Two revolutions, two exhibits

BY MARIA GALLUCCI
The News

July 28, 2009

For the rest of July and through the end of August, two separate photography exhibitions in Mexico City will chronicle images both past and present of the Mexican and Cuban revolutions, commemorating landmark dates in the respective movements.

"Zapata 90 años" ("Zapata, 90 years") marks the 90 years since the Mexican hero's death, while "Cuba: Imagen y Posibilidad" ("Cuba: Image and Possibility") celebrates the 50th year of revolution in Cuba.

Both displays offer history lessons far more interesting than those inside textbooks, so check out these exhibits while they're still here.

ZAPATA & MEXICO'S REVOLUTION

Photographs, texts and original documents are on display at the Archivo Histórico del Distrito Federal (Historic Archives of the Federal District) in the Centro Histórico. The historical tour chronicles the life and achievements of Mexico's revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata Salazar.

The exhibition recognizes the nine decades since Zapata's assassination in Chinameca, in the state of Morelos.

The collection's title, "Yo no entrAc a la Revolución para hacerme hacendado: Zapata 90 años," refers to the revolutionary leader's response to president Francisco I. Madero's proposal that Zapata drop his arms in exchange for ownership of a large hacienda.

"Mr. Madero, I did not join the Revolution to make myself a landowner," Zapata wrote, according to curator Mario PAcrez with the city's Culture Secretariat.

Zapata lead the Liberation Army of the South from 1911 until his death, pushing for an agrarian reform that would put the fruits of the earth into the hands of those who worked it, PAcrez said at a ceremony at the city's Monument of the Revolution on April 10 - Zapata's exact date of death.

The exhibit includes both sides of six large screens divided into sections including: "La paz porfirianO ("Porfirian Peace"); "La semilla de la insurrección," ("The Seed of the Insurrection"); "El estallido de la Revolución" ("The Outbreak of the Revolution"); "Zapata, el revolucionario" ("Zapata, the Revolutionary"); "El pueblo hablO ("The People Speak"); and "Zapata vive" ("Zapata Lives"), among others.

50 YEARS OF PHOTOS IN CUBA

Workers slashing through sturdy stocks of sugarcane; raisin-faced men playing festive tunes on the trumpet; streets clogged with protestors holding dutifully painted signs. These still portraits of Cuban life help compose part of the Mexico City photography exhibit that honors the island nation's 50th year of revolution.

"Cuba: Imagen y Posibilidad" opened last weekend along the green gated walls outside Chapultepec Park facing Paseo de la Reforma.

Cuba's anniversary celebrates the mid-century mark since Fidel Castro led the ousting of dictator Fulgencio Batista and implemented a Communist government.

"It's an homage that a group of photographers made to 50 years of the revolutionary process in Cuba and to the paths that are opening up toward the future," explains curator Mabel Llevat in the exhibit's opening slide.

The 120-photograph collection displays black-and-white, boldly colorful, experimental and traditional images by nearly 20 Cuban photographers both past and contemporary. The cultural institute Fototeca de Cuba procured and provided all the images for the exhibit.

Vivian Martínez Tabares, cultural attachAc for the Cuban Embassy, said that the artists present their own individual style instead of works that follow rigid thematic guidelines.

Raúl Cañibano's images, for example, show a sugarcane farmer passed out in his cot and rowdy festival goers partying into the early morning, while Michael Pou's abstract art combines bright shots of modern day Cuba with pixilated squares.

The photo display starts across from the wide entrance of the national Anthropology Museum with Jorge Valiente's nearly 20-year-old portraits of sugarcane workers slashing through the crops or resting in the emptied fields.

Further down the right-to-left exhibit, Ricardo Elías's work plays up the "past and present" angle by presenting parallel images on each slide. An aged, blurry 1961 image of the U.S.-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion at Playa Girón is paired with a recent photograph of empty, tranquil waters at the same beach. A hectic image shows Fidel Castro's grand entrance to Havana after his 1959 takeover, while another shows the same street desolate and decades later.

The collection mostly captures moments from Cubans' day-to-day lives. In one slide, a mechanic repairs one of the 1950s-make cars still ubiquitous throughout the island. A group of young adults sip beers and play dominoes, the national pastime, at a small table in the street. A man and woman break out into an impromptu dance inside the hazy cigar-rolling factory where they work.

Slides by Mabel Llevas in her "Parque Almendares" series show cutouts of photographs built into 3-D paper models of the Havana park, including a smiling family in a boat passing under a bridge, the towering JosAc Martí Memorial monument and the weathered Malecón sea wall.

Jorge García Alonso energetic photos show captured moments of rhythm and motion from the "Habana en movimiento" ("Havana in Movement") festival of contemporary and folkloric dancing.

The photo exhibit will remain outside Chapultepec Park until Aug. 31. Over the course of two years, will travel to the city's other Galerías Abiertas (Open Galleries) at the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) and neighborhoods Iztapalapa and Alvaro Obregón, although dates and locations haven't yet been set.