le visage de

it ain't garbo, but still deserves a barthesian ode of its own, don't you think?

tangentially related

tower and heritage

revolution baking, vladimir kaspé popped out of the oven. it was 1910, mexico was overthrowing a modernist dictator and russia was getting ready for a second shot at revolution. the countries' paths would cross intensely in the next couple of decades, and major soviet figures would flock to mexico for whatever reason (be it communist intrigue, cultural fascination or running away from stalin; from trotsky and alexandra kollontai to maiakovsky and einsenstein). kaspé came after the big soviet infiltration fuss was about over (around 1942), and mexico's own version of revolution was well on its way to being "institutionalized" (that is, neutralized) through single-party corporate authoritarianism. it was also around this time that the base values of the struggle (popular, agrarian reform, social equality, wealth redistribution, etc.) were belied into those of the "peaceful revolution", or "constructive period" (urban, modernizing, industrial, middle-class, state-control, etc).

kaspé had gone to school in paris with mario pani, the pet architect of the developmentalist regime (the hand behind the unam and tlatelolco). pani invited him to mexico to be editor of arquitectura méxico, local modernist bible. kaspé also started building: the lycée franco-mexicain, the centro deportivo israelita, the economics faculty at the unam, the roussell labs. quite the hardcore functionalist, kaspé thought architecture should "furnish the country with that which is necessary and sufficient." his legacy has been kept by a private trust, that recently got its own cultural center by BH architects.


kaspé's first mexican project (1946-1948) was a multi-use, multi-function, "ahead of it's time" bulding: the super servicio lomas, now slated for demolition to open the way for oma's torre bicentenario, intended to occupy the same site. in its day, the super servicio included a gas station, a car dealership, a minimart and the ciro's de las lomas nightclub, where everett hoagland played and boppy starlets such as as los hooligans, julissa, los jiggers and enrique guzmán fought the 1960 "radio exitos" duel (apparently fans who got left outside of the packed event trashed the place). only five years ago, the super servicio lomas was trashed again ("refurbished", as they say), this time by matthai architects.

the building was hardly noticed before the tower was anounced. it wasn't listed as heritage (only a provisional "building of exceptional value" decree was anounced by the national fine arts institute in the midst of the bicentenario scandal). i heard somewhere that louise noelle, a relatively well-known architecture historian who happens to be the authority on both pani and kaspé, and who has become very outspoken against the tower, is also gabriela cuevas's (the miguel hidalgo delegada heading the snob résistance against oma and the city government, see older post) mother-in-law.

personally, i don't get this whole preservationist appeal biz. first of all, the building is not the original, it has suffered various major alterations (including to the beautiful concrete nautilus garage). moreover, its razing could actually culminate the building's pseudo-revolutionary vocation. considering the regime and culture that brought it to being, the demise of the super servicio lomas would close a mini-circle of extinguishing dissent and upheaval, the turnover to reactionary consumerism, the ultimate lasting heritage of postrevolutionary mexico. a living testimony to our failed (and still failing) path to revolution.

touring the bush (13) : caracas chavista

move over, che. there’s a new big man in town, and on t-shirts. in the nineties we had marcos, now the sporadic-shower kids of genoa, seattle, gràcia, and other “politically sensitive” first-world enclaves have a new icon of enduring revolución, all the current rage in lefty-pop-politics and resistencia superstardom: hugo chávez.


1989 was the tragic year of the caracazo, the biggest social shakedown caracas faced in the last decades. in 1992, chávez appeared on the radar of global politics after two failed coup-d’états against president carlos andrés pérez, who had adopted an active repression against the protests and riots of those years (pérez, a former socialist-turned-sucker-for-washington-consensus-economics, was later removed from the presidency and imprisoned for an outrageous corruption case. he later went into exile). chávez, back then lieutenant cornel, went to jail for two years. he was later pardoned and went on to try his luck in politics, founding the mvr (movimiento quinta república, or fifth republic movement). he won the 1998 presidential election, and from then on things in venezuela would never be the same (well, some things).


privatizations were reverted, a new constitution was sworn, social programs sprung out of nowhere (sustained by petrol-dollars), massive for and against chávez demonstrations rocked the capital (around twenty between 2000 and 2004), a bush-backed coup against chávez failed, and chávez was on his way to becoming the hemispherical anti-freetrade, anti-bush spearhead (he called bush “the devil” in a speech given at the UN general assembly). his local “bolivarian missions” extended to a regional and even global call for radical change. supposedly.



chávez is a polarizing figure. he has taken control over parliament, the military, and the local media (he’s even created telesur, an alternative t.v. broadcasting company that is a sort telemundo-crossdressed-al-jazeera). he’s unsettled foreign affairs and silenced the opposition. he’s pushed the resurgence of the latinoamerican left and proven a vital ally to castro’s withering regime in cuba.


what about the city? has caracas become a revolutionary capital? is there evidence of radical change in the urban fabric? well, yes, but not really because of chavismo, not even his terms. chávez has maintained old political and economic structures, and he has reinstalled even older ones (the return of economic populismos : price controls, state intervention, subsidies, oil-funded spenditure). the precise, acupunctural interventions that have seized caracas and her barrios in the last years do reflect a generalized discontent and a reinvigorated social participation, but they are not direct outcomes of state policy. some are even funded by the devil's advocates (world bank, etc. etc.) what lies in the brick and mortar moutains of caracas's barrios is a semi-latent alternative to pure bolivarismo, a more active, pragmatic and open approach to social needs and problems. another revolution, still in the rough.

next : caracas revival