John Mraz is a Research Professor with the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades at Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla, Mexico. He is the author of Nacho Lopez, Mexican Photographer and La Mirada Inquieta: Nuevo fotoperiodismo mexicano, 1976–1996 and a co-author of Uprooted: Braceros in the Hermanos Mayo Lens.

LOOKING for MEXICO

Modern Visual Culture and National IdentityBy John Mraz

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2009 Duke University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-4429-2

Contents

Author’s Note……………………………………………………………………………………..ixAcknowledgments……………………………………………………………………………………xiIntroduction………………………………………………………………………………………1ONE War, Portraits, Mexican Types, and Porfirian Progress (1847-1910)…………………………………..13TWO Revolution and Culture (1910-1940)………………………………………………………………59THREE Cinema and Celebrities in the Golden Age……………………………………………………….107FOUR Illustrated Magazines, Photojournalism, and Historia grfica (1940-1968)……………………………153FIVE New Ocular Cultures and the Old Battle to Visualize the Past and Present (1968-2007)…………………201Notes…………………………………………………………………………………………….251Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………………309Index…………………………………………………………………………………………….333

Chapter One

WAR, PORTRAITS, MEXICAN TYPES, AND PORFIRIAN PROGRESS (1840-1910)

Modern visual culture began to appear in Mexico around the same time as an event that was definitive for national identity. The invasion and occupation of Mexico from 1846 to 1848 was a determinant step toward U.S. hegemony and Mexico’s underdevelopment; coincidentally, it was also the onset of today’s hypervisual world. The Mexican War (or “North American Intervention,” as it is called south of the border) was the first conflict in the world to be documented in both lithographs and photographs, harbingers of the mass communications that dominate contemporary existence.

Since 1848, the United States has represented the most powerful foreign influence over Mexico, which is essentially a neocolony of its great northern neighbor. Although the United States usually determines Mexico’s political arrangements through economic forces rather than direct military intervention, war established Mexico’s subaltern status; the country was dismembered and lost half of its territory, an area encompassing present-day California, Texas, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, most of Colorado, and parts of Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Even today Mexicans feel this loss, though they often turn it into a typically ironic and self-deprecating jest, which demonstrates the remarkable blend of resentment, admiration, and distrust they feel for “Americans.” It is not uncommon to hear Mexicans joke that the gringos not only took half of Mexico, they took the best half: that which is paved with super highways, populated by booming modern cities, and flourishing with irrigated agriculture.

U.S. readers eagerly awaited the latest eyewitness accounts from the front, and newspapers engaged in an intense competition to satisfy them. At the same time, technological innovations in lithography created a medium that reached a broad audience with increasingly credible images. The number of lithographs of the Mexican War is considerable, but those made of the country’s veritable nucleus, Mexico City’s central plaza, the Zcalo, illustrate the different ways in which this struggle was represented. U.S. lithographs of the entry into the Zcalo by General Winfield Scott and his army generally showed the occupying army being greeted as liberators: one (by Christiane Schuessele) depicted the streets filled with prosperous Mexicans cheering the invaders and waving U.S. flags, while the orderly ranks paraded by with arms sheathed, receiving the benedictions; another (by Christian Mayr) included well-attired Mexican women who hailed the invaders with their handkerchiefs from the balconies, as General Scott tipped his befeathered headdress in acknowledgment.

The backgrounds for these lithographs were copied from an earlier cityscape of the Zcalo, realized by Carl Nebel in 1836. Nebel was a German artist who traveled throughout Mexico from 1829 to 1834 and either continued to live in Mexico City or returned during the U.S. occupation. In his rendition of “Genl. Scott’s Entrance into Mexico,” Nebel provided quite a different image, which probably comes closest to capturing the tense hostility between Mexicans and U.S. forces during the invasion. The streets are empty of the Mexican families that appeared in the Schuessele and Mayr lithographs, while U.S. troops mill about on alert. In the foreground, a “lpero,” a metonym for those groups of indigents that harassed the occupying army, prepares to throw a stone at the entourage that, sabers drawn, guards General Scott; above, Mexican snipers peer down from the roof at the invading army. Cannons have been drawn up to put down any popular uprising, and those Mexicans not actively resisting look on largely from behind windows and curtains. It is difficult to say whether Nebel’s depiction was the result of his on-the-spot observations of relations between Mexicans and U.S. soldiers or expressed the sympathies he may have developed for a country he had visited at length.

It is also interesting to ask whether Nebel’s view was shared by George Wilkins Kendall, a U.S. newspaper editor and correspondent who invited Nebel to make this lithograph (and eleven others) for the work in which they originally appeared, War between the United States and Mexico Illustrated, published in 1851. Kendall had founded a leading penny press newspaper, the Picayune, which was a “fervent organ for annexation and expansion at the expense of Mexico.” However, despite his imperial enthusiasm, he was caught up in the reigning obsession for eyewitness accuracy, which led competing newspapers to claim their articles were “daguerreotype reports.” Kendall went to Mexico during the war, and his experiences there must have convinced him of the hostility felt toward the invaders, though he may also have felt the necessity to include some measure of resistance in order to establish his credibility. The strategy worked, at least in the United States, where the images were universally lauded for their truthful and impartial representation-“with the faithfulness of a daguerreotype reflection”-and are today considered to be the most authoritative of the Mexican War lithographs.

We do not know what Mexicans in 1851 might have thought of Nebel’s rendering of Scott’s entrance, but recent commentaries indicate that they are sensitive about it. One scholar, Fabiola Garca Rubio, is disturbed by its widespread use in primary school textbooks throughout the nation. Though Garca Rubio acknowledges the shortage of Mexican images of the war, she nonetheless is bothered by the complacent and uncritical way in which this image is employed as an illustration for children’s history books. She asks whether the editors have really looked closely at this picture of the U.S. flag flying over the Zcalo and insists that this is not a positive vision of Mexican history. The cartoonist Rafael Barajas (“El Fisgn,” the Snooper) also finds the image disturbing. He depicted President Felipe Caldern (2006-12) sleeping soundly, his dream bubble filled with the Nebel lithograph as a representation of the “Plan Mexico” that would tie the country even closer to the United States. It should be noted that both Barajas’s reproduction and Garca Rubio’s analysis omit reference to the lpero‘s resistance.

In 1848, a recognized Mexican lithographer, Plcido Blanco, produced a book, Apuntes para la historia de la guerra entre Mxico y los Estados Unidos. However, Blanco appears to take no side in the conflict, and the images are conventional portraits of Mexican and U.S. military commanders, as well as battle maps. To find pictures depicting an active response to the invasion, we must turn to some that are much less sophisticated than those made by lithographers such as Nebel or Blanco. Attributed to Abraham Lpez, two tiny prints that were published in calendarios, a sort of almanac, offer the view from underneath. In the first, “El Pueblo apedrea los Carros” (The people stone the wagons), we see the representation of an 1847 incident in which a U.S. caravan was attacked by Mexicans in the Zcalo. A year later, Lpez published another small image depicting a scene in the main square, “Los azotes dados por los Americanos” (Whipping by the Americans), which showed the public punishment of a man who had attempted to kill a U.S. soldier. The flogging evidently produced greater resistance, for the gathered crowd began to throw stones; U.S. dragoons then attacked and dispersed them.

Daguerreotypes were widely known by the time of the Mexican War, for they began to arrive in Mexico and the United States in 1839, shortly after their invention in France. Though they were unique, one-of-a-kind images that could not be reproduced, they became the first popular form of photography, and the invading U.S. forces were accompanied by itinerant photographers, who were among the thousands of their countrymen who seized the business opportunities offered by military occupations. The daguerreotypists made pictures of the soldiers as souvenirs, as well as photos that could be sold to lithographers and transformed into publishable prints; these images are the first photographs of war made in the world. Most of the few surviving daguerreotypes appear to have been taken in or near Saltillo, while U.S. forces occupied that city during 1847 and 1848. There are some interesting exterior images of mounted troops and foot soldiers, but the bulk of the daguerreotypes are studio portraits of officers who gaze off at an angle, indifferent to the camera and spectators, assuming the pose of Matthew Brady’s “Illustrious Americans.”

Among the daguerreotypes made by U.S. photographers, that of a “Mexican Family” (as it is identified on the back) is singular (see figure 1). If Mexico was soon to become a favorite spot for those photographers seeking picturesque views, there is nothing exotic about this image! Eleven people have been assembled for the picture: five women, four adolescent boys, a young girl, and an obscured figure that appears to be an older man. The absence of adult males is significant: they probably made themselves scarce in Saltillo, because they were either suspected of serving in the resistance or were actually involved in it. And the variety of poses also makes the image far from what would be a typical family photograph. At the picture’s center, the oldest adolescent assumes a defiant pose and returns the camera’s gaze, while the young girl next to him seems to share his attitude, hands on her hips and her elbows akimbo. Three adolescent males slouch and appear to fidget. Three of the women sit in neutral face-on postures, though another woman assumes a classic pose for paintings, pretending to be reading a book. One woman holds a hand to her face, perhaps ashamed to be appearing in the scene. In general, they seem to be an uncooperative group, and the reports of atrocities committed against the Mexican population by U.S. troops in the Saltillo area may account for their apparent discomfort. The fact that most of the participants look back at the camera may reflect an ignorance of the portrait conventions followed by a substantial majority of the posing U.S. officers in other Mexican War daguerreotypes, who face away at an angle. However, the returned gaze may also represent a sense of identity expressed through resistance.

The war’s most intriguing daguerreotype, and probably the first instance of a directed “photojournalistic” scene, was produced by a Mexican surgeon, Pedro Vander Linden, to recreate his role in the conflict. The doctor was in the midst of amputating a soldier’s leg when his position was overrun by U.S. forces, and he wrote a scintillating text about the experience that was published in the official government journal just three weeks afterward. There he described how honor would not allow him to abandon a man in the middle of amputating his leg, although the rain of cannon fire made death seem inevitable. When U.S. soldiers arrived, they were at the point of shooting him. However, as he dramatically narrated it, “I don’t know what emotion led me to throw myself in front of their rifles, showing my hands dripping with blood and holding a piece of the amputated leg. I shouted, ‘Respect humanity. We are surgeons.’ My words were like magic. An officer appeared from among them, who raised their rifles with his sword, and those men were from then on our friends and protectors. They brought me wounded from both sides, and we treated them, as is required by humanity and our regulations.”

It is unclear when Pedro Vander Linden restaged this scene, and the daguerreotype did not appear with the text (it was not possible to publish photographs in periodicals until the 1890s). He probably realized it relatively soon after the incident, though there is no reason to assume that “it must have been reconstructed only hours after the battle,” as Olivier Debroise asserts. Rather, the soldiers’ clean dress uniforms-Vander Linden wears medals!-and faces that show little sign of battle fatigue would seem to indicate that the doctor wrote up his report quickly but waited to pose the daguerreotype. Moreover, the sergeant’s stump has no bandage to stem the bleeding and appears to be healed. The image was made in collaboration with a U.S. daguerreotypist, because Vander Linden was taken prisoner at the battle of Cerro Gordo. He was forced to remain with the U.S. forces as a doctor until he left Mexico accused of treason, probably because he had been a favorite of Santa Anna, who fell with the U.S. victory. Hence, one imagines that both the picture and the text were motivated by his need to project his commitment to Mexico, especially as a foreigner.

The “prodigious exactitude” with which the daguerreotype portrayed the visible world signaled the onset of a culture built around the credibility of technical images. However, because they were prohibitively expensive for more than 95 percent of the population, and each picture was unique (non-reproducible), they did not enter into the mass circulation that later formats would enjoy. Daguerreotype cameras arrived in Veracruz in December of 1839, introduced by a French resident of Mexico, Louis Prlier, who eventually had to auction them off for want of buyers. Photography was brought into Mexico by foreign owners of stores that sold a wide variety of European luxury items to the upper class. Most of its early practitioners were also foreigners, itinerant photographers who traveled about the country making portraits for a limited market of wealthy clients. Perhaps photography can best be seen as one of the importations of modernity, another expression of the desire to join those on the cutting edge.

A leading liberal thinker, Mariano Otero, expressed the fascination with photography of those who wished to transform Mexico: “The national representation should be the image of society, taken by a daguerreotype.” Unfortunately, in a country of enormous inequalities, many were excluded from the picture by its price. In the early 1840s, a daguerreotype could cost from two to sixteen pesos, depending upon its size, when the monthly wage for a housekeeper was around eight to ten pesos, and that of a chambermaid was about four to five pesos. As in the rest of Latin America, the absence of a middle sector in Mexico greatly reduced the amateur image makers who might have taken the landscapes, panoramas, and urban views so characteristic of early photography in Europe and the United States, as well as clients to whom the professionals could have sold such pictures. Apparently, most Mexican daguerreotypes were portraits, and they were almost always of the well-off, dressed in European styles, though one or another surviving image presents us with men attired in the charro clothing favored by hacendados, and women who cover themselves with traditional Mexican rebozos (shawls). Although the cost of photography dropped quickly, first with the ambrotype and then sharply with the carte-de-visite, about the only way a working woman could be in an early daguerreotype was as a nursemaid holding a child. In that case, the portrait was obviously not of her, and her necessary but accidental presence was sometimes resolved by covering her with a sheet.

Tarjetas de visita and other French Invasions

The tarjeta de visita (carte de visite) marked the real ascendance of modern visual culture in Mexico, as it did throughout those parts of the world to which it arrived. Combining the credibility of the daguerreotype with mass production and wide circulation, this medium launched technical images into the very center of social existence, where they created the celebrity, constructed a bourgeois self-image of elegant modernity, and prettied up the lower classes; they also documented the poor, the prostituted, and the imprisoned. Invented in France by Andr Adolph Disdri during the early 1850s, the diminutive (2 1/2 4 inch), cartes de visite were made by four-lensed machines that could record quadruple images or take them in rapid succession. The glass negatives were printed on paper, mounted on cardboard, and cut into individual pictures. Unskilled labor played a major role in photography for the first time, and prices were greatly reduced: a dozen cartes de visite cost less than a single daguerreotype, and they could be reproduced by the thousands.

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