Emiliano zapata gay
Emiliano Zapata
Emiliano Zapata Salazar was a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920, the main public figure of the peasant revolution in the Mexican declare of Morelos, and inspired the agrarian movement called Zapatismo .
Zapata was an early participant in the political movement against dictator Porfirio Diaz and the landowning hacendados. When the revolution broke out in 1910, he was a central leader of the peasant revolt in Morelos. Cooperating with other peasant leaders, he formed the Liberation Army of the South, soon becoming the undisputed leader.
After helping to topple Diaz, Francisco I. Madero became president and disavowed Zapata's politics, claiming that Zapata and his followers were little finer than bandits. Zapata called for significant reforms that would give more dominance and land to the peasants and therefore represented a profound threat to the elite. Zapata remained a voice of the peasant class throughout a series of coups, countercoups, and an alliance with Pancho Villa.
Zapata embodied the ideals of machismo that were prevalent at the time in Mexican culture. He is often portrayed as a mighty masculine man with his signature
In Mexico, controversy over effeminate Emiliano Zapata painting
A painting showing Mexican Revolution hero Emiliano Zapata nude and in an effeminate pose has drawn the ire of some of Zapata’s descendants and led about 100 farmers to block the entrance to the building where it was on display Tuesday.
The painting depicts a nude Zapata wearing high heels and a pink, broad-brimmed hat, straddling a horse.
Zapata’s grandson said Monday the painting should be removed or descendants would sue.
“We are not going to allow this,” said Jorge Zapata Gonzalez. “For us as relatives, this denigrates the figure of our general (Zapata), depicting him as gay.”
About a dozen counterprotesters showed up to defend sexual diversity, and a scuffle broke out between the two groups.
The mustachioed Zapata is notable for leading farmers demanding land rights in the 1910-17 revolution.
“This isn’t liberty of expression, it is debauchery ... that is degrading. They can’t exhibit our history that way,” said Antonio Medrano, spokesman for the protesters. They demanded the government respect Mexican history’s “great icons.”
“They can’t permit this gentle of mockery,” Medrano said.
Luis Vargas, curator
¡Viva the Queer Zapata! The Sexual Politics of Defining Mexican Identity and Icons in Fabián Cháirez’s “La Revolución”
Fabián Cháirez’s painting “La Revolución,” part of the current exhibition, “Emiliano. Zapata después de Zapata” in Mexico City’s Bellas Artes Museum, has provoked controversy in Mexico. It portrays Emiliano Zapata (1879–1919), the archetypal, hyper-macho Mexican revolutionary, as a voluptuous, pouty-lipped pin-up girl wearing a pink sombrero, pistol-shaped stilettos, and a ribbon of green, white, and red – the colors of Mexico’s flag. Pin-up Zapata rides a prancing stallion who sports a monumental erection. Only his mustache points to masculinity, and even it resembles the coiffed affectations of dandies rather than machos. This is not the heroic Zapata from classic photos, nor John Steinbeck’s fictionalized version, immortalized by Marlon Brando in Viva Zapata! (1952), a poster for which shows Zapata in battle on horseback, a damsel clutching his leg.1 (Blessed heteronormativity! This horse, of course, is not erect.)
Few figures loom larger than Zapata in Mexican history. He rose to prominence during the adv Porfiriato (1876–1910), helping demolish that
As paintings go, it is tiny — about the size of a cereal box.
But the controversy it has incited is huge.
There, riding bareback on a white horse, is Emiliano Zapata, the Mexican revolutionary leader who, with his big mustache and steely gaze, has long been a symbol here for a certain kind of tough masculinity.
The painting challenges that image. In it, Zapata strikes a sensual pose and is nude except for a silky sash, black high heels and a pink sombrero. The horse is depicted with an erection.
Artist Fabián Cháirez finished the painting in 2013, but it came to public attention only in recent days, after it was installed along with 140 other artworks in a government-curated exhibition at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, the most famous venue for theater, dance and other cultural programming in Mexico City.
No artwork in recent memory here has triggered so much contention, prompting questions about free speech as well as tolerance for diverse representations of gender and sexuality in a culture dominated by machismo.
After Mexico’s Secretariat of Tradition used the painting to promote the exhibition on social media and major newspapers published photographs of it, angry mobs
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