Mexican Exile Research Articles

(Germanic) Modernity and (Hispanic) Tradition in Rodolfo Halffter’s Diferencias for Orchestra Op. 33 (1970)

In Mexican exile, Rodolfo Halffter developed his own compositional style without renouncing his European roots. The aim of this study is to determine the musical techniques and resources employed by Halffter in Diferencias for orchestra (1970) in order to achieve the synthesis he sought between Germanic modernity and Spanish tradition: the treatment of the twelve-tone row in the twelve sections of the work is examined, as well as the stylistic characteristics of Hispanic origin and the principle of variation applied, taking into account the Renaissance model that gave this composition its name.

Reimagining “Defeat” in the Transnational West: John Newman Edwards, Mexican Exile, and the Confederate Experiment 2.0

Abstract Rather than surrendering to Union forces in 1865, various bands of ex-Confederates chose Mexican exile. From generals and elite politicians to rank-and-file soldiers, the majority of these “Confederados” journeyed to French-controlled Mexico to escape punishment, to tap financial opportunities, and to observe how southern society would function post-emancipation. Still others, as represented by the cavalry officer and Quixotic newspaper editor John Newman Edwards, understood the U.S. Civil War on more international terms. To these men, Mexico constituted a new, imperially subsidized laboratory to continue the Confederate Experiment and recreate a mythic version of the Old South. Although cut short by the violent death of Emperor Maximilian I, their saga reveals not only how adaptation to Confederate defeat took different forms in the immediate postbellum period, but also the extent to which conceptions of defeat and even the purpose of the Confederacy itself had never been monolithic in the first place.

Intelectuales, comunicación y democracia. El Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Transnacionales (ILET) en las trayectorias de Schmucler, Casullo y Argumedo (1977-1985)

Situados en el campo de la historia intelectual de los estudios en comunicación, en el presente trabajo nos proponemos reconstruir y analizar la experiencia del Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Transnacionales (ILET) en las trayectorias de Héctor Schmucler, Nicolás Casullo y Alcira Argumedo en el período 1977-1985. En el exilio mexicano, los intelectuales que aquí estudiamos se incorporaron al ILET y participaron de microsociedades políticas, culturales e intelectuales en las que se discutió sobre diversas temáticas, entre ellas el lugar de la comunicación en un futuro que se anhelaba democrático. Una vez iniciado el retorno y en el marco de la apertura institucional inaugurada por las elecciones presidenciales de 1983, establecieron una oficina del Instituto en Buenos Aires. Desde allí, participaron de la vida cultural porteña durante los primeros años de la “primavera alfonsinista”. Siguiendo un recorrido marcado por el exilio y el posterior retorno, en el artículo se pone de relieve cómo las trayectorias de Schmucler, Casullo y Argumedo contribuyeron a reflexionar sobre el lugar de la comunicación y la cultura en la transición a la democracia.

Construções de passado

Este breve artigo propõe uma forma de leitura da trilogia da memória do escritor argentino Pedro Orgambide. A partir de seu exilio mexicano, o autor tece uma trama ficcional [re]construindo o passado, não o próprio, mas o coletivo de sua pátria, ou seja, ele narra uma [nova] versão, um [novo] passado imaginado para a Argentina. Busca-se, por meio desses romances, refletir sobre os processos de construção de laços identitários, relacionados ao distanciamento mobilizado pela experiência de exílio.

Las formas de la tragedia y la redención. Algunas reflexiones acerca de la idea de “derrota” de los proyectos revolucionarios en la obra de Juan Carlos Portantiero en su exilio en México (1975-1983)

The work intends to investigate the way in which Juan Carlos Portantiero processed the idea of defeat of the revolutionary projects in his Mexican exile. More specifically, it seeks to account for what were the theoretical, conceptual and political operations through which the author abandoned revolutionary positions and instead embraced the ideas of socialism and democracy as the fundamental pillars since the end of the years 70 'of his future political and intellectual projects. To do this, the work reviews its production in the form of essays and academic works reconstructing both the political and intellectual context in which this process takes place.

Sin garantías: José Aricó, América Latina y la “crisis del marxismo”

The article examined the work of Jose Arico, following the hypothesis that Marxism was always in crisis. It analyzed the new beginning of Marxism that Arico proposed in the context of the Mexican exile, into which he was driven after being expelled from the Communist Party of Argentina and becoming the leading promoter and architect of the neo-left project Pasado y Presente. The paper explored not only the editorial work and the dissemination of ideas that Arico carried out but also, and especially, the role of critical reader and polemicist who assumes a position within a situation by recognizing his status as a Latin American thinker, without establishing any guarantee.

Maruja Bardasano, entre la danza y la pintura en el exilio mexicano

Maruja Bardasano (Madrid, 1935) es una de las artistas más polifacéticas y brillantes del exilio republicano español establecido en Mexico al finalizar la Guerra Civil en 1939. Hija de los pintores José Bardasano y Juana Francisca Rubio, con quienes llegó a bordo of the Sinaia, se formó tanto en artes plásticas como en ballet clásico. Durante los primeros años de la década de los años cincuenta formó parte, entre otras compañías, del Ballet Concierto de Sergio Unger, en la cual llegó a ser primera solista y donde desarrolló puntualmente la escenografía. Paralelamente, se convirtió en una brillante pintora que expuso en el Círculo de Bellas Artes de México. En 1956 retornó a España, donde se dedicó por completo a la pintura, actividad que continúa desarrollando en la actualidad. En este artículo se analizan las aportaciones más destacadas de esta artista, poniendo especial atención a su faceta de bailarina en el exilio en México.

Militantes, Intelectuales Y Revolucionarios: Ensayos Sobre Marxismo E Izquierda En América Latina

Militantes, intelectuales y revolucionarios is a collection of essays with many qualities. The book brings together a cohort of scholars who examine the Left from various angles and from different countries and periods, mostly during the Cold War era. Most of the essays have been published previously and have been updated for this edition. Labor, Marxism, communism, and armed struggle are better represented for Argentina than for other countries. One essay deals with the Mexican Left of the 1960s and another with Marxist historiography of the Mexican Revolution, invoked with some nostalgia by Luis Ruiz. An essay dealing with the Peruvian Communist Party and the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) in Ayacucho after the Second World War showcases a brief period of their confrontation when communists and communism became a casualty of the Cold War, which the anticommunist APRA cashed in on by defending “landed interests against campesino challengers” (p. 74). It was followed by the proscription of both parties by the military government of General Manuel Odría.The book is divided thematically, and the Peruvian Left is traced in another section through the intellectual output of the prolific and morally committed historian Alberto Flores Galindo. One essay unveils the intellectual portrait of the Córdoba-born José Aricó, who became a protagonist in debates that rocked the Latin American Marxist Left for decades, which the entrepreneurial Aricó turned into books, publishing houses, and journals in his native Argentina both during his Mexican exile and after he returned to Buenos Aires. The Cuban Revolution is omnipresent in the book, although the sole essay dealing with the revolution is concerned with the historiographical conundrum of nationalism. This topic, which transcended the revolution, was discussed and written about during the ideologically defining 1960s in Cuba.The volume is framed by the image on the book's cover of a boyish José Carlos Mariátegui, the Peruvian Marxist, sitting at his typewriter and by the memory of the British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, who died in 2012. Drawing upon both, Carlos Aguirre outlines in his introduction that the book is a contribution to the Left's self-criticism and reexamination at a time of the renascent academic and political Left in Latin America, a point that Massimo Modonesi, with Antonio Gramsci in hand, puts in a different way. Citing the Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa from his presidential inauguration in 2007, Modonesi conceptualizes the ongoing process of change as the breakup of the neoliberal hegemony under the strain of popular subaltern opposition.Eric Zolov's imaginative and beautifully written essay, titled “Expanding Our Conceptual Horizons,” explores the contours of the New Left in 1960s Mexico. A crossroads for the New and old Left, Mexico became the place where Ernesto Guevara became the revolutionary Che and where Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg created the “New Left sensibility” (p. 111), with lasting impact on the present. Within the framework of the book and the larger picture that Zolov draws, it may be worth pointing out that the Confederation of Latin American Workers (CTAL) was not founded in 1949, as the author claims (p. 107). Created in 1938 by the Mexican Marxist Vicente Lombardo Toledano, Zolov's example of the old Left, a left-wing continental labor federation such as the CTAL, would have been impossible to form after the democratic spring was over and the Cold War set in. It required another old leftist, Lázaro Cárdenas, to be president of Mexico and Franklin D. Roosevelt president of the United States for such an enterprise to strike roots. In fact, by 1949 the American Federation of Labor succeeded in creating a well-financed organization to embark on destroying the CTAL.In this volume, as elsewhere, Marc Becker stresses the communist contributions to the construction of indigenous nationalities in Ecuador in contrast to the Peruvian, and specifically Mariátegui's, refusal to ally with the Communist International to create an indigenous republic in the Andes. Becker's work also goes against the grain of interpretations claiming that Marxism relegated ethnic and nationalist identities to a secondary status, highlighting instead individuals' class origins. In light of these contrasting national pasts, Becker argues that while by the 1980s Peru descended into the bloody and destructive neo-Maoist Shining Path insurgency, activists in Ecuador pursued a nonviolent, successful struggle of indigenous nationalities “that the Comintern had originally articulated in the 1920s” (p. 231). One might add that this is perhaps a unique occurrence in the history of the zealous Communist International's attempts to advance the class-based proletarian world revolution.In sum, this collection of essays opens a much-needed reexamination of the history of the hemispheric Left, Marxism, communism, and anticommunism in their manifold expressions and regional variations, and it hopefully will be followed by many such reassessments.

Trotsky y América Latina: una aproximación al concepto de Bonapartismo

In the following paper, through reading the writings in the Mexican exile addressing Latin America's problems, we analyze the elaborated category of Bonapartism proposed by Trotsky. At first, we explore some elements of the reference text from where the concept of –The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Marx–and then focus on Trotsky´s given use to analyze the reality of Latin America in the early and mid XX century. Some of the postures that can be seen as a change of Marx´s perspective when analyzing non-Western realities reappear around the idea of Bonapartism, in relation to a Latin American case that should stop thinking about the European model. This approach allows us to deepen the problem of translatability of specific historical junctures, which are central to unravelling the history of “mismatch” between the left and the Latin American populism.

“A la sombra de los nopales crueles”. Víctor Serge, América Latina y la revista Babel

The article reviews the life and work of Victor Serge. It focuses on his Mexican exile and themes that marked his writings, especially those published in the journal Babel during his “chilean period”.

Freud’s Mexico: Into the Wilds of Psychoanalysis (review)

GALLO, RUBEN. Mexico: Into the Wilds of Psychoanalysis. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 2010. x + 389 pp.Ruben Gallo's study of Mexico's and of Mexico begins, as the author recounts, at a Mexican museum's exhibition of collection of Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Chinese antiquities. Symptomatically absent, for Gallo, are Mexican and Latin American artifacts. This omission (or repression) serves as point of departure for the book. Mexico is divided into two parts, each containing four chapters and four free associations. The first part reads a series of Freud-inflected interventions in Mexican art, politics, letters, history, and theology. The second part, much more speculative in nature, gives the book its title. Here, the reader travels through own archive - his correspondence, his books, his antiquities, his dreams, his house and city - in search of its Mexican residues. Coleccionista, the book's endeavor, like its subject, because throughout the work we follow Gallo in the accumulation of what the author calls scant traces, their reunion, their always towards an elusive Freudian in the name of an impossible Mexican Freud. Each chapter grasps, speculatively, at some close encounter, a possibility, an opening and of the archive. Unlike Gallo's Mexican Modernity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), a book on the material constitution of Mexico's incipient modernity in the first half of the twentieth century, this new study largely invokes the Mexico of - the Mexico of someone who neither lived in nor traveled Mexico. And this procedure is, in a sense, mutual; the book's encounter with goes beyond the expected scholarly engagement with his thought, productively tarrying with the of a certain unorthodox reception in Mexico.The book's first part, in Mexico, already announces an irony that will only completely unveil itself in the text's last free association, on missed chance at a Mexican exile following the Anschluss: was never in Mexico. Indeed, the Freud who made it Mexico remains only the name of the author on the texts of the early psychoanalytic movement. Gallo here relates a cultural history of certain key moments of reception in Mexico and the wild analysis that was so often its outcome; one finds the more anticipated readers of treated alongside such unlikely figures as Gregorio Lemercier. The first chapter begins with the lone exception the cool reception of among earlytwentieth-century writers and artists, the poet Salvador Novo, and studies Novo's personal archive, reading carefully his marginalia in order reconstruct this first reading of in Mexico. The second chapter centers on the philosopher Samuel Ramos and his deployment of to diagnose the collective neuroses afflicting the Mexican nation (57) and reads as symptomatic Ramos's privileging of dissident disciple Alfred Adler over the master himself. The book's third chapter reads Paz's The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950) as a kind of return Freud, as a kind of Mexican translation of Moses and Monotheism. Part I of the book ends with a chapter on Gregorio Lemercier, whose monastery in psychoanalysis - a community that should be understood as part of the radical social and political experiments of the sixties and seventies - opens a space not merely rethink Mexicanness, but transform it by radically reforming Mexican Catholicism.Part II, Freud's Mexico, covers an even broader territory. …

Constructing Guerrilla Memory: John Newman Edwards and Missouri's Irregular Lost Cause

Constructing Guerrilla Memory:John Newman Edwards and Missouri's Irregular Lost Cause Matthew C. Hulbert (bio) On May 5, 1889, the Kansas City Times eulogized, "It is not derogation to other good and brave men to say that the death of no man in Missouri would cause genuine pain and grief to so many and so different persons as that of John N. Edwards. Nor will the memory of any be so cherished."1 Edwards—a veteran of Gen. Jo Shelby's Iron Brigade, fire-eating conservative pundit, and prolific myth-maker—stood as a pro-Confederate vanguard in Missouri politics and cultural restoration from the end of the Civil War at Appomattox in 1865 until his death in 1889.2 As author of the controversial Noted Guerrillas, Or, The Warfare of the Border (1877), Edwards's area of expertise was anything but official or Reconstructed. Other postwar movements commemorated fallen Confederates from the regular chain of command, but for the guerrilla, Edwards solemnly proclaimed, "there was no funeral."3 By most accounts, these guerrillas—endemic to the border West but particularly raucous in Missouri—had operated under night skies, utilized non-typical backcountry battlegrounds, and ambushed any alleged Unionist, military or civilian, with signature six-guns blazing.4 Thus, while elite ex-Confederate authors scrambled to produce and harness apotheosized imagery of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis to revamp southern culture, John Newman Edwards focused both gaze and pen squarely on the rowdiest, most reviled irregular figure: the Missouri bushwhacker. To aid in the production of a southern identity for Missouri, Edwards sculpted this bushwhacker to accouter the state with an irregular Lost Cause. It is important to note that Edwards was not himself a bushwhacker—nor even a native Missourian, for that matter. John Newman Edwards was born in Warren County, Virginia, in 1838 and migrated to Lexington, Missouri, sometime around 1855.5 Upon arrival, he found brief employment editing the Expositor, until a group of raiding Kansans, displeased with the newspaper's partisan slant, destroyed its printing press. Not too long after settling in Missouri, Edwards also met the aristocratic Joseph [End Page 58] Shelby; the two were avid hunting companions and lifelong friends. In 1862, Edwards joined Shelby's Confederate cavalry unit, best known as the Iron Brigade, and eventually rose to the rank of major and adjutant.6 While raiding with the Iron Brigade in 1863-64, he came into contact with many of the Missouri bushwhackers he would later spin into martyr and myth. Following Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Shelby and Edwards spearheaded a quixotic attempt at colonization south of the border. Initially, Shelby offered the combat services of the Iron Brigade to the puppet monarch Maximilian—then engaged in a bitter war with Benito Juarez and his Mexican guerrilla fighters—but the soon-to-be-executed emperor declined. Rather than arm the ex-Confederates, he instead accorded land for a colony, which the ex-Rebels named after his wife, Carlota. While in self-imposed Mexican exile, Edwards managed a struggling plantation, wrote politically charged letters to his sisters back in Virginia, and edited an English-Spanish newspaper called the Mexican Times. In 1867, after Maximilian's execution, Edwards and Shelby returned to Missouri.7 By 1868, Edwards had cofounded the Kansas City Times, a literary outlet for his fiery brand of anti-Reconstruction politics and a vehicle for his partisan editorials starring bushwhacker-turned-bandit Jesse James.8 Edwards left the Times in 1873 to edit the St. Louis Dispatch—the move marked the beginning of a long, alcoholism-fueled stint of instability and short-term work.9 Two years later, Edwards fought a duel with Col. Emory Foster over inflammatory remarks; neither shooter drew blood. Edwards, however, demanded another shot before cooler heads (and promises of libation) prevailed and his seconds dissuaded him from further gunplay. In 1877, Edwards published his magnum opus, Noted Guerrillas, Or, The Warfare of the Border, which featured William C. Quantrill, William "Bloody Bill" Anderson, Coleman "Cole" Younger, and his former editorial subjects the James brothers, Frank and Jesse. In his later years, Edwards decried the state-sponsored assassination of Jesse James and subsequently negotiated...

Miguel Prieto y la escenografía en la España de los años treinta

The artist Miguel Prieto (1907-1956) worked in three main areas: painting-drawing, graphic design and set design. The latter was the one in which he demonstrated most interest in avant-garde and political commitment during the thirties, but due to his subsequent Mexican exile, has not been dealt with in recent research. This article, focused on his years in Spain, analyses his contributions to scenic design. Prieto’s first professional period, when he worked for the puppet theatre, coincided with the young Second Republic and then the convulsion of the Civil War. This popular genre was utilized for agitation, propaganda and the revolutionary theatre, and adopted both the classical repertoire and modern works by Alberti, Dieste, Lorca and other committed youthful intellectuals.

‘Hollywood In Madrid’: American Film Producers and the Franco Regime, 1950–1970

‘Hollywood In Madrid’: American Film Producers and the Franco Regime, 1950–1970

La novelística de Benjamín Jarnés en el primer exilio: hacia La novia del viento

In this article, the author aims to analyse La novia del viento, the first novel by the vanguard spanish novelist Benjamín Jarnés, published during his Mexican exile in 1940. Based in an old story first-published in 1926, La novia del viento marks an axis between his so-called "deshumanized" writing before the civil war and his exile production, drawing a continous line with the short stories written during the war. This article tries to open a way to the study of Jarnés' exile writing, most of it forgotten nowadays, and it means rescuring a very significant part of the most important novelist in the spanish vanguard tradition.

Anna Seghers' Exile Literature. The Mexican Years (1941-1947)

Contents: In order to arrive at a deeper appreciation of the reciprocal relationship between individual experience, socio-historical reality, and art, this book analyzes and evaluates Anna Seghers' prose and essays within the framework of her Mexican exile and the wider historical context between 1941 and the author's return to Germany in 1947.

La Opinión, A Mexican Exile Newspaper: A Content Analysis of Its First Years, 1926-1929

La Opinión, A Mexican Exile Newspaper: A Content Analysis of Its First Years, 1926-1929