In the footsteps of presidents

When General Lázaro Cárdenas was elected President of Mexico in 1934-1940, he decided that the country’s leader needed a suitable residence. A landowner gave to the government an estate on the edge of Chapultepec Park called Rancho de las Hormigas (Ranch of the Ants). Lázaro preferred to name the new residence after the farm of his wife’s family, Los Pinos ("The Pines".

For more than eight decades, Los Pinos was the private space from which the most powerful men (no women yet) governed their people, who were never allowed a glimpse of the  whitewashed buildings and carefully kept gardens. A Mexican president governs for six years (his sexenio). Under the regime forged from the struggles of the 1910-1920 revolution the president was not quite all powerful, but he received absolute deference and lived in splendour in a large private retreat sheltered from the bustle and near-chaos of the capital city.

No more. One of the first acts of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (“AMLO”) was to open the gates of Los Pinos to the public. This was in part a populist gesture to show Mexicans how their rulers had lived. The longer term objective is to create a cultural centre with exhibition spaces, a concert hall and a theatre. AMLO now lives in an apartment in the National Palace in the centre of the city.

Casa Lázaro Cárdenas

There are four residences in Los Pinos. The first is the Casa Lázaro Cárdenas, a large art deco-style structure. Since the building was converted to offices after Cárdenas left office, very few traces of the president remain except for his office, a room for receiving guests and a meeting room. The next residence, that of Adolfo Ruiz Cortines (1952-1958), is now a children’s reading centre: we were not allowed in without a child.

In 1946 President Miguel Alemán ordered the construction of a residence that he considered fitting for a president to receive other heads of state.

Casa Miguel Alemán

The building, said to be in a French style which I found hard to detect, was not finished until the end of his term, so Alemán never occupied it. However, all but three of his successors have spent their six-year terms there. The information panel outside promises the visitor “French furniture, Bohemian lighting and other examples of luxury popular in the middle of the last century”. However, there is  no furniture except for a library and the presidential office.

Casa Miguel Alemán: main stairs

I was told that each president brings his own furniture and takes it away at the end of his term. Our driver, Jorge, hinted that the furniture was stolen by the incumbent. The residence now functions as an exhibition space for a collection of modern Mexican painting specially commissioned in 1993.

The Presidential football pitch

There are several other structures: for example, a conference room now used as a theatre at weekends, and a large building in which concerts are now held. There is also a five aside football pitch, converted from a horse-riding area, complete with a small stand for spectators, complete with a large presidential seal. A stage for musical performances now occupies a manicured lawn.

The extensive gardens are divided into thematic areas in which to display busts and statues of important men (alas, all men) in Mexican history.

Bust of Luis Donaldo Colosio

Themes included Democracy (for example a bust of Luis Donaldo Colosio, a presidential candidate assassinated in 1994, shortly before his expected election); the 19^th-century Liberal Reform (busts of Melchor Ocampo, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, and, in pride of place, Benito Juárez); heroes of the 1910-1920 revolution (Francisco I. Madero, the “Apostle of Democracy”, the peasant leader Emiliano Zapata); heroes of the War of Independence (Father Miguel Hidalgo and José María Morelos).

Bust of Francisco I. Madero

From 1934 onwards, each president is marked by a statue, clearly designed to project what he considered to be his significance or major achievement.

Statue of Lázaro Cárdenas

Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940) strikes a fatherly pose.

Statue of José López Portillo

José López Portillo (2976-1982), who promised to “defend the peso like a dog” and then devalued it, ever after to be greeted in public by the sound of barking, strikes a dignified pose, his hand resting on a book.

Statue of Carlos Salinas de Gortari

Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994), whose promise to make Mexico a modern global economic powerhouse came to grief, holds a copy of the Free Trade Treaty signed with the USA and Canada, and recently torn up by Mr Trump.

Statue of Vicente Fox

Vicente Fox (2000-2006), the first president of an opposition party to be elected since 1920, gives a Churchillian victory sign, and stands next to a young girl with long braided hair who clutches a book (the only presidential statue to include a second figure).

Statue of Enrique Peña Nieto

Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), possibly the last president to be commemorated at Los Pinos, stands out because he alone holds the national flag. his left hand on his chest as a salute. His plinth announces that “My commitment is Mexico”, an ironic slogan for a president notorious for presiding over notorious corruption.

Students protesting in 1968

Perhaps the highlight of our visit was an exhibition to commemorate the student movement of 1968. On 2 October, the students were ambushed in the Square of the Three Cultures, in the district of Tlatelolco, by the Mexican army. An unknown number died that night, hundreds were arrested, and many (including my late friend Alfonso Landera) were forced into hiding.

Students arrested on 2 October 1968

The exhibition looks at antecedents (railway strike, tram workers’ strike, strident anticommunism, relations with the USA and the tacit approval of the American ambassador) and subsequent events (attacks on student groups by government thugs (halcones: “falcons”) in 1971; the insurgency of the schoolteacher Genaro Vázquez in the mountains of Guerrero, where I would arrive a few years later) . The narrative of the exhibition is taken from the writings of the Mexican intellectual Carlos Monsiváis. Illustrations are contemporary photographs, propaganda posters, artworks, video of an address to Congress by President Díaz Ordaz who ordered the attack, graphic designs for the 1968 Olympic games and a video of the opening ceremony. The games were intended to announce Mexico as a modern international power. Instead, Mexicans remember 1968 for the dreadful “Night of Tlatelolco”.

The optimism of the ceremony, culminating in the lighting of the Olympic flame by a female Mexican athlete, contrasted with the tragedy of the massacre ten days earlier. In 1968 I was probably hardly aware of where to find Mexico on a map, but I remember clearly a BBC broadcast during the student movement. The famous sports broadcaster Harry Carpenter commented that it was so sad that the students were disrupting preparations for the games.

Rius: Special Number about the Cocolazos ("Banging of Heads")

Particularly nostalgic for me was the liberal use of artwork of the political comic author Rius (the pseudonym of Eduardo Humberto del Río García: 1934-2017). I was an avid reader in the late 70s of his weekly Los Agachados (The Downtrodden). His witty, biting satire and evocative drawings, poked fun at the government and the USA. Rius also used his comic as a platform for educational messages. He paid a price for his work in 1968. Government agents kidnapped him, took him to a rural location and subjected him to a mock execution. He continued to draw and write.

Rius: What the Devil is Homeopathy?

"Isn't it a great sacrifice to be mayor? Hic!" "Of course: it's not even good business...I have been mayor for 20 years for the love of my people..."

 

Mexicans have had a complicated relationship with their modern presidents. At one level, they are revered and accorded enormous respect as the holders of the greatest office in the land. At another, most Mexican believe, not entirely without foundation, that presidents use their office to enrich themselves, their family and cronies. Nevertheless, some are admired, or at least given some credit, for some achievement or other: Lázaro Cárdenas for distributing land to the peasants and nationalising the petroleum companies, Ernesto Zedillo for managing the crisis caused by the murder of Colosio and managing the final transition to a greater degree of democracy, Fox for winning that election (but achieving little else, alas). On the other hand, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964-1970), and his Secretary of Government and successor as president, Luis Echeverría Álvarez (1970-1976), are generally reviled as authors of the 1968 massacre. As one tours Los Pinos, one understands how six years as the most powerful man within Mexico’s borders (but inevitably bowing more often than not to American demands), living on a luxurious estate, his every wish met with a “Yes, Mr President”, was an intoxicating episode in a president’s life. Those six years defined one man and gave each term of office (the sexenio) a very personal character.