TECHNOLOGY ano CULTURE in TWENTIETH-CENTURY MEXICO Eprrep sy ARACELI TINAJERO ano J. BRIAN FREEMAN THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS TuscaloosaCopyright © 2013 “he Univers of Alabama Press “Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380 All rights reserved ; Manufactured in the United States of America ‘Typeface: AGaramond & Stone Sans Cover illustration: Fotosearch Stock Photography Cover design: Michele Myatt Quinn “The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements ‘of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Technology and culture in ewentieth-century Mexico / edited by Araceli Tinajero and J, Brian Freeman, pages em Includes bibliographical references and index, ISBN 978-0-8173-1796-6 (trade cloth : alkaline paper) 1, Technology—Social aspects—Mexico—History—20th century. 2. Technological innovations—Social aspects—Mexico—History—— 20th century. 3. Popular culeure—Mexico—History—20th century. 4. Mass media—Social aspects —Mexico—History—20th century. 5: Transportation—Social aspects —Menico—History—20th century. 6, Mexico—Social conditions—20th century. 7. Mexico—Intellectual life— 20th century. I. Tinajero, Araceli, 1962~ II. Freeman, J. Brian, 1982 T24.M6T425 2013, 303.48'309720904—de23 201205073012 “Los Hijos de Ford” Mexico in the Automobile Age, 1900-1930 J. Brian Freeman Contemplating the many changes in everyday life since the end of the Mex- can Revolution (1910-1920), writer and critic Salvador Novo observed that due to the proliferation of automobiles—los hijos de Ford, ot “the children of Ford,” as he labeled them—crossing the street in Mexico City had become a struggle of epic proportions.’ By the end of the 1920s, the use of private cars, taxis, jitneys, and buses by residents, from the eminently wealthy to the work- ing class, had altered the spatiality of the city, given birth to new sounds and smells on streets, produced novel dangers, and led to the appearance of new oc- cupational opportunities. Novo was by no means alone in his attention to this “other” revolution that had begun during the waning years of the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz (1876- 1911), grown alongside the armed struggle, and finally exploded during the ety Post-revolutionary era, The presence of automobiles soon captured the atten tion of countless observers, from writers and artists to government officials, Mo toring advocates, and foreign visitors. In the context ofa changing intellects! ee pared by the nation’s sweeping social revolution ee Fee clos projected onto the automobile their varying 7" and concern over the striking process of technological mode ination that was taki “ : aes the couneyide, 2A 0 the capital nd slowly but surly filtering As the armed revolution came to ‘ernment set about foster tural and indigenous a People—citizens and and the embodiment . an end and the new post-revolutionst7 57 ing a common national identity by drawing ha" esthetics, che proliferation of automobiles struck foreigner visitors alike —as a force of cultural co*™P Of the “soulless” materialism that seemed t0 chMexico in the Automobile Age / 215 sad Sxes not Menico? Yer such a view f i i Mec Ci ieonolatc eateries pias se amassed them opoducenew megane a vey sade ter impact on urban if er apron oe isinerests became active advocates See raed movement as an important com ity as they embraced arora ponent of post-revolutionar wien. ry mod- ‘Alongside these debates over the appropriateness of cars i : ccingnumber of motorists took part in an ety form aa an seught out variety of rural indigenous, and ae 2 pol Mexican culture. In so doing, they did much to nial era manifesta tun knowledge about the provincial nation, even as th Seed intending gaze from behind the steering wheels rh ae fei mapped pasable roads and catalogued cultural ae The the basis for a massive expansion in both tourist ieee daring the 1930s, 1940s, and beyond. cveryday mororing By the end ofthe 1920s, then, Mexico Ci jl ond half of the twen i i luring the sec" carve duality, which contrasted a machine age Mec eee of | joke and tradition that was distinct bat Es. Cn a ve mobile tourist. So ae ri psec a seer of the ddl decades of the twentieth ceneury, isn, his patialized vision of national cule tate ee el international narratives of Eo nd ena is i , selduing aaa tracing he, contours ofan early car culture that emer- ea ¢ Porfirian regime and examines how it was trans- eee that followed, Ie hen turns tothe devel: ee een em oa automobile transportation in the a City general strike, which was consolidated over the growing practice ra If. Finally, the chapter outlines the characteristics of mt resticteaomciesaaegt rural areas during the eatly post dg edad concludes by contemplating the state embrace of a- can culture, 1 the promotion of both modernization and traditional Teatime at the Automdévil Club he eco nomi , ‘hotita ae) and political stability associated with the rule of au- ident Porfirio Diaz (1876-1910) provided new ‘opportunities216 / Freeman for the wealthy to publicly perform their elite status through cong sumption, and during the lat decade of the era the automobile voce an ideal item to fulfil that desire.‘ Motoring formed part of 6°" fort by Mexican political and economic elites to transform the ae , ino 2 modern, cosmopolitan city; and during the fist decade ofthe “cnvuy the pevleged few sped up and down the capital’s Champy fhm Paseo de la Reforma, they had tea at the newly established Automat tet on the shores of Chapultepec Lake, and they soon began to goon exngs nearby haciendas.’ Meanwhile automobiles began to appear in anason Other activites from parades and festivals to commercial and sponge Although the ist self-propelled ca to arrive in Mexico had initially digs both residents and roaming dogs in 1895—the daily El Universal even de it “El coche del Diablo” (che Devils car)—within a year bicycle mechan Alexander Byron Mohler and William P. De Gress had built the fist domes, cally designed automobile, a tiny two-person machine that rode atop fou, cycle wheels.” By 1902, Alonso Fernindez Castellé had organized the fist ou into the countryside as he and five friends made their way to the Matiscala ha. cienda, passing through Tlalnepantla and Cuautitkin, Days lates a group of five cars traveled to the Soltepec hacienda, while that same year, H. Menel and Pedro Z. Méndez drove to Pachuca and back in one day.* Over the couse of the decade cars continued to arrive, and they soon became a fixture of everyay life in the city center. / _ Meanwhile, auromobile and parts suppliers aimed to garner public ater tion and prove the value of their products by staging spectacular tips outin ie bineland of the capital. In January of 1910, Billy Knipper hailed as“ ma : ces ee faved ‘| Puebla to eee: el car imported by dealers Mohler and De Gress? In of ee a Packard “30,” owned by distributor Kenneth Walter, made one M sico cy 0 the. western city of Guadalajara in under shiny ao id of their accomplishments, automobile agencies pul ci “20° arrived in — in the pages of the capital’s periodicals. When @ lap Gre it Mevico, having deparced fom Qusbe, Canad ober Conk Mae ill page in EL Diario ro announce that they had he MON by hauling te u le, that summer a “White” model truck also garnered eae ean ae of cement from Mexico City to Toluca in three he chance) Patt ofthe growing consumer culture that A ly twentieth-century urban Mexico, these daring drives"? sized to by ry that sll hat such models could handle the rugged terrain of &6O™" vial Pictou con hase @ system of good roads,'3 "8! local inventors had attempted to build their own vehiclesMexico in the Automobile Age / 217 sJeshad to be imported from abroad, and forei a cated in the United States, carefully watched beg ioe wat fcasamong Mexico’ urban elites. Ina 1908 study ofthe global ancy oar or vei the US Bursa of Manufactures announced that Mexico had rete the third largest market for US makes. The trade had neatly doubled repo yet, reaching $812,639 in 1907. To advance the trade in motorcar, iar studies closely cracked che tastes of Porfian consumers, and eporg sed the general preference among the city’ affluent residents for fanciful de. fanoffrench and Icalan origin, In order to expand the trade abroad, US pro. djces determined they would have to appeal tothe tastes of domestic buyers \eewith prices ranging from 2,000 to 20,000 pesos apiece, motoring remained firmly confined to the wealthiest members of society.'* Consequently, by 1910 dee wee only about two thousand automobiles in the national capital, a city offie hundred thousand people."’ Yee just asthe bicycle had initially met resistance from residents and mu ricipl governments (they were banned from the center of town for a ew months during 1891), the automobile had its detractors.6 The poor, for example, now fad to navigate new obstacles, as cars produced conflicts over how the street aught to be used, while some of the city’s well-to-do residents also questioned the benefits of such technologies."” As early as 1900, journalists at E! Universal «aed fo police action in order to ease the circulation of people and vehicles and t0“putthings in order” during the hours of transit."® Over the course of the de- cadeacidents plagued the city, and periodicals began to report on the gruesome deuils while slipping in their own editorial commentary. El Diario lamented the frequent automobile accidents . . . that day by day are becoming increas- ingly disgraceful.””” Dr. Salvador Quevedo y Zubieta characterized automobile ‘wel as detrimental to one’s health, arguing, “The automobile can be medi- ally considered to be a cause of ‘an impulsive neurosis.”®° Diario del Hogar, on ‘ober hand, reported on the deleterious effecs of exhaust fumes chat filled * ralong San Francisco Avenue during the “daily procession of the elegant el demanding action to address what the paper understood to be a pub- th threat2 Modernist writers in particular, disconcerted by the effects of the machine Publhed their own attacks. In “El automévil de fa muerte” (The auro- vit of dat), poet Amado Nervo told a presumably fetional tale of group Pessants plagued by the crazed speed of automobilists who, in their reckless Vengo through the countryside, ran over geese and into cows. Seeking re “eh gE S2P' strung apiece of wire across che road, positioned a just he “evict When an open-topped car came along, the peasants watd "S taut and rigid, cur through, with the same ease with which a wire crs218 / Freeman a block of butter, first cwo heads, then three.” “Oh, automobile oft oped!” Nervo lamented, “the frightening automobile of death, with ng 0s leaning slightly back and slowly spilling their blood!”®> Likevise Ve top. Tablada expressed his own misgivings in the poem “El automévl en Maa saan aera short stine working for Pepe and Andrés Sincher Jute, Bf che major auto dealership Garage Internacional.™ Unlike the Islan jst FT, Marinetti, who believed auto races to be “more beautiful than the Vie tory of Samothrac,” for Tablada the automobile was instead a “dragon nade by cubists,” a “mechanical caricature of an apocalyptic beast,” and a “dynamic coffin” that left behind “carbon flaculence.”® By the end of the Porfirian era an incipient car culture, characterized by ig restriction to the wealthiest of residents, a dependence on foreign manufictues and parts suppliers, and its association with the conflict-ridden modernizing project of the era had taken hold of Mexico City. When revolutionary wer Fd intellectual José Vasconcelos looked back on the period, he took dim vew of the elite fascination with automobiles, noting how they embodied the super ficiality and unevenness of modernization and technological change during he era. The Porfirian governing elite, according to Vasconcelos, seemed to have be- lieved that progress had been achieved simply “because an automobile hada rived in Mexico” even as most city residents “continued cooking with charcod like in the time of Moctezuma." Yet with the onset of the revolution in 1910, the world of the wealthy motorist soon gave way to a more broad-based and not entirely lite car culture. ‘The Automobile Revolution ‘The outbreak of the Mexican Revolution and the collapse of the Porfirian re gime brought about significant redistribution of automobiles as military forces crisscrossed the country, helping themselves to wealthy motorists stock of ve hicls, even as additional care continued to pour inco the country. The 0k" tion itself took place during the decade in which Henry Ford and other manu facturers perfected the techniques of mass production and distribution. AS* result, the price of a Model T declined throughout the decade, and by 19162 runabout could be acquired for $345 in the United Stats, wile 3 (our cost $360. That same year production hit 738,811 units, half the world a ket.”” Many of these vehicles made their way to Mexico, and in 1918 the Angler Timesassered the country was "a land of ued automobiles OT a a new models had been introduced over the previous MIS is, but from eo eae “in large numbers, not only from the Unite sti jouth American countries.” The politica!Mexico in the Automobile Age / 219 Jogical transformations of the 1910s thus enco; is see ymoble 5 nt-ites necsingl eamed wo ees vara en a ao Asa result, by 1919 the number of cars co ee that took place during the waning months of the Porfran period site of the way in which the outbreak of revolution challenged the pearing of the automobile in Mexico. In January 1911, La Iberia reported on mange occurrence in the state of Guerrero, A group of “rebels” had comman- ‘raed avehice, owned by alocal hacendado, and packed it with dynamite, Late atnight, they lit the explosives and sent the car running toward an encamp- sea of federal forces with whom they had been skirmishing. But a kilometer before reaching the base, the charge detonated without injuring anyone. The anicimactic event, nevertheless, may have been one of the world’ first car fombings.° Throughout the course of the armed phase of the revolution, rebel fuces would continue to confiscate automobiles; and cars soon came to repre- seathighly visible symbols of the new distribution of power that had emerged snce the collapse of the Porfirian regime. Indeed, the many revolutionary generals who took up residence in the na- tons capital represented a significant market for cars. Nearly every major fig- eof the period owned one, if not multiple, automobiles, and even the rural- criented rebel leader Emiliano Zapata reportedly traveled around Mexico City ina large touring car." In 1915, General Venustiano Carranza reportedly pur chased six train carloads of automobiles from the US side of the border, and by 1919 there were around fifty-five hundred in the capital and surrounding sub- uubs-" In some cases the new revolutionary officials—who were not always dis- ret consumers and were, in fact, often criticized for the luxurious cars they oroed—hosed auto races and went on excursions ro nearby attractions. On a i the city during the late 1910s, Harvey Middleton was surprised to wit- = in hapultepec park “a parade of automobiles... . four lines deep, two lines we ech direction, the cars being so numerous that they can only go ata nd and beyond the new automobilist revolutionaries, the most profound ms a in Mexico City’s “motorscape” of the 1910s came with the we lig ht ls of workers and entrepreneurs bus and eee 2 cea of the chafirete (professional chauffeur) and his the svat shad A collector), Salvador Novo observed chat many of these wilt eS ly been drivers for an assortment of generals; but over time they ce OW cars and began to provide “the newly fashionable speedo and cobra et of citizens at a moderate price.” To Novo, these young os es were none other than the “first sons of the Revolution.220 / Freeman indeed, xian bus divers benefited indirect Flom the power ig, nent tat had emerged in Mexico City following the collapse of ro regime. During a general strike that hit the Federal District on July 3 and brought tram services to a halt, entrepreneurial chauffeurs began to port multiple pasenges for a nominal fe, thus giving ts othe na 7 ty. Afer moving people around che capital in their own cars dung yet day of che strike, by the second day they had begun to transform theg ne vehicles into makesife buss or jtneys by positioning wooden plant chasis and stringing up cloth around rod canopies. Shortly afer dete improvised vehicles hic the streets, chauffeurs began eo experiment wig design and service innovations. On mainly Ford chassis, they crafted on bodies thar contained laterally running benches to ft cight, sturdy oo, a co act as backrsts, and curtains to keep out rain. Costing between 12t0 1,400 pesos, they were eminently affordable and quickly came to represent 2 permanent competitor ofthe trams. The vehicles charged ten centavosapenan roaming the city ike taxis, at all hours, and keeping to no permanent route.” To attract passengers, chauffeurs displayed a diversity of cardboard signs lie ing the tramway routes they claimed to serve, though they did not aways do so faithfully, and on every stop along the trajectory, the cobradores announced the various parts of the city through which they would pass.* During the late 1910s and early 1920s, drivers and cobradores established the first permanent and predictable routes, In 1917, a group of bus owners from the same neighborhood assembled and formed the first such line, which bythe early 1940s carried the name Santa Maria Mixcalco y Anexas. Quickly new associations of owners emerged to service other parts of the city, and herve 1918 and 1923, over 90 percent of the lines functioning in the early 1940s! had been established.” Yet with no official policy addressing matters of permits and routes, an excessive number of vehicles led to constant conflice on the sees To defend their interests, bus line owners and workers established the Cet? Social de Choferes in 1921, an afiliate of the Confederacién Region Mexicana (CROM). Through the Centro Social and the CROM, the bu . industry attempted to limit the granting of permits by the municipl a 4 ment of Mexico City and the other municipalities of the Federal na ie On February 27, 1922, bus line workers halted all services and mag Palacio del Ayuntamiento (City Hall), where they exchanged a for thorties. Negotiations with President Alvaro Obregén ended favor), nascent industry, as officials reportedly met all demands of strikes: Partment of Transit was shifted to the government of the Federal from the municipalities, while members of the Centro Social ‘thins advise that department and eventually take up high-level posison® 1916, tran.Mexico in the Automobile Age / 221 fcer represented key allies of the ‘ sffeurs thereal y allies of the Obre ini on i the filed de la Huerta rebellion, La Alianza de — Sed three unde cats forthe presiden, we ie en battlefront one end of te 1910s, changes in both domestic politics and international 1 epouction had fostered a new car culture characterized by its exten- fe ind the confines of the wealthy. During the early 1920s, as the coun- sot aj a period of post-revolutionary reconstruction and cultural revival, oy larization of the automobile would encourage authorities to embrace d means to unify the country both economically ro buling 4 fas. Ty ly and culturally, Meanwhile, howeveh the proliferation of cars struck many, particularly foreign Hontne embodiment ofa destructive machine ag chat ought not be ex z reo a"taditional” nation like Mexico, transporting troops Foreign Visitors and Machine-Age Mexicans ‘pe increasing presence of automobiles elicited an almost uniform disdain fom he countess foreigners who arrived in the nation’s capital during the first decades of post-revolutionary reconstruction. This period forms part of what Mauicio Tenorio Tiillo has called the “cosmopolitan summer,” a moment of pofound fascination for nearly all chings Mexican. During these years, foreign ns, writers, intellectuals, and tourists flocked to take part in a national cul- tual renaissance championed by such figures as artist Diego Rivera, intellec- ul José Vasconcelos, and anthropologist Manuel Gamio.* Many, if not all, foreigners: arrived in search of “traditional” and “authentic” expressions of Mexi- cannes that were being promoted by the new regime as part of its effort to fogea common national identity. Yet visitors were consistently shocked by the proliferation of motorized vehicles and the generalized process of technologi- ad modernization in the nation's capital. To such observers, machines, particu- laly automobiles, were inconsistent with what they understood to be an idyl- ‘iif primitive, land of peasants and Indians. Worse yet, the automobile, and tuachine more generally, appeared to be corrupting “authentic” Mexico. 1 2 eu the more vociferous opponents to the globalization of the re a ‘Anes? ashe saw it, was English writer D. H. Lawrence. nb Meier Serpents Lawrence populates his tale of erly pose ed <= ae ‘crazy motor-cats” and “frightful litte Ford ae dengan go a eHcUtson tothe outskirts ofthe capital, his paneer tera thoroughfare, likely Avenida de los Insurgentes> pent blank ae incredibly dilapidated Ford omnibusess crow ‘sin dirty cotton clothes and big straw hats.222 | Freeman Similarly Seuare Chase, a US polymath of sorts known for his studies g nology, economics, and society traveled to Mexico in the early 1930s, whee he witnessed firsthand the spread of such machines. In his widely read Mexico: 4 Study of Tivo Americas, Chase commented on the proliferation of automobiles and noted the “wildness of mestizo drivers.”” To Chase, these mestizos had ltd, if anything, to do with the “authentic” Mexico that lay in places like Teportin, where “flowers [were] more important to Mexicans than [were] motor carn, dios, and bathtubs combined, to Americans.”** Fearful of the impact of road construction on these “machine-less men,” ashe called them, Chase noted, ‘My foreboding is concerned with the American tourist. In a few months (this ig June, 1931) he will be able to drive his Buick through to Mexico City. Clouds of Buicks, swarms of Dodges, shoals of Chevrolets—mark my words, they will m9 F tech. come’ ‘Throughout the 1920s and 1930s countless other visitors wrote home about their run-ins with the Mexican motorist. In 1925, Russian futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky made note of the “alarming agglomeration of automobiles and buses” and the “savage and battle-hardened competitions between chauffeurs." A technophile, Mayakovsky was nevertheless annoyed by the manifestation of modern technology in traditional Mexico. Photographer Edward Weston, simi- larly, complained about the effect of traffic on the pleasant climate of the city: and in 1926, John Dos Passos wrote of the “noise, poverty, and chaos” in the capital during his trip to the country.** More commonly, visitors simply censored the machine age from theit rep- resentations of the country. While Weston was clearly perturbed by the effec of traffic, his body of work shows few sign of industriaism’s incursions in the country. Unlike his lover Tina Modotti, who captured the new face of the capi- tal in images of telephone wires, massive petroleum tanks, and modemistc te inforced cement constructions, Weston confined himself to nudes, portraits and depictions of an idyllic Mexico, Similarly, artists and writers like Winold Reiss, Langston Hughes, Hugo Brehme, and countless others limited their work ‘© the traditional, while culture brokers like Anita Brennet and Frances Toot made careers of silencing images of industrialisin and technological moder” ization in their representations of the country. Some observers took a more nuanced approach to the advent of the er ibe in Mexico, Radical US journalist Carleton Beal, for example, argues "RO are inevitable, and in thei i st inns 5 it wake automobiles, gasoline stations, tout orange-crush s » gasol ands, jazz dance halls—all of these things will probably, withi? th of these things will p ie ines atet ofa century, descend upon Tepoctin, and Taxco, and C tony ne, Yet he concluded his 1931 study, Mevioen Mise by obsit8 ue that unless a people is exterminated the conquered always condMexico in the Automobile Age / 23 2 For Beals, it was inevitable that the . eror.”” For Be it the machi . sea Mescanized. Indeed, even a foreigners wrenect ges oui motorized vehicles in traditional Mexico, an de po euning theit attention to the unexpect “garde artists and red and sensi = ; and invent st eek pace onthe srcets ofthe nations capie noe Pe eee of acomobility ED Avant-Garde Automobile Enthusiasts ‘Throughout the 1920s and beyond, the city’s young avant-gard. fi r Manuel Maples Arce, German List Arzubide, Salvador Novo, a ‘Arq Sa y ld odie » jueles Vela, snong may others, would not only depict the nascent culture of the aura. tobi butinsome cases use it to develop new forms of representation. "These idl, ls tied to idealized visions of Mexicanness, took inspiration from acityscape in the process of profound transformation, Significantly, their ac- ines wre often diametrically opposed to efforts to rescue and revive the “a. sen” nation; and, as Blissa Rashkkin argues, their depictions of rechnology— arte brides, telegraphs, and such—“provided an important counterpoint tothe folkloric stereotypes of the era.” Examples ofthe exaltation of the very vehicles that Chase, Lawrence, and cies argely rejected abounded during the early post-revolutionary era. In his fntbook of poetry, Esquina, German List Araubide playfully asserted that “the "nx Man il finally be made by bus. And in “Camiones” the sich ac sie Tare Mexicano de Murcilego, Luis Quintanilla offered viewers an “an- pomorphic rendition of buses that cough and fall dead in the middle ofthe ‘wt Than on of the dogs they've run over” ‘any avant-garde intellectuals took part in a form of urban ethnography, was the impact of the automobile on the “City of Palaces.” Salvador Novo, is ne poeta chéfer” (chauffeur poet) by friend Carlos Pellicer, was no Wena ses" consistent chronicler of the capital’ emergent car cleure. In ‘ain 1940s. Nueva grandeza mexicana, a work that drew on his earlier fas- inper pth the bus and taxi industry, Novo recalled the socal and cultural ihe is mechanized cityscape born inthe late 1910s. He found that «Proliferation of motorized vehicles, surviving lif in the big city forced mon ger new skill sets. The early cobrador, for example, learned to im got uP ad down the rear running board when he was notcalling out torent a or asking for ‘ten and one’ at the gas station, or reciting ahet- ona litany of celestial and mundane names of routs. In con- Sayan th the publi, the cobrador thus developed unmatched amb gustc agility. Likewise, bus and taxi industry workers leaned @224 | Freeman new technological vocabulary and developed their own neologisms ¢ a « . 0 descrit the transformed urban environment. “Our highly expressive folk language” xe°™ observed, “owes much to the verbal ingenuity of this new caste fae, No conductors.” He noted how, for example, the word lambiscén, which heat some widely used by the mid-twentieth cencury to refer to sycophantsandag scx had originally been coined to describe “the young conductor ofthe bees The verb ruletear, likewise, was first used to describe the offering of “een ‘on the wheel.” And mordida (a bite ot a bribe), a word that had become wide, spread by the 1940s, had its origins in the nickname for the frst trafic co ne mordelones.® oe ‘An eatly forum for exploring the city’s dynamic car culture was the bus and taxi workers’ magazine, El Chafirete, a publication believed to have been written largely by Novo and other local literary figures.” Established in 1923 in order to defend the interests of any and all chauffeurs in the capital, the magazine published numerous poems and fictional stories about the culture of motor ized transportation. Themes addressed in this eccentric periodical, among oth ers, dealt with conflicts between chauffeurs and traffic police, the enticements of prostitutes and cabaret women, and the masculinity of taxi and bus drivers. “The magazine frequently toyed with the increasingly intimate relationship between Mexicans and their machines, and cartoons, poems, and prose pre- sented readers with numerous anthropomorphized automobiles and “techno- morphized” transportation workers. In the March 1923 edition, for example, piece entitled “Mi coche triste” (My sad car) tells the tale of lost love between an old Ford and its chafirete. In the poem, the fotingo, one of many slang terms fora Ford, recals its abandonment by its chauffeur, “El Tenorio de Mixcalco” “The car laments, “Ungratefully you left me / in a ghetto garage / leaving me without a steering wheel / and without tires, for free / knowing that! loved yous both night and dey / we worked together / and in the station you change! m*/ and then you transformed me / into a ridiculous bus." Instead of fixing their gaze on the countryside and indigenous cultures: Fi ers and artists like Salvador Novo, Luis Quintanilla, Manuel Maples Arce, an a , se arrention rot Germén List Arzubide, among countless others, turned their attention © and aboard 1 manifest writ: and buses. Rather than reject Mexico City’s growing car culture a5 tion of a “soulless Americanism,” a variety of avant-garde intellectua OT. og these technological artifacts as agents of an emergent Mexican modem? set about demonstrating the diversity of ways in which residents of the sim were not simply being transformed into carbon copies of their COUN the industrialized North Atlantic, but were producing their ow" of the machine age.Mexico in the Automobile Age / 235 Touring Cultures yn of 8 nominal peace during the 1920s encour: " i hgcring in Mexico City, but automobile aes es ee ie ap and bey The most active and influential advocate bork cs ace wes argably the magazine El Aucomérl en Mesey spe wo jaa exalised the fist postrevelatonary auto ca th iat chb de México. By 1921, the magazine had already done a study of th aa cio Pachuca road to facilitate reconstruction, organized the fist “al jean contest” held a banquet for President Obregén and the Secretaria f anmunications and Public Works, organized a variety of auto excursions i : vrs and hosted the irs “International Exposition of Auromobiles”in the ‘pits National Theatre“ In the years before the state developed a cleat poi . froad building, El Ausomévil en México clamored for mds y mejores amine (ove and better roads) and set about mapping the extant road network in the cen and northern portions of the country. Initially founded in 1907 by English auto enthusiast A. R. Hogg, the maga- Joe had been taken over by Rafael Alducin (later director of the newspaper Ex- «i and then purchased by Gustavo Alafia in 1918. By 1923, EfAutomévil en ‘eco claimed to have a few thousand subscribers, up from three only five years ‘ere, and by 1928 there were twenty-five thousand issues of the magazine cir- cuiting, By March 1923, El Automeévil en México had completed an extensive suneying effort, producing a total of twenty-three road maps for automobilists; andin October participants established the Asociacién Automovilistica Nacio- na (National Automobile Association) in order to continue fighting for “the "gh of automobiliss.”® The magazine was particularly committed to extending roadways and mo~ a ilk use into provincial areas. During che 1920s, virtually every issue a - ‘magazine featured recollections of recent excursions into the country a iscussions of rural road conditions, and ideas on places to visit. Articles aL appearing in El Automéil en Mésieo promoted such tours by ap- teat © the wealthy and emergent middle classes desire to see the nation’s | eat view the ways of traditional peasants and indigenous peoples, —— Ea of the Colonial and pre-Columbian past. As these moror byt yond the confines of the capital, they did much to remap and ago Cultural geography of an increasingly esteemed rural world. Employ- tds on technologies like Kodak cameras, which were ei aver Pama: these explorers became active participants in the larger ring da, effort to expand the visibility of the rural nation. a € 1920s covers of El Automévil en México were often illustra a pub- the Auto-226 / Freeman with presentations of ostensibly rural people and folvays The May 1g sue, for example, displayed a girl with long braids, wearing a tradition» is, and bupil (indigenous blouse). Pulling back a curtain, the gia even 8 ageof the Palacio de Bellas Ares (Palace of Fine Ar). Nex wher, ane peared beside cats, holdinga serpent ints talons and a wiginin wa Other images that commonly appeared in the magazine included the fan, chapel in Cholul, Puebla, the Chichen Itza and Micla runs, photoganhe’ charro (cowboys), and the snow-covered Popocatépetl volcano. Such aren produced easly recognizable tropes of Mexicanness, which, while predating Mexican Revolution had nevertheless become increasingly common ding 1920s as part of the national cultural revival. The magazine wa aso often filled with depictions and pseudo-anthropolg cal discussions of the nation’ various ethnic groups. In May of 1928, the en, of the magazine presented a young boy holding a small guitar and wearing bele witha set of arrows, with a caption stating: “A type of Huichol indian the populates in great extensions the states of Jalisco and Nayarit, This race of ind. ans, which is still purely preserved in the departments of Totatiche and Mezqi tic, speaks the Huichola or Huichichil language.” Similarly, in December 1927, the magazine published a series of pictures taken from along the Mexico City- Acapulco road, one of which featured a tourist next to an Affo-Mexican man and several children. The caption asserted: “If the natural beauties along with numerous other interesting aspects were not a sufficient motive to stop off on any spot along the road to Acapulco, we publish here these photographs to show that the aficionado in historical studies will find numerous reasons in which to put to test his erudition, since constantly he will have occasions in which to discover archaic humanities and lost cultures, ancient customs, primitive cloth- ing, etc., etc.” And in another case, in March 1929, the magazine offered im- ages of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. A caption appearing next co pictues of@ group of local women stated: “The traveler interested in typical spectacles and in local color will find great pleasure in the village curiosities and the customs of the local natives. In the region of the Isthmus de Tehuantepec, in addition Spanish, Tehuantepecano, Chontal, Trique, and Suave are spoken." Mororing as these pictures and corresponding captions made clear, not only was pleas¥™ able, but also offered the opportunity to learn about the provincial nation ___ The work of El Automévil en México and other automobile advo: incided with and no doubt helped encourage a series of early, if limited, 9°" by the state to build a network of roads suitable for motorists. Since aa 0 thecal poical leaders had discussed the importance of 8°04, Ley de itl and economic goal of the Mexican Revolucion and PP, inos y Carreteras (Law of Roads and Highways), whichMexico in the Automobile Age / 227 ening local, municipal, and national roadways to bein the public structed between the a. allow farmers and artisans Visit the famed archeologi- Plutarco Elfas Calles estab- n nal Commission of Roads) wbich soon began poamcoraan on highways connecting Mexico City to Puebla, pachuca, and Guadalajara. ; ° ‘Athough the post-revolutionary state attempted to improve transportation largely in order to unify the nation for standard political and economic Teasons, iaders consistently discussed how road building would do much to attract for, cjgn tourists a8 well. After avisit by Charles Lindbergh to Mexico City in 1927 during his famous “good will” flight, che national government eagerly antic- pated “an influx ofauromobile tourists” and made plans to supervise the coun- ins mjor roadways. By the end of the decade the government had created a divers of commissions and agencies that aimed to ease entry requirements for foreign tourists and improve coordination between offices dealing with travel, transport, public health, customs, and immigration.® By the early 1940s even PEMEX, the national petroleum company, began to produce its own guides on Mexican cultural attractions.” Significantly, these state-sponsored initiatives employed many of the same promotional tactics that had been pioneered by El Automévil en México. During the 1920s, then, private and public interests increasingly converged in the promotion of leisurely motoring by citizens and foreigners alike, efforts that would ultimately help to produce an explosion in automobile tourism dur- ing the 1930s. Indeed, according to a study done by the Banco de México, by 1934, 58.2 percent of foreign tourists traveled to Mexico in an automobile, while in 1939 the number had swelled to 86.1 percent.’! What had begun as a casual effort by Mexico City automobile advocates to promote the benefits of ‘motoring excursions into the countryside had by the early 1930s become an explicit government policy and, increasingly, big business. 1 i “he early 1920s, a new road had been oe i if calzone of Teotihuacén and Mexico City to revel the city as well as to encourage tourists to erate ‘And a few years later, in 1925, President ed he Comisén Nacional de Caminos (Natio Conclusion The fis three decades of the twentieth century witnessed a diversity of tech- ological transformations in Mexico and, indeed, around the world. Of these Many changes, the advent of the automobile was certainly one of the most strike: "Ng, and itis no surprise that artists, writers, intellectuals, business interests, and Qovemment officials all found opportunities to muse over its impact on society. the eatly 1930s—due to both the Mexican Revolution and global changes in228 / Freeman hicle use and production—the automobile had been transformed onspicuous cos em and ae of uneven, Modern. 7 it embodied during the Porfirian period to a common means ae ee in Mexico City. Indeed, the nation’s capital had begun Took increasingly like the fast-paced modern metropolis it would be known a during the second half of the twentieth century. Yet as automobiles prolife. seed, they struck many, particularly foreign observers, as contrary to the pose revolutionary goals of fostering a new national identity rooted in indigenous and rural ways. As emblems of the machine age, automobiles were often scen ‘as antithetical to the folk cultures promoted by Mexican intellectuals, govern- ment leaders, and foreign visitors. But these concerns, as this chapter has sug- gested, coexisted with the growing practice of leisurely motoring in rural areas, a practice that, in fact, did much to promote the very traditional cultures that opponents feared were being displaced by the spread of the machine age. By the late 1930s, Mexico had become a popular destination for the automobile tourist; and this dual vision of the country, which presented the nation’s capital as a modern cosmopolitan center and the rural world as a delightful sanctu- ary from industrialism, had been established. This dual narrative would remain firmly in place throughout much of the middle decades of the twentieth cen- tury and would come to constitute a central feature of modern Mexican identity. motorized vel from the classic c Notes 1, Salvador Novo, “EI Joven,” in Toda la prosa (Mexico City: Empresas Edi- toriales, 1964), 538. There is vireually no work on automobile use in Mexico writ- ten in English and only general work in Spanish. See, for example, Héctor Manuel Romero, Historia del ransporte en la Ciudad de México: De la trajinera al met (Mexico City: Secretaria General de Desarrollo Social, 1987); Fanny Del Rio and Carlos Vargs, El Autorranporte (Mexico City: Secretar de Comunicaciones y Tans Portes, 1988). aa a is vast amount of literature on the construction, or forging, of" ‘ically Mexican identity during the post-revolutionary era. See, for example Regia authan and Stephen E Lewis, The Eagle and the Vigin: Nain and Cle vnlation gi in Mexico, 1920-1940 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, aoe 3. For a discussi ssion of what Eric Zol a ican-folkl6ri course,” see his lov terms a “cosmopolitan-folkl6 "uFSe,” see his “Discover us i ing a Land ‘Mysterious and Obvious’: The Renarrtiv” ee Metco in Fragen of a Golden Age: The Politics of i (Dasha, NC. Dake ce Cider M. Joseph, Anne Rubenstein, and Be Zt 4. Se, for example, Sn SS 2001), 234-72, . Sample, Steven B. Bunker, “Consumers of Good Taste: MattMexico in the Automobile Age / 2 29, iq Northern Mexico, 18 yi it , 1890-1910,” ayn 2 Sanne Bee 227-69. See also ney Studies/Estudios Mes cede ipisodes of Porfirian Mexico (Lineals Bec, judas ate 56 : Universit “An “Aucomobile,” ‘The Mexican Herald, July 1 aN Bar Mexico? Overland Mon tly and Ou We » 1898; Nathaniel J. M; “eM dl Autom Cla” Tiempo, a Maine, 1906 = cua dsinguidos sportmen a 4, 180s, spina Oaobe 9 1910; “Cinco jovenes Teens Benoss jira auromovilisica” sen aon” El Diario, October 31 os ralzan una bilan expe * 1 Universd, January 22, 18955 “EL at — 1 , 1895; “El coche del diablo.” 895 "Fist Motor Catiage Bult in Mexi 6 de ible.” Univer, Jan §. Dal Rio and Vargas, EL pe 37 gas, El Autotransporte, 32~ * Age, August 18 9,°Hl ‘Chalmers Detroit,” EL i ” .” EL Ig 10, "Packard ‘30° México a ee cer ped rr 11.81 Diara, August 7, 1910. a gia LL 12 E1Diario, Jane 20, 1910. 13 El Aguila pecroleum com ” i ™ imi ies i sin” gasoline to motorists. EZ paler ee cere ee gn jo, April 27, 1910; El Diariz - partment of Commerce and Labor, B ey pa ee aa wureau of Manufactures, Monthly Dining Ofice, 1908), 20. 3, No. 330 (Washington, DC: Government ae International Edition, September 1911, 4 5, Beedle, Judas at th q 1911 3. ja fradcasin ete fe ea er the use of the street duit re of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City en Seen esi ss, 2001), 24-26. 1931 (Durham: Duke léxico antiguo y la cit » Bean ee gon moderna,” El Universal, February 2, 1900. 2 Sthador Quevedo y ra 2 pals Queda y Zubia, quoted in ; in Bl Diario, June 3, 1907. 2 Nalentmosess Lah area _v "880s stound 10 was a Latin American literary m« thi sam eal 1 ovement chat lasted from the ‘i : ‘or an introduction to modernismos Bat “ay i ee ‘A History, ed. David William Foster bn Neo ress, 1994). Me ee automévil de la muerte,” in Obras comp r . Lo or abet Lozano Hi "iia ato Heres Lat veal burlas de José Juan Tablada (Mexico Eas ceeameteans 1995), 96 eo rita, “Oliendo las flaculencias de car pes November 1906; ai lesas: Tomo IT buro: Poética de230 / Freeman la desconfianza en un poema de José Juan Tablada,” in Nueve miradas sin dyeig. Ensayos sobre la modernidad y sus representaciones en [a poesia bispanoamericang yee ‘pafola (Lima: Fondo Editorial PUCP, 2004), 37. 26, José Vasconcelos, Ulises Crollo (Ediciones Boras, 1935), 499; Pablo Picea, “Urbanistas, Ambulants, and Mendigos: The Dispute for Urban Space in Mexico City, 1890-1930,” in Reconstructing Criminality in Latin America, ed. Catlos Aguirre and Robert Buffington (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2000), 113-48, 27. James J. Fink, The Automobile Age (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), 37. 28. “Mexico, a Land of Used Automobiles,” Los Angeles Times, June 28, 1918, 29. “Poderosos autos cruzarin los campos de batalla sembrando a su paso la desola- ciény la muerte.” Independiente, March 6, 1914; “Motor Cars Useful in Mexico,” Washington Post, February 1, 1914; “Autos Aid to Huerta,” Washington Post, May 31, 1914; “Thousands for Bearing,” Los Angeles Times, January 30, 1916. 30. “Ridiculeces de los Rebeldes,” La Iberia, January 20, 1911. This case pre- dates the 1920 car bombing in Manhattan that Mike Davis suggests was the first in world history. See Mike Davis, Buda Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb (Lon- don: Verso, 2007). 31. “Zapata Yields to Madero,” Washington Post, June 21, 1911. 32. The Automobile, December 16, 1915, n.p.; Motor West, December 1, 1919, 23. 33. “Nueve personas fueron muertas y otras varias heridas por un automévil, en las carreras de ayer, en la Condesa,” E! Democrata, April 9, 19175 “Auto Racing Gains Favor in Mexico,” Washington Post, September 16, 1917. For an example of such criticism, see Thomas Edward Gibbon, Mexico under Carranza: A Lawyer’ Indictment of the Crowning Infamy of Four Hundred Years of Misrule (New York: Doubleday, 1919), 33. 34, P. Harvey Middleton, Industrial Mexico: 1919 Facts and Figures (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1919), 134. 35. Ibid., 23. 36. Moisés T. de la Petia, El servicio de autobuses en el Distrito Federal (Mexico City: Departamento del Distrito Federal, 1943), 13. 37. Ibid., 14. 38. Ibid., 14-15. 39. Ibi 43. Ibid., 35; “Taxis Commandeered,” Los Angeles Times, February 31924 Anns Mauicio Tenorio, “The Cosmopolitan Mexican Summer, 1920-1949" ‘merican Research Review 32, no. 3 (1997): 224-42; see also Helen Delpa’Mexico in the Automobile Age / 231 of Things Mexican: Cultural Relations between the ens 1985 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, nee oa wa Lawrence ‘The Plumed Serpent (London: Wordsworth Editions, 1995), 2, 46 Ibid 23- 5 A ane Chase Mev: A Study of Tuo Americas (New Yok MacMillan, 1935), William Richardson, “Maiakovskii en México, 4 (ap-June 1980): 633. an 51, Rubén Gallo, “John Dos Passos in Mexico,” Moderism/Medernity 14, no, 2,007): 330; Edward Weston, The Daybook of Edward Weston, vol. 1 (Millerom, NitAperture, 1973), 129-30, 134, 139. 52, Carleton Beals, Mexican Maze (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1931), 356-57, 53, For most scholars, 1916 represents the birth of the Latin Ametican avane- gad, the very year that mass automobile transportation emerged in Mexico City Hag J. Vani “The Vanguardia and Its Implications,” in The Cambridge Hitoy «flatin American Literature, vol. 2: The Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 116. 54, Elissa J. Rashkin, The Stridentism Movement in Mexico: The Avant-Garde and Calwal Change in the 1920s (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/ Rowman and Little fld Publishers, 2009), 28; see also Ricardo Pérez Montfort, Expresiones populares eseretpos culourales en México, Siglos XIX y XX: Diez Ensayos (Mexico City: CIE SAS, 2007); and Rubén Gallo, Mexican Modernity: The Avant-Garde and the Tech- rulogcal Revolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006). 95. Rashkin, The Stridentism Movement in Mexico, 53. 56. Ibid., 102, 97. Salvador Novo, New Mexican Grandeur, Sth ed. (Mexico City: Petréleos Mexicanos, 1967), 25, 58. Ibid. °9. Very litle has been written on El Chafirete. One of the few studies of the Ibuine is Adriana Gonzdlez Mateos, “El fff y su chofer: Control social, homo- ‘euulidad y clase en un periodico del México posrevolucionario,” Signos Literarios “(hly-December 2005), 103-25. Discusion of Now involvement inthe news Nuit be found in Viviane Mahieus, “The Chronicler as Strerwalker: Salvador “Wo and the Performance of Gente,” Hispanic Review 76, no. 2 (2008): 155-77. é a Gufs, March 15, 1923. a wd ion Mes, September 1921, 20. 's October 1923, 9. ” Historia Mexicana 29, no,232 / Freeman 63. Ibid., May 1925. 64, Ibid., May 1928 and December 1927. 65, Ibid., March 1929, 19. 66. Manuel Cami, InucOn,stess concsione de la ors Le ogy del le de Teatbuacin Mexico City: Ditecciin de Tlleses Gréficos, 1939) 67. Ovidio Gonzalez Gémer, “Constuccin de carretera y ordenanien tettitorio,” Revista Mexicana de Sociologia 52, no. 3 (July-September i950, del 59; Wendy Waters, “Remapping the Nation: Road Building as Sate Forman Posctevoluionary Meco, 1925-1940" (PRD diss, University of Ariz, ig 56 68, Russell Owens, “Lindbergh Impetus Decides Mexicans to Use Ait Lines" New York Times, December 22, 1927, 1. , 69. Alex Saragoza, “The Selling of Mexico: Tourism and the State, 1929-1952” in Fragments of a Golden Age, ed. Joseph, Rubenstein, and Zoloy, 101. " 70. Dina Bergen The Development of Mexicos Tourism Industry: Pyramids by Day Martinis by Night (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 104. 71. Ibid., 45-70; Banco de México, El turismo Norteamericano en México, 1934- 1940 (Mexico City: Grafica Panamericana, 1941), 42-45,