Porfirio Díaz

Date: 1961

Medium: Cliché verre (engraved on film stock and printed photographically)

Dimensions (cm.): 50.6 x 93.0 (film sheet); 50.0 x 90.8 (printed on photographic paper); 49.4 x 92.2 (printed on wove)

Variants: See cataloging note, below

Alternate titles: El Porfiriato

Published edition: Unknown

Contemporary publication: Unknown

References: Information to be added

Commentary:  Porfirio Díaz, made for the 1961 film La rosa blanca (but not used in the final cut) depicts the aged president of Mexico shortly before he was deposed in 1911 by the revolutionary forces of Madero. The print combines allegory and caricature in a complex interplay of signs and symbols. Organized like a stage divided into thirds Díaz sits in the center in a gallery that resembles the hall of the National Assembly in the National Palace. Behind him, a group of top-hatted, politicians applaud and gesture, as though in a theater. Their hats, tumbling over the railing that separates them from the action, lend an photographic impression of instantaneity to the whole image. Behind and to Díaz’s left a man directs riflemen to shoot at an unarmed crowd of workers advancing toward the throne. Méndez used direction symbolically in this print to represent Left and Right politically, as Rivera often did in his murals. In the foreground, very foreshortened, an imposing Díaz sits on the eagle throne, covered with medals and ribbons, with an air of arrogance and detachment. His boots and sword press sadistically into the body of a woman. In a subtle reference to the Mexican national symbol, the woman has the sinuous shape of the snake, and the eagles’ enormous talons grasp her body, as the eagle grasps the snake in the national emblem. She lies on a Mexican flag, completing the reference to the woman as a symbol of nationhood. Surrounded by symbols of power, she plays the part of oppressed Mexico, and her body is the body politic, while the men with guns denote the brute force of the henchmen and overseers of the dictatorship. (Deborah Caplow)

Cataloging note: The method by which this image was printed is not fully understood. Although sometimes described as a linocut, Méndez actually created the image by scratching it on photographic film (perhaps a sheet of x-ray film) using a technique known by the French term cliché verre. The original film sheet, complete with hand-drawn corrections, is in the collection of the Museo del Estanquillo in Mexico City. Some impressions appear to have been printed photographically on light-sensitive paper directly from the film matrix; others appear to have been printed by a photomechanical process, perhaps by transfering the film image to a metal lithographic plate. Because the areas of light and dark in the impressions match those of the original film sheet, it would appear that  a reversal process (positive to positive) was used. The dimensions of the impressions vary slightly depending on the process by which they were printed.

Catalogue record number: 164