Epilogue

The conclusion comes full circle to consider the multiple meanings of Diego Rivera’s return to Mexico’s Communist Party in 1954, as well as David Alfaro Siqueiros’s conflicted relationship with the PCM during his final years. The artists’ evolving relationships with Mexico’s Communist Party, and the pivotal role of the PCM in their lives, significantly impacted the issue of art within revolutionary transformation. Throughout his long careers, Rivera and Siqueiros both embraced the position that art played a key role in politics and politics in art, whether as members of the Party or as supporters. In the end, these two significant artists ended their careers much as they started: with a passion for creating art and a fascination with revolutionary change.

Revolutionary Printmakers

The significance of chapter 5 is threefold: (1) to analyze the interactions of Mexico’s printmakers, including those belonging to Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios, or the League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists (LEAR), and the Taller de Gráfica Popular, or the Popular Graphic Art Workshop (TGP), with state officials; (2) to situate Mexico as a vital space within the international struggle against the spread of fascism; and (3) to understand better the transnational influence on culture and politics during Mexico’s postrevolutionary period. Artists associated with Mexico’s Communist Party played key roles in the formation and everyday affairs of the LEAR and TGP, and the alliances between the PCM and the two artists’ groups remained strong. Although tensions eventually developed between individual TGP printmakers and the PCM, the distinctive union of politics and art resulted in the creation of two of Mexico’s most significant creative movements of the twentieth century.

Art and the Creation of Mexico’s Communist Party, 1919–1930

Chapter 1 focuses on the founding of Mexico’s Communist Party in 1919, and the Party’s links to the influential national and international artistic movement active in Mexico throughout the 1920s. Although during these early years the Party’s official membership numbers remained relatively insignificant, this chapter argues that the extraordinary influence of these creative participants, both female and male, on the politics of the period was far from trivial. Art and politics intertwined as artists played major roles in political affairs, and government officials appropriated the arts to transmit the “official” national history.

The Gendering of the Cultural Revolution, 1919–1934

Chapter 2 analyzes the complex and often contradictory gendered positions of women artists associated with Mexico’s Communist Party during the first decades of the twentieth century. This chapter first examines the Mexican Communist Party’s official stance toward women from 1919 to the 1940s, and the changing global and national political framework in which the PCM operated. Next, this chapter highlights the artistic and political contributions of Tina Modotti, while recognizing her ambivalent position within postrevolutionary society. This chapter argues that even as state representatives grew increasingly concerned with Modotti’s communist leanings, Mexican officials nonetheless co-opted Modotti’s image in several ways. Not only did her photographs help to shape an “authentic” Mexican identity, but her very presence provided a cautionary morality tale to all women concerning the consequences of having “questionable” morals and even worse, of adhering to communist principles.

Revolutionary Women in the New Society, 1930–1954

Chapter Four analyzes the roles of women to locate their contributions squarely within Mexico’s vibrant cultural and radical political scenes during the 1930s and 1940s. To insert the crucial work of women artists into Mexico’s history of radical politics, and to understand better how women practiced their art while participating in revolutionary change throughout the post-revolutionary era, this chapter focuses on Frida Kahlo, Francis Toor, Aurora Reyes, Anita Brenner, among others. This chapter also explores the manners in which women artists and intellectuals moved beyond traditional gendered stereotypes to assume positions within the vanguard of radical politics and revolutionary change, especially throughout the 1930s and 1940s. And lastly, chapter 4 further analyzes women and the PCM from the late 1930s through the 1940s.

Trotsky in Mexico

Chapter Three focuses on the ongoing debates between Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, including their central disagreements over Leon Trotsky and his significance to global revolution, to analyze the multiple roles of culture within Mexican society and the profound connections between art and politics during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. This chapter examines the importance of art and artists in Mexico’s post-revolutionary state formation to argue that the radical artists and government officials utilized art and culture as a medium to negotiate larger issues whose general relevance fell well beyond art’s more traditional influence. Chapter 3 also utilizes the arrival of Trotsky to Mexico in January 1937 to highlight a crucial time in Mexico’s history when the artists influenced Mexico’s politics in profound and lasting ways.

Introduction

The introduction lays the foundation for the book. First, the introduction examines culture as a revolutionary weapon, including a comparison of socialist realism in the Soviet Union and social realism Mexico. Second, the chapter considers the relationship between culture and the construction of a Mexican postrevolutionary identity. And lastly, the introduction analyzes the making of the cultural revolution in Mexico, including a consideration of women’s roles, and Mexico City as the destination for radical transnational artists.