BUAP hosts an exhibition that deeply examines the migration phenomenon

▲ The exhibition features images that document the pain of parting at the Buenavista railway terminal. Photo courtesy of the MNFM

Paula Carrizosa

The Eastern Journey

La Jornada Newspaper, Friday, July 4, 2025, p. 2

Puebla, Pue., Men line up to be called at the recruitment office in La Ciudadela, Mexico City. With a small bundle or their hat barely hidden under their arms, they look toward the camera that photographed them. The first one stares at the photographer, who captures one of the common scenes of the Bracero Program, which brought Mexican migrants to work legally in the United States during and after World War II.

The image, called Interiors of the Citadel, the hiring, captured in 1945, is one of the 76 photographs, in addition to nine magazine covers, eight serigraphs and a video belonging to the National Museum of Mexican Railways (MNFM), which are part of the exhibition The braceros seen by the Mayo brothers, which from yesterday until September 28 is on display in the first courtyard of the Carolino building, headquarters of the Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP).

This exhibition project, described Luis Antonio Lucio Venegas, head of the Vice-Rector's Office for Outreach and Culture at BUAP, is an in-depth review of the migration phenomenon and labor relations between Mexico and the United States during a crucial period in the 20th century.

At the exhibition's opening, he noted that the Bracero Program was in effect from 1942 to 1964, and that thousands of Mexican workers were legally hired to fill the gaps left by Americans who had moved to Europe to participate in World War II.

The uniqueness of the exhibition lies in the perspective of those who documented these events, the Mayo brothers: Francisco, Faustino, Julio, Cándido and Pablo, photographers of Spanish origin who arrived in Mexico as refugees from the Spanish Civil War, and who, from their status as migrants, constructed a unique visual perspective marked by their commitment to social causes , Venegas defined.

He added that "Los braceros" (The Braceros as Seen by the Mayo Brothers) constitutes a relevant and necessary dialogue on migration. Researcher John Mraz agreed with this, arguing that the phenomenon portrayed by the Mayo brothers is current and complex .

The researcher from the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities of the BUAP, Alfonso Vélez Pliego, said: my interest in making the book and the exhibition arose from the notion of immigrants photographing migrants, but the truth is that the braceros did not emigrate, rather they were temporary workers, which does not mean that they did not have an impact, although, obviously, many did not return to Mexico .

The important thing, Mraz stated, has been to take this exhibition, which was put together in 2015 at the MNFM to nearly twenty venues in Mexico and the United States, so it has been seen by some 140,000 people, to convey a message: we Mexicans have always been in the United States .

He added that there is no doubt that the Mayo brothers felt identified with the Mexican workers, who, although they were not migrants in the technical sense of the word, were people willing to take risks, to move, to not stay in the same situation .

Mraz, author of exhibition and editorial projects such as La mirada inquieta (The Restless Look), Testimonio de una guerra (Testimony of a War) and Nacho López: tener algo que decir (Nacho López: Having Something to Say), said that this characteristic also typifies the photographic work of the Mayo brothers, the most prolific group of photojournalists in the history of Latin America with some 5 million negatives .

In this regard, Maribel Souza, daughter of Julio Souza Fernández, Julio Mayo's given name, pointed out that, although set in other times, the exhibition comes at the best time to raise awareness of what people in the United States suffer under the current policy of President Donald Trump, who treats them as criminals .

Interviewed separately, she recalled that her father said that he too had been a migrant, his roots being in Spain, but his life in Mexico, and that is what the braceros felt, because even though they were in the United States, they did not forget Mexico, and always had it in mind .

The exhibition "Los braceros vistos por los hermanos Mayo" (The Braceros Seen by the Mayo Brothers), mounted at the University Center for Culture and Knowledge in the Carolino building of BUAP (4 Sur 104, Puebla's Historic Center), features images documenting the bureaucratic process and the examinations that candidates were subjected to at the recruitment centers located in Mexico City. They also bear witness to the acute pain of saying goodbye at the Buenavista railroad terminal, some aspects of their life on the border, their return to Mexico, and the struggle they endured to recover the savings that had been deducted from their paychecks.

▲ The commemoration began with the unveiling of a lottery ticket in memory of the architect. Photo courtesy of INBAL

Eirinet Gómez

La Jornada Newspaper, Friday, July 4, 2025, p. 3

On the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the birth of architect, painter and muralist Juan O' Gorman (1905-1982), which falls on July 6, the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo House and Studio Museum organized a meeting with specialists, who will reflect on the topics that passionately interested the pioneer of Mexican architecture: social housing, sustainability, design and landscaping.

"We want to celebrate it through dialogue, through a discussion of the topics that always interested him ," Valentina García Burgos, director of the Museo Casa Estudio, explained to La Jornada . Rather than a monographic review, she added, the objective is to reflect on the present based on the ideas O'Gorman proposed a century ago.

What has changed in your thinking? What prevails in industrial design? Where is landscape design or architecture? Where is architecture today? García Burgos asked.

For the museum's director, O'Gorman's most important legacy is the concept of the dignity of living, present in his works. "I think it's a political postulate to speak of the dignity of the users of spaces. He carried that out in all the forms of architecture he developed, not just functionalism ," she emphasized.

In the 1930s, as the working class was emerging in Mexico, O'Gorman proposed affordable and aesthetic housing for workers: "He broke with the logic of haciendas, of French-inspired Porfirian constructions, where ornamentation and opulence predominated. He said: 'We can make affordable, innovative, and inherently beautiful houses.'"

Over time, the proposal of maximum efficiency at minimum cost was distorted, especially by the social housing model. He himself noted: "The concept of functionality and low cost has been vulgarized by stripping away the dignity of its inhabitants ," García Burgos recalled.

The event dedicated to O'Gorman, which will conclude on July 5, began yesterday with the unveiling of a commemorative ticket issued by the National Lottery. It will continue with a panel discussion bringing together specialists such as Dolores Martínez Orralde, Deputy Director General of Immovable Artistic Heritage at the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL); architect Juan José Kochen, who will discuss the muralist and his transition to modernity and worker housing; and Cristina López Uribe, who will talk about O'Gorman, transgression, and limits in 1930s architecture.

Other guests include Escobedo Soliz, a young architecture expert, and Alejandra de la Cerda, a specialist in landscape and urban planning.

One of the most symbolic aspects of the celebration is that it will take place at the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo House-Studio Museum, O'Gorman's first architectural work, designed when she was 24. These three houses are a fusion of European avant-garde movements with the Mexican landscape. Not one on top of the other, but intertwined, embodying a new proposal for modernity , García Burgos noted.

When O'Gorman sold the property in 1968, he removed the mural that had been on one of the houses—it now belongs to a private collection—but the original sinopia, discovered during a restoration, remains on the site.

The museum, its director explained, maintains an intense dialogue with national and international architecture and design students, who visit as part of their training. "O'Gorman remains very relevant. There isn't a student who doesn't remember him or who hasn't had points of contact with his ideas."

The celebration of O'Gorman's birthday, García Burgos emphasized, is an opportunity to learn more about him as an artist, not in a historiographical way, but through debate, controversy, and discussion .

▲ The artist at the unveiling of his mural , *Mutual Presence of Eternal Times*. Photo by Luis Castillo

Merry Macmasters

La Jornada Newspaper, Friday, July 4, 2025, p. 3

The mural "Mutual Presence of Eternal Times" by Arnaldo Coen was unveiled yesterday at the National Monte de Piedad (NMP) in the Tezontle courtyard of Casa Abierta Monte. The financial institution commissioned the artist to commemorate its 250th anniversary, whose theme is "Mexicans Helping Mexicans." The mural revolves around celebrating its legacy and tradition, with art as the medium to tell its story.

For the formal presentation of the 16-by-10-meter work, painted in acrylic on the wall, Coen (Mexico City, 1940) stood in front of the mural in what he called "the white part"—because of the whiteness of the chair—of the accused. An explanation? I prefer others' explanations to me, because there are times when I don't know what I'm doing.

"I wanted to create a way of managing space, something that would signify what enters and leaves the NMP. These are the leaks that flow toward the center, toward infinity, toward us, and beyond us.

The Tower of Babel or the pyramid of Axayácatl (the Mexica tlatoani, successor to Moctezuma) may appear there. However, everything else is a play of shapes that take one back to the present, the past, and a state of constant movement , Coen said.

Interviewed after the presentation, he added: "Ideas are born because they have to be born. I don't know why or how. I respect the connotation of the place, once the land of Moctezuma ," and he noted: "Axayácatl was surely present at these moments and told us that we had to be complicit in what happened here historically and anthropologically. I feel part of anthropology because of its age, although young because of its presence ."

The color of Mutual Presence of Eternal Times is striking: Colors always speak of temperatures. The warm colors, the cool colors, and everything that happens within them is infinite, just as I intend the mural to be. Like these escapes, which go toward infinity and also return .

To create the mural, Coen used a polychromatic palette, that is, a combination of light and dark tones, with warm and cool nuances, to generate a dynamic movement that, in turn, allows for the interplay of planes.

Perhaps the greatest challenge he faced in executing the work was handling the space, which is, in reality, two-dimensional . He explained: "I tried to allow the viewer to penetrate the space, to enter and exit, an experience undertaken through abstract forms ."

He added: "My search for ways to structure space led me, as someone said today, to the Renaissance. Later, new visions of perspective led me to its understanding. For this, Paolo Uccello was one of my teachers. I asked myself, how many fugues would fit in the mural? And I can say as many as we want to see. It was a matter of achieving that vision in the future, although more in the present ."

Coen considers himself an artist who experiences many things at once. There's always a reminiscence of my early works, or my latest ones, and of those I'm currently working on. I'm always playing this game of letting myself be surprised .

In the mural, you can see a luminous point that refers to Axayácatl, who gave asylum to Hernán Cortés. It has its own story; however, I wouldn't have liked to explain it because it would limit the work. I prefer each viewer to have a story to tell that evokes this .

The mural offers a geometric and chromatic explosion that suggests displacement, flight, tension, and balance. It combines a mastery of space, formal experimentation, and a profoundly philosophical vision of time: past, present, and future intertwined in a pictorial dimension.

The formal unveiling of the mural was attended by a number of Coen's friends, as well as members of the cultural community. For essayist and poet Adolfo Castañón, Coen painted the sky beneath which we live. The sky that somehow envelops us and fills us with air . According to writer Alberto Ruy Sánchez, the work is full of mischief. As in everything you do, there's something playful about it, something that brings a smile .

Architect Salvador López Negrete was emphatic: This mural reflects that you came to the NMP to make a great effort .

The financial institution's spaces are revitalized with the Mutual Presence of Eternal Times, along with the 12 panels of the mural Mexicans Helping Mexicans, by Chiapas native Érick Tsucumo, and of course, the stained-glass window Celestial Version, created by Vicente Rojo in 2019.