ABSTRACT
In July 2021, the online arts magazine Hyperallergic published an opinion piece by Purépucha photographer and writer Joanna García Cherán entitled “An Indigenous Perspective on Frida Kahlo.” To begin, let us travel to the Mexico of 1921, a moment in which indigenismo was truly consolidated in the region. At that time, Mexico was emerging from almost a decade of violent civil war, and was embarking on a rebuilding process in accordance with a sense of unified revolutionary nationalism. On the one hand, the “Noche Mexicana,” with its ostentatious performances of regional folk dances and stalls celebrating food traditionally eaten by the peasant classes, can be viewed as a radical attempt to erase prevailing prejudices towards rural and indigenous groups. The utopian ideology of mestizaje advanced by José Vasconcelos in Mexico, was likewise taken up within the Andean region, with Ecuadorian writer and diplomat Benjamín Carrión hailing him as the “prophet and poet of these tropical lands”.
