Praise to the nationalist culture of Cardenismo: The case of Jícaras de Michoacán (Jorge Pezet, 1935)
Abstract
With private or official sponsorship,
during the government of Lázaro Cárdenas,
a series of short documentaries was
filmed, such as Pátzcuaro, lago de ensueño (1935),
Jícaras de Michoacán (Jorge Pezet, 1935),
El Centro de Educación Indígena Kherendi
Tzitzica (Felipe G. Castillo, 1938), Sociedad
Cooperativa Minera de Tlalpujahua (Miguel
M. Delgado, 1938), as well as the feature
film Michoacán (Elena Sánchez Valenzuela,
1935). These works showed the implementation
of official “populist” policies in education,
agrarian, indigenist and artisanal
creation. At the same time, they were the
expression and visual representation that
the “mass politics”, that Cárdenas del Río
had previously rehearsed as governor of
Michoacán, his native state, now extended
to the length and breadth of the country.
In that sense, such filmic works, of which
Jícaras de Michoacán will be analyzed in
detail, hold a special interest in the little
explored history of Mexican documentary
film.