Building the nation of the future, one waiting room at a time: hospital murals in the making of modern Mexico

Abstract

Mid-twentieth century Mexican hospitals – the buildings themselves and their interior and exterior walls – became stages that depicted national hopes and aspirations. Hospitals and clinics became ideal spaces that married science and medicine with the state’s version of a triumphant social revolution. Visitors and patients to hospital waiting rooms, lobbies and auditoriums would see, indeed be surrounded by, depictions of the complicated hopes placed on science and medicine as interpreted by politicians, architects, and artists. Hospital walls became contested spaces where art depicted Mexico’s embrace of modern technology and medical practices while also showcasing, in vivid color, citizens challenging the government’s broken revolutionary promises, especially the right of all to health and social security.

Keywords:

• Hospitals
• murals
• Mexico
• architecture
• Diego Rivera
• David Alfaro Siqueiros

Acknowledgement

The author wishes to thank the editors, Jessica Wang and John Krige, for the initial invitation to participate in the UBC workshop, from which this article derived, for their later incisive comments, as well as the suggestions from an anonymous reader. In addition, the author is grateful to INBA and CONACULTA, in particular Dr. Xavier Guzmán Urbiola, vice-General Director, for the permission to photograph the hospital murals and to Lorena Rodas for taking the images.

Notes

1. Chávez Morado, “En busca de la nacionalidad.”

2. Though Siqueiros signed a contract with the explicit images that were expected in his mural he was allowed to finish the mural he had started and with his new interpretation was later renamed.

3. The hospital’s inauguration was delayed by two years in part to rebuild some walls that would accommodate the painter’s request for a ceiling that resembled a seashell. See Guadarrama Peña, “La Seguridad Social.”

4. By the 1950s the period of increased industrialization known as the Mexican Miracle, roughly 1940s to the late 1960s, was already beginning to show socio-economic cracks.

5. Winfield, “The Avant-garde in the Architecture,” 1.

6. Toca, Integración plástica.

7. Siqueiros explained this ideology when he was interviewed a few years later when another of his murals, this one for the Oncology Institute, was unveiled. See Excélsior, January 11, 1959.

8. Starr, The Social Transformation, 145.

9. Soustelle, Daily Life of the Aztecs, 54.

10. Though Mexico gains its independence in 1821 Spain will invade the country several times in the coming decades, attempting to reclaim the lost territory, in addition the United States invades in 1846, France in 1861, and the wars between liberals and conservatives take place during much of the nineteenth century.

11. Archivo Salud, Hospital de San Andres, 1863.

12. Ibid.

13. Homeopathy in Mexico was not an ancillary type of medicine but, rather, it was wholly embraced by the state when a school for homeopathy was built in 1912. For more information, see Hernández Berrones, Revolutionary Medicine.

14. Starr, The Social Transformation, 146.

15. For a broader description of the role of hygienists during the Porfiriato please see Agostoni, Monuments of Progress.

16. Méndez, Arquitectura nacionalista, 18.

17. Rural health, while a constant concern for the state, did not become part of a national health reform project until the late 1970s with the appearance of IMSS-Coplamar. Previous rural health efforts included the implementation of mandatory social service for medical students, state-led rural health initiatives, or communally-held-land(ejido)-based health projects. There were also international organizations, most notably the Rockefeller Foundation, who entered rural areas with Mexican government approval. A robust rural hospital infrastructure is problematic even today so it is thus not surprising that these murals were all painted in urban spaces. For more on rural health see Soto Laveaga, “Seeing the Countryside through Medical Eyes” and “Bringing the Revolution to Medical Schools,” and for the Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico see Birn, Marriage of Convenience or Cueto, Cold War, Deadly Fever.

18. As O’Rourke explains in her study of a 1929 tuberculosis sanatorium, Mexican architects “adapted Beaux-Arts composition and French rationalism as they shaped new architecture.” “Guardians of Their Own Health,” 61.

19. Ibid., 65 and 71.

20. Arte y Arquitectura, 9.

21. For a broader discussion about the nature of public and private hospitals see Starr, The Social Transformation, 147.

22. In Spanish it is often described as “salud del alma” or, literally, health of the soul. Ortiz Orozco, “Un Arte Para la Seguridad Social,” Arte y Arquitectura, 31–4.

23. The Institute for Mexican Social Security became a representative of sorts for the artistic production. For example, in the 1960s the IMSS created the most comprehensive and largest theater complex in all of Latin America. By the mid-1960s seventy-four theaters with an ample and revolving list of plays made up the IMSS theater system. In addition to theater, the IMSS had, and continues to have, its own press because literature was also key to this endeavor. Arte y Arquitectura, 34–5.

24. Burian, Modernity and the Architecture, 82.

25. Lazo, “Dislocating Modernity,” 47.

26. Hannes had come to Mexico in 1939 by invitation of President Cardenas to head the Institute for Urbanization and Planning at the National Polytechnic Institute. See Arte y Arquitectura, 81.

27. Some additional artists and architects welcomed by the Mexican government were key figures of Surrealism – André Breton and Luis Buñuel – , photographers like Tina Modotti and Edward Weston, and architects such as Vladimir Kaspe. For a more comprehensive list see Winfield, “The Avant-garde in the Architecture,” 4.

28. Ibid., 4.

29. Among the doctors were Norberto Treviño, Rafael Moreno Valle, and Jesus Lozoya prominent specialists in their fields of medicine. Equally the architects included those who had begun to make a name for themselves and who would go on to design and build many of Mexico’s hospitals such as Enrique Yañez, Mario Pani, and José Villagran. Please see footnote 1 in Arte y Arquitectura, 81.

30. Vergara, “Empleando una técnica revolucionaria,” 1945.

31. Ibid.

32. Lazo, “Dislocating Modernity,” 58.

33. See note 1 above.

34. Ibid., Bold in original.

35. Villagran García, “El hospital obra de arte,” 39–44.

36. Lomas, “Remedy or Poison,” 465.

37. Linden and Greene, “Charles Alston’s Harlem Hospital,” 391–421.

38. Ibid., 405–6.

39. Rivera was no stranger to medical or, especially, surgical themes. Years before the IMSS murals the painter was fascinated by medicine. In fact, in 1920 the artist attended at least one surgery in Paris where he was living at the time. In his famed 1932 Detroit panels Rivera portrayed among other themes the pharmaceutical industry, vaccination, a human embryo and surgery. His 1944 The History of Cardiology is the artist's interpretation of the history of medicine. See Toledo-Pereyra, “Diego Rivera and His Extraordinary.”

40. The nearly 6 meter eagle and serpent were initially meant to go atop the legislative palace but its construction was halted in 1910 when the revolution broke out. Please see “¿Qué pasó ahí?,” Excélsior, October 18, 2013.

41. Colunga, “Diego Rivera Profeta,” 34–74.

42. La Raza, 40 Años, 12.

43. Yañez and Siqueiros had already worked together in 1939 in the building that housed the Mexican Electrician’s Union. See Guadarrama Peña, “La Seguridad Social.” The surge of murals in schools begins when José Vasconcelos invites Diego Rivera to paint the National Preparatory School. See Méndez, Arquitectura nacionalista, 18.

44. Ibid., Méndez, Arquitectura nacionalista, 18.

45. Siquieros, “Contrato para la ejecución.”

46. Ibid.

47. “Las Ideas del Señor C. Presidente.”

48. Pulido Silva, “Interpretación Estética del Mural.”

49. Guadarrama Peña, “La Seguridad Social de Siqueiros.”

50. Ibid.

51. Azuela, “Rivera and the Concept of Proletarian,” 125.

52. “Diego Rivera: medicina en el arte,” 61.

53. Guzmán Urbiola, Arquitectura Mexicana: vivienda, 36.

54. Excélsior, January 11, 1959.

55. Siqueiros, “Plan de trabajo para el Centro.”

56. Grandin, “Off the Beach,” 426.

57. Ibid.

58. Duarte Suarez, 513.

59. “Diego accepted the task. It interested him to bring science within the scope of his art.” Chavez, Ignacio. Centro Nacional de Cardiologia.

60. Manuel, Memoria 35 Aniversario Hospital México.

61. Foucault, Birth of the Clinic, xii.

62. La Raza: 40 años, 1954–1999, Introduction.