of the public schools and make it widespread. The trade school was intended to teach its students how to build rational buildings (what O’Gorman termed “engineering of buildings”) while avoiding the problems of aesthetics and style inherent in traditional, bourgeois architectural education.81 The development of the school, however, would generate intense debates regarding the constitution of modern architecture for Mexico.

pláticas sobre arquitectura Architectural discourse is the discourse of an elite who is authorized (as an author is authorized) to present its concerns to the public. . . . These professional critics are qualified to speak on the basis of training and professional status, in other words, on the basis of their cultural capital . . . Architectural criticism as a discursive practice is governed by a tacit set of rules or conventions that establish the code of property. These conventions frame what is permissible and what must not be said. miriam gusevich, “the architecture of criticism” The people who live in shacks and round rooms can’t talk about architecture. We will make the houses of the people. Aesthetes and Rhetoricians—I hope that you all die— you will have your discussions later. juan legarreta, “resumen pr agmatico” O’Gorman asserted his explicit pronouncements on functionalism in 1933 at the Pláticas sobre Arquitectura (Talks on Architecture) conference organized by the Sociedad de Arquitectos Mexicanos. The conference theme, the future of architecture in Mexico, tackled the crisis between the two opposing intellectual trajectories regarding the creation of modern architecture in Mexico. Roughly divided by O’Gorman into the “functionalist” line and the “academic” line, these incipient movements were a result of the government’s overt interest in functionalist architecture—manifested in both the construction of functional schools for the sep and the establishment of the School for Construction Technicians—and the response to these that emanated primarily from the architectural establishment, the sam, as disseminated in the magazine El Arquitecto, which was revived after having been dormant since the early 1920s.82 The crisis of these two positions and its eventual culmination in the conference of 1933 had, in fact, begun earlier. In an attempt to establish a compromise between the emerging functionalism being forcefully promoted by the cement industries and the role of architects in developing a 151

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new direction, the first convention of Mexican architects was held between November 4 and November 25, 1931. In a synopsis of the proceedings that appeared in February 1932, an anonymous author defined their focus to be the architectural profession’s need to establish a social agenda for itself while at the same time understanding the exigencies and special conditions that placed limits on its aspirations and labors. Although seemingly progressive, this agenda and its guidelines expressed the elitist propositions of the architectural status quo in its process of institutionalization and in its attempt to limit the production of architecture by nonprofessionals. This agenda was articulated in the following way: [I]t is the multiplicity of resources and factors that have allowed the profane to solve elemental constructive problems while the true professional—always conscious that his labor arises from transcendental aspirations and is focused toward equally transcendental goals—encounters major obstacles in imposing his ideological premises and his well-founded requirements to create architectural work.83 As a direct affront to the emerging functionalist movement, this position clearly defined architecture as a solution that went beyond the purely utilitarian and constructional requirements and was, by implication, linked with the profoundly transcendental goals associated with artistic production and beauty. The use of the term “profane” to designate the nonprofessional established, by contrast, the architect as well-trained in spiritually transcendental requirements and solutions and as capable of manufacturing architecture that moved beyond the purely utilitarian to reproduce the historical tradition and legacy of architecture. The critique was most poignantly expressed in the “official” response by the sam to the sep’s new curriculum for a School for Construction Technicians. At its root, sam members understood the populist emphasis of the new school through its direct focus on the practical and pragmatic aspects of construction. To this, sam proponents argued that the production of architecture was unrelated to social classes because architectural education, as a scientific—and therefore nonideological—endeavor, not only was the same for all social classes but needed to be the same in order to maintain a coherent and unified national architectural vision. The sam argument maintained that the focus on purely technical solutions to “architectural problems” ignored the human necessity for beauty and art that such solutions took for granted. In its conclusion, the sam proposed that the curriculum of the new school follow the traditional professional division established between engineer and architect—rejecting, in other words, the hybrid “engineer-builder” or “engineer-architect” proposed by O’Gorman and Bassols—and that it reinforce architectural composition over structural concerns and engineering problem solving.84 In editorials for El Arquitecto, Carlos Obregón Santacilia, as president of the sam, articulated that position again in August 1933. Obregón Santacilia stated that the existing architectural chaos in Mexico needed to be resolved through the development of a strong direction that took into account modern needs and modern materials. He called for the new architecture and its makers to preserve and respect the architecture of the past even if it involved recreating a past architecture, a process he called “mak-

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ing archeology” (haciendo arqueología). He concluded, however, that in new areas of

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the city—devoid of history or character—the modern sensibilities of the time should be addressed because, after all, “to continue to copy the colonial style is criminal.”85 A second editorial in November–December 1933 was even more critical. While the earlier critique remained ideologically neutral despite calling for architectural modernization, the later one was more in line with the critique emanating from the sam against the developing radical functionalism. In this case, Obregón Santacilia waged a virulent attack against the builder who was not trained in architecture: “We should prevent those who have no formal preparation or common sense to continue building. Our field is being invaded by all sorts of people.”86 Radical functionalism was described as part of that professional invasion, taking work from architects and lowering the quality of cities. Paradoxically, the editorial concluded with a call to understand the cause of the present situation: “Are we losing work because of economic reasons? Surely, an economic force will allow us to triumph.”87 The statement was an early acknowledgment by the architectural profession of the need to ally itself unconditionally with those who maintained economic power—to serve, in other words, as agents in the reproduction of capital and not as utopian workers intent on changing the world. This division underlay the debates within the Mexican architectural profession and found its apotheosis in the now famous Pláticas sobre Arquitectura conference of 1933. The debates in the Pláticas were intended to answer a limited number of questions about the definition and role of architecture and consequently the role of functionalism in that definition. The conference engaged a number of differing polemical positions with which architects struggled after the Revolution. Specifically, the questions that guided the conference program and debates were these: What is architecture? What is functionalism? Can functionalism be considered as a definitive stage of architecture or as the early stage of an architectural decline? Should the architect be considered as a simple construction technician or as an advocate of the general culture of a nation? Does architectural beauty result simply from the functional solutions or does it also demand the conscious action and the creative volition of the architect? What should be the present direction of Mexican architecture?88 The presentations began in October 1933 and stated the positions of the two camps: the radical functionalists and the “traditional,” or “academic,” architects. The radical functionalist group—comprised only of Juan O’Gorman, Álvaro Aburto, and Juan Legarreta—claimed to reject the aesthetic importance of architecture in favor of purely functional and rational architectural solutions to the problems of housing and work environments for the Mexican population. The other group—consisting of Manuel Amábilis, Mauricio M. Campos, Juan Galindo, Federico E. Mariscal, Manuel Ortiz Monasterio, Silvano Palafox, Salvador Roncal, and José Villagrán García—consistently stressed that architecture, although serving functional needs, was a form and branch of art. The opinions of the second group, however, were more diverse; they varied from the wholehearted and virulent rejection of functionalist architecture to the acceptance of functionalism with the caveat that it also respond to human aesthetic needs. Most participants of the conference, irrespective of their group, advocated for an architecture that addressed so153

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cial issues as a way to improve the living and working conditions of the Mexican people. This is not the place, however, to describe the nuances of each of their positions.89 Here, rather, it is important to understand Juan O’Gorman’s definition of functionalism and its theories as responding to the growing critiques from the academy—especially regarding the School for Construction Technicians—and as it related to the international framework of rationalist architecture. The speech he delivered at the Pláticas conference in October 1933 emphasized three major points: a critical look at the artistic, spiritual, or transcendental notions in architecture; the importance of rational architecture; and the role of the architect in modern society. O’Gorman began his talk by summarizing the significance placed on the sentimental and spiritual human need for art and beauty by speakers associated with the architectural status quo. For them, he argued, these needs were not to be denied in favor of material necessities. O’Gorman criticized their position as an attempt to make subjective needs appear objective—in short, of making artistic, spiritual, and transcendental qualities primary human necessities to be addressed by architecture. He remarked that even the foundational myth of the primitive hut had naturalized the development of architecture as one that responded “to something divine that provoked a special preference [gusto], a preference that was close to absolute beauty, a mystical preference that was transcendental.”90 O’Gorman criticized the use of historical forms as well as the pure forms developed by engineers because they reinforced the primacy of the subjective and aesthetic in architecture. He waged his critiques mainly against traditionalist architects and those who aestheticized functionalism and its “play of forms, of light and shadow.”91 Next, O’Gorman responded to the contention that architecture should focus predominantly on spiritual needs by arguing that they were not only individual needs—and, as such, further alienated individuals from their collective class interests—but were also socially and ideologically manufactured through education, work, the media, and so forth. Essential human needs, on the other hand, were physical and material; they were known, exact, and precise; they were scientifically determined. Taking their cue from this scientific description of functionalism, López Rangel and Vargas Salguero have criticized the effects of a functionalism devoid of aesthetic qualities. For them, the functionalist architectural system set up and reproduced “an almost desolating impoverishment” (un pobrismo casi desolador) of the population for whom the architecture was intended.92 O’Gorman’s critique, however, opposed the exclusionary position of an aesthetic sensibility grounded on bourgeois education and leisure that typified academic architects. Instead, utilitarian needs derived through scientific means suggested an equalization of classes: “The size of the door for the house of the worker will have to be the same as the door for the philosopher’s house.”93 Much of O’Gorman’s objection to architecture’s role in furnishing aesthetic or subjective necessities was centered on their value to the upper classes in reproducing capital: by creating luxurious and ornate dwellings, these classes were able to “reveal the good economic possibilities that respond and guarantee—through their investment— capital, savings, insurance policies, stocks, and investments.”94 The aesthetic elements intended to address spiritual needs were, for O’Gorman, a type of advertising intended to manipulate consumption through the images while not fully satisfying the functional

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reality of the building. Thus he concluded that the “technique of advertising was the

against a new architecture

technique of deception.” Here he set up the traditional distinction between architec95

tural honesty and dishonesty in terms that were linked not only to the truth of materials or structural integrity—comparable to Viollet-le-Duc’s discourse on structural rationalism in the nineteenth century, for instance—but also to the ideological reproduction of class and capital. This form of architectural “advertising” transformed the function of architecture from one centered around function (use-value) to one centered on its commodification (exchange-value). O’Gorman’s critique of the artistic extended to his condemnation of it as vanity. The use of interchangeable styles, including the “modernist” style, promoted the fashionable interest in being different and unique, an interest the sociologist Georg Simmel considered necessary to stand out from the anonymity of the modern metropolis and for an individual’s “union with those in the same class, the uniformity of the circle characterized by it, and, uno actu, the exclusion of all other groups.”96 O’Gorman responded by asking, “Could we consider a trick or a corruption as satisfying spiritual needs?”97 He concluded that the so-called spiritual needs to create a “correct architecture” for Mexico were simply a series of pretexts by academic architects to maintain the status quo: “The architect who does not use reason is a mystic who takes advantage of the lack of knowledge of the humbly accepting public, which has no opinions, and who, with empty words, fills other voids.”98 In contrast, reason rather than inspiration—which was “antithetical to all technique”—became the important feature for defining a suitable architecture to resolve the needs for decent housing and workplaces for the working class.99 Somewhat paradoxically, however, O’Gorman said that even if the aesthetic were to be important it should not be the raison d’être of architecture while more immediate problems remained unresolved: “Life imposes its economic, social, and material conditions. The technical, within its means, is given the task of solving them in the best possible way, by way of the best avenue of maximum efficiency and minimum effort.”100 What the population needed was an architecture that could solve real, material needs without making the aesthetic an end in itself. O’Gorman rejected the traditional bourgeois notion of aesthetic as utopian in favor of a solution to the immediate needs of the present. The methods for meeting these needs were to be found in science and rational thinking, which, when translated into architecture as functionalism and material honesty, would present themselves as the true elements of the present—a “noble technical architecture, [an] architecture that is the true expression of life and a manifestation of the scientific methods of the moment.”101 The reliance on ornamentation and the invention of greater spiritual needs, on the other hand, represented a decadent culture—in a Spenglerian sense—whose moment had already passed.102 Dialectically, O’Gorman saw that even functionalism could be susceptible to this Spenglerian fate by becoming too dogmatic or the banner of fashion. By becoming fashionable, functionalism would shift ideologically to become an aesthetic form intended to solve newer spiritual needs.103 Instead, architecture should respond directly to the objective needs of the time with the present technical and rational structures. Architecture should be autonomous from its localized context while at the same time rejecting the professional autonomy of ar155

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chitecture as a discipline separated from life. Contradicting traditionalist architects, O’Gorman argued that the resemblance of functionalist architectural forms throughout the world, therefore, demonstrated similar solutions to similar problems with similar means of production and economic conditions, not stylistic copies of European architecture. This argument was also O’Gorman’s way of advocating the internationalization of architecture, since the means of its production were becoming increasingly global. As the acceptance of functionalism increased, the recognition of its forms—even aesthetically—would grow as well: “Although this language might seem ugly at the beginning, we will become accustomed to hearing its beauty.”104 Important for O’Gorman and the radical architects, then, was the search for efficient and inexpensive architectural solutions representative of the current conditions and materials of production as well as the drive toward rationalization and, by default, internationalization. O’Gorman positions are summed up in the following remarks: [T]he architecture that some call functional or rational and others German, Swedish, International, or Modern—creating confusion with so many names—we will call technical architecture with the goal of clearly defining it. This is in order to understand that its aim is to be useful for mankind in a straightforward and precise manner. The difference between a technical architect and an academic or artistic architect will be perfectly clear. The technical architect [técnico] is useful to the majority, and the academic is useful to a minority. The first is to serve the majority of disadvantaged individuals who only have material needs and to whom spiritual necessities are not essential. The second [is] to serve a minority of people who enjoy the profits of the land and industry. Architecture that serves mankind or architecture that serves money.105 Within the parameters of efficiency pertaining to the economy, construction, and labor investment, O’Gorman saw functional architecture as responding to the interests and needs of the masses. Its very effectiveness allowed for a greater number of buildings to be built for the same amount of money, materials, and work as would be spent on ornate and artistic ones. The savings attained by functionalist architecture could be reinvested to produce more functionalist architecture for a larger population. For O’Gorman and his comrades, this economic understanding of functionalist versus academic architecture was central in their critique regarding the role of the architect in the reproduction of capital. Through a basic analysis O’Gorman showed how academic architecture exemplified the production of surplus value, in the Marxist sense, and was used as a tool to reproduce capital: [I]nvestment requires general technical solutions so that those who have access to them can enjoy them; entertainment is a superlative degree of investment that can only be reached by those who enjoy an economic superabundance and as such is, naturally, in the hands of a minority who freely and without any restrictions use it in any way they please without any type of objections.106 He drew a distinction between the two predominant architectural models in terms of their economic effects: “The technical, at the service of mankind, makes capital produc-

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tive; the academic or artistic, at the service of a minority, uses the surplus value from the

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interest produced by the technical.”

107

As this statement attests, O’Gorman believed that the wealthy benefited from the extraction of surplus value. Art, in the end, became a “parasite” that would live off the productive forces of society without “strengthening and increasing the productive human capacity.”108 Instead of reinvesting in the community the profits acquired through the extraction of surplus value, the architects for the wealthy used artistic elements to give material and architectural form to those profits, further rendering the use-value of the architecture as exchange-value or exhibition-value. The multiplicity of styles prevalent in laissez-faire capitalism in the urban environment resulted from the lack of a common interest or direction.109 The functionalist architect, therefore, was to subvert the cycle of reinvestment of capital into the superfluous that O’Gorman referred to as “entertainment.”110 This would be done by simply putting all surplus money into the production of architecture for the masses. In addition, the use of an architecture expressive of its function and of the needs of its user was akin to a process of demystification, since it revealed the claims for spiritual needs to be part of a complex ideological mechanism for the (re)production of capital. Academic or artistic architecture served to naturalize the conventions of that (re)production under the guise of autonomous aesthetic investigations and needs that traditionally were disassociated from its effects on the economic realm. Through scientific means, which were to be primarily nonideological, the functionalist architect would not only demystify but begin resolving the real problems of architecture. Two points should be noted about O’Gorman’s concluding propositions, as they will find their way into our discussion of his eventual disillusionment with architecture. The first was the role of O’Gorman and the radical functionalists as part of a historical avantgarde that questioned the autonomy of art. The second was the seemingly undialectical quality of O’Gorman’s thinking about functionalist architecture in the reproduction of capital. In the first case, O’Gorman’s talk pointedly attacked architecture’s autonomy from the praxis of life. He criticized the spiritual aspect of architecture as being part of l’art pour l’art since it was addressed toward individual recipients and since it reflected the individual and heroic figure of the academic architect. As we have already seen, that was the position of the sam as it attempted to limit the definition and practice of architecture to a select few and, likewise, directed its practice toward the select few who had the means to appreciate it. By proposing a pervasive functionalism whose logic seemed to be at the service and within reach of the majority, O’Gorman altered the terms of the debate by questioning the ideological premises of academic architecture. When he did that, functionalism seemed to provide the masses with the architecture that they needed, while at the same time, more conceptually, O’Gorman transformed the idea of architecture into that of functional structures that could be produced by anyone who understood the basic principles of construction technology. Functionalist architecture removed from the hands of a small elite the conditions of architectural production and changed the essential understanding of beauty into something linked to the functional, the rational, and the spirit of the moment. The second case was more paradoxical. O’Gorman overtly and dialectically articu157

architecture as revolution

lated the view that the stylistic characteristics of functionalism could correspond to the spiritual qualities of art. He was aware, too, that the production of functionalist architecture could be understood as completely autonomous from the praxis of the everyday by creating “form for form’s sake.”111 However, and perhaps more importantly, he apparently was not aware of the power of functionalism to reproduce and increase capital, since the most minimal needs could be constructed for the least economic outlay—rendering higher rental profits based on lower investment. Neither did he seem to understand the power of functionalism to naturalize the structure of instrumental rationality—particular to advanced capitalism—that was beginning to take hold in Mexico. Further, functionalism turned architecture into “pure objects” that stood, ideologically, as metaphors for “object-merchandise” in the impersonal universe of production. To add to these ideological qualities, the massive production of functionalist architecture served to pacify the masses by solving their immediate needs. Moreover, its self-referentiality prevented any direct communication to the masses of broader social goals and aspirations. All these, in a nutshell, were the problems that O’Gorman found with functionalism in the mid- to late 1930s when he chose to abandon his architectural production in favor of realist painting. If this change seems severe—especially given the phenomenon of a forced return to representation usually associated with coercive Stalinist aesthetic practices—it is because of the radical change that it reflects in O’Gorman’s architectural polemics.

“capitalist architecture and socialist architecture”: o’gorman’s disillusionment [T]he city housing projects designed to perpetuate the individual as a supposedly independent unit in a small hygienic dwelling make him all the more subservient to his adversary—the absolute power of capitalism. ma x horkheimer and theodor w. adorno, dialectic of enlightenment In 1936 O’Gorman became fully aware of the ideological implications of the radical functionalism that he advocated and practiced, throwing him into a crisis and leading him not only to severely criticize functionalism but to entirely abandon architecture in favor of painting. Traditional historiography has focused on this sudden change, in part due to O’Gorman’s later reflective writings, as one that shows O’Gorman’s disillusionment with architecture as a practice: architecture had become, for him, a “business,” and functionalism, as a style, had become co-opted by developers who wanted to increase their profits with minimal economic outlay.112 As we have seen, Anita Brenner keenly described the reasons for the popularity of modern architecture in Mexico as a profitmaking venture: it was related to the “clever propaganda of the Tolteca Cement Company, teaching the use of clean lines and clean materials (chiefly concrete of course)”; to the “bold use of their own funds by builders, to put up small, cheap and attractive homes”; and to the “surprising (to the conservatives) immediate popularity and purchase of these homes.”113 Among these builders and developers, O’Gorman must have been aware of the architect Luis Barragán, whose “functionalist phase” was made up mainly of houses and apartments intended for speculative profits.114 158

O’Gorman’s production of architecture and theory remained uneventful—aside from

against a new architecture

the houses, schools, and other work described earlier—in the first half of the 1930s. During this time O’Gorman engaged in the construction of various functionalist houses and union headquarters. In these latter buildings O’Gorman maintained his strict theoretical position on functionalism—seen by one union president, Vicente Lombardo Toledano, as having great value and importance to Mexico—but also worked without commissions and with a self-serving interest in making the designs as inexpensive and, therefore, as buildable as possible.115 During the same period, O’Gorman taught theory and design in the School for Construction Technicians and published extensively in Edificación, the magazine published by the school. As a member of lear, he published articles on architecture and planning in the organization’s magazine, Frente a Frente, and participated in lear debates and conferences—notably the Congress of Intellectuals of 1937. In the architectural proclamations of this congress the architects described the problems facing Mexico and their possible solutions: Given that the majority of the Mexican population lives in shacks, round rooms, and unhealthy neighborhoods, we demand that not one cent of the National Budget be spent on architectural monuments, decorative avenues, or decorative street dividers. Rather, the necessary amounts should be invested in the fundamental needs for housing and of worker class struggle.116 Their proposal for change, as was obvious, did not reflect the dogmatic call for a type of architectural production like the radicals of 1933 had done but instead sought to solve through architecture the still-pending needs for housing. The requirement of revolutionary class struggle likewise featured prominently in the proclamations of the various artistic groups that took part in the 1937 conference. Different in nature from the talks of 1933, this call derived from an interest in the proletariat masses as a radical revolutionary force to be incited into action. It showed a conceptual shift that architecture was tasked to echo—one that rejected any and all bourgeois architectural production, especially any type of functionalist architecture that had been co-opted by speculators.117 This refutation of functionalism by the leftist intelligentsia and O’Gorman’s own change of position and attitude vis-à-vis functionalism and its role within modern Mexico expressed a crisis of intellectual labor: the material necessities would require the intellectual’s insertion into the conditions of production, thus ultimately negating the possibility for any political transformation as a result of the work. The work’s complicity with the system, in other words, overturned any potential and actual critical dimension that might have been embedded within it. And beyond this, functionalism’s association with the systems of production served to further exploit the workers. This became painfully apparent in O’Gorman’s seminal article of 1936 titled “Arquitectura capitalista y arquitectura socialista” (Capitalist Architecture and Socialist Architecture). Written for Edificación, the article was a follow-up to “Arquitectura técnica versus arquitectura tradicionalista” (Technical Architecture versus Traditionalist Architecture) of May–June 1935, in which O’Gorman restated the premises of his well-known 1933 conference presentation. In the 1935 article he described the modern advances in construction technology that allowed the U.S. company American Houses Inc. to develop, 159

architecture as revolution

referencing Le Corbusier, the “seed or cell of the future city: the machine for living.”118 The result was a quasi-Existenzminimum, mass-produced housing that was not only inexpensive but also adaptable to different conditions and needs. Ironically, what impressed him most was the seemingly social intention of large industrial companies in buying thousands of these to house their workers. He was aware, however, of the large investment in the development of these house-types by major American appliance corporations as a potentially huge market for their products. He would define this facet of the housing development in classic Marxist terms: “Capitalism is always present where the need for a new era of renovation exists and when it sees new opportunities for its exploitation.”119 Despite this observation, O’Gorman concluded the essay with an attack on artistic forms of architecture in favor of mass-produced architecture and the rationale behind it: “Technical architecture has, at last, technically knocked out traditionalist architecture.”120 Six months later, however, O’Gorman would reevaluate the “revolutionary and progressive role” of the houses produced by American Houses Inc.121 In “Arquitectura capitalista y arquitectura socialista” O’Gorman waged a contradictory yet vehement attack on functionalism as an ideological tool.122 Beginning with the premise that the primary interest of the bourgeoisie was its own profit and control, he explained how this class had ideologically commandeered the reading of functionalism: its “internationalist” guise and its “disruptive” aesthetic forms made it appear as the architecture of socialism, while instead, its logic of “maximum efficiency with the minimum of work” stated the productive and profitable value of such construction. Its production was no less an outcome of international capitalism, either: “The revolutionary and progressive action of the bourgeoisie has brought about the development of industry and modern means of production. . . . Modern international capitalism has employed modern international science and has created an international modern architecture.”123 Furthermore, the exaltation of standardization and mass production glorified Taylorism, industrialism, and therefore the power of capitalism. Modern architecture, O’Gorman wrote, was an instrument in this process and served as a means to ward off the anguish of industrial modernity by making visual perceptions conform to the new universe of utility.124 O’Gorman ultimately postulated that functionalist architecture had been an unwitting pawn in bourgeois imperialism. O’Gorman astutely observed that there could be no “socialist” architecture, given the structural relations that determine the nature and meaning of any particular work: only when all private property and the means of production were in the hands of the people could there be an architecture produced under socialism. Until then, and in a place like Mexico, the production of both traditional architecture and “revolutionary functionalism” would always benefit the upper classes while, in appearance at least, pacifying the lower classes by professing to make radical changes.125 Dialectically, the ideological role of functionalist architecture appeared at the moment that its forms were being used as elements of an aesthetic culture—similar to the recurrence of historic architectural forms and elements. This repetition caused an “incessant monotony” that led to “cerebral blindness,” which easily infiltrated into the mind of the worker, the notion that the machine is not a mani-

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festation of high culture but rather an ugly and evil product created by a terrible and

against a new architecture

dramatic humanity. The machine was, thus, something not worth fighting for. This has given the bourgeoisie more control over the means of production.126 In the last instance, whether aestheticized or not, control by the bourgeoisie proved to be the ideological project of functionalist architecture—to reproduce itself and its conditions of production.

functionalism as the architecture of capital [I]n present society all usefulness is displaced, bewitched. Society deceives us when it says that it allows things to appear as if they are there by mankind’s will. In fact, they are produced for profit’s sake: they satisfy human needs only incidentally. theodor adorno, “functionalism today” O’Gorman’s critical awareness of architecture and its role in capitalism’s reproduction of the conditions of production would stem from a set of overdetermined contradictions inherent within his radical position of functionalism. What was initially an architectural production intended for the social improvement of the masses was, in reality, the refinement and manipulation of construction, industrial, and advertising techniques produced and developed by modern advanced capitalism. The call for the economic efficiency of functionalist architecture by O’Gorman and his comrades was, dialectically, a call for a rationalized use of capital. The utopia that functionalism proposed was the utopia of industrial production—the objective structure of “machines” for the efficient extraction of surplus value. This was, after all, the utopia that Henry Ford had proposed: One point that is absolutely essential to high capacity, as well as to humane production, is a clean, well-lighted and well-ventilated factory. Our machines are placed very close together—every foot of floor space in the factory carries, of course, the same overhead charge. . . . We measure on each job the exact amount of room that a man needs; he must not be cramped—that would be waste. But if he and his machine occupy more space than is required, that also is waste. This brings our machines closer together than in probably any other factory in the world. To a stranger they might seem piled right on top of one another, but they are scientifically arranged, not only in the sequence of operations, but to give every man and every machine every square inch that he requires and, if possible, not a square inch, and certainly not a square foot, more than he requires.127 Despite being the paradigms of functionalist and rationalist architecture, Ford’s factories stood as efficiently planned, well-lit, and sanitary spaces that could increase profits and workers’ efficiency through their streamlined organization and consequent enhanced extraction of surplus labor. In Mexico, as O’Gorman saw it, the propositions of the radical architects for an exacerbated functionalism would serve capital in three ways: a minimal investment would yield higher profits when sold or rented; in the creation of new workplaces, functionalism helped objectify and exploit workers; and, ideologically, it served to synchronize all sectors of the Mexican population to the modern means of 161

4.31 Juan O’Gorman, Diego Rivera House and Studio, San Ángel, side, 1931–1932

capitalist rationalization. Historically, this last adjustment was necessary because the country was undergoing a conversion of its productive relations and entering an advanced industrialized capitalism. What O’Gorman had claimed to be an architecture devoid of aesthetic qualities was quickly refuted by his friend Diego Rivera, who argued that architecture created using the strictest scientific functionalism was art.128 What began as an attempt to create a self-referential and autonomous architectural language became, in the end, an archi-

4.32 (opposite page) Le Corbusier, Ozenfant Studio,

tecture full of “quotations”—most apparent in the striking formal similarities between

“reversed view,” photo published in Vers une

O’Gorman’s house and studio for Diego Rivera (Figure 4.31) and Le Corbusier’s Ozen-

architecture

fant Studio (Figure 4.32) and Maison Citrohan project; in O’Gorman’s references in

architecture as revolution

the house and studio for Julio Castellanos (Figure 4.33) to Hans Schmidt’s and Paul Artaria’s Double House in Mexico (1929, Figures 4.34 and 4.35); or in the formal and repetitive quality of the rooms of the schools for the sep. After all, it seems highly unlikely that the construction of a house in Mexico by Schmidt and Artaria, two members of the radical European functionalist group abc, would have gone unnoticed. The construction of their Double House, it should be noted, occurred at the exact moment when debates about the formation of functionalist architecture were occurring in Mexico and O’Gorman was designing and building the Cecil O’Gorman House.129 The prowlike and stepped-back form of many of O’Gorman’s schools could be seen as influenced also by maritime vessels, as with Le Corbusier, or by Jan Duiker’s Third

4.33 Juan O’Gorman, Julio Castellanos House and Studio, Mexico City, 1934

Technical Training School (1929), which O’Gorman might have seen as a result of typological research done for his school designs.130 The European functionalist obsession

with linear, block forms and interest in the ratio of density to open space—published

4.34 Hans Schmidt and Paul Artaria, Double House in Mexico, front, 1929

extensively in Das Neue Frankfurt—predisposed some of O’Gorman’s linear school compositions; such similarity is seen in comparing O’Gorman’s Escuela Primaria in Tampico project (1932) with Mart Stam and Werner Moser’s unbuilt housing project

4.35 Hans Schmidt and Paul Artaria, Double House in Mexico, rear, 1929

(1930).131 Both projects demonstrated a shared interest in solar orientation and a formal connection among the main building blocks that subdivided the open space into manageable quadrants. As a result of this architecture of quotations, the attempt to resolve or at least represent the functionality of architecture necessitated what the German cultural theorist Theodor Adorno would refer to as the aestheticization of function and, later, what Stanford Anderson would call the “fiction” of functionalism.132 For Adorno, the problematic inherent in functionalist architecture lay in its impossibility of representing the “function,” since “the purely purpose oriented forms have been revealed as insufficient, monotonous, deficient, and narrow-mindedly practical,” and any “attempt to bring into the work the external element of imagination . . . [would] mistakenly resurrect decoration.”133 The fallacy of using functionalist forms external to the architecture was strictly located in the historical and social development that had subordinated them into usefulness.

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4.36 Juan O’Gorman, Retablo de la independencia, mural, Castillo de Chapultepec, 1960–1961

Architects simply reproduced these forms in order to render their structures meaningful as functional buildings. Functionalism was, in other words, the aesthetic expression of architects attempting to signify function by referencing other “functional” forms (machines, steamships, and so forth) or other generators of form. Adorno attributed this lapse into the aesthetic to the “barbarous traits” of pure functionalism: “the sadistic blows of sharp edges, bare calculated rooms, stairways, and the like. Virtually every consumer had probably felt all too painfully the impracticability of the mercilessly practical. Hence our bitter suspicion is formulated: the absolute rejection of style becomes style.”134 In the end, the aestheticization of function would serve to redefine the industrial or functional forms quoted within these buildings, rendering them mute by lessening their shock and reducing them to pure objects devoid of aesthetic experience. As this occurred, a parallel development would result: aestheticized functionalism spectacularized revolutionary architectural forms, assimilating them into the conspicuous nature of the commodity-form to make them congruent with it. Functionalism’s radicality served to diminish the shock of the metropolitan condition and to render that shock an active mechanism of the advertisement and (conspicuous) consumption of the metropolis. What began as an attempt to utilize the most modern, durable, and economical means of architectural construction became, in the end, an advertising ploy of the Mexican cement companies. And, finally, the very “silence” of functionalist architecture in regard to its class allegiance was itself an esoteric silence—reflecting the sublimation of political impulses. This silence became a hermetic system that prohibited the utopian union of artistic practices with a communicative model of collective reception that had been actively linked to political and social change. If O’Gorman’s 1953 self-critique of the mosaic decoration for the library of the Na-

166

tional University tells us anything, it is that the aspirations and needs that he placed on

the shoulders of aesthetic production—such as appropriateness to context, the balance

against a new architecture

between aesthetic and functional needs, and, perhaps most importantly, the need for legibility—were intended to institute profound changes in the structure of society.135 All of those were requirements and aspirations that, to O’Gorman, functionalism could not meet and, because of this inability, would only ever serve to maintain the status quo. Realist pictorial production and mural making, then, could work through these needs (Figure 4.36). After all, they followed a model of didactic, public, collective reception whose legibility was linked to painterly competence and its ability to represent heroic scenes and dialectical histories that revealed the “objective essence of reality.” These would serve to incite class and revolutionary consciousness.136 This turn by O’Gorman reflected a critique that refused the quietistic conventions of “advanced” European and American art and architectural production. By reinstituting into his artistic practice elements of the Mexican historical experience and tradition, O’Gorman reconstituted a revolutionary subjectivity, a radical proposition in a heightened moment of advanced capitalist industrialization.

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5

monumentalizing the revolution

juan o’gorman’s la ciudad de méxico (1942, figure 5.1) presents, in a clear and concise way and without reservations, the fate of architecture in Mexico as the ideals to the Revolution become monumentalized.1 In the painting, O’Gorman’s vantage point is from the Monument to the Revolution—the monument that is, in other words, the Revolution. This metaphor implies a break with the architectural past and its aesthetic implications. The latter, specifically, are the issues that engaged the Mexican architectural community after the Revolution in a search for an appropriate architecture for the Mexican people. The metaphor also implies that the adaptive reuse of what was to be the Legislative Palace for the Díaz regime symbolized the Revolution and its aims—or more generally the reenactment in the present of systems entrenched in the pre-Revolution regime. O’Gorman’s painting also raises the dichotomy of the indigenous and/or populist versus modern and/or internationalist aesthetic practices. For O’Gorman, this dichotomy was closely linked to issues of artistic legibility intended to awaken class and revolutionary consciousness. The albañil (construction worker) to whom the work is dedicated stands between the contrasting elements of traditional stone and grout construction and modern reinforced-concrete and brick construction. The worker himself embodies this tension, as he appears mestizo or Indian in ancestry

Here is represented the heart of Mexico City as it can be seen from the top of the Monument of the Revolution.

yet is shown as part of the modern proletariat by his uniform and modern tools. The

j uan o’gorma n , la

painting itself positions us, its viewers, as activators of this dichotomy. After all, it is the

c iudad d e mé x ico

hands of the painter and architect who held the map of ancient Tenochtitlán. His sight is imposed on us: it is we who hold this privileged position, who hold the map and face the task imposed by the Revolution of upholding a sense of the past for the majority of the people. It is the task of the intelligentsia, in other words, to guide or paternalistically impose ideologies and culture on the public at large. At the center of O’Gorman’s painting is a subtle shift in the understanding of Mexican history and a newly developed vantage point from which he articulates this reading. In Michel Foucault’s definition of monuments as the ideological cornerstones within the formation of history, La Ciudad de México shows a change that literally and metaphorically renders history as a closed field of investigation. For Foucault, the legacy of monuments is centered on their relationship to documents: “History, in its traditional form, undertook to ‘memorize’ the monuments of the past, transform them into documents . . . [I]n our time, history is that which transforms documents into monuments.”2 Important historical events that used to be documented into history now become monumental(ized). History as a monument, in turn, becomes the ideological precondition for the reproduction of society. The monumentalizing of history serves to fabricate the myths of origins (of history, of politics, of culture, and so forth) but also, and perhaps more importantly, to form and structure our understanding of the past, which by default defines the present. Ideologically, both serve to explain and naturalize certain contemporary conditions and social situations and ultimately to secure and reproduce these circumstances through the closure of a critical reading of them. O’Gorman understood that the monuments produced in Mexico to commemorate its Revolution almost always operated in this way. Yet, as Foucault indicates, documents themselves are to be read, studied, deciphered. For the critic Noé Jitrik, it is precisely this act—of reading history—that carries the most productive possibilities in precisely defining the condition of the monument:

[R]everence impedes the development of a culture, it suffocates it, and, in the last instance, it allows the ghosts of origins to assault us instead of amusing us and giving us a joy of living from that origin and in the present. no é j itr ik, h i s to r i a d e una mir ada

5.1 Juan O’Gorman, La Ciudad de México, tempera, 1942

[T]o “documentalize” would create the conditions for a reading; to remain within the monument . . . would force us to remain passive, within the concluded, on the outside. . . . Be that as it may, always at the moment we monumentalize we cease the act of [critical] reading.3 Documents are, then, not yet monumentalized. They are still open for interpretation. This, as we will see, will be the strategy central to Juan Rulfo’s critique of the transformation—through literature and politics—of the Revolution. Rather than directing our attention to the particular view shown in the painting, however, O’Gorman’s intention is to examine and present for us the monument itself as paradigmatic of the Revolution’s change.

the revolution institutionalized

An important historical moment in this

monumentalization occurs with the institutionalization of the Revolution through the formation of the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (pnr, National Revolutionary Party), which eventually became the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (pri, Institutionalized Revolutionary Party). This institutionalization shifted the politics of caudillismo, in which the president was appointed based on the individual’s charisma and political and personal activity, to a more established political machine that appointed candidates through populist and democratic means. The democratization of the political process was a notion that President Álvaro Obregón (1920–1924, reelected 1928) began to develop in May 1928, shortly before his death. For him, it was essential to transfer power from individual leaders to a party that would reunite revolutionary ideas and leaders to create 170

an organism, be it strictly political, social, or both, that would have a defined program

and permanent place in order to guarantee the survival of revolutionary principles

monumentalizing the revolution

through democratic means, a school of leadership for public men and politicians. [It would be an organism] that would, first and foremost, guarantee the Nation a tranquil and peaceful democratic political life without being dependent on one man to solve national crises and without having to rely on violence.4 Obregón’s desire to create a national party that democratically represented the Revolution’s ideals ended with his assassination on July 17, 1928. President Plutarco Elías Calles (1924–1928), who called himself the Jefe Máximo after Obregón’s reelection and murder and whose sphere of influence—which continued until 1934—was called the Maximato,5 likewise contended that the “failure” of the Revolution was related to the focus by the individual presidents of the country after 1920 on the economic and social spheres of the Revolution over its political and democratic aspects. In an address to the national legislature on September 1, 1928, President Calles described the end of the rule of the caudillos and the direction that the country would take: The death of the elected president has been an irreparable loss that has left the country in a very difficult situation. This is not due to the country’s total lack of capable men or well-prepared men—of which there are plenty—but of figures of indisputable importance capable of holding a tremendous influence over public opinion and with the personal and political strength to merit—by name and prestige—widespread trust. . . . [For the first time in its history, Mexico finds itself with a] lack of caudillos, which has to allow us—will allow us—to orient, once and for all, the politics of the country toward the path of a true institutional life.6 The perceived failure of the Revolution, the end of the caudillo, and Obregón’s political legacy were crystallized into the pnr by Calles in December 1929. This official party served as a platform from which to control the election of Mexican presidents and to determine the presidential successors. These changes translated into what the historian Arnaldo Córdova refers to as the “institutionalization of the political game.”7 The structures for deciding who would be chosen to run for president remained the same as before while suggesting, through a coalition of various members, a democratic system. Focused primarily on the consolidation of political power, this institutionalization changed the focus from the interests of social improvement that dominated the first half of the 1920s. The focus of the Maximato and the pnr was, then, the modernization of the country through a vigorous capitalist development, without losing sight of the fact that “the working and peasant classes are the most important factors of the Mexican collective.” . . . [Nevertheless, the] obvious problem of how to reconcile the contradictory interests of the different social classes was not addressed, nor was it solved.8 The abandonment of social reforms was linked to the bitter opposition and electoral fraud that the pnr engineered to ensure victory for its candidates. Its first test was the presidential electoral campaign of 1929 waged by José Vasconcelos, who ran under the “anti-reelectionist” banner. After a hostile crusade to discredit him, including published

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attacks, physical assaults, and the murder of some of his supporters, the election ended with the presidential victory of Pascual Ortiz Rubio, who received the majority of the votes.9 One of the most ardent critics of this new expression of the Revolution was the Marxist labor leader Vicente Lombardo Toledano. Aware of the Maximato’s opposition to organized labor, Lombardo Toledano radicalized the labor movements and increased their power and sphere of influence. Lombardo Toledano’s writings from the late 1920s and early 1930s revealed his increased radicalism and a strong critique of what the Revolution had become. Within them, he emphasized the failure of the Revolution. Writing on the nineteenth anniversary of the Revolution, he faulted its lack of “political aspects, ideologically considered . . . The Revolution is concretely defined as a change of social structure in Mexico, and from that point of view, it has not achieved its purpose.”10 Coopted by the classes in power, the state, and foreign investors, the task of the Revolution was diverted from its primary purpose of social change. As a labor leader, however, he asserted that its failure further drove the need for the working class to attain class and revolutionary consciousness: “What we have not gained in works we have gained in a revolutionary consciousness: the organization of labor represents that consciousness; that alone justifies the Revolution.”11 In Lombardo Toledano’s vision, the Revolution had yet to triumph. In an article he wrote in 1930, this general description of failure was translated into a specific criticism that linked contemporary political discourse to the old Porfirian political practices that had led to the Revolution in the first place. Lombardo Toledano wrote that the Mexican economic crisis resulting from the “Crack of 1929” turned the direction of the Revolution toward a frenzy of material production guided by technocrats unconcerned with the resolution of social problems. The bourgeoisie thus used the economic crisis as an opportunity to question and dismantle the social character of the Revolution. To overcome this crisis, the classes in power manufactured an ideology linked to “national reconstruction”—to which they referred as the “second stage of the Mexican Revolution”—intended to reproduce the conditions of production. Their ideology, in other words, revolved around maintaining the class structures that existed before the Revolution. For Lombardo Toledano, this was tantamount to the reestablishment of systems abolished by the Revolution, albeit a new strain that he aptly called neoporfirismo, which he defined in terms that recalled the qualities of the old Díaz regime: “a submission to foreign capital and the suppression of the desires and legitimate rights of the multitude of our disinherited people.”12 Lombardo Toledano’s critique focused on the public authority that he saw as an agency of the bourgeoisie. Despite the Revolution and the Constitution of 1917, the pnr thrived on corruption, individualism, and lack of social direction,13 elements that to him led to the “bankruptcy” of the Revolution. Its institutionalization reverted Mexico to the prerevolutionary form of the status quo and politically monumentalized ideals other than those of the Revolution. Representative of the consolidation of political power and the undermining of the Revolution, one of the lasting legacies of the Maximato was the symbolic use of architecture to promote the notion of the institutionalized Revolution. Lorenzo Meyer, Rafael Segovia, and Alejandra Lajous find that the architectural consolidation is best seen in

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the creation of a commission in 1933 to oversee the makeover of the remains of the

Legislative Palace, begun under Díaz, into the Monument to the Revolution and in the

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creation of the monument to the great caudillo of the Revolution, Álvaro Obregón, on the place where his life was “sacrificed.”14

reflections on the monument to the revolution The Monument to the Revolution in the Capital of the Mexican Republic has become a symbol; it is the Symbol of Mexico’s Social Revolution that, understood as a unique movement, began with Independence, continued with the Reform, and ended with the Social Revolution of 1910. carlos obregón santacilia, el monumento a la revolucíon At its inception, the new Monument to the Revolution designed by Carlos Obregón Santacilia (Figure 5.2) was expected to reuse the central iron cupola of the abandoned Legislative Palace that was to be one of the masterpieces of the Díaz government (Figure 5.3). Designed by the French architect Emile Benard for the government of Porfirio Díaz, the structure was almost completely in place when the Revolution began; its iron structure was erected, the Italian marbles and Norwegian cladding had been imported, and its decorative sculptures, friezes, and ornaments had been completed. Shortly after 5.2 Carlos Obregón Santacilia, Monument to the Revolution, 1933–1938

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5.3 Emile Benard, perspective, Legislative Palace, 1902

5.4 Emile Benard, Legislative Palace, structure of central portion during its construction, 1912

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the Revolution’s conclusion, the process of dismantling the unfinished iron structure began, given its state of disrepair and weathering. All of its ornaments and imported building materials were sold or reused in different government projects. Yet, the great central cupola remained (Figure 5.4). And, in Carlos Obregón Santacilia’s words, it needed to remain because it formed an indispensable part of the “physiognomy and silhouette of the city.”15 The idea of transforming the remains of the Legislative Palace into a building that would symbolize the Revolution’s ideals had been floating around for quite some time. Francisco I. Madero, credited for starting the Revolution by questioning the legality of Díaz’ regime, expected that the building—already in progress and on schedule—would be completed during the initial years of the Revolution. After the Revolution, the government considered turning the central cupola into a pantheon for national heroes. Emile Benard, the original architect, was hired to create a proposal for this.16 A later account specified the details of this project. Initiated in 1923 by Alberto J. Pani, then minister of finance, the central cupola was to become a “Monument to the Heroes of the Revolution.”17 Curiously, another prospect for the site was a proposal in 1923 by the Austrian architect Adolf Loos for a town hall (Figure 5.5).18 Possibly responding to a competition brief or a newspaper article describing Benard’s proposal, Loos’ design addressed the existing structure for the central copula by creating a pyramid-shaped composition. Within it, a large central void would have been supported by the existing structure. By using a method of vaulting similar to the Mayan corbel arch or the corbel vaults of My-

5.5 Adolf Loos, sketch, “Town Hall in Mexico City,” 1923

cenaean tholos tombs, Loos’ proposal maintained the structural integrity of the existing framework to allow for its interior grand space. Loos created four buttressing corner structures, one of which would serve as a grand staircase (shown in the plan and section) to access the level of the assembly hall. The Benard project located this hall in the piano nobile, or one level above the base. The proportions and measurements that Loos used (28 meters for the width of the central assembly space) are similar to those of the existing structure (the interior dome of 22.5 meters in diameter). In 1925 the newspaper El Observador published the history of the building and the various proposals considered for it. At the time and as noted earlier, the framework was being dismantled and sold as scrap. The property on which the building stood was slated for subdivision and sale. One argument against this fate was that the structure should be reused to spare the cost of the demolition. Another argument against the dismantling was made by the civil engineer Angel Peimbert, who proposed that the structural remains serve as the seat of the National University, “the most beneficial institution for the individual progress of our masses and, therefore, of our national future.”19 The writer Salvador Villaseñor proposed that it become a “Cathedral of Work and of National and Foreign Labor Movements” in which a permanent exhibition space would display national and international products and would economically benefit the Mexican nation.20 In 1930 a proposal suggested that the structure be used to house a new Legislative Palace. Designed by the architect Antonio Muñoz, the project never went beyond its initial planning stage because the legislature did not approve its budget.21 By 1932 the only remaining part of the Legislative Palace was the central cupola. The lateral sections of the building had been dismantled because of rust and structural instability due to its sinking foundations. That same year, upon his return from Paris, the Mexican sculptor Germán Cueto—a former Estridentista—created a model for a Monu-

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ment to the Revolution (Figure 5.6).22 It is unclear why Cueto made this proposal since, as we will see, no competition was held for the design of such a monument. Nevertheless, the model-sculpture responded to the form of the remains of the Díaz Legislative Palace through its large central void. Despite the turn to figuration characteristic of Mexican artistic production at the time, Cueto’s scheme was an abstract and formal manipulation of primary forms and voids intended to represent the aesthetic implications of the Revolution. For him, as for the Estridentistas before, these implications prompted the challenge and complete transformation of artistic production and reception from traditional and established academic modes to those that embodied modernity and its sensibilities. Cueto’s abstract proposal was, therefore, a complex attack on the facile reading of the Revolution and its aesthetic implications of engendering “obvious” stylistic responses that served to invoke superficial emotional reactions.23 The officials deciding the fate of the monument did not consider many of the various proposals for the buildings’ reuse or their intentions. One day in 1932, according to Obregón Santacilia’s account, he noticed that the demolition of the remaining part of the building had begun. He quickly approached Alberto J. Pani—minister of finance and a former client—to stop its destruction, and he

5.6 Germán Cueto, model, Monument to the Revolution, 1932

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proposed that what still stood of the Legislative Palace be converted into a monument to

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the Revolution. Pani and Calles together approached President Abelardo Rodríguez to 24

intervene and save the remaining structure. They requested Rodríguez’ support for the construction of the monument. To back up their petition, they referred to other projects that had been started under Díaz—principally the National Theater, which was completed after the Revolution as the Palace of Fine Arts by the architect Federico Mariscal— as precedents that showed how these monuments were transformed for the good of the Mexican people. They argued that these transformations stood as paradigms of the revolutionary impulse to transform the relics of the Porfiriato into components of the new, post-Revolution Mexican nation. In their proposal, however, they understood the impossibility of finishing the Legislative Palace project as originally designed, and thus they suggested that its remaining element be used “under restrained economic conditions, in a complete architectural composition with a monumentality and extraordinary commemorative force. . . . [The structure should be] destined to commemorate the most magnificent episode of our history.”25 The magnificent episode of Mexican history to which they refer is not the one that, in hindsight, we imagine: the Revolution begun in 1910. Instead, they figured this episode as the evolutionary “stages of the great Mexican Revolution”: the Independence of 1810–1821, which they called the “political emancipation”; the Constitution of 1857 and the Reform, which they considered the “spiritual emancipation” from the church and conservative ideals; and the Revolution of 1910–1920, or the “economic emancipation.” This last stage they saw as limited to “a fight by the disinherited against the privileged to achieve a more popular participation in Government and an equitable distribution of wealth, to a socialist tendency manifested in the new principles expressed in the Constitution of 1917.”26 The Revolution, per se, encompassed, in other words, only the final stage of Mexico’s evolution toward political and social progress. This redefinition of the Revolution as part of the other two determinant moments of Mexican history, however, echoed the positivist and teleological conception of history that pervaded the Porfiriato. Expressed by Justo Sierra, a minister of education during the Díaz regime, revolutionary movements led to the creation of a nation free from the domination of Spain and its religious legacy. Writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, Sierra argued that Mexico had only been engaged in two revolutions, which he understood as “violent accelerations of its evolution . . . toward the realization of an ideal, a superior state to that which [already] existed”: the struggle for independence and the Reform.27 According to Calles and Pani’s initiative, the monument was to materially symbolize this evolution and the three stages of the larger Mexican “revolution.” The structure was to allude to the typology of triumphal arches through its stone cladding.28 Allegorical sculptural elements were to be placed at the supports of the dome to the three stages of the evolution of the modern nation of Mexico. To coincide with the four supports of the dome, however, the Revolution of 1910 was redefined as having two parts: the “redemption of the Campesino [peasant] and of the Worker.”29 Through this, the monument exemplified the fundamental shift of the Revolution under Calles: the end of the caudillo era. Instead of focusing on the individual, the monument would abstractly glorify the secular labor of the people. But the soul of the Country exists not only through the mystical impulse of the memory of past sacrifices but also through

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the material and ethical impulses—respectively, the joy of well-being in the present and the conscience of duty that each person has about leaving to future generations that quantity of well-being, augmented. The Country will keep alive, indefinitely, its spirit of renovation and its patriotic commitment to accomplish the task of improving its received inheritance and to make more feasible the proposals for the development of political institutionalization proposed by the ex-President—co-author of this initiative—to the Legislature on the first of September 1928. The monument must also prolong its commemorative function even in an undefined future by glorifying “the Revolution of yesterday, of today, of tomorrow, of always.”30 Thus, the political institutionalization that the building would symbolize, according to this initiative, was precisely the institutionalization of the Revolution itself. In response to the Calles and Pani proposal, President Rodríguez mandated the creation of a commission to oversee fund-raising (through a national pledged contribution) for the monument’s design and construction. At that point, then, the manufacture of these symbolic elements was no longer in the hands of one strong individual—as was the case, for example, of Vasconcelos’ or Bassols’ control over design and construction of buildings for the Secretaría de Educación—but under the control of a bureaucracy. Designated as the Gran Comisión de Patronato del Monumento a la Revolución (Great Commission of the Board of Trustees of the Monument to the Revolution), its composition would give the “opportunity for a majority of citizens and private enterprises of the country to contribute in the development of the initiative in a magnificent way.”31 Accordingly, the commission was composed by Calles as its president, several federal ministers, the directors of the executive branch, state governors, and the president of the pnr. To overcome conflicts caused by such a large group of people—forty-three in all—and the distance that separated the members in the various states, Rodríguez appointed an executive committee to manage and materialize the commission’s initiative. The commission’s structure thus replicated the structure of the newly institutionalized state; an illusion was created that seemed to allow access to power that in actuality was limited to a small elite. The transposition of this state structure and its problematics manifested themselves in many ways. For example, the Agrupación de Revolucionarios de 1910 (Group of Revolutionaries of 1910) requested funding from President Rodríguez for an album of inordinate expense to commemorate the monument itself. The request was in keeping with the old traditions of caudillismo yet with a new sensibility of bureaucratic politics—the members referred to themselves as friends and acquaintances of the president himself, as true revolutionary fighters, and as the “true guardians” of the prestige of the Revolution—in order to obtain the commission without either democratic process or authentic qualifications.32 Another example was the use of uncompromising campaign tactics by the committee to collect funds for the monument. The unyielding nature of these tactics appeared in a few instances in which groups of poor campesinos requested variances to the payment of contributions.33 Effects of the commission’s bureaucratic tenor included constant work stoppages during the monument’s construction. In some cases, politicians of various states diverted the funds destined for its completion; for example, hurricane recovery took pre-

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cedence over the monument among donors in coastal states in late 1933.34 Numerous

delays resulted from labor problems generated by the government against the unions

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to which the monument construction workers belonged. Another effect of the bureaucratization of building the monument became clear when the government transferred the members of the commission to other political posts after the transition of the presidency from Rodríguez to Lázaro Cárdenas. At the moment that Pani lost his appointment as minister of finance, Obregón Santacilia almost entirely lost his appointment to create the monument. The different interests of members of the Cárdenas administration placed into question the immense expenditures allocated for the monument. As Pani’s successor, Narciso Bassols refused to provide any funds for the construction of the monument, which he considered a frivolity while there were still people in need.35 The effect of bureaucratization was ultimately reflected in the monument itself and its form. Not only did the conditions of its production suffer, as we have seen, but its themes and the way they were to be expressed also changed in the process. Clearly, the monument was called to represent an abstracted notion of the Revolution itself, which had been reconceptualized and diluted by its redefinition as part of a series of larger Mexican paradigm shifts. For Obregón Santacilia, the Revolution only generated two parallel architectural searches: traditionalist and international. He saw any radicalization or other influence brought on by the event as simply “a change in artistic and economic values, negative and inevitable aspects of any revolution.”36 As a result of all of these forces, the Monument to the Revolution exemplifies a moment when the experimental and utopian searches for a new architectural language to symbolize the Revolution would come to an end. The building stands, instead, as the beginning of the instrumental and stylistic use of the architectural explorations enabled by the Revolution. Seemingly democratic in quality, these appropriations were intended to represent, by their inclusion, all of the earlier explorations. Through this strategy, however, their political and utopian qualities were rendered ineffective. These changes are best seen in Obregón Santacilia’s book El maquinismo, la vida y la arquitectura (1939; Machine Age, Life, and Architecture), in which any social aspects linked to architecture are disregarded in favor of a focus on the general aesthetic problematics of “today’s modernity and the transformations registered in life and traditions based on these.”37 For Obregón Santacilia, the modern means of communication and production that he termed “the machine age” (el maquinismo) transformed architecture as it reflected, primarily, the material conditions of its production. The architect was the mediator of these conditions. As they were general and international, architecture would become more universalized and abstract while at the same time less expressive of its place of origin: “Modern Architecture did not appear because of the desire to forget the past. It is a result of the change registered in everything and of the logical way that machines have taught us to see things.”38 Yet, he believed that the search for traditional transcendence based on beauty had to be maintained. Obregón Santacilia rejected the challenge to traditional aesthetic forms and modes of seeing enacted by the radical functionalists in the early 1930s—the very ideas he now proposed regarding the changes of aesthetic production based on the new means of production and dissemination—as mere formalism devoid of sociopolitical intention. Obregón Santacilia’s refusal to address the political or social radicalism in architecture was based on what he saw as the last determining instance of architecture: “The great transformer of architecture is the Economy.”39 The changes enacted by modernity

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were based on the economic conditions that affected the laws of production, distribution, and consumption. As such, the task of the architect was to create a utilitarian architecture with large windows and open spaces created by columns, of thin walls made with synthetic materials; houses are constructed in quantity, [they] are standardized, and comfort is created in order to produce higher rents.40 One of the responsibilities of the new architecture was to incorporate the logic and forms of advertising into all of its elements. For this, designers needed to create smooth forms and spaces designed for the application of publicity. They needed to use light and solar orientation to maximize architecture’s visibility and that of its applied propaganda, not as a socially efficient variant of functionalism. Architects needed to carefully allow commercial imagery to be part of a new, perfect, and functional (racional) form of ornamentation.41 By changing ornament into advertising, this architecture would follow the laws of the economy and render the building as useful and profitable. In other words, it would reproduce the logic of the capitalist metropolis where “the masses do not have the time to see. . . . The agitated life of the speed in which we live does not leave time for contemplation, especially the contemplation of the detail. We prefer the mass and the ensemble.”42 Like Georg Simmel’s reading of the metropolis, Obregón Santacilia argued that the mechanisms of perception and interaction with the city had to change: [T]he mentality of the world would have to radically evolve to such a degree that it would create a new form of life without precedent in the History of the world. . . . The new mentality, the evolution of criteria, a renovation of appreciation, a revision of value, an adjustment: all these [are] imposed by the evolution of the machine age.43 The new modes of perception and experience of the city resulted from the blasé attitude, an experience of detachment based on excessive nervous stimulation. Through it, value was transformed into abstract and quantifiable terms, reproducing the inherent logic of capitalism. For Obregón Santacilia, architects were limited by these new and very real conditions and needed to renounce any possible utopian union of art and architecture intended to transform society. Within this closure, Obregón Santacilia’s building would only reproduce—neither questioning nor denaturalizing—the logic of its present. The monument, then, addressed the concerns imposed by ideological forces intent on constructing a particular representation of the Revolution and echoed the structure and principles of the pnr; the Revolution would be, “in the hands of whoever could manipulate it, the ideal instrument to control and govern.”44 This is perhaps best manifested in the abstracted redefinition of the Revolution that, in essence, served to halt the various interpretations and possibilities that it had awarded, for our purposes, to architectural and cultural production. Instead, the monument conveys a more diluted notion of the Revolution as one moment in a series of “revolutionary” events, lessening the importance of the most recent and, at the time, most important revolution. Very little is known of the process that Obregón Santacilia undertook for his design beyond what he wrote about it years later in disillusionment. His El Monumento a la

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Revolución (1960) describes the changes needed to regularize the building’s proportions

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5.7 Carlos Obregón Santacilia, perspective, Monument to the Revolution, 1933

and structural system. However, it was unmistakable by the proposal Calles and Pani submitted to President Rodríguez that a design which captured the spirit of the initiative had already been prepared by January 15, 1933 (Figure 5.7).45 The design and the completed structure simply consist of cladding the existing dome structure of the Porfiriato building. The ground and base of the monument, originally conceived as its basement, now houses a museum to the Revolution. The supports allow for the ascension to the top of the structure, and each pillar holds the remains of an important revolutionary leader. The dome consists of an inner and outer shell. The inner one has a circulation stair that allows access to its top, where one can look down. Topped by an accessible and traditional lantern, the monument could be lit to resemble a searchlight (Figure 5.8). This latter feature emphasized its self-promoting qualities. In Obregón Santacilia’s text he reveals that an important part of the monument’s design was the choice of sculptures placed at the four supports of the dome. After a public competition, the sculptor Oliverio Martínez was chosen, as he had the “great intuition of sensing the sculpture of the old autochthonous roots and incorporating it into the currents of contemporary sculpture.”46 The four sculptural sets are composed of three main figures organized through a pyramidal composition (Figures 5.9–5.11). Each set represents, in a monumental way, the aforementioned stages of the evolution of modern Mexico. However, Obregón Santacilia enforced on Martínez’ design the simplification of forms to represent, as he articulated in El maquinismo, la vida y la arquitectura, the mechanization of art and architecture following the laws of the new machine age and its effects on aesthetic sensibility.47 Clearly, any political and social intention present in the work that might convey earlier artistic explorations is minimized by its abstraction and restraint. Each tripartite sculpture is a pendentive meant to express and facilitate the transition from the structural supports to a dome. In addition, the height of the

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5.8 Carlos Obregón Santacilia, elevation, Monument to the Revolution, 1933

sculptures on the monument make it difficult to read the nuanced qualities of the individuals represented and the subtle elements that give meaning to the sculptural sets; for example, the hammer and gears in the set titled “Redemption of the Worker” are next to impossible to see from the street level (Figure 5.12). Because of the enactment of this transition and the forfeiture of legibility of any sociopolitical message, the sculpture was rendered subservient to the architecture. For Obregón Santacilia, the sculptural program opposite page

developed by Martínez was to become “part of and complement to the architecture. . . . This is precisely the mission of the sculptors and artists who collaborate in architectural

5.9 Oliverio Martínez, La independencia, southeast

work—the true endpoint of sculpture and painting—and not to fight against it as many

corner, Monument to the Revolution, 1938

times had been done.”48

5.10 Oliverio Martínez, Las leyes de reforma, northeast corner, Monument to the Revolution

Instead of working dialectically with the architecture to generate and communicate new meanings, as Vasconcelos’ proposals had done, the artistic program became simply a sign registering the inclusion of art into the architectural program, as was expected

5.11 Oliverio Martínez, Las leyes agrarias, southwest corner, Monument to the Revolution

of all post-Revolution architectural production. This sign, following the principles outlined for advertising, was about “mass and ensemble” and not the contemplation of the

5.12 Oliverio Martínez, Las leyes obreras, northwest

detail, which in this case would carry a social meaning. The monument was, in turn and

corner, Monument to the Revolution

unquestionably so, subservient to the new power in charge of the Revolution.

architecture as revolution

Perhaps the strongest evidence of the ambiguity of the monument’s value to the Revolution is the fact that it was never officially inaugurated. For Obregón Santacilia, this and its immediate entry into the hands of the people signified its designation as symbol.49 However, his accounts did not define those symbolic qualities. Instead, the monument as an abstract symbol—never having been properly “baptized”—represented the Revolution as a concept removed from the real. An empty symbol, the monument’s function was expressed by its open-endedness, sufficient to readily be transformed and collect the various visions of the groups or institutions that manipulated its meaning. Obregón Santacilia quoted a poem by José Elizondo that to him best expressed the meaning of the monument: El Monumento sin par a la gran Revolución ha cambiado su misión. Ya es kiosko para anunciar . . . Como sigan nuestra huella en París sería famoso, un anuncio luminoso en el Arco de la Estrella.50 Obregón Santacilia’s dream that architecture become adaptable to advertisement became a reality. The meaning of the monument would transform according to the values and ideologies placed upon it. This was its democratic quality and, at the same time, its entirely uncommitted position. If the Monument to the Revolution represents the monumentalization of the Revolution, through its abstraction and institutionalization, the Monument to Álvaro Obregón represents the double-bind of that institutionalization regarding the politics of caudillismo. Common to both monuments, though, is the materialization of Calles’ consolidation of the Revolution.

reflections on the monument to álvaro obregón

On July 17, 1928,

President Álvaro Obregón was attending a banquet in his honor at La Bombilla restaurant in San Ángel, a suburb on the southern edge of Mexico City. At some point in the evening a young man, José de Léon Toral, approached the newly reelected president to show him a sketch that he had drawn of him. Shortly thereafter, shots were fired and Obregón was dead: he had been assassinated. In 1933 the site where the restaurant stood was expropriated by the government. The architect Vicente Urquiaga proposed and executed an urban plan that prepared the site for a structure to memorialize Obregón. This included the extension of Avenida Insurgentes, which originally ended at the site where La Bombilla stood, and a symmetrical beaux arts–inspired garden and reflecting pool.51 In the words of the presidential decree that ordered it, the Monument to Álvaro Obregón was to be erected on the historic site where “the sacrifice of his life was consummated.”52 The competition for this commission was announced in 1934. Under the binding spell of the Maximato, the competition was held during the last months of the presiden184

cy of Abelardo Rodríguez, when the Monument to the Revolution was being built. The

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5.13 Enrique Aragón Echeagaray and Ignacio Asúnsolo, Monument to Álvaro Obregón, 1934–1935

Obregón monument (Figure 5.13) was completed and inaugurated on July 17, 1935, to commemorate the date of his death, during the presidential tenure of Lázaro Cárdenas. As with the Monument to the Revolution, its production was organized by a commission directed by the presidency in association with the governors of the Mexican states. To avoid conflicts caused by such a large body of people and the distances separating them, Aaron Saenz, director of the Department of the Federal District, was selected to oversee its materialization. Saenz, it should be noted, was also on the executive committee of the Gran Comisión de Patronato del Monumento a la Revolución. Although the competition entries remain largely unknown, an image of Germán Cueto’s entry exists. Like his model for the Monument to the Revolution, this proposal is abstract (Figure 5.14). Its base is composed primarily of stairs that give rise to a mass that dematerializes into columns reminiscent of Kazimir Malievich’s Arkhitectons. On its sides, corbel-shaped planes possibly refer to the interior space. The front shows a seated sculpture of Obregón.53

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5.14 Germán Cueto, competition model for Monument to Álvaro Obregón, 1934

5.15 Monument to Álvaro Obregón, view across reflection pool

5.16 Monument to Álvaro Obregón, interior from upper observation platform

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5.17 Monument to Álvaro Obregón, ground where Obregón’s body fell

The honor of designing Obregón’s martyrium went to the young architect Enrique Aragón Echeagaray. Along with the sculptor Ignacio Asúnsolo, he proposed a structure to satisfy the conditions of the competition. For this, the architect and sculptor worked together to create a composition that integrated allegorical figures in the monument to represent some of Obregón’s principal interests. Sited symmetrically on axis with the park and reflecting pool, the monument is a tall, simple, rectangular volume that tapers as it reaches the sky (Figure 5.15). The monument makes oblique references to pre-Hispanic architecture, not only through its pyramidal base and main stair but also through its materials, especially the dark basalt stone of its base. The interior, intended to mark the spot of the assassination, is somber yet superbly clad with rich marbles (Figure 5.16). As a reference to traditional martyria, Aragón Echeagaray used an octagonal interior plan to mark the precise place where Obregón died. The very ground where his body fell was preserved in situ as a relic of the event (Figure 5.17). The lower level has a small reliquary where Obregón’s arm that he lost in battle was placed in a jar of formaldehyde (Figure 5.18). The monument features a very rich sculptural program by Asúnsolo. His high esteem for Obregón began when the latter was the maecenas of art during the early 1920s. As we have seen, Asúnsolo benefited from this directly by the commissions awarded to him by Vasconcelos for the sculptural program for the Secretaría de Educación headquarters building. In 1929 he sculpted an uncommissioned statue three meters tall of the revolutionary leader. By virtue of his admiration, Asúnsolo was then responsible for making Obregón’s death mask. Asúnsolo was an ideal candidate for the Monument to Álvaro Obregón, especially because the requirements, like those for the Monument to the Revolution, stated the importance of a symbolic representation: This work is not only the high civic obligation of a Revolutionary Government but is also the plastic expression of the equitable will of the entire country, which has consecrated General Obregón as one of its brightest symbols.54 187

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5.18 Monument to Álvaro Obregón, reliquary for Obregón’s severed arm

As a result, Asúnsolo designed and carved a series of sculptures that consist, on the front façade, of a figure at either side of the main entrance, Work and Fecundity: one holds a hammer and the other an ear of corn (Figure 5.19). On the sides, the sculptural sets Sacrifice and Triumph show scenes of revolutionary struggle and of farmworkers and peasants, respectively (Figures 5.20–5.21). On the back, a sculptural group is dedicated to the northern region of Mexico where Obregón was born (Figure 5.22). The monument’s interior features sculptures by Asúnsolo of Obregón (Figure 5.23). Encaustic murals were to be painted by Fermín Revueltas on the interior of the tall volume (Figure 5.24). As communicated to President Cárdenas, the murals would depict the military life of Obregón.55 In his 1935 competition statement, Revueltas proposed highlighting Obregón’s virtues as well as his work toward the development of education, agrarian reform, and the general reconstruction of the country after the Revolution. Ultimately, the murals, which were never painted, would depict the social impact of Obregón’s activities: “the union of educational, urban, and agrarian workers for the formation of a better Mexico” (Figures 5.25–5.26).56 188

The choice of painter was obvious at the time, as Revueltas and Asúnsolo established

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a working relationship in 1931 with the design of a monument to Jesús García, a railroad worker who had given his life to save hundreds of people from an imminent explosion.57 This relationship no doubt aided Revueltas in winning the competition for Obregón’s monument, as Asúnsolo was on its jury. The artistic traditions gathered in the Obregón monument as a whole would constitute “a true monument that the Revolution will erect to one of its favorite sons where the three plastic arts—architecture, sculpture, and painting—will be united.”58 The effort to seamlessly unite the three arts into one monument was bankrupted in 1935 by Revueltas’ death and the publication of a small pamphlet by Aragón Echeagaray.

5.19 Ignacio Asúnsolo, Work and Fecundity, Monument to Álvaro Obregón, 1935

In it, he not only took all of the credit for the monument but ignored the importance, if

5.20 Ignanio Asúnsolo, Sacrifice, Monument to

not outright authorship, of Asúnsolo. The pathetic and invidious pamphlet was mostly

Álvaro Obregón

a collection of praise—from friends, family, the competition jury, and so forth—and photographs of the monument during and after its construction. The text ended with a

5.21 Ignacio Asúnsolo, Triumph, Monument to Álvaro Obregón

quotation from Le Corbusier’s Vers une architecture arranged to appear as a direct praise of the monument and its architect.59

5.22 Ignacio Asúnsolo, Eagle, Monument to Álvaro Obregón

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5.23 Ignacio Asúnsolo, Álvaro Obregón, Monument to Álvaro Obregón

5.24 Monument to Álvaro Obregón, interior view upward

5.25 Fermín Revueltas, La justicia social, schematic design, 1935

5.26 Fermín Revueltas, La Revolución, schematic design for mural for Monument to Álvaro Obregón, 1935

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The sculptor quickly replied in a letter published on July 20, 1935, in the newspaper Excélsior in which he claimed co-authorship with the architect. More specifically, Asúnsolo argued that the monument’s design was paradigmatic of the traditional division of artistic labor: the artist worked on the design, and the architect executed the drawings and construction documents. One month later, in the newspaper El Universal, Asúnsolo was less generous. Here he claimed complete authorship for the project and implied that all of Aragón Echeagaray’s changes were either insignificant or philistine. Asúnsolo also criticized the errors that the architect had committed, including, for example, the lack of proportional relations between the architecture of the monument and the sculptures.60 In Asúnsolo’s favor, the magazine Reforma Social assumed the authorship to be Asúnsolo’s and as such praised its revolutionary quality: Not being satisfied with the artistic and symbolic work of the initial revolution, he has looked forward, bringing to light the miracle of the triumph that, incidentally, would not be far away if the will of the people was raised and [they] would decide to take the definite step toward it. . . . It is for that reason that this sculpture, as a legacy of the working masses, will stand as a reminder to them that the revolution has been cut short, that it has not crystallized, that the enormous sacrifice will have a better reward. It is also the stimulus to provoke in them the necessity to conclude it. This is the merit and the social work of the sculpture of Asúnsolo.61 This praise of the sculptural work and its message also implied the task at hand for artists committed to the Revolution’s social ideals. David Alfaro Siqueiros responded similarly to the monument. He praised it for eradicating the division between architecture and sculpture. The creation of “sculpture-architecture” as sociopolitical art efficiently addressed the masses in a direct and monumental way while avoiding the pitfalls and problems associated with applied ornamentation that he called esfuerzo ornamental epidérmico (epidermal ornamental effort). The public nature of this conception of sculpture and architecture challenged the traditional appropriation and ownership of art as Vasconcelos’ propositions had done in the early 1920s. For Siqueiros, it was sculpture that was not “destined for the rheumatic museum visitor. Instead, it is intended for the dynamic spectator-mass of the great street, of the long avenue, of the great distances, of the infinite spectacle due to its multiple spectacularity.”62 Despite overt public support for Asúnsolo and the criticism of his own selfishness, Aragón Echeagaray did not surrender any part of the praise, or authorship, of the work. In a second small publication of the work he produced during the 1930s and published in 1940, he reprinted most of the accolades from the 1935 publication. The commentaries in Aragón Echeagaray’s publication again attributed the monument’s sole artistic authorship to him. Further, it included new commendations, such as those from Aaron Saenz, the person in charge of the monument’s construction, about the greatness of the architect and his monument: In my opinion, Mr. Enrique Aragón Echeagaray has demonstrated the most competence, seriousness, and enthusiasm for his studies and professional work. I had the opportunity to get to know his work better because of the beautiful monument that was

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built in the city in memory of General Álvaro Obregón. This monument was designed and directed by the Architect Aragón Echeagaray. During the time that I had the honor of working as director of the Department of the Distrito Federal . . . I was able to notice the broad knowledge, dedication, diligence, etc. that, among other great qualities, characterize the Architect Aragón Echeagaray.63 The primacy of its architect was again implied. Once more, no mention of Asúnsolo was made.64 The genius of the architect as sole and heroic creator of the monument reflects the structure of the caudillo in the same way that the monument focused primarily on the figure of Obregón against the collective forces of the Revolution. The consolidation of authorship in the figure of a single individual, evident in the words of praise by Aaron Saenz, suggests the unfortunate closure of the heterogeneity of discourses associated with its creation. By limiting authorship, the meanings engendered by the monument were linked essentially to artistic and architectural creation over and above political issues—the very issues that Asúnsolo, and to some extent Revueltas, had attempted to address. With few exceptions, the Revolution is mentioned in the publication as the impetus and abstracted into a creative spirit devoid of its sociopolitical force. This shift in the meaning of the Revolution, as we have seen, echoed the institutionalization of the Revolution and the commandeering of its direction from a social to a political one. In the case of the Obregón monument, the diminished importance of Asúnsolo, a member of the Sindicato and a politically committed artist, explained this shift. The end of the Obregón regime that had fostered the muralist movement under Vasconcelos signified the closure of the production of socially conscious art after the Revolution when its raison d’être was being explored and addressed politically, socially, artistically, and

5.27 Plan (top) and section, Monument to Álvaro

ideologically.

Obregón

The iconography of Asúnsolo’s sculptural sets whose revolutionary potential Siqueiros praised depicted heroic and collective scenes meant to incite and introduce class and revolutionary consciousness despite their somewhat abstract titles. The sculptures, therefore, are loaded with political icons such as the hammer and sickle held by the two figures at the monument’s entrance, revolutionary symbolism, and images of labor—all themes that the Sindicato voiced in its manifesto for a monumental, popular, and legible revolutionary art. However, while the work of the muralists in the early 1920s worked dialectically with architecture, Asúnsolo’s sculptures are dwarfed by the scale of Aragón Echeagaray’s architectural composition. The abstract and self-referential architectural forms—architectural investigations of volume and surface—render the sculptures as merely ornamental. This lack of proportional correspondence between the sculptures and the architecture was one of the problems that Asúnsolo criticized of the overall composition. The monumentality of the architectural forms and of the articulation of design appears to focus more on the work as a martyrium, as an end point, than as a call to a new order or any revolutionary potential. This focus is seen not only in the monument’s scale but also in the organization of the plan (Figure 5.27). The central element of the interior as designed is the place that marked the end of the caudillo and the site for veneration— in the tradition of, for example, Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, where the Baldacchino 193

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marks the place where Peter’s remains are supposedly buried. The statement inscribed at the place Obregón died confirms this meaning: “I die consecrating the Revolution.” The reliquary to hold the fallen president’s severed arm as a relic equally invokes this tradition. The act of veneration is supported by an almost total lack in the interior of a legible revolutionary sculpture—in the sense of Asúnsolo’s exterior sculptural sets. The rich marble walls commemorate only the importance of the dead hero for whom the monument was constructed and remain mute toward any form of iconographic depictions of revolutionary action. Perhaps this was the reason the murals were never painted in the interior walls of the monument since the revolutionary impulse of Revueltas, or any other chosen artist after his death, might have challenged the ambiguity and silence of the monument. Instead, the purpose of the interior was focused on the veneration of the dead figure and the caesura of the revolutionary impulse. The lack of coherence between the architecture and the sculpture, the focus on the martyr, and the importance placed on the heroic and completely autonomous architectural gesture indicate the limited readings of the monument and the political institutionalization of the Revolution. The Obregón monument’s political ambiguity matches that of its counterpart by Obregón Santacilia. The final work underscores the importance of Obregón as caudillo while paradoxically closing down the heterogeneity of interpretations.

the closure of the revolution in juan rulfo’s pedro páramo There are villages [pueblos] that have the taste of misfortune. You can tell them apart by simply sipping their old and deadened air, destitute and thin like all that is old. This is one of those villages. juan rulfo, pedro pár amo Perhaps the most acute vision of the Revolution’s transformation was that articulated by the writer Juan Rulfo in his novel Pedro Páramo. Although written in 1955, the novel shows the paradigmatic effects of the institutionalization and monumentalization of the Revolution—most of all its loss of center. The abandonment of its social direction turned the Revolution into a political force. Instead of narrating the events themselves, Rulfo describes a vision of the lasting effects of the Revolution. The critic Evodio Escalante describes Rulfo’s position as being situated obliquely, so to speak, in relation to the dominant discourses of our times. Oblique placement, in the first place and above all, [in relation] to the most important event of this century in Mexican history: the 1910–1917 Revolution. And, subsequently, [in relation] to the legitimating discourses of said revolution converted into government. Oblique placement, also, in relation to a narrative sequence better known as the Novel of the Revolution [Novela de la Revolución].65 Through this oblique placement, the internal narrative and historical time of Pedro Páramo loosely correspond to real historical time, spanning from the Porfiriato through the Revolution and ending around the moment when the Revolution became institutionalized. However, the novel itself does not follow this chronological sequence. Instead, 194

its fragmentary nature echoes the changes caused by the Revolution and challenges the

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traditional teleology of history that has justified the classes or individuals in power. Rulfo’s attack on the realist novel, following the general tendency of the Latin American avant-garde against nineteenth-century realism, proposed a different reading of the Revolution. It is one that predominantly shows the ambiguous nature of the event itself. For historian Yvette Jiménez de Báez, the relation between the real and narrative historical time expressing the Revolution’s ambiguity is, in fact, Rulfo’s way of articulating the dystopia produced by the Revolution. Central to the story is the search by the main character, Juan Preciado, for his father, Pedro Páramo. This search traces the historical moment when, at the end of the armed conflicts, the Revolution fades to what Jiménez de Báez calls “the last instance of a history condemned to disappear, characterized by the degradation of the earth and the commodification of relations, exodus, the mark of Cain, all occurrences that transform the positive and desired elements of a utopian model.”66 This change is embodied in Rulfo’s novel through descriptions of the town of Comala, where Páramo lived and whose fertile qualities dried up after he died. The town that Juan Preciado first encounters and roams is a ghost town devoid of the living—abandoned and destroyed by time. In contrast to Mariano Azuela’s Los de abajo in 1915, when the nascent Revolution held hope for the “underdogs,” Rulfo’s novel describes a time after the Revolution was consummated. His description of Comala as “a town without sounds . . . [a town of ] empty houses, [of ] broken doors invaded by weeds” casts the effects of a Revolution depleted of life and hope. The ghost town represents, in other words, the end of the Revolution and the utopian ideals behind Azuela’s novel. Pedro Páramo, a landowning boss who resorted to violence and bribery to dominate, is the character who perhaps most embodies what happened to the Revolution. He acquired his power, a metaphor for the power of the state, through violent or illegal methods, yet his power appeared to benefit larger social aims. In the novel, relations around him are commodified and based on political or economic transactions. Páramo becomes a “benefactor” of the Revolution, for instance, by paying off a group of rogues who eventually garner profit for him and bolster his power.67 Their relations and transactions allude to the corrupt foundations of the Revolution and question the basis of the postrevolutionary government. In his descriptions of the revolutionaries, Rulfo portrayed them as a group of fools whose intentions for armed struggle were ill informed or unknown. Rulfo managed to question the integrity of the revolutionary impulse and its leaders in a simple conversation: —As you can see, we have raised up in arms. —So? —Well, that’s it. Don’t you think that’s enough? —Well, why have you done it? —’Cause others have also done it. Haven’t you heard? Just wait a while until we get instructions and we will find out the cause. In the meanwhile, we are here. —I know the cause—another man said. If you want I’ll tell you. We have rebelled against the government and against you [the rich] because we are tired of supporting you. Against the government for being so despicable and against you because you are 195

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no more than bandits and fat thieves. I won’t say anything about mister government because we will use gunshots to tell it what we want to say to it.68 Questioning the aims and leadership of the Revolution should not be seen as a reactionary response to the Revolution itself. Instead, it is intended to interrogate the role of the caudillo who was believed to be an omniscient leader, guide of the revolutionary armed forces, and, eventually, leader of the country. Rulfo examined the “true” aims of the Revolution that, through its institutionalization, presumably have been arrived at and addressed. The force of Rulfo’s critique is manifested, as are his descriptions, obliquely. Compared to novels like Martín Luis Guzmán’s El águila y la serpiente (1928, The Eagle and the Serpent) and La sombra del caudillo (1929, The Shadow of the Caudillo), Pedro Páramo challenges the ideological nature of the Revolution by putting into question the language and discourse of the “Novela de la Revolución.” In Guzmán’s work, for instance, realist descriptions simply associate the Revolution with the manipulation of power. Rulfo’s narrative, in contrast, expresses the ambiguous nature of the space and time of the characters in order to sharpen the reader’s sensibility to the plot; it forces the reader to engage the text in a productive fashion. It is this ambiguity and its ultimate perception that provide a structure through which to polemicize certain shared beliefs or ideologically constructed ideals of the Revolution. As José Carlos González Boixo has written: “It can be said that within Rulfo’s work there is a denouncement of the concrete historical moment of the Mexican Revolution. At the moment of analyzing how this theme presents itself literally, we can only have that external referent constantly present: the historical events as they took place.”69 Rulfo’s strategy involves blurring the boundaries between the imaginary and the real—creating a heterogeneity of discourse—that critiques the facile conversion of the Revolution into an institutional structure. He questions the realistic novel of the Revolution that, in the best of cases, served to unmask political problems. Through his novel Rulfo structures a critique of ideology that reproduced—in those novels, a seemingly unmediated language, and the “effect of the real”—the structure of society. By denouncing the traditional structure of the Novela de la Revolución, Pedro Páramo challenges the stereotyping of the Revolution, the revolutionaries, and the peasants. Historian John Brushwood has noted that the elusive reality that Rulfo’s novel constructs through its fragmentary nature and its challenge to chronological time confronts the essentialization of a Mexican circumstance . . . Mexican public policy followed a similar path as the nation became increasingly active in international affairs, paying a great deal of attention to certain folkloric aspects of Mexican life . . . while concentrating more and more on modern, urban living . . . Institutionalization is one of the effects forecast by essentialization; both are removed from the course of daily events.70 Pedro Páramo was wrought with the ambiguity of the nature of Mexican modernization. On the one hand, Rulfo utilizes the avant-garde’s linguistic structures that reproduced, through literature, the metropolitan experience. On the other hand, the descrip-

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tions of the places, reminiscent of Rulfo’s own state of Jalisco, and the characters who

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inhabit the novel—with their native dress, linguistic traditions, and modes of speaking— reproduce, through literature, the stereotypical qualities of that Mexican essence. Yet, in the novel, the nature of this essentialization reveals, through its contrast to the real lived experience of the reader, the persistent nature through which the Revolution is essentialized and institutionalized by conservative political forces. Rulfo’s narrative shows both an investigation into the autonomous qualities of language and literary composition and a connection with the real that is best described as “an anchorage of the imaginary in the world of the real, in the (sometimes sordid) universe of history.”71 After all, the dominant political discourse searched for a way to ideologically promote modernization while institutionally preserving the existing sociopolitical structures. The pasteurization and homogenization of the revolutionary ideals occurred in the realm of political power rather than active social change. The conclusion of Rulfo’s novel offers none of the redemptive possibilities of the utopia associated with the Revolution. Instead, it shows us a dead narrative—coming from the grave of the protagonist who recounts its story. In essence, Rulfo’s vision of the Revolution is fatalistic. For Joseph Summers, Rulfo demonstrates the inability of any individual to control his or her destiny: Pedro Páramo condenses an extreme bitterness in his evaluation of the Revolution. Implicitly, this evaluation contradicts versions, widely diffused, that demonstrate the progress and reforms of the past two decades. . . . The main character was formed before the Revolution, remains alien to it, and survives unscathed. Within the novel, the Revolution symbolizes the futility of all history and its inefficient consequences, as well as its essentially barbaric nature.72 The implicit challenge of Rulfo’s novel rests on the description of the Revolution’s contradictions as they became inherent in its development and institutionalization. As Summers suggests, the marginal space of the characters in the novel vis-à-vis the materialization and development of the turbulent event indicates their alienation from the forces of change. The pervasiveness of this alienation epitomizes the separation from the forces of production necessary to enact change. The futility of resisting destiny is tied to this inescapable condition: those in charge—Pedro Páramo in the novel and the party of the institutional Revolution in reality—controlled the destiny of the people by manipulating the means of production and the ideology that reproduced the conditions of existence. After all, when Pedro Páramo died, the region died with him. Control of the many by the few ensures the ultimate futility of class or revolutionary struggle. Rulfo’s novel shows the revolutionaries as individuals who, although banded together, have not achieved a revolutionary class consciousness that gives a sense of direction and urgency to their revolutionary impulses. The result is, instead, an abandoned town dependent on the landed classes who in the end still control the region. Rulfo’s narrative strategically puts into question the monument that is the Revolution: its assumed meaning, political structure, and narrative that ideologically reproduce its political structure. The ambiguous nature of Pedro Páramo vis-à-vis the real and the “Novela de la Revolución” position it as a novel whose critical function questions the received meanings of the Revolution. By reading Rulfo as an author of the imaginary in the 197

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historical real, the novel describes and critiques—through and beyond its autonomous linguistic and narrative investigations—the role and meaning of the Mexican Revolution from its inception to its administrative decline.

the empty spaces of the revolution This town is full of echoes. It appears that they are locked in the hollows of walls or under the rocks. When you walk, you feel as if someone was stepping on your steps. You hear squeaks. Laughter. Some laughs that are very old, as if tired of laughing. And voices already worn by use. You hear all this. I think that the day will come when all of these sounds will go away. juan rulfo, pedro pár amo [In Mexico,] the monument consecrated to the Revolution, which should express its vindications and conquests, is nothing more than an indignant re-adaptation of a spectral structure . . . It is not strange, then, that old forms appear commingled with the most genuine contemporary activity because of the perseverance of interests and habits of a social class or because it is more difficult . . . to be modern than to be old-fashioned manuel maples arce, “el olimpo y l a fábrica” Pedro Páramo and Comala express the Revolution as it revealed itself in various moments and representational systems—mainly in its narratives. As we have seen, the novel stood as a criticism of what the Revolution had become by the 1950s. It was a critical distance of twenty years that permitted Rulfo to understand its problematics and articulate them through literature. The creators of monuments to the Revolution and its leaders—Obregón Santacilia, Aragón Echeagaray, Asúnsolo, and others—were not privy to that critical distance and, therefore, expressed the form of the emerging sociopolitical direction Mexico was following in the 1930s. While the monuments of the Porfiriato in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were intended to bolster a vision of Mexico that was making its debut on the stage of modern capitalism, the later Mexican monuments to the Revolution and its heroes conveyed post-Revolution doctrines. They embodied what Lombardo Toledano called the politics of neoporfirismo. Yet, because the newly formed institutional party had only begun to exert its power on all aspects of political and cultural production, these structures could only reproduce indiscriminately the emerging ideologies. They were architectural structures of false consciousness associated with the ideological institutionalization of the Revolution, as Obregón Santacilia declared in a conference in 1960: “The Revolution [did not] produce a truly revolutionary architecture; it created what was needed at that stage in construction, and it made it using the modern forms of the time.”73 The association of an emerging ideological apparatus to architecture and the collusion of architecture in ideological work parallel issues and concerns surrounding modern corporate architecture. Manfredo Tafuri’s description of the “architecture of bureaucracy” of the 1950s and 1960s evokes the sociopolitical conditions of post–World War II urban centers. Postwar projects entailed 198

architectural designing for a vastly greater demand. . . . Behind the formal void is only

the need for minimum certainties that raise no bothersome questions. Symbols of ef-

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ficiency and a willingness to bow to the imperative of organization [those architects] speak of an inescapable collective destiny . . . [T]he immediate exploitability of such edifices, called on as they are to change the entire appearance of urban centers, realizes the dream of an architecture that uses a common and easily assimilable language and that is intimately connected with forms adaptable to commercial exploitation and with the laws of the real estate market. But it also means that when [architects] are faced with themes intended to bring new dignity to public spaces . . . they can only resort to eclectic pastiches or to the language of pretentious display pieces.74 Tafuri’s interpretation, for our purposes, suggests that the restructuring of the Revolution prepared the sociopolitical conditions that its monuments materialized. The qualities of these new architectural paradigms could be summed up as a search for a monumentality whose quietistic attributes suited the ideology of the new regimes. On this level, the monuments to the Revolution fulfilled their assigned ideological role: to monumentalize and thus stop inquiry into the Revolution and its meanings. As part of a regime of spectacle culture, they utilized Mexican and international architectural and pictorial investigations and conventions of the 1920s and early 1930s as referents to modernist (and thus social) sensibilities and proposed—through their artistic, architectural, and urban manifestations—active intervention in the space of the city. The monuments functioned as large urban landmarks affecting the “physiognomy and silhouette of the city.” In short, they turned active social investigations and urban upheaval into formal effects devoid of revolutionary potency. It should not surprise us, then, to find readings of the monuments as empty even to this day. Writing in a 2001 catalogue of Obregón Santacilia’s work in Mexico, Víctor Jiménez calls it a “petrified and uncommon remembrance” that was “a monument made to last, among other reasons, because Obregón [Santacilia] took enough care that it did: the rhetoric that served for decades to legitimize, through the discourse of the Revolution, so many governments, could be abandoned.”75 The formal void, suggested by Tafuri to be a signifier of a critical resignation against the world, is also the focus of Juan Rulfo’s post-Revolution narrative. The abandoned town of Comala is paradigmatically suited to describe the lack of critical direction that the Revolution and its monumentalization had undergone. It is as if the empty town stood for only empty promises and the caesura of opportunity—a stagnation of any possible critical reading. This void is the most apt definition of the Monument to the Revolution and the Monument to Álvaro Obregón. After all, the formal similarity of these monuments is characterized, like Comala, by empty spaces and, more specifically, by an absence of center, just as in the institutionalized Revolution. The dearth of focus or direction is seen in the continued politics of caudillismo, the bureaucratization of politics, and the abandonment of a strong social commitment. The monuments to the Revolution were all constructed around this void. In the case of the Monument to the Revolution, the utilization of the old Porfirian structure forced its architect to accept the aesthetic conditions and proportions of the previous regime. Yet, instead of proposing a concrete program for the massive structure that reflected the vindicating ideals of the Revolution, the center of the monument was retained as an empty space. The case of the Monument to Álvaro

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Obregón is similar in that its center is a void. In fact, this large concrete structure serves to monumentalize and aggrandize that empty space. The designs for both structures feature large openings that prevented the inhabitation of their centers. The openings became unattainable spaces, reserved for the glory of the Revolution—in whatever way it is defined—and the martyrdom of its leaders. The openings on the ground plane are transferred to the highest point of the monuments to become light wells. To propose a reading like that of Mircea Eliade of connecting the ground and the sky or of containing space as an axis mundi would only reinforce a mystical ideal of the monuments—their sacredness: “The sacred reveals absolute reality and at the same time makes orientation possible; hence it founds the world in the sense that it fixes the limits and establishes the order of the world.”76 As a manifestation of the territorialization of the sacred, this connotes the ideology of space making from a mystico-religious point of view. Ideologically, this space would forge and maintain control through fixing the limits of what is permissible and correct—by creating a normative structure by which to inhabit and understand the world. In other words, the monuments define the limits and the homogenization that the institutionalization imposed on the Revolution. O’Gorman’s painting La Ciudad de México is, then, a view of architecture from the “monument of the Revolution,” a privileged view in hindsight and one that shows the moment when artistic and architectural production attempted to make sense of the “Laboratory of the Revolution.” It was a view of the Revolution as a motivating force in architectural production that compelled its participants to take sides and to create architecture that best reflected their perceived positions of the Revolution as a cultural, sociopolitical, or historical episode. Yet, O’Gorman’s view from the Monument to the Revolution fundamentally portrayed the contradictions inherent in the materialization of the institutionalized Revolution. It was a vision of the end of an architectural activism based on political struggles. It illustrated a transition to depoliticized artistic interventions, eventually enforced by the state, whose bureaucratic intention was ideological.77 The interruption of the social agenda of the Revolution became linked to the form of the monument. Signified by the physical enclosure of the walls that the albañil built, the painting described the larger closure. The Monument to the Revolution and the Monument to Álvaro Obregón enforced a social closure and a new political history. While their all-encompassing architectural language served as a referent to modernist-infused autochthonous traditions, it also served to diminish the traditions’ discursive potential. These structures became, in other words, veritable towers of Babel. The form of the monument, as Nietzsche argued, forced an abridgment of the complexities of history: “If it is to give us strength, many of the differences must be neglected, the individuality of the past forced into a general formula and all the sharp angles broken off for the sake of correspondence.”78 The monuments themselves, to refer back to Jitrik, represent the inaccessibility of the sociopolitical history. The images of Comala in Pedro Páramo, on the other hand, bitterly expressed and criticized the homogenization of the institutionalized Revolution. In the end, the architectural production represented in O’Gorman’s painting revealed the caesura of the avant-gardist desire to make art as a component in the praxis of life. The role of Mexican architectural production had been permanently transformed.

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introduction 1. These dates roughly frame a generally liberal and stable political environment—after the armed conflicts of the Revolution—that began with the presidency of Álvaro Obregón in 1920 and ended with the completion of Mexico’s most liberal presidency, that of Lázaro Cárdenas, in 1940. Carlos Obregón Santacilia, in a speech defining the architecture resulting from the Revolution, suggested that with his Monument to the Revolution (1938) one “can end the discussion of the topic at hand; what was made afterwards is a logical evolution of architecture in Mexico that will continue to oscillate between traditionalism and the international movement.” Carlos Obregón Santacilia, “La Revolución Mexicana y la arquitectura,” in Carlos Obregón Santacilia: Pionero de la arquitectura mexicana, Víctor Jiménez (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes [hereafter inba], 2001), 203. 2. Néstor García Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity, trans. Christopher L. Chiappari and Silvia L. López (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 41. All translations, unless otherwise noted, are mine. 3. In Frederick C. Turner, The Dynamic of Mexican Nationalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), 292. 4. Ángel Rama, Trasculturación narrativa en América Latina (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1982), 39. 5. This group included among its members Alfonso Reyes, José Vasconcelos, Enrique González Martínez, Pedro Henríquez Ureña, Saturnino Herrán, and Diego Rivera. 6. Los Siete Sabios were Antonio Castro Leal, Alberto Vásquez del Mercado, Vicente Lombardo Toledano, Teófilo Olea y Leyva, Alfonso Caso, Manuel Gómez Morín, and Jesús Moreno Baca. 7. This is similar to the position outlined by J. L. Sert, F. Leger, and S. Giedion in their “Nine Points on Monumentality” (1943). 8. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in his Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 242. 9. Arnaldo Córdova, La ideología de la revolución mexicana: La formación del nuevo régimen (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1973), 24. 10. Antonio Negri, “Keynes and the Capitalist Theory of the State,” in Labor of Dionysus: A Critique of State Form, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 29. 11. Ibid., 45. 12. Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia:

Design and Capitalist Development (Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 1976), 61; emphasis in original. 13. Alberto Asor Rosa, “Lavoro intellettuale e utopia dell’avanguardia nel paese del socialismo realizzato,” in Socialismo, Città, Architettura: urss 1917–1937: Il Contributo degli Architetti Europei, Alberto Asor Rosa (Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1972), 221. 14. Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), especially 35–54. 15. “Ideologies always act ‘in bunches’; they intertwine among themselves; they often make complete about-faces in their historical unfolding.” Manfredo Tafuri, “The Historical Project” in his The Sphere and the Labyrinth: Avant-Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s (Cambridge: mit Press, 1987), 17. 16. Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia, 1. 17. Here I base my use and consideration of “tactics” on Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), xviii–xx, 34–42. 18. This is represented in architecture, for example, by Israel Katzman’s authoritative Arquitectura contemporánea mexicana (Mexico City: inah, 1964).

chapter 1 This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Ernest Pascucci. 1. On the presence of Vasconcelos’ antiSemitism in his later writings, in particular his autobiography, see Noé Jitrik, “Lectura de Vasconcelos,” Nuevo Texto Crítico 1, no. 2 (Second Semester 1988): 280–283. 2. In many instances one can gauge Vasconcelos’ political position: he has been defined mainly as a liberal, Marxist (or at least socialist) intellectual. See, for example, Alfonso Taracena, José Vasconcelos (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1990), 21–33; José Joaquín Blanco, Se llamaba Vasconcelos: Una evocación crítica (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1977), 97ff. Vasconcelos defined himself as a sincere follower of scientific and humanist socialism; Vasconcelos, “Indología: Una interpretacíon de la cultura iberoamericana (1926),” in his José Vasconcelos: Textos sobre educación (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1981), 202. We can see this political position most clearly in “Carta abierta a los obreros del Estado de Jalisco,” 226–228, and “Conferencia leida en el ‘Continental Memorial Hall’ de Washington,” especially 301–304, both also in José Vasconcelos: Textos sobre educación; and “Carta del licenciado José Vasconcelos, leida en

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las escuelas primarias el día 1o. de mayo,” Boletín de la Secretaría de Educación Pública 1, no. 4 (First Semester 1923): 14. 3. For a brief history of these societies and the Ateneo de la Juventud see Juan Hernández Luna’s prologue to Conferencias del Ateneo de la Juventud, ed. Juan Hernández Luna (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México [hereafter unam], 1984), 7–23. 4. In a 1926 lecture Vasconcelos named the following fellow members of the Ateneo: Alfonso Reyes, Antonio Caso, Pedro Henríquez Ureña, Julio Torri, Enrique González Martínez, Rafael López, Roberto Argüelles Bringas, Eduardo Colín, Joaquín Méndez Rivas, Médiz Bolio, Rafael Cabrera, Alfonso Cravioto, Jesús Acevedo, Martín Luis Guzmán, Diego Rivera, Roberto Montenegro, Ramos Martínez, Manuel Ponce, Julián Carillo, Carlos González Peña, Isidro Fabela, Manuel de la Parra, Mariano Silva y Aceves, and Federico Mariscal. José Vasconcelos, “El movimiento intelectual contemporáneo de México,” in Conferencias del Ateneo de la Juventud, ed. Hernández Luna, 131–133. 5. Among the university’s faculty members were the architect Jesús T. Acevedo, the philosopher Antonio Caso, Jorge Enciso, Pedro González Blanco, Enrique González Martínez, Fernando González Roa, Martín Luis Guzmán, Pedro Henríquez Ureña, Alba Herrera y Ogazón, Guillermo Novoa, Alfonso Pruneda, Alfonso Reyes, and José Vasconcelos. Blanco, Se llamaba Vasconcelos, 56–57. 6. Edgar Llinás Álvarez, Revolución, educación, modernidad: La busqueda de la identidad nacional en el pensamiento educativo mexicano (Mexico City: unam, 1978), 94. 7. For more specific descriptions, protagonists, and debates of these two educational directions see Llinás Álvarez, “Dos corrientes del pensamiento educativo mexicano,” in his Revolución, educación, modernidad, 21–89. 8. For more information on the importance of these in post-Revolution educational reform see Llinás Álvarez, “La Fundación de la Secretaría de Educación Pública,” in his Revolución, educación, modernidad, 91–159. 9. Blanco, Se llamaba Vasconcelos, 78. 10. Positivism was introduced into Mexico and advocated by Gabino Barreda. For a history of positivism in Mexico see Leopoldo Zea, El positivismo en México (Mexico City: Ediciones Studium, 1953). 11. These clearly respond to Comte’s three laws of positivism, which Vasconcelos discussed in his “Don Gabino Barreda y las ideas contemporáneas,” in Conferencias del Ateneo de la Juven-

tud, ed. Hernández Luna, 97–113. At a conference on September 10, 1921, Vasconcelos termed his proposal the “new law of the three states.” José Vasconcelos, “Nueva ley de los tres estados,” Boletín de la Universidad 3, no. 7 (Season 4, December 1921): 7–19. 12. Vasconcelos, La Raza Cósmica, (Mexico City: Epasa-Calpe, 1992), 37–40; originally published in 1925. Also in José Vasconcelos, “La revulsión de la energía: Los ciclos de la fuerza, el cambio y la existencia,” in Obras completas, vol. 3 (Mexico City: Libreros Mexicanos Unidos, 1959), 363–390; originally published 1924. 13. Vasconcelos, La Raza Cósmica, 40–41. 14. Vasconcelos’ Pitágoras and El monismo estético are in volumes 3 (1959) and 4 (1961), respectively, of Obras completas. 15. Vasconcelos, Pitágoras, 14. 16. Ibid., 11. 17. Ibid., 40. 18. Vasconcelos quotes Aristotle: “The Pythagorean soul is a number that possesses its own movement, and since the essence of the number is the essence of things, [the Pythagoreans] believed they had discovered a radical similarity between numbers and things.” Ibid., 42. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid., 38–39. 21. Ibid., 44. 22. Ibid., 48. 23. Ibid., 63. 24. Vasconcelos, El monismo estético, 42, 52. El monismo estético is a collection of essays (“Introducción,” “La sinfonía como forma literaria,” and “La síntesis mística”) and a lecture (“Arte creador,” given in 1916 to the Sociedad de Bellas Artes in Lima) that, according to Vasconcelos’ introductory note, should have appeared after Pitágoras. In other words, this work demonstrates the theoretical consistency, continuation, and further definition of the doctrine he laid out in Pitágoras. 25. Vasconcelos, Pitágoras, 65–70. 26. Mary Kay Vaughan, The State, Education, and Social Class in Mexico, 1880–1928 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1982), 250. A speech Lunacharskii delivered in 1928 confirms this; Anatolii Lunacharskii, “The Art of the Word in School,” in his On Education, trans. Ruth English (Moscow: Progress, 1981), especially 201–202, originally published 1919. Vasconcelos describes in El desastre how he took over the Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, the state-owned printing presses, to publish classic texts of literature and history to make them available in low-cost editions and large quantities. Vasconcelos, El desastre, in his Memorias (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1993), 2:46–47; originally published

1934. For a complete description of Vasconcelos’ project for publications see Blanco, Se llamaba Vasconcelos, 103–114. 27. Vasconcelos, “De Robinson a Odiseo: Pedagogía estructurativa,” in Obras completas, vol. 2 (1958), 1497, 1527–1529; originally published 1935. 28. “Positivist teachings not only enabled Mexican civilization to accept the practical conquests of the economic and industrial order, training generations in the application of useful scientific knowledge, but also, in the mental realm, they left us with an irreversible discipline [that limits our ability] to orient the hopes about [our] destiny and the progress of [our] accomplishments.” Vasconcelos, “Don Gabino Barreda,” 102. Leopoldo Zea in his seminal El positivismo en México described how positivism was manipulated by the Diaz regime to justify the interests of the ruling class. This interpretation and the ideological use of positivism, as Zea stated (35), were the interpretation of the Ateneo de la Juventud. 29. Vasconcelos, “De Robinson a Odiseo,” 1506. 30. Ibid., 1508. Vasconcelos also used this logic to criticize the acceptance of Dewey in Lunacharskii’s educational system, going so far as to denounce the use of historical materialism for its object-focused approach: “From looking so much at an object, one ends up looking at the object itself for the law to explain its behavior” (1508). Or, more architecturally, children’s decoration of standardized housing for socialized workers, Vasconcelos believed, was a conversion of aesthetic pleasure into industrial labor (1558). 31. This idealization of labor is similar to that described by John Ruskin in “The Nature of the Gothic,” in his Stones of Venice (London: Smith, Elder, 1858–1892). Vasconcelos, it should be noted, was highly influenced by Ruskin and cited him often. 32. Vasconcelos, “De Robinson a Odiseo,” 1532. 33. Vasconcelos, ibid., 1664. 34. Vasconcelos, El monismo estético, 20, 40. It is unclear to me what precisely he means by antirealistic, since the model he imposed on artists for the sep was that of a realist nature (later to be associated or confused with social realism). His earlier statements would define it as antipragmatic or anti-instrumental—in other words, free from causality and therefore completely disinterested. 35. Vasconcelos, El monismo estético, 26. Vasconcelos, it should be noted, attacked the turn toward autonomy—or its separation from life— that modern artists were following. In all fairness, it was unclear which art he meant when he said it “breaks away from its context and ethnic tradition” to “lose the best of its energy in new

adaptations or in the astonishment and curiosity of the exotic” (43). It was unfair in the sense that at the same time Wassily Kandinsky was proposing to integrate a new sense of rhythm into his art and describing his theories in a language similar to Vasconcelos’: “Our point of departure is the belief that the artist, apart from those impressions that he receives from the world of external appearances, continually accumulates experiences within his own inner world. We seek artistic forms that should express the reciprocal permeation of all these experiences” (1910); and “Form was the expression of inner content” (1912). In Wassily Kandinsky, Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, ed. Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo (New York: Da Capo Press, 1982), 53 and 237, respectively. 36. Vasconcelos, Pitágoras, 19. 37. Ibid., 20. 38. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in his Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1968). 39. This model was developed in full in Vasconcelos’ “De Robinson a Odiseo.” Although published in 1935, eleven years after Vasconcelos’ resignation as minister of education, historians (Blanco, Llinás Álvarez, and others) have agreed that this text represents the fundamental ideas for public schools under his administration. I have used this source in such a manner, supplementing it with other texts from the period when appropriate. 40. Vasconcelos, “De Robinson a Odiseo,” 1538. 41. Ibid., 1561. 42. Jorge Francisco Liernur, Formas modernas: Estudios sobre las relaciones entre la técnica, cultura y arquitectura en América Latina, 1870–1930, manuscript, 23; Claude Fell, José Vasconcelos: Los años del águila (1920–1925) (Mexico City: unam, 1989), 387–388. 43. José Vasconcelos, “Bolivarismo y Monroismo,” in Obras completas, vol. 2 (1958), 1354. In La Raza Cósmica, Vasconcelos similarly used “civilization” in the abstract: “It is always derived from a long and secular preparation and purification of elements that are transmitted and combined since the beginning of History” (19). 44. Vasconcelos, “Bolivarismo y Monroismo,” 1354. 45. Vasconcelos’ book was Spenglerian, Roberto González Echevarría tells us, from its very title. Spengler has written: “Race is something cosmic and psychic [seelenhaft], periodic in some obscure way.” Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West: Perspectives of World History, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), 2:114; originally published 1918. González Echevarría describes the importance of Spengler’s thought

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in Latin America after his Decline of the West was translated to Spanish in 1923 and through the highly popular Revista del Occidente edited by José Ortega y Gasset; Roberto González Echevarría, Alejo Carpentier: The Pilgrim at Home (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), in particular 52– 61. Liernur addresses the importance of Spengler in Latin American architectural thought in Formas modernas and in the introduction (with Marcelo Gizzarelli) to Francesco Dal Co, Dilucidaciones: Modernidad y arquitectura (Barcelona: Ediciones Paidós, 1982), 21. 46. Spengler, Decline of the West, 1:18. 47. Ibid., 1:31–32. 48. “The mestizo and the Indian, even the black, are superior to the white in an infinity of properly spiritual capacities. Neither in antiquity nor in the present has there been a case of a race that can depend on itself to create a civilization. The most notorious eras of Humanity have been, precisely, those in which various, different nations are placed in contact to one another and they mix.” Vasconcelos, La Raza Cósmica, 43. 49. The equalization of races and peoples, Claude Fell contends in José Vasconcelos: Los años del águila, was based on a close reading of Elisée Reclus’ Nouvelle geographie universelle: La Terre et le hommes (1876), which Vasconcelos mentioned in his autobiography as a source of influence. For Reclus, the racial and population mixture engendered a “civilization that will have on all of its sides its center, and in neither its circumference.” Quoted in Fell, José Vasconcelos: Los años del águila, 640. Incidentally, Reclus’ text was translated and was to be published as a textbook for use by the Secretaría de Educación; see Vasconcelos, “Indología,” 178. Another influence on Vasconcelos was Eugène Pittard’s Les Races et l’histoire (1924), in which Pittard maintained the importance of racial mixing in Latin America’s history. Regarding these influences see Fell, José Vasconcelos: Los años del águila, 640–641. 50. The return to either of these two lineages, a point of contention in Mexico at the time, and the debates it engendered can be seen in art, architecture, and literature. For more on this see Chapter 3 of the present volume, “Colonizing the Colonizer.” 51. Vasconcelos, La Raza Cósmica, 15–16. 52. Ibid., 16. 53. Ibid., 26. 54. Ibid., 28. 55. Ibid., 30. 56. Ibid., 33. In 1920 Vasconcelos published more on this in Estudios indostánicos, reproduced in Obras completas, 3:99–101. 57. Vasconcelos, La Raza Cósmica, 34.

58. Ibid., 35. 59. See Vasconcelos, “Bolivarismo y Monroismo,” or, more generally, the paradigmatic opposition of Anglos and Hispanics he describes in La Raza Cósmica, especially 25–32. 60. Vasconcelos, La Raza Cósmica, 40. 61. Vasconcelos, El monismo estético, 44–45. 62. Vasconcelos, La Raza Cósmica, 41, 49–50. 63. Ibid., 45. Vasconcelos used this to directly attack the ideological basis of Darwinist positivism: “The British predicate natural selection with the tacit consequence that the kingdom of the world corresponds naturally and divinely to the dolichocephalic structure of the [British] Islands and its descendants” (45). 64. Ibid., 48. Vasconcelos in his “Don Gabino Barreda,” as described earlier, through various scientific discoveries challenged the “scientific” basis of Mexican positivism. In a similar line, Louis Althusser used the case of the Russian biologist and geneticist Trofim Denisovich Lysenko to show the possible relation of ideology (in this case Stalinist political ideology) to tampering with science. Althusser’s account, similar to Vasconcelos’ suspicion, showed the historical ramifications and possibilities of using an ideology to justify a “scientific” discovery that itself proved the ideological structure that enabled it. Louis Althusser, “Unfinished History,” in Proletarian Science? The Case of Lysenko, Domenique Lecort, trans. Ben Brewster (London: New Left Books, 1977). 65. Vasconcelos, La Raza Cósmica, 47. For Althusser, ideology was the principal site where societies reproduced themselves. Ideology was, therefore, an “eternal” quality that served to construct (re)producing subjects regardless of the structure or ideological position of the state and its ideological state apparatuses. Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation),” in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), 175–176. 66. Vasconcelos, La Raza Cósmica, 37. 67. Ibid., 52. 68. Ibid., 50–51. 69. Vasconcelos was clearly reacting against a tendency toward reviving Spanish and colonialist aesthetics and literature as an ideological means to construct a history that excluded indigenous peoples. 70. The preface of La Raza Cósmica, according to Claude Fell, can be seen as part of Vasconcelos’ early (pre-1920) aesthetic theories because of its lyrical, premonitory, and manifesto-like qualities as well as in its attempt to provide a new “intuitive” cultural theory. Claude Fell, José Vasconcelos: Los años del águila, 639.

71. Vasconcelos, El monismo estético, 51. 72. See, for example, Vasconcelos, El monismo estético, 46. Obregón Santacilia, writing in 1947, showed how this architecture was the product of true cultural synthesis: an architectural syncretism; Carlos Obrgeón Santacilia, México como eje de las antiguas arquitecturas de América (Mexico City: Editorial Atlante, 1947). 73. Vasconcelos, La Raza Cósmica, 52–53. 74. Vasconcelos, “Discurso pronunciado en el acto de la inauguración del nuevo edificio de la Secretaría,” in José Vasconcelos: Textos sobre educación, 216–217; originally published in El Maestro: Revista de Cultura Nacional 2, no. 4. 75. Vasconcelos, “Hay que construir,” Boletín de la Secretaría de Educación Pública 1, no. 4 (First Semester 1923): 3. 76. The official newsletter of the sep gave a brief history and description of all of the major construction projects undertaken from 1921 to 1924 by the Secretaría de Educación Pública. Boletín de la Secretaría de Educación Pública 2, nos. 5–6 (Second Semester 1923 and First Semester 1924): 692–705. For more information on the specific architects see Katzman, Arquitectura contemporánea mexicana. On Obregón Santacilia see Graciela de Garay Arellano, La obra de Carlos Obregón Santacilia, arquitecto: Cuadernos de arquitectura y conservación del patrimonio artístico, no. 6 (Mexico City: inba-sep, 1979); and Víctor Jiménez, Carlos Obregón Santacilia: Pionero de la arquitectura mexicana. On Villagrán García see José Villagrán (Mexico City: inba, 1986) and Ramón Vargas Salguero’s prologue to José Villagrán García’s Teoría de la Arquitectura (Mexico City: unam, 1988). 77. See, for example, the anonymous editorial “No Palacios: Escuelas,” in El Universal, July 10, 1922, section 1, page 3. This unnamed critic complained about the outrageous expenses incurred on the building while the needs for providing safe and hygienic schools throughout the city had been ignored: “Governments have always built Palaces from which they can govern the people—without worrying about the conditions of those whom they govern.” A similar criticism was made by the architect Juan O’Gorman in the early 1930s. He would, however, have designed and built functionalist schools as a solution to the immediate need for school buildings. See Chapter 4 of the present volume, “Against a New Architecture.” 78. One needs to compare it with the work of Adamo Boari for the National Auditorium (1904), now the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts); the Post Office Building (1902) by the same architect; or Silvio Contri’s Communications Building (1906).

79. Two texts prepared for the Secretaría de Educación Pública are in the Archivo Histórico de la sep (ahsep, the sep archive) that describe the history and details of the headquarters building: Ángel Cabellos Quiroz, Historia del edificio sede de la Secretaría de Educación Pública (Mexico City: Secretaría de Educación Pública, Oficialia Mayor, Dirección General de Recursos Materiales y Servicios, April 1993); and María Pérez Santillán, Información histórica. Edificio sede de la Secretaría de Educación Pública (Mexico City: N.p., n.d.). A contemporaneous book prepared and published shortly after Vasconcelos’ tenure as minister of education showed photographs of the recently completed building as well as other buildings for the sep: Edificios construidos por la Secretaría de Educación Pública en los años de 1921 a 1924 (Mexico City: sep, 1924). 80. Federico Méndez Rivas was the brother of the poet Joaquín Méndez Rivas, a close friend of Vasconcelos. In his autobiography Vasconcelos tells us that he chose Federico because of his ability to act quickly (something previous regimes or the Ministry of Public Works—traditionally in charge of governmental construction—were unable to do because of the high levels of bureaucracy) and because of his punctuality, precision, and hard work; these last three qualities Vasconcelos attributed to his military education. However, these were the very same attributes that allowed Vasconcelos to pigeonhole Federico Méndez Rivas as an “engineer” and give others control over the design of the building. Vasconcelos, El desastre, 23–24; Vasconcelos, “Los pintores y la arquitectura,” Boletín de la Secretaría de Educación Pública 2, nos. 5–6 (Second Semester 1923 and First Semester 1924): 551, originally in El Universal, May 3, 1924. 81. The building housed a radio station and studio as well as an office of propaganda. 82. Federico Méndez Rivas, “La obra del Stadium Nacional emprendida por la Secretaría de Educación Pública en la Piedad,” Boletín de la Secretaría de Educación Pública 2, nos. 5–6 (Second Semester 1923 and First Semester 1924): 538; originally published as a letter in the newspaper Excelsior, April 20, 1923. 83. Enrique X. de Anda Alanís, La arquitectura de la Revolución Mexicana: Corrientes y estilos de la década de los veinte (Mexico City: unam, 1990), 69. See also Katzman, Arquitectura contemporánea mexicana, 77–78. 84. The design of the classical façade, based on de Anda’s interview with architect Vicente Mendiola, was the work of Eduardo Macedo y Arbeu de Anda, La arquitectura de la Revolución, 70–71. 85. José Vasconcelos, Ulises criollo, in Memorias, 1:14–15, originally published 1936.

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86. Alfonso Pallares, “Vasconcelos y la arquitectura,” Excélsior, July 27, 1924, quoted in de Anda, La arquitectura de la Revolución, 69. Similar critiques came from architects who were displaced for architectural work in favor of artists. We see this in Juan Galindo Pimentel’s critiques “La obra realizada por la Secretaría de Educación Pública y la Etapa Actual de la Arquitectura Nacional” and “La obra del Stadium Nacional emprendida por la Secretaría de Educación Pública en la Piedad,” Boletín de la Secretaría de Educación Pública 2, nos. 5–6:536–540; these were published originally in Excelsior of April 13 and 20, 1923, respectively. Vasconcelos’ response to the critiques of the National Stadium are in his “Los pintores y la arquitectura,” in the same issue of the sep Boletín. 87. It should be pointed out that others were interested in the evaluation and general valorization of Mexican colonial architecture. Many such views served as points of departure for the work of both Acevedo and Mariscal, as they indicated in their references and readings of the architectural works they described. Among these references were Manuel G. Revilla, El arte en México en la época antigua y durante el gobierno virreinal (Mexico City: Oficina Tipográfica de la Secretaría de Fomento, 1893), and Sylvester Baxter, SpanishColonial Architecture in Mexico (Boston: J. B. Millet, 1901). Establishment of the Inspección General de Monumentos Artísticos (Department of Artistic Monuments) in 1915 served to protect and document works from the period of the Conquest that were neglected or decaying. See Jorge Enciso, “Monumentos artísticos,” Boletín de la Universidad 1, no. 1 (December 1917): 133–141. 88. See Federico E. Mariscal’s biographical introduction to Jesús T. Acevedo’s Disertaciones de un arquitecto (Mexico City: Ediciones México Moderno, 1920). After Acevedo’s death, Mariscal compiled many of his discussions in this book. See also Justino Fernández’ prologue and Alfonso Reyes’ “Notas sobre Jesús T. Acevedo,” in the later Disertaciones de un arquitecto, by Jesús T. Acevedo (Mexico City: inba, 1967). Subsequent citations are taken from this later edition. 89. Acevedo, “Apariencias arquitectónicas,” in his Disertaciones, 37. Or, “[Nations] are the ones that really give monuments their character” (50). 90. “In all of these nations, men are dedicated to construction, and in each town works are produced that have the stamp of their race.” Acevedo, “Apariencias arquitectónicas,” 45. Or, “Under [the architects’] authority, we can legitimately fit the decorative works that must make of the City a particular organism and a representation that shows, in a plastic way, the character of

the race.” Acevedo, “Ventajas e inconvenientes de la carrera de arquitecto,” in Disertaciones, 58. 91. Acevedo, “La arquitectura colonial en México,” in Disertaciones, 90–91. 92. Acevedo, “Apariencias arquitectónicas,” 51. 93. Ibid., 53. 94. Ibid. 95. Acevedo, “La arquitectura colonial en México,” 97. 96. Ibid., 94. 97. Acevedo, “Apariencias arquitectónicas,” 53–54. 98. Federico E. Mariscal, La patria y la arquitectura nacional: Resúmenes de las conferencias dadas en la Casa de la Universidad Popular Mexicana (Mexico City: Imprenta Stephan y Torres, 1915), 7–9. 99. Mariscal, La patria y la arquitectura, 10. 100. The monumental legacy of colonial architecture was something that likewise deeply interested the Boston-based American architectural historian Sylvester Baxter. He argued that the availability of resources, political tranquility, availability of building material, and dominance of ideas led to the monumental character of this architecture. Baxter’s interest in this quality revealed his frustration with American architecture (with the exception of that of H. H. Richardson) and his search for a monumental language for American architecture. See Baxter, SpanishColonial Architecture in Mexico, 1–24. Baxter’s interest would translate into Bertram G. Goodhue’s designs for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego created in the Spanish colonial style, as well as into other architectural explorations by architects close to Baxter. Goodhue, it should be noted, was Baxter’s traveling companion in Mexico and illustrated Baxter’s book. On Goodhue see Richard Oliver, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (New York: Architectural History Foundation; Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 1983). On Baxter and his search for monumental architecture see Clara Bargellini, “Arquitectura colonial, hispano colonial y neocolonial: ¿Arquitectura Americana?” in 17th Coloquio Internacional de Historia de Arte, Arte, historia e identidad en América: Visiones comparativas, vol. 2 (Mexico City: unam; Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 1994), 419–430. See also Liernur, Formas modernas, 63–66. 101. Vasconcelos, El monismo estético, 46. 102. Of the Mayan architecture Vasconcelos wrote that “everything is completely barbaric, cruel, and grotesque. There is no sense of beauty. The decorations are simple paleographic labor. Since [the Maya] did not have an efficient alphabet, they used drawings and reliefs as language, forcing and distancing the line from its disinterested musical development, which is the essence of art. [They produced] utilitarian decoration that,

for that reason, does not engender any aesthetic emotion.” Vasconcelos, El desastre, 106–107. It was precisely this type of reaction or misunderstanding of pre-Hispanic art that Manuel Gamio, in Forjando patria (1916), was trying to combat. See “Colonizing the Colonizer,” Chapter 3 of the present volume. 103. Vasconcelos, “Indología,” 1231–1232. 104. Vasconcelos, El monismo estético, 46. Vasconcelos knew the Californian work: some of it was referenced in Baxter’s Spanish-Colonial Architecture in Mexico. It was also highly present in the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego. At the time of this fair, Vasconcelos was in Washington, DC, as a political envoy for the government of Eulalio Gutiérrez. Pedro Henríquez Ureña, also in Washington at that time, published an account of the exposition and its displays of colonial Mexican architecture. Henríquez Ureña’s “Homenaje a un pueblo en desgracia” was first published on February 22, 1915, in El Heraldo de Cuba. It was published in Mexico in Revista de Revistas 6, no. 272 (July 11, 1915), and is included in Pedro Henríquez Ureña, Obras completas, vol. 3 (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: Universidad Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña, 1977), 163–165. Vasconcelos in El desastre referred to the “good sense of the United States to create an architecture with the very modest remains of eighteenth-century Baroque architecture in California” (183). 105. This was a position similar to that of Acevedo, who wrote: “An architect cannot but build in a style that is compatible with the lifestyle of its inhabitants because it is absolutely true that nations have the architectures that they deserve. The progress of architecture also depends on the introduction of a new technical procedure [such as iron or reinforced concrete] in its constructive science.” Acevedo, “Apariencias arquitectónicas,” 50. 106. Baxter’s investigation was the civilizing project, in the “classic” sense of the civilization/ barbarism dialectic, of preserving the monuments, albeit in a documentary and photographic way, while they are destroyed by the “barbarians” who own them. This appears clear in his introduction to Spanish-Colonial Architecture in Mexico (xi–xii). For his critique and disdain of American colonial architecture see page 3 of that volume. 107. Liernur’s proposition comes from his reading of Baxter’s notions of the character of ornament in colonial architecture. Liernur, Formas modernas, 66. Baxter contended that the points where ornamentation is concentrated “are the points whither the vision naturally gravitates and where the attention tends to fix itself. They are therefore the points where ornament is most appropriately employed, and its concentration here

prevents the eye and the thoughts from wandering. . . . The restful surfaces of [the] tower-walls [of a Mexican church]—absolutely plain, as a rule—embrace the sculpted work between them in a gigantic frame that effectually excludes the distractions of the secular world.” Baxter, SpanishColonial Architecture in Mexico, 15–16. 108. José Vasconcelos, “Discurso pronunciado,” 213. Similarly, Vasconcelos reproached Obregón Santacilia for proposing hallways and stairways in the “Porfirian” style: 1.8 meter wide instead of the 4.0 meters demanded by Vasconcelos. Vasconcelos, “Los pintores y la arquitectura,” 553. 109. José Vasconcelos, “Inauguración de la escuela Belisario Domínguez,” Boletín de la Secretaría de Educación Pública 1, no. 4:11. 110. Vasconcelos, “Hay que construir,” 4. 111. Vasconcelos, “Discurso pronunciado,” 216. Similar concerns are raised by Vasconcelos in discussing the inauguration of the Centro Educativo Belisario Domíngez. Vasconcelos, “Inauguración de la escuela Belisario Domínguez,” 11. 112. “We have worked to respond in every detail to the moral transformation that has been operating in the Republic, distancing ourselves from the immediate past and thinking of the auspicious destiny to be able to create a symbolic building . . . solid and clear like the conscience of the mature revolution.” Vasconcelos, “Discurso pronunciado,” 218–219. 113. The architectural curriculum at the Academia de San Carlos incorporated into its list of projects taught the study and design of affordable housing, a large park for physical education, and the remodeling of the Plaza de la Constitución with a colonial architectural vocabulary. Fell, José Vasconcelos: Los años del águila, 397. 114. These statues commissioned to and modeled by Ignacio Asúnsolo were to be carved using the same stone as used in the building and to be four meters in height to harmonize with the proportions of the arcade. For a detailed description of these sculptures see “Estatuas gigantescas en el Palacio de Educación,” Boletín de la Secretaría de Educación Pública 2, nos. 5–6, 534–535; originally published in El Universal, April 23, 1923. After the installation of the white-race statue in the building, Vasconcelos gave Asúnsolo’s assistant, Germán Cueto, his approval to purchase the stone to make them. These remaining statues, however, were never modeled, and neither of them was ever completed. Margarita Nelken, Ignacio Asúnsolo (Mexico City: unam, 1962), 29–30. For more on the polemics associated with the sculpture see Vasconcelos, El desastre, 44–45. A more general work on Asúnsolo is Ignacio Asúnsolo escultor 1890–1965: Exposición antológica (Mexico City: inba, 1985).

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115. Vasconcelos described the evolutionary process of humanity as follows: “The northern continent that disappeared thousands of years ago and from which the whites possibly come. The lemurian [lemuriana] era in which the black civilization predominated, with its seat probably in Africa. The era of Atlantis, which left its imprints in Egypt and Yucatán with the ancient primitive race of Guatemala or the Maya, the ancient empires of the red race. The yellow race [was] creating religions and vast empires in Asia but contained by the ocean. The Europeans by inventing the machine have placed in communication continents and races so that all peoples, gathered in their homes throughout the planet, can finally form one family and can give birth to the definitive period of civilization.” Vasconcelos, “Glorificación de cuatro altos poetas hispanoamericanos,” Boletín de la Secretaría de Educación Pública 2, nos. 5–6, 524; originally published in El Universal, April 3, 1923. 116. Ibid., 524. 117. Ibid., 525. 118. Vasconcelos, El desastre, 44, 113. 119. Vasconcelos, “Glorificación,” 523–524. 120. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (New York: Dover, 1995), 51–55; originally published 1872. See also Richard J. White, “The Individual and the Birth of Tragedy,” in Nietzsche and the Problem of Sovereignty (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 54–77. 121. Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, 79. 122. Vasconcelos, “Discurso pronunciado,” 217. 123. For a complete account of the exterior murals of the building and a brief description see Olivier Debroise, “Secretaría de Educación Pública,” in Guia de murales del Centro Histórico de la Ciudad de México, ed. Esther Acevedo (Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana, Consejo Nacional de Fomento Educativo [hereafter conafe], 1984), 130–138. On those done by Montenegro see Julieta Ortiz Gaitán, Entre dos mundos: Los murales de Roberto Montenegro (Mexico City: unam, 1994), 98–109. On Rivera see Stanton L. Catlin, “Mural Census: Secretaría de Educación Pública,” in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986), 253–263. 124. Vasconcelos, El desastre, 81. 125. “Informe de la Sección de Edificios y Construcciones,” Boletín de la Secretaría de Educación Pública 1, no. 2 (September 1, 1922): 315. See also Ortiz Gaitán, Entre dos mundos, 93, 96–97; and Jean Charlot, The Mexican Mural Renaissance: 1920–1925 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963), 99–100. 126. In Vasconcelos’ El desastre see, for example, 17, 109, 208.

127. I used the Secretaría de Educación Pública’s Edificios construidos as a guide for the organization of the rooms relative to the murals and their titles, as well as information about their structure and contents. The images in the book show the rooms shortly after the murals were completed and as they were to be experienced by those visiting them. I used the illustrations of the murals in this book because some have been subsequently altered, such as the inclusion of a third figure in Montenegro’s El rito budista, without explanation or notice by authors of subsequent anthologies of Montenegro’s work. 128. Justino Fernández, Roberto Montenegro (Mexico City: unam, 1962), 13; Juan Crespo de la Cierna, “Montenegro: Pintor mural,” in his Roberto Montenegro (1885–1968) (Mexico City: INBA, 1970), n.p. 129. “They feel their nothing but do not know it,” Pascal; “The kingdom of God is inside Man,” Jesus; “I have seen men without the potential to learn, but none without the ability for virtue,” Confucius. Ortiz Gaitán, Entre dos mundos, 106. 130. Ibid., 105. 131. Most of Rivera’s murals for the first two floors of the complex and the third floor around the first courtyard were begun and in some cases completed under Vasconcelos’ tenure. Catlin, “Mural Census,” 249–250. Catlin, however, incorrectly dates all of the frescos for the third floor of the Court of Labor to 1928. Some were completed by 1924 and first published in the Secretaría de Educación Pública’s Edificios construidos. 132. For the terms of the contract see Charlot, Mexican Mural Renaissance, 255. Guerrero, it should be recalled, was one of the members of the Sindicato de Obreros Técnicos, Pintores y Escultores and an editor of its publication, El Machete. 133. Adolfo Best Maugard, Método de dibujo: tradición, Resurgimiento, y evolución del arte mexicano (Mexico City: Departamento Editorial de la Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1923). El fuego nuevo was one of the earliest examples of Chavez’ interest in nationalism in Mexican music; it incorporated themes derived from popular music and instrumentation that included indigenous and folk instruments. Dan Malmström, “Introduction to Twentieth Century Mexican Music” (PhD diss., Uppsala University, Sweden, 1974), 42–43. See also Yolanda Moreno Rivas, La composición en México en el siglo XX (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1994). 134. Vasconcelos was responsible for Rivera’s trips throughout Mexico and his study of the Mexican peasant. Rivera accompanied Vasconcelos on his tour of Yucatán as a cultural attaché along with Montenegro, Best Maugard, the poets Jaime Torres Bodet and Carlos Pellicer, and

the critic Pedro Henríquez Ureña. On this trip Rivera met the socialist governor Felipe Carrillo Puerto, an event that would have a tremendous impact on his work and thought. Rivera depicted him twice in the murals for the main sep building. Vasconcelos also sponsored Rivera’s trip to Tehuantepec in December 1922. On these trips and Vasconcelos’ influence on Rivera’s outlook of Mexico see Lance P. Hurlburt, “Diego Rivera (1886–1957): A Chronology of His Art, Life, and Times,” in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986), 53; Taracena, José Vasconcelos, 50; Bertram D. Wolfe, Diego Rivera: His Life and Times (London: Robert Hale, 1939), 148–149; Vasconcelos, El desastre, 88. 135. The murals were scheduled to be started in March 1923, and the ideas of the Sindicato were most likely in circulation at the time although not released as a manifesto until that December. 136. “Manifiesto del Sindicato de Obreros Técnicos, Pintores y Escultores,” trans. Sylvia Calles, in Art and Theory 1900–1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Cambridge, England: Basil Blackwell, 1992), 388; italics in the original. It was originally published in El Machete in June 1924. The full version is reproduced in Esther Cimet Shoijet, Movimiento muralista mexicano: Ideología y producción (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana [hereafter uam]-Xochimilco, 1992), 157–160. 137. In a 1921 review of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (National School of Fine Arts), Rivera wrote of the importance of an allegiance to the working class: “Our artists need to know, believe, and feel that as long as we do not become workers and do not identify with the aspirations of the working masses in order to give them, on a plane higher than that of anecdote, their expression through pure plastic arts—constantly maintaining the depth of our soul in intimate communication with that of the people–-we will only produce abortions, useless, inanimate things.” Diego Rivera, “La exposición de la Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes,” Azulejos, no. 3 (October 1921): 21, 25. 138. Roberto Barrios, “Diego Rivera, pintor,” El Universal Ilustrado, July 28, 1921, quoted in Fell, José Vasconcelos: Los años del águila, 411. 139. Diego Rivera with Gladys March, My Art, My Life: An Autobiography (New York: Dover Press, 1991), 81; originally published 1960. 140. Cargadores y lavanderas (Cargo Carriers and Washerwomen) by Jean Charlot and El torito y los santiagos (The Bull and Battle Dance) by Amado de la Cueva, both in the second courtyard, were spared when Rivera was painting El tianguis. See Debroise, “Secretaría de Educación

Pública,” 132–133. Charlot’s and de la Cueva’s disputes with Rivera led to the partial destruction of the murals of the first two, and Rivera justified his actions in view of declarations in the manifesto. See Charlot, Mexican Mural Renaissance, 273–279. 141. In a comic note, Vasconcelos described how some of the seals were invented because the artists lacked the time to wait until all of the seals had been sent by their respective delegations. Months later, high functionaries for the states with the invented coats of arms requested photographs of these because they were unable to locate the originals from which the ones in the sep building were taken. Vasconcelos, “Indología,” 184–185. 142. “Manifiesto del Sindicato,” 388. 143. Rivera explained its highly complex iconography and symbolism in “Las pinturas decorativas del anfiteatro de la preparatoria,” Boletín de la Secretaría de Educación Pública 1, no. 3 (January 1923): 363–365. 144. Frederic W. Leighton, “Rivera’s Mural Paintings,” International Studio 78, no. 321 (February 1924): 379, 381. A similar evaluation was done by the Peruvian artist José Sabogal. Juan de Ega, “De regreso a México, Sabogal Cuenta,” Boletín de la Secretaría de Educación Pública 1, no. 4 (First Semester 1923): 621–624. 145. Letter from Rivera to Alfonso Reyes, August 7, 1917, cited in Fell, José Vasconcelos: Los años del águila, 405. 146. Rivera referred to the artistic production of the Escuela al Aire Libre of Coyoacán as a “still” reflecting pool that, at the direction of Alfredo Ramos Martínez, was producing work in the style of impressionism: “reflecting foliage, clouds, or some face that leaned toward its edge.” Diego Rivera, “De pintura y otras cosas que no lo son,” La Falange, August 1923, 270, italics in the original. 147. This is reproduced in Walter Benjamin, Reflections (New York: Schocken Books, 1978). 148. For an excellent and thorough, although somewhat undialectical, evaluation of the challenges that the Mexican muralist movement posed to the capitalist production, distribution, and commodification of art see Cimet Shoijet, Movimiento muralista mexicano, especially 49–69. 149. Despite of its being ignored by current art and architectural historiography as a minor, unimportant project (seen primarily, for example, as simply a remodeling and expansion of an existing building), the building’s legacy reached clear into the 1950s, when questions of the integration of the plastic arts with architecture were being vehemently debated in the context of the construction of the new campus for the National University (unam) in the southern part of Mexico City. 150. Olivier Debroise, in what is an otherwise

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outstanding account of Mexican art in the 1920s and 1930s, comments that Vasconcelos’ ideas about the building’s murals created for the sep were not well defined. Instead, he argues, they were to be seen exclusively as decorative—as large canvases (grandes lienzos)—and as fulfilling Vasconcelos’ desire for both “surface and speed.” Olivier Debroise, Figuras en el trópico: Plástica mexicana 1920–1940 (Barcelona: Océano, 1984), 35n1, 38, 48. 151. José Clemente Orozco, Autobiografía (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1971), 58–60. 152. Vasconcelos, “Los pintores y la arquitectura,” 551. 153. Blanco, Se llamaba Vasconcelos, 116. 154. “At the beginning,” Vasconcelos wrote in regard to the three divisions of the Department of Education, “it was a type of Pythagorean inspiration. ‘What is correct,’ we told ourselves, ‘must respond to number and measurement,’ and in virtue of that we decided to divide the Department into three great branches.” Vasconcelos, “Conferencia leida,” 290. In “Indología” he explains further: “The unity [of the three departments] was even more evidently manifested in the very structure of the primary school, a type that represented the period that created it. In the architectural floor plan of the primary schools built by us, we were careful to leave the trace of the intrinsic principle that structured education then. In effect, our primary schools were a product of the labor of the three fundamental departments” (199). He also alluded to the need to represent the three departments through the architecture in “Hay que construir” (7). 155. Vasconcelos considered all of the buildings created for the sep as public buildings. The use of the designation “educational center” (centro educativo) for its buildings such as the Centro Educativo Benito Juárez and the Centro Educativo Belisario Domínguez semantically implied how these buildings were to be used: “The library of [the Centro Educativo Belisario Domínguez] is not destined only for the elementary school but for all of the people in the district. The open-air theater is also destined for the meetings and festivities of the children, parents and neighbors, as well as for the local Glee Club. Luckily, we have not only a modern elementary school but a Centro Educativo, for the service of the area in the respective city, integrated by the three fundamental elements of our organization: School, Library, and Fine Arts.” José Vasconcelos, “Inauguración de la escuela Belisario Domínguez,” 12. 156. Vaughan, State, Education, and Social Class, Table 2-2, 44. 157. Anatolii V. Lunacharskii, Intelligentsiia v ee

Proshlom, quoted in Timothy Edward O’Connor, The Politics of Soviet Culture: Anatolii Lunacharskii (Ann Arbor, MI: umi Research Press, 1983), 40. 158. Vasconcelos, “Indología,” 180. 159. Anatolii Lunacharskii, “The Tasks of ExtraMural Education” (1919), in his On Education, 77. 160. Benjamin, “Work of Art,” 239.

chapter 2 1. Manuel Maples Arce, “Los frescos de Diego Rivera,” in Diego Rivera y los escritores mexicanos: Antología tributaria, ed. Elisa García Barragán and Luis Mario Schneider (Mexico City: unam, 1986), 127. 2. Raymond Williams, “Metropolitan Perceptions and the Emergence of Modernism” in his Politics of Modernism. 3. Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (1903), in On Individuality and Social Forms, ed. Donald N. Levine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 324–339. For the relationship between the theories of Simmel and the avant-garde see Manfredo Tafuri, “Sozialpolitik and the City in Weimar Germany” in his The Sphere and the Labyrinth, 219–220; Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co, Modern Architecture, vol. 1 (New York: Electa/ Rizzoli, 1976), 90, 162; K. Michael Hays, Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject: The Architecture of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Hilberseimer (Cambridge MA: mit Press, 1992). 4. See Tafuri, “The New Babylon,” in The Sphere and the Labyrinth. 5. Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia, 105. 6. “Estridentópolis was the realization of the Estridentista truth: the absurd city, disconnected from everyday reality, correcting the straight lines of the monotone by unfolding the landscape. Erased by the fog, it becomes more distant in the evening and it returns routinely at dawn; worn down by the key of the rain, suns affirm it in the calendars of the new days; its windows rotate toward the landscapes that Ramón Alva de la Canal and Leopoldo Méndez decorated with fullness; the streets fragment, contorted by inaugural anxieties; travelers move through the sidewalks held captive by time; its architectures have been built with brave lines that announce existence; dawn lifts it every day to be taller and more rigid; it floats over the uncontrolled moment of noon among the anonymous clamor of traffic that spills into the avenue; in the afternoon, it is pompous, made up of solemn skies. Anchored in the abandonment of its buildings, whose electric lights announce the advance of night, the absurd city falls gradually silent; it widens its avenues and it annihilates its passersby so that

in the formal solitude of the hours, abandoned to the elevatory motifs, the founders can sow their aviational words.” Germán List Arzubide, El movimiento estridentista (Jalapa, Mexico: Ediciones de Horizonte, 1927), 93–95. 7. Luis Mario Schneider, El estridentismo, o Una literatura de la estrategia (Mexico City: INBA, 1970), 35, 205. 8. As examples of these activities we find the following: poetry, Manuel Maples Arce, Andamios interiores; narrative, Arqueles Vela, El Café de Nadie; novel, Arqueles Vela, Un crimen provisional; periodicals, Irradiador and Horizonte; didactic texts, Germán List Arzubide, Emiliano Zapata: Exaltación; publication of seminal national texts, Mariano Azuela, Los de abajo, republished by the Estridentistas in 1927. 9. Hugo J. Verani, Las vanguardias literarias en Hispanoamérica: Manifiestos, proclamas y otros escritos (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1986), 13. 10. Although Huidobro developed his creacionismo theories as early as 1912, he brought them to light in his manifesto-poem “Arte poética” in 1916. He published a more direct manifesto in 1925. Vicente Huidobro, “Arte poética” and “El creacionismo,” in Manifiestos, proclamas y polémicas de la vanguardia literaria hispanoamericana, ed. Nelson T. Osorio (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1988), 46, 167–175. 11. Vicente Huidobro, “La creación pura,” in L’Espirit Nouveau: Una estética moral purista y un materialismo romántico, Elia Espinosa (Mexico City: unam, 1986), 209–210; originally in L’Espirit Nouveau 7 (1921). 12. Vicente Huidobro, “Epoch of Creation,” in Manifestos Manifest, trans. Gilbert Alter-Gilbert (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 1999), 98. 13. Manuel Maples Arce, Actual No. 1: Hoja de Vanguardia. Comprimido Estridentista de Manuel Maples Arce (December 1921), reprinted in Luis Mario Schneider, El estridentismo México 1921– 1927 (Mexico City: unam, 1985), 44. 14. “Estridentismo raised the camps of hard work under the electric antlers. The streets emptied into the clamorous manifestos that would run over the metropolitan bourgeois with its final affirmations. The cexanel[?] edited poems to be read by those standing and the lyrical shivers of the new literature ran down the backbone of the luminous advertisements. Theaters announced present-day themes. Movie theaters deepened with rectilinear shadows. The newspapers surrendered their columns to the march of prophetic words. Mornings became undone by the news about Estridentismo. Jazz was included in the aesthetic of sports hours. The muscles of the stadiums were thrown to the wind. Buildings were decorated, sheltered by parasitic shadows.

In the banquets, after the shameless speeches of the “buttons” of diplomacy, the voice of the dominators flowered piercing to the hilt with their insults. The stratified teachers in their cenacles were fired because of the farce of their bookshelf science. The sabotage of ingenuity was done. . . . It was the beginning. The peak was forcibly taken from those who sold it in the shop windows of bureaucracy. The voice of nomadic life was erected. The red flags of struggle, bristled the rallies of a youth unbalanced by anxieties and the factories of advanced thought, adorned with chimneys a sky that was disconnected from the fight.” Germán List Arzubide, El movimiento estridentista, 54–56. 15. Arqueles Vela, Evolución histórica de la literatura universal (Mexico City: Ediciones Fuente Cultural, 1941), 359. 16. Federico Schopf, Del vanguardismo a la antipoesia (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1986), 61. 17. Manifiesto estridentista número 2, reprinted in Luis Mario Schneider, El estridentismo México, 50. 18. Roland Barthes, “The Reality Effect,” in his The Rustle of Language (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986), 147–148. 19. Arqueles Vela, “Un crimen provisional” in his El Café de Nadie (Jalapa, Mexico: Ediciones de Horizonte, 1926), 47. 20. Manuel Maples Arce, “¿Cuál es mi mejor poesía?” in El Universal Ilustrado, June 12, 1924; cited in Esther Hernández Palacios, “Acercamiento a la poética estridentista,” in El estridentismo: Memoria y valoración (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1983), 138. 21. Manuel Maples Arce, Andamios interiores: Poemas radiográficos (1922), reprinted in Schneider, El estridentismo México, 77. 22. Hernández Palacios, “Acercamiento,” 157. 23. Julia Kristeva finds that images such as these would function at the level of the semiotic. These had the power to subvert the symbolic order of language and, because of this, could place the subject in an unstable subjective position—what she terms the sujet en procès. That is, any literature and art that could subvert language not only could escape ideology but also had the possibility of being truly “revolutionary.” Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. Margaret Waller (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984). 24. Manuel Maples Arce, “Prisma,” in Andamios interiores: Poemas radiográficos de Manuel Maples Arce (1922), reprinted in Schneider, El estridentismo México, 73. 25. “The city/ falsified/ by the dawn of its handkerchief/ spilled in the mechanical night/ of the tunnel/ I unfolded the newspaper of my indifference/ and I read the catastrophe/ of/ her name.” Germán List Arzubide, “III. Desintegración,” in El

notes to pages 60–66

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viajero en el vértice (1926), reprinted in Schneider, El estridentismo México, 260. 26. Johanna Drucker, The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909–1923 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 59. See also Dee Reynolds, Symbolist Aesthetics and Early Abstract Art: Sites of Imaginary Space (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 81–115. 27. Stéphane Mallarmé, preface to Un Coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard, in his Collected Poems, trans. Henry Weinfield (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 121. 28. Schneider, El estridentismo, o Una literatura, 95. 29. “This is the nature of something lived through (Erlebnis) to which Baudelaire has given the weight of an experience (Erfahrung).” Walter Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire,” in Illuminations, 194. 30. Manuel Maples Arce, Poemas interdictos (1927), reprinted in Schneider, El estridentismo México, 301–303. Kyn Taniya (Luis Quintanilla), Avión: 1917-Poemas-1923 (1923), reprinted in Schneider, El estridentismo México, 161. 31. “Cities that inaugurates [sic] my step/ while her eyes/ take the landscape hostage/ the scream of the towers/ insipid with radio/ the lines of the telegraph/ strain the night/ and in the last letters, the distance returned . . . / In the corners/ the unedited girls/ have lit the voltaic/ and the landscape that is placed in the electrical/ pronounces retarded names”; List Arzubide, El movimiento estridentista, 45–46. 32. “Here is my poem/ brutal/ and with multiple souls/ to the new city./ Oh city all tense/ of cables and of efforts/ all resonant/ of motors and wings/ Simultaneous explosion/ of the new theories . . ./ The lungs of Russia/ blow toward us/ the wind of social revolution./ The literary fly looters/ will not comprehend a thing/ of this sweaty new beauty/ of the century.” Maples Arce, Urbe: Super-poema bolchevique en 5 cantos de Manuel Maples Arce (Mexico City: Andres Botas e Hijo, 1924), 13–14. 33. This is, in fact, a radical shift from Actual No. 1, which uses the first person as its author and addressee. This shift to a collective author and audience can be seen also in the other two manifestos. 34. Later in the poem Maples Arce writes: Y ahora, los burgueses ladrones, se echarán a temblar/ por los caudales/ que robaron al pueblo . . ./ Oh ciudad . . ./ Mañana, quizás,/ sólo la lumbre viva de mis versos/ alumbrará los horizontes humillados (And now, the pilfering bourgeois, will begin to tremble/ because of the wealth/ they stole from

the people . . ./ Oh city . . ./ Tomorrow, perhaps,/ only the live fire of my verses/ will light your humiliated horizons). Maples Arce, Urbe, 18. 35. Jorge Luis Borges, “Ultraismo,” in Schopf, Del vanguardismo a la antipoesia, 51. 36. “The rivers of blue shirts/ overflow the floodgates of the factories/ and the inciting trees/ manhandle their speeches on the sidewalk./ The strikers throw each other/ stones and insults/ and life is a tumultuous/ conversion toward the left.” Maples Arce, Urbe, 34–35. 37. Schopf, Del vanguardismo a la antipoesia, 16. 38. Schneider, El estridentismo México, 23. 39. “The landscapes dressed in yellow/ slept behind the panes of glass/ and the city, snatched away,/ has remained trembling in the cordages./ The applause is that rampart./ Dear God¡/ Don’t be afraid, it is the romantic wave of the multitudes./ Afterward, on the overflowing of silence,/ the Tarahumara night will grow./ Turn off your glassmakers./ Within the machinery of insomnia/ lechery, it is millions of eyes/ that are spread on the meat./ A metal bird/ has fixed its north toward a star.” Maples Arce, Urbe, 22–23. 40. “Here is my poem:/ Oh strong city/ and multiple/ all made of iron and steel./ The docks. The inner harbors./ The cranes./ And the sexual fever/ of the factories./ Metropolis:/ Tramway escorts/ moving through subversivist streets./ The window displays steal the sidewalks/ and the sun, robs the avenue./ At the day’s margins/ taxed by telephone poles/ momentary landscapes march/ through structures of elevator shafts.” Maples Arce, Urbe, 15–16. 41. Beatríz Sarlo, Una modernidad periférica: Buenos Aires 1920 y 1930 (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Nueva Visión, 1988), 26. 42. “The first Estridentista exposition took place in the Cafe de Nádie [Cafe of No One] one afternoon illuminated by posters. Five thousand tickets sold with ten days remaining guaranteed a success; underground, the politicians prepared their cheaply bought cheers in shamelessness in order to attack the exhibitors; reality frustrated their labors; they became colorless in front of the multitude that filled with hurrahs the presenters and applauded the irreverence of the introducers of the shouts. . . . Exhibited were paintings held to the colorist commotion, of Ramón Alva de la Canal, Leopoldo Méndez, Jean Charlot, Rafael Sala, Emilio Amero, Fermín Revueltas, Xavier González, Máximo Pacheco. The Estridentista masks where Germán Cueto unhinged the gesture of the precursors, exaggerating their formidable character over their reactionary wall. The sculptures by Ruiz, sealed in precision, architectural in their force, were a compilation of

the synthesis of all of humans’ unmovable and unexpected complexes. And afterward, under the humorist sanction of tea, fertile and forewarning poems were read: Maples Arce, list arzubide [sic], Salvador Gallardo, Luis Felipe Mena, a chapter of ‘el cafe de nadie,’ by Arqueles vela [sic], everything by the sharp silence of compression.” List Arzubide, El movimiento estridentista, 62–64. 43. “The paintings were an incredible show of our pace. Factories raising the flaming arm of their chimneys, assertive and robust in their walls of sweat and effort presented by Fermín Revueltas. Colors looking out the window in an intentional form, medullary balanced, that Ramón Alva de la Canal exhibited. Disaggregated serenity of line that was then the formal investigations of Jean Charlot. Musculatures of working verticals, anxiety of making into drawing the graphic of the moment, which has been the center of restlessness of Leopoldo Méndez.” Germán List Arzubide, El movimiento estridentista, cited in Schneider, El estridentismo, o Una literatura, 86. This citation, according to Schneider, is from List Arzubide’s book. During the course of my research, however, I was unable to locate its exact source. 44. Schneider, El estridentismo México, 35. 45. “[We declare] the possibility of a new art, young, enthusiastic and alive, structured in nine dimensions, superimposing our loud spiritual unease to the regressive force of the coordinated madhouses with police rules, Parisian importations to be complained at and handlebar pianos at dawn.” “Manifiesto estridentista número 2,” reprinted in Schneider, El estridentismo México, 49. 46. An adherence to realist modes of representation, they believed, was essential to institute radical changes. In contrast to this, the Russian avant-garde employed an abstract, nonfigurative language, seen in the paintings by Malevich and El Lissitzky, that was criticized as elitist and not directed toward the masses. 47. Beatríz Sarlo, La imaginación técnica: Sueños modernos de la cultura argentina (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Nueva Visión, 1992), 13. 48. “I placed my ticket/ toward all of the horizons/ and the city scattered through the telegraph/ we felt with our arms/ the wall of the tunnels . . . / the streets boxed in by silence/ broke with shadow/ our ancient steps/ the silence widened the avenues/ with its sleepless voices.” List Arzubide, “I. Los Pasos Divergentes,” in El viajero en el vértice (1926), reprinted in Schneider, El estridentismo México, 254. 49. Manuel Maples Arce, Incitaciones y valoraciones (Mexico City: Cuadernos Americanos, 1956), 26–27. 50. Maples Arce, Incitaciones y Valoraciones, 113. 51. Among the old Estridentista members

of the Grupo ¡30-30! on the editorial board and/ or published in their official publication we find Ramón Alva de la Canal, Fermín Revueltas, Tina Modotti, and Manuel Maples Arce. For a list of official members see ¡30-30! Organo de los Pintores de México, no. 3 (September–October 1928), 13. Their first major printed broadsheet protest included the names of Rivera, Maples Arce, Alva de la Canal, List Arzubide, Revueltas, and Leopoldo Méndez—all associated, as we have seen, with Estridentismo. Protesta de los artistas revolucionarios de México, November 7, 1928, reprinted in Laura González Matute, Carmen Gómez del Campo, and Leticia Torres Carmona, ¡30-30! contra la Academia de Pintura, 1928 (Mexico City: inba, 1993). 52. The group posted eight printed broadsheet manifestos and protests between July 1928 and January 1929. These are reprinted in González Matute, Gómez del Campo, and Torres Carmona, ¡30-30! contra la Academia de Pintura. 53. See, in particular, “Trayectoria,” ¡30-30! Organo de los Pintores de México, no. 1 (July 1928): 1–2. 54. Martí Casanovas, “Pastelería y arquitectura,” ¡30-30! Organo de los Pintores de México, no. 3 (September–October 1928): 8–9. 55. During their time in Jalapa the Estridentistas proposed and appropriated this stadium as an architectural symbol of the Revolution and of their theories. For them, the stadium stood as “an architecture representing the material strength of the Revolution and of the spiritual labor that erected it.” “Estadio de Jalapa,” Horizonte: Revista Mensual de Actividad Contemporanea 1, no. 8 (November 1926): 1. 56. Editing or publishing in Frente a Frente were former Estridentistas Leopoldo Méndez, Germán List Arzubide, Xavier Icaza, and Arqueles Vela.

notes to pages 76–90

chapter 3 1. Zeynep Çelik and Leila Kinney, “Ethnography and Exhibitionism at the Expositions Universelles,” Assemblage 13 (1990), 37. 2. Frantz Fanon, “On National Culture,” in his The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1968), 236. 3. Ibid., 211. 4. Seville: Spanish American Exposition 1929– 1930, pamphlet, official publication of the Spanish government; my italics. 5. The prominent placement of the Spanish royalty in this plaza symbolizes the continuing rule of the Spanish monarchy over the American continent. 6. Dialectically, however, it should be noted that the “Hispanic” style itself was not so much

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“indigenous” to Spain. As the diverse forms of the Spanish pavilions demonstrated, the style was the result and representation of the cosmopolitan history of that culture—melding the architectural traditions of the Moorish, the Gothic, Italian classicism, and various forms and vernacular traditions from throughout western Europe. The so-called normative colonial style used in most pavilions from the American continent was a result, as Vasconcelos stated, of the syncretism of the pre-Hispanic and colonizing cultures. I am grateful to Josh Comaroff for this observation. 7. Manuel Gamio, Forjando patria (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1960), 6; originally published 1916. 8. Ibid., 46. 9. Justino Fernández, Coatlícue, estética del arte indígena antiguo (Mexico City: Centro de Estudios Filosóficos, 1954), 74. 10. Gamio, Forjando patria, 52. 11. Ibid., 167; emphasis in original. 12. Ibid., 183; emphasis in original. 13. Nelly M. Robles García, Alfredo J. Moreira Quirós, and Marcelo L. Magadán, “Notas sobre el neoprehispánico en el arte y la ornamentación arquitectónica en México,” Cuadernos de Arquitectura Mesoamericana 9 (January 1987): 21–22. 14. Daniel Schávelzon attributes the pavilion to Charnay because of its many similarities to the drawings of Xochicalco that Charnay published in his Cités et ruines américaines (1863) and because Charnay was the Frenchman who had most carefully studied the pre-Hispanic sites at that time. Daniel Schávelzon, “El Pabellón Xochicalco en la Exposición International de París de 1867,” in La polémica del arte nacional en México 1850–1910, ed. Daniel Schávelzon (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1988), 165–171. 15. Xavier Moyssén, “El nacionalismo y la arquitectura,” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, no. 55 (1986): 113. 16. In ibid., 116. 17. In ibid., 117. 18. Luis Salazar, “La arqueología y la arquitectura,” in La polémica del arte nacional, ed. Schávelzon, 151. 19. Tepoztecaconetzin Calquetzani (Francisco Rodríguez), “Bellas artes: Arquitectura y arqueología mexicanas,” in La polémica del arte nacional, ed. Schávelzon, 152–155. 20. Amábilis’ pavilion for this fair was never built, which, in speculation, might be the reason he was awarded the commission for the Seville pavilion. The pavilion for the 1925 fair was to follow the architectural traditions of the ancient Maya and Toltec, fulfilling the requirements of grandiosity and of national art. “El gobierno fed-

eral tendrá uno de los más suntuosos pabellones en la feria internacional,” El Universal, August 23, 1925, section 1, page 4. 21. For more on Amábilis’ life see Juan Antonio Siller, “Semblanza: Manuel Amábilis (1883–1966),” Cuadernos de Arquitectura Mesoamericana 9 (January 1987): 95–96; Moyssén, “El nacionalismo y la arquitectura,” 122n; Israel Katzman, Arquitectura del siglo XIX en México (Mexico City: Trillas, 1993), 340; Encyclopedia yucatanese (Mexico City: Edición Oficial del Gobierno de Yucatán, 1944), 4:445–448. 22. The other entries consisted of a doctoral thesis on Peruvian archeology by Luis A. Pardo; a project of adapting pre-Hispanic architecture to a modern monument by Manuel Torres Armengol; an anonymous entry for a study of the preHispanic architecture and its variations in several American countries; an anonymous entry for a study of the pre-Hispanic architecture in Mexico that could still be found in its primitive state; and a study of the pre-Hispanic architecture of Mexico with a brief commentary on the racial similarities with the people of Atlantis by Antonio Vidal Isern. For more detailed descriptions of these, as well as Amábilis’ and Marquina’s entries see Juan Moya, “Dictámenes aprobados y acuerdos tomados por la Real Academia en el cuarto trimestre de 1930,” Boletin de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, no. 96 (Second Season, December 31, 1930), reprinted in La arquitectura precolombina de México, Manuel Amábilis (Mexico City: Editorial Orion, 1956), 11–20. 23. Ibid., 14. 24. Juan O’Gorman similarly opposed what he called “academic architecture” for being too removed from the people, as it was only created for the bourgeoisie. His solution was a functionalist architecture intended to serve the people through its efficiency, low cost, and self-referentiality. See Juan O’Gorman, “Conferencia en la Sociedad de Arquitectos Mexicanos—Octubre 1933,” in Pláticas sobre Arquitectura (Mexico City: inba, 2001); originally published 1934. 25. Amábilis, La arquitectura precolombina, 30–31. 26. Ibid., 33. 27. Ibid., 37. 28. Ignatius Donnelly, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1882); Augustus Le Plongeon, Queen Móo and The Egyptian Sphinx (New York: J. J. Little, 1896); Lewis Spence, Atlantis in America (London: Enrest Benn, 1925). See also Louis Germain, “L’Hypothese des Atlantes et les arts primitifs des deux Ameriques et de l’Egypte,” Les Etudes Atlantéennes, nos. 8–9 (February–March 1929); and Cyrus Field Willard, “Atlantis and America,” Atlantis Quarterly 2, no. 1 (October 1933).

29. Robert Stacy-Judd, Atlantis: The Mother of Empires (Los Angeles: De Vorss, 1939). For a background on the interest in Atlantis during Stacy-Judd’s time see David Gebhard, Robert Stacy-Judd: Maya Architecture and the Creation of a New Style (Santa Barbara: Capra Press, 1993), 115–120; and Majorie I. Ingle, Mayan Revival Style (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 76–79. Amábilis continued to develop his thinking and investigations of Atlantis into the 1960s. Manuel Amábilis, Los atlantes de Yucatán (Mexico City: Orion, 1963). 30. Amábilis, La arquitectura precolombina, 38–67. W. Scott-Elliot, The Story of Atlantis and The Lost Lemuria (London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1930), 23; originally published 1896. 31. Other Atlantis scholars, most notably Lewis Spence, would compare and equate the decline of European civilization with the destruction of Atlantis. See Lewis Spence, Will Europe Follow Atlantis? (London: Rider, n.d.), 71–84, 128–177. 32. We also can find, manifested at the end of the nineteenth century and the turn of the twentieth century, a similar interest in proportioning systems and proportional structures. This interest is especially evident in research that related architecture to the Golden Mean, including studies by F. Macody Lund, E. Moessel, Theodor Cook, Jay Hambridge, Matila C. Ghyka (in Nom d’or), Le Corbusier (in Vers une architecture), and Doctor Geilen in “Mathematics and Architecture as the Basis for Western Culture.” 33. Amábilis, La arquitectura precolombina, 158. 34. Ibid., 83. 35. Ibid., 36–37. 36. See Chapter 4 of the present volume, “Against a New Architecture: Juan O’Gorman and the Disillusionment of Modernism.” 37. Manuel Amábilis, “Conferencia en la Sociedad de Arquitectos Mexicanos—November 9, 1933,” in Pláticas sobre Arquitectura, 5–8. 38. Ibid., 9. 39. Ibid., 12. 40. Ibid., 16. 41. Manuel Amábilis, Donde (Mexico City: Impresora E. Gómez, 1933), 7. 42. Ibid., 11. 43. Ibid., 12. 44. Ibid., 17–18. Also quoted in Siller, “Semblanza: Manuel Amábilis,” 95. 45. Amábilis, “Nuestra tarea,” in Donde, 115–120. The artistic sensibilities of the Mexican people preoccupied Amábilis in various ways. Suggestive of these preoccupations were his proposals for the Masonic rituals to attract more Mexican members: “We have not been able to awaken [the Mexican Mason’s] innate interest and admiration for the ‘beautiful’ aspects of our

rituals and symbols”; Manuel Amábilis, “Un nuevo programa de la Franc-Masonería,” Acción Masónica, no. 11 (1941): n.p. 46. Mysticism was “to be understood as part of modern philosophy that deals with spiritual life or the possibility of coordinating the internal harmony of man with that of the Universe, and of the knowledge of the true nexus that unites humans with the rest of the world as well as the use of this nexus in everyday activities.” Manuel Amábilis, Mística de la Revolución Mexicana (Mexico City: n.p., 1937), 10–11. 47. Ibid., 95–96. 48. Amábilis, La arquitectura precolombina, 69. 49. The entries were judged on April 30 and May 1, 1926, by members of the Sociedad de Arquitectos Mexicanos and representatives from the Department of Industry. The other finalists were Alberto Mendoza, third place; the team of Carlos Greenham, Luis Alvarado, Vicente Mendiola, fourth place; and Amábilis, fifth place; “El concurso para el Pabellón de Sevilla: Resultó premiado el anteproyecto del arquitecto señor Don Ignacio Marquina,” El Universal, May 2, 1926, section 1, page 1. For a more complete list of the projects and an analytical evaluation see Luis Prieto y Souza (as lps), “Los proyectos del concurso para el Pabellón Mexicano de la Exposición de Sevilla,” El Universal, May 9, 1926, section 3, page 2. 50. Luis Prieto y Souza, “La convocatoria para el concurso del Pabellón Mexicano en la feria de Sevilla,” El Universal, May 9, 1926, section 3, pages 2, 6. I was unable to locate the source of the original criticism; however, the response cited here describes the main points of that protest. I found further critique in “El Pabellón de México en Sevilla: Proyectos de los arquitectos,” El Arquitecto, Series 2 (April 1926). 51. Alfonso Pallares, in Excélsior, May 2, 1926, quoted in Enrique X. de Anda Alanís, La arquitectura de la Revolución Mexicana, 99. 52. Ibid., 100. 53. Alarife Blas Miya (Manuel Amábilis), “Concurso para el Pabellón en Sevilla,” El Universal, May 9, 1926, section 3, page 2. 54. Ibid., 6. 55. “El Pabellón de México en la Exposición Iberoamericana en Sevilla y los concursos abiertos por la Secretaría de Industria, Comercio y Trabajo,” El Arquitecto, 2, no. 9 (May–June 1926): 2. 56. The second jury consisted of a representative from the Department of Exploration and Geological Studies, a representative of the Department of Industry, a representative of sam, a representative of the Construction Workers, Day Laborers, Stone Cutters, and Painters Union, and a representative of the National Fine Arts School. “Los proyectos para el Pabellón en Sevilla: El concurso arquitectónico más importante celebrado en

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México,” El Universal, August 12, 1926, section 1, page 1. 57. Secretaría de Industria, Comercio y Trabajo, Exposición Iberoamericana de Sevilla, 1929: La participación de México (Mexico City: Talleres Gráficos Galas, 1928), 19. 58. Luis Prieto y Souza, “El arte representativo nacional,” El Universal, August 22, 1926, section 3, page 2. 59. Katzman, Arquitectura contemporánea mexicana, 82–83. 60. For a description and evaluation of the projects see Luis Prieto y Souza, “Al margen de los proyectos,” El Universal, August 22, 1926, section 3, pages 2–3. 61. Secretaría de Industria, Comercio y Trabajo, Exposición Iberoamericana de Sevilla, 19–21. 62. Amábilis, La arquitectura precolombina, 142. 63. Manuel Amábilis, El Pabellón de México en la Exposición Ibero-Americana de Sevilla (Mexico City: Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1929), figure 25. This statement also served as the introductory quotation in the book. 64. Ibid., 54. 65. Ibid., 75. 66. Ibid., 21–25. 67. Ibid., 22. 68. Ibid., 25. 69. This view was articulated by archeologist and historian Sylvanus Griswold Morley (1883– 1948), who considered the Maya the greatest communist civilization of the Americas. 70. See Gloria Videla de Rivero, Direcciones del vanguardismo hispanoamericano: Estudios sobre poesía de vanguardia en la decada del veinte (Mendoza, Argentina: Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, 1990), 1:219–225. 71. Amauta was a Quechua word for teacher, prophet, guide, wise person, or person with high moral authority and with abilities to govern. 72. José Francisco Paoli and Enrique Montalvo, El socialismo olvidado de Yucatán: Elementos para una reinterpretación de la Revolución Mexicana (Mexico City: Siglo xxi, 1977), 164. 73. Antonio Bustillos Carrillo clearly linked the socialist political trajectory from the Mayan rulers to the postrevolutionary governments, pointing particularly to the important role of the people of Yucatán in the Mexican Revolution and in the post-Revolution evolution of the country. Antonio Bustillos Carrillo, Los mayas ante la cultura y la Revolución de México (Mexico City: Editorial Turanzas del Valle, 1957). 74. Paoli and Montalvo, El socialismo olvidado, 91. 75. Juan Antonio Siller, “La presencia prehispánica en la arquitectura neo-maya de la

península de Yucatán,” Cuadernos de Arquitectura Mesoamericana 9 (January 1987): 60. 76. Encarnación Lemus López, Extremadura y América: La participación regional en la Exposición Ibero-Americana de 1929 (Mérida, Spain: Editorial Regional de Extremadura, 1991), 41. 77. The Spanish intentions can be most clearly seen in Primo de Rivera, “Manifiesto sobre la creación de uniones patrióticas en América,” quoted in Lemus López. Extremadura y América, 30. 78. Banco del Crédito Exterior de España and the president of the cabinet; quoted in Lemus López, Extremadura y América, 33. 79. Amábilis, El Pabellón de México, 27; emphasis in original. The term “in Mexican” is a language reference to Mexican Spanish. 80. Fanon, “On National Culture,” p. 236. 81. Their efforts are similar to those in Tristan Tzara’s poèmes nègres, which promised poetic regeneration while at the same time presupposing “a destruction of civilized literature and proper forms of discourse” through the literalist translations of aboriginal myths and chants; James Clifford, “Negrophilia,” in A New History of French Literature, ed. Denis Hollier (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 903. I am grateful to Benjamin Buchloh for the reference to this parallel exploration. 82. Leopoldo Tommasi López, “Nuestra arquitectura nacional,” Crisol, no. 34 (October 1931): 286–287. 83. Amábilis, El Pabellón de México, 75. 84. Ibid., end page.

chapter 4 1. Juan O’Gorman, “Autocrítica del Edificio Central de la Ciudad Universitaria” (1953), in La palabra de Juan O’Gorman: Selección de textos (Mexico City: unam, 1983), 163–164. 2. Juan O’Gorman, “Ensayo acerca de la arquitectura orgánica,” in La palabra de Juan O’Gorman, 156. 3. Juan O’Gorman, “Conferencia en la Sociedad de Arquitectos Mexicanos,” in Pláticas sobre Arquitectura, 30. 4. Juan Legarreta, a classmate of O’Gorman, successfully constructed various worker housing developments. These would be influential to the Union of Socialist Architects in its “Plan for the Worker’s City” of 1938. Alberto T. Arai, et al., “Proyecto de la Ciudad Obrera de México,” Arquitectura y Decoración, no. 11. (September 1938): 202–216; Unión de Arquitectos Socialistas, Proyecto de la Ciudad Obrera en México, D.F., Doctrina Socialista de la Arquitectura, por la Unión de Arquitectos Socialistas, vol. 7 (Mexico City: Congreso In-

ternacional de la Planificación y de la Habitación, 1938). 5. D[avid] Alfaro Siqueiros, “En el orden burgués reinante hay que buscar la causa de la decadencia arquitectónica contemporánea,” El Machete, first half of May 1924, n.p. 6. Ibid. It is difficult to precisely focus the first part of Siqueiro’s critique, given the strength of the nationalist impulse in the early part of the 1920s. In the second part of his critique, however, the work of Carlos Obregón Santacilia comes to mind, in particular his Centro Escolar Benito Juarez, which was built in concrete with very stylized neocolonial elements demanded by Vasconcelos. 7. Siqueiros, “En el orden burgués”; emphasis in original. 8. Quoted in Jesús S. Soto, “Arte y revolución,” Crisol, year 1, vol. 2, no. 12 (December 1929): 394. 9. Ibid., 395. 10. For a brief description of Ortiz Hernán and the literary movement with which he was affiliated historiographically (“proletariat literature”) see José Luis Martínez and Christopher Domínguez Michael, La literatura mexicana del siglo XX (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1995), 100–105. 11. Gustavo Ortiz Hernán, Chimeneas (Mexico City: Editorial México Nuevo, 1937), 11. 12. José Gómez Echeverría, “Nuestra moderna arquitectura,” El Arquitecto, no. 4 (December 1923): 10. 13. In defining the compositional strategies of his contemporaries, Gómez Echeverría described them as too analytic and therefore without feeling. What they needed was a “temperament that is oversaturated with the present living” so that they could work in the present. Ibid. 14. “Ahora más que nunca,” Tolteca, no. 17 (November 1930): 211. 15. “Nuestra meta,” El Arquitecto 2, no. 1 (October 1924): 2. 16. It is enough to compare this school building with Edmundo Zamudio’s Escuela Belisario Domínguez of the same period to gain an appreciation of its reduced ornamental program. Aesthetically, little is known about the dissemination of the work of either Gill or Loos in Mexico. It is very likely that Gill’s work in California, especially given a renewed interest in the colonial vernacular and the awareness of architectural production in California, was known in Mexico, although I did not find references to it in Mexican publications. On the importation of the “Californian style” see Leonor Cortina, “El neobarroco en la Ciudad de México y su relación con la arquitectura de California,” in El neobarroco en la Ciudad de México (Mexico City: Museo de San Carlos, 1993), 28–57; Susana Torre,

“En busca de una identidad regional: evolución de los estilos misionero y neocolonial hispano en California entre 1880 y 1930,” in Arquitectura neocolonial: América Latina, Caribe, Estados Unidos, ed. Aracy Amaral (São Paulo: Fundação Memorial da América Latina and Fondo Cultura Económica, 1994), 47–60. See also my discussion on the use of the neocolonial by José Vasconcelos in Chapter 1 of the present volume, “If Walls Could Talk.” 17. Alfonso Pallares (as “AP”), “La Revolución y la arquitectura,” El Arquitecto 2, no. 2 (February 1925): 9–10. 18. “Escuelas de concreto,” Cemento, no. 3 (March 1925): 3. 19. Cemento, no. 1 (January 1925). 20. Cemento, no. 21 (January 1928). 21. Katzman, Arquitectura contemporánea mexicana, 108. 22. The extent of this nonprofessional readership was made clear by the fact that between 1901 and 1932 there were only 132 titled architects and 538 titled civil engineers. For this information I have relied on Departamento de Estadística, Anuario 1930, season 2, no. 16 (Mexico City: Talleres Gráficos de la Secretaría de Agricultura y Fomento, 1932), Table 11, Section V, 215; and Secretaría de la Economía Nacional, Directoría General de Estadística, Anuario estadístico de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos 1939 (Mexico City: Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1941), Table 117, 224–225. 23. These included, for example, Hans Poelzig’s Design for a Skyscraper in Berlin and his design for the Festspielhaus in Salzburg; images from the Decorative Arts Exhibition of 1924, including Auguste Perret’s Theater and Robert Mallet-Stevens Concrete Trees; Erich Mendhelson’s Einstein Tower; images from the Weissenhof Siedlung, including an interior by J. J. P. Oud; and, most importantly, the work and thoughts of Le Corbusier. 24. “To be a good architect, after one graduates from school, one needs to continue studying from old and new books as well as from periodical publications.” “Arquitectura moderna mexicana,” Tolteca, no. 18 (March 1931): 236; emphasis in the original. 25. “La vida moderna,” Cemento, no. 23 (May 1928): 17. 26. Jesús Bracho, “La sencillez del arte moderno,” Cemento, no. 25 (August 1928): 16–17. 27. “‘La casa barata.’ Casa de concreto hecha en fábrica,” Cemento, no. 26 (November 1928). 28. Carlos Obregón Santacilia, “‘El Instituto de Higiene.’ Hermosa obra de concreto construída recientemente en la Ciudad de México,” Cemento, no. 20 (December 1926): 23; Bracho, “La sencillez del arte moderno,” 16.

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29. “Utilidad,” Tolteca, no. 16 (September 1930): 191. 30. Ibid. 31. “Ahora más que nunca,” 211. 32. Frank Lloyd Wright, “The Art and Craft of the Machine,” in Frank Lloyd Wright: Writings and Buildings (New York: New American Library, 1960), 71; originally published 1901. 33. “Arte a máquina,” Tolteca, no. 19 (May 1931): 266. 34. Ibid. 35. “Most importantly, the person who pays for the constructions will be economically benefited” if the architect does not imitate the ornamental qualities of the past; “¿Arquitectura o arqueología?” Tolteca, no. 20 (August 1931): 276–277. “Utilidad y complicidad,” Tolteca, no. 20 (August 1931): 277; “Arquitectura para todos,” Tolteca, no. 20 (August 1931): 281; “Juan O’Gorman,” Tolteca, no. 22 (March 1932): 328–330. 36. Editorial, Tolteca, no. 23 (May 1932): 341. These concerns, incidentally, also were articulated by Sigfried Giedion and published in the same issue of the magazine. Giedion’s text was obtained from AC 3 (Second Trimester 1931). 37. Editorial, Tolteca, 341; emphasis in original. 38. Ad, Tolteca, no. 22 (March 1932): 332–333. 39. Revista Mexicana de Ingeniería y Arquitectura 12, no. 1 (January 1934). See also Le Corbusier, “The Engineer’s Aesthetic and Architecture” and “Three Reminders to Architects: I. Mass,” in his Towards a New Architecture, trans. Frederick Etchells (New York: Dover, 1986), 13–31; originally published 1923. 40. Advertisement, Tolteca, no. 23 (May 1932): 373. 41. The advertisement showed a project by Jirasek for a concrete house as having the qualities of “Resistance, Longevity, Beauty. Some of the Principal Characteristics of Concrete Constructions.” The sponsor of the advertisement was the Committee to Propagate the Use of Portland Cement. Revista Mexicana de Ingeniería y Arquitectura 7, no. 4 (April 15, 1929); the image was taken originally from Moderne Bauformen 28, no. 2 (February 1928): 62. 42. Anita Brenner, Your Mexican Holiday: A Modern Guide (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1932), 247. 43. In Anita Brenner, Your Mexican Holiday: A Modern Guide (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1935), 53. 44. Katzman contends that some “traditionalists,” architects interested in reviving traditional Mexican architecture, no doubt understood the propagandistic imposition of modern architecture as imperialism (cultural, economic, or otherwise)

waged through the concrete manufacturers. Katzman, Arquitectura contemporánea mexicana, 82. 45. Ibid., 112. 46. Juan O’Gorman, Juan O’Gorman: Autobiografía, antología, juicios críticos y documentación exhaustiva sobre su obra, ed. Antonio Luna Arroyo (Mexico City: Cuadernos Populares de Pintura Mexicana Moderna, 1973), 93. 47. Ibid., 92. 48. I have relied on Juan O’Gorman’s autobiography and his own curriculum vitae for many of the dates and descriptions that follow. The documents are archived in Juan O’Gorman Papers, Biblioteca de las Artes, Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico City. 49. O’Gorman, Juan O’Gorman: Autobiografía, 90. See also “Entrevista con el arquitecto Juan O’Gorman el dia 10 de octubre de 1979,” in the issue Testimonios vivos: 20 arquitectos of Cuadernos de Arquitectura y Conservación del Patrimonio Artístico, nos. 15–16 (May–August 1981): 129. 50. Juan O’Gorman, Juan O’Gorman: Autobiografía, 97. 51. This building could be seen as influenced by Albert Pepper’s Edificio Woodrow (1922), which displayed similar treatment of its structural program and façades. However, Obregón Santacilia’s building, because of its large industrial window elements, had a more modern appearance. For a brief discussion of Pepper’s building see Katzman, Arquitectura contemporánea Mexicana, 101–102. 52. Carlos Obregón Santacilia, “Consideraciones sobre arquitectura moderna: El hastio de la curva,” Forma 3 (1927): 41. 53. Ramón Vargas Salguero, “La arquitectura de la Revolución Mexicana: Un enfoque social,” in México, 75 años de revolución: Educación, cultura y comunicación 4, no. 2 (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica and Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de las Revoluciones de México [inehrm], 1988), 456–458; Ramón Vargas Salguero, “Las reivindicaciones históricas en el funcionalismo socialista,” in Apuntes para la historia y crítica de la arquitectura mexicana del siglo XX: 1900–1980 (Mexico City: inba, 1982), 1:95. Vargas Salguero’s references to Pani come from Alberto J. Pani, La higiene en México (Mexico City: Imprenta de J. Ballesca, 1916). 54. Tony Garnier, Une cité industrielle. Etude pour la construction des villes, trans. Marguerite E. McGoldrick (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1989), 13–14. 55. Pani, La higiene en México, quoted in Ramón Vargas Salguero, Busqueda de una arquitectura moderna nacional, manuscript (N.p., n.d.), fn36. 56. It would be a misreading of history to assume that the utopian aspirations of form

became linked at this moment-–which I do not mean to imply. A quick glance through history and, in particular, through utopian architectural and urban proposals (such as Charles Fourier’s Phalansteries, 1829–1834) would show this not to be the case. Instead, the utopian association of forms to social change through these two authors showed, in my opinion, a prevalent line that was to be followed in Mexico. 57. O’Gorman, Juan O’Gorman: Autobiografía, 94. 58. “Juan O’Gorman,” Tolteca, no. 22 (March 1932): 328–330. 59. The house appeared in the chronology of O’Gorman’s work done by Marisol Aja, “Juan O’Gorman,” in Apuntes para la historia y crítica de la arquitectura mexicana del siglo XX: 1900–1980, vol. 2 (Mexico City: INBA, 1982), 21. 60. O’Gorman, Juan O’Gorman: Autobiografía, 100. 61. Ibid., 102. 62. Wolfe, Diego Rivera: His Life and Times, 282–283. 63. Adolf Behne, The Modern Functional Building, trans. Michael Robinson (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute of the History of Art and the Humanities, 1996), 137–146. 64. See, for example, Enrique X. de Anda Alanís, Le Corbusier y su influencia en la arquitectura moderna mexicana: Exposición fotográfica (Mexico City: inba, 1987). 65. “Juan O’Gorman,” Tolteca, 328–330. 66. “Convocatoria para concurso artistico,” Tolteca, no. 20 (August 1931). Tolteca published the entries and winners in two issues: no. 21 was dedicated to the photography entries, and no. 22, where the article on O’Gorman can be found, was dedicated to the drawing and painting entries. 67. “Juan O’Gorman,” Tolteca, 328. 68. Ibid., 329; emphasis in the original. 69. Ibid., 330; emphasis in the original. 70. It should be remembered that Juan Legarreta was also producing functionalist architecture for the urban proletariat, as attested by his projects for workers’ housing and developments. A good study of Legarreta’s work and his development of a socially conscious architecture has yet to be published. 71. In comparison, the building to serve as headquarters for the Department of Education during Vasconcelos’ tenure was built in 1922–1923 at a cost of 800,000 pesos. It should be noted that Presidential Decree No. 794 of May 24, 1932, restricted expenditures by federal agencies without the approval of the Treasury Department. File 3795 in the Archivo Histórico de la Secretaría de Educación Pública, Mexico City (hereafter ahsep).

72. For a detailed description and critical evaluation of the buildings constructed and repaired by the Department of Education see Juan Legarreta, “De la crítica de arquitectura, o las 24 nuevas escuelas primarias del Distrito Federal,” El Arquitecto, series 2, vol. 1 (November–December 1933): 10–13; his article is reprinted in part as “Escuelas hechas por la Secretaría de Educación Pública, con la colaboración económica del Departamento Central, en 1932” in Ida Rodríguez Prampolini’s Juan O’Gorman: Arquitecto y pintor (Mexico City: unam, 1982), 31–33. 73. Alonso Aguilar M. and Manuel Mesa, “Preámbulo: Dentro del gobierno,” in Narciso Bassols: Obras, ed. Alonso Aguilar M. and Manuel Mesa (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1964), 115. 74. Narciso Bassols, “Nuevo consejo de educación primaria del Distrito Federal,” in Narciso Bassols: Obras, 135–140. 75. Jesús Silva Herzog, introduction to Narciso Bassols: Obras, xxvi. Evidence of the enormous importance of this renovation and how it materialized can be found, for one example, through a review of the texts that were purchased after Bassols’ tenure; the texts of general subjects were written by Russians, translated into Spanish, and sold to the sep by none other than the prominent Marxist politician and intellectual Vicente Lombardo Toledano. File 3807/10, ahsep. 76. Narciso Bassols, “La educación pública en 1932,” in Narciso Bassols: Obras, 123–125. 77. For specific descriptions of O’Gorman’s designs, the materials used, and the needs the buildings were intended to fill see Rodríguez Prampolini, Juan O’Gorman: Arquitecto y pintor, 30–31; Legarreta, “De la crítica de arquitectura”; Aja, “Juan O’Gorman,” 25–35. 78. Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State,” 146. 79. If we compare, for example, the salary of Diego Rivera in 1923 with the salary of Máximo Pacheco for the fresco murals for the Lauro Aguirre Kindergarten in 1934 we can note the difference: fifty pesos per square meter in 1923 versus seven pesos per square meter in 1934. For the salary of Rivera during Vasconcelos’ tenure see Wolfe, Diego Rivera: His Life and Times, 218–219. For the salary of Máximo Pacheco and the standard payment for murals painted during the Bassols/O’Gorman period see file 3806/39, ahsep. 80. See, for example, “Notas para un estudio de arquitectura en México,” Frente a Frente 3 (May 1935): 7, 16; “El Congreso de Intelectuales de 1937,” Línea 21 (May–June 1976): 196–197, 201. 81. Rafael López Rangel, Orígenes de la arqui-

notes to pages 135–151

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tectura técnica en México, 1920–1933: La Escuela Superior de Construcción (Mexico City: unam, 1984), 65–76; O’Gorman, Juan O’Gorman: Autobiografía, 120–121. 82. In the early 1930s El Arquitecto began its second season as the “official mouthpiece of the sam” under the direction of Alfonso Pallares. 83. “La primera convención de arquitectos mexicanos: Consideraciones gremiales y crónica de esta notable asamblea gremial,” El Arquitecto, series 2, vol. 2 (February 1932): 1; my emphasis added. 84. “La Escuela Técnica de Constructores: Cual es el criterio de la Sociedad de Arquitectos Mexicanos,” El Arquitecto, series 2, vol. 2 (March 1932): 1–12. 85. Carlos Obregón Santacilia, “Editorial por el presidente de la S.A.M.,” El Arquitecto, series 2, vol. 2 (August 1933): 11. The position he articulated in this editorial was similar to the one he had expressed in 1927 for a survey as to what direction Mexican architecture should follow. In that survey he argued that architecture should become more international through the evolution of its traditional forms. “Encuesta,” Forma 3 (1927): 15. 86. Carlos Obregón Santacilia, editorial, El Arquitecto, series 2, vol. 2 (November–December 1933): 7. 87. Ibid. 88. Alfonso Pallares, “Nota preliminar,” in Pláticas sobre Arquitectura, 1. 89. Manuel Amábilis’ intervention in this conference is described in the previous chapter, “Colonizing the Colonizer.” 90. Juan O’Gorman, “Conferencia en la Sociedad,” 22. 91. This was an obvious reference to Le Corbusier’s points on the aesthetics of the engineer and their development of pure geometrical forms. See “Three Reminders to Architects: I. Mass,” in Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, 25–31. 92. Rafael López Rangel and Ramón Vargas Salguero, “Crisis actual de la arquitectura lationoamericana,” in América Latina en su arquitectura, ed. Roberto Serge (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1975), 198. 93. O’Gorman, “Conferencia en la Sociedad,” 18. 94. Ibid., 19. 95. Ibid., 20. 96. Georg Simmel, “Metropolis and Mental Life,” 297. 97. O’Gorman, “Conferencia en la Sociedad,” 24. 98. Ibid., 23. 99. O’Gorman’s radical acceptance of the logic of function and the principal tenets of his radi-

cal functionalism echoed the functionalist theories of his German contemporary Hannes Meyer. The similarity between the two architects’ theories and positions was exceptional. For example, Meyer understood all industrial products as “the product of a formula: function multiplied by economics. They are not works of art. Art is composition, purpose is function. . . . Building is a technical not an aesthetic process, artistic composition does not rhyme with the function of a house matched to its purpose.” Hannes Meyer, “The New World, 1926,” in Claude Schnaidt, Hannes Meyer: Buildings, Projects, and Writings (New York: Architectural Book Publishing, 1965), 93. In the same book see Hannes Meyer, “Building, 1928,” 95–99. 100. O’Gorman, “Conferencia en la Sociedad,” 24–25. 101. Ibid., 25. 102. O’Gorman’s reference to Spengler was direct; he cited Spengler not only by name but also by referring to his theories and their impact on architectural discourse. O’Gorman’s use of the word “decadence,” therefore, should be read according to Spengler’s propositions. O’Gorman, “Conferencia en la Sociedad,” 23, 25. 103. Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson argued the same point about functionalism in 1932: “One may therefore refuse to admit that intentionally functionalist building is quite without a potential aesthetic element. . . . European functionalists follow, rather than go against, the principles of the general contemporary style” (52). For them, American functionalists precisely understood the “international style” of that production and used design as a “commodity-like ornament.” The eventual change in functionalism was seen in its stylized use: “While the functionalists continue to deny that the aesthetic element in architecture is important, more and more buildings are produced in which these principles are wisely and effectively followed without sacrifice of functional buildings” (54). Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, “Functionalism,” in their book, The International Style (New York: W. W. Norton, 1966), 50–54; originally published 1932. 104. O’Gorman, “Conferencia en la Sociedad,” 28. 105. Ibid., 29–30. 106. Ibid., 30. 107. Ibid., 31. 108. Ibid. 109. Ibid., 18–19. Manfredo Tafuri wrote that in the laissez-faire city, “absolute liberty is granted to the single architectural fragment, but this fragment is situated in a context that it does not condition formally: the secondary elements of the city are given maximum articulation, while the laws governing the whole are rigidly maintained.

Thus urban planning and architecture are finally separated. . . . [A]rchitecture is free to explore the most diverse expressions. The urban system assumes only the task of stating the degree to which figurative liberty may be exploited or, better, guaranteeing, with its formal rigidity, a stable reference of dimension.” Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia, 42. 110. O’Gorman, “Conferencia en la Sociedad,” 30. 111. Ibid., 25. 112. This sudden change has been examined by several writers: Rodríguez Prampolini in Juan O’Gorman: Arquitecto y pintor does not deal with the reasons at all but rather discusses how O’Gorman came to embrace Frank Lloyd Wright’s version of organic architecture in 1949 (35, 44); Clive Bamford Smith in Builders in the Sun: Five Mexican Architects (New York: Architectural Book Publishing, 1967) describes the shift by simply quoting O’Gorman’s distaste with the “business” aspects of architecture (16); Marisol Aja in “Juan O’Gorman” (132) and Edward Burian in “The Architecture of Juan O’Gorman: Dichotomy and Drift” (140), in Modernity and the Architecture of Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997) rely on the two previous sources to explain that shift, as well as on O’Gorman’s later statements that he wanted to be more in control of the aesthetic aspects of his architecture. These interpretations stem from O’Gorman’s own words, such as in Juan O’Gorman: Autobiografía (125) and in an interview in 1979 titled “‘Abandoné la arquitectura porque se me convirtió en un Frankenstein’: Juan O’Gorman” (I Abandoned Architecture Because It Became for Me a Frankenstein) in La palabra de Juan O’Gorman (214), in which he states that it was precisely the business aspect of architecture that caused him to abandon it as a profession. 113. Brenner, Your Mexican Holiday (1935), 265. 114. A critical evaluation of Barragán’s functionalist work still remains to be done. Works that have examined this period of his oeuvre, although in an extremely cursory manner, include Enrique X. de Anda Alanís, Luis Barragán: Clásico del silencio (Bogota: Escala, 1989); Raúl Rispa, ed., Barragán: The Complete Works (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996); and Esther Born, The New Architecture in Mexico (New York: Architecture Record, 1937). 115. O’Gorman, Juan O’Gorman: Autobiografía, 124; “Juan O’Gorman: Dos de sus obras,” Arquitectura y Decoración, no. 3 (October 1937): 57–61. 116. “El Congreso de Intelectuales de 1937,” 201. This was obviously referring to Legarreta’s intervention for the Pláticas sobre Arquitectura conference.

117. In the congress the members of the artistic gathering stated their opposition to any art that was produced for and by the bourgeoisie. Ibid. 118. Juan O’Gorman, “Arquitectura técnica versus arquitectura tradicionalista,” Edificación, no. 3 (May–June 1935), 10; emphasis in original. 119. Ibid., 15. One can compare this statement with the epigraph from Marx at the beginning of the section “Functionalist Architecture in Mexico” in this chapter. 120. O’Gorman, “Arquitectura técnica,” 15; emphasis in original. 121. O’Gorman’s rethinking of the housing production by this American company makes this essay, I believe, a follow-up and a more demystifying analysis of that work. Juan O’Gorman, “Arquitectura capitalista y arquitectura socialista,” Edificación, no. 1 (November–December 1935 and January–February 1936 double issue): 15. 122. In a footnote to the article, Manuel A. de Anda, editor of the magazine, attempted to abate the devastating critique that O’Gorman would wage against functionalism: “Although this article does not deal with issues that are of a strict architectural nature but [rather] with social issues that reflect its author’s personal feelings, we publish it in virtue of what it can offer from the point of view of functionalist architecture.” In O’Gorman, “Arquitectura capitalista,” 11. 123. Ibid., 14. 124. Ibid., 15. 125. Ibid., 11–17. Current critical Mexican historiography has “reread” the social responses to the Revolution by the state as part of the ideological plan of the bourgeoisie to reproduce and advance the conditions of capitalism in Mexico. These same historians have also read the association of the intelligentsia to these social responses as an act of “false consciousness.” See for example the work of Arnaldo Córdova, Ramón Vargas Salguero, and Rafael López Rangel. 126. O’Gorman, “Arquitectura capitalista,” 16. 127. Henry Ford, My Life and Work (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1922), 113. 128. O’Gorman, Juan O’Gorman: Autobiografía, 102. 129. “Doppelwohnhaus Zollinger (1929) Colonia del Valle, Mexico,” in Hans Schmidt 1893–1972: Architekt in Basel, Moskau, Berlin-Ost, ed. Ursula Suter (Zurich: gta Verlag, 1993), 200–201, 406. 130. “Ecole a Amsterdam,” Les Ecoles à l’Etranger: L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, no. 2 (March 1933): 83. See also Jan Molema, Jan Duiker (Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili, 1989), 130–131. 131. “Altersheim,” Das Neue Frankfurt, nos. 4–5

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(April–May 1930): 94; reprinted in Giorgio Grassi, “Das Neue Frankfurt” e L’Architettura della Nuova Francoforte (Bari: Dedalo Libri, 1975), 227, 252. 132. Theodor Adorno, “Functionalism Today,” Oppositions 17 (Summer 1979): 32–33; Stanford Anderson, “The Fiction of Function,” Assemblage 2 (February 1987): 19–31. 133. Adorno, “Functionalism Today,” 35. 134. Ibid., 34. Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares articulate something similar in “Eclosiona un arte,” in Crónicas de Bustos Domecq (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1963), 73–78. 135. The context was a country that had an illiteracy rate of 67 percent in 1930. James W. Wilkie, The Mexican Revolution: Federal Expenditure and Social Change since 1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), Table 9-1, 208–209. 136. Olga Sáenz, “Entrevista” in La palabra de Juan O’Gorman, 20.

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1. Juan O’Gorman’s painting La Ciudad de México depicts the central area of Mexico City—the political center of modern Mexico and the center of what used to be the Aztec city of Tenochtitlán—as seen from its western edge. In the painting a construction worker holds one of the earliest maps of Tenochtitlán. Although the painting is dated 1942, Ana Isabel Pérez Gavilán dates its completion to 1949—in the middle of the “urban, plastic, and demographic development that would take on an accelerated rhythm during Miguel Alemán’s six-year presidential term from 1946 [to] 1952,” Ana Isabel Pérez Gavilán, “Utopia y realidad: La ciudad en la plástica (1902–1949),” in Modernidad y modernización en el arte mexicano: 1920–1960 (Mexico City: inba, 1991), 106. Although the painting’s true date and O’Gorman’s intentions are unclear, it could have been produced for a competition held by the Excelsior newspaper in 1948 in which he won first prize. O’Gorman, Juan O’Gorman: Autobiografía, 146. 2. Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language (New York: Pantheon, 1972), 7. 3. Noé Jitrik, Historia de una mirada: El signo de la cruz en las escrituras de Colón (Mexico City: Ediciones del Equilibrista, 1992), 10–11. 4. Quoted in Córdova, La ideología de la Revolución, 291. 5. This included the provisional presidency of Emilio Portes Gil, who assumed office after the assassination of President-elect Obregón, and the presidencies of Pascual Ortiz Rubio and Abelardo Rodríguez.

6. Plutarco Elías Calles, Informe de gobierno, septiembre 1, 1928, quoted in Crónica del poder: En los recuerdos de un político en el México revolucionario, Luis L. León (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987), 277. 7. Córdova, La ideología de la Revolución, 310. 8. Héctor Aguilar Carmín and Lorenzo Meyer, In the Shadow of the Mexican Revolution: Contemporary Mexican History, 1910–1989, trans. Luis Alberto Fierro (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), 110. 9. For a contemporary Vasconcelista account of this electoral campaign written between 1929 and 1931 see Antonieta Rivas Mercado, La campaña de Vasconcelos, ed. L. M. Schneider (Mexico City: Editorial Oasis, 1981). o 10. Vicente Lombardo Toledano, “El 19 aniversario de la Revolución,” in Vicente Lombardo Toledano: La Revolución Mexicana, 1921–1967, ed. Gastón García Cantú, vol. 1 (Mexico City: inehrm, 1988), 21; originally published in Excelsior, November 21, 1929. 11. Ibid., 23. 12. Vicente Lombardo Toledano, “El peligro de un neo-porfirismo con el pretexto de la reconstrucción nacional,” in Vicente Lombardo Toledano: La Revolución Mexicana, 30; originally published in Excélsior, February 12, 1930. 13. Lombardo Toledano’s most pointed criticism against the pnr was expressed at a meeting of the Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers (Confederación Regional de Obreros Mexicanos, crom) in September 1932. Lombardo Toledano, “La bancarrota de la Revolución,” in Vicente Lombardo Toledano: La Revolución Mexicana, 49–59; originally published in Revista crom, October 1, 1932. 14. Lorenzo Meyer, Rafael Segovia, and Alejandra Lajous, “Los inicios de la institucionalización: 1928–1934,” in Historia de la Revolución Mexicana, vol. 12 (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1978), 167–168. 15. Carlos Obregón Santacilia, El Monumento a la Revolucíon: Simbolismo e historia (Mexico City: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1960), 36. 16. Angel Peimbert, “Las obras del Palacio Legislativo Federal,” manuscript (February 14, 1933), 2; Fondo Abelardo Rodríguez, Archivo General de la Nación (hereafter cited as ar-agn), file 017/44; originally published in El Observador, May 3, 1925. 17. Horacio Silva, “Monumento a la Revolución. 28 años: $4,000.000,” Mas 1, no. 2 (January 22, 1938): n.p. 18. Little has been written on this project or Loos’ impetus for designing it. It is unclear at this point whether a competition was held for the design of a town hall for Mexico City. Besides two

initial design sketches, no other information was available on the project. See Ludwig Münz and Gustav Künsler, Der Architekt Adolf Loos (Vienna: A. Schroll, 1964), 117, Figure 142 (incorrectly labeled as a sketch for Grand Hotel Babylon project); Benedetto Gravagnuolo, Adolf Loos (Milan: Idea Books Edizioni, 1982), 179; Arts Council, The Architecture of Adolf Loos (London: Arts Council, 1985), 56–58; Udo Kultermann, “Architectural Drawings: Historical Aspects and Criteria of Quality,” Drawing 9, no. 4 (November–December 1987): 74–76. 19. Peimbert, “Las obras del Palacio Legislativo Federal,” 2. 20. Salvador Villaseñor, “La Catedral del Trabajo debe surgir del Palacio Legislativo,” February 14, 1933, 2; ar-agn File 017/44; originally published in El Observador, May 21, 1925. 21. Silva, “Monumento a la Revolución,” n.p. 22. Serge Fauchereau, Les peintres révolutionnaires mexicains (Paris: Editions Messidor, 1985), 50–51. 23. For Fauchereau, Cueto’s proposal represented broader Latin American ideals and archetypes—similar to those explored by the Uruguayan Joaquín Torres-García, with whom Cueto was associated in Paris through the Cercle et Carré constructivist group—such as a “solar disk, the millenary emblem of Central American civilizations.” Serge Fauchereau, Germán Cueto (Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2004), 59. 24. Obregón Santacilia, El Monumento a la Revolucíon, 35–36. 25. Plutarco Elías Calles and Alberto J. Pani, “Iniciativa para la construcción de un Monumento a la Revolución, presentada al C. Presidente de la República por los C. C. Gral. don Plutarco Elías Calles e Ing. don Alberto J. Pani,” January 15, 1933, 5; file 017/44, ar-agn. These documents also were published by the Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público as El Monumento a la Revolución: Textos de la iniciativa presentada al ciudadano Presidente de la República por los ciudadanos Gral. Plutarco Elías Calles e Ing. Alberto J. Pani y del acuerdo presidencial recaido sobre la misma (Mexico City: Editorial Cvltvra, 1933). 26. Calles and Pani, “Iniciativa para la construcción,” 6–7. 27. Justo Sierra, Obras completas XII: Evolución política del pueblo mexicano (Mexico City: unam, 1991), 251–252; originally published 1900–1902. I am grateful to Ramón Vargas Salguero for this reference. 28. As part of the promotion of the monument, other references included well-known foreign examples: the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Statue of Liberty in New York; Pablo Quiroga, Sec-

retaría de Marina y Guerra: Circular 1427, January 23, 1934; file 017/44-1, ar-agn, 1. 29. Calles and Pani, “Iniciativa para la construcción,” 7; emphasis in the original. 30. Ibid., 8–9; emphasis in the original. The emphasized statement, it should be noted, was to be included on the monument itself. See Figure 5.7 in this chapter. 31. Abelardo Rodríguez, Acuerdo, January 25, 1933, 2; file 017/44, ar-agn. 32. Agrupación de Revolucionarios de 1910, letter and memorandum to Abelardo Rodríguez, June 5, 1933; file 017/44-5, ar-agn. 33. See, for example, the letter from Diego Aguilar, representative of the campesinos of Tlaquilzinapa, Guerrero, to Abelardo Rodríguez, March 7, 1934; file 017/44-1, ar-agn. 34. On October 14, 1933, some states along the Gulf of Mexico suffered major losses due to hurricanes and floods. Many of the contributors to the monument diverted their donations to help those in need after that disaster. Pablo Quiroga, Secretaría de Marina y Guerra, 2. 35. Obregón Santacilia, El Monumento a la Revolucíon, 38. 36. Obregón Santacilia, “La Revolución Mexicana y la arquitectura,” 200. 37. Carlos Obregón Santacilia, El maquinismo, la vida y la arquitectura (Mexico City: Letras de México, 1939), 9. 38. Ibid., 46. 39. Ibid., 81. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid., 62. 42. Ibid., 55. 43. Ibid., 40. 44. Meyer, Segovia, and Lajous, “Los inicios de la institucionalización,” 22. 45. “We submit for your esteemed consideration the perspective view of the project that closely reflects the ideas contained in the present initiative which has been prepared for us the Architect don Carlos Obregón Santacilia.” Calles and Pani, “Iniciativa para la construcción,” 9. 46. Obregón Santacilia, El Monumento a la Revolucíon, 50. 47. In addition to an image of the electric escalators in Howe and Lescaze’s psfs Building in Philadelphia (1929), Obregón Santacilia used a photograph in the book of the sculptures by Oliverio Martínez for the Monument to the Revolution as indicative of the “mechanization of art and architecture.” Obregón Santacilia, El maquinismo, la vida y la arquitectura, 24–26. 48. Obregón Santacilia, El Monumento a la Revolucíon, 50. 49. Ibid., 62.

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50. “The Monument without equal / to the great Revolution / has changed its mission. / It is now an advertising kiosk . . . / For those who follow our path / in Paris it would be famous / a glowing advertisement / on the Arc of the Star.” José Elizondo quoted in Obregón Santacilia, El Monumento a la Revolucíon, 69. The criticism that Horacio Silva directed toward the monument concluded in a similar way: “The Monument to the Revolution has been used to hatch in its surroundings, like a broody hen, an abundance of white stands selling orange juice and Guadalajaran earthenware.” Silva, “Monumento a la Revolución,” n.p. 51. For anecdotes and a brief history of the area of La Bombilla see Ernesto Vázquez Lugo, Sucedió en San Angel: Viñetas históricas (Mexico City: edamex, 1986), especially 69–72. 52. Departamento del Distrito Federal, Monumento al General Álvaro Obregón. Homenaje nacional en el lugar de su sacrificio (proyecto) (Mexico City: N.p., 1934), n.p. 53. Fauchereau, Germán Cueto, 73. This sculpture could have been done by Ignacio Asúnsolo or proposed for him. Asúnsolo would create the sculptural work for the final monument. It should be recalled that Cueto was Asúnsolo’s assistant when the latter was producing sculptures for José Vasconcelos’ sep headquarters building. 54. Departamento del Distrito Federal, Monumento al General Álvaro Obregón, n.p. 55. Fondo Lázaro Cárdenas, file 111/104, agn. 56. Fermín Revueltas, competition statement letter, January 31, 1935, quoted in Carla Zurián, Fermín Revueltas: Constructor de espacios (Mexico City: inba, 2002), 101. 57. Raquel Tibol, “Ignacio Asúnsolo: Simpatías, afinidades y estilo,” in Ignacio Asúnsolo escultor 1890–1965: Exposición antológica (Mexico City: Museo Nacional de Arte, inba, 1985), 28. 58. Enrique Aragón Echeagaray and Ignacio Asúnsolo, “La memoria descriptiva del proyecto,” in Monumento al General Álvaro Obregón, Departamento del Distrito Federal, n.p. 59. Enrique Aragón Echeagaray, Monumento a Obregón en “La Bombilla,” México, D.F.: Juicios Críticos, 1934–1935 (Mexico City: Imprenta Mundial, 1935). 60. Excélsior, July 20, 1935, and El Universal, August 28, 1935, quoted in Tibol, “Ignacio Asúnsolo,” 30.

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We thank those individuals, families, and institutions that have authorized us to reproduce their images. We regret, however, that in some cases, it was not possible to contact the rights holders of some of these images. The author has made every effort to respect the rights of the right holders.

illustration credits

Albertina, Vienna: 5.5 Jorge Ramón Alva de la Canal: 2.3, 2.4, 2.8, 2.9, 2.10, 2.13, 2.15, 2.16, 2.18 The Architectural Record: 4.10, 4.12, 4.13, 4.23– 4.27, 4.29, 4.31, 4.33 © 2008 Artist Rights Society (ars), New York/ adagp, Paris/flc: 4.32 © 2009 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Av. Cinco de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc 06059, México, D.F.: 1.23, 1.24, 1.25 Luis E. Carranza: 1.23, 4.3, 4.14, 4.15, 4.22, 4.27, 4.30, 5.2, 5.9, 5.10, 5.11, 5.12, 5.13, 5.15, 5. 16, 5.17, 5.18, 5.19, 5.20, 5.21, 5.22, 5.23, 5.24 cemex: 4.4 © Jean Charlot Estate llc, With the permission of the Jean Charlot Estate llc: 2.5, 2.6 Gilberto Chen: 5.25, 5.26 Colección Ing. Silvestre Revueltas: 5.25, 5.26 Le Courrier de l’Exposition: 3.3, 3.4 Mireya Cueto: 2.1, 5.6, 5.14 Edificios Construidos por la Secretaría de Educación Pública: 1.1, 1.3, 1.6, 1.7, 1.9, 1.10–1.12, 1.14– 1.22, 1.26–1.28

Archivo Histórico Fundidora, Parque Fundidora: 5.3 gta archiv/eth Zurich, Bequest of Hans Schmidt: 4.34, 4.35 Victor Hinojosa: 4.36 Ashley Hyatt: 3.5, 4.11, 5.26 conaculta.-inah.-mex. (Reproducción Autorizada por el Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia): 4.36 Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes: 1.13 Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Dirección de Arquitectura y Conservación del Patrimonio Artístico Inmueble: 1.4, 4.5, 4.7, 5.7, 5.8 Elizabeth Lessig: 1.5, 1.8, 3.2, 4.16–4.21 Eric List: 2.3, 2.4, 2.7, 2.12, 2.17 El Maestro: Revista de Cultura Nacional: 1.2, 1.29, 1.30 Mireya Maples Vermeersch: 2.5 Esther McCoy Papers, 1896–1989, Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Institute: 4.1, 4.2 María Elena O’Gorman Carstensen: 4.6, 4.8, 4.9, 4.28, 5.1 El Pabellón de Mexico en la Exposición IberoAmericana de Sevilla: 3.1, 3.6–3.19 Maynard Parker, Photographer. Courtesy of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California: 4.2 Museo de Arte Moderno, conaculta, inba: 5.1 Museo Nacional de Arte, conaculta, inba: 2.2, 2.11, 2.14 Museo Nacional de la Revolución: 5.4

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. abc Group, 164 Aburto, Álvaro, 153 Academia de San Carlos, 7, 122, 138, 207n113 academic vs. technical architecture, 153, 156–157, 214n24 Acevedo, Jesús T., 32–34, 35, 207n105; definition of Mexican architecture, 33, 206n90 Actual No. 1, 60–64, 61, 212n33 Adorno, Theodor, 12, 165–166; “Functionalism Today,” 161 “Ahora más que nunca,” 124, 127 Alba Guadarrama, Ramón, 150 Almeida Crespo, Cirilo: Simón Bolivar, 31, 44, 44 Alva de la Canal, Ramón, 61, 74, 75, 77, 78 Alva de la Canal, Ramón, works by: El Café de Nadie, 79, 79; Chimeneas, 78, 78; El movimiento estridentista (cover for), 82; Postes, 78, 78; Radiópolis, 80–81, 81, 83, 84; El viajero en el vértice (cover for), 76; Viñeta estridentista, 79, 80 Alvarado, Salvador, 113 Amábilis, Manuel, 8, 13, 87, 90, 95–112, 114, 115–117, 131, 153; and the Pláticas sobre Arquitectura, presentation for, 99–100; regulating lines in Maya architecture, analysis of, 98–99, 98, 215n32 Amábilis, Manuel, works by: La arquitectura precolombina de México, 95–99, 105–106; Donde, 100–101; Mística de la Revolución Mexicana, 101–102; El Pabellón de México en la Exposición Ibero-Americana de Sevilla, 90, 103–105, 112 Amauta, 113, 216n71 American Houses Inc., 159–161 Amero, Emilio, 74 Anderson, Stanford, 165 Anza, Antonio M., 93. See also Mexican Pavilion (Paris Universal Exhibition, 1889) Apollonian and Dionysian, 18 Aragón Echeagaray, Enrique, 13, 187, 189–193, 198–199. See also Monument to Álvaro Obregón Arlt, Roberto, 115 Arquitecto, El (Mexico), 124–125, 151–153, 220n82 art: collective reception of, 48–50, 57, 71; communicability of, 8, 49, 169 (see also Estridentismo) Artaria, Paul, 164. See also Schmidt and Artaria “Arte a Máquina,” 127 Asor Rosa, Alberto, 10 Asúnsolo, Ignacio, 13, 15, 38–39, 187–194, 224n53. See also Monument to Álvaro Obregón Asúnsolo, Ignacio, works by: Álvaro Obregón, 190; Apollo and Dionysus flanking Minerva, 31, 40, 41, 55; Eagle, 189; Raza Blanca, 38, 40, 207n114; Sacrifice, 188, 189; Triumph, 188, 189; Work and Fecundity, 188, 189

Ateneo de la Juventud, 6, 17, 32, 201n5, 202nn3–4 Atlantis: Maya as descendants, 97–99; myth of, 95–96, 97–99, 105, 112, 115, 116; and Vasconcelos, used by, 24–25, 208n115; avant-garde: definition, 4, 11, 15, 57, 60–61; and ideology, 11; and negativity, 10, 57–58; similarity of Mexican and European, 97, 116, 130; techniques, 196 Azuela, Mariano, 6, 82–83; Los de abajo, 6, 82, 195; and Estridentistas, influence of, 82–83; La malhora, 82 Barragán, Luis, 158 Barreda, Gabino, 21 Barthes, Roland, 65 Bassols, Narciso, 144–148, 150, 151, 152, 178, 179; on utopian value of architecture, 145 Batres, Leopoldo, 93 Baxter, Sylvester, 35, 206n100, 207nn106–107 Behne, Adolf: The Modern Functionalist Building, 139 Benjamin, Walter, 8, 11, 212n29; “Author as Producer,” 49; on the perception of art, 23, 54–55 Bernard, Emile, 173, 175; Legislative Palace, 174 Best Maugard, Adolfo, 42, 47, 53 Blas Miya, Alarife. See Amábilis, Manuel Borges, Jorge Luis, 70, 115 Brenner, Anita, 158; Your Mexican Holiday (1932), 130; Your Mexican Holiday (1935), 130 Bürger, Peter, 12; Theory of the Avant-Garde, 11, 62 Calles, Plutarco Elias, 171, 177–178, 181, 184; influence (see Maximato) Calquetzani, Tepoztecaconetzin. See Rodríguez, Francisco Campos, Mauricio M., 153 Cárdenas, Lazaro, 179, 185, 188 Carrillo Puerto, Felipe, 113–114, 209n134 Castellanos, Julio, 150 caudillismo, 170–171, 177, 178, 184, 193–194, 196, 199 Çelik, Zeynep, 87 Cemento, 125–126, 128, 217n22 Centro Educativo Belisario Domínguez, 35–36 Centro Escolar Revolución, 150 Centurión, Manuel, 15, 31, 38–39 Centurión, Manuel, works by: Architecture, 39, 40; Culture of India, 38, 39; Greek Culture, 38; Mexican Culture, 38; Spanish Culture, 38, 39 Charlot, Jean, 47, 48, 61, 74, 75; Urbe, illustrations for, 69, 73, 73, 77 Charnay, Désiré, 93, 214n14 Chávez, Carlos, 47, 208n133 Chichén Itzá, 106–108 Contemporáneos, 6 Córdova, Arnaldo, 9, 11, 221n125 creacionismo, 8, 60, 62, 66. See also Huidobro, Vicente cubism, 77, 79, 97

index

architecture as revolution

Cueto, Germán, 175–176, 185, 223n23, 224n53 Cueto, Germán, works by: Estridentopolis en 1975, 59–60, 59, 73, 81; Monument to Álvaro Obregón project, 185, 186; Monument to the Revolution project, 176, 176 Cuevas, José Luis, 130–131, 137 Dadaism, 76 Das Neue Frankfurt, 165 de la Cueva, Amado, 47, 48 de la Paz Pérez, Gonzalo: El fascismo y el clero contra la cultura, 136 de la Torre, Guillermo, 60 Dewey, John: American pragmatism of, 21. See also Vasconcelos, José: and Dewey’s educational system, critique of Díaz, Porfirio, 3, 173; approach to art and architecture, 5, 124–125, 198; dictatorship, 3, 7, 9, 16, 18, 29, 58, 92–93 disinterested experience, 20–23, 26–27, 35, 41, 49, 52; and contemplation, 20 division of labor: separation of art from life, 11, 15, 20, 74 Duiker, Jan, 164 Edificación, 159 Eliade, Mircea, 200 Elizondo, José, 184 El Lissitzky: Tatlin Working on the Monument, 79; The Constructor, 79 Escuela Nacional de Arquitectura, 131 Estridentismo, 6, 7, 12, 57–85, 148, 175–176; and city, 59, 73–74; and communicability of art, 81, 213n46; exhibition at Café de Nadie, 74–76, 75; members, 60, 74–76, 77; and metropolitan environment, 67–74, 82; and perception, transformation of, 62, 76, 77, 80, 85; and plastic arts, 61, 74–82; reconceptualization of art, 65; Second Manifesto, 65, 77; techniques, 63–67; and typography, use of, 66–67 Fanon, Frantz, 88 Fernández, Justino, 91 Flores, Pablo, 131 Ford, Henry, 161 Forestier, Jean-Claude Nicolas, 89 Forma (Mexico), 133 Foucault, Michel, 169 Frente a Frente, 84, 159, 213n56 functionalism, 13, 99–100, 119, 135, 136–138, 151– 158, 220n103; history of, in Mexico, 119–131 Futurism, 60, 62–64, 71, 72, 77, 79

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Galindo, Juan, 153 Gallardo, Salvador, 60, 75 Gamio, Manuel, 90–92, 95, 96; Forjando patria, 90–92

García Canclini, Nestor, 4, 58; on modernity in Latin America, 4, 8 Garnier, Tony, 134 Gill, Irving, 125, 217n16 Gómez Echeverría, José, 124 González, Xavier, 74 Granados de la Vega, José, 90 Gran Comisión de Patronato del Monumento a la Revolución, 172, 178, 185 Grupo ¡30-30!, 83, 213nn51–52 Guerrero Galván, Jesús, 150 Guerrero, Xavier, 47 Guzmán, Martín Luis: El águila y la serpiente, 196; La sombra del caudillo, 196 hispanoamericanismo, 114–115 history, monumentalizing of, 169–170 Horizonte, 77, 81 Huidobro, Vicente, 60, 62–63, 211n10; Epoch of Creation, 63. See also creacionismo Ibero-American Exposition (1929), 87–90, 114–115; character of, 89–90; grounds, 89–90, 90, 213n5; Parque María Luisa, 89; Plaza de América, 89; Plaza de España (Seville), 89. See also Mexican Pavilion (Ibero-American Exhibition in Seville) ideology: and architecture, 119–123, 158, 201n15; of concrete construction, 144; of functionalism, 160–67 indigenismo, 113 International Expositions: character of, 87–89 Irradiador, 77 Jiménez, Víctor, 199 Jitrik, Noé, 169–170 Katzman, Israel, 103, 125–126 Kinney, Leila, 87 Kristeva, Julia, 211n23 La Bombilla, 184 Lasso de la Vega, Rafael, 60 Laugier, Marc Antoine, 99 Le Corbusier (Charles Edouard Jeanneret), 13, 62, 129, 135, 136, 139, 160, 164; Amédée Ozenfant House and Studio, 141, 162, 163; Maison Citrohan, 141, 162; Vers une architecture, 7, 134, 189 Legarreta, Juan, 119, 153, 216n4, 219n70 Leighton, Fredric W., 48–49 Léon Toral, José de, 184 L’Espirit Nouveau (Paris), 62 Liernur, Jorge Francisco, 23, 35 Liga de Artistas y Escritores Revolucionarios (lear), 83–84, 114, 151, 159 List Arzubide, Germán, 59–60, 64, 75; Ciudad Número 1, 68–69, 68; El movimiento estriden-

tista, 74; El viajero en el vértice, 66, 77, 78 Lombardo Toledano, Vicente, 9, 159, 172, 198, 219n75, 222n13 Loos, Adolf, 125, 175; Town Hall in Mexico City, 175, 175, 222n18 López Rangel, Rafael, 154 Lukács, Georg, 21 Lunacharskii, Anatolii, 21, 52–54, 202n26 Lund, Macody: Ad Quadratum, 98 Macedo y Arbeu, Enrique, 32, 52, 205n84 Machete, El (Mexico), 122 Madero, Francisco I., 3, 31, 175 Malevich, Kazimir, 185 Mallarmé, Stephane: Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard, 66–67 Maples Arce, Manuel, 57, 60–64, 75, 79, 81, 198; Canción desde un aeroplano, 67; function of art, 57, 81; Prisma, 66; Urbe: Super-poema bolchevique en 5 cantos, 69–74, 69. See also Actual No. 1 Mariátegui, José Carlos, 112–113 Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, 60, 65, 73; Futurist Manifesto, 63; Mots en Liberté, 66 Mariscal, Federico E., 32–34, 153, 177; on the resurrection of colonial architecture, 33 Marquina, Ignacio, 95, 102, 103 Martínez, Oliverio, 181–182, 223n47 Martínez, Oliverio, works by: La independencia, 183, Las leyes agrarias, 183; Las leyes de reforma, 183; Las leyes obreras (Redemption of the Worker), 182, 183 Marx, Karl, 144 Massieu, Wilfredo: Instituto Técnico, 29 Maximato, 171–173, 184 Maya: socialist tendencies, 13, 112–113, 216n69, 216n73 Méndez, Leopoldo, 61, 74, 76, 77; cover for Horizonte, 80, 81 Méndez Rivas, Federico, 15, 30–32, 52, 205n80 Mendiola, Vicente, 126 Mérida, Carlos, 15; Caperucita Roja, 49, 50 mestizaje, 6, 28, 92 metropolis, 4; Estridentista interest in, 85; metropolitan experience, 196; and perception/ individual, effects on, 57, 58–59 Mexican Folkways, 151 Mexican Pavilion (Ibero-American Exhibition in Seville), 13, 87–117, 88, 104–110; competition for, 102–103, 215n49, 215n56; description of project, 105–112; Itza project, 87, 103, 104 Mexican Pavilion (Paris Universal Exhibition, 1867), 93, 116 Mexican Pavilion (Paris Universal Exhibition, 1889), 93–95, 94 Mexican Revolution, 3, 11, 177–178, 201n1; contradictions of, 9; educational needs after, 17;

effects on architectural publications, 123–130; effects on architecture, 7–8, 11–13, 96–97, 122, 127, 213n55; ideology of, 197; influence of, 70, 95, 100–102; sublimation of, 224n77 Meyer, Hannes, 220n99 miscegenation, 25, 27 Moctezuma, Mariano, 141 Modernismo, 65, 69; defined, 5–6 Modotti, Tina, 61, 77 Montenegro, Roberto, 15, 31, 41–47, 51, 52 Montenegro, Roberto, works by: Alegoría del mundo indígena, 45–47, 46; Arbol de la Vida, 42; Descanso y Trabajo, 44–45, 45; Rito Budista, 42–43, 43; Rito Cristiano, 43–44, 43 Monument to Álvaro Obregón; 13, 173, 184–194, 185–191, 193, 199–200. See also Aragón Echeagaray, Enrique; Asúnsolo, Ignacio; Cueto, Germán; Revueltas, Fermín Monument to the Revolution, 8, 13, 169, 172–184, 173, 181, 182, 199–200, 224n50. See also Martínez, Oliverio; Obregón Santacilia, Carlos Moro, Cesar: Armando Zegri, 79, 79 Muñoz, Antonio, 175

index

Negri, Antonio, 9–10; “Keynes and the Capitalist Theory of the State,” 9 neocolonial architecture, 125, 130; in California, 35, 207n104, 217n16; Vasconcelos’ interest in, 32 neo-Porfirismo, 9, 172, 198 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 28, 200; Birth of Tragedy, 18, 41 Novel of the Revolution, 194, 196, 197 Obregón, Álvaro, 170–171, 173, 184–194 Obregón Santacilia, Carlos, 13, 103, 131, 132–133, 135, 152–153, 173–177, 179–184, 198–199, 201n1; Centro Educativo Benito Juárez, 29, 30, 125, 132; Edificio Santacilia, 132, 132, 135, 218n51; El maquinismo, la vida y la arquitectura, 179–182; El monumento a la Revolución, 180–184. See also Monument to the Revolution Observador, El (Mexico), 175 October group, 138 O’Gorman, Juan, 7, 13, 119–123, 129–167; “Arquitectura capitalista y arquitectura socialista,” 159, 160–161; “Arquitectura técnica versus arquitectura tradicionalista,” 159–160; disillusionment with architecture, 119, 158–161, 221n112, 221n122; on functionalism, 141–144, 154–158, 220n99 O’Gorman, Juan, works by: Julio Castellanos House and Studio, 164, 164; Cinematographers Union Headquarters, 151; La Ciudad de México, 169–170, 170, 200, 222n1; ctm Headquarters, 151; Escuela Técnica Tres Gue-

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rras, 149; Ernesto Martínez de Alba House, 135–136, 136; Cecil O’Gorman House, 119, 136–137, 137–139, 141, 164; Juan O’Gorman House (Pedregal), 119, 120–121; Retablo de la independencia, 166; Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Studio, 138–141, 139–140, 142–143, 148, 162, 162; school designs for the sep, 129, 144–151, 146–148, 150; student project, 132, 133; Frances Toor House, 151; unam Library, 119, 121, 166–167 O’Higgins, Pablo, 150 ornamentation, critique of, 143–144, 147 Orozco, José Clemente, 52 Ortiz Hernán, Gustavo, 123; Chimeneas, 123 Ortiz Monasterio, Manuel, 141, 153 Ortiz Rubio, Pascual, 172 Pacheco, Máximo, 74, 150, 219n79 Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts), 177 Palacio Legislativo (Legislative Palace), 130, 169, 173–177. See also Bernard, Emile Palafox, Silvano, 153 Pallares, Alfonso, 125; “La Revolución y la arquitectura,” 125; and Vasconcelos, critique of, 32 Pani, Alberto, 175, 176–179, 181; La Higiene en México, 133–134 Partido Nacional Revolucionario (pnr), 170–172, 178, 180 Partido Revolucionario Institucional (pri), 9, 170–173 Paz, Octavio, 3 Peimbert, Angel, 175 Peñafiel, Antonio, 93. See also Mexican Pavilion (Paris Universal Exhibition, 1889) Perret, Auguste, 132 Pláticas sobre Arquitectura, 99–100, 151, 153–158 Poesía Pura, 123, 135 Posada, José Guadalupe, 4, 60, 77 positivism: Comte’s “Law of the three stages,” 18; in Mexico, effects, 17, 202n10; vs. Hispanicism, 17–18 pre-Hispanic architecture: influence, 187; interest, 81, 87, 93, 97, 112 pre-Hispanic Mayan architecture: mythical history, 13 Prieto y Souza, Luis, 103 Primo de Rivera, Miguel, 114 Quintanilla, Luis (a.k.a. Kyn Taniya): Avión, 67

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Rama, Ángel, 5 rationalist architecture, 139 Reforma Social, 192 reinforced concrete, 125, 134 Revista Mexicana de Ingeniería y Arquitectura, 129 Revueltas, Fermín, 61, 74, 75, 77, 188–189; La justicia social, 191; La Revolución, 190–191

Revueltas, Silvestre, 61 Reyes, Victor M., 103–105, 108–111, 114; El Trabajo, 109, 109, 111; murals in staircase for Mexican Pavilion (1929), 111 Reyes Pérez, Roberto, 150 Rivera, Diego, 8, 116, 208n134, 209n137, 209n146, 219n79; and Estridentismo, 61, 77; influence on other Mexican artists, 109–112; and O’Gorman, 138–141, 144, 162; work for Vasconcelos and the sep, 15, 31, 39, 42, 47–49, 51, 52 Rivera, Diego, works by: La creación, 48, 57; La salida del tiro, 48, 48; El trapiche, 48, 48; staircase mural, 42, 46, 47 Rodchenko, Aleksander, 80 Rodríguez, Abelardo, 177–178, 184 Rodríguez, Francisco, 93–95 Roisin, Maxime, 130 Rolland, Modesto, 126 Roncal, Salvador, 153 Rulfo, Juan, 170, 194–198, 199–200; Pedro Páramo, 79, 194–198 Ruskin, John, 22 Saenz, Aaron, 185, 192–193 Sala, Rafael, 74 Salazar, Luis, 93–94 Sánchez Fogarty, Federico, 125, 130, 141; “Utilidad,” 126–127 Sant’Elia, Antonio: Citta Nuova, 72 Sarlo, Beatriz, 74, 78 Schmidt and Artaria: Double House, 164, 165 Schmidt, Hans, 164 Schneider, Mario, 60, 71, 76–77 School of Construction Technicians, 119, 131, 151, 152, 154, 159 Scott-Elliot, William, 95, 98 Secretaría de Educación Pública (sep), 15–16, 92, 119, 123, 178, 187, 205n76, 210n155; critique of its architectural program, 206n86; division, 52, 210n154; and functionalist architecture, 144–148; El Maestro: Revista de Cultura Nacional, 21, 21 Secretaría de Educación Pública building, 12, 15, 16, 28–32, 31, 37–52, 44, 54, 205n77, 207n112, 219n71; Court of Labor (also known as Court of Races), 31, 31, 37, 48, 53; Court of Fiestas, 31, 48; critique of, 205n77; history, 30–31; mural program, 41–50, 209nn140–141 Segura, Juan, 103 Sierra, Justo, 177 Simmel, Georg, 57–58, 124, 127, 155, 180 Sindicato de Obreros Técnicos, Pintores y Escultores, 47, 52, 96, 114, 122, 150, 193; manifesto, 47–49, 54 Siqueiros, David Alfaro, 122–123, 192–193 Sociedad de Arquitectos Mexicanos, 99, 131, 151–153, 157

Sociedad de Conferencias, 16–17 Soto, Jesús S., 123 Spengler, Oswald, 155, 220n102; on culture vs. civilization, 23–24, 28; on the decline of the West, 18, 26 Stacy-Judd, Robert, 98 surplus value: art and architecture as, 22, 156–157 syncretism in art and architecture, 8, 92 Tafuri, Manfredo, 10, 11, 57–58, 198–199; on laissez-faire city, 220n109 Tarditti, Carlos, 103 Tolteca, 125–130, 141; on O’Gorman, 141–143, 219n66 Tolteca Cement Company, 125, 128, 130, 158; advertising strategies, 128–130, 129, 218n218 Tommasi López, Leopoldo, 103–105, 108–109, 114, 115–116; decorative carvings for Mexican Pavilion (1929), 110 Tönnies, Ferdinand, 23 Torres Bodet, Jaime, 58–59 transculturation, 58; defined, 5 Tzara, Tristan: Poèmes nègres, 216n81 ultraismo, 60, 70 Universidad Nacional, 17 Universidad Popular Mexicana, 17 Urquiaga, Vicente, 184 Vargas Salguero, Ramón, 133–134, 154 Vasconcelos, José, 9, 12, 13, 14–55, 92, 96, 101, 125, 171–172, 178, 182, 187, 201n1–202n2; and colonial architecture, 34–36, 204n69, 206n87; and communicative ability of art, 22–23, 53; “cosmic race” concept, 15, 25–26, 27, 204nn48–49; and cultures, development of, 25; on culture vs. civilization, 23–24, 203n43; and Dewey’s educational system, critique of,

21–22, 203n30; educational model, 15, 23, 202n26, 203n39; “Law of the three states of energy,” 18, 23, 26–27, 40, 49; and Lunacharskii, influence of, 21, 52–54, 202n26, 203n30; Maya architecture, critique of, 206n102; and pedagogical quality of art/architecture, 34–35; philosophical and aesthetic positions, 18; and positivism, critique of, 18–19, 21, 203n28, 204nn63–64; and Pythagoras, understanding of, 19–20, 23, 24, 52, 202n18; and races, importance of, 25–28; and synthesis, importance of, 28; on Universópolis, 26; utopian proposal, 15, 37–38, 51–55 Vasconcelos, José, works by: Estudios indostánicos, 42; El monismo estético, 19, 20, 22, 27, 28; Pitágoras: Una teoría del rítmo, 19–20, 202n24; La Raza Cósmica, 12, 16, 18, 21, 23–29, 32, 38, 203–204n45, 204n70 Vela, Arqueles, 60, 64; El Café de Nadie, 75; Un crimen provisional, 65 Villagrán García, José, 32, 103, 126, 131, 133–135, 153; Granja Sanitaria, 133–135, 133, 136; National Stadium, 29, 49–50, 51, 52 Villaseñor, Salvador, 175 Viollet-le-Duc, Eugene, 108, 155

index

Weston, Edward, 61 Williams, Raymond, 57–58 World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago), 93 Wright, Frank Lloyd: “Art and Craft of the Machine,” 127 Yucatán: politics after the Revolution, 113–114 Zamudio, Edmundo: Escuela Belisario Domínguez, 35–36, 36 Zárraga, Guillermo, 130–131, 137

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