José Clemente Orozco’s Dancing Indians: Performing Mexicanness for the Trans-American Market

Abstract

José Clemente Orozco’s 1935 lithograph depicting drunken and dancing “Indians” in a Mexican plaza is analyzed through the lens of performance studies as a theatrical scenario that restages colonial encounter for the trans-American tourist market. Comparisons are drawn with colonial documents, period representations of folk celebrations, satirical print culture, and contemporary performance art. The vernacular humor and vicious stereotype evident in the print are characterized as a structure of feeling that captures the ambivalent identification with alterity that characterizes Mexico’s postrevolutionary national project and the pressure on artists to perform Mexicanness for the US American collecting class.