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The Chicanization of Mexican Calendar
Art
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Tere Romo
This paper is dedicated to Tomás Ybarra-Frausto,
a scholar who had the foresight to provide leadership in the
area of Chicano art scholarship before it even had a name
and a dedicated mentor who has influenced subsequent generations
of scholars like myself. I, like many other Chicanos grew
up with Mexican calendars in my home. There were the ones
that functioned as calendars and several others that had been
framed and exhibited in our living room and kitchen. I also
saw them at my grandparents’ and other relative’s houses.
The framed ones came with us from Mexico; the yearly ones,
we got at the panaderia. A framed copy La Noche
Triste by Jesus Helguera still hangs in my parents’ living
room.
During the Chicano movement,
I became aware of them again—as images transferred onto t-shirts,
posters, murals, and even album covers. Now as a curator,
I have become more conscious of the mixed messages inherent
in the majority of them. And that’s what I would like to focus
on in my presentation. Specifically, I will begin with an
introduction to Mexico during the 1930s-50s (the height of
the production and distribution of these calendars), the calendar’s
commercial purpose versus their cultural impact, and finally,
what I call, the calendar images’ Chicanization by
Chicano/a artists.
Post Revolutionary
Mexico rebuilds itself… As is true of all countries that
have gone through a civil war, Mexico after the Revolution
of 1910 sought to re-unify itself. This process was very difficult
due to several factors. It had just lost close to a million
of its population, the majority of them males who were its
primary workforce. 1 There was widespread
financial devastation as a result of not only the economic
upheaval of a10-year war, but also the sporadic government
changes due to assassinations. Most of the nation’s resources
were own by a few, very rich individuals, the vast majority
of them foreigners. There were also the nation’s very challenging
demographics. Mexico’s population was composed of hundreds
of different indigenous groups that did not speak Spanish
and the majority of the mestizo population was rural, illiterate,
and poor. When Cuahtemoc Cárdenas came into
power in the 1930s, he tried to build on the efforts of previous
presidents to forge a national identity. In the mid-1920s,
these efforts had included José Vasconcelos’ mural art commissions,
of which José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro
Siqueiros were the main beneficiaries. Many of the visual
artists, including Los Tres Grandes looked to Mexico’s
pre-conquest history for subject matter in their murals and
also depicted the daily life of the contemporary indigenous
population in their canvas artwork. Under Cárdenas, there
was a more “socialist” bent to the government, which included
widespread literacy programs aimed at the rural areas and
the nationalization of private, foreign companies such as
the railroads and oil refineries. After WWII, there was a
big push for industrialization and modernization. Mexico City,
like New York, became a great cosmopolitan center for visual
art, dance, music, cinematography and literature. Many of
the artists, writers, and composers involved with this Mexican
“golden age” of the 1940s, including Juan Rulfo, Carlos Chávez,
Miguel Covarrubias, Manuel Alvarez Bravo and “El Indio” Fernandez
tapped the indigenous and rural traditions for their artworks.
The role
of calendars… In the 1920s, Mexican businesses
began to import lithography machines to print their own calendars.
The calendar’s socially and visually accessible format combined
an aesthetically pleasing image with a product. However, seizing
on the nationalist agenda, calendars became not only a conscious
attempt to combine art and technology, but also a popular
means to reach commercial goals by promoting a very specific
national identity based on an evolving sense of mexicanidad
(Mexicanness). Local businesses gave them out free
of charge to their customers, thus assuring wide distribution.
For the majority of the people in Mexico, calendars became
an economical way to have “art” in their homes. For the cigarette,
liquor and, later, the tire companies that publicized on them,
they were an easy way to advertise their products to generations
of Mexican families. The calendars also became vehicles for
constructing a romantic Mexican reality and promoting specific
aesthetic standards. In fact, according to Mexican scholar
and curator, Alfonso Morales Carrillo, “what seemed to be
a simple annual advertising strategy developed into one of
Mexico’s most powerful forms of cultural promotion and graphic
arts traditions.”2 There were many artists on contract
with the two most important producers of these calendars,
which were Casa Editorial Litolesa and Galas de Mexico, but
the most recognizable is Jesus de la Helguera. Helguera was
born in Mexico in 1910 to a Spanish father and Mexican mother.
At the age of five, his family moved to Spain where he lived
for over 20 years. His artistic talents were nurtured by his
family from an early age and at the age of 12, Helguera entered
the Escuela de Artes y Oficios and later attended the
prestigious Academia San Fernando. At both schools
he received rigorous training in the academy style of drawing
and painting. He was able to work as an illustrator in Madrid
and Barcelona before becoming a professor of visual arts in
Bilbao at the age of 18. Two years after the Spanish Civil
War broke out, Helguera (now married) returned to Mexico in
1938. In 1939, he painted Poco a poquito (Little by
Little) and La fiesta del Istmo (The Isthmus
Celebration), which became his first images to be reproduced
on calendars. 3 However, it was La leyenda de
los volcanes (The Legend of the Volcanos), painted the
following year, that brought him to the attention of don Santiago
Galas, the owner of Galas de Mexico. Helguera remained on
contract with him as the exclusive artist of Cigarrera
La Moderna until his death in 1971. Helguera worked like all artists
on contract at the time. Galas would come up with a theme,
including the characters and location. The artist, along with
a scriptwriter and two photographers, would then travel to
a selected location. There many staged photographs would be
taken of the landscape and the people. Though Helguera never
painted outdoors, he did pencil sketches. Once back at his
studio, he used these and the photographs to create his canvas
paintings. 4 Though Helguera worked from photographs
to develop his paintings of indigenous themes, Helguera idealized
the characters according to his own personal taste, which
was formed by his training in Spain. No matter how indigenous
looking the models or the majority of the population at the
time, Helguera’s women are always light skinned with large
dark eyes, have tiny waists and brown wavy hair. The men are
tall, muscular and with European features. Even when he painted
scenes supposedly representing Aztec or Maya eras, the indigenas
all have European features. Mexican art historian Teresa del
Conde has described Helguera as “a pioneer of a new popular
art that is not going to be, but is already here now, as a
product of the times, very much in tune with the waning of
the 20th century we are living in.”5 I believe this to be true, but I do not share the statement’s
positive connotations. Helguera’s artwork, like that of other
painters of that period (and still prevalent to this day),
practiced a subtle racism that promoted a romanticized European
aesthetic at the expense of an indigenous reality. During
a time when the mestizo (mixed race) population was
growing yet indigenous groups were still a significant portion
of the Mexican populace, Helguera’s art depicted a fantasy
society that was not only heavily European, but had also seemed
to have evolved from European ancestors. Until his death in
1971, Helguera, like the other calendar artists, reinvented
a Mexican history and portrayed a present that was more aligned
with western European “classical” notions of beauty based
on Greek and Roman human physical ideals and the French romanticism
taught in the European and Mexican art academies. This attitude
can still be seen in Mexico’s modern calendars and even more
so in its telenovelas, the television soap operas.
Both are still populated with an overwhelmingly EuroMexican
cast of characters and lifestyles.
The Chicanization process… Mexican calendars had been in the
United States even before they were available commercially
at local panaderias, carnicerias, or tiendas de
provición. Families brought them back during yearly Christmas
visits to Mexico, or had them sent in the mail by relatives.
As prevalent domestic items, many Chicanos grew up with them.
So it is not surprising that these calendars became a part
of the artistic and cultural reclamation process of the Chicano
Movement. Along with Pre-conquest glyphs and symbols, loteria
cards, religious icons and popular art, the Mexican calendar
became another source Chicano artists tapped to explore their
identity and history. But whereas these calendar images had
been used in Mexico to “europeanize” the national identity,
Chicanos used the very same images to “indigenize” a Mexican
American self-image. It was a significant tenet of the “I’m
brown and I’m proud” movement of the Brown Berets, as well
as of nationalist indigenistas. In fact, Mexican calendars informed
much of the iconography of indigenismo. Indigenism
sought to reestablish linkages between Chicanos and their
pre-Conquest Mexican ancestors and to reintroduce indigenous
knowledge through its ancient philosophy, literature, and
ceremonies. “Ancient and surviving Indian cultures were valued,”
according to Chicano scholar Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, “as root
sources from which to extract lasting values that would bring
unity and cohesion to the heterogeneous Chicano community.”
6 This indigenous connection was best exemplified by the
concept of Aztlán. Defined as the mythic homeland of the Aztecs
before they set off to found Tenochtitlán (present Mexico
City), during the Chicano Movement Aztlán became synonymous
with the United States southwest and Chicano nationalism.
Aztlán and indigenous imagery (including that found on Mexican
calendars) provided a culturally unifying heritage based on
a foundation of spiritual principles and a geographic location.
In addition to the artwork, the calendar’s
accessible format also inspired many California Chicano artist
collectives to produce a series of silkscreen calendars promoting
Chicano culture and history. Among them were Mechicano in
Los Angeles, Galería de la Raza in San Francisco, Royal Chicano
Air Force (RCAF) in Sacramento, and La Brocha del Valle in
Fresno. Unlike the Mexican versions, these calendars consisted
of a suite of six to twelve prints, with a different artist
for each print. Some were based on an overall theme, such
as The History of California (1977) calendar produced
jointly by the Galería de la Raza and RCAF. In a print created
by RCAF’s Louie Gonzalez created for this calendar, the concept
of Aztlán is joined with the outcome of the Mexican American
War of 1848. Though Gonzalez’s poem speaks of the loss of
the Southwest by Mexico, the image presents an optimistic
view of Aztlán’s rebirth and reclamation by the Chicano Movement
and is visually represented by the merger of the United Farm
Worker union flag into the rising sun over a rural landscape.
However, it is the reinterpretation
by Chicano artists of the imagery found on the Mexican calendars
that is one of the most important contributions made by the
Chicano art movement. There are many examples, but I will
focus on three by Helguera: Amor Indio, Grandeza
Azteca, and his most famous, La leyenda de los volcanes.
In 1954, Helguera painted Amor
Indio, which is one of his most romantic images. Here
the Aztec warrior is caught in the tender moment of gazing
into the face of his beloved, who waits for his kiss with
eyes closed. Helguera has added a dramatic sky behind them,
a freshly killed meal on the ground, and a baby deer resting
on the woman’s lap. This is the image that most non-Chicanos,
nationally and internationally, are familiar with because
of its wide distribution as the cover image of the 1972 debut
album by San Francisco’s rock group, Malo. In the mid-1990s,
it became available again with the reissue of Malo’s first
record as a CD. The Helguera image was not only used on the
cover, but a detail of it is printed on the CD itself. In
fact, the image has become associated with Malo to the point
that their publicity materials still feature the image. I
would even argue that today most people, including some Chicanos
think it is a Chicano, rather than Mexican image. This is
an example of how Chicanos adopted a Helguera image without
changing it, yet through its association with a Chicano product—in
this case, Chicano music—it directly transferred the original
commercial intent into a cultural reclamation project. La leyenda de los vocanes was painted in
1940 and marked the beginning of Helguera’s artistic revision
of Aztec mythology. According to the Aztec legend, Popocapetl
wanted to marry the Princess Ixtaccihuatl, but to do so he
had to earn his warrior feathers in battle. Upon his triumphant
return, Popo finds that Ixta, believing he had died in battle,
had killed herself. Grieving, he takes her lifeless body in
his arms to the highest mountains in Mexico so that the snowflakes
would wake her. But she never wakes up and they both remained
frozen, forming the silhouettes of the two famous snow-covered
volcanoes in Mexico. The most popular of Helguera’s images,
it has been reproduced consistently on calendars to this day.
It is also the image that many Chicano artists have chosen
to reinterpret and even subvert its original commercial intent
by consciously infusing it with socio-political meaning. Luis
Jimenez is an artist who creates works on paper and monumental
sculptures. Using both media, he has recreated the scene from
La leyenda de los volcanes and updated it into a more
sensual, tragic love scene titled, Southwest Pieta.
There is the obvious reference to Michelangelo’s Pieta,
which portrays the Virgin Mary holding the lifeless body of
Christ after his crucifixion. In Jimenez’s lithograph version
of Southwest Pieta (1983), it is a man, Popo
who is holding his dead lover, Ixta. Behind them are the volcanoes
that bear their names, but the similarities with the Helguera
painting end there. Jimenez has added imagery that references
its Chicano, in this case bi-national, origins. According
to Jimenez, “Those same images and symbols that are so important
in Mexico are also equally important to us in the U.S. Certainly
the eagle—it’s the national symbol for both countries. The
rattlesnake is important from a religious standpoint. The
nopal cactus was an important food and actually still
is, as is the maguey.” 7 Another variation of the same Helguera
painting is the lithograph entitled Air, Earth, Fire and
Water (1994). In this highly sexualized interpretation,
Jimenez has transformed the legend into the four basic elements
of life: the eagle atop the warrior’s head symbolizes the
element of “Air.” Ixta is now the earth itself, a volcano
spewing fire that spills into a body of water that flows from
her head as hair. In this version, we are reminded of the
reason for the legend itself, the ancient connection between
the formation of the mountains (nature) and a tragic love
story (humans), and thus the inseparability between nature
and passion, and nature and human life. In 1965, Helguera painted Grandeza
Azteca, which provided another variation on the Popo and
Ixta myth. In this painting, Helguera depicted the moment
in which Popo carries Ixta lifeless body in his arms. In this
painting, their frontal pose is the central image, even though
a huge mountain looms behind them. Though Popo’s pose is still
very powerful and regal, his face is full of personal pain
and confusion. In 1974, Manuel Cruz of East Los Angeles took
this Helguera’s image and used it in a mural he painted at
the Ramona Gardens Housing Project. However, in Cruz’s visual
translation, Popo is transformed into an Aztec warrior that
carries the dead body of a Chicano youth killed in barrio
warfare. This Popo laments the death of all Raza youth and
turns his personal grief into a call for Chicano unity on
behalf of social action. Another example of a socio-political
reinterpretation of Helguera’s Leyenda de los volcanos
is Alma Lopez’s digital photograph, Ixta (2000).
Against the backdrop of the Helguera painting to the top
of the composition, Lopez layers her scene with the Los Angeles
skyline and the US/Mexico border directly behind and below
the central image. There are two other important changes:
Ixta and Popo are recreated as young women and Lopez has utilized
computer technology to “restage” the ancient scene within
a contemporary time frame. This is what Alma says about her
piece:
Growing
up in El Sereno, a neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles,
I would
see this image of Popo & Ixta on murals, lowrider cars,
and Low Rider
magazine. As an artist, I asked my two friends to help me
recreate
this familiar myth however, the two princesas are on
the US/Mexico
border. This image is important to me in that it addresses
and challenges images that I grew up with in my neighborhood. 8 Lopez is challenging the Helguera
version of the myth through her eyes as a Chicana Lesbian.
She has chosen to depict the middle event of the myth, the
discovery of Ixta’s dead body by her lover. In re-enacting
the myth with Chicana protagonists, Lopez’s version foregoes
the implied safe distance afforded by a historical painting
or print. Instead, she confronts us directly with a photographic
image that reveals another “picture” of our Chicano/a reality.
In her recreation, the tragic love story is subverted into
a parable about the consequences of restrictive gender constructions
that regulate love and desire, as well as a stark reminder
of the dangers urban youth face daily. Humor
as a political tool has a long history within Mexican graphics
and its legacy continues in Chicano art. In his seminal series
entitled The Legend of Ixta and Popo, Arizona photographer
Roberto Buitrón utilizes biting humor and the substitution
of a Chicano couple as the doomed Aztec lovers to address
relevant cultural and political issues. From a total of almost
40 photographs, Buitrón chose images to create and publish
calendars from 1990 1992. Reminiscent of the fotonovela
format of popular Mexican magazines based on sequential staged
photographs, the series follows Ixta and Popo through the
trials and tribulations, successes and triumphs of the Chicano
experience. According to Buitrón, “the work addresses many
issues of today, such as gender, cultures, histories, diversity
and politics in a monolithic society. In particular, it addresses
the Chicano community and questions of assimilation and displacement,
heritage and invisibility, customs and change.” 9 By utilizing a staged, soap opera
approach to denounce underlying societal problems, Buitrón
makes the work humorous and accessible, and thereby increasing
its impact. The outrageous sense of irony contained in his
piece, Leverage Buyout where we see Ixta sitting at
a table surrounded by Euroamerican men is a powerful statement
about the invisibility of women, especially women of color
in the boardrooms of multinational corporations. Aspects of
the connection between ancient spirituality and modern mental
health are exposed in Popo in Therapy, in which as
a contemporary indigenous man, Popo attempts to deal with
cultural change and identity crisis by seeing a psychiatrist
instead of a traditional healer or shaman. No salen sin
ella (Don’t Leave Home Without It) is a play on the words
of the American Express motto, which is meant to convey a
sense of confidence inherent in carrying their credit card.
In Buitrón’s photograph the credit card and the power it bestows
on the user is also a metaphor for the access and safety that
a green card affords immigrants against deportation and economic
exploitation. In
conclusion, I think that the Mexican calendar images became
double-edged swords with regards to their role in creating
a Mexican national identity. While they tried to promote a
positive image of an indigenous and rural Mexico, they drew
on European aesthetic standards to construct this identity.
In doing so, they continued the colonial legacy of the conquest,
specifically the degradation of the native population. Jesús
(de la) Helguera was very much a product of his time and of
his artistic training. He not only ascribed to the EuroMexican
agenda, but also firmly believed in its aesthetics. 10 On the other hand, calendar images became initial resources
for Chicano artists to learn about Mexico’s indigenous past,
cultural traditions and regional diversity. In fact, calendar
images provided some of the most memorable icons in Chicano
art, especially during the 1970s. However, unlike the Mexican
goal of celebrating a “Mexicanness” based on European aesthetic,
Chicanos gravitated to the calendars in order to reclaim and
affirm their indigenous heritage and mestizo identity. More
importantly, through a process of Chicanization many
artists took these very accessible images and transformed
them into powerful socio-political statements about the condition
of Mexicans and their descendents living on this side of the
border—a practice that continues today. Their ability to resonate with people
from different classes and generations on both sides of the
border is what accounts for the long lasting appeal of Mexican
calendars. Some of us view them as nostalgic reminders of
home. However, art historians such as myself view their social
implications, especially as it relates to aesthetics and national
identity. But I believe their greatest value lies in their
ability to inspire new generation of artists to create their
own relevant reinterpretations. And in this chicanization
process, these artists help the rest of us to continually
re-evaluate and re-define notions of aesthetics and identity
(national or otherwise) within a critical framework of historical
relevance and societal self-assessment. Notes
1.
William Weber
Johnson, Heroic Mexico: The Narrative History of a Twentieth-Century
Revolution. (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1968),
41.
2. Alfonso
Morales Carrillo, “General Exhibit Information” for La
Patria Portátil: 100
Years of Mexican Chromo Art Calendars,
1999.
3
Alfonso Morales Carrillo, La Patria Portátil:
100 Years of Mexican Chromo Art
Calendars. (Chicago: Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum), 38.
4.
Teresa del Conde, “Recordando a Jesús Helguera”
in Jesús Helguera: El Calendario Como Arte. (San Francisco:
Mission Cultural Center, n.d.), 19.
5.
Ibid, 22..
6.
Tomas Ybarra-Frausto,
Califas: California Chicano Art and its Social Background,
unpublished manuscript, 58. Prepared for Califas Seminar
at Mary Porter Sesnon Gallery, University of California, Santa
Cruz, April 16-18, 1982.
7.
Luis Jimenez,
Man on Fire: Luis Jimenez/El Hombre en llamas. (Albuquerque:
The Albuquerque Museum, 1994), 142.
8.
Alma Lopez,
“There Was a Princess and a Princesa,” On the Web.
Available:
http://home.earthlink.net/~almalopez/other/artist/artist.html
9.
Robert Buitrón,
On the Web. Available: http//www.chicanovista.com/text/arts/buitbio.html
10.
Elia Espinoza,
“Para entender la obra de Jesúa de la Helguera” in Cronos
y Cromos (Mexico City: Centro Cultural Arte Contemporáneo,
1993), 20.
Copyright © 2003
Smithsonian Institution |
