Tina Modotti and the Image of Mexican Communism in 1928: La Técnica

Leonard Folgarait

Tina Modotti, Máquina de escribir de Mella, 1928, blanco y negro.

Julio Antonio Mella (1904-1929) was activities dangerous to the regime of the Ché Guevara and Su­­bcomandante President Machado, Mella took up Marcos of his day in terms of owning headquarters in Mexico City, galvani­ the very image of the charismatic and zing leftists there under his forceful uncorrupted revolutionary leader. Exi­ oratory and writings. He occupied led from his native Cuba in 1926 for positions in several communist orga­ nizations and publications. It was as a "in the [Mexican] revolutionary socia­ journalist that he made his greatest list tradition".6 reputation in Mexico, signing some Rivera celebrated this photoge­ articles as Cuauhtémoc Zapata, com­ nic pair in a mural painting on the bining the two most legendary names walls of the Secretariat of Public Edu­ of resistance against oppression in cation in Mexico City in 1928-1929, Mexican history.1 Ione Robinson refe­ in a section entitled Distribu­­ting Arms. rred to him shortly after his death as Modotti seems to be handing Mella "a symbol around which everyone a bandolier in preparation for pit­ I know in Mexico [the Tina Modot­ ched class warfare. That Rivera inclu­ ti-Diego Rivera circle] revolves".2 By ded them in such a militant scene late 1928, Mella and the Italian-born speaks of the place they both held photographer Tina Modotti (1896- in communist circles at this time. A 1942), having met in the offices of the portrait of Mella by Modotti of 1928 Mexican Communist party organ El captures the heroically handsome fea­ Machete as co-workers in June, were tures he was known for. In this year, a public couple, striking for their com­ Modotti produced what amounts to mitment to the cause and for their another portrait of Mella, this time attractive appearance. Because she in the form of his typewriter. This is had left a relationship with the pain­ titled La Técnica. ter and graphic artist Xavier Guerre­ It seems disarmingly simple and ro to join Mella, and because both artless at first. We look down at a men were members of the Executive Committee of the Mexican Commu­ 1 Sarah Lowe, Tina Moddotti: Photographs, nist party (Partido Comunista Mexi­ New York: Harry N. Abrams and Philadelphia cano, pCM),3 Modotti felt that she Museum of Art, 1995, p. 40. 2 Letter to her mother of July 4, 1929. had to clear this relationship with Ione Robinson, A Wall to Paint On, New York: the PCM. Baltasar Dromundo remem­ E.P. Dutton, 1946, p. 92. bers that "What [Modotti and Mella] 3 Margaret Hooks, Tina Modotti: Photo­ had they spent on the Party [or] on grapher and Revolu­­tionary, London: pandora, 1993, pp. 168, 169. other people; they were truly mag­ 4 Hooks, p. 159. nanimous and as a result sometimes 5 Baltasar Dromundo, Rescate del Tiempo, didn’t have a cent …"4 In reference Mexico City: self-published, 1980, p. 40. 6 Barry Carr, "The Fate of the Vanguard to this couple, Dromundo says of the­ under a Revolutionary State: Marxism's Contri­ se years, "It was the romantic stage bution to the Construction of the Great Arch", of communism".5 Both Modotti and in Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugent, Eds., Mella were honored in the 1940s by Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolu­­tion and the Negotiation of Ru­­le in Modern Mexico, the naming of Mexican communist Durham and London: Duke University press, 40 cells after them, due to their status 1994, pp. 326-352, 341. fragment of a typewriter and read technology of the production of mea­ the ends of four lines of writing on ning. The typewriter here is a machine the paper. This is a machine that we of social change, a weapon of the revo­ can trust, because its workings are so lution, as Mella himself congratulated straightforward and so much at the Modotti on "this typewriter [that] you service of its human operator. The have socialized with your art".7 camera is also to be trusted because The typewriter is angled slightly it records these qualities so clearly. By away from our eye, so that although looking at such a partial view of the there is a clear recession into space, typewriter, we complete the machine there is also the sense that the plane by mentally imaging the whole key­ of the object is almost parallel to board, the second spool, the remain­ that of the photograph. The typewriter, der of the written lines, and probably although a squarish object with gridded the missing writer himself. perhaps internal arrangements, such as in the we are looking over Mella’s shoulder, keys, is organized so that we see the which might explain our angled view, composition mostly in terms of crossing and perhaps his fingers are even now diagonals joining opposite corners. The resting on keys just outside the frame curved arrangement of the hammers of the image. Mella’s implied presen­ and their armature and the large cir­ ce gives a new dramatic quality to cle of the spool play counterpoints to the subject, which is now perhaps not this dominant rectilinearity. But even wholly mechanical. His missing but within explicitly squared grids, such as in maybe present body further embo­ the keyboard, irregularities can be seen. dies the image and endows it with Because the rows of keys are offset, the narrative implications of the next diagonal and sometimes curved diago­ key to be struck, driven by his politics. nal lines appear, such as in the line that The typed lines are followed by a starts at P and goes left toward L and blank space, perhaps, because the wri­ toward yet another key, whose curved ter has not finished typing. frame is barely seen. The line connecting Seeing fragments of the mechani­ O to L and then to the accent marks cal properties of the typewriter leads key is a slightly curving diagonal. There is to a conceptual understanding of the also the cylindrical platen, which is both complete machine as a metaphor for round and straight, depending on the communication in general and activist rhetoric in particular. The keys produce words of revolutionary purpose which 7 In a letter to Modotti published in Excél­ sior, January 16, 1929. Cited and translated in could inspire action at the barricades. Patricia Albers, Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Meaning is inherent and waiting in tools; Tina Modotti, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: one merely needs to understand the University of California Press, 1999, p. 229. 41 axis, around which the sheet of paper vigilance of these shifting operations. alternately goes from flat to curved and The leftist vision, then, is a perpetual flat again. Even the typed lines are a performance of the score provided mix of curves (in the letters) within a by daily realities and agendas for the grid, with the occasional diagonal of the future, but a performance that is self-cri­ accent marks. The culmination of the­ tical and capable of making the sort of se combinations is in the ribbon itself, adjustments in positions that allow it to which goes from circular on the spool keep a viable place in this endlessly revi­ to flat as held in the frame ready to sing score. A true revolutionary needs receive the hammer; in between these to remain a constant revolutionary by states quite irregularly curvilinear as it correctly understanding the context of floats in space. transforming relations. These formal devices add up for The typed lines on La Técnica are Modotti as a way of saying the follo­ not authored by Mella and therefore wing: A revolutionary subject is more a complicate the reading of this as his moment in flux, a dynamic movement, typewriter and the image as a por­ than an object or idea or event measu­ trait of him.8 This is a fragment of rable in static, quantitative terms. This a text written by Leon Trotsky and movement, then, is a performance of which Modotti quoted in full in a and among several possibilities. Activist brochure describing her one-person political movement and performance exhibit in Mexico City in 1929. The can occur only between multiple and full Spanish text reads: si-multaneous possibilities. Revolution does not occur in a linear or measu­ La técnica se convertirá en una rable or predictable manner. Thus the inspiración mucho más poderosa angle of view in this image neither de la produccíon artística; más penetrates space forcefully nor rests tarde encontrará su solución en only on the surface of the photograph. una síntesis más elevada, el con­ The person and instrument of action traste que existe entre la técnica and propaganda fall into an order that y la naturaleza. is always highly pressured by contingen­ cies that distort that order. The laye­ Which I translate as: ring of visual information both enriches and confounds our reading, highligh­ 8 The title Mella’s Typewriter, was applied ting some details and obscuring others. fifty years afterward by Vittorio Vidali, another The life of the leftist political activist, Italian communist working in Mexico at this to Modotti, is about recognizing the time. Vidali wrongly claimed that the text on the sheet of paper was from an essay that constant instability of social relations Mella had written on Modotti’s photography. 42 and about the need to keep constant Lowe, p. 40. Technique will convert itself into a hybrid (word/image) form of propa­ a much more powerful inspiration ganda and its implied hybrid form of of artistic production: the contrast political action (the hybrid here being that exists between technique Stalinism/Trotskyism, the first term cham­ and nature will later find its solu­ pioned by the PCM, of which Modotti tion in a higher synthesis.9 was now a member, and the second seen as its enemy), to act across rather I depend on this statement to sup­ within political labels. Between an incom­ port my discussion of Modotti using plete image of a machine and an incom­ her photographic technique as a most plete phrase. Between a phrase that important inspiration for her art, that fits well inside a typed sheet of paper she depended on it to expand her that is much too large for it alone and subjects' inherent political purpose a typewriter that is too large to fit into and revolutionary consciousness, see­ the frame of this print. Between trust in king this "higher synthesis." the technologies of propaganda, such as I want to take quite seriously the camera and typewriter, and the propa­ cropping of this statement as we see ganda itself, these incomplete phrases in the photograph. The translation of this fragmented edit is: "inspiration … artistic ... a synthesis … exists between". 9 Andrea Noble has read this passage Creating a paraphrase, the sense now differently, and her translation has a different is: "Artistic inspiration. A synthesis exists sense, especially the fragment "later it will find between …" Between what? Between its solution in a higher synthesis, the contrast that exists between technique and nature", many things. Between Modotti and in Tina Modotti: Image, Textu­­re, Photography, Mella and Trotsky. Between the typewri­ Alburquerque, University of New Mexico ter and the words it produces. Between Press, 2000, p. 85. She bases her translation of the Trotsky quote as reproduced in Elena a camera and the image it produces. Poniatowska, Tinísima, Mexico City: Era, 1992, Between two machines –the camera p.42. The Trotsky quote is from "Revolutionary and the typewriter– and their methods and Socialist Art", the last chapter of Literatu­­re of creating a product; the ribbon chan­ and Revolu­­tion, New York: Russell & Russell, 1957, p.253. The book was written in 1924. ging the touch of a human finger on As I have translated from the Spanish version a key into forms on a blank piece of that was available to Modotti, the following is paper and the film changing the pres­ the English published translation, which was unavailable to her: "Technique will become a sing of a human finger on a shutter or more powerful inspiration for artistic work, removing a lens cap for a few seconds and later on the contradiction itself between into forms on a blank piece of paper. technique and nature will be solved in a hig- her synthesis." For a very interesting account Between ‘seeing’ the words as images of this image from a strongly Trotskyite posi- and ‘reading’ them as we would on tion, see Gen Doy, Materializing Art History, typewritten paper. Between accepting Oxford, New York: Berg, 1998, pp. 145-150. 43 and images. Between all the possibilities tions. Her deceased husband of the of revolutionary action; and between early 1920s had contributed illustrations those possibilities and their impossibili­ for the cover of Gale’s, a well-known ties in the context of Mexico in the late socialist magazine in the United States. 1920s. In Mexico, she fell in with communist In this photograph there is an artists such as Rivera, David Alfaro implied narrative, a promise of agency Siqueiros, Frida Kahlo, and Guerrero. The­ leading to action. The keyboard waits se relations led her to participation in for the next key to strike the next PCM publications and conferences. Her letter. But none of this seems overt- fluency with English and Italian made ly about to happen. All is implied. In her valuable as a translator for articles this year, 1928, Modotti wrote to her and for assisting foreign visitors. She teacher, the American photographer was known to lead meetings with grace Edward Weston, of her growing appre­ and discipline or deliver a speech with ciation for these sorts of implications, stirring content. Modotti became the as opposed to spelling out content in very model of a PCM member and was too obvious terms. She takes as her trusted beyond any doubt. Her house example the mural painting of Rivera was a regular site of entertainment and and of José Clemente Orozco. serious discussion, to the point that bet­ ween 1926 and 1929 comrades from As time goes by, I find myself liking out of town or country gravitated to Orozco's more and more, I feel the Modotti address as the central mee­ the genius. His things overflow ting place. with an inner potentiality which However, there is no evidence, eit­ one never feels in Diego's things. her written or anecdotal, that Modot­ Diego comments too much, lately ti was an ideologue bound to speci­ he paints details with an irritating fic leaders of communism. Especially precision, he leaves nothing for at this time in Mexico, the lines bet­ one's imagination. With Orozco's ween Stalinism and Trotskyism were things, you feel that you can begin well drawn indeed, to the point that where he leaves off and that is Siqueiros was known as a committed very satisfying. With Orozco one Stalinist and would stage a dramatic also feels that he never says all he armed attack in 1940 on the house feels and knows, he is too impa­ of Trotsky in Mexico City, whose arri­ tient for that, he just suggests, and goes on, …"10 10 A letter of September 18, 1928. Amy Stark, "The Letters from Tina Modotti to Edward Weston", Archive, January, 1986, Modotti was a leftist by upbringing, Tucson, The University of Arizona Center for 44 as her family in Italy had leftist associa­ Creative Photography, p. 56. val in Mexico in 1937 would be arran­ in Mexico to subordinate itself to ged by Diego Rivera. In general, the the C[entral] C[ommittee] of the PCM in the mid-1920s had not yet PCM", this specifically due to his sus­ felt the full force of the rift between pected leanings toward Trotsky. Mella these two claimants on the mantle was furious at the Cuban resolution of Lenin for leadership of internatio­ and temporarily resigned from the nal communism, but by the mid to PCM.13 La Técnica may remove incri­ late 1920s, when Mella had indicated minating ‘evidence’ that he was ever leanings toward Trotsky, the PCM lea­ seated at the keyboard that repro­ ders became alarmed. Modotti never duced these lines by Trotsky, but, on made any statement for or against the other hand, who else within the either Stalin or Trotsky. Even the sta­ PCM could have typed these words tement by Trotsky in La Técnica, when but him? later used in support of her one-per­ Having been both in front of (as son exhibition of 1929, was repro­ a photographer’s model in the early duced without credit to him as the 1920s) and behind the camera, at opening to her own manifesto, "On the forefront and absorbed into the Photography". When this manifesto ranks of communist activity, commit­ was published, the Trotsky quote was ted to the Mexican cause yet a foreig­ deleted.11 ner, Modotti operated between cate­ But a failed Mella mission to libe­ gories. The use of "between" here is rate Cuba put him and Modotti into meant to connect to the paragraph a dangerously compromised position several pages past where the word with their fellow Mexican commu­ is overused on purpose. Now I ask nists. Shortly before his departure, the reader to browse this image and he swore her to absolute secrecy: apply these accumulated observations "You KNOW NOTHING, unders­ as reasons for its particular style and tand? When it comes to them [PCM purpose. But by factoring Modotti’s leaders]". When these became awa­ personal history into the photograph re of his plot, he was threatened as the interested agency that gives it with expulsion from the pCM.12 structure and emotive content, much In a 1927 visit to Moscow, he was has been left out of the wider political known to have met with Trotskyites contexts she traveled in. and possibly Trotsky himself. PCM offi­ The Communist International, cials suspected that "Mella has always Comintern, was formed in 1919 in had Trotskyist "weaknesses". In 1928 an emissary carried back from the 11 Hooks, p. 191. Cuban Communist party in Hava­ 12 Hooks, p.170. 13 na a resolution for "Mella’s group Hooks, p.171. 45 Moscow with the intent of fostering International communists loyal to Sta­ world revolution by taking advantage lin were now to support the interna­ of what it saw as an economic and tional standing of the Soviet Union, military crisis in the West. The plan as it would seek extensive economic was to form communist groups as and political backing from the West widely as possible to win the masses for Stalin’s plan of economic develop­ from the Socialists, who at this time ment. Central to these strategic shifts were favoring non-violent and evolu­ was to pose the Comintern fully on tionary conflict with the bourgeoisie. the side of Stalin and against Trotsky, In 1919, the Comintern wanted imme­ who had moved toward a "leftist" diate action to overthrow their class position and was relentlessly attac­ enemies. "Our task is …, to mobilize king Stalin.15 the forces of all genuinely revolutio­ International communism during nary parties of the world proleta­ the 1920s experienced its connection riat".14 But by 1924, with Lenin dead and obligations to the Comintern as and his followers struggling for his a journey from full engagement with leadership position, with the failure the propulsive principles and immi­ of the communist revolution in Ger­ nent success of world revolution to many in 1923, and with the Soviet serving the stasis of "Socialism in one Union badly in need of capital from country". Rather than feeling the full the West for its vast projects of indus­ force of Soviet commitment behind trialization of farming and manufactu­ them to push forward with the dis­ ring, the Comintern made a critical mantling of bourgeois capitalism in adjustment to its strategy, calling it their own countries, world commu­ Bolshevization. This meant a slower, nists after 1925 felt this energy rever­ more flexible preparation of the inter­ sing and deflating. No longer at the national proletariat toward assuming vanguard of revolutionary purpose control of the state apparatus of capi­ as the heroic shock troops of politi­ talist nations, many of which were cal liberation, they now became the seen by Moscow to be on the verge managers of organization and disci­ of internal collapse. By 1925, however, pline, attempting to maintain good it was clear that the capitalist West was not faltering and that world revo­ 14 "Manifesto of the Communist Interna­ lution seemed less and less a pro­ tional to the Proletariat of the Entire World", bable event, forcing the Comintern 1919, quoted in Donald L. Herman, The leadership, increasingly meaning only Comintern in Mexico, Washington D.C.: Public Joseph Stalin, to focus on internal Affairs Press, 1974, p.5. 15 This paragraph and in general the Soviet developments with the doc­ information on the Comintern is based on 46 trine of "Socialism in one country". Herman, pp.13-19. relations with their previous class greatest capitalist power of its time enemies. The outward explosion of a critical enterprise. The Communist revolution was now imploding into a Party of the Mexican Proletariat, for­ holding pattern of bureaucratic watch­ med in early 1920 and accepted by fulness. the Comintern in 1922, thereupon What was the interest of the reformed into the PCM.17 Comintern in Mexico? The Revolu­ The government stand against tion of 1910 and its ten year civil war the church also seemed opportune was not, until 1920, a ripe circumstan­ for radicalizing from the communist ce for international communism. The front. The Constitution of 1917 had leaders of the Revolution came from severely restricted the operations of firmly entrenched interests of social the church, to the extent of confis­ and economic privilege, seeking to cating church buildings and limiting loosen the monolithic political system religious instruction and the political of the dictator Díaz for opportunis­ rights of the clerics. The Articles sta­ tic reasons. The masses of urban and ting these limitations, however, had rural workers involved in the fighting not been enforced until president followed the orders of men not ver­ Calles decided to do so in 1926, with sed or interested in dissolving the the result that no Mass was observed class structure. Thus, until the 1920s, in Mexico again until 1929. It was there was no strong presence of com­ during this period that the Cristero munism in Mexico. rebellion broke out, with armed Cat­ The 1920s, however, presented holic peasants taking on the military a new picture. The masses had now forces of the government, the violent settled into self-consciousness about conflict claiming thousands of victims. their power and were organizing into During this three year period, the large groups. With the fate of the communists sided with the govern­ government under constant threat of ment, forming Anti-Clerical Leagues counter revolution and the working and in general taking every oppor­ class flexing its muscles, the time see­ tunity to oppose the church. The med ripe for communists to organize. communist Unitary Trade Union Con­ The Second World Congress of the federation declared "that it hopes Comintern of 1920 declared that "A Latin American bloc with Mexico at 16 The Second Congress of the Com­ its head would greatly check the lust munist International, Moscow: The publishing for power"16 of the United States, Office of the Communist International, 1920, making a strong Comintern presence p. 123. Cited in Charles James Stephens, "Com­ munism in Mexico", M.A. Thesis, University of at the gateway to the rest of Latin California at Berkeley, 1963, p. 9. 17 America and butting up against the Herman, pp. 60, 61. 47 the Government maintains its attitu­ red, and he is, a traitor. I need not de before the disobedience of the add that I shall look upon him as Roman clergy, not accommodating one too, and from now on all my differences in any form".18 contact with him will be limited to The Comintern then took a "left our photographic transactions.21 turn" in 1928, actualized in Mexico at the July 1929 meeting of the PCM There are two points of interest Executive Committee as a newly radi­ here. She is writing to Weston, never calized position against the govern­ a communist, and thus has no need ment. The masses needed to be agita­ to impress him with her PCM loyalty. ted against imperialism and capitalism Indeed, a friend at this time com­ in a form more uncompromised than plained of "how Tina has sacrificed ever before.19 Already by April, El everything to this damn Communist Machete had stated that "Only by Party".22 Yet, she is willing to profit armed force can the workers and monetarily from her work of photo­ peasants guarantee the establishment graphing Rivera’s murals. How would of a worker and peasant government the PCM have felt about this willing­ in Mexico".20 ness to deal with a "traitor" at this In gearing up for its showdown level, as her photographs of his work with the Mexican government in mid- were largely responsible for his great 1929, the PCM began to define who fame, at home and abroad? Modotti was a loyal party member and who is riding the political fence here. was not, and Rivera was increasingly Perhaps Modotti was trying to coming under suspicion for his sup­ satisfy her duty to the pCM and at posed sympathies for Trotsky. He was the same time acknowledging the ceremoniously expelled and soon great debt she owed Rivera for his after came out publicy in favor of unwavering support of her during Trotsky. On this issue, Modotti stood by her party, writing to Weston in 18 September of 1929: El Machete, March 9, 1929, p. 2. Quo­ ted in Herman, p. 35. 19 Barry Carr, Marxism and Commu­­nism Diego is out of the party … Rea­ in Twentieth-Centu­­ry Mexico, Lincoln and Lon­ sons: That his many jobs he has don: University of Nebraska Press, 1992, p. 8. 20 In an article entitled "The armed lately accepted from the govern­ campesinos should not turn in [to the govern­ ment ..., are incompatible with a ment] nor a single rifle nor a single gunbelt", militant member of the p[arty] … no. 161, p. 1. Cited and translated in Stephens, I think his going out of the party p. 66. 21 Letter of September 17, 1929. Stark, will do more harm to him than pp. 68, 69. 22 48 to the p[arty]. He will be conside­ Monna Alfau, in Hooks, p.199. the scandal surrounding the assassina­ of international and Mexican commu­ tion of her lover Mella in early 1929, nists gearing up to an explicit challen­ when she had been under intense ge to capitalism in 1928-1929. This suspicion of complicity by the police. photograph expresses in visual terms Rivera had published an impassioned the highly conflicted nature of these defense of her in the newspapers. He poiltical dynamics in what it shows had also been a friend and comrade and does not show, both in terms of of Mella, appearing with him at rallies actual objects and people, but more and at speakers’ platforms.23 importantly in the depiction of a ten­ The fluctuating mission of the sion between stillness and action. PCM according to shifting instructions Looking one last time at this pho­ from the Comintern begins to apply tograph, the issues raised by the histo­ to my analysis of La Técnica. In 1919, rical and political contexts now apply. the Comintern was interested in The typewriter remains still and silent. "mobiliz[ing] the forces" for an immi­ This is especially poignant, as the fra­ nent victory of the communist revo­ yed and worn ribbon and the resul­ lution throughout the world, and as tant pale ink on the paper speak of this strong directive was then tempe­ long and recent heavy work and relen­ red into watchfullness and a managed tless attention to the political content state of readiness, to be geared up of the work at the expense of the again in 1929 into militant action, this equipment pushed to its limit. Perhaps photograph can be read partly as a this sort of propagandistic posing and visualization of this zig-zagging agenda. posturing was the best that could be This juggling between action and rest, expected of and for the Mexican com­ between activist or watchful behavior munists of this time. Or perhaps this is what the experience of a pCM aspect of frozen yet potentially active member was during these years. This agency, of studied formal complexi­ instability would have been felt even ties that promise yet suspend political more pointedly by Modotti, a mem­ action were equally indicative of the ber of the Stalinist pCM, yet close position of Modotti and other commu­ to the Trotskyite sympathizers Mella nists in the political culture of Mexico and Rivera. All of this in the context in 1928.

23 Albers, p. 226. 49