CUARTOSCURO / Articulos

Número 74 Oct-Nov 05

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Photographs of migrations
By: EJohn Mraz
Translated by Georganne Weller

The Mayo brothers know what it means to emigrate. Since 1940 this collection of photography has contributed to redefining graphic journalism in Mexico, but actually began in Spain on the verge of the outbreak of one of the largest flare-ups of the 20th century, the Spanish Civil War. There, on the eve of so much hope and deception, we see the dawn of a link with “those below us” that continues into the present. The last name “Mayo”, which has been used by all of the members of the collectivity, is a “battle name” which reflects a commitment to the working class of the five “brothers” from two families: the Souza Fernández family –Francisco (Paco) Souza Fernández (1911-1949), Cándido Souza Fernández (1922-1985) and Julio Souza Fernández (1917)— and the Castillo Cubillo family –Faustino del Castillo Cubillo (1913-1996) and Pablo del Castillo Cubilla (1922).

When the Spanish Civil War broke out, they went into several units. Julio was the only one to fight with arms as well as with a camera. He was in the artillery and at the same time a photographer for the Superación newspaper. Faustino worked for the well-known Spanish photojournalist José María Díaz Casariego, and during the defense of Madrid, he was the one who shot the photos that so impressed Enrique Lister, Commander of the Eleventh Division. When Lister saw the photographs published he called the paper and said “I want that young reporter”. Faustino entered Lister’s forces and was sent to work for the newspaper of the First Brigade, Pasaremos, published by the later famous Marxist philosopher who lived in Mexico, Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez. The photographer served on many fronts during the war —Madrid, the Guadarrama mountain range, Jarama, the Ebro River, Belchite, and Barcelona, but always as a photojournalist.

Paco also limited his activities to photography and worked for the El Frente de Teruel, Crónica, El Diario de Madrid, and El Paso del Ebro publications, in addition to being the photography director for an important leftist newspaper Mundo Obrero. He would send his rolls of film to Cándido, who developed and printed them and then took them to the publications in the Republican zone. His commitment and abilities made him famous and General Vicente Rojo, head of the Chiefs of Staff of the Republican Army, appointed him Director of Photography in the Military Intelligence Service. He was gravely injured by a bomb in Madrid and spent three months in a hospital, during which time they had to do a skin graft on his wrist, thigh and knee.

When the Republicans were defeated in February, 1939, half a million Spaniards crossed the border with France, including men, women and children. Paco had received recognition by the French Government as a member of the Chiefs of Staff of the Army and therefore was entitled to leave France for Mexico with his family. He got in touch with Fernando Gamboa, the Mexican diplomat in charge of selecting the refugees to emigrate to Mexico, and at the beginning of 1939, Paco left Barcelona en route to France, together with the four women in his family. Faustino and Cándido arrived in France in February soon after Paco and the women, but they were assigned to a concentration camp. Through Paco’s good offices, Faustino and Cándido were rescued from the camp and were able to join the rest of the “family”. Julio was taken prisoner in Alicante in March, 1939, and was in jail for two years and then had to serve in the army until 1943. He worked in Madrid from 1943 to 1947 as a photographer until he was “claimed” in 1947 through the Mexican Embassy in Lisboa and left for Mexico that year. Pablo was “claimed” to go to Mexico from Spain.

On June 13, 1939, three of the Mayo brothers —Paco, Faustino and Cándido— arrived in Veracruz aboard the boat named Sinaia. They arrived together with another thousand six hundred refugees, all of whom were known as “The First Expedition of Spanish Republicans in Mexico”, a name that the emigrants had given themselves in the newspaper they set up on board. At the port of arrival they were received by prominent Mexicans, among them Ignacio García Téllez, Secretary of the Interior; Vicente Lombardo Toledano, an important labor leader; and the band of the famous Fifth Regiment, which played “The Internationale” while the refugees saluted with their fists raised high.

When they reached the new world the unity of the Mayo photographers was re-established. Recognition of Paco meant that the Mexican Government had charged him with taking pictures of each of the refugees that arrived in Mexico and the three brothers spent two months making documents for the recent arrivals. From then on they worked for more than forty newspapers and magazines, among which we could mention El Popular, La Prensa, El Nacional, Hoy, Mañana, Siempre!, Tiempo, Sucesos, Time and Life. Moreover, they participated in the formation and founding of newspapers and magazines that reflected their commitment to the democratic forces in Mexico, ranging from short-lived magazines such as Tricolor and Más, to the newspaper El Día, which is still published.

Just as is the case of the work of anonymous constructors of pyramids, the unknown carvers of the colonial churches and engravers such as José Guadalupe Posada, the work of the Mayo brothers is yet another expression of that long-standing Mexican tradition where art is the product of the struggle for our daily bread. However, the Mayo brothers, just like the “braceros” (temporary or season farm laborers), had to adjust to their new country and suffer from prejudice and discrimination. Faustino tells of how they offered him a position as a photographer at La Prensa but the head of photography, Miguel Casasola and other photographers rejected him —“What, a refugee here?” He was assigned to do the most disgusting of tasks, such as police stories but, as Faustino mentions, his experience and kindness served him well.

The head of photography, Miguel Casasola, sent me to cover police cases just to annoy me, but by then I had worked a lot on those stories for El Popular at the old penitentiary and I had a lot of friends there among the police and they would let me in with the inmates, something they wouldn’t allow anybody else. I would arrive back at the office with the photos and be asked “How did you manage to take them?” And I would say, “Well, you sent me there to get screwed, but I ended up screwing you.”

This anti-Spanish attitude was a product, to a large degree, of the reaction against the “gachupines”*, who basically were merchants and businessmen in Mexico. Just like the other refugees, the Mayo brothers completely rejected being confused with those typical emigrants from Spain who came to make it in America. Julio said:

We were not migrants who ate bread and onions who came to work in the fields, nor planned to set up brothels, nor see who we could exploit. We came for reasons which were very different from the ones the Mexican people were familiar with, so there was a very marked difference among the Spaniards and it was an honor to say “I’m a refugee”. We as refugees protested if they called us “gachupines” (Derogatory term in Mexican Spanish for certain types of Spanairds) because to be one was offensive since they had come to Mexico to take advantage of the people and to make money.

Faustino embodied this attitude when he signed the dedication of his book Testimonios sobre Mexico with the words “from a refugee” (underlined) when he gave it to the President of Mexico at that time, Miguel de la Madrid. The President asked him why he had written those words and Faustino explained that it was a great honor for him to be a political refugee. More than forty years after arriving in Mexico he still insisted on drawing attention to the difference between him and the “gachupines”.

Although both the braceros and the Mayo brothers were part of the uprooted peoples of the world, circumstances leading to their emigration were different. For Faustino they were:

Exactly the opposite. We arrived with the doors open, thanks to General Lázaro Cárdenas. They arrived with stumbling blocks and labor problems. They were mistreated in the United States. People who want to work have the right to work, both there and here. All over the world people who want to work should be entitled to do so.

Julio also made a sharp distinction between the two cases:

We were political emigrants and they were fleeing from hunger. We didn’t have a problem earning a living in Spain. The problem was that if we had stayed, they would have killed us. Yet we did feel sorry for the poor devils because they had to leave their families and homes behind just to be able to make a living, which they had to do in Mexico.

Whatever the differences between the emigration of the Mayo brothers and the braceros, the sensitivity they have shown by portraying the different facets of the braceros’ situation is evident. The number of negatives (400 on braceros in a archive of more than five million) does not indicate particular importance conferred by the Mayo brothers; however, the fact that they reproduced them in a “bracero style” —one of the “classic” photos of the collection, the worker with the mallet— would appear to indicate special interest.

The photos taken by the Mayo brothers of the braceros generally dealt with their experiences in Mexico City and the aspect most photographed by them was the process in the “Concentration Centers”, the places where the people who hoped to be braceros went to “hook up” with potential employers. At the beginning (August, 1942), these Centers were operating at the offices of the Dept. of Labor and Social Welfare. Then they were moved to the National Stadium in the Col. Roma district, and finally ended up at the La Ciudadela building. At these Centers the unwavering applicants, who stood in long and tiring lines, gave out their personal information in answer to questions designed by the hiring agencies and the Mexican Government. They were submitted to a series of medical examinations and then would receive orientation with respect to the hiring terms. Those who were accepted had to sign a contract for at least six months.

It was to be expected that the Mayo brothers would portray these endless lines where the men had to wait with empathy. The French helmets of the police were a simple ironic note that reminded them about the lines and all the forms that had to be filled out and the signatures that had to be obtained for them to leave France. They had gone through something similar and the Mayo brothers have a sharp eye for the inhumane aspects of the red tape the braceros had to go through in the Federal District to be able to leave legally. So, they documented the applicants leaning over the papers on the desks of the bureaucrats, who were soon to be bending over in the fields of the United States.

In spite of the difficult situation the applicants had to go through, the Mayo brothers did not just represent them as passive victims. One of the most important questions to consider in their photography about the braceros is whether or not these images belong to the category of “photographs of victims”. In other words, up to what point can we find in their photographs a double act of subjugation —first in the social world that has produced victims and second, in images, produced within and for the system that led to the conditions that it then represented. For sure their photographs were destined to be consumed by a very different universe than the one they came from. Their middle and upper class readers of newspapers and illustrated magazines where their works appeared were a world apart from the braceros. But, if consideration of this relationship between subject and public is important, it is not necessarily definitive, but rather the matter of “photographs of victims” evolves around the question of up to what point do the images attempt to break with the social, textual and ideological system they are inscribed in.

An aesthetic strategy to avoid being a victim is to show interactions between those photographed and the camera and thus represent them as subjects capable of acting in the world instead of just being objects used by the photographer. The connection between the braceros and the Mayo brothers’ camera is exceptional, although among the images of a collective body known for its understandable representation of the vulnerable. Other images of the hiring centers confirm that the intention of the Mayo brothers is to document the humane aspects of the applicants, to portray their vitality. In some photos they look back into the camera, but others show a lack of interaction that goes even further and the candidates openly play with the photographer, smiling at him as though he were an old friend and accomplice.

It might seem easy to portray the emigrants in this fashion, but other photos by the Mayo brothers show that from their perspective it was a product of their intentions, having lived through a similar situation. The work they did so that the applicants could relate to them can be seen in photos where they hide their faces behind their hats, their hands or even behind a newspaper. Perhaps they didn’t like the idea of having their features in the media, or perhaps they were afraid of the cameras taking their faces, and caught before the cameras, they covered their faces. However, in general the reaction of the applicants when looking at the Mayo brothers’ cameras was to please them, by collaborating in what takes on tones of a common project of representing the process of emigration, where the subjects participate in ensuring that the image expresses something about them.

It is useful here to compare the images of the braceros made by the Mayo brothers with what can be found in the Casasola archives. The Casasolas basically covered the same events as the Mayos, although they took more images along the border, especially of undocumented workers. In the Casasolas’ photos there are some that reveal dramatic events, for example, the undocumented workers crossing the Rio Grande, in addition to the hot pursuit, capture and arrest by the border patrol. In some cases, the Casasola tried to instill their images with visual dramatics, by focusing on the applicants´ feet, but it is precisely in one of Casasolas’ photos that we find the rapport that is common in the Mayo brothers photos. In general, Casasola images portray distance between the photographer and those photographed, who undoubtedly represented the traditional lack of comprehension and the rejection of Mexicans toward those who left the fatherland to seek a new life to the north.

When dealing with emigrants such as the braceros, the Mayo brothers did not share the biased perspective of the Casasola; however, whatever their feelings might have been toward the braceros, the duties of the Mayo brothers as photo reporters meant that sometimes they had to pry into the privacy of the individuals who didn’t want to have their picture taken. Those men who hid behind their hands, their hats and their bags, served as a warning to the vicitimizing photographer who took advantage of these people imprisoned in situations where they could not defend themselves against the heartless scrutiny of the camera.

In spite of the fact that there are photojournalist commitments that sometimes led them to place their cameras where they weren’t wanted, the Mayo brothers showed solidarity with the braceros by portraying them as subjects capable of acting in the world in spite of their subordinate situation. The ability of the Mayos to interpret the tenacity of human beings in the face of the process of objectivization can clearly and forcefully be seen in the photo of the doctors who examined the two nude men. Few photos as this one reveal the humility of the bureaucratic process the applicants had to undergo, but the attitude of those two men revealed a whole spectrum of human reactions and possibilities. The older of the two modestly covered himself, and the younger man looked directly into the camera, as though he were rejecting being reduced to a mere object by the doctor, by the photographer, and by history, and defiantly shows his dignity.

The skill of the Mayo brothers in capturing the complexities of the social world were expressed in the photos taken at Buenavista, the train station the braceros departed from. There their images reflected the relationship between the beginning and the end of something: leaving behind a familiar life and family ties, and the birth of new possibilities. Of course there were images that document the sharp pain of their separation. Loved women cry when saying good-bye to the young man on the way to make his “fortune” in a far-off world; parents who raise their children for a final hug. When the train leaves the platform a couple separates their hands but with their eyes still meeting. And how could it have been any other way? The Mayo brothers knew too much from personal experience about tearful farewells from the Civil War, that families became separated never to see each other again, but the talent and the power of the Mayo brothers were not lost in bitter nostalgia. They see and show in the victory greeting of the braceros, the energy and the emotions released by the apparently infinite possibilities offered by the new lands. It’s a “V” for victory in the name of those who don’t give up or who, at least, had surpassed the first bureaucratic barriers they encountered and who were certain that something better awaited them.

In the photos about the border the vision of the Mayo brothers was condensed in the Mexico-U.S. dichotomy. Here, the picture of the bracero changing money could be a metaphor for the two worlds. On the one hand, in the photo we find the Mexican bracero, a human being who toils. But, his work is done in the United States, where he found his labor opportunities and stretches out his hand to take the money that comes from there. On the other side of the photo, we see a dominant person who comes to the forefront and takes up two-thirds of the picture, is just a plastic surface. In reality it is the teller’s window of a money exchange office, but here it serves as a metaphor for the United States, made of plastic and without a human face, full of money but essentially inhumane. The reflection of the other braceros could be a comment on the way in which the United States and Mexico see each other mutually, or a decision of representing Mexicans as ghosts who go back to live on the other side. The duality of humanness and the inanimate can also be seen in the photo on the undocumented workers sitting next to the Santa Fe train car. The train car dominates the scene and it is upon the Mexican workers, just as imperialism weighs on the shoulders of cheap labor, like the case of the braceros. As is the custom with the Mayo brothers’ pictures, those of the border express the vitality of those who would soon be “illegal”.

The confrontation between humaneness and inhumaneness can also be seen in the photo of the peasants and the applicants to be braceros protesting in front of the Presidential Palace, symbol of the State. In a metaphor that shows the struggle of the peasants against the State, the protesters look upwards, where the President usually comes out. If we relate this to the level of the applicants, it takes on and expresses the perspective of “those below us”, thus creating a dialectic situation between the two forces. On the one hand the braceros appear to be smashed by a building coming down upon them, while on the other, kneeled, they adopt the “typical” attitude of peasants everywhere. Thus, they indicate their eternity and their universality, as can also be seen in the example of the photos taken by Dorothea Lange of the “Okies” during the depression, which provide us with the feeling of being able to wait and demanding justice for more years than these colonial constructions will last.

The Mayo brothers’ photographs about the braceros are important because of what they tell us about these migratory workers and what they reveal about the vision of this collectivity. In an attempt to give fixed images analytical mobility, the Mayo brothers develop relationships that they find in opposite poles: humility-dignity, pain-enthusiasm, peasant-State, struggle-repression, humane-inhumane. It is through the clash of these realities that a dialectic situation is produced within and among theses photos. Moreover, these “interactive” images the Mayo brothers took allow those photographed to look back into the camera and thus insist on their realities and their persons. Human spirit and the tenacity of the struggle stand out as values that we will see engrained in the braceros who were photographed.

Given their past as refugees, their situation as workers, and their awareness of all of this, the Mayo brothers have been able to produce these thin slices of time. We see a powerful and penetrating vision of the braceros put on paper, since they not only took their oppression —their situation of “poor devils”, but also expressed their resolve and capacity to act under the most inhumane conditions. Just like the braceros, the Mayo brothers “chose” to change places, to move somewhere else, to move so as not to die, be it physically or to be able to be creative, as occurred with Alfonso Sánchez García, the important Spanish photojournalist of the thirties who was forbidden to practice journalism and was limited to taking pictures of Franco’s generals in triumphant poses over the destruction they had caused. But, if we are to celebrate the Mayo brothers’ art, we must bear in mind the circumstances that had to exist for them to be able to take their pictures, and, as Julio Mayo said, “Photography has to be creative but realistic”. n