Colouring history in Puerto Vallarta

 

One of the not very useful facts that I know from my studies of Mexican history is that in 1582 cochineal was being produced in Chilapa in the mountains of Guerrero, and a few years later in Huamuxtitlán, Olinalá, Tlapa and Ahuacuotzingo. The little insect Dactylopius coccus was used to produce a dye much in demand in the textile workshops of Mexico City.

 

But while I had read about cochineal I had never seen it, and had no idea how the dye was made nor what colours it produced, until Jan and I paid our annual visit to a shop called Casa Oaxaca in Puerto Vallarta. The shop is the retail outlet of a cooperative of Indigenous textile workers in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, a drive of more than 1,300 kilometres so Google informs me.

 

In front of a loom were several baskets each containing different dyeing materials. There was indigo from plants of the Indigofera genus, pods of a shrub called huizache (Vachellia farnesiana) whose seeds produce blacks and greys; a mineral used to break down the lanolin of wool so that dyes can be absorbed.

 

And there was a basket of a shiny material that I took to be small stones, but was in fact the dried bodies of the cochinilla insect. It feeds on the sap of prickly pears, in three months growing to about one centimetre. These are voracious little creatures as our son Chris told me later: they ate the prickly pear in his garden in San Vicente in no time at all. But the textile workers of Teotitlán love them: they infect prickly pears with a male and female and wait for them to multiply and suck the plant dry.

 

The young man who served us gave me a demonstration. He crushed some cochineal in his hand, applied a few drops of lime juice; a red stain appeared on his hand. Then he added a little ground chalk to produce a different shade; next slaked lime for another shade. With judicious application of a variety of alkaloids, a range of reds can be produced. So here the historian who knew about the cultivation of cochineal almost 500 years ago was given a beginners class in how it is used to produce goods for tourists today.

 

These insects little have other uses. They are edible, but apparently have no great flavour. They can be used as a food colouring, and are added to mezcal.

A day at Vallarta Botanic Garden

Arriving for work with Chris

Chris's "office"

 

The orchid lab, where rare orchids are propagated and new varieties created.

A view from the orchid house.

Chris with the fruit of the cuastecomate tree. The fruit apparently has medicinal properties. The outer skin was used in ancient Mexico to make drinking vessels.

 

Orchids in the orchid house. Mexico has 3,000 varieties, of which the garden has 300.

 

The view from the restaurant of the Horcones River valley.

 

A hummingbird visited us for breakfast.

Lots of spiders hanging high up on their webs.

 

 

Lots of butterflies of all colours and caterpillars. We joined a presentation and walk by the local butterfly conservancy. Dulce, who led the presentation and walk, told us that this not very attractive caterpillar has a nasty sting.

A cacao tree. The whiteish pods contain the seeds from which the chocolate is made from and the small white flowers growing up the trunk will produce more pods.

 

 

 

“Gente importante”

 

After we had returned home from dinner with our friends Lupita and Eliseo, our son Chris received a message from Eliseo thanking us for inviting them to dinner, especially since the restaurant is a place where “important people” (gente importante) go.

 

You may recall from a blog item about two years ago that we last met Lupita and Eliseo for dinner with their teenage son Carlitos, who had both legs amputated because of cancer. Alas, Carlitos died of his cancer shortly before our visit to Puerto Vallarta last year. While we were visiting, Chris, his then boss Arturo and Eliseo spent a day at a local hospital offering to give blood to replace some of the blood given to Carlitos.

 

Both Eliseo and Lupita are blind. As they entered the restaurant with Chris “en tren” (“in train”) Lupita with her hand on Chris’s shoulder, Eliseo’s on her waist, they surprised their surviving son Eliseo who is a waiter at Campomar where we ate. Eliseo Jr.’s other given name, we learned is Charbel, after Charbel Makhlouf, a Lebanese saint known for uniting Christians, Muslims and Druze, and known as the Miracle Monk of Lebanon.

 

Some of you may recall that Eliseo has been blind from birth (he has no eyes) and Lupita from a later stage of life. Eliseo continues working as a physiotherapist at Pasitos de Luz, the children’s charity where Chris worked until recently. Lupita teaches braille at a government agency called DIF (Desarrollo Integral de la Familia; Integral Family Development). Lately, she has devoted more of her time to providing social interaction for elderly people who are losing their sight and who lack the skills and confidence to leave their homes. She organizes gatherings to enjoy music and dancing.

 

Both Lupita and Eliseo are involved in a theatrical event, a production about a famous figure in Mexican history, La Malinche. Malinche was an indigenous noblewoman from south-eastern Mexico who had learned Spanish from a shipwrecked Spanish sailor. She played an important role in the Spanish invasion of Mexico as an interpreter who enabled Cortés to negotiate alliances with enemies of the Aztecs. She also became his lover and mother of his son Martín Cortés, and has an ambiguous role in Mexican history as a capable indigenous woman. But many Mexicans consider her a traitor who betrayed their motherland. The play is to be performed entirely by blind actors. The director is a professor who is losing his sight. The audience will wear blindfolds so that, as Eliseo put it, they will experience the sounds and smells of the production.

 

When we meet Lupita and Eliseo we are acutely aware of the importance of their non-visual senses. For example, Lupita commented to Jan that she sensed that the restaurant was very busy, although of course she could not see the customers, nor distinguish between the talk of staff and customers. Then there were the screens showing American football games and their associated commentary, and the clatter of knives and forks on plates. As for smells, the food provided plenty to assail the senses.

 

I reflected on Eliseo’s comment that our fellow diners were important people. In the sense that they had the money to arrive in nice cars, have someone park it for them, and order food that was beyond the means of our guests, they are no doubt important. But in the Bahía de Banderas area there are really only two ways to make money, tourism (hotels, restaurants, and tours/events) and real estate. Success in these businesses can require permits to build perhaps where permission should not be given, or building on a scale that should not be allowed; ignoring ecological damage to flora and fauna (turtle nesting on the beaches, for example, are vulnerable to development); and so on.

 

I think I much prefer the company of Lupita and Eliseo to the “important people” of Campomar.

Footsteps of history in Mexico

  

Among the pleasures of exploring Mexico City are the unexpected traces of history one encounters. As we strolled along the grandly named Triunfo de la Libertad (Triumph of Liberty), a narrow street typical of central Tlalpan in Mexico City, a sign on an otherwise unprepossessing wall caught my eye. It informed me that on that location once stood the Hospicio de San Antonio de los Padres Dieguinos de las Filipinas, a residence for missionaries en route from Spain to the Philippines. The hospicio was donated to the order in 1580 by a certain Beatriz de Miranda, together with 15,120 varas (almost 19,000 hectares) of land, including an orchard and vegetable garden.

Here the missionaries could recover from a long, arduous, and sometimes dangerous, journey from Seville to Veracruz, and then on horse or mule back through the mountains to Mexico City. They then faced a journey of thirteen to sixteen days to Acapulco, through mountains, crossing the Balsas river, one of Mexico’s largest, on wooden rafts, staying overnight in remote wayside inns, and braving mosquitos. Fray Alonso de la Mota y Escobar, bishop of Tlaxcala, commented on the arduous terrain during his visit to parishes in the mountains of eastern Guerrero in 1610-1611. On one occasion, he complained he had travelled “an appalling” 28 kilometres of “foul” tracks. In the 16^th century, Acapulco was not the luxury tourist resort it became in the last century; rather it was a small, hot and humid tropical settlement with few buildings of substance. But, despite its lack of facilities, it was the Spanish empire’s only authorized gateway to all of Asia.

The friars occupied the property in Tlalpan until 1827 when it was expropriated by the governor of the state of Mexico, one Lorenzo de Zavala, a prominent Liberal politician. Zavala was a prominent figure in independent Mexico: he helped to draft the constitution of Mexico’s first Liberal Republic in 1824; was minister of finance and ambassador to France, and travelled widely in Europe. In 1835 he fled to the state of Texas from one of the many coups of the grandly named Conservative General Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, more conveniently known plain Santa Anna. Zavala then became an advocate of the independence of Texas and signed its Declaration of Independence in 1836. Consequently, Zavala is reviled in Mexican history books as a national traitor, but praised as a hero in Texas where a town and a county are named after him. However, the town (Zavalla, in Angelina County) named in his honour could not get the spelling quite right and had only 603 residents to remember him in 2020. Zavala, in Jasper County, got the spelling right, but was abandoned in the second half of the 19^th century. Those who named Zavala County (in southern Texas) in Lorenzo’s honour in 1858, also mangled his spelling, and only removed the surplus in 1929. Only a cemetery honours Lorenzo today.  Zavala’s nemesis, Santa Anna, on the other hand is persona non grata in both Mexico (for losing Texas) and in Texas (as the besieger of the Álamo).

By mid-century, the former hospicio was the site of the betting tables during Tlalpan’s fair. In 1847 the invading forces of the USA occupied the property, after which it was abandoned and the land divided. In 1978 Carlos Hank González, former governor of the state of Mexico purchased the site and donated it to form the Literary Institute of the Autonomus University of the State of Mexico; it is now the cultural centre of the university. Hank González, by the way, was famous, among other disreputable things, for the motto “A poor politician is a poor politician.” He was certainly not a poor politician.

The façade of the Viceroy Mendoza house in Tlalpan.

A few minutes around the corner from the former site of the hospicio is a building said to have been a residence of the first Viceroy of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza, who ruled the future Mexico from 1535-1550. It is thought that Mendoza lived there during the annual Easter festival of the Holy Spirit in Tlalpan’s church of San Agustín de las Cuevas.  In 2007 a citizen-led campaign saved the building from demolition. A modern visitor sees little of Mendoza’s country residence, now much modernized as a community educational centre, other than its 16^th-century style façade, and, like other properties in central Tlalpan, a garden of surprising and impressive size in modern super-crowded Mexico City. The garden is now a wild place, but stone remains of former structures, prickly pears and trees hint at a once larger residence and a substantial kitchen garden and orchard.

The modernized interior of the Mendoza house.

The Mendoza house garden, partial view.

 

The church where Mendoza celebrated Easter was built in 1532. Now much remodelled inside, it retains its façade, a bell tower, the ringers’ ropes attached from the garden below (nobody climbs the tower to ring), and a two-storey cloister where friars once lived. In front is a sizeable garden. These large open spaces of early Mexican churches were used to minister to the indigenous people, then far too numerous to be accommodated inside the church itself.

San Agustín de las Cuevas, Tlalpan

 

Jan and I have become fond of Tlalpan after two visits. Here we can sense a Mexico of the past, and of the modern city where parents walk children to school, deal with official matters in the town hall on the main plaza, and dine in restaurants where pale-skinned visitors like us are a comparative rarity, and welcomed with courtesy and pleasure.

In another colonial-era district of Mexico City, the Plaza San Jacinto in San Ángel, a statue commemorates Comandante John Riley. Riley was an officer in the US army ordered by President James Polk to invade Mexico in 1846-1848. The army included a battalion of men of Irish origins, known in Mexico as the Heróico Batallón de San Patricio (The Heroic Battalion of Saint Patrick). Polk’s invasion was essentially a land grab – Mexico was obliged by military force to ”cede” to the USA California, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Texas, about half the national territory). The Irish soldiers evidently understood exactly why they had been sent into Mexico, and true to Irish traditions of anti-colonialism, decided to fight for Mexico’s territorial integrity.  Alas, Mexico was soundly defeated, the Irish soldiers killed or captured, and most of the prisoners were tortured and hung, many of them in Plaza San Jacinto.

Bust of John Riley, Plaza San Jacinto, San Ángel, Mexico City.

The day between our visit to Plaza San Jacinto and Tlalpan, we had taken our son David to see the Trotsky House in Coyoacán. Trotsky arrived in Mexico after a long peregrination seeking asylum in several countries. Finally, in the 1930s President Lázaro Cárdenas, who had admitted many Republican refugees from the Spanish Civil War, offered Trotsky asylum. His admirers, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo became friends (Kahlo slightly more than friends) and visited him regularly in what was then a country house (now a multi-lane highway runs past the door). Guarded by young acolytes from the USA, Trotsky, his wife and their youngest son survived an armed assault led by the painter David Alfaro Siqueiros; the only casualty was the son who was lightly wounded. Watchtowers on the walls testify to the threats under which the family lived. After the attack, Trotsky’s office was fortified with heavy cast iron shutters and doors. In the end, of course, it was not a gun that killed Trotsky, but an ice axe wielded by a Catalan Communist infiltrator, trained in Russia. Gory black and white photos record the deed. Trotsky and his wife are buried in the garden where he once tended his rabbits and chickens.

The burial place of Trotsky, his wife Natalia Sedova Kolchvsky, and their grandson Estéban Volkov Bronstein and a partial view of the Trotsky house. Note the guard post top right.

 

 

Romance Vallarta Style

 

After we arrived at our apartment on Playa Amapas yesterday I went down to the beach. At one end, a small white tepee stood was decorated with electric candles, red roses, and illuminated letters spelling T E A M O (I love you). Two sunshades provided shelter from the sun. Later a couple of young women lay among the roses and embraced on. Our son Chris tells us this ia a favourite LGBTQ+ beach.

 

This morning, as we prepared breakfast the sound of a trumpet drew our attention. About where the two young ladies had embraced yesterday, a heart-shaped display of false red roses had been erected. In its centre was an illuminated sign asking “Will you marry me?”. A red carpet was lined by electric candles and red roses. Two displays of roses stood either side of the arch and behind on the beach more electric candles. A bouquet of red roses was strategically placed on the red carpet just in front of the heart.

 

 

A glamorous young woman in an elegant trouser outfit and beach sandals was busy on a mobile phone, while a young man dressed in black with a pony tail was busy setting his camera for the event. The trumpet player was a member of a mariachi that was gathering and preparing its instruments.

And then the couple arrived. We felt a certain sympathetic tension. Would she say yes, or no? The girl wore a fetching long dress, her beau some not so elegant shorts and a black shirt. The mariachi played. He fell to his knees, produced and fitted on her finger a ring.

 

What next? The suspense rose.

 

The beau stood up; the girl embraced. They kissed. The answer was clearly YES. The bouquet was presented. There followed many photos and videos. No doubt the young couple are now on Snapchat or Tiktok.

Given the elaborate arrangements, we assumed that the Yes was a foregone conclusion.

Distant memories and present realities

 

 

As is our habit when we visit our con Chris in Puerto Vallarta, we first check into the hotel Villa La Estancia for a few days of luxury relaxation. There was an innovation this year in the breakfast restaurant: quesadillas with hand-made tortillas, with cheese and a choice (or combination) of mushrooms, spinach, tinga de pollo (chicken in a sauce of tomatoes and smoked chiles), or birria. The latter is a western Mexico speciality of beef, goat or lamb, cooked for two to three hours in a marinade of chile ancho and guajillo, garlic, cumin, oregano, thyme, black pepper, cloves, cinnamon, bay leaf and vinegar. It is hearty and absolutely delicious.

 

Chatting to Yolanda, who made our breakfast to order, I discovered that she was born in Chilpancingo, the state capital of Guerrero (and the place where Mexico’s first constitution was drafted) seven years after I had stayed there for a couple of months to consult the state archives. We reminisced about Chilpancingo’s culinary speciality, pozole. Everyday white posole is made from long-cooked hominy, pork, garlic, onion, bay leaf, oregano, pepper and salt, and served with lettuce, radish, avocado, oregano and lime. But the truly special pozole is the green pozole made only on jueves pozoleros (pozole Thursdays), flavoured with fewer herbs and spices, but with that all-Mexican herb epazote, and with tomate, which in English we call either green tomato or tomatillos, and jalapeños.

 

Yolanda making quesadillas.

 

 

Our conversation reminded me of a long afternoon sharing local mezcal and quantities of pozole verde with a colleague from the Autonomous University of Guerrero. The pozole was delicious, the mezcal too copious, and our fellow diners included anybody who was anybody in Chilpancingo.

 

Apart from the rather mundane mornings spent in the archives, I was trying to make contact with the Figueroa family, whose ancestors had been important figures in the state during the Revolution of 1910-1920. Indeed, they had continued to be important players in state politics, and Rubén Figueroa Figueroa had recently been elected governor. The governor was, to say the least, a colourful figure. He was one of the breed of rough and tough gun-toting politicians who had ruled Guerrero not at all well for half a century. The most spectacular episode of his career had been his capture by the guerrilla band of Lucio Cabañas. Figueroa had hoped to persuade Cabañas to give up his armed struggle in return for ‘election’ to remunerative political office. However, instead of pulling off a political coup de théâtre, Figueroa found himself held captive until all political prisoners in Mexico were released. Cabaña’s bands methods were rather haphazard, and on one occasion the corpulent governor-elect had managed to walk away from his captors, only to be recaptured. Finally, the band was betrayed and caught in an army ambush. In the midst of the firefight, Figueroa walked over to the army side and demanded to be given a gun with words to the effect of ‘so I can shoot the bastards.’

 

I had tried to meet the governor in Acapulco, but was told that he was fishing with the Shah of Iran. In Chilpancingo, however, I managed to make the acquaintance of the governor’s cousin, Arturo Figueroa Uriza, the family historian and guardian of their archive. Arturo refused my request to have access to the archive, arguing that all that was in the archive was in his book Ciudadanos en Armas (Citizens in Arms). I tried to gain access to the archive through another cousin, Jesús Figueroa, who lived in the family’s home town, Huitzuco (now known in full as Huitzuco de los Figueroa) and made wine there. But he asked me what I was interested in. When I replied ‘The social background of the followers’ of his relatives, hoping to allay fears that I might be digging for dirt, he responded that the archives contained no such material. The Figueroas guarded their past carefully, so I never was allowed to see a single document, except for a few which were in the national archives, beyond family control.

 

However, don Arturo offered to introduce me to the governor. We found him meeting the people who brought their petitions hoping that the governor would take up their case. Anybody of importance who happened not to be the governor’s enemy need not queue up, but ordinary citizens (almost all small-scale farmers) had to wait their turn. I was taken straight to the front of the queue, where I found the governor, a corpulent man dressed in a white guayabera shirt. He was flanked by two other rotund gents wearing guayaberas; the greatest living poets in the state I was told.

 

We talked about the governor’s rescue by the army and he invited me to a seminar of the mayors of the state’s largest cities to discuss municipal finance. Guerrero’s main problem is poverty and an economy and political system structured so as to keep the majority impoverished. In the context of the seminar, a secondary problem was the number of tiny municipalities. The population of each is too small and too poor to pay much in taxes, so the governor commented that, except in the larger municipalities, such as Chilpancingo or Acapulco, they lacked sufficient budget even to buy pencils. Nevertheless, locals often jealously and forcefully guarded the autonomy of their municipalities, despite the fact that they did very little to benefit their tax payers.

 

In these circumstances, I was often impressed by how resourcefully the people of Guerrero could manage to improve their lives with very little (or no) support from those who were “elected” to govern them. I recall being asked by the head teacher of a politically radical secondary school in Acapulco to give a presentation to a class about the history of their state. The head’s office was equipped with a desk, a couple of chairs and a filing cabinet, as minimal as the office of the mayor of Buenavista de Cuéllar, far to the north of the state, who I once visited. But the head’s room was palatial compared to the classrooms.

 

Looking at the class, I was struck by the footprint of the history of enslaved Africans on the coast: many of these young men and women had much darker skins than fellow Mexicans descended from the ancient peoples of Mexico. When I had finished my talk, the students were not interested in the history of their state; they wanted to ask me questions about my own country. In response to a student who asked what the police in the UK were like I answered that “en mi país los policías no tienen pistola”, meaning that they were unarmed. This remark caused such hilarity that the head decided to end the class there; in local slang a pistola was a penis, and I had told these young people that British police officers don’t have any.

 

As I reminisced with Yolanda, she commented that many say that the people of Guerrero are bad and violent. We both agreed that this is an unjust stereotype. This reminded me of a conversation with Margarita Zavala, wife of the president of Mexico, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa. The occasion was the private view of an exhibition in 2010 about Moctezuma Xocoyotzin at the British Museum to mark the 200^th anniversary of the beginning of Mexico’s war of independence. Noticing that Margarita was alone after giving her speech in English, my friends Dudley and Silvia Ankerson and I introduced ourselves to her. She was very keen to be reassured that her English was up to scratch. We assured her that it was excellent, and Silvia complimented her on her elegant rebozo (a Mexican stole). When my friends commented that I had studied the history of Guerrero, the First Lady commented “Un pobre estado con muchos problemas” (a poor state with many problems). Quite what her husband was doing to solve the problems of Guerrero she did not say.

 

Guerrero’s current predicament as one of Mexico’s most violent states is in some ways a historical conundrum. In pre-Columbian times the region had abundant resources of cotton, coffee and metals, all much in demand. The indigenous communities fared reasonably well. Spanish law gave the indigenous some useful privileges and protections. They paid no sales tax, could not be tried by the Inquisition for heresy, and were left to govern most of their own affairs. The best-placed municipalities were able to accumulate substantial community funds and to defend many of their cultural practices, their land and treasured documents.

 

Then came the Bourbons followed by Independence. The Bourbons, hard up for cash, “asked” for loans from village funds. Independence piled on the problems. The Liberals who led the movement to free Mexico from Spanish rule decried the supposedly infantilizing protections and privileges given the Indians under Spanish rule: they must have the full rights and responsibilities of all Mexicans and pay taxes like everybody else. And the Liberals deplored the communal property of indigenous towns as “la mano muerta” (the dead hand) that stifled economic development. Instead, village lands were to become private property on the open market, and thus, coincidentally, available for non-indigenous Liberal thinkers to snap them up and accumulate capital. This process was sometimes resisted determinedly and violently by communities in the mountains of Guerrero; ironically, the only ruler to try to help them retain their land was the Austrian-born emperor Maximilian I, only for disamortization as it was called to be pursued with greater vigour by the government of the national Liberal hero Benito Juárez (himself an indigenous person) and his successors.

 

The revolutionary regimes after 1920 distributed land to many communities, an initiative to which the Figueroas were opposed. However, this was not ownership by the community, but rather a highly conditional tenure controlled by federal law and politicians. True, clinics and schools appeared in small towns and villages, but politicians focused on grand initiatives that did little to ease rural poverty. Meanwhile fortunes were made in tourism, the only modern sector of Guerrero’s economy, in Acapulco and Itztapa Zihuatanejo. Oh, and the Figueroas came to control some key sectors of the state’s economy, notably passenger and goods transport.

 

And most recently, crime syndicates have seized control of much of the state and have suborned local politicians. Those who do not submit to the demands of organized crime pay with their lives. So the hardworking and long-suffering people of Guerrero live in poverty and insecurity.

What’s in a name?

 

I have been asked to write an article about the production of my publishing magnum opus, The Dictionary of Art (1996, 34 volumes) for Oxford University Press, the current publisher of the dictionary to mark its 30^th anniversary.

 

This exercise has provoked many memories. During the long and laborious task of assembling in a rational and clear order the entire history of art around the globe, editors sought ways to make the task seem lighter.

 

One stratagem was to hold parties. I recall a fancy-dress party for which we all dressed up in costumes that reflected our speciality or role. For example, one young desk editor had herself encased in aluminium foil to convert herself into a pair of scissors (cutting over-length text). One year the Scots among us (joined by those who had studied in Scotland) cooked a Burns day lunch of haggis and mashed swede, accompanied by a wee dram and recitals of the poet’s works, including a bawdy piece entitled One inch shall please a lady, for which we Sassenachs were given a glossary so that we should not miss the point. The poem was recited by a young woman who has since become a historian of Renaissance Italian gardens.

 

Editors sought amusement in the texts they edited, noting strange/amusing names they came across in texts: one of my favourites was a Croatian contributor, Urban Couch. Another was Professor Richard Brilliant, an excellent name for a career in art history, a discipline in which reputation counts for much. The names were displayed on a wall in our office at 112 Strand, but, unfortunately, we failed to keep a. record of them all.

 

Some 200 miles to the north, in the offices of our typesetter, Pindar Limited, colleagues who spent a decade keying our text, kept an eye open for amusing facts. The result was a dictionary of death, classified into chapters according to the way people died. Alberto Greco (1915-1965) an Argentinian died in Barcelona in curious circumstances: "He committed suicide with barbiturates in a room bursting with sanitary appliances." A search in what is no known as Groveart Online (OUP has kindly given me a temporary license while I write my article) suggests that suicide was not an uncommon way for artists to end their lives (and careers, of course). One of the more dramatic was the deat of Dezsó Czigány (1883-1937), a Hungarian painter. In a psychotic fit he first murdered his parents and then killed himself in 1937. The Mughal ruler Humayuun died when he tumbled down the stairs to his library in 1556. The unfortunate Léopold-Emile Reutlinger (b Callao, Peru, 17 March 1863; d Paris, 16 March 1937) caught a typesetter’s eye, not for the way he died, but for the event that ended his career: he “stopped working in 1930 when he lost an eye in an accident with a champagne cork.” Our typesetting colleagues proudly presented us with a copy of their work when their task was finished*.

 

Perhaps the most redolent name in The Dictionary of Art was, you guessed it, a Mexican one: Diego María Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez. Quite how he fitted it into his passport, I do not know.  María and Concepción suggest that the parents of this godless Commmunist/Trotskyist painter were devout Catholics. Nepomuceno is the Spanish rendition of St. John of Nepomuk, executed by King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia for refusing to divulge the queen’s confessions. The monarch appears not to have been a particularly good King Wenceslaus, but his name apparently lives on in a video game, Kingdom Come: Deliverance. The derivation of Estanislao means to be or to remain famous, a challenge which Diego certainly met. The name also referred to Saint Stanislav of Cracow, martyred for opposing the cruelty of king Bołeslaw the Cruel of Poland. Fortunately, historians of Mexican art know the great muralist simply as Diego, so nobody needs to remember his full name to identify him.

Diego Rivera's house in San Ángel. The large glass windows on the second floor light his studio.

There are, of course, many connections to Diego in Mexico City, and not just his murals. One of Diego’s friends was Juan O’Gorman, an architect and painter perhaps most famous for his enormous mosaic decoration of the library of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. O’Gorman was a modernist in the style of Le Corbusier. In 1930-1932 he built separate (but connected by a footbridge) houses, in San Ángel, a southern suburb of Mexico City, for Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and a house for himself and his parents. The Rivera and Kahlo homes included studio spaces: Rivera died in his studio in 1957. Visitors can see the tiny bed (he was a short man) in which he died.

Frida Kahlo's house in San Ángel. The exterior stairs of the O'Gorman house are in the foreground.

Kahlo's house showing the bridge that connected Diego's house with hers.

 

Another connection to Rivera and Kahlo is the Dolores Olmedo Museum in Xochimilco, another southern neighbourhood. Olmedo was a muse (and probable lover) of Rivera. She made her home in the hacienda de la Noria, a colonial building that incorporated the late 16^th-century chapel of San Juan Evangelista Tzomolco. Olmedo’s former home houses the largest collection of paintings of Rivera and Kahlo, and of Rivera’s first wife, the Russian painter Angelina Beloff. However, the museum has been closed since 2020. Proposals to relocate the collection to the Parque Aztlán in Chapultepec Park proved extremely controversial and the museum is still closed, although it may reopen in 2026.

The Dolores Olmedo Museum

The Dolores Olmedo Museum

 

*Note: Gleeson, B. et al: The Pindar Book of Death: a compilation of curious and unusual ways in which artists have met their end (Scarborough: Pindar Ltd, limited edition, 1992-1995).

80 Years Ago

 Today, Friday 15 August 2025, the UK formally commemorated the 80^th anniversary of VJ (Victory in Japan) day – the Emperor Hirohito formally signed Japan’s surrender on 15 August 1945. Ron Waddams, my father-in-law, then in Rangoon, had received news of the surrender of the Empire of Japan on Friday 10 August 1945.

A summary map produced after the surrender by Ron's unit (apologies for the amateur photograph).

Ron was drafted into the Royal Artillery, serving in Britain, until on 30 September 1942 he was transferred to the army’s map-making school in Ruabon, Wales. On 23 February 1943 his unit of the Royal Engineers sailed from Greenock in Scotland, via Dakar, Freetown, Capetown and Durban, to India, arriving at Bombay 11 June 1943. In May 1945 Ron and his British and Indian colleagues crossed into Burma. 

Ron Waddams, self-portrait in his Burma uniform, oil on canvas.

 

Two days after learning that fighting in Asia had ended, Ron wrote to his parents. His letter follows:

1601540 Sgt. R. Waddmas R.E.

61 Ind Reproduction Group I.E.

S.E.A.C.

August 12.1945

Dear Mum and Dad,

By the time this letter reaches you the world will be at peace. The first new I heard of the Japanese wish to surrender was on Friday evening [August 10]. My first reaction was one of jubilation, in fact we all went a bit crazy. It was so sudden. I had not expected it to end until later in the year

            The remainder of Friday evening was passed riotously, with whiskey, rum and gin … it is perhaps needless to say that I got drunk. We had the drinks out on the balcony of our house. Our dance band was there to keep things at a lively pitch, and it wasn’t long before some of us younger ones were dancing around. My clothes were soaked with perspiration. There was of course much singing as well. I remember of one our lieutenants singing ‘Don’t ‘Ang my’ Arry’¹ and among other vocals I had to give the refrain from ‘Popeye’. It was about the maddest booze-up I have had, but of course we couldn’t let such an occasion pass without an extra-special celebration. I was told later that it wound up about three in the morning. At the time, I was unaware of this as I had faded out to the lavatory an hour before. Later, I was found asleep in the aforementioned retreat. I managed to stagger back to my bed under my own power, where I was sick and had a grinding head. I had made the unfortunate mistake of mixing my drinks, a thing I never usually do, and I paid dearly for it afterwards. I spent the whole day on my bed, but recovered sufficiently in the evening to take a short stroll. Now I am back to normal practically.

            At the moment we are expecting confirmation of the leave to come through tomorrow. I don’t think the official day of peace will give rise to another celebration. It will be rather a stale peace, as I think everybody’s already celebrated it. I don’t know whether it is the same in England.

            I expect that you are even more happy than I am, and you’ll be asking how soon shall I be home. Now that the initial exuberance has passed over, I can view the future seriously. I am not going to build up any false hopes for you. The chance of my returning to England by Christmas is remote. I will be reasonable and estimate I will be home in January or February². You will realize what a terrific task the transportation of men back to England will be, and of course men will still be required out here to continue administrative and garrison duties. I consider myself in a fortunate position … I can imagine myself back among you in the old surrounding, going to dances and concerts, and all the rest of it. Before, all this. Was too far in the distant future to ever contemplate. As I hinted in a previous letter, I shall be in civilian clothes by my next birthday. In a few months time I shall be able to tell you the exact date of my release.

            The following months of waiting will be very trying. I shall try to keep my mind occupied with my reading and writing, and hope the time will pass as quickly as it has in the past. I hope too that you will be patient; it’s only a matter of months now…

            I am enclosing my photograph. I feel that I should put my spoke in and say that I have no intention of carving off the fungi [moustache].

Reference my request for editions of New Writing, I have just acquired editions Nos. 18 and 20, so please don’t buy these numbers.

Just this week I sent one of my short stories to John O’London’s. I had intended sending another to Lilliput but since the advent of peace, I do not think war stories will be acceptable for some years to come, so I intend to keep my original plan of compiling a book of such stories.³

Until Friday my week was a quiet one. I read and write a little, and had not found it necessary to go out. But this afternoon I was tempted out by a recorded orchestral concert. It was held in the only cinema left intact. The cinema recording apparatus was used and was excellent. The main work was a violin concerto by Beethoven.

I have managed to borrow a turntable gramophone on which I have tried out my symphony. I thought it exceedingly pleasant.

I shall have to abandon my plan of taking a French course, as I don’t have time to complete it. I hope to be able to study it when I return, though I realize that I shall be cramped for time to do all the things I want to do. I shall never know boredom anyhow.

My best wishes to the family with my fondest thoughts for the peaceful future which lies ahead of us.

Sincerest love from,

Ron

A page of photos taken by Ron in Imphal, now in the Indian state of Manipur, February 1945.

The view from Ron's tent, Imphal, 1945.

 

 

Publications collected by Ron. Finale is a booklet that commeorates the travels of his unit. The Christmas Programme was produced in Comilla, now in Bangladesh. The menu was: 

Roast duck, roast potatoes, peas, carrots, savoury stuffing. Sauce: Worcestershire, Heinz

Dessert: Christmas pudding, cream, preserves. Cheese. Mince pies. Rolls.

 

 

Notes:

1. The lyrics are as follows:

Don't 'ang my 'arry, don't 'ang him please,
'E's nothin' but a poor boy, on 'is knees.
'E didn't mean no 'arm, you see,
'E was just tryin' to 'elp, like me. 

The baker's boy, 'e asked 'im 'elp,
To carry a loaf, that was quite a shelf.
'E tripped and fell, the loaf it flew,
And 'it the baker, right in 'is shoe.

The baker, 'e was mad, you see,
And said 'e'd 'ang my 'arry, for all to see.
But 'e didn't mean to cause no pain,
'E was just a clumsy lad, in the rain.

So please don't 'ang my 'arry, I pray,
Let 'im go free, and 'ave 'is day.
'E's all I 'ave, my only love,
Sent from the heavens, from up above.

So please don't 'ang 'im, let 'im go,
'E's a good lad at 'eart, you know.
'E's not a criminal, not a thug,
Just a young man, with a clumsy lug.

So please don't 'ang 'im, let 'im go,
'E's a good lad at 'eart, you know.
'E's not a criminal, not a thug,
Just a young man, with a clumsy lug.

2. Ron’s ship home arrived in Liverpool on 18 June 1946. On 22 June 1946 he met Betty Charrosin at the National Gallery. On 20 October 1953 Betty gave birth to a daughter, Janet, now Janet Jacobs. 

3. Ron did not achieve his ambition to become a writer, although he had bought a portable typewriter in the market in Rangoon, perhaps with a future in mind. He had also neem designing Christmas cards, while in Burma, for a publisher in London. When he returned to London, he worked briefly for his father at the printer Emery Walker. He became a successful graphic designer.

Ron's Rangoon typewriter.

 

 

A poetic soul

I was once told during a management course that most employers have no idea of the talents of their staff. Perhaps publishing is unusual in attracting a large number of people of varied and unsuspected talents. Unfortunately, I have been reminded of this by the funerals that I have begun to attend over the last few years.

 

I recently “attended” online the funeral of Alastair Gordon, who had been the international sales director of Macmillan Press (the academic division of Macmillan Publishers) with whom I worked for a number of years. Alastair was a genial colleague, but my books were a difficult sell for him because reference works were very expensive, and I was unwilling to give overseas booksellers the high discounts that were customary. Nevertheless, Alastair did his best, and we were on very friendly terms.

 

I learned more about Alastair in our retirement at occasional reunion lunches, usually in Winchester. He and his wife owned a house in a tiny town, Sant Martí de Barcedana, in the Catalan Pyrenees, so we shared an interest in matters Hispanic. He was learning Catalan and was a keen walker on routes once traversed by Spanish shepherds with their flock of transhuman animals.

Sant Martí de Barcedana (photo by Gustau Erill i Pinyot)

What I learned from his funeral was that Alastair was fond of memorizing poetry. Another friend from Macmillan days, Jim Papworth, read verses selected by Alastair of a Longfellow translation of the Coplas a la Muerte de su padre (Couplets on the death of his father) of Jorge Manrique (c.1440-1479). Here are the verses that Jim read:

 

Let from its dream the soul awaken,

And reason mark with open eyes

The scene unfolding,

How lightly life away is taken,

How cometh Death in stealthy guise,

At last beholding;

 

What swiftness hath the flight of pleasure

That, once attained, seems nothing more

Than respite cold;

How fain is memory to measure

Each latter day inferior

To those of old.

 

Beholding how each instant flies

So swift, that, as we count, ‘tis gone

Beyond recover.

Let us resolve to be more wise

Thank stake our future lot upon

What soon is over.

 

Let none be self-deluding, none,

Imagining some longer stay

For his own treasure

Than what today he sees undone;

For everything must pass away

In equal measure.

 

Our lives are fated as the rivers

That gather downward to the sea

We know as Death;

And yonder every flood delivers

The pride and pomp of seigniory

That forfeiteth;

 

Yonder the rivers in their splendor;

Yonder the streams of modest worth,

The rills beside them;

Till there all equal they surrender;

And so with those who toil on earth

And those who guide them.

 

Longfellow’s version, is not, of course, a faithful translation – that would not have been poetry. The six verses and 36 lines versions selected by Alastair are three verses and 35 lines in Manrique’s original. Here are Manrique’s three verses with my own un-poetic translation:

 

Recuerde el alma dormida,                 Let the sleeping soul recall,
avive el seso y despierte                     The brain stir and awake
contemplando                                     Contemplating
cómo se pasa la vida,                          How life passes,
cómo se viene la Muerte                     How Death comes
tan callando;                                       So silently;
cuán presto se va el placer;                 How fast pleasure flees;
cómo después de acordado                 How later, when recalled,
da dolor;                                              It pains;
cómo a nuestro parecer                       How we esteem
cualquiera tiempo pasado                   Any time past
fue mejor.                                            As better.

                                                                       

Pues si vemos lo presente                   For, if we see the present                   
cómo en un punto se es ido                As if it were merely a point, it is gone
y acabado,                                           And done with,
si juzgamos sabiamente,                     If we judge wisely,
daremos lo no venido                         We will see that the future
por pasado.                                          Is already past.
No se engañe nadie, no,                      No, let nobody be deceived,
pensando que ha de durar                   Thinking that what is to come
lo que espera                                       Will last
más que duró lo que vio,                    More than lasted what we saw already,
pues que todo ha de pasar                   For everything is to pass
por tal manera.                                    In like manner

 

Nuestras vidas son los ríos                 Our lives are rivers
que van a dar en la mar,                      That flow to the sea
que es el morir:                                   That is death;
allí van los señoríos,                           Thus pass all dominions
derechos a se acabar                           Straightway to end
y consumir;                                         And be consumed;
allí los ríos caudales,                          There go great rivers,
allí los otros medianos                        There the lesser streams
y más chicos;                                      And the least;
y llegados, son iguales                        And on arrival all are equal,
los que viven por sus manos               Those who live by their labour
y los ricos.                                           And the rich

 

Manrique’s father, Rodrigo Manrique de Lara (1406-1476), Count Paredes de Nava and Grand Master of the Order de Santiago, was famed for his feats of arms in the Reconquista against the Moors, as verse XXIX tells us:

 

No dexó grandes thesoros                  He left no great treasures

ni alcançó grandes riquezas                Nor did he earn great riches

ni baxillas,                                           Nor great wealth

mas hizo guerra a los moros               But he made war on the Moors

ganando sus fortalezas                       Seizing their fortresses

y sus villas;                                          And their villas;

y en las lides que venció,                    And in the battles that he won

muchos moros y cavallos                    Many Moors and horses

se perdieron,                                       Were lost,

y en este oficio ganó                           And these deeds won him

las rentas y los vasallos                       The rents and vassals

que le dieron.                                      That they gave him.

 

Fortunately, the Longfellow verses that Alastair chose for his friends and family to mark the end of his life were a much more apt selection than verse XXIX. Those verses reminded me of one of my own favourite Spanish poems, Antonio Machado’s “Caminante, son tus huellas”, the translation here from a video that includes a reading by Emilio Aponte Sierra, a Colombian refugee in Florida (https://scalar.fas.harvard.edu/resources-for-loss/caminante-no-hay-camino-by-antonio-machado-contributed-by-jerry-sevillano-2021):

 

Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace el camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino
sino estelas en la mar.


Traveler, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no road;
you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road,
and when you look back
you see the path
you will never travel again.
Traveler, there is no road;
only a ship's wake on the sea.

 

Alastair’s wake speaks of a kind, thoughtful man of wide interests and a fondness for fine verse. A rather better record of a life than that of Rodrigo Manrique de Lara.