Editor, Frontera NorteSur

Swinging open the museum doors, the visitor was in for a shock. Inside the spacious building, gutted walls, protruding wires and a dug-up floor were seemingly all that remained of the Posada Museum in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Springing from the back, a friendly Guillermo Saucedo Ruiz, the museum’s director, quickly set the record straight: the “home” of iconic Mexican artist Jose Guadalupe Posada was getting a makeover.

Guiding the reporter through rooms of hammering workmen and rising dust, Saucedo outlined the renovation that is planned to be ready for the opening of Aguascalientes’ annual San Marcos Fair later this month.

Carrying an estimated price tag of  $1.2 million, the new Posada museum will feature a research center, library, cafe, Internet connections and graphics classes once it is completed.

Supported by state and federal funds, the 1,000 square meter facility will exhibit 200 original Posada works including and El Quijote, Saucedo said, adding that Posada’s new home will open as part of the national celebrations for the twin anniversaries of the 1810 War of Independence and 1910 Mexican Revolution.

“Posada is known as the father of popular graphics, not only in Mexico but at the Latin American level,” he said.  Dubbing Posada the “graphic chronicler” of his times, Saucedo described how the prolific artist depicted the legendary political leaders of the strife-torn years of the early 20th century-Madero, Zapata, Villa and others.

The Posada collection on hand in Aguascalientes will also include surrealistic pictures, crime scene drawings and comical works like the old cartoon character Chepito Marihuano.

Aguascalientes’ most famous native son, Posada was born in the historic barrio of San Marcos in 1852. Moving from the central Mexican city at a young age, Posada lived to the neighboring state of Guanajuato before arriving in Mexico City in 1888. Showing talent at an early age, Posada soon broke with the European influence that dominated Mexican art and developed a unique style that transmitted the realities, frustrations and fantasies of Mexican life for a mass audience. In a teasingly jolting way, Posada’s graphics portrayed Mexican social and economic relations, politics and popular myths.

“His most important legacy was leave national and international art a style that had a very Mexican stamp on it,” Saucedo asserted.

The cultural historian credited Posada for making another, less-recognized contribution. Creating art in an age of mass illiteracy, Posada helped Mexicans learn about their culture and country during periods of great upheaval and change.

“He visually taught the alphabet to the people of his time,” Saucedo said. “Posada was looking for the genuine language of the Mexicans in such a way that they could understand an image according to the sociological and socio-cultural level they had in that era.”

By far, Posada is best known for the skeleton drawing known as La Catrina. According to Saucedo, the piece, originally called Las Calaveras Garbanceras, poked fun at domestic workers. Ironically, La Catrina was published shortly after Posada died in 1913.

Legendary for his end-of-the-year drinking binges during which he would vanish from Mexico City to disappear into a bottle in Guanajuato, Posada died alone. Essentially a pauper, he wound up tossed into a common grave in the Mexican capital. Saucedo credited artists David Orozco and Diego Rivera for playing a major role in rescuing the graphic artist from historical obscurity.

Nearly 100 years after his death, Posada is a fixture of the international art scene, and even a commercial phenomenon. Flashing Posada-like skeletons onto the streets of  Albuquerque, New Mexico, a Jose Cuervo billboard urges viewers to “Party Like it’s 1795.”

In Albuquerque, the University of New Mexico (UNM) maintains hundreds of Posada originals at the Center for Southwest Research. Hauntingly contemporary, the prints include scenes that depict miners escaping an explosion, three laborers stumbling across a dead woman with her infant, a decapitated girl stretched across a bed and a hallucinating man surrounded by monsters. Posada’s prints can be viewed online at the Center’s website (http://econtent.unm.edu/index.php).

In a surprising way, striking parallels stand between Posada’s time, the years of the Porfiriato, and modern Mexico. Both periods of history are characterized by rapid development, large-scale foreign economic penetration, uncertain political transitions, widespread violence, and the fracturing of the state.

On a closely related note, the UNM Art Museum also possesses a collection from the Workshop for Popular Graphic Arts, a group of Mexico City artists who have followed the Posada tradition by producing politically-charged prints since the late 1930s.

Yet Posada’s greatest influence is seen every year in the reappearance of La Catrina, the skeleton goddess of early November’s Day of the Dead celebrations, which have spread from Mexico and Latin America and caught fire in the United States in recent years.

An internationally-known artist and cultural activist, Victoria Delgadillo has organized and participated in many of the growing Day of the Dead events in her home town of Los Angeles.

“Chicano art receives a lot of political work from Posada, especially the Day of the Dead,” Delgadillo said by phone from Los Angeles. “He’s the icon of the Day of the Dead.”

This year, Los Angeles’ Day of the Dead celebration will be themed around the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, Delgadillo said. “I’m sure Posada will be there,” she added.

According to Delgadillo, Posada treats death from a very Mexican and indigenous perspective. In essence, Posada’s artwork projects a spirit that speaks to the roots of the Chicano people north of the border.

Long dead before he achieved international fame, Posada today inspires people across the globe. The 25,000 regular visitors the 37-year-old Posada Museum hosts in Aguascalientes every year does not include local school groups and specialized tours, Saucedo said.

“The image of Guadalupe Posada is a magnet for Aguascalientes. I can tell you that in the four years I have been here international tourism has increased a lot,” he affirmed. “We used to just have US tourism. Now we have tourism from Europe, Asia, Central and South America…. oddly enough they come to the state to see Posada’s works. Their objective is to come to Aguascalientes to see the works of Posada. This is very interesting.”

Outside Aguascalientes’ Posada Museum, visitors will encounter a neatly-tended garden plaza cooled by water fountains and palm trees. A big stone church, secondary school, Yucatan-style restaurant and a steakhouse grasp the plaza.

At mid-day, blue-smocked workers from an adjacent factory that manufactures pants for export to the United States crowd the garden and spill into the surrounding streets eating lunch and socializing. The mainly female, low-paid workers symbolize a transformed social structure and economy that defines the contemporary landscape. If he were alive today, it’s a safe bet Posada would satirize the scene in one of his drawings.

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico.