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The Satiric Penny Press for Workers in Mexico, 1900–1910: A Case Study in the Politicisation of Popular Culture*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

María Elena Díaz
María Elena Díaz
Affiliation:
graduate student in History at the University of Texas at Austin.
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Extract

In 1908 an editorial in El Diablito Rojo, itself a penny journal, made some disparaging, yet revealing, remarks regarding the impact of the penny press of the time on Mexican workers:

There is hardly a worker in Mexico [today] who every morning does not bring to his workshop or leave at home the paper of the day in addition to the small papers dedicated to workers which he acquires with real pleasure. In the big paper [the worker] looks for the daily news… in the small weekly he looks for a joke, a caricature, an anecdote; something that can distract or instruct him…

But is that small press useful to its readers?… No: the journals constituting the small press all call themselves defenders of the worker and preach a dangerous gospel: hate of the bourgeois… [so that today] The worker already sees the bourgeois as an ogre…

The small press does not… demonstrate to the worker the evils brought about by rebellion or violence, instead it tries to flatter the proletariat, indeed defending it in its own way when it is victimised, but only by fomenting in him a bad attitude towards his work.1

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , October 1990 , pp. 497 - 526
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 El Diablito Rojo, 22 06 1908, p. 2.Google Scholar

2 Most labour histories of Mexico tend to start with the Mexican Revolution, while previous periods are dealt with in terms of ‘background’ material. Carr, Barry, El movimiento obrero y la política en México: 1910–1929 (Mexico, 1976)Google Scholar; Clark, Marjorie Ruth, Organized Labor in Mexico (North Carolina, 1934)Google Scholar; Aparicio, López, El movimiento obrero en México, (Mexico, 1958).Google Scholar

3 Basurto, Jorge, El proletariado industrial en México (Mexico, 1975)Google Scholar; Hart, John, El anarquismo y la clase obrera mexicana, 1860–1931 (Mexico, 1980)Google Scholar; Cockcroft, James D., Intellectual Precursors of the Mexican Revolution, 1900–1913, (Austin, 1968).Google Scholar Moisés Navarro's study of labour during the Porfiriato in Villegas, Daniel Cosío (ed.), Historia moderna de México: el Porfiriato. La vida social (Mexico, 1957), pp. 344–76Google Scholar, attempts to cover other currents influencing labour as well, but remains an impressionistic account, and one which is too narrow in its choice of sources.

4 Anderson, Rodney D., Outcasts in Their Own Land: Mexican Industrial Workers, 1906–1911, (Dekalb, Ill., 1976)Google Scholar; ‘Mexican Workers and the Politics of Revolution, 1906–1911’, Hispanic American Historical Review vol. 54 (1974), pp. 94–113.Google Scholar

5 Knight, Alan, History of the Mexican Revolution (Cambridge, 1986).Google Scholar‘The Working Class and the Mexican Revolution, 1900–1920’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 16, Part 1 (1984), pp. 449–59.Google Scholar

6 Anderson seems to assume that because democratic liberalism is a bourgeois ideology, it somehow precludes working-class consciousness. Thus he sees Mexican workers steeped in this ideology speaking as ‘working Mexicans’, rather than as ‘Mexican workers’. See his ‘Mexican Workers’, p. 113.

7 Aparicio, A. López, El movimiento obrero, pp. 103–15Google Scholar; Hart, J., El anarquismo, pp. 59–80 and 112–39Google Scholar; J. Cockcroft, Intellectual Precursors.

8 Important histories of Mexican journalism such as Ross's, StanleyFuentes para la historia contemporánea de México: periódicos y revistas (Mexico, 1965), vol. 1Google Scholar; and the article ‘Periodismo’ in Alvarez, José R. (ed.), Enciclopedia de México (Mexico, 1977), vol. 10, pp. 222–56Google Scholar, either mention them as a genre in passing or altogether ignore them. Even Manuel González Ramírez in his specialised work on the political cartoon in Fuentes para la historia focuses exclusively on well-known satiric periodicals such as El Hijo de Ahuizote and El Colmillo Público, but seems totally oblivious to this other tradition; note how his reference to Posada's cartoons deals exclusively with the period after the Revolution.

9 There is a prolific literature on Posada and some on the satiric penny press which he illustrated, but mostly written from an aesthetic point of view. The most recent, and one of the best, is Posada's Mexico, edited by Tyler, Ron (Washington, D.C., 1979).Google Scholar For Diego Rivera's homage to Posada, see p. 123.

10 Some important exceptions to this trend have been Rodney D. Anderson, Outcasts, who has made some use of this press to document the textile strikes of the period, and, more obliquely, the political ideology permeating among Mexican workers at the time. Also Raat, William D., in ‘The Antipositivist Movement in Prerevolutionary Mexico, 1892–1911’, Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 19 (02 1977), pp. 83–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar, briefly examines some political issues raised in this press. Finally, Charles Cumberland refers to them in passing and although, in terming them ‘truly proletarian papers’, he recognised their significance properly, he misidentified them as anarchist and socialist. See Mexican Revolution (Austin, 1952), p. 25.Google Scholar

11 See, for example, Alba, Víctor, ‘The Mexican Revolution and the Cartoon’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 9, no. 2 (01 1967), pp. 121–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Manuel González Ramírez, Fuentes: la caricatura política; Cockcroft, Intellectual Precursors.

12 Spell, Jefferson R., ‘Mexican Literary Periodicals in the Nineteenth Century’, Modern language Association of America, vol. 52 (1937), pp. 308–12Google Scholar, and ‘Mexican Literary Periodicals in the Twentieth Century’, Modern Language Association of America, vol. 54 (1939), pp. 848–52.Google Scholar Out of the 36 satiric journals listed by Spell, only six are identified as directed to workers. In my own examination of the publications found in the University of Texas (UT) collection, I have found that, for the decade of 1900–10, nine other satiric journals in Spell's list were also dedicated to the ‘defence of workers’. For the nineteenth century, Spell did not list a single satiric journal dedicated to workers. A preliminary examination of at least those satiric publications found in the UT collection for that period confirmed this.

13 La Guacamaya, 5 12 1907, p. 3.Google Scholar This weekly published the figures for its press run for a period of five months. They fluctuated between 19,000 and 29,000. El Diablito Rojo reported on 22 06 1908 (p. 2)Google Scholar, that 25,000 issues of the penny press circulated in Mexico. The less popular and short-lived Don Cucufate reported a press run of 12,500 in its issue of 29 July 1906.

14 Ross, Stanley, Fuentes: Periódicos y revistas, vol. 1, p. xxivGoogle Scholar and ‘Periodismo’ in Enciclopedia de México, p. 247. The widespread oppositional weekly of Flores Magón, Regeneración, increased from 11,000 to 30,000 by 1906, according to Cockcroft, James D. in Intellectual Precursors, p. 124.Google Scholar The best-known opposition satiric weekly El Hijo de Ahuizote had a circulation of 24,000 according to Fuentes: la caricatura política, p. xxvi.

15 Rafael R. Rodríguez, founder of La Guacamaya, was said to be sympathetic to the working class ‘of which he had also formed a part’ (La Guacamaya, 23 08 1906, p. 2).Google Scholar A rival weekly claimed that Rodríguez, was a comedian ‘who did not know anything about labour issues’ (La Palanca, 4 09 1904, p. 3).Google Scholar Fernando Torroella, the latter's successor after 1906, and owner of other short-lived penny papers, wrote poems which often appeared in the ‘literary section’ of these journals, and also published poetry books (see El Duende, 15 11 1904, p. 4).Google Scholar In an editorial, Torroella also mentioned other contributors to La Guacamaya, among whom was a Solórzano, Rafael, described as ‘skilled with the pen and with the hammer’ (La Guacamaya, 23 08 1906, p. 2).Google Scholar Often the address of the journal's director, to whom all matters regarding the weeklies were to be sent, was an Imprenta or printshop, pointing to the possible involvement of typographers in the business of the penny press. Further evidence of this may be the fact that many of these papers advertised popular novels published in their own press. La Chihuantlahua, for instance, offered a coupon worth ten cents in its issue of 21 Oct. 1906, for what it termed the ‘beautiful’ novel, The Ripper of Women. Furthermore, José Guadalupe Posada, the cartoonist for most of these papers, worked in a printshop and at the time had the status of an artisan, not of an ‘artist’, as today may be imagined. Finally, at least one of the directors of the most ‘educational’, and rather middle-class, weekly El Diablito Rojo, was Jacobo E. Escalante, a lawyer as indicated by his title of licenciado; see issue of 1 July 1901, p. 4.

16 See La Guacamaya, 23 08 1906, p. 2.Google ScholarEl Chile Piquín, 26 01 1905, p. 2.Google ScholarEl Diablito Rojo, 25 05 1908, p. 2.Google Scholar

17 This issue has been particularly debated with the advent of the commercialisation of popular culture. See Chambers, Iain, Popular Culture and the Metropolitan Experience (London, 1987).Google Scholar E. P. Thompson approaches the problem in yet another way in his brilliant discussion of the ‘style and tone’ of the radical writers Hazlitt and Cobbet. See The Making, pp. 746–62.

18 El Diablito Rojo, 22 06 1908, p. 2.Google Scholar

19 Rodney D. Anderson has read hundreds of workers' letters appearing in these and other papers and they would appear to echo the concerns expressed in the penny weeklies. ‘Mexican Workers’, p. 96.

20 La Guacamaya had agents in several locations: Orizaba, San Luis Potosí, Aguas Calientes, Toluca, Hidalgo del Parral and Guanajuato. See the list of these agents with standing debts published in the issues of 18 Jan. 1906, p. 2; and 2 Sept. 1902. It definitely circulated in the factory of Río Blanco (13 July 1906, p. 2). El Diablito Bromista reopened its operations in 1 Oct. 1906 after a suspension of several months with a feature welcoming complaints from ‘the operators of textile factories and from all workers in general’, p. 3. El Diablito Rojo circulated, at least in 1900, in Zacatecas, Puebla and Guanajuato. See its debtors' list in issue of 8 Oct. 1900, p. 2.

21 El Diablito Rojo, 11 06 1900, p. 3.Google Scholar This is an interesting incident, for while apparently circulating among workers, at that time El Diablito dealt more with political protest than with properly labour issues.

22 The term ‘working-class consciousness’ is used here in a Thompsonian sense– meaning the subjective/cultural expression of the objective experience of class in a particular historical moment and vis-à-vis another class. This sense of class consciousness does not, however, necessarily imply a ‘revolutionary’ consciousness.

23 One of the cultural expressions of class is the precise meaning that the term assumes at different historical moments. The term ‘working class’ today, for instance, tends to refer only to industrial workers. The transformation in meaning already undergone by the term at the turn of the century – as reflected in this penny press – is even more marked if contrasted with its use in the nineteenth-century press where, according to Arturo Obregón, it tended to aggregate artisans, office workers, and in general, all waged workers. See ‘La prensa obrera’, p. 37.

24 La Guacamaya, 5 12 1902, p. 1Google Scholar; and El Chango, 28 05 1904, p. 1.Google Scholar

25 For a discussion of the Micheletian concept of ‘the people’, see Fisher, David James, ‘The Origins of the French Popular Theatre’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 12 (1977). pp. 461–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 The use of the term in these journals corroborates the definition given in Santamaría, Francisco J., Diccionario de mejicanismos (Mexico, 1974).Google Scholar

27 For an explicit statement of the sense of the term ‘el pueblo’, see El Moquete, 16 02 1905, p. 2.Google Scholar

28 The following discussion on the ideological struggle over language, sign, or naming carried out in the pages of this press is based on the ideas of the well-known Marxist language theoretician Mikhail Bakhtin.

29 La Cagarruta, 20 12 1906, p. 4.Google Scholar

30 El Diablito Bromista, 14 07 1907, p. 3.Google Scholar This exact characterisation of ‘workers’ and ‘the people’ is common to other countries as well. See Lidsky, P., Los escritores contra la comuna (Mexico, 1971), p.109.Google Scholar

31 El Papagayo, 17 07 1904, p. 2.Google Scholar

32 El Diablito Rojo, 2 07 1900, p. 2.Google Scholar The original text reads as follows: ‘El sabio te llama populo/ El roto, peladaje/…El aristócrata, plebe/El rico, desarrapado/El Diablito te dice mano, guadarnís, valenciano…’

33 Don Cucufate, 17 09 1906, p. 3.Google Scholar

34 La Chintatlahua, 23 09 1906, p. 2Google Scholar; and 21 Oct. 1906, p. 2.

35 For similar humanitarian currents permeating a reformist republicanism in France, see Agulhon, Maurice, The Republican Experiment, 1848–1852 (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 9–11 and 20–1.Google Scholar For socialist and anarchist discourses in Spain, see Zavala, Iris, Románticos y socialistas: Prensa española del XIX (Madrid, 1972), pp. 131–2.Google Scholar

36 Don Cucufate, 20 08 1906, p. 2.Google Scholar

37 On the specific issues of the eight-hour day and child labour, see La Guacamaya, 8 09 1902, pp. 1–2 and 7 06 1906Google Scholar; El Diablito Bromista, 8 10 1905, p. 2.Google Scholar

38 See for instance references to gachupines in El Moquete, 5 05 1904, pp. 1–2Google Scholar; La Chinhuantlatua, 30 09 1906, p. 2Google Scholar; El Diablito Bromista, 15 11 1903, p. 1.Google Scholar It is hard to say why attacks against this group are not more prevalent in this press given the widespread stereotypes and prejudice against gachupines in Mexico. Perhaps it is due to the fact that such stereotypes were more related to individuals in the commercial sector and did not fit so well the main targets of attack in this press, i.e. the ‘bourgeois’ and the ‘overseers’.

39 El Diablito Rojo, 25 06 1900, p. 2.Google ScholarPrimo (cousin) was a term often employed for North Americans to satirise the kinship relation implied. For other related protests, see El Diablito Bromista, ‘Contempt for the National Worker’, 20 10 1907, p. 2Google Scholar; 26 Jan. 1905, p. 2; ‘Mexican Capital and Yankee Enterprises’, 6 03 1904, p. 2Google Scholar; La Guacamaya, 3 05 1906, p. 1Google Scholar; El Chile Piquín, 19 01 1905, p. 2.Google Scholar

40 Most of the journals put their columns at the disposition of workers to report abuses. See, among others, the programmes of El Pinche, 18 01 1906, p. 2Google Scholar; La Tranca, 21 07 1906, p. 2Google Scholar; El Duende, 15 11 1904, p. 1.Google Scholar Not all of them actually published many direct protests from workers, however. Only La Guacamaya seems to have consistently followed this policy, at least until about November 1907, when there was a shift towards more abstract pieces from the editor that coincided with a change in the administration of the paper. See issue of 22 Oct. 1907, p. 2.

41 La Palanca, 12 10 1904, p. 2.Google Scholar The list, however, is endless since many weeklies continuously reported abuses. See, for example, El Papagayo, 28 08 1904, p. 2.Google ScholarLa Guacamaya, 4 and 18 07 1906, p. 2.Google Scholar

42 El Chile Piquín, 2 02 1905, p. 2.Google Scholar Indeed, the latter may have been pointing to a change in policy related to a new administrator of the paper. The change took place around December 1905, at the latest. The new administrator, Fernando Toroella, who had directed and/or collaborated for two other satiric weeklies in 1904, eventually became the owner of the popular La Guacamaya around August 1906.

43 El Diablito Rojo did not explicitly identify itself as a worker's weekly until June 1908 when its head changed into ‘a worker's combat weekly’, and its editorials became systematically dedicated to issues of mutualism and the edification of workers. During its initial period (1900–1), however, it only had a ‘special section’ dedicated to ‘mutualism’ and labour issues. See issue of 7 May 1900, p. 2.

44 El Diablito Rojo, 11 02 1901, p. 2Google Scholar; Don Cucufate, 5 08 1906, p. 2.Google Scholar

45 El Diablito Rojo, 8 06 1908, p. 2.Google Scholar See also El Diablito Bromista, 1 10 1905, p. 3.Google Scholar

46 El Diablito Rojo, 25 05 1908, p. 2.Google Scholar

47 Cole, G. D. H., Historia del pensamiento socialista: Los precursores, 1789–1850 (Mexico, 1957), vol. 1, pp. 171–9Google Scholar; and Agulhon, M., The Republican Experiment, pp. 35–7.Google Scholar

48 For El Diablito Rojo's tenacious crusades for respectability see, among other issues: 26 Oct. 1908, p. 2; 30 March 1908, p. 2; 14 Dec. 1908, p. 2; 19 April 1909, p. 2.

49 El Diablito Rojo, 22 06 1908, p. 2.Google Scholar

50 El Chile Piquín, 22 06 1905, p. 2.Google Scholar See also issue of 25 Jan. 1905, p. 2. For statements in support of the principles behind the strike see: La Palanca, 20 11 1904, p. 2Google Scholar; El Diablito Bromista, 31 May 1903; 3 Feb. and particularly 14 Feb. 1904, p. 2; 6 Jan. 1907. For the role of government as mediator see El Diablito Bromista, 31 05 1908, p. 2.Google Scholar

51 Don Cucufate, 29 07 1906, p. 3Google Scholar, for instance, noted that 300 Mexican workers had been assassinated by ‘Green's cronies’ who had violated the national territory, and not by Mexican federal troops, as a paper in Texas, El Alacrán, had reported.

52 Don Cucufate, for instance, celebrated the happy conclusion of this strike. See issue of 20 Aug. 1906, p. 1. See also Chile Piquín, 2 02 1905, p. 2.Google Scholar

53 El Diablito Bromista, 7 08 1904, p. 2.Google Scholar

54 La Guacamaya, 13 07 1906, p. 2Google Scholar: ‘La Guacamaya in Río Blanco’. For other incidents of harassment, see El Diablito Rojo's report quoted on p. 8.

55 La Guacamaya, 9 04 1908, p. 1.Google Scholar See also El Diablito Bromista, 6 06 1907, p. 2Google Scholar; and 7 July 1907, p. 2, where it analysed the current strike of ‘more than 1,500 workers’ just months after the ‘massacre of January that had left so many deaths behind’.

56 El Diablito Rojo, 26 02 1901, p. 4.Google Scholar For other protests against the police, see El Diablito Bromista, 4 07 1907, p. 1Google Scholar; Don Cucufate, 3 09 1906, p. 1Google Scholar; La Guacamaya, 12 03 1908, p. 1Google Scholar; La Chihuantlahua, 23 09 1906, p. 1Google Scholar; El Diablito Rojo, 14 02 1901, p. 2.Google Scholar

57 La Guacamaya, 26 04 1906, p. 3.Google Scholar The original text reads as follows:–Y ya que hablamos de baños dime, ¿cómo se explica eso de que a todos los peladitos los llevan a puro chaleco a la regadera?/ – A que tu tan a…maje, el hilo se revienta por lo más delgado… / – ¿Quere decir que solo los rotos gozan de la mera endividualidá?/ – Me parecen rieles, pos si no ahora cuando, ¿no ves que en todo hay sus diferencias?/ – iAh! Pos no lo sabino yo, pero ya me voy fijando y asigún me pienso eso quere decir quial verdadero pueblo hay que estorcionarlo y jo…robarlo quialcabo es humilde y calla./ – Hasta que adijiste la mera neta.

58 El Papagayo, 11 09 1904, p. 1.Google ScholarEl Chile Piquín, 2 03 1905, p. 1.Google Scholar See also the series of anti-clerical cartoons in La Guacamaya 8 02 1906, p. 1Google Scholar; 12 April 1906, p. 1; and 19 April 1906, p. 1. In reality, the most consistently anti-clerical worker's penny weekly was La Guacamaya; others, for the most part, ignored this theme. There were, however, some satiric penny weeklies like El Jacobino (1901) and El Padre Eterno (1908) consisting solely of anti-clerical campaigns, but these were directed to a general public and were not ‘worker's’ papers.

59 On these national holidays, special ‘serious’ issues were often dedicated to patriotic figures. On Cuahtémoc see: El Diablito Bromista, 18 08 1907, p. 4Google Scholar and 8 and 16 Sept. 1907, p. 2. On Hidalgo see: Don Cucufate, 17 09 1906, p. 1Google Scholar; La Guacamaya, 21 07 1902, p. 1Google Scholar; El Diablito Bromista, 18 07 1903, p. 3.Google Scholar On Juárez see: La Guacamaya 21 07 1902, p. 1Google Scholar; El Diablito Bromista, 18 07 1907, p. 3.Google Scholar

60 Don Cucufate, 29 07 1906, pp. 1–2Google Scholar; El Chile Piquín, 20 07 1905, pp. 1–2Google Scholar. La Guacamaya, 21 07 1902, p. 1.Google Scholar

61 El Diablito Bromista, 29 07 1906, p. 2.Google Scholar

62 See for instance the cartoons of El Diablito Bromista in the issues of 11 Aug. 1908 and 5 April 1908. An editorial piece in the 21 July 1907 issue of El Diablito Bromista was entitled ‘Mexicans Alert! The U.S. wants to take over a piece of the national territory’ (referring to the Magdalena Bay and Lower California). Similarly, in the 20 Oct. 1907 issue, the editorial title read ‘Unashamed Protection of the Foreign Worker’. For other examples of this anti-US nationalist thesis, see El Duende, 3 12 1904, p. 1Google Scholar; El Chile Piquín, 26 01 1905, p. 2Google Scholar; El Diablito Bromista, 25 Oct, 1903, p. 2.Google Scholar

63 El Duende, 15 11 1904, p. 1.Google Scholar The term la psicología was coined in the 1890s after a judge ruled that transgressions against [censorship] laws should be determined by also taking into consideration ‘psychological theories’ related to the effects of innuendo. Hence, a journalist should be held responsible not only for what he may have literally drawn or written, but also for what could be implied from his drawings or writings. See Alba, Victor, ‘The Mexican Revolution’, p. 127.Google Scholar

64 For one such homage, see, for example, La Guacamaya, 31 05 1904, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

65 Tram conductors were a symbol of the technological ‘progress’ brought about during the Porfirian regime. Perhaps reflecting as well the initial popular reaction and resistance to the introduction of this machine into the urban landscape, these trams were depicted in these papers as public enemies and as worse than ‘natural epidemics’ in terms of the danger they represented and the accidents they had provoked. La Guacamaya, 5 10 1906, p. 2.Google ScholarEl Diablito Bromista criticised the many concessions given to the company running the trams when these vehicles constantly clashed and killed, 30 Aug. 1903, p. 2. See also El Diablito Bromista, 11 Oct. 1903; and El Chango, 9 06 1904, p. 1.Google Scholar

66 La Guacamaya, 14 01 1904, p. 1.Google Scholar

67 El Diablito Rojo, 29 04 1901, p. 2.Google Scholar

68 El Diablito Rojo, 5 05, 1901, p. 2.Google Scholar Shortly after this, El Diablito Rojo disappeared from publication, perhaps victim of the widespread repression against anti-Díaz publications that took place between 1901 and 1902, whereby more than 42 papers were closed down (Cockcroft, J., Intellectual Precursors, p. 102Google Scholar).

69 El Diablito Bromista, 14 02 1904, p. 2.Google Scholar

70 El Diablito Rojo, 9 03 1908, p. 1.Google Scholar