Exhibition at the Diego Rivera Mural Museum addresses the long-standing debate about miscegenation

When writing the novel Franco’s spy (2019), the historian and art critic Luis Rius Caso returned to the controversies that existed in the 40s and 50s about miscegenation and, for many, its poor assimilation. The book revolves around the murder of José Gallostra, who had been here for two years as an unofficial minister of Francoist Spain when, on February 20, 1950, he was shot to death on a street in Mexico City.

The controversy surrounding miscegenation reached a fever pitch with the rediscovery in 1946 of the remains of Hernán Cortés in the church of Jesús Nazareno, attached to the Hospital de Jesús, and then the discovery in 1949 of the tomb of Cuauhtémoc thanks to a document supposedly signed by the Franciscan friar Motolinía, which described the location of the burial, which agreed with the oral tradition of the town of Ixcateopan, Guerrero. Both sources indicated that the remains of the last tlatoani They were under the altar of the church of Santa María de la Asunción in said community.

Such an atmosphere gave rise to On the bones of Cuauhtémoc and Hernán Cortes: Diego Rivera and the great debate on Mexicanness, exhibition of nearly a hundred pieces, including oil paintings, drawings, documents, photographs, graphic works, prints, sculptures, publications and a film, mounted at the Diego Rivera Mural Museum (MMDR). The exhibition is based on two core topics: the construction of Mexican identity and the memory of the past that is resignified in successive presents, which blame it or review it critically.

For Rius Caso, curator of the exhibition, it is about showing all postures regarding this controversy that was fueled because in the 1940s there came a kind of revision of What the Mexican Revolution left us. Many historians even go back to Independence, whose effectiveness is questioned. Thence, They go until the Conquest, saying that evil has come since then. That discussion already existed; then they find the bones.

In this controversy, Diego Rivera was one of the protagonists, with images and words, as evidenced by the exhibition. The muralist, who was anti-Hispanist, had expressed his position for some time, as can be seen in The Insurgentan independent publication (found in the artist’s archive at the Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo), which apparently only saw the light between 1936 and 1937. Rius Caso was director of the venue, as well as the MMDR, from 2013 to 2019 .

Apart from the newspaper, there are other materials in the archive very rareas “residues of records of Spanish hymns, such as that of the Legion founded by Millan Astray, titled The groom of death. This shows that Diego was interested in studying Spanish to be against it. Other discs have the Song of the phalanxperformed by military choirs, as well as the song The death of Manoletecouplets by Miguel de Molina, pasodobles and flamenco,” notes the researcher.

Unreleased material

The exhibition includes material between unpublished and little known. It documents, for example, with photographs, the trip that Rivera made to Ixcateopan with the objective of reviewing the find from her friend, the archaeologist Eulalia Guzmán: Diego goes crazy with happiness and says that yes, they are the bones of Cuauhtémoc. For me it had a decisive influence. In the images you can see how Rivera rebuild the skeleton Even He asked that the detractors be shot as traitors: in the back.

After the rediscovery of the remains of Cortés, a fact that caused anger in many MexicansRivera painted the mural in 1947 Dream of a Sunday afternoon in Alameda Centralin which he portrays the conqueror with blood-stained hands. The work was originally done for the Hotel del Prado, a building damaged in the 1985 earthquakes and later demolished. A year later, the mural was moved to the MMDR, built expressly to house it. In the mural group that Rivera made for the National Palace he represented a Cortés syphilitic.

Visions

The muralist’s position contrasts with that of his colleagues of the time, such as José Clemente Orozco, who was panhispanista or David Alfaro Siqueiros, who makes a symbiosis of both inheritances to create a new mexican. The visions of personalities such as José Chávez Morado, Jorge González Camarena, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, Leopoldo Méndez, Alberto Beltrán are also presented, without forgetting those of contemporary artists such as Daniel Lezama, Gustavo Monroy and Érik Pérez.

Vicente Rojo is also present, but not the abstract and geometric painter of series such as Signs o Mexico in the rainbut one semifigurativea little-known facet, although the artist he would become is outlined on the canvas. The untitled oil painting, which has the subtitle in parentheses Battle of the Conquestis from 1958, measures 1.22 by 3 meters and comes from the collection of the Kaluz Museum.

One of the strong points of the exhibition is the inclusion of unpublished or rarely seen material. This is the case of Francisco Marco Chillet, a Spanish exile and great cartoonist: He was a set designer who worked in the golden age of Mexican cinema. He drew concentration camps, since he was imprisoned, and suddenly became interested in the theme of miscegenation, also in the Conquest, in part due to a diorama he made for the National Museum of Anthropology.

The Conquest has continued to be an attractive topic for the art world.

On the bones of Cuauhtémoc and Hernán Cortes: Diego Rivera and the great debate on Mexicanness It will remain until February 16 at the Diego Rivera Mural Museum, located in Balderas and Colón, Centro neighborhood.