En nombre de Cristo... han asesinado más de 200 maestros

Published 1939, Editorial Gráfica Popular, Mexico City

Description: 7 lithographs with texts, each commemorating a rural teacher or group of teachers murdered by the Cristeros, a right-wing pro-clerical vigilante force.

Date: 1939

Dimensions: See below

Published edition: 3 variant editions. Texts and images vary slightly between edition 1 and editions 2 and 3.

1.  Printed on heavy wove (light cardstock), sewn binding with red cord. Each sheet printed on one side only, bound so that texts on left side match images on right side when assembled. Title page credits Méndez and the "EDITORIAL GRAFICA POPULAR." Colophon reads: "PREPARO E IMPRIMIO/JUAN VALDEZ/EDITORIAL/GRAFICA POPULAR." Sheet dimensions: 34.5 x 24.4 cm. (folded). Number of impressions unknown.

2.  Printed on papel rústico, staple bound. Sheets printed on both sides.  Title page credits Méndez as "DEL CENTRO PRODUCTOR DE ARTES PLASTICAS DEL DPTO. DE BELLAS ARTES." Colophon reads: PREPARO/JUAN VALDEZ/EDITORIAL/GRAFICA POPULAR." Sheet dimensions: 35.2 x 23.3 cm. (folded). 3,200 impressions (Prignitz 1992).

3.  Printed on medium-thin paper, unbound; otherwise identical to variant 2. Number of impressions unknown.

Signature and annotations: Portfolio and images are unsigned.

References: Prignitz 394-400

Commentary: The Taller de Gráfica Popular published Méndez’s 1939 portfolio, En nombre de Cristo (In the Name of Christ), which commemorates the murders of rural schoolteachers during the Cristero rebellion, the reactionary Catholic peasant uprising that plagued Mexico from 1926 until the late 1930s. Méndez’s seven lithographs combine documentary specificity with symbolic imagery. On the facing pages of the prints, Méndez included the names of the teachers and newspaper accounts of the circumstances in which they died. The inclusion of factual details, such as the places and exact dates, put these prints into a category of documentary realism, although Méndez depicted the events in imaginative, dramatic form. Cristero fanatics targeted the school teachers in reaction to governmental suppression of Catholicism in the schools, and Méndez emphasized the sacrificial aspects of these events in all the prints in the portfolio, depicting the teachers as martyrs. In a curious reversal, the title of the series, En nombre de Cristo, associates the murders of the teachers with the death of Christ. The Mexican government used the portfolios as part of the official campaign against the Cristeros and made them available to members of the public for free. The appropriation of religious imagery reinforced the message directed to a devoutly religious population. (Deborah Caplow)

Contents:

1. Profesor Ramón Orta del Río

2. Profesor Juan Martínez Escobar (two alternate versions)

.1  as published in edition 1

.2  as published in editions 2 and 3

3. Profesor Arnulfo Sosa Portillo

4. Profesor José Martínez Ramírez

5. Matanza de campesinos y maestros en San Felipe Torres Mochas, Gto.

6. Profesor Ildefonso Vargas

7. Profesora María Salud Morales

Catalogue record number: 308