Elaboración de las tortillas

Date: 1954? 1957?

Medium: Linocut on two sheets

Dimensions (cm.): Information to be added

 Alternate titles: Unknown

Published edition: Unknown

Contemporary publication: Unknown

References: Information to be added

Commentary: Méndez made CEIMSA (also called The Making of Tortillas), one his largest prints, as the model for a mural designed to fit into a stairwell. Presumably made for the Compañia Exportadora-Importadora Mexicana, the government agency in charge of corn production, the print is a kind of triptych. Although never realized as a mural, the image was intended to fit the three walls of an architectural setting. The Making of Tortillas is also one of the few prints in which Méndez used pre-Columbian imagery. An indigenous woman sits by an open fire on the right-hand side of the image, making tortillas by hand, in a structure that is half house, half ruin. A crumbling wall separates the woman from the rest of the scene; on the wall are the Aztec glyphs for corn and tortillas. Méndez depicted a landscape with a pyramid in the middle ground and a grain elevator in the distance. A campesino with a loaded burro moves toward the pyramid and the grain elevator, delivering his corn harvest. On the left side he portrayed a tortilla factory with women workers at an assembly line. 

This print accords with Méndez’s opinion that Mexico needed to modernize, while at the same time it shows sympathy for the traditional way of life represented by the woman making handmade tortillas. It is one of the few landscape images Méndez made; the juxtaposition of modern and ancient worlds, ruins and modern buildings is oddly ambiguous. At the top of the image, the smoke that billows up from the cooking fire joins the smoke from the factory. It is possible that Méndez was not truly convinced about the value of the industrialization of the Mexican countryside, although in theory, the clean, efficient factory workers are enjoying a more comfortable life than the indigenous woman at her earthen hearth. The scenes on the right with the burro, the pyramid and the woman making tortillas all seem to belong to the past, contrasted with the images of modern Mexico on the left. And, as Méndez knew, the scenes on the right were themselves still familiar and reflected social realities. In all probability the workers in the factory returned home to scenes such as the one on the right, and the corn they made into flour at work was still brought to the modern factory carried on the backs of burros. (Deborah Caplow)

Cataloging note: According to Pablo Méndez (6/10/22), the left-most portion of the print (depicting the interior of a factory) was carved by Adolfo Mexiac, based on Méndez's design. Mexiac assisted so that the print could be completed in time to meet a deadline.

Although this print has customarily been given the date 1954, an impression placed for sale by Swann Auction Galleries in 2019 (sale 2507, lot 373) was dated 1957 in pencil.

The original title was CEIMSA, based on the acronym for the Compañia Exportadora-Importadora Mexicana, S.A., the government agency that controlled corn agriculture in Mexico at this time.

Catalogue record number: 157