On august 26, 2010, Emma Cecilia García Krinsky, gave a conference at Monterrey Tech titled in Spanish: “La utopía de las causas, a través de la imagen fotográfica. Homenaje a Carlos Monsiváis”. The utopia in causes, through the photographic image. A tribute to Carlos Monsiváis.
As her title tells us, the main purpose of her speech was to enlist a number of causes from twentieth century Mexico, try to interpret the iconic pictures of each cause and their relation to their utopian cause. The causes she chose are focused mainly on the causes and consequences of the Mexican Revolution. The pictures form part of the tribute art gallery to Carlos Monsiváis.
The first cause she talked about was: the anti-porfirism. Porfirio Díaz is most often considered as a tyrant, as one of the worst presidents in Mexican history but it is a petty point of view. This is caused chiefly by the education given in this country, which is an inheritance of the 70 years of the PRI political party in the presidency. The actual perfect (almost perfect) dictatorship as stated by Mario Vargas Llosa, the way he called PRI, is as such the result of the Mexican revolution, the nonsense continuum of rebellions, wars, and massacres perpetrated by the “caudillos” that supposedly wanted better living conditions for their fellow citizens. This party would put in line all the caudillos who wanted to have power in a “legitimate” way; it actually was a very clever idea from Plutarco Elías Calles and should be admired. In this way PRI, a product of the revolution, would obviously want to praise the great accomplishment that the revolution meant for Mexico and did so by implementing the “caudillo” ideas to public education; thus promoting a deformed idea of patriotism that still continues to haunt our society affecting above all civil rights and the economy.
The principal way to justify the control PRI had over the country was to make everyone believe President Díaz was the worst that ever happened to the nation. This was easily accomplished by creating a dichotomy between the good guys (members of the official party) and President Díaz. It is almost always overlooked Díaz’s accomplishments in matters of economy, infrastructure development and national security, sure it came with a cost but anything of value isn’t free. Nobody is perfect and no one should be judged by that standard, good or evil. If we did get ourselves in other people shoes, and think what we would have done in their present situations, there’ll be more tolerance and less partial judgment.
In this case, as the speaker García said: photography is really a portion of reality (the vision of the photographer). Anyways, it is actually a witness of history, it leaves a record; a subjective yet valuable record of history.
Photography is not only used as a veritable witness of things past, it is also used as a medium of propaganda; a very good example is the Cold War. Mexico was not the exception, and since the revolution of 1910, it was an effective mean to create a national identity. And I mean my words, it is a created identity; not necessarily a desired, popular debated or reached by consensus.
As everyone knows, a photograph is the capturing of a moment, normally a 60th of a second; that as García states, it is the frontier between reality and imagination. Each one of the pictures presented here tried to establish a utopia, each with its different background, idiosyncrasy, and purpose.
There is not enough space to rant about the 6 causes that the speaker talked about, maybe in another time it can be done.
