The Women of Mexico's Cultural Renaissance: Intrepid Post-Revolution Artists and Writers 303111177X, 9783031111778

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LITERATURES OF THE AMERICAS

The Women of Mexico’s Cultural Renaissance Intrepid Post-Revolution Artists and Writers Elena Poniatowska Translation and Introduction by Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez

Literatures of the Americas Series Editor

Norma E. Cantú Trinity University San Antonio, TX, USA

The Literature of the Americas series seeks to establish a conversation between and among scholars working in different Latina/o/x and Latin American cultural contexts across historical and geographical boundaries. Designed to explore key questions confronting contemporary issues of literary and cultural transfers, the series, rooted in traditional frameworks to literary criticism, includes cutting-edge scholarly work using theories such as postcolonial, critical race, or ecofeminist approaches. With a particular focus on Latina/o/x realities in the United States, the books in the series support an inclusive and all-encompassing vision of what constitutes literary and textual studies that includes film, arts, popular culture, and traditional and avant-garde cultural expressions. Editorial Board: Larissa M. Mercado-López, California State University, Fresno, USA Ricardo Ortiz, Georgetown University, USA Romana Radlwimmer, University of Tübingen, Germany Ana Maria Manzanas, University of Salamanca, Spain

Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez Editor

The Women of Mexico’s Cultural Renaissance Intrepid Post-Revolution Artists and Writers

with translation of Elena Poniatowska’s essays from Las siete cabritas

Editor Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez DePaul University Chicago, TX, USA

Elena Poniatowska c/o Schavelzon Graham Agencia Literaria, S.L. Barcelona, Spain

ISSN 2634-601X     ISSN 2634-6028 (electronic) Literatures of the Americas ISBN 978-3-031-11176-1    ISBN 978-3-031-11177-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11177-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Translation from the Spanish language edition: “Las siete cabritas” by Elena Poniatowska and Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez, © Elena Poniatowska 2000. Published by Ediciones Era. All Rights Reserved. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Azoor Collection / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

First, there are no words to express profound thanks to the beautiful woman who is Elena Poniatowska, an inspiration to me for many, many years, since I first met her as a grad student in Albuquerque, and she gave me permission to translate her delightful first book Lilus Kikus. Through the years she has generously provided her time in conversation at her home and at events in Mexico City, in Mérida, Yucatán, and at literary conferences including homenajes to her and the bestowing of honorary doctorates to her. I am grateful for her travel to Sonoma County in northern California, where she graciously spoke at two venues, Sonoma State University and the Sonoma County Library, where we enjoyed a delightful evening in conversation with Linda Egan before she did an additional presentation at the University of California, Davis; for her time and presentations more recently at DePaul University in Chicago, where we enjoyed celebrating one of her birthdays as she grinned and plunged a huge knife into the cake to our delighted laughter; for her moving talks at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago; for her willing agreement in 2015 to my request to translate/publish these essays on important early women figures; and for her patience as time passed and obstacles got in the way, and now, here it is, finally. Thank you, dear Elena Poniatowska, del fondo de mi corazón. I am especially obliged to the Literatures of the Americas series Editor Norma Elia Cantú, who saw potential in my project and gave me much-­ needed encouragement along the long route, and I am gratefully indebted to Palgrave Senior Editor Molly Beck for her enthusiasm, support, and help to see this book to completion. I also offer thanks to the blind peer v

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reviewers, who saw in this an important book and evaluated my translation as “exemplary.” Finally, I acknowledge the generosity of my former colleague and friends, Arturo and Fern Ramírez, who reviewed my translation and various stages of my narrative along the way, for their forever helpful and encouraging comments and suggestions. Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez

Fig. 0.1  Credit: Elena Poniatowska and Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez (Photo taken in Mérida, Yucatán, 30 Dec. 2021, by Poniatowska’s daughter, Paula Haro)

Contents

1 Introduction  1 Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez 2 Legacy  and Biography of Elena Poniatowska 47 Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez 3 Diego  I’m Alone, Diego I Am No Longer Alone: Frida Kahlo 57 Elena Poniatowska and Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez 4 Maria  Izquierdo, Backwards and Forwards 69 Elena Poniatowska and Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez 5 Nahui  Olin, She Who Made Waves 89 Elena Poniatowska and Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez 6 Pita  Amor in the Arms of God111 Elena Poniatowska and Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez 7 Elena  Garro: The Rebellious Particle133 Elena Poniatowska and Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez

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8 Rosario  from “My Dear Beloved Guerra” to the “Little Boy with Corn-Colored Hair”153 Elena Poniatowska and Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez 9 Nellie  Campobello, Who Was Not Granted Death171 Elena Poniatowska and Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez Index201

CHAPTER 1

Introduction Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez

Frida Kahlo may appear to be the sole female artist in Mexico’s early twentieth century, but she had plenty of company. During the 1920s and 1930s, Mexican women were active politically, they advocated adamantly for the right to vote, and insisted on exercising their talents. Access to the vote was promised and reneged on again and again, while artistic opportunities and distinction were extended mostly to their male cohorts. Yet they remained true and relentless in their production, and more women followed. The very first female artist to exhibit internationally, in 1930 in New  York, was María Izquierdo. In 1937 Izquierdo, and then Frida Kahlo in 1939, were the first Latin American women artists to exhibit in Paris. In 1936 there was a solo exhibit in Spain for Carmen Mondragón, who used the pseudonym Nahui Olin, who, in addition to painting, wrote poetry and composed music. In the late twentieth century, scholars and art curators began to rediscover and highlight such talented Mexican women. This collection of essays by the marvelous chronicler of Mexico, Elena Poniatowska, in English translation for the first time, provides examples of their lives and work, describing the artists and writers as well as other prominent E. C. Martínez (*) DePaul University, Chicago, TX, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. C. Martínez (ed.), The Women of Mexico’s Cultural Renaissance, Literatures of the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11177-8_1

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characters of that era. The introduction relates background on Mexico’s cultural renaissance of the early twentieth century, with insights from critical sources, published since Poniatowska’s essays. Izquierdo began painting in the 1920s in Mexico City; other women artists in those years were Isabel Villaseñor, Olga Costa, Andrea Gómez, Dolores Cueto, Rosario Cabrera, Aurora Reyes, Rosa Rolanda, Cecilia Calderón, and the artistic photographers Lola Álvarez Bravo and Tina Modotti,1 who helped document and build an archive on several cutting-­ edge muralists and artists. Some of these artists, and prominent actresses, also modeled for the male muralists. A second wave of women artists and writers would emerge in the 1940s–1960s, joined by a few refugees from Europe: Leonora Carrington, who became a Mexican citizen in 1942, Kati Horna, Remedios Varo, and Alice Rahon. As Mexicans thronged to Mexico City after the battles of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, a new government was being established and opportunities opened to participate in projects demonstrating the nation’s true cultural roots. Artists helped construct the new ethos, finding ways to express a more authentic Mexican identity, the primary example being Diego Rivera’s murals. New cultural projects were launched, sprouting work by a great number of artists and writers. Dubbed internationally the era of the great muralists, in Mexico the new painting style was called Escuela Mexicana, an artistic and cultural movement as had not occurred previously. Male artists featured male revolutionary heroes, male indigenous deities, and the last Aztec emperor Cuauhtémoc, with women figures as bystanders. Female artists featured women in primary roles as curanderas, nursing maids, women performers in the circus, scenes with children, kitchens, and pantries, with Native symbology relating to the female. Mexico became visible internationally in the 1920s–1930s, beginning with attention to the murals. Europeans flocked to Mexico to view work in progress, to climb the “pyramids” newly opened to the public, to attend 1  While not Mexican-born, Tina Modotti (born in 1896), who arrived in Mexico City in 1922, was an important participant in the early artistic movement. With Edward Weston, she opened a photography studio and between 1924 and 1928 she took hundreds of photographs of Diego Rivera’s murals, helping promote his work. In 1926 she and Weston were commissioned to travel around Mexico photographing an array of people for a book by Anita Brenner, Idols Behind Altars. After 1927 her work appeared in Mexican and international publications, and in 1929 a one-woman exhibit of her photographs was featured at the National Library in Mexico City. In 1930, Modotti was forced to leave Mexico in exile. After 1931, she stopped photographing, fought for the republic in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939, returned to Mexico City afterward, and died of heart failure in 1942.

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community fiestas, and to finally appreciate indigenous civilization and culture. French surrealist Antonin Artaud arrived and traveled around Mexico between 1935 and 1937. In Mexico City he found María Izquierdo’s work most fascinating; upon returning to France, he organized and hosted her solo exhibit, and wrote about her work. Multi-talented like Nahui Olin, Nellie Campobello was commissioned by the Minister of Culture José Vasconcelos to visit all regions of the nation and document dance steps, to prepare a choreography of national dance. A skilled ballerina since childhood, she created the first national dance company and the presentation now internationally recognized as Ballet Folclórico Nacional. An avid writer who published books of poetry, Campobello also created a novel released in 1929 about the experience of the Revolution, the prevalent topic of the era: Cartucho is a text of brief chapters in poetic form, with sharply realistic details, which Hemingway would soon be recognized for. Her book memorializes peasants and villagers caught up in the Civil War struggle, poor people from the rural area who remained unrecognized. In the early 1930s, Elena Garro was one of few women students at the National University, UNAM, in Mexico City. During her studies she participated in dance and theater, and published newspaper articles which continued over the next decades, despite travels with her husband, Octavio Paz. Garro, like Lupe Marín, spoke her mind openly, to the annoyance of some and delight of many others.2 In the 1950s she created a novel now recognized for its magical realism, Los recuerdos del porvenir, but was unable to get a publisher until in 1962, the era when male writers, and not women, were being saluted for a new literary form. Born a few years after Garro, Rosario Castellanos broke terrain in the 1950s–1960s by bringing focus to issues of social justice and indigenous communities. She became an important influence to women writers in the ensuing generations because of her MA thesis, Sobre cultura femenina, and a strong speech about women’s intelligence before a distinguished gathering at the Anthropology Museum in 1971, a discourse offered when she was named Ambassador to Israel. Guadalupe “Pita” Amor was a sharp-witted discussant and noted personality who appeared regularly as a commentator on television in the 1960s, a medium dominated by men. She published her first book in 2  Marín’s semi-autobiographical novel with erotic details, La única, published in 1938, was banned by the government for many years.

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1946, followed by 11 masterful works in poetry with metaphysical themes, and the male literary greats sang her praises. Amor, like Nellie Campobello, chose not to marry; the other women highlighted here were divorced, all of which added to negative commentary, but may have aided in their artistic and literary production. Mexico’s long-term journalist and chronicler Elena Poniatowska, born seven years after Castellanos, interacted with some of the women described in her essays, interviewed most of them, and sought to highlight their intellectual thought and creative work, as well as their presence and impact on Mexican society. From her earliest newspaper writing to her numerous books, Poniatowska has been dedicated to observing people, listening to their way of talking, studying their personalities, and finding ways to relay their human qualities. She creates essays through a hybrid style of writing, combining interviews from a variety of witnesses, family members, and friends. Poniatowska demonstrates how each artist or writer plunged ahead in spite of roadblocks and notwithstanding their at times irreverent or rebellious behavior, but most significantly, she describes their lives, the particulars of their talents and passions, the neighborhoods they walked, the era in which they lived, and the both amusing and terrible things that happened to them. She herself faced roadblocks and hardships, yet relentlessly continued to write, revealing those on the peripheries of society: squatters seeking their own piece of land, people jailed by the government, protestors, and Mexicans left outside official recognition. The noted cultural commentator Carlos Monsiváis has called Poniatowska Mexico’s greatest chronicler. In the earliest English-language study of Poniatowska’s writing, Beth Jorgensen traces a meticulously developed strategy of political testimonial writing that is subtle and consistent in interpreting social consciousness, that blurs the boundaries of conventional literary form. Marjorie Agosín called Poniatowska’s work a “literature of witness,” where she “acquires the essential component of her artistic legacy, [in] the very alliance with the disposed” (33).3

3  In one of the essays in Fuerte es el silencio (1980), Poniatowska expresses heartfelt personal reflections on creating her book about the military assault and massacre of protesters in 1968. In that era, she began interviewing people at the infamous Lecumberri prison in Mexico City, often incarcerated for years and years for their protest.

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Building Cultural Change After a Terrible Civil War As the years of struggle in the 1910 Revolution subsided, the victors pledged a new society and new type of government with freedom and rights for all. The revolutionary ideology developed in the 1920s was that Mexico was no longer steeped in colonial practices and now espoused a mestizo consciousness, acknowledging the history and presence of indigenous heritage and culture. Revolutionary goals promoted the eradication of social barriers and access to education and to the political process. Peasants and workers left without employment, ranch work, or food, and many young women, left war-torn areas to converge on Mexico City, believing in the promise of new opportunities. In 1917, a national convention and several meetings were held to enact the new Constitution, with invitation open to all participants. Afterward, cultural ministers launched new initiatives, like the murals project, to interpret the new philosophy. Women had served as traveling nurses, cooks, and companions, carried loads and ammunition, and became soldiers when their spouse was killed, or by dressing as men. Now they expected to continue in those freedoms and have their equal citizenship recognized. They participated enthusiastically and raised their voices at the 1917 Convention, but after hearing their proposals for the right to vote same as the men, the matter was met with derision and dropped.4 Since 1910, women had been publishing articles in the first feminist magazine in Mexico, Mujer Moderna; now they organized political rallies, and women’s congresses sprung up in major cities.5 During the volatile, short-­lived administrations that followed, women continued to lobby for their voting rights, finding politicians who made promises, but nothing went further. Finally, in 1937, a hunger strike that lasted 11 days convinced the president, Lázaro Cárdenas, an early advocate for women’s rights, to sponsor a new constitutional amendment, which ultimately failed to be approved by the legislature. Ten years later, another president offered a constitutional amendment giving women the vote in municipal elections; then yet 4  See The Women’s Revolution in Mexico, 1910–53 (2006), by Stephanie Mitchell and Patience A. Schell. 5  The first Feminist Congress was convened in 1916 in Yucatán, even as the revolutionary struggle continued. Yucatán recognized women’s right to vote in 1923, but soon women were forced to resign from political posts and the new law was nullified. A similar victorious trajectory in the northern state of Sonora was also nullified.

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another proposal to reform the Constitution to allow for universal suffrage languished, inconclusive, until in 1953, women’s right to vote was enacted by presidential decree. The new government ministries provided commissions for new artistic and cultural ventures during the 1920s–1930s, but few women were granted major projects. Even then, a commission for a series of murals already granted to María Izquierdo in the early 1940s was withdrawn, as Poniatowska discusses, when Izquierdo was already at work on the process, because complaints were launched by members of a review board that the project should have gone to a male artist. In her landmark book Plotting Women, Jean Franco observes that revolutionary ideology “constituted a discourse that associated virility with social transformation in a way that marginalized women at the very moment when they were, supposedly, liberated” (102). Artists involved in transformative movements tend to write manifestos about their goals and avant-garde inclinations; during Mexico’s cultural renaissance, women were not acknowledged or permitted to participate in expressing these ideas (later Nahui Olin wrote her own manifesto). The initial manifesto about the murals project, dated December 1923, was written by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco. They declared that art must prioritize Mexican features, and indigenous-origin culture and traditions, rather than those of European origin. They stated that revolutionary art should be realistic, social, and polemical and they rejected easel painting and what they called bourgeois taste.6 Fifteen years later, in 1938, a second manifesto was written by Russian exile Leon Trotsky, in discussions with Diego Rivera and André Breton, and signed by all three. Titled, “Towards a Free Revolutionary Art,” this treatise looked to the future and classified art as that of the worker in a worker society. Easel work was not mentioned, but now individualism was encouraged, warning artists to beware letting governments determine artistic content. In a book published in 1945, Siqueiros described the artists’ early artistic goals as wanting a monumental, heroic, and public production, different in nature and concept from any previous work; he also 6  Although the word “mural” is not in this manifesto, by 1923 most of the signatories were already painting murals at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria. See initial section of the excellent book study on Frida Kahlo and María Izquierdo by Nancy Deffebach, which amply discusses the manifestos.

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implied that good art was masculine, while “bad art” was chic and “domestic” (Deffebach 13). Siqueiros does not discuss women artists. Despite their innovative work and following similar themes, women were barely acknowledged in discussions of the cultural renaissance. Toward the end of the twentieth century, when women writers appeared to burst on the scene with bestseller novels, Ángeles Mastretta with Arráncame la vida (1986) and Laura Esquivel with Como agua para chocolate (1989), it created an opening to remember artists and writers of the early twentieth century. Around that time Frida Kahlo was becoming popular in Mexico, as books were released by scholars,7 and soon also in the US. Biographies were published on Nahui Olin in 1993 and Guadalupe Amor in 1994, then Rosario Castellanos’s personal letters, Cartas a Ricardo, in 1995, each book with a foreword by Elena Poniatowska, who had just published a novel on Tina Modotti, Tinísima (1992). She was also asked to provide the prologue for Frida Kahlo, la cámara seducida (1992). In 1985  in the US, the first book study on Castellanos’s work was issued and in 1992 an updated translation of Castellanos’s first novel (a book of her poems in translation had come earlier). In 1988, Nellie Campobello’s first two books were released in English translation as one volume: a first study on Elena Garro’s works in 1990, a first book study on Poniatowska’s writing in 1994, and in 1995, a new study of Castellanos’s prose (see titles below). Noticing renewed interest in women’s work, Poniatowska prepared essays about seven talented women of the early twentieth century, collecting them in a book titled, Las siete cabritas (2000), a colloquial reference for the Pleiades constellation (English-­ language speakers tend to use “the Seven Sisters”),8 an apt term to describe women as guiding stars for other women. Showing they are forerunners to contemporary women artists and writers, Poniatowska relates their lives, their frustrations, delights, provocations, command of the issues in their 7  Raquel Tibol published the first book about Frida Kahlo in 1977; a biography in English by Hayden Herrera came in 1983; in 1992, Mexican art curator Carla Stellweg published Frida Kahlo: la cámara seducida, with a version in English. In 1999, Margaret Lindauer released a scholarly work, Devouring Frida. 8  The Pleiades is a hot and luminous star cluster (“blue giant” in astronomy) which, due to its proximity to the earth and visibility to the naked eye, served as a useful early navigation guide; the translation of her title can denote the seven little goats, and perhaps stubbornness, but Poniatowska declares she was thinking only in terms of astronomy, noting that her husband Guillermo Haro was an astronomer.

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day, the men they loved and those who diminished them, and perhaps why the few who lived to old age appeared to retreat into madness. Curators also began taking interest in locating earlier work by women artists, and major exhibitions opened in Mexico on Izquierdo’s work in the late 1980s, and on Nahui Olin in 1993, with a more extensive exhibit on Nahui Olin in 2018. In the US, collaborative retrospectives were organized on María Izquierdo in Chicago in 1996 and New York City in 1997, with books on the exhibitions published by Elizabeth Ferrer, Luis-Martín Lozano, and Teresa del Conde. Today a line of continuity can be drawn from the women artists and writers of Mexico’s cultural renaissance to a few courageous women writers of the mid-twentieth century, to the rise of new Mexican women writers in the 1970s, and the bestseller novelists of the late 1980s. In all cases they are intrepid women who defied obstacles put before them, contested the idea that art is masculine, or that writing and publishing belonged only to men. They refused to quit or go away when sidelined from projects, and endured despite being denied tribute and awards. Despite little or no interactions between the seven women in Poniatowska’s essays, each stands out as symbolic navigational guides, with their marvelous talent, feistiness, and unrelenting spirits, remembered in these chronicles by Mexico’s current greatest woman writer. Since Poniatowska’s essays are not encyclopedic biographies, the following segments attempt to fill in biographical details, adding details from critical sources published since her collection of essays was released in 2000. It is hoped that these notes will be helpful before or after reading Poniatowska’s essays. My translation follows her format in the original edition, some essays have subheads, others none, and I have followed her practice of stating the full name of each person in each and every instance. * * * Frida Kahlo Born July 6, 1907, in Coyoacán, now part of Mexico City Died 1954 Before she was Frida Kahlo the artist, in the 1920s she was one of only 35 women among some 2000 students at the nationally prestigious Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, planning to do university studies in medicine.

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Remarkable from the time she was a child, Kahlo also endured great physical pain throughout her life. As a child she survived polio, then a terrible accident when she was 16 years old, when the streetcar she was riding collided with a train. Her body was impaled by a metal handrail, straight through her torso and lower body. These tragedies only deepened Kahlo’s resolve to live and to find happiness by participating as fully as possible in life. When she was confined to her bed with polio, her father gave her a tablet on which to draw and paint; after the terrible streetcar accident, she chose painting as her vocation. Marriage to Diego Rivera is not the reason for her achievements in art, she carved that path herself. When they married the second time, she stipulated that she would support herself. Born in 1907 in the home where she later hosted a variety of visitors and where she would die, Kahlo was enthusiastic about Mexico’s new political environment, the cultural changes, and the opportunities for art that would transform Mexican society. Although today her self-portraits grace an array of paraphernalia and popular art, and her designs, and even attire, are regularly featured at museums, during her lifetime she had little access to exhibitions. Likely because of Kahlo’s recognition, Poniatowska’s publisher chose to place this essay first in Las siete cabritas (2000). It is different from Poniatowska’s other essays here, in that she wrote it in first person. She states that it simply came to her that way. Poniatowska had recently completed the foreword for a book of photographs by Carla Stellweg, Frida Kahlo: la cámara seducida (1992). Soon afterward, The Diary of Frida Kahlo was released, with an introduction by Carlos Fuentes.9 This diary is not from her early life, but one she began late in life: after the death of her beloved father, after she had divorced and remarried Diego, and after the numerous medical procedures on her body. She was likely reconciling herself to the fact that her health would never improve. An illustrated narrative attesting to the chronic pain which shaped her outlook, equal only to her strong desire to participate in society, it serves as testament to Frida’s physical decline during the last ten years of her life. In her essay, Poniatowska imagines Frida’s voice, her reflections on life, and a final trip outside to celebrate with students and friends, limping along despite knowing the price she would pay for doing it. 9  Released simultaneously in Spanish and English-language versions, in 1994 (in the US, it was preceded only by a biography by Hayden Herrera in 1983). Reissued in 2005, Frida’s diary is regularly found in museum gift shops.

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In his extensive introduction to The Diary, Fuentes creates a fascinating analysis where he describes Diego and Frida as two sides of a coin in post-­ Revolution Mexico: “He paints the cavalcade of Mexican history, the endless, at times depressing, repetition of masks and gestures, comedy and tragedy. …But the internal equivalent of this bloody rupture of history is Frida’s domain. As the people are cleft in twain by poverty, revolution, memory, and hope, so she, the individual, the irreplaceable, the unrepeatable woman called Frida Kahlo is broken, torn inside her own body much as Mexico is torn outside” (Fuentes 9). Elena Poniatowska’s imagined Frida speaks directly to the reader, and the essay serves as a memoir of sorts, describing her teenage hoodlum years, the streetcar accident, and her life as a professional painter. This Frida recalls the kids in school making fun of her, her family’s lack of understanding about the polio she contracted at age six, and how, after the dreadful streetcar accident when she was a teenager, they fully expected her to die. Poniatowska describes Frida’s skinny body covered in gold dust someone was carrying in a bag which flew, sticking to her bloody body, causing someone to refer to her body as “the little angel.” Her description of the handrail being yanked out leaves a harrowing image. Poniatowska’s observations come from newspaper accounts and from the diary itself, as well as those who knew Kahlo, especially Carlos Pellicer, who converted the Kahlo studio into a museum, and Raquel Tibol, who interviewed Kahlo in 1953 and published the first book about her in 1977. This Frida describes how she feels about the surgeries, the dreadful stretching of her spine, the braces (corsets) around her torso, the “little boot” for her foot, how she loathed doctors who experimented on her, and how she was received by the French,10 who found her “extravagantly beautiful,” when in Coyoacán, Frida says, she was “no more than a cripple.” Conjuring Kahlo’s rage, passion for life, and connection to her “Judas,” the skeleton figure hanging above her bed, Poniatowska’s essay relates her delights in what she can see, savor, and smell, as well as her acute, “ongoing pain.” Frida observes her cremation, hears her interns 10  Poniatowska states that Kahlo’s exhibit was organized by André Breton, who in 1938 extended the invitation while he was in Mexico. What is not generally known is that when she arrived in January 1939, Kahlo discovered that Breton had failed to make any preparations. It was Marcel Duchamp who jumped into action, got her paintings out of customs, and quickly organized a show on Mexican art at the Renou & Colle Gallery (see Deffebach 12–13).

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intone the communist anthem, and assesses “two Fridas,” one that has gone and one that remains on the canvas, “the one dearly loved by life.” Frida Kahlo did not attend art school, but she studied avidly and was highly well read. Her painting came from heart and intellect. As with other artists of the cultural renaissance, she searched for Mexican roots in indigenous cultures. She brought attention to Native heritage through her attire, her jade necklaces and headdresses, and through the symbology in her art: monkeys, hummingbirds, deer, and the hairless dogs, each invoking ancient values (see Deffebach). Two of her earliest and important paintings incorporated popular arts in the use of oil on tin: Unos piquetitos (1935), about her miscarriage in Detroit, and another about violence to women. Native imagery is strong in Mi nana y yo (1937), with her adult head placed on the body of a baby, nourished at the breast of a dark-skinned woman whose face is covered with a Teotihuacan-style mask, traditionally laid on a person’s face at burial. Later Kahlo reproduced colonial retablo style with small ex-voto pieces, a practice where a layperson depicts a miracle, often a healing, in a small, painted design. After 1937 her work took on greater complexity. Upon reading a book on Freudian thought about life cycles and the birth of heroes (only males), Kahlo created Moisés (1945; a work she also called Núcleo solar), named for one of the “heroes” discussed early in that book. Philosophic in nature and intricate as a mural despite its 20 × 37 inch size, the baby Moses floats in his basket; above him are a fetus, ovaries, and a bright sun; along the sides are colorized fragments from the mother goddess Coatlicue. Juxtaposed against an array of male historical and mythological figures, she invites the question of where heroes come from. When asked about it, Kahlo said, “the reason people need to invent or imagine heroes is mitigated… Like Moses there have been and there will be a great number of ‘higher ups,’ transformers of religions and of human societies … messengers between the people they manage and the ‘gods’ invented by the managers” (Deffebach 11–12). Kahlo recognized systemic manipulations. She enjoyed only two solo exhibitions during her lifetime: the first in Paris in early 1939, the other at the Lola Alvarez Bravo gallery in 1953, shortly before her death. Kahlo participated in three important international group exhibitions for Mexican artists: “Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art” in 1940 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she and María Izquierdo were the only two women whose works were exhibited alongside several men; the exhibit “Mexican Arts Today” in 1943 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, featuring Kahlo, Izquierdo,

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Olga Costa, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Isabel Villaseñor, Doris Heyden, and other artists; and in 1952 an exhibition in Paris on pre-Columbian and contemporary Mexican art, which included Izquierdo and Kahlo, Dolores Cueto, Olga Costa, and Andrea Gómez. Like other Mexican artists, Kahlo disliked being linked to the surrealism movement. For her, the surrealists, and especially André Breton, were “decadent.” After 1938, she vehemently rejected that label, later stating that the reason she did not have a solo show in Mexico until 1953 was because she had been labeled a surrealist (Deffebach 12–13). From the early years with her parents to her life with Diego, Frida Kahlo insisted always on her independence, and yet, as Poniatowska points out, she found great happiness in her partnership with Diego Rivera. This Frida states that upon discovering his need to try everything, including other lovers, she decided to become a “devourer” herself, taking and discarding as she saw fit. But even through the constancy of her chronic pain, Poniatowska’s Frida says: “I was never prudent, never obedient, never submissive, always rebellious. Had I not been, could I have withstood my life and painted on top of it? [Ultimately,] Nothing is worth more than laughter.” María Izquierdo Born October 30, 1902, in San Juan de los Lagos, Jalisco Died December 2, 1955 The first two Mexican women to exhibit internationally were María Izquierdo and Isabel Villaseñor, the only women in a large group exhibition on Mexican Arts in 1930 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It was Izquierdo’s second exhibit. The previous year she was honored with an exhibit at the Galería de Arte Moderno in Mexico City (organized by Lola Álvarez Bravo). In 1940 she was part of the group exhibition by the New York Museum of Modern Art, and in 1943 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but Izquierdo had at least 20 solo exhibits during her lifetime, including one organized by Antonin Artaud in Paris in 1937 and 6 solo exhibits in Perú and Chile between the late 1930s and early 1940s, during a period when she was appointed Ambassador of Mexican Art. In 1943, the art promoter Inés Amor11 organized a major 11  Founder of the Galería de Arte Mexicano (GAM), Mexico’s first national gallery for the preservation and promotion of artists and where hundreds of exhibitions have been hosted.

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exhibit at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, displaying 60 paintings by Izquierdo, created between 1939 and 1943. She was a very major artist. Alongside Kahlo, Izquierdo’s body of work in comparison is greater, although the exact size is still being determined,12 since there was no one who promoted her legacy after her death as was done for Kahlo. Born María Cenobia Izquierdo Gutiérrez in 1902 in a small Jalisco village, her real-life story reads much like that of a character in a Revolution-­ themed novel: her father died when she was five years old, her mother took her north to the city of Torreón, to be raised by grandparents and an aunt. She grew up in small villages, around strict Catholic traditions. When she was only 14 years old, they arranged for her marriage to an older army officer; she gave birth to three children in three years and only obtained her freedom upon taking off for Mexico City in 1923, with Cándido Posadas.13 Her children mostly grown by 1928, Izquierdo enrolled in classes at the Academia de San Carlos in the historic city center and participated in student exhibitions in 1928 and 1929. When Diego Rivera was appointed director of the academy in early 1929,14 he walked through the exhibit hall and, unaware of students’ names or gender, declared that her work was the only one worth advancing. The other students, upset, lashed out at her rather than directing their disappointment to him. After that, she stayed home to paint. Fifteen years later, however, an older, more powerful Rivera would block her contract for a mural. At the Academy she met Rufino Tamayo, considered her true love in life. They shared a studio between 1930 and 1934, complementing each other in their style and work habits. Poniatowska considers María Izquierdo more Mexican than Frida, in terms of her very essence: an Adelita of the Mexican Revolution, women sent ahead as scouts or in advance patrol to 12  The catalog for Izquierdo’s 1988–1989 retrospective at the Centro Cultural Arte Contemporáeno shows 317 paintings, 12 drawings, and 2 prints (Deffebach 6). 13  Poniatowska refers to the military man Izquierdo married as Cándido Posadas, but recent research shows that it was not the name of her husband in marriage, but instead the journalist she hooked up with and traveled, with her children, to Mexico City (Deffebach 18). 14  Rivera was a student at the Academia de San Carlos from 1897 to 1902 (when he was 13–18), until he was expelled for leading a student protest against Porfirio Díaz. He traveled around Mexico until 1907, when a benefactor funded his trip to and studies in Europe. Having returned to Mexico in 1921, he garnered attention for his frescoes and murals between 1923 and 1930. Appointed director of the Academy in April of 1929, he stayed only a short while; later that year he married Frida Kahlo and they left in 1930 to work in the US for the next three years.

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apprise potential safety in a village and to begin preparing food for the men. Women who heated water and started cooking a meal on a makeshift fire, while keeping a shotgun at the ready. Called “Adelitas” due to a popular corrido about the female companion in the Revolution, it has come to symbolize the woman warrior, the intrepid woman who opens paths for others. In referring to her as an Adelita, Poniatowska applies double meaning to the term “avant-garde”—both advance guard for the Revolution and forerunner in revolutionary art: “In the 1920s, women are free because they are their authentic selves. They do as their instincts dictate, they do not involve society, religion, or the officials. There is no difference between their inner and outer worlds.” By 1932, her portrayals of female circus performers as “active, strong and brave” women (Deffebach 18), ballerinas standing on one foot atop a galloping horse, on a tightrope high wire, or flying through the air as trapeze artists, are figures of remarkable skill: they tame wild beasts and capture full attention in each frame. Poniatowska suggests that Izquierdo’s repeated female dancers and fair horses occurred despite having seen only one circus performance, in the village San Juan de los Lagos. But Nancy Deffebach updates this discussion, noting the fact that big-tent entertainment was in its heyday in Izquierdo’s era, and quotes from her daughter, as well as a close friend, that Izquierdo enjoyed meeting people from all walks of life and knew many of the dancers and acrobats.15 Deffebach devotes an entire chapter to Izquierdo’s portrayals of circus performers, showing how they emphasize independence and women as strong beings. In Izquierdo’s fascinating work of 1945, Zenaida, la domadora de leones (1945), the female trainer subdues a ferocious lion by showing him his reflection in a mirror. During the 1930s Izquierdo’s style consisted of a low-key palette, dominated by reds, earthy and neutral tones, giving her work a mysterious and soulful nature. Working with watercolors in loose strokes, she applied colors thickly, producing the effect of gouache. Izquierdo painted still-­ lifes, self-portraits and portraits of other women, children playing and sleeping, circus scenes, village scenes, ofrendas and popular altars, 15  Her daughter says she easily made friends with everyone; she remembered that her mother went to see the performers in the morning when they were rehearsing and made friends with the dancers, acrobats, and jugglers. Izquierdo’s close friend Lola Álvarez Bravo described how she “liked everything of the people, what was truly Mexican: the tents, the songs, the fairs, …the bars, the corners of the towns, the circuses” (Deffebach 39).

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devotional art in Mexican popular traditions. Poniatowska delights in imagining that Izquierdo’s props were part and parcel of her home life: a bowl with assorted fresh fruits that were later consumed by her family; a fresh fish, sketched and painted, became the day’s lunch. Poniatowska plays with the titles of Izquierdo’s works, working them into her descriptions and subheads, a tantalizing process that promotes interest in seeking out the specific paintings. After 1938, Izquierdo’s style changed; she used lighter and brighter colors, oils more frequently, and more defined brush strokes. But her focus on popular traditions and community life was still prevalent in a series of altars to Dolores, the Virgin of Sorrows, and her many depictions of pantry cupboards or granaries. Upon returning from South America in 1945, the Mexican government offered Izquierdo a commission for a major mural at the Federal District offices. She had sketched the designs to scale and was preparing the walls when the director met with the new members of his evaluating committee, who happened to include Rivera and Siqueiros. They told the director that she was incapable of completing the project and that her commission must be withdrawn. At that point Izquierdo had considerable experience, an extensive body of recognized work, and a major exhibition at Bellas Artes. Also, her name was now known to the evaluators. All that could have changed in 16 years was clearly Siqueiros and Rivera’s sense of power. Her contract was revoked, and she was barred from doing her mural. Izquierdo entered a lengthy polemical debate with Siqueiros, complaining publicly about the injustice done to her. Even those in the press highly criticized her for insisting that women are qualified to do murals. Poniatowska then states what it is easy for all to see, that there are no major murals in Mexico by a Mexican woman.16 Her marriage in 1943 to a Chilean man was likely not helpful to her. A mediocre painter she agreed to have become her agent/manager, Poniatowska states he had Izquierdo change her personal look, westernize her indigenous features, and attend cocktail parties in makeup and ill-­ fitting dresses not suitable to her. Furthermore, he took most of her 16  An exception that of Aurora Reyes, born in 1908, a close friend of Frida Kahlo, who began teaching drawing and painting for the Secretariat of Education in 1927. Perhaps because she evaded controversy, or because of her allegiance to the worker’s party, she was able to create murals in the 1930s promoting rural schoolteachers, and a mother defending a child in war, as well as four murals between 1960 and 1972 (after Rivera’s death) at the SNTE worker’s union building, and in 1978, a mural at the Hernán Cortés house in Coyoacán.

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income. When she suffered a massive stroke in 1948 and was paralyzed for eight months, he was unsympathetic and either left or she divorced him. Izquierdo had trouble recovering and was never able to use her right arm again. More strokes followed, an illness Poniatowska describes as hemiplegia, and yet she continued painting, clumsily, her daughter at her side, until her death in 1955 at age 53. She was not honored as Frida Kahlo had been the previous year, with a wake at Bellas Artes. Izquierdo’s passing was ignored, likely because she spoke up about women’s rights in her ongoing dispute in the press with Siqueiros, and because Rivera did not like her. Five years older than Kahlo, Izquierdo is of the same generation, and yet the two women moved in different circles. Both were affiliated with the communist party, but Izquierdo was also connected to the Contemporáneos literary group of the 1930s,17 whose members thronged to her exhibitions, wrote laudatory reviews of her work in their magazine, and gathered at parties in her home. A member of this group helped her secure the ambassadorship. They shared a belief in Arte puro, true art, the poetry of visual art (Deffebach 15). Izquierdo was a feminist who always spoke up for herself. In the 1980s, a retrospective exhibit on Izquierdo’s work was organized in Mexico, followed by scholarly studies and new exhibits. In the US in the 1990s, there were two important exhibits: María Izquierdo: 1902–1955, in Chicago in 1996, with a book by Luis-Martín Lozano and Teresa del Conde, and the following year in New York by the Americas Society, honorary chairman David Rockefeller, an exhibit that toured and released a gorgeous book by Elizabeth Ferrer—The True Poetry: The Art of María Izquierdo (1997). In 2000, Izquierdo’s work was highlighted in a special issue of the Oxford Art Journal, article by Robin Adele Greeley, “Painting Mexican Identities: Nationalism and Gender in the Work of María Izquierdo.” To commemorate the centennial of her birth in 2002, Lozano published the lavishly illustrated, María Izquierdo: Una verdadera pasión por el color (2002). Nancy Deffebach’s book in 2015, on both Izquierdo and Kahlo, is another important study. 17  The Contemporáneos poets held political views opposite those espoused by Rivera, Siqueiros, and others in the worker’s party (Poniatowska quotes Juan Soriano calling them overall wearers). Rufino Tamayo also disagreed with the muralist group and asked how one could “say that ours is the only path [a Siqueiros comment] when the fundamental thing in art is freedom!” (Deffebach 19).

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Nahui Olin Born July 8, 1893, in Tacubaya (now part of Mexico City) Died 1978 Antics by the early feminist Nahui Olin could be compared to the impact pop singer Madonna had in the 1980s, when her lyrics and emphasis on her body were considered scandalous. Nahui Olin posed in the nude for Diego Rivera’s early mural La creación (1922), symbolizing “Erotic Poetry,” and soon afterward became a source of gossip for parading nude on the rooftop of the building where she lived. A natural beauty with startling green eyes and kewpie doll lips, she was not at all interested however in becoming a star. Her deepest desire was to be free to decide her life for herself, which she advocated from age ten. Her self-portraits and emphasis on her body precede Frida Kahlo’s era, but despite an extensive body of work, her work was never celebrated in Mexico. Highly intelligent, Nahui Olin published a book in 1937 that astonished readers for her ability to discuss and argue with Albert Einstein’s theories. She interacted with most artists and promoters of the early era cultural renaissance, but by the 1960s she was for society only a scary old lady who fed stray cats or copped a feel on city buses. Born Carmen Mondragón in 1893, the fifth of eight children, her father was a military general who designed and procured artillery for the Díaz, then Huerta regimes. Between ages 4 and 12, her family lived in Paris, where her father developed weaponry for the Díaz dictatorship. They returned to Mexico City in 1905; in 1911 her father helped Victoriano Huerta topple the new government and arranged for the murder of the elected president, Francisco I. Madero. The family left again for Europe in 1913; Carmen now newly betrothed to a military cadet, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano. Nahui Olin was never interested in politics or governments, only freedom and art. In Paris they met Picasso, Matisse, and other artists and writers, and they both began to paint. When World War I broke out, her father moved the entire family to San Sebastián in northern Spain. According to her biographer,18 little is known about those eight years of her early adulthood spent in Europe. The couple returned to Mexico City 18  Malvido’s biography was first released in 1993; she added new chapters to a second edition in 1995, and an updated edition came in 2017. She thanks Poniatowska, who has a short foreword, for encouraging her to create this book. See “A Mexican Artist and Muse Reclaims her Legacy,” by Julie Meade (Aug 20, 2018).

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in 1921, as Diego Rivera and other artists were returning, due to victory of the Revolution. Carmen and Manuel took separate paths, although each studied for a while at the Academia de San Carlos.19 Her parents advised against divorce due to the social stigma it meant for women, but in 1922 she filed the papers without their knowledge (Malvido 33–34). When she met Gerardo Murillo, who used the nickname Dr. Atl— Nahuatl word for water with the honorary “Dr.” title bestowed on him in 1902 by the poet Leopoldo Lugones—they jumped into a passionate relationship. He was 18 years older, but they were compatible in their gusto for life. Murillo had presided over the artistic community in Mexico City for over a decade and served as director of the San Carlos academy. He is credited with the idea of a great murals project to mark the launching of post-Revolution consciousness.20 A self-taught volcanologist, studying volcanos as a hobby, as well as Nahua heritage and language; he also painted and did literary writing. During their volatile relationship it is clear she always stood up for herself. In late 1923, Murillo was interviewed by a reporter and asked if he would ever marry a writer; his published response stated that marriage is “absurd,” life with a woman “insufferable,” and with a literary woman it would be a “constant catastrophe.” He added that he was certain other men thought the same. A week later Carmen was interviewed and stated that she would never marry a man, much less an extravagant painter or mediocre writer, because they are obsessed with their own glory.21

19  Manuel Rodríguez Lozano became a member of the Contemporáneos artistic group and a recognized painter. 20  Born in 1875, Murillo received a grant to study art in Paris in 1897 and broadened his studies to philosophy and law, spending time in Italy. He returned to Mexico in 1906 and issued a manifesto calling for huge public monuments to be erected to celebrate Mexico’s nearing 100th anniversary since independence. The Díaz regime asked him to design the impressive Tiffany glass curtain for the stage of the Palace of Fine Arts, Bellas Artes, which was under construction. After Díaz was ousted, and Huerta grabbed control, he left again for safety. When he returned, he joined the constitutionalist party of Venustiano Carranza, convincing José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros to do the same. Murillo recruited Diego Rivera (who was in Italy studying frescoes), Orozco, and Siqueiros to paint murals and created a two-volume study on Mexican folk art. In 1943, when he was making field observations too close to an eruption, his leg was damaged and had to be amputated. 21  See “Poet, Artist, Erotic Muse of Mexico’s Avant Garde: Rediscovering Nahui Olin. On the Life and Times of a True Iconoclast,” by Claire Mullen (Feb 1, 2019). https://lithub. com/poet-artist-sex-symbol-of-mexicos-avant-garde-rediscovering-nahui-olin/.

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In the 1920s and 1930s, artists joyfully visited ancient indigenous sites now open to the public, especially Teotihuacán, and sought to incorporate Native symbology in their art. Early in their relationship, Murillo christened Carmen “Nahui Olin,” a Nahuatl term for earthquakes and cosmic cycles, when the sun renews its force and sends the planets spinning. She loved the pseudonym and felt that she did in fact have the force to bring overwhelming light. Their apartment on the top floor of the La Merced cloister, they bathed and sunned on the rooftop. It is said he introduced Nahui to hallucinogens, but Poniatowska states that her spirit was already free. She wrote poetry, composed music, and painted scenes of daily life and popular traditions, weddings, bullfights, and community fairs. Dr. Atl mostly painted her. In 1923, she published Óptica cerebral, a collection of poems with themes fusing color, memory, and material. The next year, her childhood teacher from Paris appeared at their door, stating she had traveled to Mexico to deliver Carmen’s grade school notebook, which the teacher had saved because her writings were so striking for a ten-year-old. Nahui Olin was so pleased that she published the little book, with her face on the cover: a drawing showing an intense stare, with huge eyes, and braids. In 1925 she wrote her own manifesto about the teaching of art (which was displayed at a retrospective exhibit in 2018). When Dr. Atl had affairs, she paid him back by bringing vendors up from the street to her own “consultation room,” for her flings (Malvido 98). After several years together, separating and reuniting twice, the relationship ended. Between 1927 and 1928 she lived with the cartoonist Matías Santoyo; they traveled to Los Angeles, where his work was featured in a museum. Hollywood pursued her for films, but she rejected their offers, not wanting to be made a sex symbol. Nahui Olin saw nudity as self-expression, not a sales tool (112). When she returned to Mexico City, the photographer Antonio Garduño did a series of nudes which she loved, as Poniatowska states, and disliked those done by Edward Weston. Nahui Olin hosted an exhibit of Garduño’s photographs at her apartment in 1928, attended by noted personalities and government figures. The next year, on one of her many trips to Europe, Nahui found true love finally in the sea captain Eugenio Agacino, who worked for the Compañía Trasatlántica Española. They traveled together to Spain, Cuba, and New York, and she often awaited his return at the port of Veracruz. In 1934 he died suddenly, from eating bad shellfish, and she would always mourn him, living alone in her parents’ home.

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Nahui Olin’s exhibits were mostly privately organized, often in Spain, a final exhibit in 1936, where she also performed her own musical compositions. Generally aloof from artistic circles, she was not invited to join group exhibits by Mexican artists in New York in 1930 or 1940. And yet, her astounding work of the late 1920s showed great intensity: a style of wide and flattened brush strokes and vivid colors. A self-portrait circa 1927 is remarkable: in front of a colorful backdrop scene of tall city buildings, a mountain range behind, she centers the back side of her full-length figure; she is nude with her fanny accentuated, and her head turns toward the viewer, with huge, dominating eyes. In 1937 she published Energía cósmica, a book of poetic and scientific narrative describing metaphysical continuities between life and death. The prologue by Leonor Gutiérrez expresses amazement by her writing. She calls Nahui’s paintings a reflection of her infinite sensuality, in the candor of a three-year-old girl, but in her writing, Gutiérrez finds a balance of eroticism, spirituality, and science (Malvido 135). Gutiérrez declares that Nahui Olin is greatly misunderstood and underappreciated. Recently a scholar assessed Nahui Olin’s work as a deceptively naïve rendering, approached through themes of synthesis and science, memory, and experiences.22 The eminent poet and senator Andrés Henestrosa, 13 years younger than Nahui, knew her well and was highly impressed by her intelligence. During the 1940s he advocated for more dedicated study of the women of the cultural renaissance, “Tina, Frida, Lupe Marín, Nellie Campobello and Nahui,” women like Sor Juana, he stated, women who broke out of the confines of the female condition much like the colonial era feminist. Expressing awe for Nahui’s ability to foresee the use of an atomic bomb and space travel, he also said the intensity of her look scared him. He cited witnessing tremendous fights between her and Atl during their dinner parties (Malvido 103–107). By the 1940s, when Nahui Olin taught part-time in the schools, acquaintances would occasionally encounter her in the hallways of Bellas Artes. When World War II broke out, and her brother and his family were in France, sequestered at the port, she was the first in her family to help him, quickly selling some of her work to send money, according to her

22  See “A Mexican Artist and Muse Reclaims her Legacy,” by Julie Meade (Aug 20, 2018). https://hyperallergic.com/454033/nahui-olin-la-mirada-infinita-museo-nacionalde-arte/.

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biographer. Mexican society became more restrictive and closed,23 and artists tended to retreat; there was also fear of incarceration.24 Nahui Olin lived alone, taking in cats and dogs, heading out at dusk to bring in the sun (see Poniatowska’s essay). Later she sold her work on the street to have money for food. Today she would be considered an unusual personality and talented artist. Malvido assesses that Nahui was rejected by her society because she stood up for herself, because she declared her body was hers alone, and because she made clear that she was free and would make her own choices. When the art critic Tomás Zurián was studying Dr. Atl’s records in 1989, he found several examples of Nahui Olin’s works and wondered why she had not received greater attention. Poniatowska calls him her guardian angel, for it is his research over two decades that has identified and promoted her paintings. Much of her work is undated. During his search, he discovered that three of her paintings were in a group exhibit at Bellas Artes in 1945. He collaborated with Blanca Garduño, director of the Museum-Studio Diego Rivera, to organize the first posthumous Nahui Olin exhibit in 1993, commemorating the centennial of her birth, titled: Nahui Olin, una mujer de los tiempos modernos. Poniatowska viewed this exhibit and offers that Manuel Puig would have been delighted with all those little red mouths Nahui put on everything. When she published the essays here in 2000, Zurián’s major exhibit had not yet occurred. Continuing his search, Zurián was successful and in 2018 he mounted an extensive retrospective at the Museo Nacional de Arte: Nahui Olin, Una mujer sobrenatural, with more than 250 examples of her work and photographs of her by others, including the nude images by both Edward Weston and Antonio Garduño. In interviews Zurián was asked if he saw Nahui as an early feminist; he replied, yes, definitely, but it was feminism

23  After over a decade of interest among artists, the Mexican communist party lost its status in 1946 for the excuse of not enough registered members. The institutionalized party system government became more autocratic; only in the 1970s did Mexican society open again to certain social freedoms enjoyed in the 1920s–1930s. 24  Rodríguez Lozano, who had achieved status as an artist, was falsely accused of stealing paintings from Bellas Artes and jailed in the infamous Lecumberri prison for several months in the late 1940s. Between 1960 and 1964, Siqueiros was jailed there for speaking against the president.

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by example, not by waving a placard.25 He added that the idea of Nahui Olin’s sensuality is more an idea in the public imaginary than one of reality, and he quoted her: “Al único amante al que tengo que ser fiel durante toda mi existencia, es al concepto de libertad.”26 Nahui Olin was ahead of her time. Poniatowska considers her the type of character that society destroys because of her uninhibited innocence, sincerity, and total commitment to her own freedom. In the US in 2007, the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago presented: Beyond Time/Nahui Olin: una mujer fuera del tiempo. In late 2011, to great fanfare at the important Guadalajara Book Festival, Patricia Rosas Lopátegui presented a scholarly book, Nahui Olin, Sin principio ni fin. Vida, obra, y varia invención; and in 2019, the Spaniard Juan Bonilla published a novel about Nahui Olin, titled Totalidad sexual del cosmos, which was her own title for a book she left unfinished, meant to be a repository of all her knowledge in poetry, science, painting, and music. His novel received Spain’s National Literature award. Most recently, in 2020, a Mexican film Nahui was released. Pita Amor Born May 30, 1918, in Mexico City Died in May 2000 Another woman who loved her freedom above all else, born a quarter century after Nahui Olin, also into an elite family, was Guadalupe “Pita” Amor Schmidtlein. She never traveled to Europe, but she fared better than Nahui in receiving acclaim. Raised in Mexico City, as a girl she read voraciously from her father’s extensive private library, which prepared her to write philosophical poetry in classical form, her books published by Spain’s preeminent Aguilar Press. Her family’s practice was to sit around the table reciting classic Spanish poetry, which her biographer thinks imbued the rhythmic quality of her work. As an adult, she was well versed in a variety of subjects and could avidly discuss classic literature, metaphysics, religion, and existentialism. 25  See article about the exhibit, “Nahui Olin, una mujer sobrenatural: Tomás Zurián,” by Judith Amador Tello and Armando Ponce. Proceso online. 14 June 2018. https://www. proceso.com.mx/539765/nahui-olin-una-mujer-sobrenatural-tomas-zurian. 26  Translation: “The only lover I need to be faithful to throughout my life is to the concept of freedom.” See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lu_FGJ3m-0.

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Born and raised in Colonia Juárez,27 the youngest of eight children, this unique creature, as Poniatowska calls her, figured out by age seven how to demand and receive attention, manipulating everyone to get what she wanted. Were it not granted immediately, the neighbors heard her screaming yells. As an adult, she was equally audacious. Highly conscious of her family’s long-standing aristocratic status, despite the fact they lost most of their landholdings and herds after victory of the Revolution, she developed and flaunted a colonialist mentality. Her parents’ names alone might lead one to confront life with aplomb: Carolina Schmidtlein y García Teruel (of German and Spanish heritage) and Emmanuel Amor Subervielle (of Spanish and French heritage). Her two sisters, Carolina and Inés,28 were remarkable groundbreakers in art and publishing, laying a foundation for Mexico’s cultural renaissance. Inés studied art and the great masters through her father’s library, while Pita’s route was poetry. And Pita was the rebellious one. She began adult life as an actress and model, posed nude for Diego Rivera, and due to her beauty could have had a career as a movie star (she made María Félix her rival). But Pita, like Nahui Olin before her, decided she could not be her unique self in that medium. Her first book, Yo soy mi casa (1946),29 discusses her upbringing and family financial situation. After that, Pita Amor published 12 volumes of poetry, verses in classic traditional form.30 Her primary influences were notable women: the prolific colonial writer Sor Juana and Chilean writer 27  A neighborhood between the city center and Chapultepec Park, created at the turn of the century for the upper class (the first neighborhood to receive electricity), and which remained prominent after the Porfirian era, through the 1960s. Hard hit by the 1985 earthquake, it has mostly deteriorated since. 28  Ten years older, Carolina “Carito” Amor (married to the Dr. Fournier in the essay on Nahui Olin), an intellectual who served for many years as director, editor, and translator for a scientific press and news service she founded in the 1930s, also created a publishing house called Editorial Fournier and in 1965 co-founded the now-prestigious Editorial Siglo XXI. Inés Amor, six years older than Pita, created a framework for preservation of art being created during the cultural renaissance, when she was only 23, and in 1935 founded the Galería de Arte Mexicano (GAM), out of her home, a significant cornerstone of the Bellas Artes endowment, in which building the gallery took up offices in 1940. She organized exhibits and created a system for cataloguing Mexican art, and to support shipping works by national artists to museums in other nations. 29  The title could be a nod to the maxim by the eminent Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset: “yo soy yo y mi circunstancia.” The phrase first appeared in his landmark text, Meditaciones sobre el Quijote (1914), a cornerstone of early twentieth-century Spanish literature. 30  As with Nahui Olin, none of Pita Amor’s works have seen English translation.

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Gabriela Mistral, Latin America’s first Nobel laureate, with whom she sustained a close friendship while Mistral lived and worked in Mexico. Amor’s first book is dedicated, in fact, to Mistral. Pita Amor studied and dabbled in several disciplines; her sonnets often dealt with metaphysical issues, framed with rhythmic qualities in everyday subject matter, thus appealing to all levels of readership. Pita Amor never married and always took the reins of her life. Of many love affairs, her true love according to Poniatowska was José Madrazo, with whom she shared a long-term, open relationship. But when she decided at age 38 that she wanted to have a baby, he withdrew his support and ended the relationship. She visited a clinic for artificial insemination, but after giving birth she suffered a severe post-partum experience, and her sister raised the baby until its accidental death at age two. In the 1950s she hosted her own television commentary program, wearing extremely low-cut dresses and excessive jewelry. On one occasion one of her breasts fell out during the program; the women’s league issued strong complaints, as noted both by Pita’s biographer and Poniatowska. In the evenings Pita Amor was known to stroll the prominent Paseo de la Reforma wearing only her mink coat. She would show up that way to cocktail parties, soon shedding the coat. Among her admirers was the prominent Televisa newscaster Jacobo Zabludovsky, for whom she was a favorite guest. Her picaresque quips, off-color vocabulary, and irreverent attitude made her a phenomenon of Mexican society; she was often imitated by comics and actresses. Her niece and the author of these essays, Elena, who is 14 years younger, appears as flabbergasted by her as many in the public. Pita refused to be connected publicly to Elena and forbade Poniatowska to use her maternal last name of “Amor,” she says. A Ph.D. student from the US spending time in Mexico, Michael Schuessler, was so moved upon reading her verses in 1990 that he sought a meeting. He found Pita Amor living in a “ramshackle” hotel in the same Colonia Juárez where she grew up, now 72 years old, eccentric, and penniless. Patiently visiting with her on several occasions, he recorded her comments, paid for the rompope she liked to sip, and wrote a biography, titled for the honor bestowed on her by the poet Salvador Novo, La undécima musa, making her heir apparent to Sor Juana. For Schuessler, Pita Amor was not a controversial figure but a grand dame, a great poet, and unique personality. In an interview about his book, Schuessler acknowledged that “she was kind of scary, especially in her old age. …She was a young girl who always got her sisters’ hand-me-downs and was

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always trying to attract attention to herself, and that was something that never ended, you know, this cultivation of her persona. But Pita cultivated that image of decadence and perhaps craziness to such an extent that I think it took over her own being. When I met her, she would almost refuse to speak in anything but verse.” 31 In her foreword to his biography, Poniatowska says her aunt saw him as a nice-looking gringo, liked that he was very tall, and expected him to pick up the tab each time they met, not recognizing he was a graduate student with little income. In the essay here, Poniatowska mentions her aunt’s boxes of jewelry under the bed; Schuessler says that when he met her “she had about 47 of them on her coffee table” at the hotel, which she opened and shut numerous times before they left her suite, and she would have him double-check twice that the door was locked as they left. She accused him once of stealing a medallion, but then shouted from the balcony as he was leaving that she found it “behind her left breast.” Despite her “ticks,” as Schuessler calls her condescending attitude toward those she considered beneath her, which made him uncomfortable, he considered it part of her upbringing. He felt fortunate to be able to engage with Pita Amor because of her involvement with the artistic community of the early twentieth century, “a group of very extraordinary individuals that worked and created in Mexico’s post-revolutionary culture.” Of them all, only she remained. While Pita tended to flippantly dismiss some of the literary greats, Schuessler felt that she truly admired several, hearing her often reciting from their work. Ultimately, he says, because “she really viciously defended her independence, and she would have no problems attacking the major players in Mexico’s cultural and political regime, she was isolated by many of them.”32 As noted by Poniatowska, society’s attempted censure of figures like Pita Amor and Nahui Olin is what made them so combative, forcing them to employ challenge and provocation as a way of life. Elena Garro Born December 11, 1916, in Puebla, raised in Iguala, Guerrero Died in August 1998 31  Interview conducted in March 2012, at Librería Rosario Castellanos in Mexico City. He also states that he did not like her demeaning comments to those she considered below her elite status. See http://www.cmmayo.com/podcasts/TRANSCRIPTS/SCHUESSLER.html. 32  Ibid.

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Her father from Spain, her mother from Chihuahua, Elena Garro was born in Puebla but grew up in Iguala, Guerrero, the setting for her first novel and place of her fondest memories, the place where she sought refuge and inspiration, according to Liliana Pedroza.33 In the 1930s, she was one of only a handful of women to enter the National University (UNAM), where Garro studied literature while working in dance and theater with Julio Bracho, Xavier Villaurrutia, and Rodolfo Usigli. Her husband-­to-be, Octavio Paz, abandoned his studies in 1936 and headed to Mérida to teach and write poetry. From there he sent her long letters, then returned to Mexico City in 1937 to kidnap and marry her, says Pedroza, who read his trove of letters archived at Princeton University. After class, Garro returned home to her parents, and Paz went to retrieve her. Her father wanted to keep her home, but Paz threatened him with asking the authorities to deport him. This despite the fact Spain had entered a civil war and, in solidarity with its republic, the Second International Writers Congress was being held in Madrid, which Paz planned to attend. The couple spent their honeymoon at that conference; while there Garro wrote her first book, which was not published for six decades. From the beginning of their marriage, Paz prohibited her return to the university and had her withdraw from dance and theater. But she continued writing. Garro worked in journalism and sought to expose injustices much like Poniatowska would do a generation later. Pedroza says Garro wanted to write about women, that she challenged the authorities and spent a short stint in jail to be able to publish an article about violence against women. As a result, the jail director was fired. When Paz received a Guggenheim in 1943, they traveled to Berkeley, California, and Garro wrote about what she found interesting, significantly, an article on the pachucos, which publication predates Paz’s essay on that topic in his celebrated book El laberinto de la soledad (1950). In 1945 Paz entered the Mexican diplomatic service and was sent to New  York City, then Paris,

33  Mexican scholar and poet Liliana Pedroza published Andamos huyendo, Elena in 2007, which highlights the intensity of Garro’s writing from the beginning in her early journalism. Pedroza has published several of Garro’s letters in Mexican newspapers. Comments by Pedroza included here are from an interview on “NuestrasVoces.mx,” conducted by Abigaíl Mendoza and Andrea Albarrán on June 18, 2020. https://ne-np.facebook.com/MxNuestrasVoces/videos/empezamos-transmisi%C3%B3nen-vivo-sobre-elena-garro-con-la-dra-liliana-pedroza/266053171128355/

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27

where he wrote the essays for that book. After short diplomatic trips to India and Japan, Paz was assigned to Geneva, Switzerland. They took up residence again in Mexico City in 1954. While he crafted his epic poem Piedra del sol (1957), Garro became more and more involved in social activism. Separated two years before their divorce in 1959, he returned to Paris. In 1962 he was named Mexico’s ambassador to India and in 1965 married a French woman. Elena Garro was not simply “Paz’s wife,” a retort inseparable from her name, as noted by Poniatowska. She was a prolific writer, who, after separating from Paz, was finally able to publish her first dramatic work in 1958; her first novel, Los recuerdos del porvenir, in 1962; and two years later a remarkable collection of short stories. In the 1950s a publisher had rejected her novel, stating it was too “surrealist” and that they wanted realism. Set in a small village, her novel captures the tension and harsh social conditions of the Cristero War in the 1920s, a topic covered by very few Revolution-themed novels. Poniatowska quotes the eminent writer Juan Rulfo that with this novel Garro “recognized the voice of the earth.” This novel in fact, predates the era dubbed “magical realism,” when male writers became highly saluted for their work. Gabriel García Márquez, who lived in Mexico City, frequented the same social circle and admired Garro. Her early stories traverse pre-Hispanic themes and often mix history with issues of social justice. The novelist Sergio Pitol considers Garro’s “La culpa es de los Tlaxcaltecas” the best story written by a woman in Mexico, Poniatowska says. Then she provides a synthesis of the story and characters. Referring to Garro’s postures in life as similar to those of her female characters, Poniatowska calls them “contradictory.”34 It can be noted, however, that when Poniatowska wrote her essay, few studies had emerged with possible reasons for those contradictions, reasons including how Garro was sidelined by her spouse, how her works were delayed for publication, and how the government’s political machine cast her as enemy of the people. Beyond personal roadblocks, the depths of Garro’s talent is examined in her unpublished writings, letters, and journalistic work by the 34  Paz’s contradictions could also be pointed out: a man whose father greatly admired and worked with Emiliano Zapata, who was entirely uninterested in the fact Zapata’s followers were stripped of their lands, a man who served the government for many years, striving only to achieve his ambitions.

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scholar Patricia Rosas Lopátegui, who calls Garro an “irreverent creator” who broke with traditional literature while fighting for liberty, democracy, and social justice. Rosas Lopátegui says Paz hurt Garro’s career more than helped it, and that her society chose to erase Garro from the national discourse.35 In a recent book study, Lucía Melgar and Gabriela Mora provide insights on Garro’s brilliance alongside her paranoia, her powers of seduction alongside her strong dedication to the campesino movement. By drawing on perspectives from letters, relatives, friends, and interviewers, these scholars show that Garro did receive funds from the government, as well as Paz and a few friends, despite constantly declaring her state of poverty, and that her childhood was not as paradisiacal as she always claimed. This book provides an excellent overview of cultural history in the mid-­ twentieth century. In discussing Garro’s work habits, they state that in her rush to publish while in exile, she released some works too quickly and inadvertently disposed of manuscripts that were probably equal to the caliber of her early work. While Poniatowska describes Garro as headed down a path of self-­ destruction, her anecdotes bring focus to Garro’s justice-oriented activities, her awareness of stark differences in class, and her sharp wit. Upon returning to Mexico in 1954, Garro’s sister brought some farmworkers to her to interview. Hearing that their lands were being taken, she campaigned to help them regain the lands. A few battles were won, but when peasants were murdered, Garro ramped up her activism and the authorities were displeased. Upon winning the trial for the Ahuatepec peasant lands in early 1959, she fell into the spotlight of President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz and his successor Luis Echeverría. The police tracked her activities, much as they did with union leaders, student activists, and intellectuals. A close friend since her early university days, Carlos Madrazo was the PRI party president and tried to make reforms within the party, but he was

35  Titled El asesinato de Elena Garro, denoting elimination of Garro’s impact and presence, the book collects her newspaper articles and includes a short biography. Rosas Lopátegui maintains a close friendship with Garro’s daughter and calls herself Garro’s official biographer. In 2020, she published a two-volume collection of Garro’s unknown works, her letters, and additional journalistic writings. See her interview at the Feria del Libro in Guadalajara: https://www.milenio.com/cultura/laberinto/elena-garro-excluida-machismo-patricia-rosaslopategui.

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opposed by those in power.36 Madrazo and Garro were made scapegoats, branded by the government as communist leaders. Garro gave press conferences, at first to encourage protest, then after 1968 pleading her innocence.37 She knew the students were being used but failed to consider that she was also. The question is often raised in Mexican society about whether Garro was involved in the protests of 1968. It is known that she went into hiding, that she lived in fear and received death threats, even two days prior to the terrible night of October 2, 1968. In 1972 Garro sought refuge in New York, but her friends turned their backs on her. She went to Madrid, then Paris. She published plays in the 1970s, more novels in the 1980s, and in 1992 the book written during her honeymoon, Memorias de España. When she finally returned to Mexico in 1991 for an homage, the national theater society, SOGEM, asked her for new work. Poniatowska describes her eager participation in that project; three of her new plays were staged in 1993, and published right away, followed by two novellas (translated to English as First Love and Look for My Obituary). Garro was honored with the 1996 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz award for prominent women writers. After her death, previously unpublished works were sought for publication, and earlier books were reissued.38 But in 2016, when a Spanish publisher reissued Memorias de España to mark the centennial of her birth, women pointed out how shocking it was for the book cover to define Garro by the men in her life—“wife of Paz, lover to Adolfo Bioy Casares, inspiration to García Márquez, admired by Borges”—rather than by her own writing.39

36  Madrazo, who had been appointed to the party presidency by President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, was forced to resign his position in 1965, after removing older members from posts to install younger people seeking reforms. He died in 1969 in a plane crash, with 78 other passengers and crew. 37  The accusations that she named more than 500 intellectuals, mostly UNAM staff and faculty, were made primarily by one newspaper, El universal, according to Pedroza and Rosas Lopátegui. Garro simply suggested that people look for the names of those who signed the pamphlets. 38  Her works have been translated to German, English, French, Arabic, and Polish. 39  A creative writing teacher in Madrid, Camila Paz Obligado, and the Mexican journalist/ commentator Denise Dresser’s comments are included in this article on December 2, 2016, in The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/02/publisher-apologises-sexist-wordingcover-elena-garro-book.

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Although today Elena Garro should be recognized as one of Mexico’s greats, Mexican society still tends to paint her as a madwoman and traitor to the nation, technically in the same manner as the indigenous woman interpreter Malinche continues to be treated negatively in popular culture. Poniatowska demonstrates in a quote from Garro that she was cognizant of stark differences between how she and Paz were referred, he a literary giant, and Nobel laureate to boot, and she: “with Octavio Paz I was a great gentleman, I gave up my place. I was simply a silly, sweet little girl,” while he “took care of his career.” US scholar Sandra Messinger Cypess creatively examined them side by side, blending their biographies and studying their literary works, the result being a meticulous analysis of the era’s cultural history through dual contexts of the 1910 Revolution and the feminist and social revolution of the cultural renaissance: Uncivil Wars. Elena Garro, Octavio Paz, and the Battle for Cultural Memory (2012). Having studied Paz’s El laberinto de la soledad for its impact on literature and myth,40 Cypess here concludes that Paz demonizes, sexualizes, and makes the notorious Mexican figure Malinche a sellout, while in contrast, Garro’s first novel suggests the past does not have to predict the future, that destiny is not foretold. Cypess finds Garro’s story, “Blame the Tlaxcaltecs,”41 especially remarkable, because of Paz’s interpretation of Malinche as a traitor. Pointing out that much like Garro herself, the main character Laura empathizes with the Native past, choosing to remain with her earlier Native spouse over her present-day husband who is a member of the contemporary political machine, Cypess finds that Garro, beyond her campaign for justice and for the indigenous peoples to have their land, had her finger on the pulse of sociopolitical discussions in the mid-century. Stating that “[i]n all of Paz’s work, some fourteen volumes published by Fondo de Cultura Económica, nowhere does Garro’s name appear,”42 Cypess notes that she queried her

40  Her landmark early study, La Malinche in Mexican Literature: from History to Myth (1991), evaluated Mexico’s “la Malinche” for its status as a negative cultural symbol in the formation of national identity. 41  Title in translation of “La culpa es de los Tlaxcaltecas,” first published in Garro’s collection of short stories, La semana de colores (1964). Because this story became the one most highly recognized, new editions carry its title. For the version in translation, see Sun, Stone and Shadows: 20 Great Mexican Short Stories. 42  See https://literalmagazine.com/elena-garro-octavio-paz-and-the-battle-for-culturalmemory/.

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colleagues in the Humanities, including Latin Americans, and found none had ever heard of Garro. For Pedroza, what endures is the amazing complexity, depth, darkness, and poetic qualities of Garro’s Recuerdos del porvenir, a novel where the characters are neither entirely good nor bad. It is true that Garro was at times frivolous, Pedroza notes, and that she had a strong personality, but that does not diminish a writer’s achievement. Elena Garro put female agency front and center, Paz did not. His seminal work solidified a negative conception, with the indigenous woman as traitor, in a limited view tied to colonial discourse.43 Garro, despite being ostracized and discredited, was a fierce survivor and left an extensive literary legacy. Rosario Castellanos Born May 25, 1925, in Mexico City Died August 7, 1974, while serving as ambassador to Israel Born nine years after Garro, Rosario Castellanos completed two degrees at UNAM by 1950 and embarked on a year-long fellowship to Spain to do research. Then she returned to Comitán, Chiapas, where she grew up in southern Mexico near the Guatemala border, worked for the state indigenous cultural center, and directed its traveling community theater. There she began writing stories. In Chiapas her parents had a large hacienda with indigenous servants and field workers, essentially a plantation producing coffee and cane sugar; she was the oldest of their two children. When the federal government launched laws for agrarian reform in the 1930s, her parents balked at being required to improve working conditions and provide a school for indigenous workers, an experience captured in her first novel, Balún Canán (1957). When her brother died from appendicitis, her parents’ reaction was to lament it was the boy and not the girl who died. Having lost their lands, they returned to Mexico City, and by the time Castellanos entered the university, each had died: her father due to older age, her mother from cancer. She immersed herself in studies and research. When Castellanos began her university studies in the early 1940s, there was no feminist movement (the earlier lobbying for women’s rights having 43  Such a limiting, erroneous view made all nations of Mesoamerica the same group, homogenizing Native nations, languages, and cultures into one entity, which was not at all true.

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been stamped out). The general posture in science and philosophy was that only men could be “cultured,” meaning the ability to think, evaluate, and produce ideas. Women were incapable of thought and analysis. In her graduate studies, Castellanos set out to demonstrate that there are no differences in terms of human intelligence between the genders. The opening sentence of her MA thesis, Sobre cultura femenina (1950), posed the question: “Is there a female culture?” (“¿Existe una cultura femenina?”). She quoted from 1940s sources in the sciences and psychology that treated male and female gender as two different species, women without the abilities of men, then crafted an argument by using further observations from philosophers and scientists, both European and Latin American, to dispute such an idea. Building her case through prominent European philosophers as Arthur Schopenhauer, Otto Weininger, Georg Simmel and Émile Deschanel (which she read in Spanish translation, for she knew little French), St. Paul, and Plato, whose analysis of the female condition provided clear evidence of thinking beings, Castellanos concluded the first chapter of her thesis by stating that to believe women cannot think, write, and create is as superfluous and stupid as believing in the existence of the Sea Serpent.44 She exposed the faulty premise with humor and advanced scientific analysis. Finding inspiration in the works of the Spanish poet Santa Teresa, the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, and Emily Dickinson, she then read early work by Simone Weil and Simone de Beauvoir45 in translation and was aware of Virginia Woolf’s writings, although her books were not yet in Spanish translation.46 As adept as the great colonial scholar Sor Juana in developing an argument, and applying wit effectively, Castellanos succeeded well in both her writing and her speeches. Her feminist ideas were not widely recognized, however, until the 1970s. Her first book of poetry

44  While it might seem odd today, this mythical monster arises out of the nineteenth century when legend met science and was frequently named in texts by philosophers and scholars into the early twentieth century. See https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2016/08/ great-american-sea-serpent/. 45  Castellanos met de Beauvoir briefly in Paris, during her fellowship, through Mexican diplomat Octavio Paz; de Beauvoir’s landmark text, The Second Sex, was only released in 1949. 46  A Room of One’s Own was first published in 1929, but Castellanos did not read in English.

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was published in 1948, her first novel, Balún Canán, in 1957.47 The title is in Maya, translated for the English-language version as The Nine Guardians. Castellanos paints a contrast between the lives of the hacienda owners and those of the indigenous workers. This book garnered the Chiapas state literary award. She published two books of poetry, and in 1960 she was tapped for Mexico’s prestigious Xavier Villaurrutia Award for Ciudad real, a series of short stories based in Chiapas and experiences viewed through race, class, and gender. During her studies at UNAM Castellanos met her future husband, but their relationship came years later. She spent a year in Spain, then two years in Chiapas before returning to Mexico City to immerse herself in research and writing, mentoring students, and her administrative work at UNAM, all of which continued after her marriage to Ricardo Guerra in 1959. Her greatest challenge was to balance life as a writer with being a wife and mother (Gabriela Cano contends that she was tormented about doing both well). She also cared for her husband’s children from his previous marriage,48 while continuing to hold university responsibilities greater than those of her husband. Despite her irritation about his continued infidelities, in her personal letters she declares always striving to be a better wife, while appearing to blame herself. Ricardo was highly jealous of her prolific work: in a scene from a recent Mexican film about her, Los adioses (2018), her husband stares at her angrily from another room as she sits typing at the dining table. The film recounts, through flashbacks, Castellanos’s childhood in Chiapas, her activities at the university, how they met, her dedication to research and writing, her engagement with the intellectuals of her day, and the machismo she confronted. Her husband even asked her boss at one point to release her from her job, without telling her. In the film the character tries to assuage her spouse’s jealousies of her work, but then she declares loudly, “I will write, I will work, and I will be a mother!” The film, which received several awards and saw limited distribution in the US as

47  This novel includes some of her personal experience and upbringing. Later her posthumously published third novel Rito de iniciación included autobiographical details from the 1950s and early 1960s. See “Rasgos autobiográficos en Rito de iniciación de Rosario Castellanos,” Gerardo Bustamante Bermúdez. Literatura mexicana 18:1. Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, UNAM (2007): 89–105. 48  Castellanos helped raise her husband’s two young children and tried to have her own. After several miscarriages, including the death shortly after birth of a daughter, her son Gabriel was born in 1961.

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The Eternal Feminine,49 demonstrates the pull Castellanos felt between a desire for motherhood and the strong drive to write, and how she occasionally succumbed to depression. To this day, Castellanos’s love life and divorce are discussed more readily than her literary achievements. After decades out of print, in 2005, Castellanos’s thesis was reissued with an extensive introduction by UNAM scholar Gabriela Cano, who describes her early years at UNAM, how she discovered Santa Teresa’s writings during her fellowship in Spain, and how Castellanos’s ideas developed during the very same era as other feminists in Europe. Cano states that her use of humor and satire (noting that laughter was heard from outside the room during her thesis defense)50 led to a subsequent, more refined ability to get deep points across through humor and self-deprecating tendencies. The new edition of the thesis activated new awareness about an intelligent Mexican woman who embarked on a fruitful career despite society’s impediments. Poniatowska had already reached positive impressions of Castellanos, having interviewed her previously, and again when the novelist-­professor was named to the important role of ambassador to Israel. On the first occasion, Poniatowska’s newspaper editor refused to publish an interview, telling her, “Leave the suffragists out; they are boring.”51 When Poniatowska published Ay vida, no me mereces! in 1974, one extensive chapter of the book (87 pages) is about Castellanos, who “taught us so much about ourselves,” and yet her ironic tone “caused us not to take it all so seriously” (45; my trans.). The essay here in translation was written before Cano’s book arrived. What Poniatowska focuses on here is the reaction to Castellanos’s personal letters to Guerra, published in 1994, which were being criticized as anti-feminist and submissive. Poniatowska knows more about the story. Women in her age group, she says, will recognize the angst and contradictions, because women of 49  The title of a farce, a comedic work of drama by Castellanos, released the year after her death. 50  One of her thesis committee members was Leopoldo Zea, early in his career, before becoming a distinguished philosopher. 51  Her editor, Fernando Benítez, is reported to have said, “Ay no, angelito, deja a las sufragistas por la paz. Aburren” (in Gabriela Cano’s introduction, p.14, to the 2005 reissue of Rosario Castellanos’s Sobre cultura femenina). Cano states there were seven interviews with her by Poniatowska early in the 1970s, in the months preceding her departure for Israel (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005: pp 14–15n7). Those interviews informed her essay/ chapter in Ay vida, no me mereces! and later for a series of articles for La Jornada between 12 and 15 September 2004.

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her generation were encouraged to sacrifice career and focus only on their families. She feels the letters have been judged too harshly. They include a few sent in 1950 from the ship as Castellanos traveled to Europe, others from Chiapas, telling Ricardo she misses him, but he has not told her he got married. The remainder of the letters are from late in their relationship. To discuss Castellanos’s lifelong struggle with depression, Poniatowska mentions that some of her poems, such as “Valium 10,” share similarities with Sylvia Plath’s confessional poetry and early feminist writing. In the 1960s, medical treatments to which Castellanos submitted were untested and useless, plus she never ceased in the heavy pace of her work. Poniatowska shows that in her final letters she was finding her own way to greater understanding about herself. To understand the letters, and the possible reasons Castellanos wanted them published, one must understand her work as a whole. Mexican women writers of an earlier era recognize her amazing accomplishment despite societal pressures and her spouse’s jealousies and ongoing psychological abuse. Her keynote talk at the National Anthropology Museum in 1971, upon being named ambassador, left a lasting legacy for Poniatowska and other women. Standing before the Mexican president and important guests, Castellanos chose to speak about women’s lives and work. Titled, “La abnegación: Una virtud loca” (Self-Denial: A Crazy Virtue), she stated that the concept “woman” in Mexico continues to imply subservience to male authority, whether one’s father, brother, husband, or priest. Despite having finally gained the right to vote, women still lacked access to higher education and jobs, salary equity, and even permission to pursue those things. It is highly unfair, Castellanos said, that one gender can be educated and not the other, that one can have a profession and not the other, that domestic labor is non-remunerated, and that one gets ownership of his body, the other does not. She called for opportunities for women to express intelligence, for them to not be subjected to limited conditions, to think that they are only truly fulfilled once they have given birth. Never had anyone spoken in public that way, Poniatowska says in Ay vida. It should be noted that Castellanos’s speech occurred four years before the UN-sponsored first World Conference on Women was convened in Mexico City in 1975. Her greatest prizes in life, Poniatowska says, were her son Gabriel and the Villaurrutia Award. Seeing it as unlikely that Castellanos’s love insecurities would have halted her work, her strongest conviction, Poniatowska remarks, is that at age 41, alone in Wisconsin, Castellanos finally chose the

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love, and “torture,” of writing above marriage. She returned to Mexico, divorced, renewed her university duties, and was appointed ambassador to Israel. The final letter, directed to her son and published in a newspaper right after her accidental death in Tel Aviv in 1974, is a tender and heartbreaking account revealing her deeply felt compassion. First categorized as “indigenist literature,” a term for works by nonNatives with a compassionate focus on Native peoples, Castellanos’s legacy built slowly: the first study in English, published by Norma Alarcón in 1985,52 opened discussion on her feminist ideas, explicating her thesis, poetry, and short narratives. In 1988 Maureen Ahern identified specific signifying systems in her writing. with excerpted translations of some of Castellanos’s work. During the 1990s, some women scholars disputed her ability to address race and gender, perhaps not understanding disguised writing. Clearly, whether in rural or urban settings, Castellanos always put a spotlight on gender: a frequent example is the short story “Cooking Lesson,” which applies humor with a much deeper discussion on feminist satire.53 Such subtle strategies in her fiction continue to intrigue scholars. Now frequently cited by Mexican women writers as one of their greatest influences, it is interesting to reflect on those who inspired her: Santa Teresa, a young woman who had to become a nun to be able to write, and her unmarried peer, Gabriela Mistral, a prolific poet also misunderstood in her era. Perhaps younger scholars in the US will find the key to understanding Castellanos’s narrative as Erin Gallo does in a recent dissertation54 by studying her impact on the imminent feminist movement in Mexico of the late 1970s. Gallo assesses Castellanos’s work as a “feminist project” for women’s self-definition and Latin American sisterhood, approaching from the lens of global feminism, alongside such luminaries as Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Virginia Woolf, and Gabriela Mistral.

52  Originally Alarcón’s doctoral thesis of 1983. This literary critic later created a publishing house, Third World Press, to launch new scholarship by Chicanas, and as a professor at UC-Berkeley engaged in feminist discussion groups and published an essay about how professional women are often labeled traitors, using the Mexican image in popular culture, Malinche, and examples by Castellanos and women writers. 53  For the story, see Sun, Stone and Shadows: 20 Great Mexican Short Stories. Jorge F. Hernández, Ed. Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2008. 54  Hopefully this study will be published. Dissertation filed at the University of Oregon, 2018. See https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/23819.

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Nellie Campobello Born November 7, 1900, in Durango, northern Mexico Died 1986 Before Elena Garro and before Rosario Castellanos, the intrepid writer Nellie Campobello became the first woman in the early twentieth century to publish a novel based on the 1910 Revolution. Frida Kahlo had not yet suffered her terrible streetcar accident, Nahui Olin was living with Dr. Atl, Castellanos was not yet born, Garro was seven years old, and Pita Amor was five. Hailing from Pancho Villa territory in the north, a talented young woman who arrived in Mexico City the same year as María Izquierdo, 1923, she was among the first group of artists who founded the cultural renaissance. The earliest published Mexican woman writer of this era also spearheaded the creation of an extensive choreography for the Ballet Folclórico Nacional. Born in 1900 in Villa Ocampo, Durango, Campobello spent her childhood in the small town of Parral, Chihuahua. Her mother, a widow who supported her children as a seamstress, relocated to the capitol city of Chihuahua and married a US doctor named Stephen Campbell, whose last name Nellie used, slightly altered. Her names at birth variously indicated as María Francisca and Nellie Francisca; the name she chose both for publication and in dance was Nellie Campobello. In Chihuahua City Nellie and her sister Gloria completed studies at an English school, excelling in dance (ballet). Her mother died when she was 21, and Nellie lost an infant baby, so she and her sister moved to Mexico City, coincidentally the same year Pancho Villa was assassinated. Nellie and Gloria refined their talent in ballet and performed and went on tour with the former teacher’s dance group, as Poniatowska describes, meeting the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca and great American poet Langston Hughes, who translated some of Nellie’s poems. She published her first book of poetry, Francisca, ¡Yo! Versos, through a publishing venture by Dr. Atl, who illustrated the cover. Having arrived in Mexico City during the heady era of artistic explosion, Campobello’s talents were tapped by culture minister José

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Vasconcelos,55 to research regional dance traditions in practice since before the colonial era. Campobello and her sister traveled to small villages, studied steps and practices, and worked on choreographies to interpret authentic Mexican culture with Native roots. Future president Lázaro Cárdenas asked her for a dance to commemorate the launch of the Mexican Revolution, which Campobello titled, “Ballet de masas 30–30,” and first performed in 1931 at the national stadium. The magnificent Palacio de Bellas Artes was inaugurated in 1934;56 she directed performances and founded the national School of Dance in 1937, a position held until 1984, and the Ballet Folclórico Nacional57 in 1943, with the help of her sister and close friends Martín Luis Guzmán and José Clemente Orozco. Poniatowska opens her essay viewing a video recording of Campobello’s directions to students,58 to illustrate her skills as choreographer, scenographer, and teacher. Thus, Campobello has a dual legacy, the creation of a national ballet company and the first novel on the Revolution by a woman writer, the topic of interest in this era. Her avant-garde text, Cartucho: relatos de la lucha en el norte de México, has a structure in short, first-person narratives of quick action, much like snapshots (framed in the era of the black box camera), or spent cartridges (for the title itself suggests a cartridge belt), an innovative technique documenting images of villagers swept into battle and lost in the war. Cartucho represents the stark reality of so many rural villages stripped of food and anything of value by roving factions, and how those left behind try to defend their families. It is disturbing, but no more so than Mariano Azuela’s novel of 1915, Los de abajo, or Martín Luis

55  Vasconcelos was in Paris during the Huerta regime, returned to Mexico City in 1914, and a year later departed again in exile when the political faction he supported was defeated. He did not return until 1920 and was named rector of the National Autonomous University (UNAM); the next year he was named to a cabinet position as Secretary of Public Education, to oversee initiatives to provide education for all. In 1929 he ran for president but lost in a contested election and once again left for Paris. 56  Construction begun by the Porfirio Díaz regime, which required that only European form and style be represented in arts and culture, under the idea it would make Mexico more sophisticated. 57  This choreography is visible in cultural performances at venues in the US, as well as shows for tourists in Mexico. Today, the Mexican Folkloric Ballet is headed by Amalia Hernández, who was one of Nellie’s students. 58  In 1987 a collection of Campobello’s performances and dance instruction was published on CDs, which Poniatowska was likely viewing.

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Guzmán, whose first two books in the late 1920s were greatly lauded.59 Critics and readers debate whether the book represents fiction or scenes Campobello herself witnessed, without appreciating her technique of using a child’s gaze to present the gruesomeness of war. This pulls the reader in, to feel present, viewing what the child narrator sees. Some macabre scenes are shocking, even that a child appears to admire, and claim, a corpse she sees for days from her window. When the body is finally removed, the child seems disappointed. Poniatowska states “Nellie’s corpse,” rather than that of the child character; in works of realism it is easy to fall into thinking of the author as the character. There is a purpose to Campobello’s realism: although the child seems comfortable and accustomed to such scenes of war, it is because there is no other reality. The recent film, Pan’s Labyrinth, also uses a child character, who escapes the horrors of the Spanish Civil War through her imagination. In Cartucho, the Revolution is a beast. Campobello emphasizes the brutality of war and great loss experienced by the common people, but there is also great tenderness, the excellent example being “Four Soldiers without 30–30s,” highlighting stark hunger but also humanity. The child character says, “he passed by each day, skinny, poorly dressed”; they became friends because “one day our smiles met. …There was hunger in his laughter.” Although Poniatowska’s essay leaves the account at this point, the rest is poignant: the child offers him “some gorditas, thick corn tortillas,” and in response, “his skinny body smiled, and his pale lips spread.” He said his name and gave his status as the company bugle boy. Clasping the napkin against his stomach, he walks away, and from behind the child character thinks he “looked like a scarecrow,” likely wearing pants taken from a dead man, making her laugh. Later, after a three-day battle beyond the hill, the men return, and she sees him carried on a stretcher made of poplar branches. “I stood speechless, my eyes wide open, I suffered so much…He had several bullet wounds. I saw his trousers—today truly those of a dead man” (Campobello, Cartucho 16). This author and the painter Orozco shared great commonality in their themes: he did not romanticize the Revolution in his murals like Rivera did, he focused on the terribleness of war. First published in 1929, then reissued in 1931, slightly revised,60 Campobello’s poetic language, short chapters, crisp and vivid images place 59  Martín Luis Guzmán published El águila y la serpiente in 1928 and La sombra del caudillo in 1929. 60  A few portions were removed, others added.

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her work in avant-garde status. But she is not remembered as one of the original Revolution writers. She was seen by the victors who took the reins of power in Mexico City as supporting Pancho Villa, who was negatively portrayed by them. Campobello admired Villa (also born in Durango) because her mother did; he was from the north like her, along with several friends, like Guzmán. Her work should have been celebrated for its revolutionary structure and theme. It was met instead with negative criticism, even gossip that she could be Villa’s daughter, which was not true. Poniatowska salutes her body of work, quoting from her poetry, especially Las manos de mamá (1937), noting how she worshipped her mother, and describes other important books by Campobello: her invaluable notes and history in Ritmos indígenas de México, illustrated by her brother, a book nearly impossible to find today, and Apuntes sobre la vida militar de Pancho Villa (1940), based on the revolutionary leader’s diary. She published Tres poemas in 1957, and a final volume (her collected works except for Ritmos), Mis libros, in 1960, with illustrations by José Clemente Orozco (who had died in 1949). After that, Campobello continued to perform her commemorative dance annually, wearing an enormous indigenous headdress, as Poniatowska describes, and dressed in Tehuana attire.61 She left the directorship of the national dance school in 1984 and disappeared from the public except for once in 1985 when she appeared somewhat confused and frail. Failing to arrive for an event later, upon inquiries, someone calling himself her manager reported that she had taken ill. But he was her kidnapper and had kept her drugged while stealing her possessions. After her sister and friends died, Campobello had entrusted a former student and her husband (the kidnapper) with access to her home; he regularly told those seeking her that she preferred life as a recluse. It is primarily because of the scholar Irene Matthews, who translated two of Campobello’s books,62 and visited her in her home in 1979, that her fate is known. When Matthews tried to visit her again in the late 1980s, no one answered. She kept trying to find her, and pushed the police, then the legal system, to open the home. They found the house empty, falling down, and everything of value gone. Not until 1998 was it discovered that Campobello had died in 1986, and her body lay in a pauper’s tomb in a rural graveyard. A death certificate filed in a nearby town stated she died  Years later, Frida Kahlo would paint herself in this Native style.  Published together in one volume in 1988, as Cartucho and My Mother’s Hands.

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of heart failure. “If Nellie had been a man,” Poniatowska reflects, “Mexico would not have let one of its novelists disappear like that.” She expresses regret about not having had the opportunity to interview Campobello, and yet celebrates her with this essay, closing with a marvelous quote. And Poniatowska credits Matthews, who later published Campobello’s biography, in Spanish,63 with rescuing Nellie from the cruel anonymity of her death. Few studies have been published on Campobello’s work, but in 2000, to commemorate the centennial of her birth, the Mexican arts commission CONACULTA released a limited-run, short account by Patricia Dávila Valero. It has remained a mystery what happened to the huge stage backdrops created by Orozco that were in Campobello’s possession, her early drafts and other writings, and Pancho Villa’s diary. Another insult is that in 2006 someone took her bust on display at the government palace in Durango, and it has not been recovered. * * * In her poetic essays translated for this book, Elena Poniatowska honors seven important women artists and writers of Mexico’s cultural renaissance. There were many other daring, talented, and stubborn women, such as Concepción “Concha” Michel, mentioned by Poniatowska in the chapter on Frida Kahlo, and Guadalupe “Lupe” Marín, a very tall feminist greatly admired by the Contemporáneos group, for whom Poniatowska created a tantalizing, novelized biography.64 Like Tina Modotti and Nahui Olin, Michel and Marín were models for Diego Rivera’s early murals and made their own artistic forays: Michel in composing and preserving popular and regional music, Marín in writing novels. Born in 1895, Marín grew up in Guadalajara. She headed to Mexico City, joined the artist community, and worked with Edward Weston and Modotti. In 1922 she married Diego and had two daughters; she posed in the nude, several months pregnant, for his “(mother) Earth” image. After they divorced in 1928, she married poet Jorge Cuesta and had a son. They divorced in 1933, and she remained single. Her first novel, La Única (1938), was a memoir of sorts about the 1920s, which the government banned for many years for erotic language. In 1941, she published Un  Nellie Campobello: la centaura del norte (1997), with a foreword by Poniatowska.  Dos veces única (2016), published by Seix Barral.

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día patrio, a strong expression of her political views. Her oldest daughter became an important architect, and her namesake daughter created several books, one with her mother’s recipes, another about Diego’s childhood and young adult years.65 Born in Jalisco in 1899, Michel’s family moved to Oaxaca when she was seven; her grandfather sent her to a convent to correct her mischievousness, which got her expelled four years later, but first she learned to play the guitar and sing. Michel then lived with her sister in Guadalajara, earned an award to study voice at the conservatory, and had a baby before she was 15. In 1918 she arrived in Mexico City, joined the worker’s party (like other artists, who were also communists at first, then Marxists), and played music for new art openings. Later in the 1920s she worked for the Secretariat of Public Education traveling the nation to teach, collect, and document folkloric corridos and indigenous songs. For years she tried to get her work published; finally in 1951 a portion of her collection, Cantos indígenas de México, was released. In 1932 she joined a group of artists traveling to New  York City, performed at J.D.  Rockefeller’s home, and participated in a contest at the Museum of Modern Art, receiving an award of $1200. That funded her travel to Europe and Russia. A lifelong women’s rights activist, in 1936 Michel led a group of 250 women to invade one of the estates of former President Plutarco Elías Calles, imploring that it be converted to a training center for rural women; her plea went unheeded. Her closest friends were Kahlo and Modotti; she performed for the latter at her exhibit at the National Library in 1929. Michel accompanied Kahlo at her 1953 exhibit in Mexico City and performed for her cremation, as Poniatowska shows. During the second half of her life Michel lived in Morelia, where she continued her activism, wrote plays with strong women characters, and founded a folkloric institute.66 She died in 1990, Lupe Marín in 1983. The remarkable women of Mexico’s post-Revolution cultural renaissance pushed the boundaries, broke social mores, and bucked patriarchal limitations. They had to be loud, make waves, argue, be cute, witty, and 65  Released in English translation in 2004, Diego Rivera the Red (Arte Público Press, translator Dick Gerdes). 66  Poniatowska published a four-part interview with Michel in Novedades in August 1977 and an article in Fem magazine (7:25) in 1982. In 2015, Olga Martha Peña Doria published a book which includes selections from her plays and other works. See also “‘Take off that Streetwalker’s Dress.’ Concha Michel and the Cultural Politics of Gender in Postrevolutionary Mexico,” by Jocelyn Olcott Journal of Women’s History 21:3 (Fall 2009), 36–59.

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persevere against the odds. Highly creative, they left an enduring legacy of painting, compositions, books, performances, images, and recordings. Likewise, Elena Poniatowska has persevered, published journalism and many, many books, guided other writers, and celebrated the forerunners.

References and Works Cited The Diary of Frida Kahlo: an intimate self-portrait. H.N. Abrams, 1995/Mexico: La Vaca Independiente, 1995 Agosín, Marjorie. “Introduction, From a Room of One’s Own to the Garden.” A Dream of Light & Shadow. Portraits of Latin American Women Writers. University of New Mexico Press, 1995. Ahern, Maureen. A Rosario Castellanos Reader: An Anthology of her Poetry, Short Fiction, Essays and Drama. UT Press, 1988 Alarcón, Norma. Rosario Castellanos Feminist Poetics: Against the Sacrificial Contract. Ann Arbor: Univ.Microfilms, 1985 ———. “Traddutora, traditora: a paradigmatic figure of Chicana Feminism.” Cultural Critique 13 (1989 Fall). U of Minnesota P. 57–87 Albers, Patricia and Sam Stourdzé. “Tina Modotti and the Mexican Renaissance.” Moderna Museet. Stockholm, Sweden Museum publication, 2000. [1/4/2021] Beristáin, Natalia, Dir. Los Adioses. 2017. 85 min. Caballero, Oscar Bonifaz. Allgood, Myralyn F, Tr. Remembering Rosario: A Personal Glimpse into the Life and Works of Rosario Castellanos. Potomac: Scripta Humanistica, 2015 ———. Una lámpara llamada Rosario. Consejo Estatal para las Artes y la Cultura de Chiapas, 1984 Campobello, Nellie. Cartucho, Relatos de la lucha en el norte de México. Ediciones integrales, 1931. Cartucho and My Mother’s Hands. Tr. Doris Meyer, Irene Matthews. UT Press, 1988 ———. Apuntes sobre la vida militar de Pancho Villa. México: EDIAPSA, 1940 ———. Ritmos indígenas. Np identified, 1941 Castellanos, Rosario. Balún canán, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1957. The Nine Guardians. Irene Nicholson, Tr. Readers Intl, 1992 ———. Cartas a Ricardo. Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1994 ———. Rito de iniciación. Alfaguara, 1996. ———. El eterno femenino: Farsa. Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1975 ———. Sobre cultura femenina. Gabriela Cano, Ed. Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005 Cypess, Sandra Messinger. Uncivil Wars. Elena Garro, Octavio Paz, and the Battle for Cultural Memory. U of Texas P, 2012

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———. La Malinche in Mexican Literature: from History to Myth. U of Texas P, 1991 Dávila Valero, Patricia. Nellie Campobello. Durango: Poder Legislativo del Estado de Durango, 2000 (digital version available through the University of Texas) Deffebach, Nancy. María Izquierdo and Frida Kahlo: Challenging Visions in Modern Mexican Art. UT Press, 2015 Ferrer, Elizabeth. The True Poetry: The Art of María Izquierdo. New York: Americas Society, 1997 Franco, Jean. Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico. Columbia UP, 1989 Fuentes, Carlos. “Introduction.” The Diary of Frida Kahlo. An Intimate Self-­ Portrait. New York: Abrams, 1995 Gallo, Erin Louise. International Interventions: Rosario Castellanos (1925–74) and Global Feminist Discourses, a dissertation filed in Creative Commons in June 2018, by Erin Gallo, in fulfillment of her Ph.D. at the University of Oregon García, Kay S. Broken Bars: New Perspectives from Mexican Women Writers. University of New Mexico Press, 1994 García Pinto, Margarita. Women Writers of Latin America: Intimate Histories. University of Texas Press, 1991 Garro, Elena. Los recuerdos del porvenir. Joaquín Mortiz, 1963/Recollections of Things to Come. Tr. Alberto Beltrán, Ruth Simms. UT Press, 1969 ———. La semana de colores. Universidad Veracruzana, 1964/Translation of her most important story here, “Blame the Tlaxcaltecs,” is found in Sun, Stone, and Shadows: 20 Great Mexican Short Stories. Ed. Jorge F. Hernández. Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2008 Greeley, Robin Adele. “Painting Mexican Identities: Nationalism and Gender in the Work of María Izquierdo,” special issue, Oxford Art Journal 23:1 (2000: 51–72). Herrera, Hayden. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo. Harper & Row, 1983 Jehenson, Myriam Yvonne. Latin American Women Writers: Class, Race, and Gender. State University of New York Press, 1995 Jorgensen, Beth Ellen. The Writing of Elena Poniatowska: Engaging Dialogues. University of Texas Press, 1994 Lindauer, Margaret A. Devouring Frida. The Art History and Popular Celebrity of Frida Kahlo. Wesleyan UP, 1999 Lozano, Luis-Martín. María Izquierdo, una verdadera pasión por el color. Editorial Océano, 2002 ———, and Teresa del Conde. María Izquierdo, 1902–1955. Chicago: Mexican Fine Arts Center, 1996 (versions in Spanish and English) Malvido, Adriana. Nahui Olin, la mujer del sol. Barcelona: Circe, 1993/ reissued 2017

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Martínez, Elizabeth Coonrod. Introduction and Tr. Lilus Kikus and Other Stories [translation of the short novel, plus stories written later]. U of New Mexico Press, 2005 ———. Teaching Mexicana and Chicana Writers of the Late Twentieth Century. MLA Press, 2021 Matthews, Irene. Nellie Campobello, la centaura del norte. Cal y Arena, 1997 Melgar, Lucía and Gabriela Mora, Eds. Elena Garro, Lectura múltiple de una personalidad compleja. Puebla: Etalcontenidos, 2018 Mitchell, Stephanie, and Patience A Schell. The Women’s Revolution in Mexico, 1910–53. Roman and Littlefield, 2006 Pedroza, Liliana. Andamos huyendo, Elena. Tierra Adentro, 2007 Poniatowska, Elena. Hasta no verte, Jesús mío. Ediciones Era, 1969 ———. Until We Meet Again. Tr. Magda Bogin, Pantheon, 1987 ———. Here’s to you, Jesusa!. Tr. Deanna Heikkinen. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001 ———. La noche de Tlatelolco. Ediciones Era, 1971 ———. Massacre in Mexico. Tr. Helen R. Lane. Viking Press, 1975 ———. Las siete cabritas. Ediciones Era, 2000 ———. Las indómitas. Seix Barral, 2018 ———. Nada, nadie: Las voces del temblor. Ediciones Era, 1988 ———. Nothing, Nobody, the voices of the Mexico City Earthquake. Tr. Arthur Schmidt, Aurora Camacho de Schmidt. Temple University Press, 1995 ———. Querido Diego, te abraza Quiela, Ediciones Era, 1978. Dear Diego. Tr. Katherine Silver, Pantheon Books, 1986 ———. Ay vida, no me mereces! Joaquín Mortiz, 1985 (orig 1974) ———. Tinísima: novela. Ediciones Era, 1992 ———. Leonora. Seix Barral, 2015 ———. Paseo de la reforma. Plaza y Janés, 1996 ———. Lilus Kikus. Los Presentes, 1954 (re-issued by Biblioteca Era, 1969) [Note: a separate book came later, which included the original short novel plus new stories: Los cuentos de Lilus Kikus, Universidad Veracruzana, 1967] Rosas Lopágueti, Patricia, Ed. Nahui Olin, Sin principio ni fin. Vida, obra, y varia invención. UNAL, 2011 ———. El asesinato de Elena Garro: periodismo a través de una perspectiva biográfica. Editorial Porrúa, 2005 ———. Diálogos con Elena Garro: entrevistas y otros textos. Gedisa, 2020. 2 volumes. Schuessler, Michael Karl. La undécima musa: Guadalupe Amor. México: Diana, 1995 ———. Elena Poniatowska: an Intimate Biography. University of Arizona Press, 2007 Stellweg, Carla. Frida Kahlo: la cámara seducida. La Vaca Independiente, 1992

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Stoll, Anita K. A Different Reality: Studies on the Work of Elena Garro. Bucknell UP, 1990 (Includes a personal interview with Garro, translation of two of her one-act plays, and critical essays) Tibol, Raquel. Frida Kahlo: Crónica, testimonios y aproximaciones. Ediciones de Cultura Popular, 1977 ———. Escrituras: Frida Kahlo. México: CONACULTA, 2001 Zamora, Martha. The Letters of Frida Kahlo: cartas apasionadas, Chronicle Books, 1995

CHAPTER 2

Legacy and Biography of Elena Poniatowska Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez

Elena Poniatowska came to notice in Mexico during the 1950s–1960s for her intriguing interviews with “the stars,” as she calls them, the famous figures happily chomping their way through new opportunities after victory of Mexico’s 1910 Revolution. They included Diego Rivera, two years before his death; Mexico’s important architect Luis Barragán; actresses María Félix and Dolores del Río; singers Lola Beltrán and Juan Gabriel; innovative filmmakers Luis Buñuel and Gabriel Figueroa; the lucha libre idol “El Santo”; and the most renowned literary writer of the first half of the twentieth century, Alfonso Reyes (1889–1959). Caught off guard at times by the seemingly naïve questions by a young woman barely in her 20s, her interviewees’ responses became more tantalizing. Her provocative questioning of Mexican figures continued over the decades, now transformed into thousands of published newspaper articles and dozens of books. Today Poniatowska is Mexico’s grand dame of letters, recognized and popular in other Latin American nations, and highly distinguished with

E. C. Martínez (*) DePaul University, Chicago, TX, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. C. Martínez (ed.), The Women of Mexico’s Cultural Renaissance, Literatures of the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11177-8_2

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numerous awards, including Spain’s prestigious Premio Cervantes in 2013 and Latin America’s Rómulo Gallegos award in 2007. From the moment she reached adulthood, Poniatowska reveled in discovering all she could about Mexico. Having spent four years at the Sacred Heart Convent School for girls in Pennsylvania, and before that a few years at the French School in Mexico City, she was conversant in three languages and eager to learn about people. Born in Paris in 1932, where her Mexican mother, Dolores Amor, had married and settled with her husband Jean José Poniatowski, of Polish origin. Her earliest years were spent under the watchful care and tutelage of her paternal grandparents, who had immigrated and lived in France many years, while her parents were volunteers during the French resistance. Their family was disrupted by Germany’s invasion of France in 1940 and full occupation by 1942. Dolores Amor then returned to Mexico with Elena and her younger sister for safety; her parents, Juan and Elena Yturbe, and extended family lived in Mexico City. Elena’s father served in the army until the end of World War II and then joined them in Mexico. As young women, Poniatowska and her younger sister, who married at age 17, attended parties and other society events, but Elena’s interests lay elsewhere. After returning from the Sacred Heart school, Poniatowska took a typing class, ostensibly to help her father launch a business, and one day reading her parents’ newspaper, noticed that the author of an article was a woman, which was unusual to see in that era (although it was an article in the Society section). Poniatowska decided that was what she wanted to do; she marched off to see the editor and suggested doing an interview with the current US ambassador. Her parents were planning to send her to France the next year to find a suitable mate, but she chose a different path: from her first interview published in 1953, she continued a goal of one interview per day. Hearing about a writing coach who was editor at a publishing house, Poniatowska and other writing aspirant peers, including Carlos Fuentes, sought mentoring with him. Poniatowska quickly wrote a short fictional text, Lilus Kikus (1954), the first released in the editor-coach Juan José Arreola’s series for new writers, Los Presentes.1 At the time, she was devouring books in her grandfather’s library, including several authors her mother had just read: Virginia Woolf, Goethe, and the Russian novelists, which likely influenced her passion for writing. Poniatowska created what could be categorized as a short coming-of-age novel, although some critics refer 1  The second book released in the Los Presentes series was Los días enmascarados, by Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012), five stories of early magical realism, the best-known “Chac Mool.”

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to the accounts, always with the same main character, as stories.2 The little book consists of twelve brief chapters following the adventures of a girl who makes observations on incidents at the convent school, in different parts of Mexico City, and in Acapulco during vacation. Delightfully humorous, with a between-the-lines, somewhat subversive writing style, each detail demonstrates Poniatowska’s early powers of observation and listening. A rebellious character at the school gets expelled; another marries young, and her spouse appears to tire of her baby talk; the main character notices people’s actions at the beach, at concerts, at a rowdy street rally for a political candidate, and reflects on the fact that girls likely need to read Goethe. Then, in the final chapter, Lilus accepts quietly as the nuns prepare her for her wedding night. In real life Poniatowska did not marry right away; she kept observing and interviewing and worked for several newspapers, the major daily Excélsior, followed by Novedades. Quickly recognized for her intriguing writing, she was referred to in the diminutive as “Elenita,” typical of her era, with Fuentes dubbing her “la Poni,” and Diego Rivera, the little Polish girl. Soon her newspaper articles were collected in books,3 and she was writing additional stories, collected to accompany a reissue of the short novel in 1962.4 During the heady 1960s, male novelists captured attention as they sat together in cafes, often called the literary mafia, but women were not part of that club. Carlos Fuentes gained immediate fame in 1958 with his novel, La región más transparente (Where the Air Is Clear, 1971), saluted as the first new novelist in Mexico. Gabriel García Márquez arrived from Europe in 1957 to reside in Mexico City, joining other Latin American writers, and his most acclaimed novel, Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude), was released in 1967.5 Poniatowska meanwhile spent ten years creating an in-depth novel on the 1910 Mexican Revolution from the perspective of an illiterate protagonist forced to work as an orphaned child cleaning houses, married by force as a teenager, and then spent years helping in the struggle to win the 2  A critical reaction similar to Sandra Cisneros’s first book, The House on Mango Street (1984), which for some represents a coming-of-age novel and others a collection of short stories. 3  Palabras cruzadas (1961), Ediciones Era, and Todo empezó el Domingo (1963), Fondo de Cultura Económica. In the 1990s, an extensive array of her interviews were collected in a seven-volume series titled Todo México. 4  Cuentos de Lilus Kikus (1962, often confused with the original book). 5  García Márquez (1927–2014) received the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1972 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.

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war: Hasta no verte, Jesús mío (1969; Until We Meet Again, 1988; Here’s to You, Jesusa, 2002). Poniatowska met the woman who inspired her character, working as a laundress, in Mexico City; Poniatowska was fascinated by her way of speaking, and it took many years to learn about her experiences. In the 1970s this book was referred to as testimonial literature, the little visible account of a female soldadera in the national story about the Revolution. The novel garnered the Mazatlán Literature award. As it was being published, the nation was shaken to its core in October 1968, when the Mexican national guard and other military swooped down in a brutal attack on protestors in a prominent plaza of the Tlatelolco neighborhood. Hundreds were slaughtered and many people rounded up and put in jail. The next morning Poniatowska headed out to the plaza; found it full of scattered pamphlets, personal paraphernalia, and bloody shoes; and began months of interviewing family members and witnesses. Her book, La noche de Tlatelolco (1971; Massacre in Mexico, 1975), held an innovative structure, opening with a thorough history of the student protest movement, then alternating segments of official reports with short interviews from witnesses, resulting in a chilling testimony. Poniatowska’s book was the only one for many years to get past censorship, perhaps because of her recognized status and journalistic integrity. To this day, it is the book for which she is most recognized. In 1967, when she was 35 years old, she married the astrophysicist Guillermo Haro (1913–1988), and continued her writing, while raising her children. Poniatowska continued to write for newspapers and to write new creative accounts: in 1978 she released a book in the fictional voice of Diego Rivera’s first spouse left behind in Paris, Angelina Beloff: Querido Diego, te abraza Quiela (1978; Dear Diego, 1986). The next year she published a collection of short stories, De noche vienes (1979) and a biographical account about a Jewish-Mexican young woman with cerebral palsy, who was a disabilities activist, Gaby Brimmer (1979). Poniatowska developed close friendships with other literary figures and journalists, but she was especially influenced and inspired by Rosario Castellanos, for her speeches and writings and her important MA thesis.

The Prolific Era The 1980s and 1990s were a decade of transition to major themes and broader recognition. Her hard-hitting account, Fuerte es el silencio (1980), revealed five essays on those who survive at the peripheries of society. There were two new collections of journalistic articles—Domingo siete (1982) and

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El último guajolote (1982)—and a series of essays on cutting-­edge creative writers Juan Rulfo, Rosario Castellanos, Carlos Fuentes, and a hip group of young people—Ay vida, no me mereces (1985). She published a novel based on experiences in her childhood and home life transition from France to Mexico, La flor de Lis (1988). And in the 1980s Poniatowska taught writing workshops at the National University, UNAM, helping propel several new Mexican women writers into publication. She recommended one author’s new book to a friend, Costa Rica-born film director Guita Schyfter, who was looking for stories based on Jewish-­Mexican experience, especially among girls: a film based on Rosa Nissán’s novel was released the same year the novel was published, Novia que te vea (1994). The academic world in the US had discovered Poniatowska through her books now being translated in the 1980s, and she was often invited to speak at campus venues. Then, when a magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck Mexico City in September 1985, Poniatowska and members of her writing group rushed out to help in relief efforts. As the weeks went by, the dust and grueling work affected her health until the Mexican writer and close friend Carlos Monsiváis urged her to do what she does best: to write about it. Again using a structure alternating government-issued commentary with short interview segments from victims and witnesses, her book, Nada, nadie: las voces del temblor (1988; No one, Nobody, 1995) revealed an impact as great from government inaction and ineptitude as from the earthquake itself. She may have found peace studying, and making trips, to understand the life of the artistic photographer Tina Modotti, interviewing those who knew her, even in Spain and Italy. Modotti was an important member of the artistic movement in the 1920s in Mexico City and responsible for creating an archive of the famous murals process. She traveled to Russia, as other artists did, to see the impact of the Russian Revolution, and later joined the troops for the republic during Spain’s terrible Civil War. Poniatowska’s extensive novel reads like a biography, with fascinating details: Tinísima (1992; same title in English, 2000). As this book was being published, Poniatowska wrote long, poetic essays to accompany the work of two other women photographers: Carla Stellweg on Frida Kahlo, La cámara seducida (1992), and Graciela Iturbide on Oaxacan Native women, Las mujeres de Juchitán (1994). She prepared a short novel, Paseo de la reforma (1996), based in part on Elena Garro’s activism, then an eloquent book about her conversations with Octavio Paz, released the year he died: Las palabras del árbol (1998). Another long introductory essay accompanied a book of photographs by Amanda Holmes, titled Mexican Color (1998), which is a calming, inspiring read.

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If anything, Poniatowska’s images in words are as powerful as paintings and photographs, as much as her poignant words describing the pain felt in communities in distress, such as the essay she prepared to accompany the oral histories and photos on a small community flooded after construction of a dam: Guerrero Viejo (1997). Asked recently what has kept her going through the years, Poniatowska replied that writing: “was my calling. Like a shoemaker, you go to work each day, and build your work, shoe by shoe.”6 As one century and millennium ended, and Poniatowska chalked up nearly five decades of publishing, she created a breathtaking book of images from the historic Casasola photographic archives featuring women during the Revolution: leaning out of trains, doing chores in the field, carrying their musket, cartridge belts around their chest like shawls, with a historic essay by Poniatowska: Las Soldaderas (1999; Soldaderas, Women of the Mexican Revolution, 2006). She prepared a loving biography of the painter and close friend, Juan Soriano, niño de mil años, published the same year as a difficult account documenting the plight of an underage girl in Tijuana who is raped, tries to seek an abortion, and is stopped at various junctures by the legal system and the church: Las mil y una … la herida de Paulina (2000). Also that year, she released a series of essays on outstanding early twentieth-century women artists and writers, represented here in this book. Referring to them as role models, Poniatowska states: They knew what they wanted. Dolores del Río and María Asúnsolo were two members of the so-called proper society who lived their lives openly in the early twentieth century. Del Río chose to move to Hollywood to fully express herself as an actress, and Asúnsolo became a muse to many Mexican intellectuals. David Alfaro Siqueiros painted a splendid portrait of her, titled, ‘María Asúnsolo coming down the staircase.’ Del Río, upon returning from being a star in Hollywood, played a Native figure residing in Xochimilco, María Candelaria, and many more movies directed by Emilio Fernández, filmed by the great Gabriel Figueroa. They received several awards in Cannes. All of this happened long ago, and there were many changes through the decades. I interviewed Tongolele [cabaret dancer] as well as Rosario Castellanos, and Margarita García Flores, editor of UNAM’s La Gaceta, who was adored

 Telephone interview, 22 February 2022

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by her students, and the painter Helen Escobedo, and the artist Fanny Rabel. The only people I did not get to interview were Frida and Nellie, they were a little ahead of my time. I admired them all.7

In the New Millennium In her 70s, Poniatowska continued to pursue writing adventures, often on her favorite topic of artists: an endearing, long essay accompanied a book of photographs by her close friend, Mariana Yampolsky, in 2001. Sporadically writing more short stories, she published a new collection, Tlapalería (2003; The Heart of the Artichoke, 2012), and she spent many years creating a novel as much about science in Mexico as the founding of the important observatory in Tonantzintla, Puebla: La piel del cielo (2001; The Skin of the Sky, 2013), which received the prestigious Alfaguara Prize. Her legacy of documenting people is profound and notable: in 2004, France bestowed on Poniatowska the French Legion of Honor, in recognition of her attention to the voiceless. And her long-term Mexican publisher began releasing her complete works in 2005 and years following, an extensive series of volumes, Obras reunidas. Poniatowska documented another protest, in real time, about fraud in the presidential election of 2006, with protestors occupying the national plaza for weeks. Her interview compilation was published as Amanecer en el zocalo (2007); the previous year she released an extensive novel on the railroad worker movement in the 1950s, through the leadership of the union organizer Demetrio Vallejo, incarcerated by the government at the notorious Lecumberri, where she interviewed him for many years. Titled, El tren pasa primero (2006), this novel was selected for the prestigious Latin American Rómulo Gallegos award. Between 2006 and 2009, Poniatowska tried her hand at something different: several charming children’s books on popular Mexican topics like mariachis, the Adelita soldierwoman, burros, and jacaranda trees, for which she teamed with noted cartoonists and illustrators. And she created a book of poetry and melodies: Rondas de la niña mala (2008). Another book of essays on protests by land squatters and their leader, No den las gracias: La colonia Rubén Jaramillo y el Guero Medrano (2009), rounded out the first decade of the new millennium, as she completed research and travel for an extensive novel on the cutting-edge British artist Leonora Carrington (1917–2011), also a close friend: Leonora (2011; 7

 Email conversation, 14–15 October 2021.

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Leonora, 2015). Carrington sought refuge in Mexico after World War II; she became a naturalized Mexican citizen, created an important mural for the National Anthropology Museum, El mundo mágico de los Mayas, and was a founding member of the women’s movement in Mexico in the 1970s. Poniatowska’s novel was published the year she died and is now in English translation. In 2012, Poniatowska now 80 years old, had many more books to publish. That year it was a biography about her husband, the eminent astrophysicist Guillermo Haro, El universo o nada. The next year, the announcement came that she was selected for the most important award in Spanish-language letters, the prestigious Cervantes award (equivalent to the Pulitzer in the US), for lifetime achievement and publication. In her acceptance speech at the official ceremony on April 23, 2014, a month before her 82nd birthday, Poniatowska made note of the fact she was only the fourth woman to receive the award since it began in 1976, four women “among 35 men.” Wearing a beautiful red and yellow dress created for her by the Native women of Juchitán, she talked about her love for the culture and history of her home continent, a people condemned to obscurity before Gabriel García Márquez “gave wings to Latin America.” She described her family roots as “Italian who ended up in Poland, Polish who ended up in France, and French who ended up in Mexico,” and addressed her lifelong pursuit documenting the voice of the voiceless, concluding that, “the silence of the poor is a silence representing centuries of being forgotten and pushed back to the edges of society.”8 She had just completed a novelized account on the feisty feminist Lupe Marín, Diego Rivera’s second wife; the novel opens in 1922, when they met, and includes marvelous descriptions of Mexico City spanning decades: Dos veces única (2015). This novel is also the story of several avant-garde characters in the Contemporáneos poetry movement, including Marín, and her second husband, the poet and critic Jorge Cuesta, as well as the lives of Marín’s two daughters. Poniatowska then churned out three more thick books: De la tierra al Cielo (2019), on the distinguished Mexican architect Luis Barragán, and colleagues, and a two-volume tome on the life of the last king of Poland, Stanislaw Poniatowski, an ancient uncle of her father’s, El amante polaco (2019; 2021). Each volume more than 400 pages long, the reader is 8  See https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/words-thought/walking-besidedreamers-2013-cervantes-prize-lecture.

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transported to the eighteenth-century European monarchies, where Stanislaw at age 20 becomes assistant to a British diplomat, then a longterm lover of the Russian empress-to-be, Catherine the Great, rises in the diplomatic circles, and participates in the intrigues of the powerful European regimes, before ascending to his throne as a reformist who created “the best constitution” outside of France, Poniatowska says. In her foreword she exclaims that in doing research, she was shocked to learn that for 123 years Poland ceased to exist, until its current restoration in the early twentieth century. She included an interesting surprise in the final segments of each chapter, where she related her own story, briefly, in chronological order. The remarkable Elena Poniatowska is likely not winding down, and more books will come. Her earlier books are being reissued by new publishers in Spain, since the prestigious Cervantes award. A few books have been translated to other languages, and it would be great to see more translations to English of her latest works. She is saddened about the loss of her writing peers and close friends; in 2010, Carlos Monsiváis’s death took her by surprise. She stood guard for hours at the wake of her close friend. Recently, it was José Emilio Pacheco in 2014, the same year as Gabriel García Márquez, who a few months earlier had arrived at her home with a bouquet of yellow roses, to congratulate her for the Premio Cervantes.9 Five years her senior, they had been friends since the late 1950s through a shared love of journalism. In 2012, it was Carlos Fuentes, and in 2018, another close friend, Sergio Pitol. Poniatowska does not travel as much now; she is comfortable in Mexico City; she writes a weekly column, and still receives journalists, academics, and friends who want to interview her. Asked if she has advice for other writers, she says no. How about young women, and she replies readily:10 To young women? To write is to read. Read what others have written. Especially read the classics, no? Read your peers, others like you who want to write. Other aspiring writers. And read in other languages. I think to read is one of the most important paths. Another is to hear, to listen to what others have to say. How they look at you when they’re talking, or how they feel about their subject. Writing is about thoughts and feelings. You also have to love what you’re doing.

9

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzEQv4_7E8M.  Telephone interview, 22 February 2022.

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CHAPTER 3

Diego I’m Alone, Diego I Am No Longer Alone: Frida Kahlo Elena Poniatowska and Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez

This woman you see, looking directly at you, is a deception. Beneath these lips that never smile are rotted, black teeth. The broad forehead, crowned with braids woven in colorful ribbons, masks the selfsame death that runs through my bones ever since I had polio. Look at me, examine me well, because this may be the last time you see me. See my watchful, sleepy eyes, observe them; I never sleep, or almost never, I go through the days and nights in a constant state of alert. I capture signs others do not see. Look at me, I am both the hammer and the butterfly that freeze in a moment as Ignacio Aguirre, the painter, my lover, has said. I have always awakened from my nocturnal fevers with shock, seeing I did not die during my sleep. English translation by Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez, essays from Elena Poniatowska’s book Las siete cabritas, published in 2000. E. Poniatowska c/o Schavelzon Graham Agencia Literaria, S.L., Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] E. C. Martínez (*) DePaul University, Chicago, TX, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. C. Martínez (ed.), The Women of Mexico’s Cultural Renaissance, Literatures of the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11177-8_3

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See my hands covered in rings? I kiss these hands, I revere them, they have never failed me; they have followed my mind’s orders, while my entire body has betrayed me. In this skin that encloses me, the lymphatic fluid, the blood, the fat, the bodily humors and sense of taste have been condemned since I was six years old. My body has been a Judas, and in Mexico we burn all the Judases [large puppets filled with fireworks]: they erupt into the sky, they are reduced to ashes. Every year, every Lent, every Friday of Holy Week, the same ceremony: the burning of Judas to remember betrayal. These hands that you see braided my long black hair and pinned flowers on my head; that is why the poet Carlos Pellicer wrote, “you are completely covered in carnations.” These hands that you see have interlocked with Diego’s hands, have thrown a shawl over my shoulders, have caressed the feminine chest of Diego my frog-prince, have pulled the nipple of a desired woman, have pulled up a blanket when I’m cold, but above all have held the paintbrush, mixed colors on the palette, drawn my parrots, my dogs, my miscarriages, Diego’s face, my Native nanny, the contours of the faces of my sister Cristina’s children, my father Guillermo’s eyebrows, have written letters and a diary, have penned love notes, have made me a painter. The hands that you see took scissors and cut my hair, scattering the long strands on the floor, dressed me as a man, buttoned my jacket, and wrote the song: “Look, if I loved you it was because of your hair, now that you are pelona1 I do not love you.” I painted everything, my lips, my blood-red nails, my eyelids, the circles under my eyes, my lashes, my corsets, one after another, my birth, my sleep, my toes, my nakedness, my blood, my blood, my blood, the blood that came out of my body and they put back in, the Judases who surround me, the one who guards my sleep at night, the Judas that inhabits me and that I don’t allow to betray me. When I painted, I did not exorcise these demons, I never wanted to exorcise anyone, or anything. I knew since I was a girl that if I exorcized them, I would become an india muerta [dead Indian]. Epilepsy is a possession. My father was epileptic. When Diego was courting me, my father warned him: “She has the devil in her.” It was true. That demon gave me strength, it was life’s demon. This woman you see, contemplating herself in the mirror, forever reflected in the other, on the canvas, in the windowpanes by which I travel outside in my imagination, this woman you see smoking, who comes forth from the canvas and observes you fixedly, is me. My name is Frida Kahlo. I was born in Mexico. I don’t feel like giving the date. I did not tell my first boyfriend Alejandro Gómez Arias my age because he was younger 1

 This word has double meaning: “bald” but also, primarily, “death.”

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than me. I don’t want to lose anyone, I don’t want anyone to die, not a dog, not a cat, not a parrot, I don’t want them to leave me. May they all always be there so that they can see me. I exist in the light reflected by the others. This woman you see never wanted to be like them. From the time I was a girl, I tried to distinguish myself so that they would put me on an altar. First my father, then Alejandro, who in fact never loved me, and “the Cachuchas” gang, my peers at prep school. I wanted the intensely blue skies of Mexico to love me, the stacked watermelons in the market stalls, the anxious eyes of the animals. I was going to get the world to fall head over heels in love with this Shit Girl. We Cachuchas were a bunch of hoodlums. We stole books from the Iberoamericana Library and sold them to buy big sandwiches. Anti-­ religious, our passions still scalding from the Revolution, we were intent about anything and everything. We did not want to study, simply to have a fine time. I once planted a bomb at school during a lecture by Antonio Caso, and it blew up at one of the windows of El Generalito Hall. The shards tore his outer clothes. I greatly disliked Antonio Caso, for being a philosopher and for being a bore. The headmaster, Vicente Lombardo expelled me. José Vasconcelos, the Secretary of Education, summoned him and said: “It is best you resign if you can’t control a ne’er-do-well, 14-year old girl.” Lombardo Toledano stepped down. I always knew that in my body there was more death than life. From the time I was a child I knew, but then I didn’t care because I learned how to combat solitude. Those who are ill are isolated. You know who your friends are when you are sick or in jail. When I was six, pow!, one morning I could not stand up, and pow! poliomyelitis. They diagnosed “a white tumor.” I was in bed for nine months. They would wash my shrunken leg in walnut leaf water and little hot towels. My father helped me. He bought me colorful paints and created a small easel so that I could draw in bed. My little leg became skinnier. No one knew what to do. Doctors are a bunch of dummies. When I was seven, I wore boots. “Frida Kahlo peg leg, Frida Kahlo peg leg,” the children at school would holler. They made a verse: Frida Kahlo peg leg Gringo-style stocking She doesn’t even try.

I didn’t think the teasing insults would hurt, but they did, each time even more. For my skinny leg to not look so skinny, I would wear double socks. Physical suffering nestled into my small body rather quickly and not just in mine, but in my father’s also.

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He loved me so much. He was the first one who truly loved me, more than anyone. In his pockets he carried a little bottle of ether. Later, I accompanied him to take his photographs of churches and monuments, and I learned how to assist him in the moment of an seizure, give him the ether to breathe, put a handkerchief to his mouth, clean off the foamy saliva, put water on his forehead, and make sure the curious bystanders did not steal his camera. That would have been the worst, to have his camera stolen, because we were poor, and he would not have been able to buy another one. After an attack, he wouldn’t say anything to me. My father was very reserved. He did not talk about his illness. Why? Clearly everyone who sought photographs at the corner of Londres and Allende respected him because he never said a word. He knew what he needed to do, fulfilled it, and was good at it. That was enough. When I was seven, I helped my sister Matilde, who was 15, escape to Veracruz with her boyfriend. Since then, I believe in love. Women need to have the balcony open so that they can fly after love. I also flew after Diego. I have flown after all the men and women I desired. Open the balcony, that is what love consists of. When my mother found out her favorite daughter had eloped, she got hysterical. Why would Matita not want to escape? My mother was hysterically dissatisfied. Sometimes I hated her, especially when she would catch rats in the basement and drown them in a barrel. That impressed me in a horrible way. Perhaps she was cruel because she was not in love with my father. When I was 11 years old, she showed me a leather-bound book where she kept the letters from her first love. On the last page she wrote that the author of those letters, a German boy like my father, had committed suicide in front of her. On September 17, 1925, my life changed forever, because until then the skinny little leg had not caused me pain. It was the accident between the trolley and the bus. The trolley dragged the bus that my boyfriend Alex and I were riding and smashed it against a wall. It was an astounding crash. The bus handrail pierced my entire body much like running through a bull. A man carried me and laid me on a billiards table. And he pulled out the iron rod, which had traversed my body from side to side, quickly as a matador or a butcher would do. Alex told me that the crash left me naked and covered in blood and gold dust, the gold dust that stuck to my body because of the blood, and people said: “Look at the little dancer, poor little dancer.” A passenger was carrying a bag of gold dust and with the impact it burst and spread over my body. The diagnosis was: “Fracture of the third and fourth lumbar vertebrae, three fractures in the pelvis, eleven fractures in the right foot, dislocation of the left elbow, deep wound in the abdomen,

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produced by an iron bar penetrating through the left hip, exiting through the vagina, ripping the left lip. Acute peritonitis. Cystitis that requires a catheter probe for several days.” The doctors still do not know how I survived. I lost my virginity, my kidney was bruised, I could not urinate, and what I most complained about was my spinal column. Of my family only Matita, my sister, came to visit me. The others were so shocked at the initial sight of me that they became ill. To my mother, who finally saw me for the first time after three months at the Red Cross hospital, I said: “I did not die, and besides, I have something to live for, which is painting.” Truly, painting became my cure, my only true medicine. Doctors are assholes. Painting became my life. I lost three babies and a series of things that would have fulfilled my life. Truly horrifying. All of that was replaced by painting. I think work is the best therapy. On December 5, 1925, I wrote to Alejandro Gómez Arias: “The only positive thing I can attest to is that I am getting accustomed to suffering.” I wrote to him again on April 25, 1927: “You cannot imagine the desperation that one begins to feel in this condition, it is a horrifying ailment that I cannot begin to explain; there are moments of intense pain that cannot be contained. Today they were going to put the corset cast on me, but it will probably not be until Tuesday or Wednesday because my father does not have the money. It costs sixty pesos, it’s not so much the money, they could have obtained it, but the fact is that no one in my house believes that I am that bad off […] I can’t write for too long because I can hardly bend […] You cannot imagine how the four walls of my room drive me crazy. Everything! I can hardly explain to you the desperation I feel.” On Sunday May 1, International Worker’s Day, 1927, I wrote: “On Friday they put the cast around on my body: it has become a martyrdom that cannot be compared to anything. I feel asphyxiated, there is horrifying pain in my lungs and throughout my back. I can hardly touch my leg. I can barely walk and cannot sleep at all. Imagine this, they had me hanging with my head down for two and a half hours, and then put pressure on my feet for more than an hour, while blasting [my mid-body] with hot air. But even when I got home it was still totally wet. Entirely alone, I suffer horribly. I must endure this martyrdom for three to four months; if this does not help me heal, I sincerely want to die, because I can bear it no longer. It is not just the physical suffering but also that I have nothing to distract me. I never leave this room, I can’t do anything, cannot get up and move around. I am entirely desperate, and above all, you are not here.” When my father took my photograph in 1932 after the accident, I saw a battlefield of suffering in my eyes. Since then I began to look straight

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ahead and directly into the camera’s eye. Without smiling, without moving, determined to show that I was going to fight to the end. The Frida in me, only I know her. Only I put up with her. She is a Frida who cries a lot. She is always fever-hot. She is lustful. She is fierce. Desire seizes her. Man-desire and woman-desire. Desire tires her because desire erodes, empties, enervates. I lost my life many times but I also recovered; my life returned drop by drop in a transfusion, in a kiss from Diego, his mouth on mine, and then left again through a new operation. Over the course of 30 years I endured 39 operations. In the final one they cut off my foot. “Why do I want feet when I have wings to fly.” Also, when Diego would leave me my life would depart, but I liked that. I wanted to give Diego my entire life. To love him until death. I would give my life so that he could live. I love Diego more than my own life. I can’t keep things in, I have never been able to do so. I always needed to get them out and say things in a different way: with the paintbrush, with the mouth. To speak myself, and for others to understand me, I began to paint. My face. My body. My broken column. The darts in my deer casing. I dressed my Judas with Diego’s clothes and mine and hung him on the bed canopy, just like the doctors hung me with bags of sand tied to my feet, supposedly to stretch me. In August 1953, I hung a rattle on the celluloid fake foot, that hateful prosthetic, and asked them to dress it, to give it a little red leather boot. My corsets. So many corsets. At first, I painted the corsets a Gentian purple, or methylene blue, the colors of medicine. Later on I wanted to adorn them, make them obscene, because my illness was a crappy illness, a piece of shit. They would yank me by the neck, they would pull the vertebrae with traction, and my column kept getting more and more fragile, my spine each day more useless. I could hear the bones crack like those of a chicken. They immobilized me for months and months, then finally admitted it had served nothing. Lousy quacks. Often I wanted to die, but also, enraged, I wanted to live. And to paint. And to make love. And to paint how it is to make love. I had nothing other than myself. I was the best for me. And Diego. When I married Diego I felt a warm happiness. We would laugh. We would play. He remembered all the pranks I played, how I bugged him in the patio of the Secretary of Education building [where he painted murals]. We “Los Cachuchas” greatly admired the painters and would defend the murals of Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros, all of them. In the amphitheater I asked him: “Maestro, does it bother you that we watch you paint?” He responded: quite the contrary. On another occasion as I watched him pass by, I screamed: “How I want to have Diego Rivera’s child!”

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One day I soaped up three steps of the central ladder he used, so that Diego would slip and fall. But he was forewarned and descended from a different side of the scaffolding. I asked him to tell me honestly what he thought of my painting. Orozco saw what I did and liked it. Diego also. Once we were married, we traveled. I became the distinguished Mrs. Frida Kahlo de Rivera. We clung together like bean plants, we took root, and my injuries flowered. We traveled to the US. We made fun of the gringos: they are like half-baked bread, taken out of the oven too early. Then they want to be loved. But there is always a pebble in the beans of happiness, and Diego was very amorous. He was a macho, he had other women, and I had to put up with it. All of his life, one lover after another, woman after woman. Many lovers. They say that Diego is immoral. That’s not true. He does not believe in morals; he has no morality. He lives for his work and gets excited about women in heat, smelling like rotten fish. When he fell in love with María Félix, I really suffered, but then she rejected him, and I defended him. I also had other lovers. I devoured them, took and cast aside. Let’s get trashy: any old shoe women I tossed aside I never touched again. I went after any he that I liked, or any she that I liked. I was a violent and tender lover. I was born to cause problems, but life gave me a big problem. I still believe in myself and in life. In me, as long as I live and in all that lives. “Diego, I’m alone, Diego, I’m no longer alone.” In Gringoland I had some exhibits, the gringos went crazy for my early pieces. Anyway, they’re crazy because they drink so much Coca-Cola. I created a dramatic self, I wanted to be spectacular wherever I made an entrance, but within me, every step I took hurt like shit. I also jerked my head back so that no one saw my teeth hidden by my tongue. The devil inside. I laughed heartily in order not to cry out in pain. I am a badass woman. As an adolescent, I dressed in a man’s suit. Even without heels I was taller than my four sisters and my mother, and also more intelligent. My father said so. Once grown up, I covered myself in long skirts so my legs could not be seen, so that I would not be like the peacocks that suffer anger and shame when theirs are seen. At my exposition at the Pierre Colle Gallery in Paris, organized by André Breton, a lot of snobbish Frogs attended. Over there in Paris I drank and drank, cognac after cognac, bottle after bottle, each and every night to sleep, to be able to endure the pain in my spine. I’ve always liked to be slender but not too much. I began to float. I would forget that I was crippled. Imagine this: in Paris the stylists are such clowns that when they

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saw me stumbling down the streets in my long skirts, they invented a dress for their collection that they called, I swear, Robe Madame Rivera. I liked appearing in Vogue though. The crappy French said that I was extravagantly beautiful. In Mexico no one ever turned to watch me pass on the street, for in Mexico and in Coyoacán I was no more than a cripple. One time, in one of my photographs, I marked the map of my life, the four cardinal points with legends for each place, as though the pain, affection, love, and passion were gods of a Oaxacan codex. To the North, pain: it lives in all parts, reconstructs me everywhere. To the South, love: it is light and music, tearing at my heart. To the East, passion: a pyramid of humanity, pain, and hope. And to the West, affection. When my life is over—because it will end—I, Frida, will remain to immortalize her. I am one and my life is another. I bury my hands in oranges. In 1940, in San Francisco, Dr. Eloesser forbade alcoholic beverages, depriving me of a way to quell the pain. By then my pain was so extreme that painting could not distract me like before. It was difficult to hold up a paintbrush, to concentrate. I never did anything haphazardly, never painted carelessly. I revised everything again and again until each tone came to light exactly as I wanted. I painted each one of the little hairs of my monkeys, with fleas on them, in fine hairs like my moustache. I diligently sketched each gland and each vein in my nursemaid’s breasts, filled with milk. The roots and the flowers intertwined in their sap and found their way under the earth. Fruits were tempting, full of juice, in heat, lavish. This woman you see received Trotsky in Tampico [in 1937]. Diego asked me to welcome the couple and provide them with lodging at my home in Coyoacán, the Blue House. Trotsky lived within my strong walls and we became neighbors. Trotsky and Natalia, his peevish woman, on Vienna Street, Diego and I around the corner on Londres Street. Trotsky developed a crush on me. This woman you see is going to leave you curious. I have wings to spare. In 1946, Dr. Philip D. Wilson fused four of my lumbar vertebrae with the application of a graft from my pelvis, and a plate, 15 centimeters long, made of vitallium. I was bedridden for three months, but I got better. I improved a lot. Since I felt better, I thought I could live an almost normal life; he had told me not to risk it, that I should rest. But I could not waste my recovery. I did not stay in bed as he advised, I was anxious to live. I came and went without stopping, and the consequences of my

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disobedience were terrible. But that’s my nature. I was never prudent, never obedient, never submissive, always rebellious. Had I not been, how could I have endured my life, and furthermore, painted? I felt that my strength was returning, so much so that when they inaugurated the Pulquería La Rosita on Francisco Sosa Street, with murals by my students, “los Fridos,” I said: “No more corset. Tonight, I will go corset-less.” I walked alone best I could, trembling, staggering, feverish, rushing out to celebrate the opening night party at La Rosita. I dove into the uproar in the streets, the fireworks, the Judases [giant puppets], my hair loose, I screamed: “Enough! Enough!” I kept going even if I fell, even if I died that very night, even if I would never again leave my bed, even if that night depleted my vital strength, even if the devil that kept me painting left me. That night the people out on the street followed me, I spoke to everyone, I kept talking a lot. To speak is to combat sadness. I talked my head off to neighbors I did not know, addressed faces I had never seen before. For one single day I wanted to be free, healthy, unbroken, like everyone else, a normal person, not a nuisance. The big tease. This woman you see, in her wheelchair, next to Dr. Juan Farill who cut off my foot, is Diego’s mother, his lover, his daughter, his sister, his protector, his guide, the one who takes him by the hand, alongside José Guadalupe Posada, in the work Un domingo en la Alameda [Diego’s mural]. This woman you see doesn’t believe God exists, because if he existed I would not have suffered so much, nor would I have spent my life in crummy hospitals but instead on the street, where I was always a wanderer even with my stiff foot. If God existed, Mexicans would not be so ravaged, my father would not have had epilepsy, my mother would have been a little Oaxacan belle who knew how to read, Diego would never have been unfaithful to me, nor would I have done that to him, and I would now have his child. I am disintegration personified. This woman you see, deceit after deceit, died on July 14, 1954, and was cremated. Frida of the sugar skulls with her name written on her forehead: “Frida” of the colored brushes, of clay and silver necklaces, of golden rings, the one in pain, the one stabbed by a handlebar, the one who flamed out, and recovered her healthy body at the moment when the fire engulfed her. The other one, the one I invented and painted, the one who was photographed a thousand times, is the one who remains with you.

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Nothing is worth more than laughter. This woman you see has returned to dust. Now disappeared are her odors, her underpants, the density of her flesh, the red of her fingernails, her brilliance, the intense look in her eyes, her one eyebrow like the wing of a raven across her forehead, her little moustache, her saliva, her oils and juices, the thickness of her hair, her hot tears, her broken bones, her palette, her little cigarettes, her guitar, her way of being song and water and burst of laughter. She embodies pain. Because I was pain in the hallways of geraniums and ferns, in front of Diego’s murals, in the kitchen replete with little clay pots, at the dining room table where I never ate cheerfully, in the canopy bed with the mirror above me to see me painting me. I am a teasing dog. This woman who looks at you now is the first of two Fridas. The one on canvas remains, the one dearly loved by life, the one they will converse with in their heart. Never has there been a bigger coward than me, nor a woman braver than me. I have never known a woman more alive, one dirtier, bitchier, or one more disgraced. Nothing should be left without trying. From my bed, from my corsets made of plaster, of iron, of clay, from the canvas, from paper photographs, I say: women, sisters, friends, don’t be fools, open your legs and don’t choke your future children, sleep hooked into the shoulder of your lover, breathe into your lover’s mouth, share the same exhalation. In pain, movements are wasted energy, listen to the beating of your heart, that mysterious, magical clock we all have inside. I hate compassion. I wrote in my diary a few days before my death: “I await happily the exit and expect never to return.” I sketched the black angel of death. Long live life. The dove confused its path. Frida’s body engulfed in flames was cremated on July 14, 1954, while her students intoned La international. Frida of the demons, Frida of Mr. Xólotl, Frida of the red brushes dipped in her own blood, Frida of the stone necklaces, Frida of the chains, Frida the one in pain, the critic, the feisty one, Frida in the end covered in the red-black flag, with the red hammer, the red sickle and white star, continuing to be an impassioned communist in the heavens. One Frida has left, and the other remains. The one leaving is the coward.

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This woman you see now, I myself, Friduchita, Fridachín, Frieda, Diego’s little Fisita, she lights her human wrapper, burns the cardboard Judas, ignites it and listens with her ears and her earrings how it explodes into the sky filling it with light and amazing fireworks. Her ear to the ground, she hears Concha Michel’s ballads, strumming her guitar, tata chun, tata chun, she hears them sing La Internacional, and remains always among you, she-I the badass, Frida Kahlo.

CHAPTER 4

Maria Izquierdo, Backwards and Forwards Elena Poniatowska and Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez

The gunfire of the 1910 Revolution still resounds. Women wear their shawls crossed in front, in the manner they previously strapped cartridge belts in an “X” across their chest. Their strong, walker legs open the road ahead. They strive to tame their mane by pulling it into braids. They are still made from earth and water, maize formed their teeth, straightened their bones, strengthened their skeletons, and shaped their cheekbones. The sun highlights their faces; Zapata’s cry of “Land and Liberty!” runs through their blood. They arrive in a village to quickly build a fire, toss stolen chickens into pots of boiling water, or skewer them on the points of their bayonets. The rifle is on their shoulders at the ready so that no one interferes with preparing food for those who follow. They are the vanguard. English translation by Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez, essays from Elena Poniatowska’s book Las siete cabritas, published in 2000. E. Poniatowska c/o Schavelzon Graham Agencia Literaria, S.L., Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] E. C. Martínez (*) DePaul University, Chicago, TX, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. C. Martínez (ed.), The Women of Mexico’s Cultural Renaissance, Literatures of the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11177-8_4

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The women walk, sweat, make love, provide comfort, give birth, and grow accustomed to death. Each carries her dead within. Nellie Campobello, the only female novelist of the Mexican Revolution, recounts in Cartucho how she [the child character] falls in love with the corpse shot to death near her window—her dead one—and misses it when they take him away. She doesn’t cry, no one cries, there is no compassion, it is not a time for prayers or candles. The only thing that matters are the bullets. In the 1920s, women are free because they are their authentic selves. They follow their instincts, without falling for any complicities with society, with religion, or official canons. There is no difference between their inner and outer worlds. They step firmly, tap their heels, are as colorful as flower fields, pinwheels, and little merry-go-round horses in traveling circuses or park fairs. They pass through life under their own flags. Tall, slender, and fierce, Lupe Marín—Diego Rivera’s wife—breaks his pre-­ Hispanic figurines over his head, then, when he won’t give her money for household expenses, serves him a delicious soup made of clay shards. Dolores del Río returns from Hollywood to exchange her peacock feather boas and “Cedric Gibbons” aigrettes for a Oaxacan straw hat. Inés Amor elopes to Texcoco with a bullfighter named Pérez—can you imagine? a Pérez? The wedding banquet consists of two toasted tortillas with aged cheese and a shot of tequila, which they enjoy under the shade of a tree. An Amor with a Pérez, heavens! Juan Soriano and Diego de Mesa call out from the street a midnight, “Lola, Lola, Lola!” awakening the neighbors. Lola Álvarez Bravo gets out of bed to dress quickly and join them in dancing at the Cabaret Leda. Antonieta Rivas Mercado is the patron of Teatro Ulises and José Vasconcelos’s muse. In contrast to her devout and saintly aunt Conchita Cabrera, founder of the Order of the Holy Spirit, the sensual Machila Armida prepares aphrodisiacal stews, sautés mortal sins, seasons desires, and holds her drink better than the men. Elena Garro makes and unmakes Octavio Paz’s life; when he asks her to dress for a reception at the Guatemalan Embassy, she puts mud on her face, a kerchief on her head, grabs a broom, and gets into the official car, scaring her husband: “Octavio, didn’t you tell me to get dressed?” María Izquierdo at age 14 marries a military man, Cándido Posadas, and later paints him as a looming and menacing figure in dark attire. A woman stands behind him. Is it she?

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One Circus Performance Left a Mark María Cenobia Izquierdo was born in 1902  in San Juan de los Lagos, Jalisco, a pilgrimage site where the devout flock to await a miracle. She lived with her grandmother and an aunt,1 devout and boring women, according to Margarita Nelken, the art critic exiled to Mexico in 1939 from the Spanish Civil War. She never participated in the annual San Juan festival, which draws men and women from all over the world to the shrine and the innumerable vendors of rosaries, religious cards, and bottles of holy water. Once, however, they took her to a circus performance, which left such a mark on her that she would forever paint little fair horses, acrobats, trapeze artists, elephants, jugglers, dancing dogs, solitary zebras, and one lion with his lioness who give themselves up to lovemaking when the tamer is distracted. No one has painted horses like María Izquierdo, she sees them short and docile, never tossing off their blankets or the rider. María is not only a horsewoman, she is a lion tamer. To marry at age 142 a man who raises his finger to give orders, which is the way she paints him, is an omen of violence in a nation of violence and betrayal.

Mexico City in 1923 From Saltillo in the north, María arrived in Mexico City in 1923, her children and husband in tow, taking up residence in the San Rafael neighborhood. Their house downtown was near the Academia de San Carlos and the School of Medicine. In the patio chickens clucked happily and dogs barked. María turned that mansion of many bedrooms into a boarding house, where she later rented a room to Lola Álvarez Bravo, who had recently separated from Manuel. Her maestros were Germán Gedovius and Alfonso Garduño. Both told her to paint at home to meet the needs of her husband and children, Aurora, Amparo, and Carlos, as well as her sister Belén who came with her. After a few years, she decided to separate from Cándido Posadas. From the time she was a girl, María Izquierdo gazed fixedly at the door, through which she wished to escape. The photographer’s camera also held 1  Her father died before she was 5, her mother moved to northern Mexico and remarried; Izquierdo bounced around between grandmothers and other relatives’ homes in various states, until her arranged marriage at age 14 to an older military officer. 2  Her three children were all born by the time she was 17.

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a strange attraction: the magic of how it captured her at age six with her dark stockings, three-tiered skirt, her hair pulled up onto her head, and her thick eyebrows that she would later reduce to a thin embroidery string, like that done in Aguascalientes on handkerchiefs for a good cry, or that which unravels from monograms on linen sheets. The witchcraft spell of a camera is powerful. Portraits of her are a projection to the future. There she is, thick brows and stubborn. The camera already knows of her decision, Cándido must remain behind.3 She cannot continue being Mrs. Posadas, her three children are growing and no longer need her; she will be a painter. She will throw herself full force onto the blank canvas, she will enter the School of Painting and Sculpture at the Academia de San Carlos.

This Is the Only One On August 14, 1929, Diego Rivera was named Director of the Academia de San Carlos and singled out her work as the only one worth his time: “In María’s painting there is neither the easy tribute to lovely improvisation nor the picturesque qualities of good taste, or even the literary departures that can attract strange sympathies for the visual arts.” Margarita Nelken adds, “Diego Rivera passed by the top students’ works without stopping, and then, upon suddenly viewing María’s work, declared adamantly: ‘This is the only one.’” Indignation. Scandal. Loud protest. The next day the students receive her with buckets of water. “It is a crime to be born a woman,” María Izquierdo exclaimed in her memoir, “And an even greater crime to have been born a woman with talent.” Confronted by the envy and lack of understanding from her classmates, she chooses to work at home.

Mexico, Mexico Mexico is an explosion of fireworks, it radiates its light. No one in Europe can remain indifferent to the newly revealed cultures hidden in the American jungle. Archaeologists are incredulous that beneath the trees, pyramids multiply. Mesoamerica could be the ancient Greece of the New Continent. Maya art, crouched like a tiger hiding in the swamp, gives archaeologists the greatest shock of their lives. Jacques Soustelle will never 3

 She divorced in 1928.

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be the same again after seeing Teotihuacán and Monte Albán, nor Sylvanus J. Morley, Eric Thompson, Eduard Seler, Alfonso Caso, or Alberto Ruz Lhuillier. Suddenly Mexicans are to be admired; the great Maya civilization brings prestige, and they are attractive in a way they were not previously. Surely the heirs of such masters are the artists the world has awaited. Mexican muralism dazzles many, and when the Tres Grandes arise, their movement is acclaimed and critics proclaim a new Renaissance of universal art, in Mexico—the navel of the moon. European and US artists want to paint alongside maestro Rivera. Jean Charlot and Pablo O’Higgins are his humble assistants. The sisters Grace and Marion Greenwood are the first women who climb the scaffolding and paint. Furthermore, they do it in a public market. The writers D. H. Lawrence and Hart Crane and photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paul Strand, and Edward Weston and his disciple Tina Modotti, and Sergei Eisenstein and Tissé, his personal videographer, are in ecstasy, and Tormenta sobre México [Eisenstein’s 1933 film] depicts this earthly paradise. Not only did the 1910 Mexican Revolution precede the Russian one, in our nation, according to José Vasconcelos, a new race has emerged: the cosmic race. The new man is forged in Mexico, the future of the world gestated on our continent, this joining of blood from two cultures will make us invincible, the energy concentrated in our terrain is volcanic, like the neurons in the Mesoamerican brain. José Vasconcelos draws a parallel to the Greeks in his book Ulises Criollo, although Juan Soriano quips better to read Homer’s Ulysses. An endless euphoria. No visitor will be able to ignore Mexico’s greatness, which is not only that of the past, but also now bursting from all manifestations of popular culture. Mexico is a stunning market which alongside radishes and carrots offers colors and sensations that drive the foreigners crazy.

More Mexican than Frida Kahlo María Izquierdo turns out to be more Mexican than Frida Kahlo, because she is not folkloric but essential. Her poetic genius goes beyond that of shawls and stencil paper. Only when her body of work increases does she lose a little of the freshness in her static little fair horses, which are marvelous. She paints still-lifes, soup tureens, mermaids, farm girls, childlike houses in serious ways, red tablecloths, self-portraits, nieces, and a true marvel, Naturaleza viva con huachinango [Still-life with red snapper].

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The Juanita Cardboard Dolls Edward Weston and Tina Modotti photograph with delight, and near reverence, the ingeniously crafted toys at the markets; William Spratling in Taxco promotes silverworks; Jorge Enciso opens up ironworks; and Dr. Atl publishes a book: Arte popular en México. The festivals for the Saints in diverse villages, the traditions, ceramics from Patamban and Metepec, black pottery from Oaxaca, wool products from Chiconcuac, the market chairs that look like Van Gogh’s, those cardboard dolls named Juanita, the frayed needlework from Aguascalientes, all invade homes. Previously Frenchified women now wear Mexican shawls, assigning them the honor previously held for the Spanish mantilla. “Mexican” is in.

The Marvelous Red Snapper María Izquierdo, scooped up in that vortex of new awareness, is filled with vitality, with fantasies, with lyricism, and with gratitude for this unique nation which has drawn the attention of intellectuals from around the world. Women’s enjoyment transforms into aesthetic pleasure. María paints the fruit she would enjoy eating, and after Manuel Alvarez Bravo photographs them, she devours the pears, figs, bananas, and mandarin oranges in the fruit bowl before they turn. For the midday meal, María prepares the red snapper she has just painted. Mexico, where the air is clear, the magical nation in which nothing goes to waste and nature is, above all, an immense call to art. Soup is created from chrysanthemums, teas from bougainvillea, flowers are scrambled with eggs, chicken in a chocolate sauce is a dish which the nuns in a Puebla convent dared to create. Everything is possible. When fireworks blast, Edward Weston thinks its gunshots, and if he hears gunfire, he confuses it with the fireworks of a village fiesta. What a nation, my god, what a nation! Far from ultra-capitalism and technology, in Mexico nothing is wasted, neither in time nor space, it does not rot, or reproduce, nor is it trivialized. María Izquierdo sews her own dresses, cures her family with wild herbs, eats her own models, and they don’t disturb her stomach.

República de Venezuela Street #34 Nothing tastier than the wonderfully smelling pots of red rice sprinkled with green peas at the street markets! Nothing better than the tacos at the corner, evenings in Plaza Garibaldi, the dancehalls where signs alert:

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“Gentlemen are implored not to toss their cigarette butts on the floor because the young ladies can burn their feet!” The painter sets herself up in the heart of the city, at República de Venezuela #34, where she is near pedestrians, the resounding whistles of the street knife sharpener and sweet potato vendors, and the sidewalk bustle of the more typical characters of the city, where the organ grinder and the mariachi are equally expert in providing serenades.

Like an Altar to Dolores María Izquierdo, who previously painted her lips into a little red heart, now accepts her large, ardent, and aching mouth, a mouth that knows about sowing and reaping. Both wild and courtly, she carries her nation in her womb. From her native Jalisco, the state that gave Mexico José Clemente Orozco and Juan Rulfo, she brings ochres, hot reds and gold-­ yellows, the colors of mole—not just the black and chocolate mole, but also the green, the white, the yellowish, and reddish mole sauces. She puts them on her palette and on her face. According to Lola Álvarez Bravo, she invents cosmetics with an ochre and toasted sienna base to smooth over her face that she now accepts just as it is. Other women with Olmec features copy her. Robust and short, the body of a soldierwoman, María Izquierdo adorns herself like an altar to Dolores [the virgin of Sorrows]. To decorate piñatas, create kites, set up altars, stock pantries, and keep flowers on the graves are the chores of brown women, and María will fulfill her duties to the end of her days. Even now, when she is not well, she continues producing still-lifes because they are Mexican style, ready for export much as the little girls with braids and fixed eyes seated in tiny flower-decorated chairs painted by Gustavo Montoya, a painter far less talented. Surely Chicanos are fascinated by María Izquierdo because her work conjures memories of village life preceding their move to the US; her paintings are scenes from the past with home remedies, teas, and curative herbs used by the magical grandmothers who watched over them in childhood and never learned English. Xavier Villaurrutia, Roberto Montenegro, Luis Cardoza y Aragón (the poet and critic friend of Orozco), Manuel and Lola Álvarez Bravo, Juan Soriano, Jorge Cuesta, Andrés Henestrosa, Alí Chumacero—all joyously flocked to María Izquierdo’s parties. Her dishes ignite both the palate and desire, the salsas and black ink of the octopus are hallucinatory.

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Concoctions in the Clawfoot Tub Juan Soriano remembers when Lola Álvarez Bravo lived with María Izquierdo: “I met them in Guadalajara and we became friends. When I got to Mexico City, I looked them up. They were of generous nature and introduced me to everyone; they threw a lot of parties. They had a bathroom with a huge tub which they would fill with wine and fruit. They made these punches that left you with a heavy hangover the next day: they kept adding to the concoction any liquors people brought. It didn’t bother me because I could drink turpentine. That is where I got to know Olga Costa, and Lya, but principally Olga, who was an amazing beauty. She had marvelous green eyes and an attractive body. Lya was thin, skinny, she seemed like a girl who had not yet developed. She was always very skeptical about life and said she was the girlfriend of Luis Cardoza y Aragón but we never saw her with him. She would arrive alone. Luis Cardoza y Aragón, not a likely boyfriend! I said to Lya, ‘Hey, when I see Luis he never talks to me about you.’ I would meet Luis in a café and he talked a lot about surrealism, very intelligent, very charming, but he never spoke of Lya. Olga, on the other hand, was pursued by Chávez Morado, who suffocated her with extreme jealousy. She was a good drinker, very coquette and very attractive and everyone wanted to be with her. Another beauty but always in a horrible state of depression was Isabel Villaseñor, married to Gabriel Fernández Ledesma, who was incredibly jealous of her and got crazy if anyone paid attention to her. And since everyone paid attention to her and not him, he was always furious. His mustache perpetually stained with tobacco, he horrible and she a sylph. They lived in a pretty house near the Villa de Guadalupe.”

The LEAR According to Juan Soriano “Since none of them was able to truly reach success, they felt bad. Besides, Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros made such a fuss, and were featured in all the magazines, everyone pursued interviews with them. When they went to the theater, the photographers and newspaper reporters besieged them and everyone else was ignored. In the meetings at the LEAR (Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists], there was a mood of bitterness like you cannot imagine. Those were meetings with a lot of discussions and struggle to get commissions. José Chávez Morado was called ‘Jobs Morado’ because, besides

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being greedy, he protected his brothers, especially one of them. When there were projects, he would jump in and grab [contracts for] murals, sculptures, everything. Word would get out that a building was going up, and the two brothers, very savvy, immediately presented their bid for the entryway, and they would get all the important projects. Then at the LEAR, there were meetings and meetings and meetings to say that the comrade has betrayed us and needs to be sanctioned. Heck, it was sanctions and sanctions and those who betray us.”

The Curvature of Her Lips Not everything was betrayal, on the third day they resurrected. María Izquierdo’s dinner guests would bump and grind at the Cabaret Leda, headlined by Luis Aguado, el Príncipe, launched to fame by his close friend María Izquierdo. To dance is to free one’s self, to believe in one’s self, to apply colors with generosity, to thicken them, make them doughy, spread them like butter; to free one’s self is to self-represent like the Madonna with baby Jesus in her arms. All of María Izquierdo’s virgins display her face and the curvature of her lips. All are powerful, strong, inevitable. Her talent in keeping her frustrations restrained reflects her strength. That is how she confronts life, with force, without hesitance or shame about her experience. María Izquierdo no longer wants to be provincial nor to beg forgiveness; she yearns to manifest her desires, to show herself and the world what she has inside, to burst like a piñata or the red pulp of a pomegranate which explodes when bitten into and spills its blood. María paints by taking great bites, aching and ardently: she now knows a great deal about life. There is no expression so beautiful as that of this Guadalajara native with her high cheekbones, her black eyes, and the lips of an Olmec head that Carlos Pellicer would surely have installed in his La Venta, Tabasco museum. On Sundays she takes everyone out to Xochimilco, the Venice of America. There are many aficionados of Xochimilco, not just the painter Francisco Goitia who lives on a chinampa, but also Lola Olmedo, a future model as well as a major collector of Diego Rivera’s work, René d’Harnoncourt, Jorge Enciso, Fernando Gamboa, Fred Davis, Tina Modotti and Edward Weston, Carleton Beals, and D. H. Lawrence. All find happiness in this beautiful landscape, affirming the Tenochtitlan Bernal Díaz del Castillo witnessed: aquatic, musical, and covered with birds, the most beautiful city in the world, constructed on the water.

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The Circus There is more. For María Cenobia Izquierdo, the provincial girl whose serious gaze in her striped dress which appears to imprison her, her two legs dark inside stockings and equally black little boots—freedom arrives. Let’s dance! The little horsewoman on her toes atop the horse dances, the acrobat dances, the lions dance under the tamer’s whip, the little merry-­ go-­round horses dance, clumsily, their wooden legs don’t easily obey—of course, they had never done this before—and now they throw themselves into the ring, gracefully, authentically, revealing their true essence which is also that of María Izquierdo. They do it with crude, clumsy steps, in that oldest and most primitive stage, the circus. Sylvia Navarrete says that a herd of wild horses nearly trampled María when she was a child, hence her obsession with horses throughout her life. Well, all Mexicans are obsessed with horses; we must remember that during the Mexican Revolution the horses traveled inside the train cars and the people above getting rained on. As Jesusa Palancares, the protagonist of Hasta no verte Jesús mío, explains: “The beasts came first. The peons outside, covered in mud, and the horses inside, covered with shawls, eating tortillas and piloncillo cane sugar.”

Tamayo, Tamayo, Tamayo Just as she spins her ambulatory circuses, her wheels of fortune, her little fair horses, María Izquierdo herself whirls with passion. According to Ermilo Abreu Gómez, the parties at her house would last two days, with all the great artists of the era in attendance. Rufino Tamayo, the man who sings, paints, plays guitar, wears pink shirts, and blue shirts that turn purple, falls in love with her. They live together for four years [1928–1932]; they make love, make observations together, and paint together in a studio on Calle de la Soledad where later the muralist Pablo O’Higgins would live. Passion flows from one to the other, from the paintbrush to the canvas. They don’t compete, they complement each other. They choose similar themes, they share similar obsessions. María Izquierdo’s presence is so strong in Tamayo’s life that, years later, the pianist Olga Flores Rivas, his second wife, prohibits mention of María for the rest of her life and the world obeys that request.

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People Who Love Deeply, When They Quarrel, Express So Much Passion in Hate That It Is Scary “She was so cute, and showed a lot of spunk,” Soriano relates. “She lived with Tamayo for several years and they painted somewhat alike, similar themes and colors. They loved each other deeply, but often people who love deeply, when they quarrel, express so much passion in hate, that it is scary. They separated and never again even greeted each other.’” “María Izquierdo and Rufino Tamayo worked in a second-floor arcade, above a walkway,” says Luis Cardoza y Aragón. “There are slight similarities in their works of that era, with some related or common themes. María possessed unusual grace and sensibilities but lacked technical abilities. Artaud wrote about her. Soon Tamayo’s talents would become more polished, and yet some of his more astonishing oils and gouaches are from that era. María died in 1954, decades after they separated.” Juan Soriano confirms that hate between the two women: “Olga did not want anyone to speak of María. If you said ‘María Izquierdo,’ she got furious. ‘That whore. That miserable, shameful hussy.’ ‘But Olga,’ I would say, ‘María was not a whore.’ ‘How could she not have been? She had children and she got involved with Rufino.’ ‘But Rufino was single.’ I told her, ‘What’s it to you?’ ‘If they got together it was like two angry horses.’ ‘María Izquierdo was very important to me,’ Soriano continues. ‘I found her very attractive, unique even, a short, somewhat bowlegged woman, a very sensual mouth, and a marvelous face. Have you seen the photos that Lola Álvarez Bravo took? They show her spunk; I really loved her early work.’ Olivier Debroise, in his book Figuras en el trópico, declares that María Izquierdo “achieves her greatest artistic expression in her treatment of cupboards, still-lifes and little altars, through a graceful accumulation of objects that lend themselves to a composition both imagined and ideal. Her still-lifes and circus scenes stand out for their provincial style with roots in nineteenth century popular and religious art.” After her break with Tamayo, María criticizes herself harshly. Her work evokes the pain that grips her. She denudes her women to further torture herself. Through them, María begs and howls like a wounded animal: Calvario, La manda, La caballista, and especially Tristeza express her despair.

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The Dark Red of Fire María Izquierdo’s most important visitor is, naturally, Antonin Artaud, whom she meets in 1936. He stresses her work over others; for him María’s art is the only one worthwhile in Mexico besides pre-Colombian art. In 1947 she would write: “I strive to reflect the authentic Mexico in my art, the one I feel and love. I do not want to fall into anecdotal, folkloric and political topics because they lack poetic force, and I believe that in the world of painting, a work is a window open to the human imagination.” Artaud saw the dominant red in her work as the “dark red of fire. Her art does not evoke a world in ruins, but instead a world being remade. …All of María Izquierdo’s work originates in that color of cold lava, from the contours of the volcano. That is what gives it its disturbing quality, unique among painting in Mexico: the sparks of a world being formed.”

Antonin Artaud Artaud’s friendship4 is somewhat obtrusive, for, besides not having anything to offer, he drinks and takes drugs. “That not very tall, bony man, pale with short, straw-colored hair sticking up, no hat and dressed in white, often found standing on any street corner in Mexico City, looking nowhere, under the effect of some kind of substance, who if you greeted him jerked you up by the lapel refusing to let go until he declared something,” recounted Fernando Gamboa. Many a day before dawn, María and Lola Álvarez Bravo would head out to pick him up from wherever he was, on whatever sidewalk in the poor neighborhoods of Guerrero and Buenos Aires where he had keeled over, totally lost, ready to die of ecstasy. Artaud was in Mexico for eight months. Neither of the two women understands the poet and theater critic very well, but they suspect he is a genius. He is tormented by evil forces which pursue him, wanting to lock him up again in an asylum. At every corner he detects a conspiracy against him. His three principal interests in Mexico are María, the sculptor Luis Ortiz Monasterio, and peyote.

4  María Izquierdo gave him lodging in her boarding house. He was in Mexico City in 1936 (after traveling north, to the Tarahumara region, where he recovers from heroin addiction and discovers peyote).

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The power of the [Mexico] drug is huge. In Oaxaca he is seduced by the mysterious City of Palaces blushing in the sun, and the gods of the past, dethroned by Spain, reemerge: Tláloc is again the god of rain; Coatlicue, with her skirt of serpents, the goddess of fertility; and Tlazoltéotl, the goddess who cleans excrement. For Artaud, María is a priestess, representing both Coatlicue and Tlazoltéotl. To trip on hallucinogenic mushrooms under the guidance of María Sabina, the shaman of Huautla de Jiménez in remote Oaxaca, he is later joined by Gordon Wasson and Roger Heim, from the US and France, and they will ingest them with chocolate, and in pairs: male mushrooms and female mushrooms, the “little people” as they are called by the shaman.

Café Paris Luis Cardoza y Aragón states in El Río: “Neither Villaurrutia nor Lazo, who are so suave and exquisite, would deal with Artaud; I have said this previously, but I repeat it, for it still surprises me. Were they frightened by that voyou [thug], not wanting to encounter him in a café or brewery where they might eat? Did Artaud eat? The Café Paris on Gante Street stood between the brewery owned by a German and—in the opposite direction and a short distance away—a tavern. In María Izquierdo’s home, where she was always understanding and generous even when he was heavily drugged, I saw that he felt comfortable, and happily accepted a little homemade soup and chewed on tortillas with avocado.”

The Peyote Greatly Unhinged Him Soriano, who met Antonin Artaud in fact at María’s house, states that “he was in such a drugged state that it was scary to look at him, but he was a great poet. His book is very lovely. He had been an actor and worked on the Joan of Arc film with Falconetti, a beautiful woman who only made that film. Artaud acted in Los Cenci, a dramatic play with Iya Abdy, a lady who was later with Matías Goeritz. The peyote he experimented with deeply unhinged him and on top of that he was sick when he arrived in Mexico because he had been in several institutions. He drew very well, I saw his drawings, very remarkable indeed.”

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You Will Not Paint Murals, María In 1945 María began sketching the draft of what would be a major mural for the Federal District [Mexico City] offices, but then the evaluating committee, on which Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros sat, rejected the project and the contract she had already signed was canceled, and María Izquierdo, who had been a member of the LEAR, felt betrayed by her peers and comrades. In Mexico there are no female muralists, only the two North American sisters, Grace and Marion Greenwood, who painted in the Abelardo Rodríguez market. The poet Aurora Reyes painted a mural in a school in Coyoacán and was criticized because, like Tina Modotti, she was a communist and wore overalls. The Mexico City mayor, Javier Rojo Gómez, had offered María Izquierdo more than 150 square meters along the main stairwell of the Federal District offices. María’s plan was to first paint La música y La tragedia, continuing along the stairs with a history of the arts. She prepared her sketches to scale and had presented all of her work plans. Upon viewing these plans, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros told Javier Rojo Gómez that she was not capable of painting murals and that her mixtures were too basic.

Not You María, You Cannot María denounced the boycott and began a polemical debate with David Alfaro Siqueiros. Caricaturist Freyre satirized this argument by the “Russophiles” and drew María Izquierdo with an immense head and an apron, as though she were the cook for the Left. María Izquierdo cited her relationship with the LEAR, which was founded to be at the service of the people. Humiliated, rage and bitterness darken the painter’s disposition; she is consumed by ill feelings. Despite the fact the critic Justino Fernández calls her “the best contemporary Mexican painter,” resentment takes root in her heart. Soriano consoled her, although it saddened him to see her walking bow-legged down the street with one of her daughters, headed to sign and collect her wages at the Ministry of Education. She no longer gave classes, “but they did not take away her salary, every two weeks she cashed her paycheck. It was a miserly amount, but she received it happily. Even after her illness she was good-hearted and grateful.”

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From Bohemian to Diplomat In 1938 María Izquierdo trades the bohemian world for that of the diplomat. She falls under the spell of the Chilean Raúl Uribe—a terrible painter according to Inés Amor—who becomes her “manager” and six years later, in Chile in 1944, her husband. She appears in the newspaper society pages, clinking toasts with ambassadors, while she paints portraits, cupboards, Dolores altars, Mater dolorosas, Live lifes (as she calls them), and retablo images. She also dresses in a new manner. French designer Henri de Chatillon creates stylish hats for her. Oh, fashion, how many crimes are committed in your name! She now wears black dresses, tight-fitting, difficult to put on and take off, which do not bring out her natural beauty. They have lunch now at the Normandie, no longer at the Fonda Santa Anita. Raúl Uribe is a social climber, a parasite who transports her to the world of receptions and public relations. He has María paint with a secondary intention: to charge for her work. But the one who charges her clients is he, the agent. The couple’s life is a whirlwind of commitments and activities outside the creative life. María writes about art for the newspapers; her topics include Antonio “El Corsito” Ruiz, Tina Modotti, Andrés Salgó, López Rey, and Fernández Leal. She gives private painting classes, attacks the muralists, and speaks of their despicable monopoly in the field, caricaturizing her enemies and defending the art teachers whose salary is miserly. She denounces the government’s hostile indifference to artistic forms not in line with their requirement of “no path other than our own.” She travels to Latin America, and in Chile Pablo Neruda receives her as though she were an apparition.

The Trees Lose Their Leaves Having changed her status, becoming worldly, enjoying cocktail receptions, eating canapés, and never again biting into maize, María’s work also loses its force. [Giorgio] De Chirico5 enters her painting, trees lose their leaves, the earth becomes ashen, branches reach imploringly to the sky, spaces are emptied, and the black horizon unknowingly threatens her, threatens us, defines her work of that era. María Izquierdo’s houses are cubes, rectangles, and squares plopped in the middle of the canvas as a child might do. The proportions are both 5  Italian surrealist painter and art critic, who resided in New York between the mid-1930s and 1940s

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infantile and seductive, the walls almost elemental. Her portrait of Juan Soriano is sensual and perverse, in some ways similar to the nudes of great proportions of her earlier era with Rufino Tamayo. It appears that María Izquierdo wants to deny her beautiful indigenous traits. De Chirico’s influence, the trees without leaves, their mutilated stumps open to the sky, evoke a war scene. She loses her brutal force. There is something tragic now in her work. She paints a fruit bowl full of pomegranates, grapes, bananas, and peaches and places it below a sky of an impending storm, leaving us to wonder if everything will be ruined. Her Naturaleza viva of 1946 is sinister, suggesting catastrophe. A seashell alongside a mamey and an avocado remind us of Artaud’s idea of her work as a world in formation, but it does not seem to apply to all of her work, as in this Naturaleza viva they appear to be the only things left at the end of the world. “I would tell her to stop paying attention to Uribe,” Soriano says, “but I never got anywhere because she was very much in love with him. Then one day she had a stroke and was paralyzed on her right side, and he left her. She could not paint after that, for it required tremendous effort, and she was in such bad shape. She did a few more paintings but they were awful, because her relatives helped with them. In the early years we all had a great time, we were almost happy. Villaurrutia and Agustín Lazo were very fond of her, we spent our time going from cantina to cantina, but that would inspire us because we were young, and the next morning we could paint even better.”

Not Even the Marxists Were Happy “The world of the Left and of the LEAR was horrible [Soriano continues]. You couldn’t paint what you wanted, you couldn’t have an opinion about what you wanted, you had to think exactly like them, and so it was nearly impossible to converse because if everyone thinks alike and says yes, well, not a single idea emerges. At the LEAR everyone said yes to everything and everyone was under the same influence, supposedly Marxism, although no one had read Marx. In reality they were very uneducated and would talk like, ‘hey bud man, you supersede it,’ like Cantinflas, who was highly successful because nothing he said made any sense, but that was very Mexican. I did read Marx and left it behind, I’ll tell you why later. The sessions were boring and interminable, they went on and on about how much to charge per centimeter of painting, and whether something was well or badly painted, according to their own criteria. They were jealous of each other, didn’t like each other, and snarled at each other like a bed of scorpions.”

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Substituting the Olmec Head for That of Henri de Chatillon In 1940 María Izquierdo created a most singular portrait. There were two gurus of fashion in that era—Armando Valdés Peza and Henri de Chatillon. Diego Rivera did a portrait of Chatillon with one of his creations on his head: a lovely feminine hat. María Izquierdo turned him into a dandy dressed in white, seated, clutching a peasant’s straw hat, with a tiny white dog [at his feet], in front of an easel where he is depicted as a peasant, with the hat on, and a blue shirt. Later María Izquierdo herself—who used to dress Tehuana style, braiding her hair with multicolored ribbons like Frida Kahlo—decides, under Raúl Uribe’s influence, to Chatillon herself and covers her body in tube skirts and “bell” hats which made her look odd.

Hemiplejia Upon seeking recognition and falling into the hustle and bustle of the limelight, and long before fully entering that black horizon, María Izquierdo begins fading. In 1947 she paints a prophecy: Sueño y premonición. Looking out a window, she holds her own head in her right hand. The head cries out in the sinister scene. In February of 1948 she suffers the first embolism, which paralyzes her entire right side for eight months. Her strong and noble nature nonetheless propels her, in inconceivable efforts, to recuperate. Between 1948 and 1955, a period of nearly six years, María Izquierdo exhibits singular heroism: she paints her own stations of the cross. That is how I met her, seated in a chair, facing a canvas that she clumsily covered with paint, making broad strokes with her right hand, the hemiplegic [paralyzed] arm held up by her left arm for deliberately slow, painful hours of martyrdom. A blanket on her knees, one of her daughters, Aurora, stood alongside her and spoke for her.

She Never Painted with Her Left Hand, Assures Olivier Debroise Olivier Debroise confirms, “She had never worked with her left hand, as numerous journalists state, playing with her surname. Her brush strokes were always made with the right hand, which she rested on her left arm. Through supreme efforts always, she painted a few cupboards, a few more landscapes. The tracings are crude, the material and colors uninteresting. The effort, of course, is laudatory.”

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In the early years [of this stage] her friends, moved by her afflicted state, organized auctions and took up collections. María Asúnsolo, always generous, her heart in her hand, Lola Alvarez Bravo, Margarita Michelena, Elías Nandino all mobilized to help her, but as time passes, so do good intentions. Her house emptied. Diplomats are swallows who leave the nest. The doorbell no longer rings, María is no longer in the swirl of activities, few people visit. Another act of bravery on her part is that she divorces Raúl Uribe and accuses him of doing business in her name. Debts accumulate as do the hospital bills. Due to her state, the gossip from 1948 on was that Raúl Uribe substituted for her, brush in hand, creating “Marías Izquierdos.” What is certain is that Uribe left her. From then on, her work loses its essence. María Izquierdo’s courage goes unrecognized. She paints with a bravery out of this world. But an attitude of “Why do I paint, if I remain poor and my triumphs have not brought more than sorrow and disappointments” would not fit María Izquierdo. Two phrases that she left me with during that 1953 interview are seared in my memory: “I owe a lot to Tamayo but he also owes me a great deal” and “During one decade I was dedicated to a single color per year. Now, there are seven colors that are important to me: red; vermillion; carmine; ochre; light pink; the pink of Indians, chewing gum and tezontle; and the burnt earth of Michoacán.” Her red soul, which Antonin Artaud so admired, surged again. Outraged, she grew stronger from pain. Artaud had foreseen it: “The red soul is solid and speaks. Without exaggeration, it can be said it roars. Among contemporary Mexican painters, María Izquierdo is the only one who felt that vehemence, the astonishing and wrathful originality of the Mexican soul which, without effort or waste, tames lions as it plays. María Izquierdo takes us back to that fabulous era when, behind the walls of a holy city, there were lions more impetuous, more intelligent, and more lucid than human beings.”

The Circus Girl Dances Again María is 53 years old when, following her fourth embolism, she dies on December 2, 1955, at home in her house on Puebla Street. Frida Kahlo had died the year before, but Frida resurrects in the 1980s to become a totem, a fashion, a movement. María Izquierdo, cast aside by the “Fridomania,” is barely mentioned and only recuperated in grand form in November 1988, at the Centro Cultural de Arte Contemporáneo, when

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they organize a notable retrospective exhibit, of four months’ duration with an extensive catalog, where María Izquierdo regains her rightful place within the national history of art and universal art.

Her Daily Life and Intimate World From that moment, María walks again as an Adelita from the Revolution, her red shawl across her chest, from San Juan de los Lagos to the capital. Her heart is full, her movements free, as she advances upon her strong soldierwoman legs. In addition to her Mauser, she transports her ochres and yellows, the reds of her red soul and the fire of her great passion for colors. She walks erect, never faltering even when she would have liked to have a horse carry her at full gallop. Her own will guides her to look far ahead, beyond the horizon, she appears to be seeing all of her future work: the jewelry box and the fan, the bridal veil on the chair and the soup tureen, the circus and the swimmers, the lion tamer and the circus girl, the dancers and the acrobat, the elephants and little dogs, her simple home life, her daily life and cherished world, which extends its arms to say yes, María, yes, now you can stand on your tiptoes on the horse’s haunch and it will take you to a place where cupboards merge with altars for the dead.

CHAPTER 5

Nahui Olin, She Who Made Waves Elena Poniatowska and Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez

Adriana Malvido holds the photo between her slender, youthful hands. She examines it. What is it about those eyes? They captivate her. Adriana looks again. The image entraps her, diabolically, as they did to Tomás Zurián years ago, and way before that, Dr. Atl, Diego Rivera, Carlos Chávez, Edward Weston, Raoul Fournier, Antonio Garduño, Matías Santoyo, Eugenio Agacino the ship captain, and, why not? even Manuel Rodríguez Lozano. Among them all, however, General Manuel Mondragón was the first: before anyone else, he was seduced by the splendor of those two little suns, suns like fire, like Hell. That unpredictable girl, blonde curls, tantrums and screaming fits, that little creature of his, who was an incarnation of Lucifer the fallen angel.

English translation by Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez, essays from Elena Poniatowska’s book Las siete cabritas, published in 2000. E. Poniatowska c/o Schavelzon Graham Agencia Literaria, S.L., Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] E. C. Martínez (*) DePaul University, Chicago, TX, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. C. Martínez (ed.), The Women of Mexico’s Cultural Renaissance, Literatures of the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11177-8_5

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What is it about those eyes? Awestruck, Adriana Malvido is slow to find an answer. One fact is undeniable: Adriana is a victim of Nahui Olin. “You are Nahui-ized,” Carlos Payán tells her. Nahui-ized, she begins to travel the streets of the San Miguel Chapultepec neighborhood: Tacubaya, Juárez Avenue, the Alameda, Madero, Isabel la Católica, the Zócalo—this was Nahui Olin’s route. The newspapers of the 1920s and 1930s pass through her slender hands: Malvido reads in the periodicals library about Mexico’s best years, when José Vasconcelos, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros envisioned a fabulous nation, a nation rising from the ashes of the Revolution through an act of love—creativity. Art for everyone. Poetry had to be read in the public plazas; there would be books for the peasants, corn for everyone, teachers, beans, water, electricity, panuchos [stuffed, fried tortillas], painting, soft toffee, gummy candy, happy boys and girls, women fully satisfied, contented men, chocolate, singing charros, and poets in love. Something likely to never occur again happens to Mexican culture: it expands and contracts, it is in the people’s domain and simultaneously reaches universal dimensions. In the midst of this great splendor appears, the mystery baptized Nahui Olin by Dr. Atl. In Nahui Olin, la mujer del sol, Adriana Malvido offers a hypothesis: that for Nahui there was no masculine figure more important than that of her father, General Manuel Mondragón. Agreeing with Raquel Tibol’s comments: “Nahui had a classist mother, difficult, strict, formal, terrible. Her refuge was her father, who shielded and protected her, and there are elements to make one think that perhaps their relationship was more than that of father and daughter. Personally, I still wonder.” Carmen Mondragón Valseca—Nahui Olin—is born in Tacubaya, Mexico, July 8, 1893. Four siblings precede her, and another three follow, one named Napoleon, because her father, General Mondragón, loves military exploits and worked in a cannon smelter in Saint-Chamond, France. The entire family is Frenchified. Nahui is exceptional from July 8, 1893, to January 23, 1978. Throughout her 85 years, her poetry, her paintings, her caricatures, her spontaneity, her nudity, her dementia, and the way she sails her ship through a sea infested with sharks all make her a woman of superior lineage. “She is a goddess,” says Tomás Zurián, and he is right.

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Raoul Fournier1 helped her nearly to the end and was one of few who dared to undertake the adventure of visiting her in her abandoned and smelly cave. He was her doctor, her patron, her interlocutor. He listened to her. He would not contradict her delirium. “Yes, Nahuita, yes, Nahuita, of course Nahuita, whatever you say.” They spoke in French. She would recite her poems, her youthful texts. “Calinement je suis dedans,” where she tenderly rendered tribute to the slow rippling of her legs upon being inserted into silk stockings, moving to her feet, to her smooth belly, to her eyes which burned with a slow fire, to her beauty which bewitched any man, woman, animal, or fantasy that crossed her path. Nahui could whinny in French because she came from the stable of fine mares at the Colegio Francés de San Cosme and was the favorite student of Marie Louise Crescence, a nun who kept dried flowers of evil2 in her devotional. Her father, General Manuel Mondragón, inventor of an extraordinary rifle capable of killing 20 with just one shot, took the secret of such a powerful weapon to his death, never imagining that his little rifles were superseded by the 100,000 megaton bomb of devastating, green-eyed percussion cap and a lethal charge superior to any device known to that time: that was Carmen, Carmela, Carmelita, Carmelina, carmine-red mouth and carmine later in desire, the girl Carmen with thick, blonde braids.

A Precocious Girl That Carmen was precocious was immediately apparent. Marie Louise Crescence, teacher at the Colegio Francés, knowledgeable in Voltaire, Lamartine, and Rousseau, affirms: “This girl is extraordinary. She understands everything, guesses everything. Her intuition is astonishing. At age ten she spoke French as well as I who am French and wrote some of the strangest things in the world, some completely outside our religious discipline.” 1  Born in 1900, Raoul Ignacio Fournier Villada studied medicine in Mexico City, then pursued advanced studies and medical practice in Paris between 1924 and 1926. In 1935 he married Carolina “Carito” Amor Schmidtlein. He was a humanist who interacted easily with and among intellectual and artistic circles. He specialized in gastroenterology and studied Chinese medicinal practices as well. Fournier founded and advanced many important health and medicine initiatives and institutions. Prominent artists declared he could also cure the soul. 2  See Charles Baudelaire’s poetry; also Fleursdumal.org.

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At a young age, Nahui composed a surprising text at school: “I am a misunderstood being who is drowning in the volcano of passions, of ideas, of feelings, of thoughts, of creations that cannot be contained within me, and that is why I am destined to die of love… I am not happy because life was not made for me, because I am a self-devouring flame that cannot be extinguished, because I have not achieved the freedom of a life in pursuit of pleasures, instead I am destined to be sold like slaves previously were, to a husband. I protest, despite my age, being under the guardianship of my parents.” In 1924, the publisher Editorial Cultura released A dix ans sur mon pupitre, texts that reveal her fully, although they were composed at her school desk when she was ten years old. “Miserable me, I have no other destiny but to die, because I feel my spirit is too wide and great to be comprehended, and the world, man and the universe, are too small to be filled …” Years later, Nahui tells Dr. Atl about her relationship with her mother, Mercedes Valseca de Mondragón, of whom she would paint a portrait in 1924: ‘Come, my little girl, let’s go see the flowers, but first let me brush your hair, you are very pretty—as much as when you were little, and I would take you by the hand to school.’ She would brush it very softly and she gave me a doll. ‘This,’ she told me, ‘is for your brother’s daughter that God took to heaven, not like you who cries and says ugly things.’ In the garden, my mother told me: ‘Look at these precious flowers, cut them so that you can take them to your father’s and your brother’s tombs—they are the last flowers of life, of my life and your life. They will dry over their tombs, but their perfumes will reach the heavens where they live next to the Lord our God.’ ‘Who is the Lord our God?’ I asked my mother. ‘He who has created us, my daughter, to whom we owe all.’ ‘I was born against my will and I owe nothing to that man.’ ‘Why don’t you pray?’ ‘I do not know how to pray, mamma. You pray for me and let me look at the flowers which speak to me of love.’

Throughout Her Life, the Same House Throughout her life Nahui Olin kept her childhood home on General Cano Street #93, in Tacubaya. It was a one-story house with a large fountain in the center of the patio which inspired peace with the sounds of its soft dripping water. Years later, the only thing that survived the deterioration of time and neglect was the French mosaic floor.

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Adriana Malvido relentlessly interviewed her family, discovered photographs (Nahui little girl, Nahui playing the piano, Nahui at teatime with her family, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano stiff at her side the day of her wedding), unpublished poetry, love letters, hateful letters of rejection and spitefulness, visitor’s cards, passport photos, intimate diaries, ribbons, and most sensational of all: seven of Nahui’s paintings, belonging to Miguel Ramírez Vázquez, one of which was found in Acapulco.

A Little Soldier for Me Raoul Fournier met her, at the wrong time he says, while she was married to his friend Manuel Rodríguez Lozano. In 1913, Manuel was in the army and when Nahui saw him marching, standing in formation and very fit, the girl said to her father: “Ay daddy, give him to me.” The girl and her brothers were always impressed to see their father enter the dining room with his high shiny boots, his uniform full of insignias, stars, stripes, gold braids and military medals, medals from battle and medals for delayed promotions. Imposing in his authority, he could even hide the sun. His children were never ashamed of the fact that he was one of the principals in the murder of Francisco I. Madero, which precipitated his exile to Paris. General Mondragón’s daughter got everything she wanted if she painted her brows and darkened her long eyelashes. Her father fulfilled her every wish: “There goes your little soldier.” Neither Rodríguez Lozano’s homosexuality nor his indifference to her blonde curls and enveloping coquetry subdued her desire. It also helped that Carmen and Manuel shared, from 1913, General Mondragón’s exile, where they painted, if not happiness, then simply on canvas and paper. They had the time and nostalgia for painting and for their lack of love. Raoul Fournier has said that over there they had a son or daughter who died in a mysterious way, that possibly the baby was asphyxiated when its mother fell asleep on top of it, that it fell during a struggle between the couple, or that Nahui herself killed the baby to take revenge on Manuel in Paris. Some swear they saw Carmen Mondragón pushing a little carriage with a baby in uniform, military cap, and little black boots up to the knee. Others are certain that the carriage was empty. Lola Alvarez Bravo says: “Manuel Rodríguez Lozano was incredibly attractive, extremely handsome, very intelligent, extraordinary conversationalist and a natural flirt, with grace and agility for magnificent conversation. Later yes, he got very bad and succumbed to horrendous decadence,

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but he was a man of great pull, very attractive, very, very attractive, so much so you cannot imagine. But also, the poor thing never had a penny. Except for Antonieta Rivas Mercado, we were all a bunch of nothings, really truly poor. Their marriage did not last, but listen, what a couple, what a sensational couple.” Juan Soriano is less enthusiastic. “Rodríguez Lozano had a long and very good period of drawing monumental figures. Then drinking, marijuana, and fornication took him down. He only spoke of his affairs. I would encounter him at the Alvarado Bridge, we had not so much as said hello and he was relating a series of erotic stories where he mixed fantasy with reality. I had no idea whether he was stoned or if it was reality. I could not stand him because later in parties he would tell the same stories. He wasn’t very tall, but he was good looking. He had a gorgeous house that his patron Francisco Iturbe had given him.”

The Return to Mexico Of General Mondragón’s extensive offspring, Carmen and Manuel were the first to return to Mexico, in 1921. They lived in an apartment on Nuevo México Street. That is where they separated, each embarking on their own path. Carmen’s led her to an irresistible passion for hats and shoes. “My hats / are an entire history / of color, of form, of bows… / they cover the stories / of my head / and discover my face / wisely.” She returned to her childish obsessions, which she tenderly preserved because they were hers and she had to give them affection: “For my feet / I had to find / shoes / red and black / that kiss the earth / with their toes. / The contour of my legs finishes / with shoes / red and black / which warn / of the danger of seeing / my legs come out / of my petticoats / which end / at the knee / And I tie / my petticoats / and lift them / with great knots / which I loosen to the gaze / of he / who loves my knees / my feet dressed / in shoes.” Her verses are not earth shattering but her overflowing heart, the reverberation of fire in her gaze, assured that no one could take their eyes off her lips when she read poetry.

Dr. Atl The vulcanologist Dr. Atl, besides the Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl, studied a volcano more dangerous and yet fragile, because her ice was thin and brittle, in the young Carmen Mondragón, who attempted to make every

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type of sound with her body. In 1922, Dr. Atl locked her into his Merced Cloister in order to examine her alone, where he watched her walk nude on the roof terrace, blinded by the geraniums. Her shorn hair, eyes that reveal a glimpse of dementia, and a mouth in slices of mandarin, explodes, roars. A nudist from age seven, like the Balthus girls, a soft, golden down covers her and turns her body into a wheat field. She writes “I love you” in different languages including her excellent French from the Colegio de San Cosme.

Atl Would Baptize His Lovers Juan Soriano says, “Atl was a little man, skinny and perverse. He lived in the Merced Cloister and that is where he would take women. He is the one who most corrupted Nahui Olin, as he did all his women. He would give them hallucinatory drugs, strange potions, and the poor things would fall helplessly in love with him. There were a lot of them. Anyone with a name a little strange is one of Atl’s baptizees. Do you know who was his first lover? [The actress] Isabela Corona. Well, her original name was Refugio Pérez Frías and he changed it on her. Atl himself was actually Gerardo Murillo, but he was not pleased with his real name and called himself Dr. Atl. Isabela Corona was not ruined because she had a very strong character, no one could control her.”

First with Two Legs “Atl made love to all of them, at first with two legs and then with one, because the other one got burned when he was already old and had already had many women. He was very sure of himself and did not much mind losing his leg when the Paricutín volcano erupted. The lava from the volcano ran and he was standing there, he could not move his leg fast enough and it was gone. He would make big paintings of craters and explosions and had many weird theories. People were highly impressed—both with the paintings and the theories—but for me he is not a great painter.”

When I Knew Her She Was Fairly Gone [Soriano continues:] “Nahui painted cute pictures with children and flowers and would make clever cartoons, but her writings were prettier. From the photographs I’ve seen of her, she was gorgeous, but when I knew her, she was far gone, although not yet entirely crazy. I saw her sitting along

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the Alameda with some kitties and her stockings falling down, her skin all scaley, knots and varicose veins, but for sure, astonishing eyes. I never again saw eyes like those. Her face was a disaster because she used coloring pencils on it.”

The Early Awakening of Nahui Olin’s Body Nahui writes: If you had known me / with my stockings / and my short dresses / you would have seen underneath / and mother would have sent me for some thick pants which hurt me / down there.

Not even Nabokov’s Lolita was as skilled in suggesting such Brahmanic3 perversions. Everything Nahui describes is based on her body and the passions of her early sexual awakening. She insinuates herself sexually into a nation of prudish hypocrites. Behind the angelic appearance of Miss Mondragón lurked a woman with the impact of an entire firing squad and the light of a hundred evening lamps, a magnificent and anxious woman who did not want to be fragile; instead, she eagerly sought out lewd intentions. How incredible that she was not discreet, how extraordinary that her libidinous dreams appeared in her pupils, and how amazing that her nudity adjusted to the air and light!

Clay Pitcher Woman Nahui Olin is perhaps the earliest female to promote her woman-body, clay pitcher-body, hourglass-body. She was powerful because she was free, she poured herself out without limits. It can seem that Nahui’s skin was doing the writing. Her eyes held a brutal, even violent eroticism. There is no man or woman in Mexico, now, on the cusp of the twenty-first century, who dares to write like this, to feel like this, to love herself like this, to paint like this. 3  Brahmanism earlier terminology for Hinduism, which had the Vedas, or vedic teachings, which includes discussions of sexual positions. A woman’s thighs are stated to be the most beautiful part of her body and should be kept wide open for receipt of lovemaking, just as the spirit is open to the divine.

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I cut my long and blond hair I cut it to love to give a little of the gold of my body. I cut it for love. I cut half my hair to give a little of my body. I cut my long coat of gold… for the sun which comes from faraway to me to love me. Nahui Olin, “J’ai coupé”

Perhaps Edward Weston, in 1923, best revealed her in photographs. Edward Weston accepted the equality of women and was jealous of only one, his own Tina Modotti. He recognized in Carmen Mondragón a sacred spark. Diego Rivera painted her as Erato, the muse of erotic poetry, in his 1922 mural on enamel La creación, in the lobby of the Bolívar Theater of the National Preparatory School. In his fresco Día de Muertos in 1923, on the first floor of the Secretary of Public Education building, he placed one of her large eyes, with enormous and thick eyelashes, below a felt hat; this mural includes Diego himself and his wife Lupe Marín, the painter Máximo Pacheco, his helper, the actress Celia Montalbán, the bullfighter Juan Silveti, Jean Charlot’s mother, and Salvador Novo. In 1929, Diego portrayed her again in his mural above the main stairwell of the National Palace. Then, in 1953, he placed her, wearing a string of pearls, among several figures of the Porfirian-era bourgeoisie, to the left in the mural Historia del teatro en México, in the Teatro de los Insurgentes. Diego was not the only one who succumbed to her greenish-blue eyes: Gabriel Fernández Ledesma, Ignacio Rosa, and Antonio Ruiz “el Corzo” all surrendered to her beauty. Dr. Atl loved her and painted her, as did Roberto Montenegro, who created a splendid portrait in which she appears as a character of the Spanish royal court.

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Adriana Malvido confirms that Nahui admired everything done by the patron of the arts Antonieta Rivas Mercado for Mexican culture: the Teatro Ulises, the Sinfónica Nacional, and the Vasconcelos campaign. Nahui did not do any of this and yet Tomás Zurián considers her one of the first feminists without a placard, because by sheer force of her actions she created a fissure for the female condition. Despite paying a huge price for it, she is considered an important precursor to women today who own their own path. Living her sexuality without limit [however] destroyed her. Tomás Zurián asks: “If Nahui Olin was mad, it does not matter. Were not also Juana la Loca, Camille Claudel, Federico Nietzsche, Otto Weininger, Antonio Gaudí, Hugo van der Goes, and Antonin Artaud? Nietzsche wrote that ‘there is always a little madness in love, but there is also always reason in madness.’ To this we could add that creative madness produces more fruit than incompetent reason.”

A Female Volcano What is it that accounts for some Mexican women’s bluestone eyes, making them appear dazzling, almost possessed, with eyes reflecting a tree leaf or a wave from the sea? Nahui Olin most assuredly had the sea in her eyes: saltwater moving between two basins, revealing a placid lake, or becoming suddenly choppy and torment green, an immense, threatening wave. Living with two waves inside her head must not have been easy. Nor would it have been easy to live with her either. When Dr. Atl first encountered her in a salon, a green abyss opened before him: “I fell into that abyss instantly, like a man who slips from a rock straight into the ocean. A strange attraction, irresistible.” He invited her to see his paintings at Capuchinas Street #90. “Perhaps you would like to see my works of art.” So said the serpent to Eve, and thus commenced a paradise for them both. Poor Nahui! Poor Dr. Atl! The volcanologist vulcanized. His female volcano roared more than Ixtaccíhuatl. Ignited, she never slept. She complained, asked for more, and once again, and each day she asked for more. Her flow was not lava, it was fire. Her luminescence was of another world. Ay volcano! Poor Dr. Atl! Nahui was not only a green burst of lightning but also a highly educated woman who loved art, who discussed the theory of relativity, who would have argued with Einstein over its possibility, who played the piano and composed music, who knew how to judge a work of art, and believed in God: “You are God, love me like God, love me like all the gods together.”

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Dr. Atl did not know everything about pleasure; she who knew it all, because she had the sea in her eyes, was Nahui. Atl wrote to her: My former dwelling shadowed by the virtues of my ancestors is now illuminated by the glow of passion. Nothing disturbs us, not friends nor prejudices. She has come to live in my home and has laughed at the world, and at her husband. Her beauty has become even more luminous like that of a sun whose brightness increases upon colliding with another celestial body.

Dr. Atl baptized this celestial star Nahui Olin and turned her into a myth: “Nahui Olin was the Nahuatl name for the fourth movement of the sun and refers to the renewing movement of cosmic cycles.” The cosmos is a constant both in her life and in her writing, where, according to Andrés Henestrosa, Nahui predicted interspace travel before it occurred. In 1922 she published her book of poems, Óptica cerebral. In 1937 the publisher Botas released Energía cósmica with a cover designed by her, and where Nahui proposes a series of ideas about the universe’s molecular erosion and discusses Einstein’s theory of relativity. She states she is not entirely in agreement with certain of the theory’s details but does not specify which. However, her writings demonstrate rare mathematical genius.

The Merced Cloister Nahui and Atl lived on the top floor of the Merced Cloister, where lovemaking made them pass through time like a huge ball of fire. To calm their thirst and needs, they would get into the water tanks on the roof in the nude. When other tenants protested that their water arrived dirty, Dr. Atl alleged that “If you can take Dr. Ross’s pills, then you can surely drink Dr. Atl’s water.” Nahui would receive friends in the nude, a tray below her breasts, to serve glasses of refreshing elixir. Visitors included Diego and Lupe, Adolfo Best Maugard, Ricardo Gómez Robelo, Carlos and Dalila Mérida, Tina Modotti, and Edward Weston. They drank, danced, sang, painted, photographed, freed themselves, created, discovered Mexico, consecrated it. They were happy until they did not know when. On a piece of cardboard, Nahui drew an excellent portrait of Edward Weston. Her

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drawings elicited the absurd spark of talent without training, and absolute grace of one who does not take herself too seriously. Her drawings were like her: clever, free, the cheeky work of an uncontrollable woman. Such an intense relationship between a female volcano and a volcanologist had to erupt. Nahui threw sparks of jealousy, her red mouth became abusive, the baroque cloister of la Merced filled with insults, the thick walls echoed with jealousy, with hurtful screams, rages, fights, and upheaval. How strange! The greatest scorn on the face of the earth is that of two beings who have loved each other. Their love in ruins, they separated. Nahui stated repeatedly to Tomás Braniff, a well-mannered person, that Atl was a lame, mediocre asshole. And she was so fine.

There Is Some Reason in Madness Later, posing in the nude for the photographer Antonio Garduño filled Nahui with pleasure. She first traveled to Nautla, Veracruz, in 1926, and Garduño took several photos of her in a bathing suit which were published by El Automóvil en México magazine. In that same issue, Nahui had an article on her incidents of travel [to Veracruz], accompanied by three cartoons and several of Garduño’s photographs. How different these were from earlier photos by Edward Weston! Nahui did not like those photos, said she looked like a sheared mare; she liked those by Antonio Garduño, where she appears as a friendly, insipid little rabbit. But these lack energy, they turn the model into yet another nude in the pile. There is no originality. They do not have the freshness of the divine fat girls in the nude from his book, Casa de citas. His photographs do nothing for the grace and daring of the dazzling Carmen. And she could well have been blind, for her large eyes pondered by all cannot even be seen! Still, Carmen had taken this step. Another dare.

Daring to Do Everything The next year Nahui provoked yet another scandal upon unveiling an exhibit of a hundred or so photographs taken of her, most in the nude, by Antonio Garduño. The opening reception, in his studio-home at 5 February Street, included among the guests the Secretary of Education Manuel Puig Casauranc, Montes de Oca, Lola Olmedo, the painters

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Ignacio Rosas and Armando García Núñez, and the young photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo. This daughter of a prestigious family, ex-wife of a military officer, Dr. Atl’s volcano, had not only removed her clothes, but also every single inhibition acquired since convent school. She left Antonio Garduño’s studio in a joyful state, content to walk the Alameda and elsewhere naked the rest of her life. Álvarez Bravo witnessed a turbulent romance between Nahui and the caricaturist and painter Matías Santoyo, with whom she traveled to Hollywood to see Fred Niblo, who wanted to film her. In 1933, in San Sebastián, Spain, Nahui exhibited 54 of her paintings and drawings and also offered a piano recital in the vestibule of Cine Novedades. She played not only the classics but also her own compositions, at the conclusion receiving a standing ovation. The next year, in the Hotel Regis she exhibited 22 of her oil paintings.

Captain Eugenio Agacino Nahui Olin loved many. She had beaus, she played around: an Italian opera singer, a Lizardo from Acapulco, the Man with a Carnation. But Nahui never loved anyone as much as she loved Captain Eugenio Agacino, a Spaniard whose ship docked at every port until it dropped anchor permanently at only one: Nahui Olin. Never before had Nahui painted with so much color, never before were her oranges so fruity, her blues so purple, her yellows so luminous, her waist so slim. The sea had returned to the sea. Her eyes rested. Her self-portrait with the captain’s ship attests to this, as also her painting Eugenio Agacino y Nahui en el Atlántico: there are palm trees around their happy faces even though a coconut has just fallen on Nahui’s head. The stars descend to the bow and dance with them. Havana and New York are in the background while the captain wraps her in an embrace. In 1934 Captain Agacino died at sea, and Nahui’s eyes then spun like sails come loose, without direction, caught up in a tornado, mired in a swamp. Lola Álvarez Bravo says: “Weston did an excellent portrait of Nahui Olin, showing her a little angry, helpless, looking as though she could suddenly become alienated. She had a very strange inner being, and Weston captured that.”

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A Witch’s Talents “In the end she went mad,” Lola Álvarez Bravo continues. “Diego de Mesa and Juan Soriano were insistent on going to her house at General Cano #93. A horrible dog came out barking, it was wooly, blind, very impressive. Nahui adored it because they had tried to rob her and the dog defended her. Then Nahui brought us into her home. I had forewarned Juan and Diego. ‘Please, whatever she offers, even Coca-Cola, if she doesn’t open the bottle there in front of you, don’t drink a drop of what she offers you.’” Juan Soriano adds: “Lola told me, ‘You just pretend to drink it and don’t.’ For me, Nahui Olin was scary. ‘Look at what I can do,’ she said, and grabbed a light bulb, rubbed it with her two fingers and the bulb lit. Imagine that, with her hands! Then she said: ‘Look at my bed!’ And there I see a well-sketched man with real hair embroidered here and there, and false eyelashes like the ones women wear sewn onto it. Then she showed me all her paintings with the ship captain Agacino, who had been her last lover, and on each she had painted a heart-shaped, pointy, very red mouth. Even on the black and white photographs she had put that pointy, red heart mouth. For a man to be handsome, according to her, he had to have long eyelashes standing up like hers and a mouth painted like a bright strawberry.” “The house was horrifying. I did not know whether to laugh or cry and it took great effort to restrain myself. She told me she was very poor and no longer had anything to sell.”

Lola Álvarez Bravo Lola continues: “Nahui always said that she had her potions to keep men under her spell and the entire world at her feet, and that her concoctions and herbs were infallible. She would go into a trance and pray in the hallways of her rickety house: ‘Saint Martín Caballero, bring me the man I want.’ And the only thing that arrived were the bats. “We started to talk, and I asked her: ‘Hey Nahui, show us the photographs that Weston made of you.’ ‘That worthless junk, how could you want me to show you that junk? You will see, now I am going to show you some portraits that are truly great.’

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“She opens a chest and takes out two magazines, I think it was a Jueves de Excélsior section or who knows what, perhaps an Ovaciones, and shows us photos of her as a baby, and some other salty ones where she’s lifting her skirt as in the can-can, another where she is turned sideways while lifting the underskirts, to show her underwear, like a chorus girl, another with a fig leaf over her you-know-what, and well, other vulgarities. I asked her: “‘How about your paintings?’ Nahui did naif art. ‘I am awaiting a cable from Spain because the royals want to open a large exhibit of my work. As soon as I find out, I’m leaving. It’s wonderful! Because people here don’t understand anything, nor do they know anything.’ “And you will go to Madrid? ‘Yes. Besides, over there my love is waiting for me.’ “Really? And who is your love? ‘Come.’ She took us into a room and showed us a large bedsheet hung on the wall, where she had painted, horrible, horrible, in lifesize form, a manly figure that, except for some briefs, was naked, brawny with biceps bulges, just horrible-looking. The eyes were painted a green, green, green, with stiff, huge eyelashes above them, and that heart-shaped mouth. That orangutan of Nahui’s, with the immense green eyes, was one of the strangest things I have ever seen. ‘As you can see, he comes every day and keeps me company. I take him down and sleep with him, I cover myself with him and he takes care of me. You see, I fell very much in love with him and he with me, but he had to leave. So we went to Veracruz and he left on his boat because he is in the Navy, and I remained at the pier, sitting on the seawall, and the ship left and from far away the captain was bidding me goodbye, sending me kisses. Now he has written to me that the king of Spain is waiting to receive me. I am going to go with my exhibit and Eugenio and I will be married.’ “Later she told us: ‘Now you’ll see what I can do.’ “She closed the blinds and took out a vase about this big, of ancient talavera, full of lightbulbs, and said: ‘Now you’ll see, pay close attention to what I do.’ “She pulled out a bulb and rubbed it against another, lightly, bam, bam, bam, and sparks start to come out, just dreadful.

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‘So you see, these are my powers. Where do you think I get my powers? The cosmic force I have is sent by the sun.’ “And we three, imagine, clinging closely together in terror in the darkness, while she goes bam, bam, bam. ‘The only bad thing is that the neighbors here are terrible. In the morning the sun has to defend me, it comes down to scold them and protects me, because the kids throw rocks at me. The sun comes to chat with me, gives me affection, lies in my bed, gives me advice. We talk and it has already told me that were it not for me it would have already destroyed Mexico and blasted into a thousand pieces those kids because they are truly bad kids.’ “Diego de Mesa says in a low voice: ‘Hey, let’s go, otherwise we’re going to turn out as crazy as this one.’ “Juan, who is perverse, wanted to stay and see what else Nahui might do, because he was so amazed that the lightbulb could go on just through her fingers, until she came over, getting really close to him, blinding him with one of her bulbs. “We hurried away, scared. “I lost track of her for a long time until one day I encountered her in an elevator in Bellas Artes. ‘Hello Nahui, how are you? ‘I’m fine.’ ‘What are you painting?’ ‘Hey, it’s kind of you not to make fun of me.’ ‘Why would I make fun of you?’ ‘I just came to see Carlitos.’ “That was Carlos Chávez. ‘Really? That’s great. We’re headed over there, come on.’ ‘Yes, he’s going to conduct a symphony I wrote. Only, since I do everything intuitively because that’s how it comes to me, I wrote it in lyrics, so I put do, do, re, re, mi fa so, and Carlitos, who is so kind, is going to put in the notes for the musicians, the trumpets, the cornets, the violoncellos, and the violins. Yes, above all, the violins.’ ‘Even if you don’t believe it, Carlitos is going to put on my concert, it will be played by the Bellas Artes Symphony.’ ‘That’s wonderful, Nahuisita.’ ‘It was heartbreaking to see that extraordinary woman reduced to such a state. Nahui was someone who made you feel, not pity, it’s awful to say pity, more like tender love—you did not want anything to happen to her. You would feel sad that she had such a difficult life because she fell really

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hard. Dr. Atl would still ask about her. ‘Have you seen little Nahui?’ ‘Yes doctor.’ ‘And what does she say?’ ‘That you’re a mule.’ She didn’t love him at all, nor Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, poor thing, she would say they are both trash. Well, Manuel wasn’t trash, he painted trash. There was a time when, if Nahui got a little check of whatever type, maybe 80 pesos or whatever from Bellas Artes, some little annuity, she would then eat at a community kitchen for the indigent, or one of those public kitchens, a meal for 50 cents, because Nahui did not even have enough for a daily prix fixe, only beans and atole. “Between the Guero Fournier, Diego Rivera, and I don’t know who else, I think Misrachi (although he was pretty cheap), they would purchase her paintings to help her, but then she didn’t want to sell them anymore because she said they were headed to Spain for her exhibit. “One time we were at the Leda, it was New Year’s eve, and Nahui hung onto Obregón Santacilia. And he didn’t know what to do. She kept pulling him, saying let’s dance, and him so stiff. He kept looking at us like ‘help me,’ but we were wicked and pretended we didn’t notice.” All of Mexico pretended not to notice. No one gave her a hand and Nahui went downhill walking the streets around the Alameda. Lola Álvarez Bravo says: “She used to hang out on the Alameda bridge, offering herself, poor thing. She would wear some dresses of really shiny material, very cheap, tight-fitting with deep plunges, with a huge paper flower in her cleavage.”

If Only All Women Had a Tomás Zurián In 1993, Blanca Garduño, director of the Diego Rivera Museum Workshop, rescued her memory, and Tomás Zurián Ugarte, her lifesaver, pulled her out of oblivion and organized an exhibit around her beautiful, drowned body: Nahui Olin, una mujer de los tiempos modernos. If only all women, [including] Chabela Villaseñor, Concha Michel, Blanca Luz Brum, Cuca Barrón, and others, had a savior who, some 20 years after her death, would remember her with such loving colors of benevolence! To Nahui Olin, Toltec Princess of seven sails Empress of the paintbrush And Queen of all colors Mayoress of drawing,

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Of the professorial line Of master contours And Queen of harmony You painted poetry Nahui Olin abbess Your greatness is immortal. Guadalupe Amor, January 23 of the year of grace 1993

A Lover from Here to Eternity He was a lover Nahui never expected; of them all, the man who loved her best. At the grand exhibit, Nahui Olin’s paintings were a bright collection of radishes, red bundles, bulges, circular rounds, clusters of green eyes, clusters like rainy-day fans in the bullring, clusters of little heart-shaped mouths, clusters of eyelash pins in eyelids, clusters of sunflowers. Here, Manuel Puig would have been happy: so many little red mouths painted only for him, so much love in glorious technicolor, so much movie screen, such vertiginous brilliance.

Hey There, Cheeky Buttocks Besides the heart-shaped mouths, Nahui Olin loves her bum as the best part of her body. She rounds her buttocks, sticks it up, makes it dance, suns it. “Hey there, cheeky buttocks!” Guillermo Haro would yell to our daughter Paulita when she showed up in her short shorts ready to go to Cuernavaca. More than anyone, Nahui knows of the importance of the buttocks and sits on it gently to not waste anything because it is priceless. Precious jewels, the buttocks and the face are the same, the hidden face of the moon. “When one door closes for me, I push it open with my hips. Hips are the center of the universe.” How many sayings there are about the hips! If it was up to Nahui, we’d all have open-air buttocks! Prodigious posteriors and big butts are the focus of attention at bachelor and bachelorette parties. Harmony, in Nahui’s works, rests on a pair of buttocks. The golden focal point in her compositions are the glutes (what an awful word! as much as pompis): gluteus maximus, buttocks, cheeks, bottom, fanny, buns, bum, full moon, rear end, rump, toosh, hams, haunches, seat. Her principal topic is always the bum, even in the more naive drawings, those most innocent, where eroticism is absent, the buttocks are what give meaning to the work: Nahui and Matías Santoyo, El abrazo, Autorretrato,

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Nahui y el capitán Agacino en Nueva York, Garduño y Bert jugando a pipis y gañas. Perhaps the other titles are not as revealing, but in Garduño y Bert jugando a pipis y gañas, a tarantula devours Garduño’s behind. Of all the drawings, the most beautiful is Desnudo femenino de espalda, with the shape of an hourglass. I remember that in Juan Soriano’s studio on Melchor Ocampo we were greeted upon entry by a pair of prodigious buttocks, in a photograph sitting atop the chimney, taken by the architect Abarca, who became a photographer in Lola’s classes at the San Carlos. Student and teacher became good friends; Abarca would help her and carry the cameras until Juan told Lola: “Look, why humor him? Leave him alone, this is going to end badly.” He did not like women and that is why he took that photo of splendid male buttocks. He discovered them in a club for soccer players. One after another of Nahui’s works insist on a focus on the buttocks, but the only ones left are those held by Soriano which he no longer shows in public.

The Ghost of the Post Office If she were still alive, Nahui Olin would turn 107 years old, my good luck number. She was born in 1893 and died on January 23, 1978, of respiratory failure. Few remembered her. She died alone, fat, surrounded by cats, under a blanket made with the worn-out pelts of the cats who had died before her, dried and preserved including the head, so that she could recognize them and talk to them about love: Blondie, Manelik, Roerich, and others. She died convinced that her retirement from the world was the best thing for her. There was not a single death notice, or obituary, no one remembered her. In the 1970s, Nahui was known as “the powdered woman,” “the loca,” “the post office ghost” (Tacuba and San Juan de Letrán were her walking areas), “the lady with the cats,” because she often fed cats along the Alameda. They also called her “the Dog,” “the long arm,” and “the assaulter,” because she was always, so they said, a nymphomaniac. Even at 85 years old, when she was able to board a bus or train car, she would touch younger passengers in a vulgar manner. They would jump up from their seats frightened not as much by the voracity of the tattered lady as the white powdered mass on her plump, aged face. Nahui is the antithesis, the antiheroine who expressed herself through her body. To the end she believed in her body, she continued seeing herself as beautiful because, as Adriana Malvido verified, she would buy three different sizes of the same dress “for when I lose weight.”

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No one ever guessed that that old lady of astonishing eroticism concealed one of the most beautiful and passionate women of Mexico, a legend who inspired the curator of her [posthumous] exhibit, Tomás Zurián Ugarte, with such intense passion that Nahui still appears before him at masques held at the San Carlos Academy or in the obsessive tosses and turns of his insomnia.

Not a Common Madwoman Homero Aridjis says he met Nahui Olin along la Alameda. “I told myself: this is a literary character, a poetic personality. Clearly her activity along the Alameda told one she was not a common madwoman who might frighten you; she was a poetic madwoman. The fact that she would bring the sun out at daybreak, that she would move it along throughout the sky, then put it back and remain looking at it with those greenish-red eyes, awakened my interest in her world immersed in the logic of madness and the survival of the girl within that madness. “Nahui Olin is the type of character that society destroys because she is of total uninhibited innocence, sincere, without compromise. A person like her is vulnerable to any and all male abuse, because she retained that innocence in her body. Many warned me against having a friendship with someone like that. But my intuition guided me to let the encounter flow without fear. I became aware that our current cultural ambience is afraid of true madness. We tend to make monuments for the characters of our national history, but never reconstruct human beings. “The encounter flowed, hours and hours until daybreak, and Nahui told me nearly the entire story of her life. She gave the impression of being very lonely, that terrible loneliness accompanied by poverty. I remember being hungry, but it didn’t matter to me, I felt that I was inside a novel and she was a character.”

Loneliness Through Death Beginning in 1942, Nahui’s friends began to die. The night of January 5, 1942, a heart attack killed photographer Tina Modotti; on September 7, 1949, José Clemente Orozco died. The engraver and painter Isabel Villaseñor died on March 13, 1953. On July 13, 1954, Frida Kahlo died in her home in Coyoacán, and according to Tomás Zurián’s chronology, María Izquierdo died of an embolism at age 53 the same year. On

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November 24, 1957, we lost Diego Rivera, and on August 16, 1964, Dr. Atl died. His vigil was held in the lobby of Bellas Artes. Nahui slipped in discreetly during the vigil. On January 6, 1974, David Alfaro Siqueiros died in his home in Cuernavaca, and on December 30, 1975, Nahui’s very close friend, the painter Rosario Cabrera. Despite the fact that many friends had already turned their back on her, these disappearances must have deeply injured Nahui Olin’s spirit.

Thirty Years After Her Death Nearly 20 years after Nahui’s death in 1978, Adriana Malvido knew how to give her love, placing into her blighted hands a little round sun: sheets of paper flying, gold dust, sea salt, the lights of Havana, with its palm trees, and those of New  York, which descend to the bow of the transatlantic liner, becoming stars on the backdrop. Nahui dances in the arms of captain Eugenio Agacino, the most glamorous romance of her life. Nahui finally makes her final stop. Thanks to Tomás Zurián and Adriana, the sea has returned to the sea. Adriana loves Nahui, she has extended to her the only lifesaver possible: that of her lovely, polished book in an era when women come and women go, writing about each other in joyful celebration.

CHAPTER 6

Pita Amor in the Arms of God Elena Poniatowska and Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez

God, the admirable invention created out of human anxiety and from such arcane essence that it becomes impenetrable. Why are you not palpable to the arrogant who saw you? Why do you tell me no when I now ask you to come? Dear God, don’t delay, or, do you want me to go to you myself?

English translation by Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez, essays from Elena Poniatowska’s book Las siete cabritas, published in 2000. E. Poniatowska c/o Schavelzon Graham Agencia Literaria, S.L., Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] E. C. Martínez (*) DePaul University, Chicago, TX, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. C. Martínez (ed.), The Women of Mexico’s Cultural Renaissance, Literatures of the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11177-8_6

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Pita Amor arrived for their mutually agreed appointment on Saturday, May 6 of 2000, after contracting pneumonia. God kept her waiting for a while, but finally canceled other commitments to receive her at his divine threshold on Monday, May 8, at 4:45 pm, from her nephew Juan Pérez Amor’s clinic on Apóstol Santiago Street, neighborhood of San Jerónimo. Like an 80ish-year-old shaman, lionlike, in a brocade jacket with Zapata moustache and newly washed long locks, Juan accompanied her to heaven’s gate, where he stopped, for only she could cross it. “We hugged with our eyes, we were alone the two of us, she looked gorgeous, very tranquil, and without saying goodbye she left.” Pita Amor sang to God and she herself was God. To prove it, Pita is likely at this moment gifting the saints with celestial umbrella whacks, and making the ecclesiastic hierarchy tremble by greeting them in her thunderous voice: “Good morning” (a “good morning” from Pita is not any simple greeting, it reverberates against the mountains). She is interrupting the music of the celestial spheres to yell to Jesusa Rodríguez: “You are barbarous! Better than Chaplin!” She is barking orders at Patricia Reyes Spíndola, standing in the middle of the theater, a rose atop her head, thrusting her cane into the air: “Patricia, get off the stage immediately! That play is for morons, it is beneath you. Get down right now Patricia, or I’m coming up!” A chorus of taxi drivers, transit agents, and humiliated waiters likely hides behind the clouds to prevent her from calling them “monkeys, flat noses, Guatemalan dwarfs,” just like in 1985 when they asked her opinion about the earthquake, and she exclaimed: “Good! It is a purge of low-lifes!”

Poetry in the Family This unique personage who in her later years in the Juárez neighborhood was called “Batman’s granny” would have turned 82 years old on May 30. Dubbed the “honorary queen of Zona Rosa,” she wandered its streets day after day dressed as a butterfly in gold lamé, or as a dragonfly, or as Isadora Duncan, with tinted hair, a flower halfway down the side of her head, smothered under the weight of a few tons of jewelry, her face looking like a slice of jicama dusted with red chile. Liverpool, Berlín, Londres, Varsavia, Hamburgo, Milán, Florencia, París, Versailles, and Niza watched her age and go mad. Perhaps Pita sought her old haunts in the dark corners of the Juárez neighborhood: she was born at Abraham González Street #66 and later lived on Génova. She lost her eyesight, they operated on her eyes, and after that Pita wore thick

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coke bottle glasses and used a cane. She walked forward without abiding that anyone come near her, using the cane to frighten off admirers and creditors alike, sometimes hitting them, sometimes swinging it through the air: “Step aside, deplorables, coming through!” When passing beggars she would scold them harshly: “Stand up, lazy bums, stand up and work!” The antiquarian Ricardo Pérez Escamilla coped with all type of catastrophes she brought. Loyal and generous, he protected her from assaults by hotel clerks, restaurant employees, and taxi drivers and from the insults of destiny. Pita dearly loved a little blond boy, Andrés David Siegel Ruiz, whom she called Pomponio and she went to visit him every day. Today Siegel is the owner of an art gallery in the house where Tina Modotti and Edward Weston lived on Veracruz Avenue #43. Guadalupe Teresa Amor Schmidtlein was born May 30, 1918. She was a privileged child, the youngest of Emmanuel Amor and Carolina Schmidtlein’s seven children. Emmanuel Amor had another child from his first marriage who grew up with them: Ignacio Amor, whom everyone called Chin, the son of his deceased first wife, Concha de la Torre y Mier (the sister of Nacho de la Torre, who was married to Don Porfirio’s daughter, Amadita Díaz). The seven siblings loved their baby sister, but her vanity, shrieks, and demands for attention worried them. Her sister Maggie—the mother of Bernardo Sepúlveda, ex-Secretary of Foreign Relations—once told me: Pita was also very testy about sleeping … and clever. We slept in the same room with our nanny Pepa, and Pita used to cry, with stronger and stronger sobs, ‘I want my mother!’ ‘Little girl, hush,’ the resigned nanny said. ‘Ay! Don’t tell me ‘little girl hush,’—say, ‘hush your little mouth.’ [Pepa then said] ‘Now, now, hush your little mouth.’ ‘Ay! Don’t say it so angry, tell me without ‘now, now.’

“And that’s how the petulant conversation continued between Pita and nanny Pepa, who doted on her. Meanwhile, I could not sleep.”

I Am Divine Elena, one of the two still living Amor sisters, told me that Pita delighted in admiring herself in the mirror for hours on end and up until recent days would ask in her baritone voice: “How do I look? Divine, right?”

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Her exhibitionism, and adoration of herself, of her body, the exaggerated personal care she gave herself during adolescence, youth, and the early years of adulthood were well known. “I have never worn a dress more than twice,” she would boast. Even as a girl she hated underpants and would refuse to wear them. A nun accused her of immorality because there would then be nothing between Pita and her school uniform. “I am against passion-killing underpants.” Even without underpants, later her elegant attire and good taste were a regular feature of the newspaper society section. The black lace mantilla used by ladies going to mass was desacralized by Pita who used it to cover her bosom, her shoulders, and would use it to wrap up her lovers like little tamales. From age 30 she began to crimp the middle of her hair like the cupies around a heart to express love. As a girl growing up in the house on Abraham González Street, she never learned what her sisters knew to perfection: good manners. She spoke some French and English also. But they never made her do what she did not want to. For her there was no discipline, just sweets. No one ever stopped her from misbehaving. She quickly learned how to make all gazes converge on her, all ears listen to any trivial requests or silly remarks. Carito, her older sister, compared her to a tiny thundering Jupiter. As the years passed, she began insulting anyone who came close and at the end of her life did not want anyone to touch her. “How dare you give me your hand when it is full of germs?” She was disgusted by anyone who dared invade her vital space, and she washed her hands 47 times a day. Owner of half the state of Morelos, her father Emmanuel Amor Subervielle lost the Hacienda de San Gabriel, with one of the most important sugar mills in the state of Morelos. He was also owner of the San Ignacio Actopan and Michapa ranches, extending over 36,000 hectares of the state of Querétaro, all the way to Lake Tequesquitengo. Her father had dreamed of building irrigation canals from the Amacuzac River to benefit the hacienda, but it was all a dream. As with all the Porfirista families, the Amor Schmidtleins lost their haciendas. Persecuted by the Revolution, they relocated to Mexico City early in the new century. They never forgot their aristocratic past, despite quickly losing their status and landholdings. Carito Amor, the most socially conscious family member, worked at Bellas Artes with Carlos Chávez, a position later inherited by Antonieta Rivas Mercado. In his book about Zapata [and the 1910 Revolution], John Womack declares that of all the hacienda landholding families, Emmanuel Amor was the one who treated his peons the best. He never accepted any compensation from the government for the loss of his properties. To the day

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of his death, in 1923, he held on to the hope of recovering them. If he had any remaining properties, they were appropriated through the agrarian reform laws of [President] Cárdenas. Who knows if he ever rode his horse across the 36,000 hectares of land that had been his. Emmanuel Amor had a great library where his friends would gather and in which Pita acquired an informal but definitive literary education. “I read all the books I could grasp: Góngora, Lope de Vega, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Rubén Darío, Bécquer, Manuel José Othón, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Juan de Dios Peza, the Russians Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and the French authors Balzac and Stendhal. I even read Don Juan Tenorio. I think that from the essence of all that poetry, what stayed with me was its rhythm. Perhaps that was what created in me rhythm and poetic measure.” From his haciendas, Emmanuel Amor relocated to his city residence colonial paintings, Brazilian mahogany furniture with Puebla-style inlaid work, Louis XIV side tables, greats urns and Persian rugs, and a drove of peons converted into household servants—civil slaves. Late in life, Emmanuel Amor was taken out to catch the sun on a balcony above Abraham González Street with a plaid Scottish throw over his knees. That is how Pita remembers him: “Very old and very British.”

Hush, Pitusa Neither her father nor her mother had the strength to control her and Pita was left as free as her words. They never understood why their youngest child was a cyclone, a meteor, when the rest of their children were stable and fixed planets. The entire neighborhood thought the house on Abraham González hid a dragon. Within a 30-meter radius, Pita brought attention to herself. In a throaty voice she belted out a tango: Que todo a media luz, es un embrujo del amor… (Anything at half-light, comes from the witchery of love, half-light kisses, half-light …). Her mother advised silence with, “Hush, Pitusa,” admonishing to not waste her privileged voice, which no one knew how to appreciate. At night, after dinner, the family had the custom of reading and reciting, and surely that poetry read aloud influenced her in a definitive way. Her sisters Mimí and Elena also recited poems but never dared to jump into the ring. Inés Amor, director of the Galería de Arte Mexicano, said of Pita in 1953: Within the universe, Pita is like an asteroid. I don’t know in what sun’s orbit she spins, but I can state that she has her own peculiar life, although in some

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aspects her elementary forces are like those of our planet, hurricane winds, intense fire, storms and dust, and once in a while (and may it be more frequent), calm beauty. To get to know Pita will require the fearless valor of an inter-planetary pilot or the wise patience of an astronomer. I have a dream of someday being admitted, as a student, to the Observatory of Santa María Tonantzintla.

From childhood, Pita was the spoiled one, the little doll, always demanding, moody, and bad-tempered, with nocturnal terrors. She was such a lovely creature that Carmen Amor tried out her new camera on her, taking many photographs of her in the nude. And she enjoyed contemplating herself. Perhaps that is the origin of her narcissism. She herself speaks of her childhood in her novel I am my Home, the same title as her first book of poems. And if she was a precious child, she was a truly beautiful adolescent. Her shenanigans brought as much attention as her large, wide open eyes, her deep voice, and her long strawberry-blonde hair. From a young age, Pita had access to Mexican artistic life thanks to her sister Carito, collaborator with Carlos Chávez and founder of the Galería de Arte Mexicano, which later her sister Inés would direct. To this gallery, set up in the basement of the Amor home, arrived Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros, and Julio Castellanos. Young Pita became friends with Juan Soriano, Roberto Montenegro, and Antonio Peláez, and they all painted her, including Diego Rivera, who did so in the nude, causing great scandal to her family and “and some 300 others.” Imperiously, she made demands with screams, and, flustered, they did whatever she wanted. Pita always had trouble adapting to the world. She would isolate her voice within the unified chorus, in the home, among her five sisters and brother Chepe, at the Academy for young ladies, Sagrado Corazón School in Monterrey, which she could not stand, just as they could not stand her. The Mother Superior told her to kneel at moments of prayer, and Pita pretended not to hear. “She came over and tried to force me down by the shoulder. A furious little beast is tame compared to me at that moment: blind with rage I hit her in the face, her dentures flew out, landing, along with the rosary she had in one hand, between the legs of a nearby trash can.”

To Love Another, No, Not at All Pita could never get outside herself enough to truly love another being; the only surrender she ever consummated was to herself. Intensely in love with herself, others interested her only to the extent that they reflected her. They were merely a narcissistic gratification.

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It is interesting to note that the same woman who never ceased in her desire for scandal, who went outside nude but for her mink coat at midnight to stroll down the Paseo de la Reforma and announce to the flow of automobiles, “I am the Queen of the Night,” would return to her apartment on Río Duero Street at dawn and, in her bed alone, write on a brown paper bag with her eye pencil: Window portal, open … How much air comes through it! And alone, in the room, despite the infusion of air, I died asphyxiated; this air did not save me, because in my mental torment, the anguish and affliction of my knowing, I lacked the window of my reason.

Pita moved from scandal to scandal without a bit of compassion for herself. On a television program, covered in jewels, two rings on each finger, cleavage showing (which brought protests from the League of Decency, declaring that San Juan de la Cruz could not be recited with breasts showing), she recited arrogant verses. Her Lyrical Verses to God were ecstatic ravings.

Pita dixit “Huge illuminated signs with my name announced my books, and my beautiful face was disseminated even on common post cards. I monopolized the attention of Mexico. Me, in a strident D major, the opposite of what I do now: in D minor. “Despite my success, I was more concerned about my beauty and my turbulent love conflicts. “I do not accept, nor have I ever accepted, nor will I ever accept, skepticism, which is an invalid and impotent position. The current generation causes me despair. I cannot tolerate today’s youth. They are impossible, and an abomination. “Because I have been young, I am young, because I have the age I want to have. I am beautiful when I desire and am ugly when necessary. I am young when I wish and old when I must be. I, who have been the most common and frivolous woman in the world, do not believe in time tracked

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by the clock or the calendar. I believe in the time of my glands and my arteries. Long ago I abolished anguish, by consuming it.” Scary, uncontainable, unpredictable, Pita Amor has affirmed, with a grimace of disdain: “Of all that is mine, of what I have written, what I like best is my epitaph.” My room measures four meters, my body one and half The casket which awaits me will be the sum of my monotony.

Pita Was Demonized Like Nahui Olin, Nellie Campobello, and Elena Garro Pita Amor was one of the most flamboyant figures of the 1940s and 1950s. For 20 years, after the publication of her first book in 1946, she attracted growing attention from the public. Together with Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, Frida Kahlo, Carlos Pellicer, María Izquierdo, María Félix, Edmundo O’Gorman, Justino Fernández, Lupe Marín, Cordelia Urueta, Xavier Villaurrutia, el Dr. Atl, Salvador Novo, Ignacio Asúnsolo, José Vasconcelos, Archibaldo Burns, Nahui Olin, Amalia Hernández, Juan Soriano, Diego de Mesa, and many sacred monsters more, she formed a type of “contemptible mob” where she did and undid as she pleased. Impossible to forget were Pita Amor’s parties at her home on Río Duero street, which she decorated according to the theme of a newly released book. When she wrote Polvo, she had the walls and ceiling painted and everything in her house was smudged gray: a gray carpet, gray curtains, gray satin covers for her furniture, gray tablecloths. When Otro libro de amor appeared, heavily flowered cretonne fabric and House & Garden-­ style chintz covered her living room and bedroom: the house filled with branches, the carpet became green grass, and there was always water in the flower vases. With Décimas a Dios, Pita’s house acquired a somber, lightly anguished appearance; large candles appeared, colonial candelabras highlighted from the shadows Pita’s large portraits: one by Roberto Montenegro, two or three by Diego Rivera (a beautiful oval face), one by Gustavo Montoya, one by Cordelia Urueta, another by Juan Soriano, the daring nude of Raúl Anguiano which shows her seated with her legs open, the precious pencil drawing by Antonio Peláez, and the one by Enrique Asúnsolo.

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A whirlwind of energy propelled her to go out drinking night after night, to the Sans Souci, the Waikiki, the Ambassadeurs, the Salón de los Candiles at the Hotel del Prado. Pita was the focus of all gatherings. She made rash decisions: “Let’s burn down the tidy José Luis Martínez’s tidy library.” She entertained everyone with her unexpected ideas and her daring. She was also supportive in solidarity with her friends. One night when Fernando Benítez realized he did not have money to pay his bill at Ciro’s, he told his party buddies Pepe Iturriaga, Hugo Margáin, and Guillermo Haro: “Don’t worry, I’m going to call Pita right away.” “But Fernando, it’s five in the morning!” Pita soon arrived in her deshabille and usual mink coat and paid his bill, leaving a generous tip. Pita then declared: I am a disconcerted and disconcerting creature; I am full of vanity, love for myself, with sterile and naïve ambitions. I have lived much, but have thought deeply much more, and after taking a thousand different positions, I reached the conclusion that my greatest anxiety is God.

A Legend Since 1953 This was in 1953. By then Pita was a legend of unexpected contrasts and emotions. Everyone commented on her antics, her “I’m here, you bastards,” her nudity, her deep cleavages. She would stand next to María Félix and boast: “I’m prettier, right?” She danced with great grace. She made people laugh and everyone followed her around. In a movie she dressed like a pussycat with ears and pointy tail. As a seductress, her admirers, who were legion, applauded her as well when she dressed all in black, wore a Córdoba hat and short jacket, and dramatically intoned cante jondo, dancing upon hearts both masculine and feminine. Her cinematographic career, however, was of short duration; she decided the film world was beneath her. “That is for domestics. I do not need to obey anyone.”

Scandal as a Way of Life She did not even obey her parents. To the contrary, she caused her mother great grief because she would enter the Votiva Church and scream loudly at a precise moment: “I had an abortion!” Scandal and celebrity go hand in hand. Pita attracted much more attention than her two older sisters, whose contribution was more valuable:

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Carito founded the Mexican Medical Press and Inés directed the Mexican Galería de Arte Mexicano. But each retreated from the footlights. Pita, on the other hand, was nude in public. She always advanced at the edge of the knife. Her family contemplated her activities in sheer fright: could she be mad? Other women, older than she, had already been demonized: Dr. Atl’s Nahui Olin, also proficient in nudity, who would receive guests opening the door of her home on the top floor of the Merced Cloister with breasts exposed; Nellie Campobello always holding her sister Gloriecita’s hand, and Tina Modotti, who posed nude for Edward Weston’s photographs. Today nudity does not have the same impact. Jesusa Rodríguez has gone naked several times in her theatrical works as though the world were her shower, and the only people who screamed about it were the Pro-­ Life idiots. In the midst of fandangos, pachangas [parties], and outings to the era’s great Cabaret Leda, where Lupe Marín and Juan Soriano danced without shoes and made a spectacle at a fete for the Contemporáneos group and José Luis Martínez, her Sundays at the bullfights, and her regular attendance at parties and cocktails, Pita Amor suddenly and surprisingly published, to great astonishment, her first book of poetry: Yo soy mi casa, published through Manolo Altolaguirre’s initiative. The book was a sensation. Immediately Alfonso Reyes, who was a little mischievous, saluted her with, “No comparisons needed, here we have a mythological case.”

Pita Amor, the Provocateur One night when Pita was blowing her nose, a little depressed and with a box of Kleenex under her arm, she commented: “I always get the flu. It could be because I first got it during those sessions in Diego’s freezing studio.” That nude painting brought scandal. President Miguel Alemán, inaugurating Diego Rivera’s retrospective exhibit in Bellas Artes [1949], froze in place when he saw it. Pita, standing beside the frame in her fur coat, launched into a loud explanation about how it was a portrait of her soul. “Ah, well, what a pink soul you have!” he responded. Diego Rivera painted Pita’s full body, nude and open to the world; he also revealed María Félix behind a nonexistent transparency and Silvia Pinal in a María Victoria type of dress, which denudes her more than nudity itself. But since everything Pita did was for provocation, those who came to Bellas Artes yelled to the high heavens upon confronting the

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gigantic (and ugly) full body portrait of Pita: eyes wide open like Diego’s, curls on her forehead, her bare feet standing on the dust of the Globe, and a magic wand that declared: “I am the poetess Pita Amor.” That same year of 1949 when her book Polvo was released, Diego had wanted to render tribute to that book. But if the nude image caused a heart attack for the Amor, Escandón, Subervielle, and Rincón Gallardo families, it created an even greater fuss when Justino Fernández discovered that Pita had written, provocatively, on the back of the canvas: “At 7:20 p.m. on the 29th of July of 1949 when we finished this portrait, Diego and I enjoyed coupling without limits whatsoever.”

The Amor Siblings, United by Blood In 1954, at a party at her home on Duero Street, she threatened me in a loud voice: “Don’t compare yourself to your aunt by blood! Don’t compare yourself to your aunt of fire! Don’t you dare appear next to me, next to my hurricane winds, my storms, my rivers of lava! I am the sun, little girl, if you even come near, you will be charred by my rays! I am a volcano!” The next day, at one in the afternoon, the phone rang. It was Pita fresh as the morning: “Are you happy, dear heart?” I told her yes, very much so. Then she asked me where she could get some patent leather shoes with a bow in the shape of a butterfly so that she could step out for the afternoon before being stomped on seven times. Pita also forbade me to use my maternal last name, Amor: “You are a lousy newspaper writer, I am a goddess.” My mother and Pita are second cousins, daughters of two brothers: Emmanuel, Pita’s father, and Pablo, my mother’s father. When I became a journalist with Excélsior, I received an extensive letter about the origins of my maternal family. The author called me a degenerate and predicted I would soon be locked up in the Fray Bernardino convent because, according to him, during a masque held last mid-century, two young people met and fell in love at first sight, and went to the basement to make love. Once the act was consummated, they removed their masques and exclaimed: “Cousin! Cousin!” Disconcerted, they traveled to the Holy Headquarters to seek an audience with the Pope. After hearing their story, the Pope forgave them under the condition that they carry the last name Amor. According to Carito Amor, the true story is that an Escandón who had not yet had children became pregnant right after the arrival of her brother from Stonyhurst; when the baby was born, wagging tongues whispered

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that it was a child of incest. For certain, this myth about the blood line weakened by promiscuity has given birth to a singular lineage of which Pita is the first legend.

A Little Starched Percale I once asked if she considered herself extravagant and she responded angrily: “Extravagant me? Where do you get such things, you snotnose insolent, that I am extravagant? Who said so?” “My aunts have told me you are extravagant and frivolous.” “Look, everything I do by contrast and overall is to not look like them, bourgeoisie women full of hesitancy and suspicion. Frivolous I am not. I like to talk about the disturbing topics that consume man’s spirit and I do it decorated and dressed as though I were one of those women who do not care about anything but their appearances. In contrast to my five sisters who discuss their children, husbands and recipes, I talk about God, about anguish, about death. I take care of myself and strive to wear dresses of the highest decor possible on my television program. Furthermore, I am not luxuriously attired. This is a deception, as on television everything is an illusion. On many occasions, the next day after the program, I receive a phone call from an admirer stating: ‘You looked truly stunning in that Italian brocade dress,’ and yet my attire is no more than a starched percale, created in such a way that only television and the infallible confidence with which I wear it make it seem luxurious, do you understand?”

My Jewels Are an Illusion “And your jewelry? Your fingers full of rings?” “Those rings are part of the illusion, just like my eyes and my teeth…” “They may be an illusion, but they weigh more than the iron ball attached to a prisoner’s leg.” “Shut up, insolent child!” “Auntie, they are a nightmare.” Pita kept them under her bed in some wooden crates covered in brown paper. When someone she trusted visited, she would pull out handfuls of dreadful trinkets, enough to fill a train boxcar. “Are they good ones, auntie?” “Of course they are valuable, the daily wear ones I buy at Sanborns. The others are worth millions.”

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In 1958, when Guadalupe Amor published her book of poems, Sirviéndole a Dios de hoguera (Serving as a bonfire to God), Alfonso Reyes affirmed it was the best of all her books to date. Don Alfonso told Pita directly that she had “grabbed the nucleus of poetry.” Pita was in one of her better moments, in terms of creativity as well as emotion. Nevertheless, there were rumors that she was not the author but rather don Alfonso, who was courting her. Then Pita wrote a sonnet, “that I parodied from Lope de Vega when the jealous imbeciles said it was not possible that I wrote my poetry and that Alfonso Reyes did it for me”: Since they say I am ignorant, everyone comments without respect that without a doubt there must be someone who puts my thinking into consonance. It must be a boundless type, since everything produces even a sonnet that is why with my books I deliver a challenge: joking and playing now thirteen ahead. May he continue singing for my fame and personal advantage, so that I may continue enjoying his talent without right, and hopefully he never tires until he has created an entire library for me.

In regard to Sirviéndole a Dios de hoguera she explained: “I think these verses are less religious than those in Décimas a Dios, and more optimistic. I have dug deeper. Sirviéndole a Dios de hoguera is much more universal than my earlier books. Through complete premeditation and advantage, I created 110 four-line verses from a great poverty of words. You know that I only have four or five essential words: God, eternity, blood, universe, Astros!” “And isn’t that a defect? Shouldn’t you have more vocabulary?” “How ignorant you are! It really moves me greatly that in a nation as uneducated and ignorant as Mexico, my work reaches the great masses. You would not believe the number of letters I receive and the many people who want to visit me!”

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Octavio Paz Is Nowhere Near Equal to Me “I have just recorded an album with RCA Victor, of poetry dating from the 15th century to the modern poets. The theme is love. I chose two romances from the 16th and 17th centuries, Quevedo, Lope de Vega, Sor Juana, Neruda, García Lorca, Alfonso Reyes, Salvador Novo, Xavier Villaurrutia, Octavio Paz, and me of course, although I consider myself superior to Octavio Paz. While he takes himself very seriously, he is nowhere near equal to me. In truth, including him is an act of condescension.” At the time, when Paz was asked for his opinion about Pita, he responded bad-humoredly: “About Guadalupe Amor I do not have an opinion.” Pita definitely had something against Paz and composed this verse about him: In order to dance bulerías,1 In order to dance bulerías, Your feet are too small Your feet are too small

José Emilio Pacheco brought honor to Pita with one of his riddles: “Who burned in her own fire, made her life poetry, descended to the somber region, and carries in her name who she loves?”

Pita Amor’s Crimes In 1946 when her mother, Carolina Schmidtlein de Amor, died, Pita, obsessively, felt responsible for her death: My mother gave me life and I killed my mother I annihilated her through shame. My mother is now asleep. I am alive, divided I alone know of my crime I carry her death hidden In my remote memory. 1

 Popular Andalusian song and dance

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Oh what a cruel note! Oh what dark torment! Oh what an intensifying crime! Oh what long memory! What a bitter memory!

When her mother died, Pita spent her entire inheritance, absolutely all of it, on dresses and makeup, bodices and trinkets. Others invested in real estate what she squandered in stockings and perfumes. She began to torment herself, as she attests in Mis Crímenes. She declared that she had killed her mother much as she would later write that she killed her son Manuelito. Even so, her feelings of culpability did not inhibit her life, which continued like a whirlwind. When she was still young, Pita met José Madrazo, 60 years old, owner of the bull breeding ranch La Punta, which captivated her. They had a free and open relationship, and he was perhaps the only man Pita truly loved. Despite her family’s opposition, Pepe Madrazo became a splendid and disinterested patron. Pita kept the relationship going for many years while also continuing with the excesses of her nature; there was no one to stop her partying habits. She liked to provoke, there were no limits to her exploits, and her unashamed and daring character razed everything to the ground. She would accompany Pepe Madrazo to the bullfights and several bullfighters fell in love with her. Whenever she was asked how many men had fallen in love with her, she would say, “Well, bullfighters, five; writers, six; bankers, seven; aristocrats, three; painters, four; doctors, eight,” and continued picaresquely enumerating dozens on her bejeweled fingers.

A First Child at Age 38 After 12 years cultivating her angry pen, enjoying her friends’ praises, the loyalty of a tumultuous public, and homage from her fans, whom she called “godforsaken,” which was priceless after the free and overindulgent social life she lived, Pita Amor decides at age 38 [in 1956] to have a child. When she informs Pepe Madrazo, he withdraws his financial support and never sees her again. Impatient, Pita visits a clinic with great anticipation, and her pregnancy produces a profound nervous crisis, as also her Cesarean section. Pita cannot stand the idea of having been operated on, she feels they profaned her body: “I am perforated, needled.” After giving birth,

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her family delivers her to her Duero Street apartment. From the moment of the newborn’s first cry, Pita is certain she will not be capable of caring for the baby Manuelito. Her older sister Carito takes on his care; Mimí receives Pita at her house in Tizapán and, in order to erase her past, Pita burns all of her belongings and sells her nude paintings. One year and seven months later, little Manuel dies by drowning, at Carito and Raoul Fournier’s home in San Jerónimo, upon falling early in the morning into a water basin. I killed my son, my very own, I killed him upon giving him life.

Despite the greater pain of the older sister who cared for the baby as her own, from that moment on Pita goes downhill and her descent scares people as much as her previous dramatic ascent. She lives alone, doesn’t want to see anyone, no one can console her, and she repeats over and over: “At this age, at this age,” referring to the year and a half of her son’s life. Why am I alone crying? Why am I alone living? Why, thinking and wandering, is my blood being consumed? Can my laments not be heard? Can my clamors not be heard? Why do my little contented moments taste like sorrows? When nothing is around me, but everything obsesses me, when happiness creates me, but pain imprisons me. Isn’t a pathway for justice even when it should be fatal? Isn’t it the work of destiny to free me from this sadness?

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She Never Spoke Again of Her Personal Life From one day to the next, Pita removed herself from everyday distractions. She chose enclosure. Far from the limelight, she never again accepted a single television program offer, or let anyone get near her on the street, let anyone know of her. She neglected her physical appearance, threw her false eyelashes and dyes into the trash, the comb and hairbrush cease to serve her. Her huge eyes became opaque. Finally, in 1972, after ten years, she agreed to appear in the Ateneo Español, where she recited Mexican poetry from Sor Juana to Pita, through Díaz Mirón, Manuel José Othón, Manuel González Montesinos, Alfonso Reyes, Enrique González Martínez, Renato Leduc, Xavier Villaurrutia, Ramón López Velarde, and Roberto Cabral del Hoyo, all to great acclaim. The Ateneo was filled to capacity. When she finished her final poem, the ovation lasted 15 minutes, the entire room on its feet. “Pita! Pita! Pita!” they exclaimed. Some wiped away tears, shouted bravos, and came up to tell her that they had not been so moved in many years. Many young people attended her public appearance, among them her nephew, the young Roberto Sepúlveda Amor, who was her favorite and whom she visited regularly because he reminded her of her son Manuelito.

Zabludovsky Is So Cute She granted Jacobo Zabludovsky a television interview, “because he’s so cute, truly cute.” Zabludovsky always admired her and helped her, because in addition to liking her poetry, Pita was the first woman he permitted to install herself on the set, and Jacobo liked how she bossed people around. Pita was her own floor manager: she directed the cameras, gave orders for lights, insulted the staff, and if they did not obey she kicked them with her little pointy foot; she abused them with her little trucker’s mouth, she praised and criticized employees as she wished, without anyone protesting. Her most frequently heard insult, “Indian!” She was more imposing than María Félix, and more wicked; everyone obeyed her stupefied. That is why to Zabludovsky she seemed a timeless, roaring, and unfaded goddess, and he asked himself how it was possible that despite a libertine life, Pita produced such profoundly anguished works. “No decoration. I am the décor. I am the only thing that exists,” and Pita talked to herself on an empty stage, her voice strong, profound, well-­ modulated, dominating everything, like a five-foot Napoleon.

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The program was incredibly successful, with one of the highest ratings. In addition to the poetry, her words, sharp as a sword, pierced through the screen. She gave more recitals where the ovations lasted longer than a trot around the bullring. She swore up and down that she was superior to Sor Juana “because she is dead and I am alive.” Those who had celebrated her beauty now deceased—Alfonso Reyes, Manuel González Montesinos, and Enrique Asúnsolo—she was left to praise herself and declare: “I am a goddess.” Many believed her. She never again spoke of her past. If she granted an interview, she tended to tell the reporter, “I don’t tolerate stupidity. If you are going to ask about my life, better be gone.” She would humiliate whoever tried to break down the barrier. If she was in a good mood, she responded bluntly with verse, from Quevedo to Elías Nandino. Toward her final days, the reaction of the spectators before her extraordinary megalomania was always laughter. But up close, fear continued to prevail. Her extravagance and piercing clarity were disconcerting, but it was not difficult to discover in Pita Amor a clear vision of damage brought by lack of self-criticism. Toward the end, what had been an excess of self-esteem dissolved into exorbitant egomania. In the Zona Rosa, between Génova and de Amberes streets, Pita was rescued on several occasions by Pedro Friedeberg and Wanda Sevilla, who protected her. The Antonio Souza gallery also sheltered her at a critical moment. Juan Soriano reports that, when she would walk to his studio on Melchor Ocampo to find him, Pita would pass by a barber shop and the barbers would scream, “Pita Amor! Pita Amor!” and she would respond, “Do not speak to me, do not dare to address me. You are servants, children of servants and are going to die servants!” To go out with her was dangerous; there was no telling how she would react. Michael Schuessler, author of La undécima musa, relates that a taxi driver attempted to charge her for a ride and Pita spit out: “You are absolutely hateful, you unfortunate Indian, filthy maid’s son.” “Lady,” he replied, “we are no longer in the era of the Conquest.” “Better for you,” Pita responded categorically, “because if we were, you would already have been killed for being Indian.”

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Pita-Style Christmas Year after year we would celebrate Christmas at Carito Amor and Raoul Fournier’s home in San Jerónimo, and Pita would arrive with two or three plastic bags from the Comercial Mexicana and hand out her gifts: a tube of toothpaste, a bar of soap, shaving cream, a small box of Kotex, all of which seemed entirely original alongside the traditional ties, pewter frames, and glass ashtrays. After a while, it was no longer Bic shavers or Kleenex; instead, she would place in our hands drawings made on cardboard the size of a post card, like those done by the deaf and dumb on the sidewalk outside cafes.

I Do Enough Just Being Cordial Pita never worked. “What is wrong with you? To work is for maids,” she would protest. I once suggested it to her and she responded: “Listen, little brat, I do enough by just being cordial!” To survive, she sold most of her art to Lola Olmedo, “a gangster, a thief, assaulting the camino real.” In the Zona Rosa she would sell those little cardboard drawings for twenty or fifty pesos, with gargoyle faces (her own), the majority frankly cute. Some of the restaurants along her way would invite her to a meal, but then her uppity manner and boastful pride scared them. Her torment of insults, the rays sparking from her eyes, her deafening thunder of a voice, her slap of a sonnet, her threats in stanzas, and her literal clubbing with a cane made her the scourge of waiters and customers. “Hurry up, get out of here, here comes Pita!” Lovers as well as friends disappeared. With a rose on her head and cane in her hand, Pita was nonetheless part of the Zona Rosa, a unique character that everyone sought at first, then fled after having an encounter with her. Daisy Ascher barely escaped her profusion of cane beatings and got revenge later photographing her seated in the middle of her bed. Pita got angry at Jesusa Rodríguez when she began to imitate her in her El Hábito cabaret. A regular at the bar, where she occupied an entire sofa to herself and would hog the bathroom for hours, she never returned again after witnessing a dramatic sketch she considered an affront to her mythological stature. Another great Pita imitator is Myriam Moscona. For certain Pita Amor was capable of breaking the patience of Job himself: Beatriz Sheridan, Susana Alexander (who gave her an entire show), Jesusa and Liliana who provided not only drinks, from whisky on the rocks to silk stockings, all bestowed generous friendship. Martha Chapa made

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two excellent drawings of her and fed her over several months, but after a while chose to break from her in order to rest and summon strength enough to again see her. In return for all of her efforts, Pita’s only response to Martha Chapa was: “You will never attain Frida Kahlo’s level with those stupid apples you paint.” Carlos Saaib, owner of several apartments in the Vizcaya building, maintained a friendship with her for 20 years, opened his home to her, and responded to all of her “Carlooos!” demands in that legendary building on Bucareli street, which provided lodging to the likes of Luis G. Basurto and Ricardo Montalbán. One day he could no longer take it and returned the undécima musa to Mariana and Juan Pérez Amor, who took care of her until the end of her days. Patricia Reyes Spíndola, an elegant, generous, and true in solidarity woman if ever there was one, demonstrated loyalty above and beyond and profoundly loved Pita. At times, Pita was capable of seeing herself in extraordinary lucidity: “Between the deficiencies of my personality lies my life of leisure. Since being a little girl, I ran around, here and there, without achieving discipline in study or play, or even in conversations. From my life of leisure came my first verses, and it is in my mature leisure that I have engendered the true settling of my written words.” Dust, why do you follow me as though I were your prey? Your strange influence does not cease, and you make me yours; but for all you punish today my humiliated figure, tomorrow in the sepulture you will mix with me. You will no longer be my enemy… You will share my torture!

Pita is important for future generations because she broke ways of thinking, much as other women of her era did, those who were labeled crazy and “sentenced to eternity” as Pita stated in her poem “Letanía de mis defectos” (1987). “I am perverse, wicked, vengeful. / My blood is borrowed and fugitive. / My thoughts are very taciturn. / My sinful dreams are nocturnal. / I am hysterical, mad, unhinged, / but already sentenced to eternity.”

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The cases of Nahui Olin and Pita Amor are emblematic. Rejection and censure turned them each day more rebellious and they made challenges and provocation their way of life. Michael Schuessler, Pita’s biographer, selected one of her multiple epitaphs, of which she made numerous, where she contemplated her own death: The ovations are so great that the world gives my memory, that, if singing victory, it raised me from the cold tomb, I would sink back into the tomb under the weight of my glory.

CHAPTER 7

Elena Garro: The Rebellious Particle Elena Poniatowska and Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez

Elena Garro has remained so entangled with Octavio Paz that it is often difficult to separate her work and life from that of the poet. “Ah, Paz’s wife!” is a phrase now part of her identity. This exclamation describes the love-hate relationship of that couple. It is certain that after her novelized autobiography, Andamos huyendo, Lola, Elena Garro’s novels revolved around the figure who was her husband for 24 years, from 1939 to 1959. It was a long siege, an interminable argument, a nocturnal, incessant carrousel ride, a waterwheel going round and round, smashing all possibilities, all because— more than any other writer—Elena Garro has the star of madness in her eyes, as well, however, that of enchantment because her seduction is infinite and her attraction “fatal,” despite sounding like the title of a movie.

English translation by Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez, essays from Elena Poniatowska’s book Las siete cabritas, published in 2000. E. Poniatowska c/o Schavelzon Graham Agencia Literaria, S.L., Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] E. C. Martínez (*) DePaul University, Chicago, TX, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. C. Martínez (ed.), The Women of Mexico’s Cultural Renaissance, Literatures of the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11177-8_7

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Impossible to be more contradictory, Elena Garro, just like her female characters who are herself, heads down a path of self-destruction, dragging with her to the abyss her faithful followers, friends, relatives, lovers, those who frequent her salon, the incautious who knock at her door, essentially, those enchanted by her. Enchantment, Elena says, is both a way to deceive one’s fellowman and a maleficent device. On the other hand, she portrays herself as an innocent in the hands of the riffraff, be it that of moneyed people or the intellectual mafia. She never knows anything, by day or by night her eyes widen with innocence and incredulity before human wickedness. The child who climbed trees in her home state of Guerrero has no connection to the person she has become. She is never aware. And yet, a constant feature that runs through her novels, her stories, and her theater is that of fear. No one makes her feel safe, there are no man’s wide shoulders upon which she can rest her own. Masculine presence is always hostile. No man can understand her or become an ally to her cause. Everyone is going to betray her and let her fall. She watches out for rumors of cohabitation. Home is a trap. Behind the door, someone, the husband, the lover, sharpens a knife to plunge into her neck.

Living Between Suspicion and Distrust Throughout her adult life (“I began to feel fear after I married”), there was always someone stalking: a man or a group determined to eliminate her. She dedicated numerous hours of her life to clarifications about holdups or murders (Andamos huyendo, Lola, publisher Joaquín Mortiz, 1980). That someone sought to harm her was her daily bread. She lived between suspicion and distrust, love and hate. She loved and hated in the same breath. In a love relationship she was always the victim, although suddenly and without realizing it, she became the aggressor. Violent, terrifying, no one has ever described a lover with such rage and contempt as Elena Garro.

A Fervent Belief in Poetry According to Octavio Paz, Los recuerdos del porvenir [1962] is one of the best novels written in the twentieth century in Mexico. Carlos Monsiváis agrees, stating that in this novel “are already present the insights, intelligence, poetic instinct, narrative skill, and the ability to create characters which in some measure are at the same time metaphors of a dreamscape. Truly her fervent belief in poetry tunes into magical realism, and Elena

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Garro describes a Mexican countryside where people are divided by the Cristero War and defined by bitterness, using the rancor of passionate love and beauty which despite the war continue to exist. Her collection of short stories, La semana de colores, is excellent, especially ‘La culpa es de los Tlaxcaltecas,’ her master work.”

Octavio Paz “Got There Ahead of Me” Born December 20, 1916, in Puebla (although she would cite her year of birth as 1920), Elena Garro died on Saturday, August 22, 1998, in Cuernavaca, only five months after the passing of Octavio Paz on March 31 in Mexico City. When they told her about the poet’s death, she said in a low voice: “He got there ahead of me. He will receive me up there. I forgive him, I know that he has forgiven me, and I hope soon to join him. Death is to live forever. “I believe in life after death and believe that if we were bad, God will punish us, but since I, since 1968 (the year of the student movement and year of my disgrace), have walked through so many thorns, I think I am going to heaven. They say that each person is architect of his own destiny, but mine has been terrible. “I want to die in my sleep and, for my burial, sometimes I imagine bells ringing and I am there happily listening to the bells ring and seeing people enter the church to pray for me. I want to be an angel although I think I was a devil. “For everyone, life is a walk among thorns. I think we get a rose every once in a while, but generally we get thistles. As a child I was not miserable, I did believe there were only flowers, but it’s not like that. “Life hit me hard. There are difficult and bitter days; the happy days pass quickly, and the wretched days go on and on, and you think, when will I ever get out of this? I think only when you die life closes and you sleep forever. “Everything has life and has death, the seconds, minutes, hours, months and years, all is carried off by time. When the sun comes up, it is life, when the moon appears it is part of an ephemeral death where you sleep and dream.”

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How Will I Pay the Bill? One of the final interviews with Elena Garro was conducted by the young journalist Luis Enrique Ramírez in 1993, in the gardens of her sister Devaki Garro de Guerrero Galván’s home in Cuernavaca. He saw her as an apparition among the bougainvillea, the azaleas, and poinsettias and felt the wind moved her, as she seemed fragile, pallid, extremely thin, with desolation tattooed on her face which had been very beautiful. It was difficult to hear her because Elena always spoke as though telling a secret, a voice soft and low except when she became angry: then her voice acquired the sonority of a cathedral organ, bouncing against the walls, making the spirits shake, and terrifying those present for they had never imagined such force. It was like Christ chasing out the moneychangers and merchants from the temple, asking what they had done with his father’s house. Elena Garro made a deep and lasting impression on Luis Enrique Ramírez. When she returned to Paris, the reporter with few resources wanted to send her his paycheck because Elena always suffered hunger (although wrapped in her luxurious fur coat in which she looked gorgeous) and always felt threatened, always dependent on a gift. “How will I pay the bill?” was a constant refrain of hers, both in her life and her work. (Of course, those paying the bill had to be multimillionaires for she always stayed at the Beau Rivage de Lausanne, the Plaza in New York, the Georges V in Paris.) Everyone else had to be responsible for her, support her, her daughter, and her cats. Besides her intellectual empire, Elena Garro exerted a very powerful sexual appeal, which she recognized, and relied on her slender boy’s body, her long legs (as beautiful as those of Marlene Dietrich), her smile and her laugh, and the invitation and fright which alternated in her gaze. To be fair and blonde was her obsession. If one were to count the times that the words fair and blonde appear in her literature, they would be infinite. In Reencuentro de personajes (Grijalbo, 1982), a dark hair found on the rim of the bathtub produces indescribable horror: “A black hair, they said in her home, and they knew it belonged to a stranger, since everyone in the family was blonde. The presence of a black hair was always a threat.” Black hair belongs to the servants who certainly belong to another social class. To establish any connection with them is condescension and undignified promiscuity. However, despite the repugnance caused by Ivette, her cook in Reencuentro de personajes, Elena makes her her confidante in Paris. In Mexico, she also considers that Ignacia, a servant, is a traitor par excellence, and yet similarly, seeks her complicity.

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The Greatest Curse She is the heroine of her novels: the character Verónica in Reencuentro de personajes, Mariana in Testimonios sobre Mariana (Grijalbo, 1980), Inés in Inés (Grijalbo, 1995), the one who attracts everyone’s attention, author of the days, the battlefield, the cause of all misfortunes, the very center of the universe. Many loved her with passion only to become the dislocated characters of her narratives: men who are clumsy, rude, who used her without ever trying to understand her. The greatest curse for a lover is to become a character in Elena Garro’s fiction. The portraits she draws of her series of admirers are ruthless, and yet carry some truth. A true exponent of female psychology, Elena Garro, upon seducing us, defends the women of the world without really intending to. More lucid than most, sensitive to the highest degree, Elena, whimsical, demanding, deserving of all gifts, never forgets that she is a woman and can pull the strings to get a man to wrap his arms around her and protect her. In 1957, when the earthquake that knocked the angel from atop the Independence column on Paseo de la Reforma occurred, she was attending a party at poet Guadalupe Amor’s home. Elena Garro was the one who most dramatically reacted to the earthquake: in an attack of hysteria, she tried to throw herself from the balcony. While Guadalupe Amor demonstrated supreme calm during the frightening moments, Elena completely lost it. The other guests tried to calm her. Five hours later, she was still shaking like a leaf in the wind.

Love for the Field Workers Subject to profound depressions, Elena Garro’s fits of rage were well-­ known, above all when it involved defending the field workers in Morelos, Ahuatepec, Atlixco, and Cuernavaca. Friend in the then-Secretary of Agriculture, Norberto Aguirre Palancares, Elena Garro spent time in his offices in Mexico City, helping arrange for property lines and deeds [in compliance with the new Constitution]. Since these took weeks to arrange, she housed the community leaders and peasants in her own home, providing lodging and food. This included the leader of the coconut producers, César del Ángel, a jerk who later created problems for her and was never grateful for the lodging. Today in Mexico land distribution is no longer discussed, but during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s it was a primary topic of conversation, so

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much so that a common refrain was that Mexico was now being apportioned by layers. Land was assigned, but not farm equipment: there was nothing with which to plant, and the parcels provided were tired, overused lands, not easily cultivated. Outside the demagoguery, peasants were treated like garbage by government representatives, and their issues never resolved. The offices were slow with the paperwork; the indigenous people who traveled to Mexico City waited for hours, days, and weeks, sleeping on the street piled up, wrapped in their sarapes, their heads hidden under their straw hats. Elena Garro was indignant and became their defender. She demanded that governors, bankers, and land magnates return the extensive hectares expropriated to construct their country homes with a swimming pool in Cuernavaca, “a sunny place for shady people.” Seeking justice, she brandished her sword of fire and it was quite a show to see her speak to the public officials. Courageous like only a few, she could make them tremble by her intelligence and capacity for drawing crowds.

One a Communist, the Other Monarchical It was a given that Elena Garro and her sister Devaki should be concerned about peasants, for they spent their childhood in Iguala, Guerrero, hot country (nearly a jungle) near the most-frequented beach of the era: Acapulco. Devaki joined the communist party following her husband, the painter Jesús Guerrero Galván, but Elena, aristocratic and very religious, soon condemned communism and looked for other avenues to help others. A true Joan of Arc, it was she who prepared all the legal procedures and bureaucratic paperwork for the inhabitants of Ahuatepec, an oasis where bougainvillea, corn, sugarcane, rice, and beans grew. Elena fought like a woman possessed for them to recover land previously designated by Emiliano Zapata for the people.

Ahuatepec and the Field Workers At some point I accompanied her with Javier Rojo Gómez, Elvira Vargas, and her brother Albano to the country home in Ahuatepec belonging to the banker Agustín (Tintino) Legorreta, whose ranch she wanted expropriated, in order to return it to its legitimate owners, the townspeople. During the entire trip on the old highway to Cuernavaca, she talked about Fernando Benítez, director of the Novedades cultural supplement México

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en la cultura, who she could not stand and was writing a play lampooning him and his pompous way of speaking: “Everything he says is pretentious.” I tried to defend him, asking her to remember Goethe’s saying about those who work hard will be saved, since Benítez was known for diligent work. She threw me a hateful look and said, with a vehemence worthy of a better cause, “Yes, but if he is an idiot he does not get saved, and your friend is an idiot.” Her play about him was Benito Fernández. She regularly transferred her hate into her works. Likewise, she put the Spanish poet Tomás Segovia in Los recuerdos del porvenir, making him a small-town apothecary. Octavio enjoyed Elena’s literary vendettas, without anticipating that many years later she would put him in her novels, turning him into a somber masculine and most conventional, social climber character, who also inspires fear: the Augusto character in Testimonios sobre Mariana. That day—memorable for me because Elena made magic of everything she touched—we went to a meeting with the peasants, who afterward hosted a barbecue for us, and both Elvira Vargas and I were most impressed with the strength of Elena’s character and easy confidence with which the peasants approached her. Elvira Vargas was much more of a realist than me, more aware of the situation, and yet she always succumbed to Elena’s charm. The truth is, Elena had me under her thumb. When she asked me to jump the fence of the banker Legorreta’s house and run to open the main gate, I blindly obeyed, without a thought for the fierce guard dogs. The imperious rule which Elena exerted over her followers was absolute. The Ahuatepec peasants looked up to her like a female Emiliano Zapata; thus it was a given she would unfurl her flag and march in front of their retinue. Once when Elena was wearing a fur coat to a meeting I asked her if it did not seem inappropriate and she responded: “I am not a hypocrite, they can see me just as I am, get to know me just as I am. I have nothing to hide, in comparison to other writers, corrupt hypocrites who pretend to be indigenist and deep down are racists; they play a double game, pretending to be saviors of the Indians but very content to be white and blonde. They disgust me! If have a fur coat, I will wear it wherever and whenever, I am not going to hide it.” Naturally, since Elena Garro was dazzling, Tintino Legorreta fell in love with her and she agreed—to my surprise—to go to dinner with him on more than one occasion. Elena aroused great passions. The best known was with Adolfo Bioy Casares, who declared in Buenos Aires that Garro was the woman he had most loved in his life, aside from the writer Silvina

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Ocampo—his wife and sister of the celebrated Victoria—who always accepted her husband’s frequent flirtations.

A Female Juan Rulfo It is no surprise that her works, as well as stories and theatrical pieces of great prestige, were faithfully rooted in the countryside and rural life. Much like Juan Rulfo, Elena Garro recognized the voice of the earth.

A Tiger’s Fierceness Blonde, with those brown eyes that Octavio Paz said had a tiger’s fierceness and the next moment the supplication and dependence of a dog, Elena Garro was without doubt a singular woman. There was something maleficent in her look. Always in trouble, she could turn dangerous. Her head was her battlefield, where her good thoughts and bad intentions resided. She had magic, an angelic charm way beyond the naïve US characterization of sex appeal. Her magnetism was from the sun. Since she knew it, she dressed in all the colors of the sun, from ochre to yellow, penetrating lives like a ray of sunshine, although of course, sun rays can also burn to the very bones. Wrapped up in herself, centered in her ego, her prose was also burning hot in Los recuerdos del porvenir, La semana de colores, and [the play] El hogar sólido, then repetitive and weak in her later novels: Testimonios de Mariana, La casa junto al río, Reencuentro de personajes, Inés, and Matarazo no llamó. She began losing force when she launched a long recrimination against Octavio Paz, the executioner, the prosecutor, the powerful, the Augusto who does all harm against an innocent and defenseless creature with blonde locks (she herself). Never abandoning the very obvious autobiographical tone since Andamos huyendo, Lola, Elena speaks of herself as of a defenseless child up in the tree of the apple of good and evil, she never stops calling herself “blondie”—being such was indispensable to her—and always considers herself a victim responding to imminent harm.

Competing with Octavio Paz The 1940s–1960s comprise her era of magnificence. Gorgeous, provocative, Elena liked to be daring to men because she lived her life like a daily challenge. Highly stimulating, she was always the focus of conversations

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and thus competed with Octavio Paz. When both were present, it was Elena Garro who turned all heads, she who everyone listened to, both for her vehemence and because she accosted her prey. She grew larger during moments of discussion; she would raise her voice and speak sometimes like the oracle of Delphi, pulverizing the enemy. Octavio would then move to another room and from there, behind the door, enjoy Elena’s elocution. He would chuckle alone because he did not want to make enemies with the one being punished, and he could not help but admire his incendiary wife. Elena would not desist until her victim was torn to pieces. On those occasions Octavio looked at her with overflowing admiration. He was always fascinated by his wife’s grand scenes where he, of course, was not the target of her annihilating verbal barrage. To see her grow large, overwhelming a setting, was a grand spectacle for him because, a moment later, Elena reverted to her low voice and fragile nature, insuring that everyone wanted to hear her and come near, because her cryptic and scathing judgments were the delight of the intellectual world. Mischievously, Carlos Fuentes once commented, knowing Elena was at Cannes, that the power of her poison was so great it had intoxicated even the swimmers in the Sea of Marmara.

Activities of the People Arnaldo Orfila Reynal organized an homage to Rómulo Gallegos at the national publishing house, Fondo de Cultura Económica [in 1958]. Don Rómulo was returning to his home nation of Venezuela after a long period of exile in Mexico. Since ex-President Gallegos was an intellectual of profound commitment to the people, all of the speeches touched on a single theme: democracy and social injustice. Suddenly, something very unusual occurred. Into the grand ballroom of the Fondo de Cultura Económica walked 30 Indians in straw hats, sandals, loincloths, and behind them, Elena Garro de Paz. Elena said: “In that great hall were all the intellectual men, and when they saw me with all the Inditos, they would not offer their hand, the elegant intellectuals with their whiskies in their hands and some ladies who write a lot and very badly. They all only stared. The little Indians who had entered on tiptoes remained in one corner, their hats in hand. One of the orators spoke of ‘his pen at the service of the people…,’ ‘social justice…,’ ‘the revolution…,’ ‘the soil belongs to he who has worked it…,’ and the peasants nodded their heads: ‘That indeed is very good… Very good… We should have come sooner…’ Once the speeches ended, I

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came close to one of the intellectuals and asked him to ask everyone to sign a petition to help these Indians reclaim their lands. The intellectual told me: ‘Go tell the President of the republic.’ ‘But I have been, for two years!’ He turned his back and left. The intellectuals formed circles, they began talking among themselves, turning their backs to the peasants. Then I asked the Fondo director: ‘Mr Orfila, could you not, please, ask your friends to sign this?’ Orfila told me no. Gallegos told me no, he could not step into internal matters of Mexico and I found that more comprehensible. In the end, all refused; no one was willing to sign. That is why I tell you that if the intellectuals are revolutionaries, I am anti-revolutionary. We left. Honestly! These Indians have never had a pair of shoes. “On the street were all the cars of the intellectuals, bankers and Foreign Relations functionaries, the educated politicians, the tigers in jacket, crocodiles in tailcoats and jackals in tuxedo. I asked the Indians, ‘Anyone know how to let the air out of tires?’ and so we all began puncturing tires. Suddenly two chauffeurs for Foreign Relations came up to us, ‘What is going on here?’ I knew them, Antonio and Román. I told them what had happened. ‘See here, Antonio and Román, they threw out these Indians!’ They responded: ‘Predictable, they’re all scoundrels!’ The chauffeurs dressed in black took off their caps and coats and we all beat on the Cadillacs and Mercedes Benz.”

La semana de colores The names of the characters in her stories and plays, Juan Cariño, Perfecto Luna, Ventura Allende, Francisco Rosas, are a poetic and apt choice impossible to forget. The short story collection, La semana de colores (Universidad Veracruzana, 1964) is a collection of ideas, poetry, and names almost as seductive as the situations in which Elena places her characters. Sergio Pitol does not vacillate in stating that “La culpa es de los Tlaxcaltecas” [The Tlaxcalans are to blame] is the best story in literature written by women in Mexico. [The protagonist] Laura is wife to the very conventional Pablo Aldama and has two maids at her service: Josefina and Nachita, the latter Laura’s confidant. Unhappy in her marriage, Laura receives help from Nachita, who covers for her. Pablo is only interested in politics and how to reach higher posts in President Adolfo López Mateos’s government [1958–1964]. Laura feels like a prisoner under the watch of her mother-in-law, who lives with them. However, in her bedroom, alone, she is able to break free of her vigilance, and escapes to an interior life in which

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her husband is not the ambitious and unfriendly Pablo Aldama, but instead an imaginary and marvelous Indian who has known her since she was a child for he is also her cousin. And then, not so fictional, for the Aztec man has arms, chest, sex, and is much more handsome than the husband-character Pablo. Through her love for him, Laura escapes her daily life, Pablo’s pretentious demands, her mother-in-law’s accusations, and escapes to a world conjured by her readings of Bernal Díaz del Castillo. “My poor son, your wife is mad,” the mother-in-law laments. Husband and doctor both decide that Laura is living outside her reality and view her only through their green envy, their rage, and lack of imagination. No one understands her except Nacha, her accomplice, who cleans up the evidence of her participation in [earlier era] battle: the blood, sweat, embers. She knows her mistress is a traitor just like the Tlaxcalans who allied with the Spanish. Laura betrayed the Indian [world] upon marrying the annoying and materialist Pablo Aldama. She is a golden dove, an obsidian butterfly, a word of love, and while the two rational beings, husband and doctor, those of beds that make no sound, heads that are empty, remain gasping in impotency on the other side, Laura escapes, and dissolves: “When there is no longer a transparent cape [dividing the eras], he will arrive and the two will become one and I will reside in the most precious lodging of his chest.” “The madwoman escaped,” the mother-in-law reports, while noting that the complicit servant Ignacia [Nacha] has left without collecting her final salary.

Los recuerdos del porvenir Los recuerdos del porvenir by Elena Garro is an exceptional novel which [literary critic] Emmanuel Carballo places ahead of all literature by women. Francisco Rosas, Julia Andrade, and Isabel Moncada are unique characters within this world of collective fantasies, but the greatest character of all is a rock that retains in its immobility the memory of the people of Ixtepec. “Here I am, seated upon this visible rock. Only my memory knows what it encloses. I see it and I remember me, and as water goes to water, so I, melancholically, come to find myself in its image covered in dust, surrounded by weeds, closed within itself and condemned to memory and its assorted reflections. I see it, I see myself, and I am transfigured in a multitude of colors and eras. I am and was in many eyes. I am only memory and the memory that remains of me.”

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A Gift for Each Hour Elena stops time. Just as in her home in Iguala a servant would stop all the clocks at nine at night, starting them again in the morning,1 Elena returns to her infancy in the tropics to animate her characters. Important among them is Boni, the only man she truly loved. In proof of their great love, Elena recalls, each August 18, which is her saint’s day, he would send her a gift each hour, via his servant don Félix. “Perhaps because he guessed that later in life no one would give me any gifts and he wished to make up for that,” she confessed to [the playwright] Emilio Carballido.

A Hallucinating Play of Mirrors For Margo Glantz, Andamos huyendo, Lola is a novel about persecution and flight in a hallucinating game of mirrors in an apartment in New York. The mother and daughter [characters] are eternal. Beginning with this novel, psychological violence, life in exile, misunderstandings, squalor, and betrayal are a constant in Elena Garro’s fantasies, dissolving into something terrible. With the exception of Chata Paz’s epigraph, “Behind each great man is a great woman, and behind each great woman is a great cat,” Elena Garro’s writing is marked by what it means to live away from home, far from family, from friends, from everyday customs. To flee has to do with torture, violence, and death. To bewitch2 is the verb that best explains Elena, who during her entire life bewitched any and all males who came near. During her entire life, Elena always made the private public. “With Octavio I was a great gentleman. I gave up my place. “The Nobel Prize to me? Oh no, man! I was a silly, sweet little girl. He took care of his career, caravans here, caravans over there. He always aspired to higher posts. I have done no more than put my foot in my mouth.”

1  A practice in the novel Recuerdos del porvenir (Recollections of Things to Come) is that a household servant would stop the clocks in the character Isabel’s home and wind the clock up again in the morning. 2  Engatusar in the original, which in Spanish also implies using a cat as the means of enchantment.

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The Mexican Woman Writer Most Studied in the US It is difficult to separate Elena Garro’s work from her life because, more so than other writers, her work is autobiographical and because her life, more so than other writers, elicited morbid fascination and curiosity. Of course, the fact that she was married to Octavio Paz is paramount. In the US, Elena Garro, together with Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Rosario Castellanos, is one of the most studied women writers. But since researchers cannot return to the seventeenth century, they stand at the edge of the colonial era, looking in, engaged in speculations, and since in the case of Rosario Castellanos, Chiapas is still a world being discovered and Rosario was categorized as an indigenist (and thus, lesser) writer, Elena Garro then becomes the focus of greatest attention, around whom anxious literary doves converge. They cross themselves and say oh my, and never understand her.

Persecution Complex Interestingly, Elena, the one who harassed politicians and intellectuals, had visions of endless pursuit, living to the end of her days in a state that today would be called a persecution complex. She told her daughter, Helena Paz: “They steal from me, they attack me, they do not recognize my merits, they hate me, they want to eliminate me, they hassle me.” Someone followed her on the street, someone was going to hold her up at the next corner, someone disliked her, someone desired her disgrace. The harasser harassed, Elena took into her home those abandoned or treated in a hostile manner and awaited a fatal outcome. She was capable, in any circumstance, of establishing immediate complicity. She felt pity for those displaced, for delinquents, for those outside the law, and took them in, perhaps because she also wanted to live at the edge of the law. If opulence could be considered a crime, she wanted to live in opulence, in luxury. She spent everything. Consumed everything. Demanded. Cried. Implored. And the next minute, threatened. Her contradictions made her fascinating. She would look out the window of her home on Virrey de Alencastre in Las Lomas (a house by the way which belonged to the defense attorney Raúl Cárdenas) and, seeing a parked car, would say: “Look, they are watching me.” “How do you know?” “I’m certain. For days they have been following me. It’s a plot by Governor X against me.”

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She was absolutely devoted to outsiders, she spoke of alien status, of not belonging and of nostalgia as though they were cardinal virtues. And her female characters demonstrate the magic of making trips, even short ones, their suitcases always waiting, as well as the bill they could not pay, in the hotel lobby. They use soft scarves to protect themselves against the windchill in nations where they travel, their charm is infinite. I don’t know why but they always take me to that long scarf Isadora Duncan used to wrap herself in, which upon [a car] taking off, becomes tangled in the rear tire and strangles her.

The Two Elenas Elena’s personality induced Fuentes to write his story, “The Two Elenas,” about mother and daughter: Elena Garro and Helena “la Chata” Paz. But the persona of the great Mexican writer was a still an enigma conjuring the same charm. If her novels following Los recuerdos del porvenir tire for their repetitiveness, they still exert a certain fascination because Elena Garro without a doubt had it in her to be a brilliant woman. Her inconsistency, however, and that recognition put her in a hole: she did not know how to protect herself from herself, or from believing that others were victimizing her. Elena Garro fell into the easy path of making her fellowman her tormentor, from the time she began to flee not only from Mexico but from herself.

You Arrive at Night In 1964 Elena Garro returned to Mexico from Paris3 with Marcel Camus, the director of Orfeu negro, to film her own screenplay, Vienes de noche [You arrive at night], with participation of Juan de la Cabada and his cousin Amalia Hernández. At this point, Elena Garro had lived abroad for several years, which made her objectify Mexican reality, to see it somewhat like a spectator: she left to judge it differently.

3  Octavio Paz served as a foreign diplomat from 1945 to 1954, mostly in Paris, and again from 1962 to 1968, when he resigned his post in protest of the government massacre of students and protestors. He remarried in 1965.

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The Fatal Year: 1968 “About 1968,” Elena Garro says, “Madrazo warned me: ‘Look, Elenita, this is a conspiracy with lots of open phone lines. Don’t sign anything because if you do, they will make you a sacrificial lamb.’ And I did not sign anything, and they still picked me up… It could be said of course, that I already had a long tail as they say in popular speech, because since 1965 I was writing articles in favor of the peasants,4 and I suppose also that my defense of them in Morelos must have made more than one person uncomfortable because they were killing members of ejidos [communally held properties] in order to take their lands.”

Cracked Feet on White Carpet “I will never forget the image of Enedino Montiel Barona, his wife Antonia, and Rosalía Rosas Duque, the first time they went to my house, which was elegant, their feet cracked like tree bark stood in contrast to the white carpet. I have never forgotten those feet, with those sandals coming undone from so much walking, and the patched cloth pants. I said, Oh, my gosh! I am going to go to hell because I have given myself the great life at a cost to these poor people, people who are dying of hunger and me enjoying life with their money. Because all of our expenses and income were taken care of by the government since Octavio was in the diplomatic service.”

Flight As a result of the October 2, 1968 massacre, Elena Garro became unhinged. She had revealed the names of a number of intellectuals. José Luis Cuevas called her mad and Monsiváis in Siempre! called her “the singer of the year.” Sócrates Campos Lemus also accused her, and several witnesses said Elena Garro would go to the assemblies in University City to yell: “Madrazo, Madrazo!” because she wanted to give the impression that Carlos J Madrazo, ex-director of the PRI, was leader of the movement.

4  For an example of Elena Garro’s writing, see this reissue of her short article in El Universal about meeting these residents of Ahuatepec in April 1957: https://archivo.eluniversal.com. mx/cultura/49675.html.

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Elena abandoned her home on Alencastre to hide in a boardinghouse, together with Chata. Terrified, she dyed her hair black, as seen in the newspaper photographs. The Secretary of Agriculture, Norberto Aguirre Palancares, who had always protected her, could no longer do so. Elena Garro’s declarations in the newspaper became chaotic: Excélsior published: “‘I am less afraid of the government than of the terrorists. I had always given them advice, including the day they were going to sleep at the Zócalo. On all occasions I told them I was helping advocate for the amnesty of those detained. One day when some of the boys told me they were getting paid 150 pesos to shoot at the vocational students, I told them I would pay them 155 not to do that.’” [The newspaper continued,] “The ex-wife of Octavio Paz also involved the rector [university president] Javier Barros Sierra, accusing him of complicity and the main instigator responsible for all of the protests at University City [UNAM’s main campus). “Having located her in a boardinghouse where she was in hiding, she denied ever having had meetings with the leaders of the National Strike Advisory body, and stated that more than 500 Mexican and international intellectuals—the majority employed by UNAM and the Politechnic University—were the true culprits responsible for the unrest. She cited specifically Luis Villoro, José Luis Ceceña, Jesús Silva Herzog, Ricardo Guerra, Rosario Castellanos, Roberto Páramo, Víctor Flores Olea, Francisco López Cámara, Leopoldo Zea, Roberto Escudero, Eduardo Lizalde, Jaime Augusto Shelley, Sergio Mondragón, José Luis Cuevas, Leonora Carrington and Carlos Monsiváis, as well as numerous South American refugees and a few hippies from the US.”

The Return In 1981, Patricia Vega of La Jornada quoted from Carballo, who reported Elena Garro’s exact words: “My parents were José Antonio Garro and Esperanza Navarro, two people who always lived outside reality, two failures who turned their children into failures. My parents only liked to read, and their children did not like to eat. They taught me to imagine, see multiple realities, love for animals, dance, music, Asian culture, mysticism, disdain for money… my parents permitted me to develop my true nature, that of a ‘rebellious particle,’ a quality inherited by my daughter Helenita and which the wise men are only beginning to discover. These ‘rebellious particles’ produce disorder without intending to, and always act

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unexpectedly, to their own detriment. In the end, when my father was very old, he was still surprised: ‘You still don’t feel remorse about anything?’ It was a shame, I felt no remorse. Better said, I do not have any.” And Elena Garro, says Patricia Vega (who planned to write her biography), never avoided any questions and responded with a sincerity both overwhelming and disarming: “I left because I was very angry with Mexico. In 1968, they said a lot of nonsense about me in the newspapers. […] Sooner or later I have to return, because I had set my mind on, I won’t leave, I won’t leave. […] Wherever I go, I don’t know why, I just have the bad luck of causing chaos […] I have ten or fifteen works not yet published […] Why stir things up that need to be still? […] I have never liked intellectuals because they have an annoying and boring language […] The French thought of our nation as Mexico, hats and pam-pam-­ pam, and Octavio Paz demonstrated that it was not that way. After the war, Spanish was a dead language that no one wanted to speak, and Paz with his works turned it into a universal language again […] Cats are better than poets, they are divine, they are poetic in each movement and don’t want to earn money or fellowships like the poets…” Patricia Vega followed Elena step by step when she visited Mexico. She accompanied her on her trip to Monterrey in 1991 and wrote stupendous articles about the homages to her in Bellas Artes, in Monterrey, in Aguascalientes. She also interviewed Emmanuel Carballo, who stated: “She is a writer from head to toe, transformative, dazzling, innovative: there was one type of literature before Elena Garro and another afterward. Now, if you compare her to Rosario Castellanos, Elena Poniatowska, Inés Arredondo, Nellie Campobello, María Luisa Puga, Silvia Molina or Ángeles Mastretta, well, they would be, in courtly terminology, the chambermaids to her majesty Elena the First.”

The Best Writer For Silvia Molina, Elena Garro is undoubtedly the best writer of the late twentieth century: “All that was needed to recognize her formidable talent were two books: Los recuerdos del porvenir and La semana de colores, the most outstanding, from my point of view, of her vast and complex oeuvre, for she created everything from story to novels to theater. “Los recuerdos del porvenir, armed with words that flow magically and miraculously, that must be deciphered, lest they hide, or escape, or stalk, the good ones or the bad ones, the ones that can transform into color

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cones or smiling lizards. It will be a classic book for centuries and centuries, because of the cyclical and circular writing that holds it together, because in it everything is repeated, which is the reason why the characters have neither past nor future and forget the present.” For Beatriz Espejo, Elena Garro “was a kind of sorcerer or word alchemist. She had the gift of creation: everything that went through her mind turned into literature.” Patricia Rosas Lopátegui was amazed at Elena Garro’s force of language and the lucidity of her analysis on Mexican reality. “Never before had anyone dazzled me nor will they dazzle me like this writer. In the 1980s I was writing book reviews for La Semana de Bellas Artes and for several Mexican newspapers about her novels and stories, which began to arrive after a long silence. My passion for Garro kept increasing.”

The Mythic, Endless Treasure Chest From the mythic, endless treasure chest of Elena Garro came two new books published with Ediciones Castillo—Busca mi esquela, and Primer amor in one volume [1998], and Inés [1995], as well as several theater works. Patricia Vega published a letter from Elena Garro in La Jornada directed to the researcher Olga Martha Peña Doria, at the Universidad de Guadalajara: “In regard to myself, well, you see how I have ended up a clochard, as they refer to beggars in France. When I found it necessary to leave the theater, I could not step into one again for many years, not even as spectator. I felt a kind of anger that should not be expressed, and which plunged me into deep depressions. Years later, many years later, I decided to write it all—since I could no longer act it or live it. But it is not the same. I remember the first reading of El Gesticulador in the Editorial Séneca de Pepe Bergamín. We were about 20 people. That work left us stunned, glued to our chairs and poor Usigli nearly cried from emotion because he was allowed to express himself.”5 In Mexico City, in February 1994, a special presentation of three plays by Elena Garro was featured, with an interlude of piano and vocals. This included Andarse por las ramas, La señora en su balcón, and Un hogar 5  Rodolfo Usigli’s El Gesticulador saw its first performance in 1947 in Bellas Artes; a political play that criticizes the revolutionary government in power, it became the first Mexican play to be essentially censored.

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sólido, directed by Sandra Félix, production by NET, Núcleo de Estudios Teatrales. “So right away I said, Yes, what would you like, what would you like? They told me that they had cut out the tongue of [the activist] Rosalía Rosas Duque—they sewed it on at the Red Cross—that her son was shot point-blank, in the head, and his father burned alive. And I responded, ‘How horrible! Let’s see what we can do.’ You know, I got the Ahuatepec peasants’ land recovered and my sister Deba became close friends with Rubén Jaramillo. We used to fight a lot, and I would tell her: ‘You and I don’t get killed because we are blondies, but these poor peasants, who are so very poor, so defenseless and so Indian, well they put a bullet through their heads and no one does anything about it.’ And she [my sister] responded: ‘Oh, you’re so reactionary!’ That is why we would argue. But anyway, why stir up things that perhaps should remain quiet?” “It’s terrible to get old, I don’t recommend it,” Elena Garro told María Luisa López from Reforma in 1995. Today the rebellious particle who produced such disorder without intending to, and always acted unexpectedly despite its impact on her, is dividing the heavens between those exposed to the sun and those extinguished, punishing planets, holding a rivalry with the moon, elbowing out the blonde and intangible angels like her, disrespecting God without intending to, and falling into the most extraordinary heresies. Hopefully she is not fleeing from the heavens like a comet, the way she fled from earth, so that Chata, her daughter Helena, can find her later alongside Faustino the children’s shoemaker from Guanajuato, Nachita, Lucía the foreigner, Candelaria, Rutilio, and the 37 cats headed up by the first pair, Picos and Lola.

CHAPTER 8

Rosario from “My Dear Beloved Guerra” to the “Little Boy with Corn-Colored Hair” Elena Poniatowska and Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez

Mexican women tend to gravitate around and toward love, much like donkeys circling a waterwheel: we insist on a king Solomon kissing us with the kisses of his mouth, saying our breasts are twin gazelles, our belly a mound of wheat encircled by lilies, our mouth and tongue tastes like milk and honey. Our lives are constructed upon that deceit which is our greatest hope. We insist on the lilies to the moment we ascend to heaven, storm the gates, and end up more plastered flat than the Andromeda nebula. The celestial dome is covered with women-stars who spin crazily like the seven sisters in the love ring until one fine day King Solomon has mercy and shuts them down. English translation by Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez, essays from Elena Poniatowska’s book Las siete cabritas, published in 2000. E. Poniatowska c/o Schavelzon Graham Agencia Literaria, S.L., Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] E. C. Martínez (*) DePaul University, Chicago, TX, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. C. Martínez (ed.), The Women of Mexico’s Cultural Renaissance, Literatures of the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11177-8_8

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Elena Garro formed with Octavio Paz the ideal couple: they were young, beautiful, and intelligent. Soon their love was completed with a girl child from the battlefield, her neck a marble tower, her belly a round cup, her hair a flock of goats, a creature sweet and flexible as sugar cane: Laura Elena, la Chata, who was to inherit the intelligence of her parents. Father, mother, and daughter formed a dazzling trinity. In time, however, love fell apart. María Izquierdo married Cándido Posadas (what a lovely name!) at age 14, and later her true love was Rufino Tamayo but he left her with a wound that would never heal. Frida Kahlo cultivated her love for Diego like an immense, juicy green squash prepared for the best homemade mole, but he preferred other squashes less colossal, not because he wished to hurt her but because when he was a child they taught him to try everything. Nahui Olin was victim of several natural forces but Dr. Atl as well, who named her so following her foolish marriage to Manuel Rodríguez Lozano. Nellie Campobello, the ferocious fighter, never recovered from the death of Martín Luis Guzmán in 1976. Pita Amor spun in an orbit only she knew. The only man she ever loved was Pepe Madrazo, and the only woman, Lola Feliú. She was lucky: they loved her better than she loved herself. Rosario Castellanos, born May 25, 1925, and died in 1974: “To die doesn’t hurt so much / it hurts us more to live”—lived pierced by love for the father of her only child, Gabriel. Her gurus were Virginia Woolf, Simone Weil, and Simone de Beauvoir, as well as the indigenous people of Chiapas, about whom she wrote rough, painful, and realist texts, laying bare the shocking human rights abuses there.

Because She Wrote About the “Indians” No one likes denunciation. Social justice is such a hassle! Long ago the awful smell of good intentions was condemned. Because she wrote about Indians and their conflicts, Rosario was tagged as provincial and a homebody. Of all Mexican women writers, Rosario had the least propensity for notoriety. She even insisted that many of her poems burned her face with shame: her self-criticism is fierce. “Woman of ideas? No, I have never had any. / I never repeated others’ ideas (out of shyness or lack of mnemonic abilities.) / Woman of action? Neither. / It is enough to just examine my foot size and my hands. // A woman then, of word. No, not of word. / but, yes of words. / Many words, contradictory, ay, insignificant, / of pure sound, vacuous, dusted in arabesque twirls, / salon games, gossip, foam, forgetfulness. // But if a

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definition is necessary / for the role of identity, then jot down / that I am a woman of good intentions / and that I have paved / a straight and easy road to hell.” In one of her final poems, “The Return,” she insists: “Superfluous here. Superfluous there. Superfluous / I experienced each equally / Of those you see and those you do not see: / Not one is necessary / not even for you, who by definition / are needy.”

An Admirable Attitude In his Crónica de la poesía mexicana, José Joaquín Blanco stated: “Rosario Castellanos wrote extensively, and her texts are perhaps more significant due to the obstacles she defied than for the results. The challenges she had to overcome in order to achieve her work were tremendous, yet she pursued her narrative and poetry with an admirable attitude both in her criticism about life in Chiapas, and the oppressive status for Mexican women in the 1950s, which she personally experienced. She was ignored and dismissed by the cultural system, by people very inferior to her.” In a nation that has badly muddled official culture, women are much freer than men.

Letters, Letters, Letters To date, no Mexican writer has left such an enriching trove of letters as those she wrote to Ricardo Guerra from July 1950 through 1952, and in 1966–1967, when a devastated Rosario left Mexico for a visiting professor appointment in Madison, Wisconsin.1 If only we had similar letters by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. But then, between these two writers are 300 years and the information technology of our current era. At least we have Sor Juana’s [extensive essay] “Letter 1  Castellanos’s 77 letters are separated by 14 years, beginning with shortly after she became acquainted with Ricardo Guerra, during her fellowship in Spain, and from Chiapas (all before they were married), and the second period, after she has published several books and is in Wisconsin as a visiting professor, her husband in Mexico City. Castellanos left her collection of letters with a close friend, to be published after her death, when she assumed her post as ambassador and traveled to Israel in 1971. But upon her untimely death in 1974, Guerra was unwilling to grant permission for some 20 years. See the interesting analysis by critic Cynthia Steele: “Letters from Rosario: On Power, Gender, and Canon Formation in Mexico,” Studies in 20th & 21st Century 20:1 (Winter 1996).

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to Sor Filotea de la Cruz,” and her courtly love sonnets to the Divine Lysi, which are sufficiently revealing that we do not lament it as much. Mariana Alcoforado’s letters are our supreme example of amorous epistolary,2 although they are not correspondence, however, because—differently from an Eloísa who provides the voice of Abelardo3—the Portuguese nun sings her love to just one voice. Likewise, Rosario Castellanos sings her love in a sustained and aching solo which becomes her biography. With Virginia Woolf we have a correspondence of extraordinary complexity. Virginia never forgets that she is English and thus does not lose the irony, British phlegm, and distance from what she describes. She becomes too intellectual. We women born in the 1930s and 1940s can identify with Rosario Castellanos, and these 77 letters (which include 2 by Gabriel to his father and 2 by Rosario to Gabriel), and her struggle with the angel that is she herself, make her irreplaceable (never has there been a word more appropriate for her than angel). Truly, each human being is irreplaceable, but some more so than others and Rosario is that entirely. Rosario’s letters are devastating, excruciating, obsessive, gold dust for psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, biographers, and, why not, literary critics, as well, for we women who see ourselves reflected in them. Not for younger women today: they rage against Rosario, they find incomprehensible her feelings of persecution, her erasing of herself, the way she becomes her own victim. They reject her wails and her nostalgia: “I remember a house I have left. / It is now empty. / Here where a foot left its print, / in this profound and closed hallway, / a girl grew up, raised / her body as a slender and sad cypress.” Sentenced, Rosario punishes herself, and her friend Guadalupe Dueñas is correct in calling her “A rose of weeping.”

2  Poniatowska’s reference to the mid-seventeenth-century Portuguese nun was perhaps a topic in discussion during the years she was preparing this essay, as two books were released shortly afterward: a novel, Mariana, by Katherine Vaz in 2005, and Letters of a Portuguese Nun: Uncovering the Mystery Behind a 17th Century Forbidden Love, by Myriam Cyr in 2006. 3  Heloise and Abelard are classic tragic figures, based in a twelfth-century poem about a clandestine love affair and marriage between a young woman and her teacher, which her family brings to an end (has him castrated, sends her to a convent), which saw several interpretations by male poets in the early 1700s. More recently, letters written by Alcoforado during her subsequent life as a nun have come to light.

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What greater proof of the fact that many women bet everything on love than this trove of letters? There never was another man in Rosario’s life, only Ricardo, always Ricardo. Hers is an extensive letter of love and desperation that lasts the 17 years they are together and more, because when Rosario returned on occasion from Israel she tended to interrupt conversations with her eternal question: “Hey, have you seen Ricardo?”

I Am Going to Tell You What I’m Like Ricardo and Rosario met in Mexico City in the Languages & Literatures Department at UNAM, in Mascarones Hall, toward the end of 1949. From her first letter, on July 28, 1950, her terms are those of complete surrender. She addresses him formally prior to their marriage: “Look, I am going to tell you what I’m like because you do not know me.” Later she speaks to him informally. She analyzes herself better than any therapist. Seeing herself weak, she creates goals to gain strength; seeing herself scattered, she organizes work goals and fulfills them. Seeing herself as antisocial, she is enchanting, she delights everyone with her conversation. One of the more poignant traits of her personality is her conscientious dedication to her vocation: “I am going to kill myself working but I am going to be a writer.” Another of course, is her fidelity to love. Rosario confesses: “I was so perfectly, so completely happy in the last 15 days thanks to you, that this separation has not yet bothered or destroyed me. I am still too completely full and overflowing with the happiness you gave me, I have still great reserves of the joy you filled me with, and I hope it does not dissipate until your presence again renews it.” She becomes obsessive: “Each night I dream but it is always the same anguished thing, of knowing that you are in a particular place, of going in search of that place, walking and walking and never reaching it.” She repeats: “I never thought that I could need someone as much as I need you.” Curiously, though, she is always the one who leaves. During the final years of her relationship, she states in 1967: “I think that in these past days I developed a clear sense of what fidelity is. You see I remained with honey on my lips because I am only now discovering the delights of sexuality. […] I love you and that gives perfect meaning to my desire: only you can fulfill it. I don’t want anyone or anything to intervene in this new reality which for me is now so rich and important. […] It is very much to my delight, my pride, my happiness and my security knowing that my body knows only the pleasure you have given it. And it awaits

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with desire, with great patience. […] Think of me now not as the wife requiring conjugal duty but instead the woman in love who wants to show with gestures and actions that which cannot be stated with words.” One could assume that we are peering into an intimacy to which we were not invited and that Rosario should not air her marital relationship in the public arena. But Rosario herself preserved the letters when she gave them to Raúl Ortiz instead of destroying them. She did not think they would cause her harm. Nor did Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf’s nephew, upon revealing the love relationship of his aunt with Vita Sackville West, nor Ricardo Guerra Tejada and Gabriel Guerra Castellanos, who had the good sense to approve the letters to be published without censorship. To them, to Raúl Ortiz who preserved them, and to the editor Juan Antonio Ascencio, we should be grateful.

I Will Write Often Without Expecting Response In 1950 Rosario traveled to Comitán, where she lived with her half-­ brother Raúl, and from there writes to Ricardo. Although the responses are few and Rosario does not believe she deserves his attention, she still insists: “I will write you without expecting responses.” That he exists is all that matters. She adds with irony: “If you wish, do the same.” Through the years the same complaint is repeated, Ricardo seldom responds, and we don’t have his few letters. However, just when it seems that Rosario has finally understood and is about to give him up, she receives a little yellow card, those that the post office used to sell with the postage on it, a missive that hits the mark with its good, although for her bad, intentions. Any little post card and she is ready to forget her suffering and respond gratefully. And in what a manner. She overflows. Her birdseed turns into a sheaf of wheat. Love then finds its most ignited eulogist. Like all loved ones, she repeats the enchantment formula: “I loveyouloveyouloveyouloveyouloveyouloveyou,” although this, in her case, does not open any door.

Greenhouse Flower Her first letters from Tuxtla and Comitán are fascinating because she speaks of her home state of Chiapas from her perspective. Rosario is a greenhouse flower, a white girl in the midst of Indians, a landholder in the midst of the disinherited. Later, in 1952, upon returning from Europe, she would go to Chiapas to work for them. In her letters of 1950 are

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found the initial ideas for her stories in Ciudad Real, for her novel Balún Canán, and even her poetry. In her August 7, 1950, letter can be read nearly verbatim the account of the Indian hanging from the wheel of fortune which she describes in Balún Canán. Her appreciation for Tuxtla Gutiérrez is terrifyingly precise: “but also the tropics are sucking me up, the jungle swallows me. Tuxtla is a city for which the only qualifier is a bedpan.” On Comitán she observes, “This town is completely implausible, totally improbable.” Of San Caralampio she says: “No, it is not a joke. That is the saint’s name and they are devoted to him and erected a hideous church to him.” She tells her dear Ricardo, her “dearly beloved Guerra,” about her own childhood, which turns out to be the plot of Balún Canán: “You know that I had a brother and he died, and my parents, despite never stating it to me directly and explicitly, in many ways let me know it was an injustice that the male child of the house had died and I continued alive and running around.” As early as her second letter, jealousy shows. Her impatience bursts. She makes hypotheses. She is assailed by doubt. She suffers. If for Sor Juana love is perfected through jealousy, for Rosario it is the opposite. Her jealousies are sinister, they destroy her and throughout her life become a finely tuned instrument of torture that she herself polishes and others feed with their gossip. In Ricardo Guerra, Rosario’s jealousies find the ideal subject and a solid base, as rock solid and voluminous as the Monument to the Revolution. “Monster” is a word used frequently in her correspondence, in most instances attributed to herself. Could it have been a word of that era much like the “grrrrrrrr” that appears today in comic strips to indicate anger? Monster, female monster, little monsters. She feels “an anguished desire to be perfect.” She writes: “I would like to know how to dance, and to not be fat anywhere, and for you to like me a lot, and to not have complexes. If you will permit me and give me time, I will correct myself. I want to be the way you want me to be. But tell me my defects slowly. Otherwise it makes me so sad to have them that I will get angry and decide to keep them.” At a moment of crisis, she explodes like a firecracker with her impressive sense of humor. Even so, the image Rosario paints of herself is harmful, pathetic, and, for those of us who knew her, inexact: “I am so insufficient, I feel so in need of warmth from others, knowing that I am superfluous in everyone’s life. In any house I visit, I am an intruder, they see me as a strange, uprooted creature, if not as a complete bother.”

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She assures Guerra: “I do not feel, under your look, the same as under everyone else’s, like an insect under the microscope. Instead, I feel as one person in front of another, as a woman before a man, as your woman. And I am happy to be so, to be branded by you forever. And I have no regrets and I am not ashamed, and cannot deny it to anyone, much less myself, for I am yours.” There is no response. “Write me, my darling. What does it cost you? Even just a little card telling me you are well and that’s it. If you do, your cards will reach to the heavens for me to be content and consoled. And if not, you will pay for it with God.” Then the self-ridicule: “Although I am undoubtedly a monster.”

Travel to Spain Having received a fellowship from the Instituto Hispánico in 1950, she sailed from Veracruz with her best friend, Dolores Castro, and remained in Spain from 1951 to 1952. Her rounded, complex, and nervous handwriting is devilishly difficult to read. She knows it and prefers to type. Above deck of the SS Argentina, she sits in front of Lolita Castro’s portable typewriter while other passengers observe her. She describes everything around her, how they spend their mornings above deck and “the afternoons on the bow to receive the wind against us. There is also a pool, and in the afternoons if we’re too bored they organize a cyclone.” Her chronicles are a precious travel account: she describes her relationship with Dolores Castro, her opinions about the Spaniards, her colleagues from the Instituto Hispánico, and her passionate reaction to the El Greco painting, Burial of the Count of Orgaz. Curiously, throughout her correspondence, Rosario did not write about politics or social issues. She said little while she was in Spain; in her final letters there are no references whatsoever about the conflicts in her nation, nor in her articles in Excélsior, sent from Israel, although being ambassador required her to have good awareness, to speak and write about politics, and to do it well (she was very intelligent). She traveled many roads in Chiapas when she worked with the Petul theater among the indigenous communities. And her preoccupation with social issues, which are at root also political, is very evident in all her works.

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The Great Revelation During her time in Spain, the great revelation for Rosario was of Saint Teresa. She stated: “I lost God, or cannot find him either in prayer or blasphemy, in asceticism or sensuality.” Now she plunges into the mystical dimension of love: “All that you tell me about how you have been reading your Imitación de Cristo coincides with what I have been reading about Saint Teresa and Saint Agustín. What with this religious problem I am not sure where I am going to end up. Naturally, religion is something that I have not been indifferent to, and less so now. In my heart I have an intense hunger but when I try to satiate it, I am confronted by a series of objections of intellectual (!) nature. I who never reason, who have little capacity for logic and above all, religious instruction, begin to criticize it and everything seems absurd and irrational and therefore unacceptable. Now I am now beginning to suspect I am using the wrong categories to try to understand it, because it is not with reason, cold like that, that one can come near […]. So I got curious about what mysticism was and began reading Saint Teresa. Now, this is one of the books that has most greatly moved and reached me. It brought humility and charity front and center, with all its transcendence and importance. My first inclination was one of total commitment and a plan to change my life. But, ay, my resolve lasted two or three days.” She returned to Mexico from Europe at the end of 1952 and clearly her relationship with Ricardo does not materialize, because she leaves again for Chiapas to stay with her brother Raúl at his ranch in Chapatengo. There she commits an act on the order of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, but which seems to me a shocking self-flagellation: she shaves her head. Rather, with her consent, her brother shaves her head. So that she cannot leave, so that no one can see her. Rosario communicates this by letter to Ricardo and to me it sounds like a cruel joke: “Today to entertain ourselves we organized a diversion that kept us busy all morning. Raúl shaved my head, first using some scissors, zip, gone were the locks. Then, with other finer scissors, cut to close to the head. Finally, with his shaver. He left my head glowing, polished and glossy. We had a lot of fun. And therefore, I cannot leave, even if I wanted, until it grows, at least a centimeter. We’ll see what little game occurs to us tomorrow.” Ricardo has not bothered to tell her he married Lilia Carrillo in 1951 and that they are expecting a child, Ricky. While Rosario insists on her passionate missives (as she always would, whatever the circumstances,

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except in late 1967 when she in fact asks for a divorce), Lilia and Ricardo, with a fellowship in Paris, leave Ricky with Socorro García, Lilia’s mother. Ricardo seems to go around and around like the squirrel in the fable and is always difficult to follow.

To Return, Return, Return In 1954 Lilia meets the painter Manuel Felguérez and separates from Guerra in Paris, although she is pregnant with her second son, Juan Pablo. She returns to Mexico, and Juan Pablo is born in Socorro García’s home while Guerra travels from Paris to Heidelberg. (Later, Rosario would treat Ricky and Pablito as though they were her own.) When he returns to Mexico, they divorce. At the same time, Rosario was returning from Chiapas and her work in the Instituto Indigenista directed by Alfonso Caso. Seeing Ricardo again and marrying him is a single act; they are married within three months of reuniting. Rosario marries Ricardo in Coyoacán in January 1958, one year after publication of her first novel, Balún Canán, and when she is 33 years old. She steps out of Guadalupe Dueñas’s house, previously Xavier Villaurrutia’s house, at 247 Puebla Street dressed in white, tulle illusion, with a crown of orange blossoms. “Rosario dressed in white both inside and out, with a purity of soul that few have. Cute, sharp, serious or profound, invariably of crystal,” is how Guadalupe Dueñas saw her.

Life in Common Everything is implicit in the letters, even when she is not telling it. We know because Rosario is already a public figure. Biographies circulate, and theses about her life and works. We know also because silence is terribly eloquent. The letters hide key moments: that of her reencounter with Guerra in Mexico City after his time in Paris with Lilia Carrillo, their marriage in 1958, their life in common, the death of her first daughter, the miscarriages, the suicide attempts, the birth of Gabriel, the move to the high-end, modern house on Constituyentes, facing Chapultepec Park. If Rosario at that time does not write letters due to being at Ricardo’s side, she writes poetry, stories, novels, and essays.

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It is not hard to speculate on what occurs inside the home on Constituyentes. At times we visualize a suspense movie, other times, one of terror. It is not that, like all couples, Rosario and Ricardo fight, hurt each other, separate, reconcile, make amends, and tolerate each other, but instead that, facing doubt and rejection, Rosario chooses self-blame. She begs forgiveness. She is the only one responsible for not knowing how to accept, for suffering excessive jealousies, for not understanding, for falling into fits of anger, for making demands. She needs to understand everything, to seek togetherness and, in order to never again make a scene, turn to tranquilizers. She thinks herself as ugly, fat, slovenly, hysterical. It is logical that he seeks in other women what he does not find in her. All the others must be better. Rosario does not satisfy him because she is a “monster.” About Ricardo we only know what Rosario tells us or what is easy to deduce from her letters when Rosario is explicit. Her disgrace comes from Ricardo’s infidelity, and yet the only one responsible is she. What are the others like? Lilia Carrillo is barely a ghost, a momentary apparition, a single telegram that alerts which day she will pick up her children. Selma Beraud [an actress], on the other hand, has greater presence, and Rosario, who despite everything always seeks reconciliation, writes to Ricardo that she does not accept traveling with him to Puerto Rico because she does not wish to hurt Selma. And she will feel guilty: “Hopefully I won’t lose my temper when I return to Mexico, and the people who have to live with me will not have to share my problems which, in the end, are mine alone and no one but me can help resolve them.” The atmosphere in which Rosario struggles on Constituyentes is not exactly placid. Lilia Carrillo’s mother, Socorro, the grandmother of the Guerra boys whom Rosario cares for, commits suicide. And although the suicide is much discussed in the Constituyentes home—to the point that little four-year-old Gabriel, during one of his tantrums, threatens to take his own life—everyone takes it in stride.

A Daily Tragedy Nothing affects human beings more than the sentimental learning process, which tortures us to the final moment of our existence. Rosario’s love life is a tragedy because it is tragic to not find answers and yet continue to insist, to envelope oneself in a hope that is never realized. Rosario lives that tragedy daily and yet she writes. Her brain is separated into two

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frontal lobes inhabited by two goals: to write and to suffer. They apparently do not mix. Rosario can move from the most terrifying scene of jealousy to her workspace. And she does not vent upon the paper. She writes. She does not succumb to psychoanalytic catharsis. She makes abstractions, draws meaning; upon deciphering these, she deciphers life. Finally, in 1966, Rosario decides to leave and accepts an invitation as visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She has had a difficult time of late: as News and Information chief at UNAM, she is greatly saddened by the violent ouster of Dr. Ignacio Chávez from the presidency by a gang of protesting students. However, in the midst of her own personal tragedy which takes her to an anxious, weakened state, on the verge of suicide and stints in the psychiatric hospital—from which she returns incredulous, rejecting psychologists and believing Valium 10 “condenses, in a chemically pure form, the order of the world”—Rosario Castellanos never ceases to express herself, that is, to communicate, through her writing. During those crucial years, 14 of her books are published, prose, essay, and poetry. But they are not worthy, they don’t matter. Rosario completely erases her bibliography each time she discovers a new infidelity.

The Mechanism of Pain It is notable that in the solitude of Madison a being so torn apart begins to rebuild herself, learns to manage her depressions, to understand the cyclical nature of her episodes and how to prevent the crashes. Now finally, through her own intelligence she begins to break down the mechanisms that trigger her pain, although there are aspects that never disappear from her letters: the tracks from her infancy which continually return to persecute her. In Madison she learns to how to bear that sack of memories and painful experiences so that it no longer forces her down. Rosario simply refuses to be a victim. In one of the letters from Madison, Wisconsin, on September 14, 1966, she states: “In those late hours of the night, I worry about why María left, because Gabriel has a cold and could have become sicker, because so many terrible things could happen. Then I realize that the only thing I’m doing is to pull out the lump that is my true problem, the one I have to confront now without any palliative and or pretext: am I or am I not a writer? Can I write? Write what? Since preparing my classes takes a lot of time, I am

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going to dedicate the weekends to only that. We’ll see what happens. If I am not that I am not going to die because of it.” At that point, Rosario had already published two novels, Balún Canán (1957) and Oficio de tinieblas (1962), and two collections of short stories, Ciudad Real (1960) and Los convidados de Agosto (1964), and she had released eight books of poetry: Trayectoria del polvo (1948), Apuntes para una declaración de fe (1949), De la vigilia estéril (1950), El rescate del mundo (1952), Poemas (1953–1955 and 1957), Al pie de la letra (1959), Judith y Salomé, and Lívida luz (1960). In 1961 she received two prizes: her son Gabriel and the Villaurrutia Award. She was writing the prologue to La vida de Santa Teresa. In 1962 she was selected by the critics for the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz award. Beginning in 1963 her articles on literary criticism appeared regularly in Excélsior. She was highly recognized. In addition to the early fellowship from the Centro Mexicano de Escritores, she received a Rockefeller in 1956, and she was a tenured professor in the Philosophy and Letters Department at UNAM. Is it possible that her love insecurities annihilated what should have been her strongest conviction: her work? Rosario is no longer concerned with whether she is a good or bad writer, which would seem normal, but instead, whether she is or is not a writer. She tortures herself over it. She wants to prove it to herself at age 41 in the solitude of her new life in Wisconsin.

Come What May, She Always Worked It is tremendously impressive to see that Rosario worked all of her life; not even in the worst circumstances, or even during the most difficult moments did she dodge sitting down to work at her table, tending to duties in her ninth floor office at UNAM, giving lectures in Philosophy and Letters, and giving conference talks. She worked always, no matter what was happening, not because she forced herself or was stoic, but because she had tremendous discipline and a fierce sense of duty. In her speech on February 15, 1971, at the National Museum of Anthropology, Rosario stresses that the person who works deserves respect, affirming that in Mexico men and women do not receive equal treatment. At the University of Wisconsin, since she has an excessive number of students, the dean decides that some of the students should go to another class. None wants to leave; they protest and finally all of them remain with her. At that university Rosario has

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an entourage of students who adore her and yet she does not manage to discard her language of defeat. Rosario’s correspondence is a vital and formidable document, testimony on the first order which seduces women and men who want to understand women. After reading it, one is left with a desire to comment, to argue about it, to take it out of the morass, and while doing so, remove us also, even when we are not in exactly the same situation and in fact believe we are in a better situation.

Humor Is Not Prevalent in Mexican Women Writers The letters are a liberating process and a triumph, a war comprising several battles won by herself day by day. I would dare to affirm that, had we not known about her prose or her poetry, her letters alone would make Rosario Castellanos an admirable human being. A notable aspect of that is the humor, even at her own expense, that is, especially at her own expense, and this does not abound in Mexican women writers. However, she does not like the jokes made about her relationship with Ricardo, she complained about Sergio Pitol and Luis Prieto and their comments that Ricardo wanted a castle but got a Castellanos, a comment made by Ricardo himself, which she found cruel. Before her, María Lombardo de Caso is the only one who ventured into the arena of irony. Only the intelligent can make jokes about themselves. The stupid ones are those who repeat other’s jokes. Rosario’s intelligence makes her keenly aware of her own processes and very soon she learns how to penetrate deeply into herself, as well as her son Gabriel, whom she knows backwards and forwards not because it came naturally or her son is cute, but because she is uniquely observant. Her perception about others is, more than penetrating, stunning. Hence, her literary criticism is especially lucid, very well informed. The only one she never seems to read, because she loves him with a crazy and blind love, as a crazy, deaf, and dumb lover, is Ricardo. He escapes all of her senses.

Gabriel the Tormentor Gabriel’s arrival in Wisconsin is for Rosario marvelous, but not as much as for us who read the letters this Doña Rosario Castellanos sent to Ricardo Guerra beginning January 5, 1967. I state “Doña Rosario Castellanos”

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because one cannot help but remove one’s hat to her valiancy and the great love with which she treats her son, and Ricardo Guerra as well. Gabriel, the five-year-old, repeats her conduct, but now the “other” isn’t Ricardo’s new companion Selma; instead, it is his mother, who does not deserve to return to the Constituyentes house, who should not have a Volkswagen, and who is but a maid that his father drove off by striking. Rosario listens to all of this with supreme irony and awareness that even psychologists may not possess. She applies her therapy, more efficiently than any provided by hospitals. Her sense of humor prevails, whether in dealing with her son, whether in her worst circumstances, and even when the child, echoing other abuse, kicks her again and again mentally and emotionally. As Rosario states, he even shares something Ricardo has not bothered to share with her. Rosario does not accept, as a submissive Mexican mother, the suffering her son inflicts; to the contrary, she combats it with overwhelming nobility. If Gabriel is to be saved, it will be through his mother, precisely here and now. Rosario takes the bull by the horns. She never ceases observing him. Her heartfelt intelligence is so vast it is difficult to understand how she did not apply it to her relationship with Guerra. The only explanation seems to be that Guerra never loved her, never had the will or capacity to love her, and to get her to understand that he must have rubbed it in her face not once but several times through his dalliances with other women. And Rosario could love none but him; she was too integral a human being. Rosario does not know what has happened in her home in Mexico during her absence. Gabriel, with his corn-colored hair and angelic face, informs her. How does a human being survive when assaulted by such intimate realities? How did Rosario survive? We cannot deny anyone their reasons for living, the most profound ones, faith in themselves, in their body, in their work. And yet Rosario’s were denied, she was left stretched out on the carpet below the little foot of a cherub and still managed not to die. She definitely survived and a year later could write to Ricardo: “I don’t know why Gabriel is pursued by bugs, but they bite him without ceasing. We have found insecticides of all types and he still wakes up with huge bites on his forehead (must be inherited from his mother) because something attacks him at night. And yesterday he insulted me in one of his more dramatic accents: ‘Why was I born? What have you done to the only child you could have? Have you not even been able to defend him from insects? What are you going to do to get rid of the insects?’ That and the

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other day when I had an official visitor he came into the living room and after a very ceremonious greeting said: ‘I didn’t come to interrupt, just to have a drink and smoke a cigarette with you all.’” Gabrielito had just turned six years old. That she discovers and constructs herself through Gabriel her son is truly fascinating. Rosario grows, she is never as analytic, never before distances herself so fabulously. It is fascinating to see how Gabriel fares, observed by an extremely sharp narrator, a mother very attentive to his process. Each afternoon Rosario remains with her son, helps him with his homework, accompanies him, tells him stories. The stories she writes him are a delight.

Responsibility They return to Mexico and to the home on Constituyentes. Guerra goes to Puerto Rico to teach courses and Rosario remains in charge of both homes, the one in Mexico City and the one in Cuernavaca. It is surprising that a woman who labeled herself a candidate for the insane asylum manages both homes, and not only Gabriel, but also Ricky and Pablito. In complete control of the situation, Rosario takes care of all responsibilities: the university students, her university appointment, the psychologists, and her writing craft. She never lets family needs slide, or the bills, the property needs, the plumber, and bureaucratic processes. To be responsible for the needs of both Ricardo and the children is a constant in Rosario’s life and appears on each page of her letters. Ultimately, it’s not Ricardo’s continuous infidelities and lies that matter, but instead, Rosario Castellanos’s construction of “another way of being human and free.” She, on the other hand, never tells a lie; instead, she magnifies and exaggerates things, and she knows it. She says, for example, that she does not like social gatherings, and yet she takes the lead at those she attends. Since she is witty, by making things enjoyable for everyone else, she has fun. Extroverted, brilliant, and very amusing, she always gave the impression of being a woman very accustomed to gatherings. In public she never revealed her nervous anxiety; on the contrary, perhaps because of it she decided to conquer others, and make them friends and allies. We women are devalued. Rosario was born devalued and she only stops accusing herself, finding herself guilty, in her final days. Is the love relationship the only thing that could have given her stability? Or is it precisely because this was denied to her, that she turned to writing?

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Rite of Initiation Does she have to pay a price for having been a writer? What could have happened if Rosario Castellanos had a greater degree of self-esteem? José Joaquín Blanco, upon assessing her poetic themes around abandonment, unrequited love, unreachable good, and an immense wasteland, tells us she is a mourner. She must have seemed so to José Joaquín Blanco, a man after all, an insufferable neurotic, because in her poetry we see clearly to what degree she suffered, and only just recently did we know how. Her letters clarify that. She is never more rational than in her poetry. She finds the exact word, places it, and it is done. Poetry in her is a search for rationality. Rosario Castellanos takes up the theme of Indians in more than one of her narrative works, but she was not interested in being categorized as an indigenist writer [a common descriptor for literature on Native life by non-indigenous writers]. The Indians are neither good nor poetic because they are Indians, they are human beings exactly like the white people, and in fact, because they are weaker [politically], can become more violent. Rosario approaches them not simply because of Comitán and Chiapas, her homeland, but because she recognizes her own solitude in their abandonment.

Divorce, an Act of Self-Esteem Rosario Castellanos began revaluing herself, and it was a painful process because she began to know herself. Finally, in an act of self-esteem she separates from Ricardo and asks for a divorce. In an interview with Beatriz Espejo in 1967 she confesses that work never hurt her the way love and cohabitation did.

Meanwhile I Love Him Although Gabriel is her only child, the achieved one, and very loved one, she does not hold out great hope and her attitude could seem ambiguous to us. In her poem, “Rito de iniciación,” she says: “Why would you arrive to shatter my bones / and when God was giving them consistency he thought / of making them weaker than your force.” In “Autorretrato” she states: “I am the mother of Gabriel: you already know, that boy / who

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one day will set himself up as a judge who does not grant appeals / and who likely will also perform as executioner. / Meanwhile I love him.” Her final article published in Excélsior right after her surprising death is directed to Gabriel, to whom she asks: “Do you remember La Guiveret who came to clean every week until the Yom Kippur war broke out, and to whom a great disgrace happened to one of her sons, so great that he will forever remain in a hospital? La Guiveret was also sick and unable to work and only now, barely recovering, is returning to her former watering holes. “The first time she came to the house we were alone and I observed her with some worry as she—rigidly, mechanically, absently—dusted the furniture, mopped the floor, and cleaned the windows while two streams of tears, that she did not wipe because she was unaware of them, trailed down her cheeks. She cried thus, unconsciously, much as we breathe. I felt helpless before her as I had no words for such suffering, no template, mold or chalice. From pity I moved, little by little, to fear. What if she goes crazy and suddenly has a fit and strangles me? “The first visit transpired without incident. Several days later I was on the terrace when I saw her advancing, walking with difficulty below the hot sun. From far away she was saying something, asking me for something. Of course I was going to give her whatever she wanted. But what did she want? She took me by the hand toward a vase in which I had placed those colorful paper flowers we brought from Mexico. She pointed to one and I gave her the entire cluster. She hugged it as if it were her son healthy and recuperated, and left erect, radiant, without memory of her sorrow. We are so insignificant! And we console ourselves with so little! “I for example, erase all the scars of the past, I dismiss all the pressures of the present, I forget all the threats of the future upon simply seeing a post card in the colors of the Aztec calendar which says, ‘I am very content. Greetings,’ signed, Gabriel.” Rosario had stopped writing to Ricardo Guerra only seven years before her death. Electrocuted by a house lamp, at the headquarters of the Mexican Embassy in Tel Aviv, she died on August 7, 1974, one day before traveling to Mexico to be the only speaker for an official breakfast for women at Los Pinos [the Mexican White House].

CHAPTER 9

Nellie Campobello, Who Was Not Granted Death Elena Poniatowska and Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez

That woman of noble posture who moves through the air with arms upraised is Nellie Campobello. That woman with her hair pulled back, who stretches her neck and points the way with the big toe of her right foot, is Nellie Campobello. That woman who defies gravity and rises to the sky is Nellie Campobello. Nellie and Gloria perform at their National School of Dance, their skirts spin like corollas: from above they look like giant flowers, Mexican dahlias formed by dozens of underskirt petals. “And now a dance from Jalisco.” Their students watch with rapt attention. The sisters exhibit their talent and knowledge of Mexico’s dances. English translation by Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez, essays from Elena Poniatowska’s book Las siete cabritas, published in 2000. E. Poniatowska c/o Schavelzon Graham Agencia Literaria, S.L., Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] E. C. Martínez (*) DePaul University, Chicago, TX, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. C. Martínez (ed.), The Women of Mexico’s Cultural Renaissance, Literatures of the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11177-8_9

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“You must make your body speak, give every one of your movements meaning.” Nellie is the authority, the supreme voice. She throws herself into it. This is her moment. The muscles of her legs and arms extend, they stretch out like branches through the air. They are a quicker form of expression than writing and provide for immediate response. Pressed against the walls, her admiring disciples contemplate her every move. “Mexicans are quiet, distrusting, I refer to those who live in the city. The way they walk is their true expression.” The two sisters now demonstrate Maya rhythms: “Make shorter and stronger steps. The mestizo way of walking is graceful and concise.” Nellie laughs as she continues tapping her heels. “Well, the Maya are not as tall as I am, so there is a biological reason for the tempos of their dance, and that their steps are short, light and animated.” This woman was born on November 7, 1900, in Villa Ocampo, Durango, the daughter of Rafaela Luna, heroine of Las manos de Mamá. In the Villa Ocampo parish, where people remember her as “daughter and benefactor” (the local school carries her name), the birth records registry shows María Francisca, called “Xica,” for Francisca, like Francisco Villa, which is why some have speculated about her origins and say Nellie was the daughter of the Centaur of the North. Direct and frank, “so much so that they think I am telling lies,” Nellie nonetheless did not accept her real name and invented another, inspired by the Bostonian who was in love with her mother, father of Gloria, Ernest Campbell Morton, which she Hispanicized as Campobello. Hugo Margáin, while showing me a dedication by her in a book, “From the Campobellos clan to the Margáin clan,” told me she was Pancho Villa’s daughter. Nellie and Gloria Campobello traversed Mexico from one end to the other collecting indigenous rhythms. The group they most loved were the Tarahumara, because the sisters were from the north. They traveled to villages to attend patron Saint’s day celebrations, and when there were not any, they sat on benches in the square to observe. They took notes, jotted down steps, and collected musical sounds. From their notes came words in movement: “The Mexican,” they wrote, “walks with the full weight of his body on his heels, similar to the Yucatecan, and yet, differently from him, does not stretch his body upward, nor slightly back. Instead, he inclines slightly forward, but not as much as the Indigenous of Michoacán.

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With eyes always fixedly looking down and arms tightly at his side, he gives the impression of hugging himself.” Nellie, renowned dancer, choreographer, and ballet teacher, published with her sister Gloria in 1940, the book Ritmos indígenas de México, which is impossible to locate today. Impassioned by pre-Hispanic dance, she declared: “Indigenous dance is Mexico’s clearest expression.” Nellie is one of the founders of the National School of Dance, which she directs beginning in 1937.1 By immersing herself in our culture, she revives it. Mexico reveals itself to itself. Nellie reveals her great creative capacity, the strength of her great nation. She experienced poverty, distrust, betrayal, and violence during her childhood in Villa Ocampo and Parral, Chihuahua, but despite that she was able to declare “I was a happy child” because her mother knew how to create another world which mitigated the immediate reality, the harshness of the Revolution.

Miss Carroll The sisters were students of Miss Lettie Carroll, whom my sister Kitzia and I knew because we went to her classes in Colonia Cuauhtémoc [Mexico City]. She was a tall lady with slender ankles, who punctuated the rhythm with a broomstick on the floor and had a pancake face, round and plump. Miss Carroll included the Campobellos in her Ballet Carroll Classique, which included girls from the US who had long legs; they made a presentation at the Regis Theater [Mexico City] in 1927 and at several American Legion festivities. They also traveled to the countryside, where for Nellie the trips, rather than enjoyable, were torture. Oh gosh, the theater is horrible! What an awful life led by the poor, unhappy artists! Worse than a poorhouse shack, the theaters are disgusting and smelly!

The Carroll Girls They dance in Havana, where the newspaper Diario de la Marina touts the performance, but despite the help provided by their friends the Reina and Fernández de Castro families, Nellie’s account is bitter: “Finally one 1  Nellie created choreographies for the Escuela Nacional de Danza and in 1943 founded, with the help of her sister Gloria, Martín Luis Guzmán, and José Clemente Orozco, the official Ballet de la Ciudad de México, which she continued to direct until her retirement in 1983.

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day they included us in a performance, and I noticed our names on the program were in tiny letters. Upset, I did not want to go out to dance, but Esperanza Iris’ husband convinced us to do it. Therefore we did it, but they wanted us to dance by lifting our lower skirts to show our legs. I danced like the Tehuana, dignified and with humility, not majestically, but with the concentrated dignity of the Native subject.” Cuban socialite José Antonio Fernández de Castro described the sisters in language similar to that Nellie would use to describe her devoted mother: Clutching the arms of an old man, two poppies. Two poppies born in a valley. A valley that is not tropical. One of reddish color. The other less so. The other, with a soft violet color. Violet bathed in a fine gold dusting.

Nellie would write in the poem Ella, referring to her mother: Flowers of lilac, they looked more lilac and in clear blues they kissed In the linen of the skirt and lace of the ring the hands were folded behind the sleepy air, as souls cluster in corners at the edge of the path.

Vous etes une artiste Nellie harvested elegies, bouquets, and cards that proclaimed in French: “Vous etes une artiste.” The critical response she remembers best though is that by her brother Chaco: Chaco, what did you think? You looked like a horse in the desert, running!” he replied. Ayyyy, and here I thought I was a butterfly. But since I had two horses I regularly rode, morning and afternoons, it couldn’t be any other way.

Me! Her first work, ¡Yo!, published in Mexico in 1929, is a collection of 15 poems signed as Francisca. A few were translated to English by Langston Hughes, collected in an anthology of Latin American contemporary poetry published by Norfolk in 1942.

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Dr. Atl [who illustrated the book cover] said about the book: She did not tell her friends, her close friends. What a scandal it would have been in her high-end circle to know that the girl was a poet! They would have looked down on her. Perhaps even her boyfriend would have fought with her. She entrusted them to a very wise friend and he was so enthusiastic about the poems that from a handful of ‘little blue papers’ he created a chapbook, her first book: ¡Yo! That little book never circulated. Literary professionals are unaware of it. The few who had it in their hands have preferred to dismiss it, out of mere fear. They say I’m brusque, that I don’t know what I’m talking about. Because I’m from over there. They say from the dark mountain I know I came from a clarity. Brusque because I look straight on; brusque because I am strong. they say I am wild … How many things they say because I’m from over there, from a dark corner of the mountain! But I know that I came from a clarity.

* * * The North was a battleground. Happiness went along singing throughout the house, like a bird without a cage. That’s how I enjoyed my liberty. And how many times hugging my happiness did I have to cry?

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* * * She swore that she loved liberty more than the waves of the sea and much more than love, which recalls Simone Weil’s thoughts about recognizing nature’s law in the fierce obedience of the waves. As a result, she never desisted from telling truths, denouncing pretense, injustice, plunder, and slander. I wanted to have wings, true condor wings: to leave. I think that many Mexican souls have also wanted at some point to have wings. I am a butterfly. I like to fly and to get near the heart of the roses, and to feel in my open wings gardens of liberty.

She loved horses and rode very well. From the time she was a girl she traversed the countryside on horseback, and in Mexico City she continued riding at the equestrian clubs. Nellie and Gloria Campobello met Federico García Lorca in 1930 in Havana, thanks to the critic and journalist José Antonio Fernández de Castro, who showed Federico her book ¡Yo! And García Lorca went to congratulate her and to ask that Nellie, with her Moorish eyes and thick eyebrows, read her poems aloud. She was in her steps a dance entirely comprised of rhythm.

* * * My dance, erect in the stadiums follows the majestic rhythm of Mexican waltzes.

* * *

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Chiapas Chiapas, menu of tangled hills, trees and cliffs. At your summit I danced between grasses and pebbles. The people’s voice could be heard in the rhythm of my steps.

* * *

The Centaur of the North Was God For Nellie, the Centaur of the North was God, and Martín Luis Guzmán his altar boy. She defended him against insults and slander. “The novels written at that time were full of lies about the men of the Revolution, and principally about Francisco Villa … The only warrior genius of his era, one of the greats of history, one of the best in the Americas, and since Genghis Khan, the greatest warrior that has existed.”

Martín and Nellie Addressed Each Other Formally The Centaur of the North never realized that in Martín Luis Guzmán he would have his best biographer, superseded only by Friedrich Katz with his own monumental work, Pancho Villa, in 1998. That a writer of the caliber of Martín Luis Guzmán (I don’t like calling him simply Guzmán as other writers do) would take charge of Villa’s legacy, with his Memorias de Pancho Villa [1940, five volumes], giving him a prestige he otherwise would not have had. The fact that Nellie Campobello gave to Martín Luis Guzmán her entire archives indicates that she considered him the only person capable of writing that legacy. Why didn’t she do it herself since one of Villa’s wives, Austreberta Rentería, placed the documents and letters in her hands? She only wrote her Apuntes sobre la vida militar de Francisco Villa, published in 1940, where she uses the documents and memories of Villa’s wife. Such a major and definitive work, however, is prepared by her friend and beau Martín Luis Guzmán, who, according to Juan Soriano, always addressed her formally, not to hide their relationship but in a demonstration of respect. Nellie’s love for Martín, in vox populi, lasted all of her life; after he died in 1976 she was never the same.

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In an interview with Carlos Landeros, published in Siempre! on November 22, 1976, Martín Luis Guzmán declared: “Nothing in life has likely been as satisfying, after my personal dealings with Villa, than having had in my hands the documents from General Villa’s archives, kept by his widow, Madame Austreberta Rentería. Some 30 years ago Miss Nellie Campobello interviewed me about helping the Villistas construct a full and complete portrait of Francisco Villa; I researched the work in those years when Villa was defamed, vilified and accused of all sort of crimes, passed over and banished everywhere. Thanks to those papers I conceived of a way to write the Memorias de Pancho Villa, and actually, the first 300 pages are based primarily on those documents; the other 800 no, those are definitely from my own work, but the first 300 pages are based on those papers.” Later he emphasizes: “Villa is very interesting for the human aspects. One day, I think, the personality of this admirable young lady, Nellie Campobello, will become better known, because, as I mentioned earlier, she has been an enthusiastic and indefatigable defender of the figure and memory of Pancho Villa for more than 40 years; she is the one who obtained access for me to the aforementioned documents.” Don Martín ended his five volumes of the Memorias de Pancho Villa with the battles in the Bajío, prior to the fall of the Centaur. Nellie Campobello, despite her overflowing enthusiasm, ends her Apuntes sobre la vida militar de Francisco Villa with his agreement to a truce and return to his hacienda Canutillo, gifted by the revolutionary government. Through the character of Axkaná González in La sombra del caudillo, Martín Luis Guzmán demonstrates that ineptitude and corruption in power have existed for more than 50 years, and “the tragedy of the politician trapped in a net of immorality and lies that he himself has woven” continues even today. In his older age, Mariano Azuela denounces the cacique chiefs, the land barons, the nouveau riche, and local leaders for betraying the ideals of the Revolution, but for Nellie Campobello the Revolution vindicated the rights and dignity of all, and the heroes who emerged from the people are our saints. A true devotee, she defends Pancho Villa, her hero, her idol, and—despite the bloodbath orgies—her golden soldier, to whom she dedicates days and days of research: about him and also his troops and staunch supporters, Nieto, Dávila, and Máynez. Nellie collects oral histories and writes passionately. Despite her admiration for him, Apuntes sobre la vida militar de Francisco Villa is the least significant of all her books. In popular terms, she prefers to see the forest and not the trees. Jesusa Palancares, the

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protagonist of Hasta no verte Jesús mío, who did not have the ability to read or write, had a better critical view of the Mexican Revolution: “I believe it was a stupid war, because the idea of killing each other, fathers against sons, brother against brother, Carrancistas, Villistas, Zapatistas, we were all the same nobodies and starving people, but those are things that, as they say, because they are known they are not discussed.” Jesusa does not share Nellie’s image of Francisco Villa: “Villa was a bandit because he did not fight like a man, he only put dynamite on the tracks for the passing trains… if I hate anyone it is Villa.” It has been nearly a century, and as Adolfo Gilly states: “The assertion of the Mexican bourgeoisie that ‘the Revolution lives,’ is negative confirmation of the permanency or uninterrupted nature of revolution.” Octavio Paz is also condemnatory: “All revolution without critical thought, without liberty to oppose its power, or the possibility of peaceful substitution of one government by another, is a failed revolution.”

The Authors of the Revolution Institutionalized, the Mexican Revolution also became novelized. Six years after the first pop of gunfire, Mariano Azuela publishes Los de abajo in 1916  in El Paso, Texas, the novel par excellence of the Mexican Revolution, opening the floodgates to characters under the wingspan of Demetrio Macías, of whom Azuela himself states: “If I had known a man of such stature I would have followed him to the death.” He astounds with his currency and his fidelity to the dialect of infantry troops. A medical doctor and writer, Mariano Azuela provides the first literary images of the Revolution. From Azuela onward, the novel of the Mexican Revolution goes forward at full gallop. Martín Luis Guzmán wrote La sombra del caudillo, El águila y la serpiente, and Memorias de Pancho Villa, giving Mexico, according to the critics, the best prose known to date alongside that of Salvador Novo. In Mexico, in the US, and in certain European universities such as the one in Toulouse, France, the novel of the Mexican Revolution is studied systematically: Rafael F. Muñoz, Se llevaron el cañón para Bachimba and Vámonos con Pancho Villa!; Gregorio López y Fuentes, Campamento (published in Madrid in 1931); José Rubén Romero, Apuntes de un lugareño, released in Barcelona in 1932; the revolutionary general Francisco L.  Urquizo, Tropa vieja; José Vasconcelos, Ulíses Criollo; Mauricio Magdaleno, El resplandor; José Mancisidor, Frontera junto al

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mar; and Miguel N. Lira, La escondida; and there were a few other authors such as Agustín Vera. Among them all, only one woman, Nellie Campobello. The publication in 1958 of La región más transparente by Carlos Fuentes opens a second round for the revolutionary novel, since Juan Rulfo and his Pedro Páramo are a separate matter: perhaps the final revolutionary embers are found in the hot ashes which Rulfo reignites with El llano en llamas and his master work, Pedro Páramo. In La muerte de Artemio Cruz, Carlos Fuentes, the most brilliant of our novelists, paints a portrait of Artemio Cruz, a corrupt revolutionary. La muerte de Artemio Cruz opens the doors then to Arturo Azuela (nephew of the first Azuela); Fernando del Paso; Jorge Ibarguengoitia, for whom the revolution is a great charade; Tomás Mojarro; and, once again, one woman alone, Elena Garro, who in some ways is the successor of Nellie Campobello. Los relámpagos de Agosto by Ibarguengoitia gives us the flip side of the coin—a humoristic, crude, and bestial revolution, one to make fun of to escape the tragedy—while Rulfo is the essence of tragic. It could be that Nellie Campobello’s version is the only true vision of the Mexican Revolution. When Nellie dedicated her Apuntes sobre la vida militar de Francisco Villa to Martín Luis Guzmán, calling him the most revolutionary writer of the Revolution, she does not recognize that she is the best writer of the Revolution. Her words, free of adjectives and flourishes, and her direct, raw style belong to an Adelita who decides to courageously join the battle.

Cartucho: A Run of 3000 Copies Nellie Campobello published Cartucho: relatos de la lucha en el Norte de México, with Ediciones Integrales in 1931. Of all the novels on the Revolution this is the only one that uses the realistic news of the moment. In a world of machismo, no one pays attention to her—Please! What is a woman doing in the midst of a party of bullets! That’s all we needed! Nellie is so entertaining, so descriptive, so sharp, that her brilliant images, fleeting impressions from the balcony by a curious creature who passes unnoticed in a daunting book that has nothing to do with her, and she tells it as innocent glimpses, with the candor of childhood, become scenes that astound for their cruelty and because they are witnessed by a girl. In La Plaza del Diamante, Catalan writer Mercé Rodoreda provides a view of the Spanish Civil War of 1936 without historical notes or

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explanations and yet the reader feels very present in that war. Nellie Campobello does not analyze the whys of occurrences, she simply lays them out just as she recalls them, and the impact of those brief phrases is absolute. Las manos de Mamá was published nine years after Cartucho, January 20, 1940, under the imprint of Editorial Villa Ocampo in northern Mexico, with a print run at Talleres Gráficos de la Nación. Perhaps it was self-published, because Villa Ocampo is the place where she was born.2 Her Cartucho is a collection of 56 fragments: “I wrote in this book what I am aware of about Villa-ism, not what I have been told.” The two books are brimming with Nellie’s love for her mother, demonstrating her personality as a young widow in the Villa era, capable of doing anything and everything for her children. A fighter, Rafaela Luna also worried about the fate of Villa’s Golden ones, and of course, about Villa himself. “A tall man, he had blonde whiskers and spoke loudly, barged into our home with ten men, and insulting Mother he said: ‘Tell me you aren’t in Villa’s confidence, I know you are. Here there are guns, if you don’t give them to us together with money and anything set aside, I’ll burn your house.’ He spoke while pacing back and forth in front of her. I rebelliously stood alongside her, but he pushed me and I fell. Mother did not cry, she simply said do not touch my children, we will do as you ask… The image of that blonde man was in my memory for life.” Two years later we went to live in Chihuahua, and I saw him going up the steps of the National Palace… That day everything turned out bad for me, I could not study, I kept thinking about being a man, having a gun in order to shoot him.

Not until 1940 was a second edition of Cartucho released, through EDIAPSA. This is not common only to Nellie; the first run of three thousand copies of El tirador by Alfonso Reyes went 12 years before being out of print. Las manos de Mamá enjoyed the privilege of being illustrated by José Clemente Orozco, the most impressive of the three major artists. Orozco—who only had his right arm because he lost the left arm in a 2  The two books were issued together in English translation in 1997, as Cartucho and My Mother’s Hands, with the University of Texas Press translators Doris Meyer and Irene Matthews (they had been reissued as Mis libros in 1960). In 1998 an homage was planned in Bellas Artes for Campobello, for which she did not appear, and no one knew of her whereabouts.

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dynamite blast—was one of the preeminent characters of the so-called Mexican Renaissance. He was an angry, foul-tempered, and secretive man who fell in love with Gloriecita, as Nellie called her, and that is why he illustrated her big sister’s book and produced an infinity of theatrical backdrops for Nellie and Gloria Campobello’s dances at their National School of Dance.

The Terse Cruelty of Childhood Nellie’s novels are autobiographical and interweave her memories as a seven-year-old, wide-eyed and capable of predicting death. Highly observant, Nellie returns to the evocative voice of her childhood. In Las manos de Mamá she recognized the influence of her maternal grandfather in Villa Ocampo, Durango, and says that he imbued in her a love for nature and several other aspects of his character. She speaks of her love for Papá Grande, whose portrait is the only image she displayed in her living room. In Cartucho, the episodes she relates are brutal and reveal the terse cruelty of childhood. Death is natural, there is no alternative. The very soldiers who kill are also those who carry her and give her chewing gum. Nellie does not create a difference between death and heroism because they are part of her own daily life. She witnesses firing squads and sees how the bodies of those hanged bounce about from tree limbs. The exposed guts of the dead appear rosy and pretty to her [the character], especially those of General Sobarzo. She attends summary executions and relates all as a child who without awareness freshly describes the most abhorrent occurrences. Marta Portal states in her book Proceso narrativo de la revolución mexicana that Nellie “presents a virgin vision of the Revolution.” Nellie herself states very clearly: “I had my eyes wide open, my spirit flew to find images of the dead, firing squad victims, how I liked hearing tragic narrations; I felt I was seeing and hearing it all again. I needed to have in my child’s soul those pictures of terror, the only thing I felt was that Mother’s eyes, upon describing accounts, would cry.” Her mother’s great love is evident even in incidents of death. In a manner, her mother bequeaths the dead to her daughters, she reminds them of it, she makes it present. In “Los hombres de Urbina,” one of the more striking vignettes of Cartucho, her mother takes the daughter by the hand to a little field and points out: “‘Here,’ stopping where there was a blue rock. ‘Look,’ she told me, ‘It was here in this place that a man died, he was

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our neighbor, José Beltrán; he defended himself to the end, they cooked him in a barrage of bullets. It was here, he was crouched down like God delivered him, shooting and reloading his rifle. They were many, he had been betrayed, they followed him to here. He was 18 years old.’” Youth for those in the struggle was terrifying; they don’t live past 25 and they are all headed to death.

Firing Squad, Bodies Fallen at the Wall Possibly Nellie Campobello is the only child in the world who writes of death from such an innocent approach. While other children play at tea parties, she collects cadavers. Nellie’s stories are about those shot by firing squad, bodies fallen at the wall. Her book Cartucho is full of popular wisdom, but not the kind manifested through sayings and rhymes, recipes and advice, instead, comments like these: “Money sometimes makes people unable to laugh.” Cartucho is a man who arrives at Nellie’s window to chat with her, and becomes fond of her little sister, the beloved Gloriecita. Nellie tells us: “One afternoon he had her in his arms. He walked up the street. Suddenly shots were heard. Cartucho, with little Gloria still in his arms, was shooting toward the hill with the cross, from the corner at Don Manuel’s. He had fired several rounds before they could take her from him. After that, the gunfire became intense. People locked themselves in. No one knew about Cartucho. He had remained shooting from the corner.” A few days later, he no longer appeared. Mother asked about him. Then José Ruiz, the one from Balleza, told her: ‘Cartucho has found what he was looking for.’

When Cartucho fails to return, Nellie’s family asks again about him and the same devastating response: “Cartucho has found what he was looking for.” The characters Nellie Campobello brings us find their death. But Nellie takes it even further; for her, those who fight are “immaculate soldiers of the Revolution.” Immaculate like the Virgin Mary? Heavens! This unexpected adjective was never foreseen by the revolutionaries! With it, Nellie reveals that she is the immaculate, the innocent, the naive, the gullible, she the ingenue, the biased, the blind little girl, she the big girl in love with the Centaur Pancho Villa, the man-horse, the Attila on our side of the sea.

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The Girl Who Walks Hand in Hand with Death Another character is Kirilí, with a red jacket and yellow chaps. Chaps are leather coverings for the horseman’s legs. Nellie, almost jubilant, states: Kirilí was bathing in a river: someone told him the enemy was coming, but he did not believe it and did not get out of the water. They arrived and killed him right there, in the river. Chagua, a young woman with little feet that Kirilí was courting, shortly afterward became a woman of the street. Doña Magdalena, who no longer has teeth and puts on glasses to read, cries over him every day in a corner of her house in Chihuahua. But Kirilí remained in the water, his body cooling and expanding against the threads of his porous flesh, where the bullets had burnt through.

The scenes Nellie describes in flashes, explosions, as though she were firing her rifle in battle, are direct, brutal, shocking, and yet her crude language, with flesh and spilt blood, is very much the terrible innocence of children who tell truth like punches to the face. It brings to mind what Jaime Sabines wrote about his son Julito who, upon seeing his puppy (or kitty) dead, said to his father: “Throw it away papa, it’s ugly,” bringing amazement to Sabines about a child’s wisdom upon confronting death. From her window, her vantage point on life, lookout to the street, Nellie writes: “And he passed by each day, skinny, poorly dressed, he was a soldier. He became my friend because one day our smiles were exactly alike.” As if that were not enough, Nellie says: “I showed him my dolls, he smiled, there was hunger in his laugh.” Her two books are an ode to machismo, a continuous tribute to Pancho Villa the brave, the womanizer, the strong, the protector, he who wins battles, the generous man, the one who takes care of his guys. For her, those in power are the bad ones, those “dressed English-style with silver decorations all over their bodies,” the functionaries, the dandies, the sissies.

Green Sequins Contradictorily, Nellie throws herself into fierce criticism of the “green sequins” of posh society. Following the indelible fixations of her childhood, for her the bad people are the rich with their cakes and silk stockings, “children with withered lips and mothers with painted faces in tulle

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outfits, who smile feebly.” And yet, Nellie Campobello was no stranger to luxuries and forgets that she moved in circles under chandeliers, in the gold and parquet ballrooms of the Alemán [1946–1952] and Avila Camacho [1940–1946] presidencies. She wore fur coats and other adornments of the era. This woman floating on air, who kept her body beautiful in the sunshine as well as the cold of the north, retaining her splendid figure for many years, this courageous and healthy woman, who pitied her ballroom contemporaries, those who slowly sip a pallid highball, as Pepe Alvarado would say, those of foul-smelling soirees, “white flesh that looked like the belly of dead fish preserved in alcohol.” Many photographs in the society sections reveal her among the haughty, hat-wearing elite, covered in sequins, rings, and necklaces. Sequins and corn kernels are different. When rain hits sequins they come apart. Corn grain gets wider and is offered to empty stomachs. Everything ends: tables, chairs, reams of lace, cakes, the color of the heels of healthy children, tablecloths, tea cups, rings, silver and gold coins, sacks of corn. At birth, none of these lies are with us. Why then suffer to obtain things from lies? Why not close the eyes and extend the hand? Mother taught us this.

Although she despises those who ignore that it is in the fields where bones and eyes are strengthened, Nellie traded in the cold wind of the north for a good mink coat.

Childhood in the Revolution or the Child of the Revolution Nellie’s phrases always hit the mark; they burn with their sincerity and absolute absence of elaboration. Unlike other writers of the Revolution, Nellie never criticizes it; on the contrary, she professes such profound devotion, the same as to her mother. She is not disappointed, everything was done well, all can be justified, everything has a reason. She is still a child watching a group of ten men pointing their rifles at a young man trembling with fear, badly tied, on his knees, his hands extended toward the soldiers. Nellie [that is, the child character] observes with interest when the body gives a terrible jump upon being riddled with bullets, how blood pours from numerous holes. The body lies in view from her window for three days and Nellie [the character] becomes accustomed to the cadaver; when someone removes it overnight, she misses it: “That dead

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body truly belonged to me.” Accustomed to violence, to cruelty, Nellie’s everyday world is the world of those who are executed. Cadavers are the pillars of her childhood. No other Mexican writer is so abrupt, so edgy, so dangerous, such a firearm. Nellie explodes but then analyzes. She is equal to Martín Luis Guzmán in her capacity to judge the Revolution, pistol at the waist, bullet phrases ready to come out of her cartridge belt. Ah, sons of bitches! Nellie is also a woman and gives her treasure to her lover. They don’t pay attention to her and after a while she tires of so much passion without objective. Nellie lived the Revolution, it was a part of her, she felt the indignation, she had fits of rage against the injustice, she divided the world between good and bad, she had hope, but the Revolution gave her nothing in return. The tragedy of good and bad was not unfamiliar to her, but her judgments and scale of values are disconcerting. To conquer and to be conquered were her two options and she never accepted defeat. When she saw that her writing went into the void, she decided to retire from it and dedicate herself to dance, which is one of the great salvation dynamics of life, the excitement of the grand jetté which makes men and women fly above the stage. The movement saves us and releases the jaguar within us, which she had only tamed in her two books, and which she later released, flexible and liquid, on stage, so that from up there she could deliver blows with her energy, and dance all that she had not written. If no other Mexican woman writer has her strength, likewise no other writer of the Mexican Revolution has the capacity of Martín Luis Guzmán to be both protagonist and also analyze and judge it through critical eyes, as he does in El águila y la serpiente, where, for example, he reflects on his first encounter with Villa, who received him while lying on his bed, wearing his sombrero and pistol at his waist. In less than 20 minutes Villa has called Victoriano Huerta a “son of a bitch” and asks why he was not shot. For over half an hour, they are locked in a conversation both strange and revealing to Martín Luis Guzmán, because they confront two different mental states, unrecognizable one to the other, two irreconcilable and different worlds, with the exception of the casual accident that unites their beliefs in the struggle.

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My Mother’s Hands In Las manos de Mamá, she bequeaths memorable pages about her mother, the real person, and the other, the Revolution. Her mother is a heroine who, just as she works on her sewing machine to support her children, runs to save people and hurries back to knit topcoats and mend the cuffs of school uniform shirts. But “what was the poor, weak sound of that sewing machine in comparison with blasts from a cannon? How many pounds of flesh did it take in total? How many eyes and thoughts?” A strange girl to think about shootings like a nursery rhyme and speak of pounds of flesh accumulating through cadavers. Rulfo as a child also saw the sinister puppets of men hung from trees, and likewise no one ever covered Nellie’s eyes; quite the contrary, they caused them to open wider to see better. In Mis libros Nellie says: “More than 300 men shooting from behind barricades leaves a strong and profound impression, people say, but our children’s eyes found it completely normal.” Nellie makes splendid discoveries: “Jiménez is a small, dusty village. Its streets are like hungry guts.” The girl who drinks coffee with sweet bread and milk with sweet potato (curiously, Jesusa Palancares also enjoyed milk with sweet potato more than any other sweet) accepts her destiny, presided over by a marvelous mother. “My life was a multi-colored quilt.” Nellie writes rapidly, without putting much thought to style. “You have to do things more quickly. That way you will not feel fear.” What does a writer do when his childhood is a battleground? What does a girl do when her friends are men who gallop into her house in a flurry of hoofbeats? What does she do when she was born with the new century and given only a battle-scarred landscape, but also the birth of a new Mexico emerging from a Revolution where everything needs to be done, everything has to be invented, education and health, art and play, language and liberty, “the amorous love of equal partners”? For the Campobello sisters, dancing the Revolution is part of the effervescence surging in the 1920s, which fascination is still not over. Mexico was transformed into a magnet by the force and magic of its art. Mexico’s walls are potent frescoes: they exist only to be painted upon. History unfolds before the eyes of Mexicans in great images demonstrating its true identity. Not only is muralism important, also flourishing are new ways to live and to love. Miguel and Rosa Covarrubias travel throughout the republic digging into archaeological sites to prepare a collection

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out of this world. Following their book about Bali, they publish the extraordinary Mexico South. Lupe Marín is a black panther who one day after Diego Rivera does not give her money for groceries serves him a rich soup of tepalcates [shards]. Dr. Atl, Julio Castellanos, Roberto Montenegro, and Fito Best Maugard, los Contemporáneos, Rufino Tamayo, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, Juan O’Gorman, Octavio Paz, and Juan Soriano become contemporaries of all men; the 1920s and 1930s are extraordinarily fecund for Mexico. Lázaro Cárdenas [1934–1940] opens the doors to refugees from the Spanish Civil War as previously they had opened to Trotsky. The Three Great Ones attract many foreigners. Muralism is an energy center: it teaches old Europe the art of a continent which is only now emerging. Admiration is now directed to Mexico as previously to Florence, to Teotihuacán as previously to the Egyptian pyramids, to Chichén Itzá as previously to the Coliseum in Rome. The new nation that surges from the ashes, that conquered its liberty, alone and prior to the Russian Revolution, is an example to be followed.

The Writer Who Loves Her Mother Above All Mother, look this way… Mother, Mother, Mother! Las manos de Mamá

Elena Garro always spoke more of her father José Antonio Garro and of the legendary companion of her outings, Boni, than of her mother from the north, Adriana Navarro. Rosario Castellanos never felt loved by her loved ones and less so after the death of her younger brother Benjamín. “Now we no longer have someone for whom to struggle,” she heard her father César Castellanos say. Perhaps when I was born someone put in my crib a myrtle branch and it dried Perhaps that was all I had in my life of love.

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Her aversion was not so much for César Castellanos, the political authority in Comitán, Chiapas, as for Adriana, her mother. The portrait Rosario creates of her mother in the story, “Tres nudos en la red” (Three knots in the net) is a final reconciliation, although not an act of love. Adriana Castellanos died in January 1948 of stomach cancer; it is easy to recognize her mother in the manner Rosario describes her internment in the oncology hospital ward. “The Incurables section is on the eighth floor.” “Thank you.” Juliana (Adriana) again grasped the suitcase she had set on the floor and with firm and sure steps walked to the elevator.

Differently from Rosario and Elena, Nellie Campobello throws herself into her mother’s arms, blindfolded, and her surrender is unwavering. Nellie is hyperbolic, her odes are incessant. Although she appears to need no protection from the world (the world of Villa’s golden boys, the men who gather at night around the fire, and the cadavers left to one side until they smell), her entire being cries out to her mother, a strong mother whose hands know how to roll a cigarette and light it at dusk, her seamstress hands that lift hems, hands that can clench a rifle, responsible hands that care for her and her siblings. In referring to her mother, Nellie writes the word She in Italics, making her a goddess to honor her even more. She describes a marvelous woman always ready to deliver and without thought for herself. For her, it does not matter which group the soldiers are from: she considers them brothers and protects them even when they are savage enemies. “For me they are not even men,” She says, serenely. “They are like children who need me, and I offer my help. If you were in a similar place, I would be with you.” That Florence Nightingale is a generous and committed being, and Nellie asserts: “She was dedicated with true love to help the soldiers, no matter which people they were.”

Mexico, Splendidly Creative Nellie Campobello writes in an extraordinary era, the era of Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner in the US and Sigmund Freud, Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, George Orwell, Stephen Spender, and Albert Einstein in Europe. She writes in the 1920s, when Mexico is splendidly creative and

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attracts many intellectuals from other nations. Visitors include foremost writers such as D. H. Lawrence, author of The Plumed Serpent [1926] and Mornings in Mexico [1927], John Dos Passos, and a little later Hart Crane (who would jump overboard from the ship in which he was returning to the US), Jean Charlot, Pablo O’Higgins, Emily Edwards, and not to mention the archaeologists and anthropologists who were fascinated by the Maya and Aztec worlds. Malcolm Lowry set in Cuernavaca his best novel Under the Volcano. The Russian poet Mayakovsky, author of Una nube en pantalones, preceded him, and by coincidence another extraordinary Russian, Sergei Eisenstein, filmed Viva México! here, starring Isabel Villaseñor, the beautiful wife of Gabriel Fernández Ledesma. Finally, arriving in Mexico at about the same time, André Breton, who said Frida Kahlo’s work was a bomb tied in a ribbon and invited her to exhibit in Paris, in the Pierre Colle gallery, and Leon Trotsky and his wife Natalia.

A Contemporary of Extraordinary Women A contemporary of many extraordinary women, María Izquierdo, Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Lupe Marín, Nahui Olin, María Asúnsolo, Dolores del Río, and a little later, María Félix, Rosario Castellanos, Elena Garro, and Pita Amor, Nellie Campobello belongs to a Mexico which discovers itself, and in its fascination with itself beautifies others. This Mexico-divine-Narcissus, this Mexico-Ulysses-Creole, this Mexico-Prometheus unchained, a Mexico that names itself and appears on the face of the earth, Mexico in its seventh day, which without fuss begins naming the things of the earth, to see how and what they are made of, scattering them in the afternoon as Carlos Pellicer has said, like its Brother Sun, who placed the heavens above and the earth below, scattering the colossal Olmec heads like meteorites in the jungles of Tabasco. The Mexican Revolution is an original popular movement, where several women rise up and throw out furious protests ahead of any other feminist movement in Latin America. Splendid figures rise up like Concha Michel, Benita Galeana, and Magdalena Mondragón, whose works pale in comparison to their lifelong heroism. A northerner like Nellie, Magdalena Mondragón, nonconformist, makes fun of those in power with Los presidentes me dan risa [1948], banned from bookstores for being subversive. To be part of the troops means to tighten the belt, have a well-seated heart and strong character. Nellie knows she is rebellious, and if not, she intuits it. Nellie is not an activist; however, she has no political ambitions

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(the Revolution cured her of fright once and for all), nor does she desire what has been denied her. Even if during the Miguel Alemán era she was decked in jewels, they did not recognize her literary merits. Nellie then clings to her art: dance and literature, literature and dance; the macabre dance of the Revolution alongside the dance that must be created in our nation, one which mixes multiple and diverse aspects, popular dance which would become academic to reinforce a national identity with steps that originate in all regions and speak to Mexicans of zandungas and Adelitas, rhythms and sayings, the ay ay ays that moan in time with the guitar strings. Just as Concha Michel collects in one book the ballads of the entire republic, Nellie and her sister Gloriecita collect choreographies, legs and arms, their mother’s steps on earth, their mother, the essential figure of their lives: “She gave us songs and dance steps designed for us. ‘Mother, dance for me, sing, lend me your voice… I want to see you create your eternal dance for me.’ “Mother turn your head. Smile as you did before, whirling with the wind like a red poppy scattering its petals.” And this profound supplication: “And I, now a woman, dressed in white and without makeup, cry outside the door: Mother, Mother, Mother!” She tells us insistently in Las manos de Mamá that her mother is graceful: “Where are you, my dear Mother, so that I may kiss your hand? Are you in the heavens where my eyes can see? Is that your slim, graceful and vague figure, moved by the wind, over there on the glorious Segunda del Rayo street?” Her mother allowed herself to die of heartbreak at age 38, upon the sudden death of her final, blonde, and blue-eyed child.

Disappearance and Death Nellie’s two principal works are books of memories, the terrible recollections of a child who watches death pass each day below her window. Her knowledge of death is absolute and definitive. Her lessons about law come through firing squad executions and the hanging tree; her evangelists those shot and the revolutionaries who gallop through empty villages. She knows death so well that she says of a man walking down the street: “He is white from the anxiety of death.” Nellie Campobello never realized that she would not have death, that she would be denied her own death. Everyone wants to have ownership over their death; the French, for

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example, always seek a heroic death: “une belle mort” or “une mort tres douce” as Simone de Beauvoir adjudicated about her mother, or the death Goethe exclaims from his bed of agony, “Licht, mehr Licht”; even valiant acceptance in the final words of Kant: “All right.” In Mexico death is expedited, cruel, not worthy. “Whatever it sounds like.” “If they are to kill me tomorrow let them do it at once.” Nellie, however, who was extremely familiar with death, had her own death stolen from her: she could not enjoy it as she did that of the revolutionaries she viewed from her window. Nellie is finally located in 1986 [sic],3 in Hidalgo, thanks to the efforts of Irene Matthews, Raquel Peguero, Felipe Segura, and representatives from the Human Rights Commission, in a tomb with three other cadavers, after discovery of a death certificate signed by her kidnapper; the tomb marked only by a small cross and two rows of initials, for her real name Francisca Luna and for Nellie Campobello, the name she invented.

She Simply Evaporated Who cared for her? What happened to her estate? Who took the backdrops Orozco painted for the National School of Dance, her backdrop curtains, theater panels, paintings, drawings, original notes, and of the cases full of valuable jewels, her furniture, and attire? It all simply evaporated. Except for Emmanuel Carballo, who interviewed and fully embraced her, as he also did with great emotion for Elena Garro, giving her the recognition no other critics in Mexico did, in that era the critics were barely lukewarm for Nellie Campobello. That the revolutionaries were machos is highly evident. The authoritarianism that emanated from the saintly Mexican Revolution is the same machismo which permeates relations between a couple, in the household, in social and political venues. Despite the fact that Antonio Castro Leal included her in his anthology on the novel of the Revolution, published by Ediciones Aguilar, Nellie 3  This little error appears to have confused the year she died, 1986, with the year her death was finally confirmed in 1998. For 12 years her employee, who had power of attorney, would state that she was reclusive and had moved to Hidalgo and that he would get word to her. At one point he offered to lead investigators to her but then reneged. A death certificate for July 9, 1986, was signed by him as witness, and located in one village in 1998, then a search in the nearby area located her site of burial. Campobello had an extensive collection of artworks by renowned painters which also disappeared. Carlos Monsiváis stated that the last time he saw her, in 1985, she looked like a terrified child.

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Campobello has not received the attention she deserves. After all, she is the only female author of the Mexican Revolution. On a scale equal to that of the dismissal of her works, she devoted her entire energy to dance, in which she also highly excelled. In 1937, Ermilo Abreu Gómez opined that “Nellie Campobello’s book Las manos de Mamá is a little master work, somber, virtuous and profound, by one of Mexico’s best poets.” Francisco Monterde likewise found her in greater command of her technique here than in Cartucho and praised her rhythmic precision. Of course, the most enthusiastic was Martín Luis Guzmán, who judged the work a poem in prose, inspired by the devotion and image of a mother surely like many others in the realm of unknown heroism during the Revolution. Carlos González Peña also addresses the realism and beauty of that work, while José Juan Tablada judges it a barbaric, disjointed, and crude book despite its softness and moving melodies.

Hugo Margáin, Her Lover When her mother died so young, Nellie confessed: I loved her so much that I haven’t had time to pursue love myself. Of course, I have had suitors, but I am very busy with my memories.

Speaking of suitors, Hugo Margáin, a friend to both sisters, was in love with Nellie and admired her beauty and said of her in an interview I did with him on January 4, 1993: She was very attractive, very independent, very intelligent: above all intelligent. Gloriecita was not as highly intelligent. On various occasions, when we went out to ride at my father’s Copilco ranch, I discovered also that Nellie was a great horse rider. We not only visited the countryside, we also had lunch and dinner frequently. We would go out with Nellie and Gloria (they were always together), and we would go to the Regis to talk about the Revolution. Nellie always wanted to hide the fact that she was born to a single woman. She headed up her family and the siblings lived closely together in the Federal District [Mexico City] like a clan. She exerted strong power over her younger sister, Gloria, getting her to do as she wished. Gloria was very, very pretty, her mother’s daughter with a different father, but the one truly gorgeous and with a great personality was Nellie, who when they danced together did the male role: the Charro outfit, black pants and sombrero decorated in silver, looked stupendous on her.

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Segunda del Rayo Street “Nellie made me swear I would not talk about this, but now it is history. One day, after we knew each other well, she told me: ‘When I was very young I had a son, little Raúl, and that boy was the joy of our house on Segunda del Rayo, in Parral. We all loved him, my siblings, my cousins, everyone. And he died.’ She did not tell me how he died, nor did I ask, because that is too intimate. Because she was so particular, whatever she wanted to talk about I listened to, but if I interrupted, she would get irritated. Nellie came to Mexico City with Gloria.4 They participated in the Orientación theater, provided a few functions on the back patio. Our lives revolved around the Bucareli clock and its bell ringing. We also met the Campobellos at Café Colón, near the entrance to Chapultepec, and had passionate talks about the Revolution. She was a fan of the topic. Nellie frequented Lady Baltimore, to buy chocolates with nuts, and also there, over coffee, she would talk about the Revolution. When I was Secretary of Housing & Urban Development I made a commemorative medal for Pancho Villa, and the first one released I gave to her.”

Reminiscent of Guadalupe Posada Nellie was really vague about her family composition. Who are they? What are they like? How many are there? We will never know. The only one who shared history is Gloriecita, the dancer. She spoke only in passing of an older brother who at age 13 joined the Revolution against the Carranza group, whom she visited in Chihuahua at a large hospital “with lots of light and a lot of faces saying goodbye to the sun. There people could die comfortably, no one cried, there were no candles.” She spoke of another, also dead and buried after a train went off the tracks between Conchos and Chihuahua.

Little Gloria Although Nellie did everything for her sister Gloriecita and created entire ballets promoting her little sister’s talent, Felipe Segura was witness to a confrontation between the two:

4

 In 1923, upon her mother’s death.

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I hate her, I hate her with my entire being. Throughout life she has manipulated me. Since I was a girl, I always had to do what she asked. I was so afraid of horses and yet had to become a horsewoman, until one day I was thrown and almost killed. Only then did she understand that I hate horses. Now I have told her I no longer want to dance.

In 1929 Gloriecita was ranked among the ten most beautiful women in the world; she danced for the last time in 1958 and died at age 57, following Mauro Luna Moya, Nellie’s favorite brother.

A Barbarous Death Where others collect nursery rhymes, Nellie archived images of the Revolution in her precocious child’s mind. In the manner of José Guadalupe Posada, Nellie captured the combatants at their worst moment—that of the disjointed, final expression: “If men knew they inspire pain in their last position, they would not allow themselves to be killed.” What Nellie never foresaw is that she would not die, no one would stop at her threshold of agony, she would not find her own place in the ground, no burial, no one would claim her body. There is as much barbarism in her death as there was in the Revolution. That is why Irene Matthews’s book, Nellie Campobello, la Centaura del Norte, transcends, because it resurrects an author whose whereabouts were unknown for years. If Nellie were a man, Mexico would never have permitted one of its novelists to just disappear like that. In 1985, Patricia Rosales Zamora asked furiously in Excélsior: “Where are you, Nellie Campobello?” Years would pass before we women could receive the disconsolate and indignant response.

Twelve Years of Silence About Her Death Dr. Irene Matthews has unique resolve that leaves one impressed. She took very personally Nellie’s disappearance and death and would not desist in seeking answers. A feminist, the dismissal of so many Spanish-language women writers in our nation has always infuriated her, and in Nellie’s case she did nearly the impossible: she appealed constantly to Human Rights, visited courts, consulted attorneys and litigants, alerted journalists, and fought tirelessly, although Irene is neither authoritarian nor aggressive. Few smiles are as impressive as that of Irene Matthews, although

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sometimes it takes time to bloom on her face. English (“Scottish,” Irene corrects), her smile is especially significant when it is directed toward the sun hidden behind the clouds. “Sun, where are you? Why don’t you come out?” Then she lifts her face to the sky and smiles at it, and the spectacle is enchanting. In Mexico she stopped smiling and alongside the tireless Raquel Peguero she would not rest until they were able to capture the sinister Claudio Cifuentes—spouse to Cristina Belmont, a student of Nellie’s at the National School of Dance—who gave himself the authority to kidnap and bury her, without alerting anyone, in a common tomb in the Progreso Obregón municipality of Hidalgo, engraving only: “Miss NC FML, 9 July 1986.” This was the final resting place-without-rest of Francisca Ernestina Moya Luna, known to relatives and friends as Nellie Campobello. What were the connections between Irene Matthews, a young, full-­ time professor at a university in the US, and Nellie Campobello? Irene translated her work and because of that visited her in the dangerous labyrinth of her home in 1979.5 Nellie introduced her to her 25 cats, among them Pancho Villa, an old, ugly one; she showed her not only the book of her life but also how to sing and dance. Irene rescued her and conducted the final known interviews with her. The novelist, very alone, felt comforted by the homage paid by the professor after so much time and space. In Mexico, the artistic world paid no attention to Nellie. Once, toward the end of the 1950s, Juan Soriano, who is mischievous, told me that the Campobello sisters would bathe naked in the Alameda fountain. I related this in an article published in Novedades, and immediately the magazine received an explosive letter declaring it was not true and that I was a spoiled brat. My irreverence cost me the possibility of an interview with her. That is why I was very pleased that Irene Matthews repaired in some ways my lack of forethought. Years later, Irene found her in bed, very sick, weak, and suffering from lack of care. I accompanied Irene to Ezequiel Montes Street #128. We were not able to enter. “Terrible things are happening,” she told me. “This is a horror film.” Visible from the front gate, sealed with several locks and rusted chains, was only a pile of ashes, rags, pieces of broken furniture, an empire in ruins, much like the large celebratory poster faded by the rain and sun marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the National School of Dance. 5

 In Mexico City’s historic center.

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Doberman dogs prevented any entry. Therefore, in 1995, Judge Margarita Guerra y Tejada issued an order to police to shoot them if they attacked. The first floor, with rooms separated by curtains, was a total disaster. And it was impossible to go up the stairs as there were rats and filth on the steps. Irene had already seen that the house was in terrible shape when she visited Nellie in 1979, but now she was seized by fright to confirm its total ruin.

Machete Pando “When Nellie danced they called her Machete Pando,”6 Juan Soriano remembers, “because she was graceful, and because each year she went to the stadium to do the same dance, one day only, for the Olympic games, on a large platform, she at the lead with a torch she lifted into the air. After so much lifting she became bent over. She danced well, she was gorgeous. One day she performed it in Bellas Artes, but since she was unaccustomed to doing the performance in such a small space, when she whirled and thought she was facing the public, she had her back to them. That mistake caused her great sadness.” Her school of dance was for large groups and the girls danced on giant stages. They were like gymnasts. They could hang from poles and trees and everything, making their vertebrae column crooked after time. The great weights they lifted were like rocks for burial. What a world!

Pancho Villa, Horrific Assassin “Nellie was very strong,” Soriano continues, “much more so than Gloriecita. She liked being a descendant of Pancho Villa, a tremendous bandit and horrifying killer like fictional characters in books. That Centaur was the father of dozens of children by many women. Afterward he would abandon his extensive progeny, but they called themselves ‘Daughters of Pancho Villa.’ One of those was Nellie Campobello. Her sister Gloria was selected by Orozco and was the only beautiful woman he had because his wife was horrible and hardly let him breathe.”

6

 Female machete perhaps. “Pando” can also mean trembling giant.

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Followers of Ulysses by Joyce and Those of Panchito Chapopote There were two groups, one was Los Contemporáneos, those who followed André Gide, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, the French movement and the Irishman, James Joyce, who transformed literature with his Ulysses. [Soriano again] The other group was that of Diego Rivera and the revolutionaries who dressed as miners or mechanics, in overalls, with five-year-plan galoshes, who were dying to go to Moscow to die. Can you imagine? For them, Karl Marx was the ultimate. And yet they never read him. I read a few of Marx’s books and found them, in part, boring, in part, naïve, and in part, sad. They described a world in which everyone was going to live happy because everything was going to be taken away, down to their underwear and those ugly shoes. The group of nationalists read things by revolutionaries who really were not, and they followed that other great mistake: José Vasconcelos. If we men were so off base, imagine now the women: they were whistling tops spinning without knowing where to look and that is what happened to Nellie Campobello.

To Contemplate the World Despite her sturdy personality, her importance to the Mexican dance movement, despite being a member of the generation of writers of the Revolution, Nellie never received the recognition that would have stimulated her writing vocation. Had that occurred, she would not have lived apart from the community of writers. The cruelty which marked her youth enveloped her again in her old age. “Nellie Campobello,” Emmanuel Carballo wrote, “resides in a distinct and distant space from that inhabited by a majority of Mexican writers. She is in the region of Grace. She contemplates the world with newborn eyes. She preserves the candor and generosity of her early years, the expansive happiness of childhood.” It was to Emmanuel Carballo that Nellie said: To love the people is not simply to holler with them at patriotic events, to make a brave gala of kissing a sugar skull, to upset a horse, or gulp down half a bottle of tequila. To love our people is to teach them the alphabet, to guide them toward beautiful things, for example, respect for life, for their

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own life and naturally, the lives of others, to teach them which are their rights and how to obtain those rights. In sum, to teach with truth, by example, the great example bequeathed by great Mexicans, those illustrious Mexicans who have not been given their due. Could it be because we have not had time? Because we ignore them? We could even ask: Why don’t we know?

“She is exceptional and prodigious,” reflects Carballo.

Index1

A Agacino, Eugenio, 19, 89, 101, 107, 109 Agosín, Marjorie, 4, 43 Ahern, Maureen, 36, 43 Alarcón, Norma, 36, 36n52, 43 Alemán, Miguel, 120, 185, 191 Álvarez Bravo, Lola, 2, 11, 12, 14n15, 70, 71, 75, 76, 79, 80, 86, 93, 101–103 Amor, Carolina “Carito,” 23, 23n28, 114, 121, 125, 129 Amor, Guadalupe “Pita,” 3–4, 22–25, 23n30, 37, 111–131, 137, 154, 190 Décimas a Diós, 118 Otro libro de amor, 118 Polvo, 118 Sirviéndole a Diós de hoguera, 123 Yo soy mi casa, 23

Amor, Inés, 12–13, 23, 23n28, 70, 83, 115 Arreola, Juan José, 48 Artaud, Antonin, 3, 12, 79–81, 84, 86, 98 Asúnsolo, María, 52, 86 Ávila Camacho, Manuel, 185 Azuela, Mariano, 38, 179 B Ballet folclórico, 3, 37, 38, 38n57 Beauvoir, Simone, de, 32, 32n45, 36, 154, 192 Beltrán, Lola, 47 Bioy Casares, Adolfo, 29, 139 Borges, Jorge Luis, 29 Brenner, Anita, 2n1 Breton, André, 6, 10n10, 12, 63, 190 Buñuel, Luis, 47

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. C. Martínez (ed.), The Women of Mexico’s Cultural Renaissance, Literatures of the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11177-8

201

202 

INDEX

C Calles, Plutarco Elías, 42 Campobello, Nellie, 3, 4, 7, 37–41, 38n58, 43, 53, 70, 118–120, 149, 120, 154, 171–199 Apuntes sobre la vida militar de Pancho Villa, 40, 177–178, 180 Cartucho, 38–39, 180–186, 181n2 Las manos de mamá, 40, 172, 181–182, 187, 188, 191, 193 Mis libros, 40, 187 Ritmos indígenas de México, 40, 173 Tres poemas, 40 ¡Yo!, 174–176 Cano, Gabriela, 33, 34, 34n51 Cárdenas, Lázaro, 5, 38, 188 Carranza, Venustiano, 18n20 Carrington, Leonora, 2, 53–54, 148, 190 Castellanos, Rosario, 3, 4, 7, 25n31, 31–37, 32n45, 32n46, 32n49, 33n48, 34n51, 36n52, 50–52, 145, 148, 153–170, 188–190 Al pie de la letra, 165 Apuntes para una declaración de fe, 165 Balún canán, 33, 159, 165 Cartas a Ricardo, 155–156, 155n1 Ciudad real, 33, 159 “Cooking Lesson,” 36, 36n53 De la vigilia estéril, 165 El rescate del mundo, 165 Judith y Salomé, 165 La vida de Santa Teresa, 165 Lívida luz, 165 Los adioses (film), 33 Los convidados de agosto, 165 Oficio de tinieblas, 165 Poemas, 165 Rito de iniciación, 33n47 Sobre cultura femenina, 3, 32, 34n51, 36n52, 50, 52, 145, 148, 149, 188, 190 Trayectoria del polvo, 165

Cisneros, Sandra, 49n2 Conde, Teresa del, 8, 16, 44 Contemporáneos, los, 16, 16n17, 18n19, 41, 188, 198 Costa, Olga, 2, 12, 76 Cuesta, Jorge, 41, 54, 75 Cypess, Messenger, Sandra, 30, 30n40, 44 D Dávila Valero, Patricia, 41 Deffebach, Nancy, 6n6, 11, 13n12, 14, 16, 44 Del Rio, Dolores, 47, 52, 70, 190 Díaz, Porfirio, 13n14, 17, 18n20, 38n56 Díaz Ordaz, Gustavo, 28, 29n36 Dickinson, Emily, 32 Dr. Atl (Gerardo Murillo), 18–19, 18n20, 21, 37, 89, 90, 92, 94–95, 97–101, 105, 109, 118, 120, 154, 175, 188 Duchamp, Marcel, 10n10 E Einstein, Albert, 17, 189 Escuela Mexicana (muralist movement), 2 Esquivel, Laura, 7 F Félix, María, 23, 47, 118–120, 127, 190 Ferrer, Elizabeth, 8, 16 Figueroa, Gabriel, 47, 52 Fournier, Dr. Raoul, 23n28, 89, 91, 93, 105, 125, 129 Franco, Jean, 6, 44 Fuentes, Carlos, 9, 10, 44, 48, 48n1, 49, 51, 55, 141, 180

 INDEX 

G Gabriel, Juan, 47 Gallo, Erin, 36, 44 García Lorca, Federico, 37, 124, 176 García Márquez, Gabriel, 27, 29, 44, 49, 49n5, 54, 55 Garduño, Antonio, 19, 89, 100 Garduño, Blanca, 21, 105 Garro, Elena, 3, 7, 25–31, 26n33, 28n35, 29n37, 30n41, 37, 44, 51, 70, 118–119, 133–151, 154, 180, 188, 190, 192 Andamos huyendo, Lola, 133, 134, 140, 144 El hogar sólido, 140 Inés, 137, 140 La casa junto al río, 140 La culpa es de los Tlaxcaltecas, 27, 30n41, 135, 142–143 La semana de colores, 30n41, 135, 140, 142, 149, 188, 190, 192 Los recuerdos del porvenir, 3, 27, 134, 139, 140, 143, 144n1, 146, 149 Memorias de España, 29 Reencuentro de personajes, 136, 137, 140 Testimonios sobre Mariana, 137, 139, 140 Greeley, Robin Adele, 16 Gutiérrez, Leonor, 20 Guzmán, Martín Luis, 38–39, 40n62, 154, 177–180, 181n2, 186 H Herrera, Hayden, 7n7, 9, 44 Hughes, Langston, 37 Huerta, Victoriano, 17, 18n20, 186

203

I Izquierdo, María, 1–3, 6, 6n6, 8, 12–16, 13n12, 13n13, 14n15, 37, 69–87, 108, 118, 130, 154, 190 J Jorgensen, Beth, 4 K Kahlo, Frida, 1, 6n6, 7n7, 8–13, 10n10, 13n14, 15n16, 16, 17, 37, 40n61, 41, 42, 51, 53, 57–67, 73, 108, 118, 154, 190 L Lindauer, Margaret, 7n7, 44 Lozano, Luis Martín, 8, 16, 44 Lugones, Leopoldo, 18 M Madero, Francisco I., 17, 93 Madrazo, Carlos, 28–29, 29n36, 147 Madrazo, José, 24, 125, 154 Malvido, Adriana, 17n18, 45, 89, 98, 107, 109 Marín, Guadalupe “Lupe,” 3, 3n2, 41–42, 54, 70, 97, 99, 118, 120, 190 La única, 3n2 Un día patrio, 41–42 Mastretta, Ángeles, 7 Matthews, Irene, 40–41, 45, 181n2, 195–197 Matisse, 17

204 

INDEX

Meade, Julie, 17n18 Melgar, Lucía, 28, 45 Michel, Concha, 41–42, 105, 190, 191 Mistral, Gabriela, 24, 32, 36 Mitchell, Stephanie, 5n4, 45 Modotti, Tina, 2, 2n1, 7, 41–43, 51, 73, 74, 77, 82, 83, 97, 99, 108, 120 Mondragón, Carmen, née Nahui Olin, 1, 17, 18, 93, 97 Monsiváis, Carlos, 4, 55, 134, 148, 192n3 Mora, Gabriela, 28 Mujer moderna (earliest Mexican feminist magazine), 5 Mullen, Claire, 18n21 Murillo, Gerardo, see “Dr. Atl” N Nahui Olin (Carmen Mondragón), 1, 3, 6–8, 17, 19–23, 23n28, 23n30, 25, 37, 41, 89–109, 118–120, 131, 190 Bonilla, Juan, Totalidad sexual del cosmos (about Nahui Olin), 22 Energía cósmica, 20 manifesto, 6, 103 Nahui (film), 22 Óptica cerebral, 19, 99 Neruda, Pablo, 83, 124 Nissán, Rosa, 51 Novo, Salvador, 24, 97, 118, 124 O Orozco, José Clemente, 6, 18n20, 38–41, 62, 63, 75, 76, 90, 108, 116, 181n2, 192 Ortega y Gasset, José, 23n29

P Pacheco, José Emilio, 55 Paz, Octavio, 3, 26–31, 27n34, 32n45, 34n51, 51, 70, 124, 133–135, 140, 141, 144–145, 146n3, 148, 154, 188 Pedroza, Liliana, 26, 26n33, 31, 45 Pellicer, Carlos, 10, 58, 118, 190 Picasso, 17, 189 Pitol, Sergio, 27, 55 Plath, Sylvia, 35 Poniatowska, Elena, 1, 4, 6–10, 12–16, 19, 21–30, 34–35, 37–43, 42n66, 45, 47–55, 149 Ay vida, no me mereces, 34, 51 Cuentos de Lilus Kikus, 49n4 Dos veces única, 41n64, 54 El universo o nada, De la tierra al cielo, El amante polaco, 54 Guerrero viejo, Las soldaderas, Juan Soriano, niño de mil años, Las mil y una…la herida de Paulina, 52 Hasta no verte, Jesús mío, 50 La flor de Lis, 51 La noche de Tlatelolco, Querido Diego, De noche vienes, Gaby Brimmer, Fuerte es el silencio, Domingo siete, El último guajalote, 50 Las siete cabritas, 7, 9, 45 Lilus Kikus, 45, 48 Nada, Nadie, las voces del temblor, Tinísima, Las mujeres de Juchitán, Paseo de la reforma, Las palabras del árbol, Mexican Color, 51 Palabras cruzadas, Todo empezó el Domingo, 49n3 Tlapalería, La piel del cielo, Amanecer en el zócalo, El tren

 INDEX 

pasa primero, Rondas de la niña mala, La colonia Rubén Jaramillo, Leonora, 53 Posadas, Cándido, 13, 13n13, 70–72, 154 Puig, Manuel, 21 R Reyes, Alfonso, 47, 120, 123, 124, 127, 128, 181 Reyes, Aurora, 2, 15n16, 82 Rivera, Diego, 2, 2n1, 6, 9, 13, 13n14, 15, 16, 18, 39, 42, 58, 62, 65, 70, 72, 76, 77, 82, 85, 89, 90, 97, 99, 105, 109, 116, 118, 120, 188, 198 Gerdes, Dick,Tr., Diego Rivera the Red, 42n65 Rivera, Diego, Studio/ Museum, 21, 105 Rockefeller, David, 16 Rockefeller, J.D., 42 Rodríguez Lozano, Manuel, 17, 18, 18n19, 21n24, 89, 93–94, 105, 154, 188 Rosas Lopátegui, Patricia, 22, 28, 28n35, 29n37, 45, 150 Rulfo, Juan, 27, 51, 140, 180 S Santa Teresa/Saint Teresa, 32, 34, 36, 161 Schuessler, Michael, 24–25, 45, 131 Schell, Patience A., 5n4, 45 Siqueiros, David Alfaro, 6–7, 15, 16n17, 18n20, 21n24, 62, 76, 82, 90, 109, 116 Soriano, Juan, 16n17, 70, 73, 75, 76, 79, 84, 94, 95, 102, 107, 116, 118, 120, 128, 188, 197 Stellweg, Carla, 7n7, 9, 46

205

T Tamayo, Rufino, 13, 16n17, 78–79, 84, 118, 154, 188 Tibol, Raquel, 7n7, 10, 46 Trotsky, Leon, 6, 64, 188, 190 U Usigli, Rodolfo, 26, 150, 150n5 V Vasconcelos, José, 3, 37–38, 38n55, 70, 73, 90, 98, 118, 179 Villa, Pancho, 37, 40, 41, 43, 177, 186, 197 Villaseñor, Isabel, 2, 12, 105, 108, 190 Villaurrutia, Xavier, 75, 81, 84, 118, 124, 127, 133, 162 Villaurrutia Award, 33, 35 W Weil, Simone, 32, 36, 154, 176 Weston, Edward, 2n1, 19, 21, 41, 73, 74, 77, 89, 97, 99, 120 Womack, John, 114 Woolf, Virginia, 32, 36, 154, 156–158, 189 Y Yampolsky, Mariana, 53 Z Zabludovsky, Jacobo, 24, 127 Zea, Leopoldo, 34n50, 148 Zurián, Tomás, 21–22, 22n25, 89, 90, 98, 105, 108, 109