Marxismo y socialismo mexicano en Redes, de Paul Strand y Carlos Chávez, con música de Silvestre Revueltas

• Published in: Historia mexicana 2021-04, Vol.70 (4), p.1987
• Main Author: Saavedra, Leonora
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Subjects: Authorship; Capitalism; Closeness; Collectivism; Emotional responses; Exploitation; Film history; Fine arts; Fishermen; Latin American history; Marxism; Marxist analysis; Motion pictures; Musicians; Radicalism; Socialism; Strand, Paul
• ISSN: 0185-0172; 2448-6531

Redes (1934­-1935), a Mexican film conceived and shot by the modernist photographer Paul Strand, is recognized as a fundamental work of Mexican cinema, albeit considered a propagandistic one by some. Among musicians, it is known for the soundtrack composed by Silvestre Revueltas. Redes was produced in accordance with the educational guidelines laid down by the Public Education Secretariat under Narciso Bassols (1931­1934) and the Department of Fine Arts under Carlos Chávez (1933­1934). The film follows the tribulations of a group of poor, exploited fishermen in Veracruz, but Redes was designed to be not just about, but for the workers. The purpose of this article is to place the intellectual and physical creation of Redes within the context of the social and political ideas of Bassols, Chávez and, due to his closeness with the former two, Strand. More specifically, it will show how the film’s story and its very cinematography faithfully follow classical Marxist theory on capitalism and the exploitation and alienation of the worker, in accordance with Bassols’s collectivist vision. Using archival documentation, this article recounts Strand’s political radicalization in Mexico, proving the photographer’s clear intellectual authorship (even though the film is credited to the director Fred Zinnemann), discusses the educational guidelines under which Strand worked and makes a Marxist reading of the film in order to show its specific political message. Eduardo Contreras Soto and James Krippner have shown that Revueltas’s association with the Redes project came late and that the music was written after its filming. Here I only discuss the use of musical signifiers in the soundtrack that facilitate the political reading of the film by the worker-­spectator by channeling their emotional responses and anchoring their perceptions in a specifically Mexican context.