No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2015
Ahush fell over the gathering of fidgety kindergarteners on a May morning in 1934 in an Ixtapalapa schoolyard, as stage curtains drew apart to reveal an animated stereotypically black hand puppet (El Negrito) laboriously hauling firewood back and forth at the behest of his patrón. El Negrito complained about his plight, and the children's eyes widened with terror, reflecting the fear demonstrated by the puppet when the patrón threatened the arrival of the Devil if he did not keep working. Enter Comino, a cheeky young boy puppet, whose grandmother, accusing him of slothfulness, had brought him to the patrón to learn some work ethic. A Devil puppet loomed large on the makeshift stage, bellowing out vague threats. Two kindergarteners burst into tears. Not wanting to disturb the rest of the captive audience, the teacher removed the terrified girls and brought them around to the back of the stage so that they could see the puppeteers manipulating the cloth, felt and wooden dolls. Despite her efforts, the girls remained inconsolable and refused to watch the rest of the show.
I am grateful to the PEO Foundation and to the Marshall Foundation for supporting the research that led to the publication of this article. I thank the staff at the Archivo Histórico de la Secretaría de Educación Pública in Mexico City for their tireless efforts, Francisca Miranda for directing me to the children’s images, and the editorial staff and anonymous reader for The Americas for providing concise feedback.
1. Archivo Histórico de la Secretaría de Educación Pública (AHSEP), Departamento de Bellas Artes, Serie Teatro 1932–1936, Caja 71, Exp. “Teatro del Niño,” 1934.
2. Also sometimes written as Teatro Guignol. The name Guiñol comes from a prodigious Italian puppeteer in the early 19th century, named either Guignol or Chignol, reportedly responsible for the popularity of puppet theater expressly for children throughout Europe. The makeshift stage itself soon became known as teatro guignol. Lago, Roberto Teatro Guignol Mexicano, 3d. ed. (México: Federación Editorial Mexicana, S.A., 1987), p. 15.Google Scholar
3. Comino vence al diablo appears first ¡n an anthology of three plays by Arzubide, Germán List Tres comedias infantiles para Teatro Guignol (Mexico: Departamento de Bellas Artes, 1936). The play also appears in El Maestro Rural Tomo XI, No. 10 (October 1938), pp. 20–21, 25.Google Scholar
4. Vaughan, Mary Kay and Lewis, Stephen Tìjc Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920–1940 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5. Benjamin, Walter “Program for a Proletarian Children’s Theater,” Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings Vol. 2, 1927-1934, Trans. Livingstone, Rodney et al. (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 202.Google Scholar
6. Schell, Patience “Nationalizing Children through Schools and Hygiene: Porfirian and Revolutionary Mexico City,” The Americas 60:4 (April 2004), pp. 559–587 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Schell, , Church and State Education in Revolutionary Mexico City (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2003).Google Scholar A classic view of this process of nation building is Weber, Eugene Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976).Google Scholar Scott, James C offers a critique of the modern, centralized state in Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).Google Scholar
7. Vaughan, Mary Kay Cultural Politics of Revolution: Teachers, Peasants and Schools in Mexico, 1930-1940 (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1997).Google Scholar See also Joseph, Gilbert M and Nugent, Daniel “Popular Culture and State Formation in Revolutionary Mexico,” Everyday Forms of State Formation, eds. Joseph, and Nugent, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), pp. 3–23.Google Scholar
8. Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso Editions, 1983).Google Scholar
9. Mena, José de la Luz Escuela racionalista: doctrina y método, 2nd cd. (México, 1936), pp. 153–156.Google Scholar
10. An example of the conscious use of theater to promote national identity comes from Spain in the short-lived Second Republic from 1931–1936. See Chapter 3 in Holguin, Sandy Creating Spaniards: Culture and National Identity in Republican Spain (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002).Google Scholar
11. For more about the development of nineteenth-century Mexican national identity through stories from the Rosete Aranda puppet troupes, see Beezley, William H. Mexican National Identity: Memory, Innuendo and Popular Culture (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2008)Google Scholar and “Cómo fue que El Negrito salvó a México de los franceses: Las fuentes populares de la identidad nacional,” Historia Mexicana 226, no. 2 (October-December 2007), pp. 405–444; Francisca Miranda Silva and William H. Beezley, “The Rosete Aranda Puppets: A Century and a Half of an Entertainment Enterprise” in this Special Issue.
12. Arzubide, List Tres comedias infantiles, pp. 5–19.Google Scholar
13. Spenser, Daniela “Encounter of Two Revolutions: Mexican Radical Elites in Communist Russia during the 1920s,” Strange Pilgrimages: Exile, Travel, and National Identity in Latin America, 1800-1990s. Eds Fey, Ingrid E. and Racine, Karen (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 2000), pp. 147–162.Google Scholar
14. “El Teatro del Muñeco,” El Maestro Rural, Tomo VI, No. 7 (April 1935), pp. 36–37.
15. List Arzubide’s brief exile resulted from his vocal anti-imperialist demonstrations, causing an outcry when he denounced US intervention in Nicaragua by representing the US flag being trampled by Sandinistas. His exile bolstered his credentials as a bona fide revolutionary nationalist. Carrara, Carmen “ Presentación,” in Arzubide, Germán List Tres comedias infantiles (Mexico: UNAM, 1997), p. vi.Google Scholar
16. AHSEP, Department of Bellas Artes, Serie Teatro, Caja 4949, 1934.
17. Ép oca de oro del Teatro Guiñol de Bellas Artes, 1932-1965, CD-ROM. Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 2005.
18. Lago, , Teatro Guignol, p. 20.Google Scholar
19. AHSEP, Departamento de Bellas Artes, Serie Teatro, Caja 71, Exp. 43, 1934.
20. Memoria de la SEP, Tomo I (1933), p. 121.
21. Época de oro, 2005.
22. For a summary of the evolution of Teatro Guiñol as well as a complete bibliography and select images of the puppets and puppeteers, see Época de oro. The puppets earned international acclaim fairly early on; one letter from a schoolteacher in Madrid requested more information about the “saladísimos muñecos“ that have captured the imaginations of Mexican children, and sought guidance on how to replicate the experiment in his own primary school classrooms. AHSEP Departamento de Bellas Artes, Serie Teatro, Caja 72, Exp. 56, 1934.
23. AHSEP, Departamento de Bellas Artes, Serie Teatro 1932–1936, Caja 71, Exp. 43. Music was an important part of the plays; every play started off with a musical prelude, often recognizable as folkloric, of popular pieces such as “La bamba,” “El jarabe tapatío,” and “La bicicleta.” Silvestre Revueltas, who at the inception of Teatro Guiñol was the director of the National Conservatory, composed some original pieces, such as “El renacuajo paseador,” specifically for the puppet shows. Época de oro.
24. “La prosperidad de la patria es la cultura de sus hijos,” in de los Dolores, María de la Canal, Alva [Para la Campaña de Alfabetización], “Comino Analfabeta,” Epoca de oro.Google Scholar
25. Sanees, Jorge Contreras [Para el grupo Comino], “Comino Ignorante,” in Epoca de oro.Google Scholar
26. As early as 1922, scarcely a year after the institutionalization of the SEP, an estimated 5,000 children were signed up for the Ejercito Infantil, and had taught 8,947 of their peers the basic tenets of reading and writing. Boletín de la Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP), Tomo I, No. 3 (1922), pp. 468–469.
27. Boletín de la SEP, Tomo I, No. 4 (1923), pp. 83–85.
28. Soscnski, Susana “Diversiones malsanas: el cine y la infancia en la ciudad de México en la década de 1920,” Secuencia: Revista de historia y ciencias sociales 66 (Sept-Dec 2006), pp. 37–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
29. Garza, Abelardo González “Proyecto de reglamento para la asistencia de menores de edad a los espectáculos públicos,” Memoria del VII Congreso Panamericano del Niño, Tomo I (México: Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1937), p. 191.Google Scholar Religious publications spoke out against the movies and their negative influence on children, especially La Vanguardia: el periódico de los niños ( 1921–1922).
30. AHSEP, Departamento de Bellas Artes, Serie Publicaciones, Caja 64, Exp. 41, 1935.
31. AHSEP, Departamento de Bellas Artes, Serie Teatro 1932–1936, Caja 71, Exp. “Teatro del Niño,” 1934.
32. The relationship between these congresses and feminism is outlined in Guy, Donna “The Pan-American Child Congresses, 1916–1947,” Journal of Family History 23:3 (July 1998), pp. 272–292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Memoria del Primer Congreso Mexicano del Niño (México: El Universal, 1921).
33. Arzubide, List Tres comedias infantiles, pp. 9–10.Google Scholar
34. Cárdenas, León “Letters to the Maestro Rural: How to Make a Teatro Guiñol,” Epoca He Oro.Google Scholar
35. Arzubide, List “Comino va a la huelga,” Tres comedias infantiles, pp. 47–58.Google Scholar
36. AHSEP, Departamento de Bellas Artes, Serie Teatro, Caja 3969, Exp. 18, 1935.
37. AHSEP, Departamento de Bellas Artes, Sección de Teatro, Activities 1935, Caja 3969, Exp. 18, 1935.
38. Oro, Juan Bustillo “La moral en el teatro infantil,” El Maestro Rural, Tomo XI, Nos. 11–12 ((Nov-Dec 1938), p. 37.Google Scholar
39. AHSEP, Departamento de Bellas Artes, Serie Teatro, Caja 73, Exp. 11, 1934.
40. AHSEP, Departamento de Bellas Artes, Serie Teatro, 1932–1936, Caja 71, Exp. 43.
41. AHSEP, Departamento de Bellas Artes, Serie Teatro 1932–1936, Caja 71, Exp. “Teatro del Niño,” 1934.
42. AHSEP, Departamento de Bellas Artes, Serie Teatro, Caja 4949, 1934.
43. AHSEP, Departamento de Bellas Artes, Serie Teatro, Caja 73, Exp. 57, 1936.
44. Many requests from teachers can be found in AHSEP, Departamento de Bellas Artes, Serie Teatro, Caja 72, Exp. 56, 1934.
45. Bennett, Susan Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception (London: Routledgc, 1990), p. 128.Google Scholar
46. “Literatura para niños. Comino vence al diablo,” El Maestro Rural, Tomo XI, No. 10 (October 1938), pp. 20–21, 25.
47. The magazine was intended to link the SEP to both rural schoolteachers and newly literate campesinos. El Maestro Rural was also circulated among Mexican schoolteachers working in the US, and throughout South America and the Caribbean. In 1936, Cárdenas changed the goals of the magazine so that it targeted primarily an audience of rural schoolteachers. Palacios, Guillermo ”Postrevolutionary Intellectuals, Rural Readings, and the Shaping of the ‘Peasant Problem’ in Mexico: El Maestro Rural, 1932–1934,” Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2 (May 1998), pp. 309–339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
48. For examples of the impact that El Maestro Rural borc on the morale and sense of integration of rural schoolteachers, see their letters to the editor in El Maestro Rural, Tomo VI, no. 1 (January 1935), pp. 38–39.
49. “Trabajos de Teatro Infantil,” El Maestro Rural, Tomo IX, No. 4 (September 1936), pp. 38–39; “La construcción del teatro infantil y de títeres,” El Maestro Rural, Tomo IV, No. 12 (June 1934), p. 31.
50. Saavedra, Rafael M. “Instrucciones para orientar y facilitar la creación de la obra de teatro,” El Maestro Rural, Tomo V, No. 3 (August 1934), pp. 25–27.Google Scholar
51. For a discussion of cultural reception of Soviet film in these terms, see Tsivian, Yuri Early Cinema in Russia and its Cultural Reception, Trans. Bodger, Alan (London: Routledgc, 1994), pp. 1–12.Google Scholar
52. Memoria de la SEP, Tomo I (1935), p. 35.
53. “Aspiraciones infantiles,” El Maestro Rural, Tomo VI, No. 7 (April 1935), pp. 15–17, 28.
54. El Maestro Rural Tomo VI, no. 7 (April 1935), p. 17.
55. Cárdenas, Epoca de oro.
56. AHSEP, Departamento de Bellas Artes, Serie Teatro, Caja 71, Exp. 43, 1934.
57. AHSEP, Departamento de Bellas Artes, Serie Teatro, Caja 71, Exp. “Teatro del Niño,” 1934 and Exp. “Teatro del Niño,” 1936.
58. See the discussion by Stephen E. Lewis in this Special Issue about the reception of puppets in the Mayan Highlands as spiritual advisors.
59. AHSEP, Departamento de Bellas Artes, Serie Teatro, Caja 4949, 1934.
60. AHSEP, Departamento de Bellas Artes, Serie Teatro, Caja 4949, 1934.
61. AHSEP, Departamento de Bellas Artes, Serie Teatro, Caja 71, Exp. “Teatro del Niño,” 1934.
62. AHSEP, Departamento de Bellas Artes, Serie Teatro, Caja 4949, 1934.
63. For a summary of these methods, see Maugard, Adolfo Best Mètodo de dibujo: Tradición, resurgimiento y evolución del arte mexicano, 2nd edition (Mexico: Editorial Viñeta, 1964).Google Scholar
64. Cárdenas, Época de Oro.