Stridentist Movement in Mexico

In the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution, Stridentism (estridentismo) burst on the scene in the 1920s as an avant-garde challenge to political and intellectual complacency. Led by poets Manuel Maples Arce, Germán List Arzubide, and Salvador Gallardo, prose writer Arqueles Vela, painters Fermín Revueltas, Ramón Alva de la Canal, Leopoldo Méndez, and Jean Charlot, and sculptor Germán Cueto, the Stridentists rejected academic conservatism, celebrated modernity and technological novelties such as the radio, cinema and the airplane, and sought to transform not only written and visual language but also everyday life through the creation of new aesthetic spaces and new approaches to the urban environment. From 1921 to 1927, they issued manifestos, published magazines and books, organized performances, and served as a critical force in Mexican art and literature that was known and admired in intellectual circles throughout the Americas. Initially active in Mexico City and Puebla, Stridentism reached its peak in Xalapa, Veracruz, where its members collaborated with the state government to the extent that critics accused them of "stridentizing" the state. By 1928 the movement had dispersed, but its iconoclastic spirit lived on in other forms, merging into and influencing other movements of the 1930s and beyond. This book is a history of Stridentism as a multifaceted cultural movement deeply imbued with the spirit of 1920s Mexico. Bringing together original interdisciplinary research and critical analysis, it explores the ways in which the Stridentists pushed the limits of the collective imagination in an era of conflict and change.

In this welcome, wide-ranging study of the 'stridentist' movement and cultural changes in Mexico during the 1920s, Rashkin evaluates different aspects of estridentismo : manifestos, publications, performances, artistic affiliations, and social issues. . . . This work will be valuable for anyone interested in the Mexican avant-garde cultural movement during the 1920s. Including an excellent biography, the book serves as a solid introduction to this avant-garde group and a useful review for those already familiar with the subject. . . . Recommended., Rashkin's study could be a useful textbook for undergraduate courses when accompanied by more theoretical studies of the movement, like Unruh's The Latin American Vanguards, as well as by primary texts., Elissa Rashkin’s The Stridentist Movement in Mexico, directed to a US academic audience, is another welcome contribution to recent studies in English on the Mexican avant-gardes. The book provides a remarkably thorough overview of Stridentistism that will be of great use to scholars and students wishing to familiarize themselves with Mexican culture during the 1920s and 1930s.... The Stridentist Movement in Mexico will offer a wealth of information from which readers can develop their own perspectives. It is precisely because of the broad scope of its approach that Rashkin’s book makes a valuable contribution to the study of one of the most dynamic periods of Mexican culture., In this compelling study, Elissa Rashkin meticulously details one of Mexico’s most original yet once nearly forgotten artistic movements. The revolutionary Stridentists were original, noisy, creative, and gleefully carnivalesque in their avant-gardism. Long anticipated, this book evaluates their fascinating activities and rightly situates them in historical context. !Viva el mole de guajolote!, The Movimiento Estridentista of the 1920s was Mexico's most important avant-garde movement, and author Elissa Rashkin has written a well-researched, fascinating study of this dynamic group, providing an extensive understanding of the works and ideas of the writers and artists involved. Her book is the first full-length monograph about the Stridentist Movement in English and a welcome addition to Mexican cultural studies.

Elissa J. Rashkin is researcher in cultural and communication studies at the Universidad Veracruzana in Xalapa, Mexico and author of Women Filmmakers in Mexico: The Country of Which We Dream (2001).