a lost light from the revolution

First things first.

Happy Revolution Day.

109 years ago today, a war started in Mexico that would alter its very character. We are celebrating it today.

I had hoped to write a couple of essays about some of the causes of the war earlier this week, but time got away from me. So, I will tell you only one tale.

I just returned from two short parades -- one in Barra de Navidad, the other in San Patricio. The usual suspects were there. Elementary school students in drill order.

Prepa students performing acrobatics. Ten-year olds dressed up as the historical figures who led a revolution and ended up killing one another (the leaders; not the kids).
 

And, of course, my favorites -- horses.

One dress-up figure that has been missing from every Revolution Day parade I have ever attended is José Guadalupe Posada. You might recall that we all met him during our conversation about Day of the Dead (hello, dollies).

Posada was one of Mexico's best political cartoonists -- with a pen far sharper and wittier than Herblock. Think Jules Feiffer with a Latin flair. Or Jeff MacNelly.

He did his best work during the late 1800s, skewering the powerful, sometimes finding himself banned from publishing. And, even though we may not now immediately recall his name, everyone knows one of his favorite satirical inventions.

The late 1800s in Mexico were contradictory. Dickens could have been describing Mexico, as much as 1789 Paris, when he wrote:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

Since it attained its independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico had suffered a series of wars that had left it struggling socially and economically. All of that changed during the long dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. During his presidency, Mexico entered the industrial revolution and started accumulating wealth unlike any time in its past. And Mexico was at peace.

But Mexico was paying a big price for peace and prosperity. Peace came at the cost of political repression (including Posada's cartoons). And even though Mexico for the first time in its modern history was able to pay off its massive foreign debts, that prosperity meant that the foreign investment that drove the growth resulted in vast British-owned agricultural holdings; Canadian mines; American railroads.

Even though all Mexicans shared in a country whose wealth was growing, it was the elite around President Porfirio Diaz who pulled in most of the wealth. Mexico's elite has often looked to Europe to be its social and fashion guide. Initially, it was Spain. During Porfirio Diaz's reign, it was France and England.

Mexico's cities are filled with French Empire buildings from this era. That is ironic because Porfirio Diaz made his name in the army by fighting the French invasion at mid-century.

One of Mexico's architectural oddities comes from this period. Porfirio Diaz built metal-framed gazebos in almost every town square in Mexico. They were so French, it is easy to imagine they were built by Eiffel. Some were. But almost every gazebo has faux-gargoyles -- Welsh dragon heads. Their foreigness is jarring.

Posada found the perfect satirical target in the elite's European infatuation. What could better describe corruption at the top than native Mexican women dressing up as if they were having dinner at Maxim's while the rest of Mexico remained poor?

And he then took it once step further. To emphasize the absurdity of such pretense, he stripped the women of their flesh. They became walking skeletons dressed in Paris finery.

And thus was born La Calavera Catrina, a symbol of revolutionary resistance against European intrusion, rather than a caricature for Day of the Dead. It is as if Thomas Nast's Democrat donkey and Republican elephant morphed into the symbols for Valentine's Day.

The rest of Posada's story is a bit tragic. Even though his Catrina helped to inspire bourgeois revolutionary fervor against the elite, his career faded to the point that when he died during the height of the revolution in 1913, he was almost unknown. Legend has it that of the three neighbors who certified his death, only one knew his full name.

One of these days, it would be nice to see both José Guadalupe Posada and his Catrina restored to their rightful place in the revolutionary pantheon -- or just on a parade float.