East / West

Juarez Ave in downtown at Historic Center. Latin American Tower in the background of the top shot.
Have a great weekend!
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Local News / New Taxes: Internet ...

Cartoon by El Fisgon. La Jornada -21-10-09.
La "toma de la tribuna" que llevaron a cabo ayer los petistas Mario di Costanzo y Fernández Noroña fue un acto de protesta espectacular pero inútil. Este día la Cámara de Diputados en pleno aprobó los impuestos que previamente diseñaron los presidentes (Felipe Calderón) que saldrá en tres años más y el que espera remplazarlo (Enrique Peña Nieto). No quisieron sacrificar la vida de lujo de la alta burocracia, vamos, ni un Mercedes Benz. En el último año de gobierno de Ernesto Zedillo el presupuesto fue de un millón de millones de pesos (un billón). En los nueve años de panismo se triplicó y, aunque estamos en crisis, el de 2010 rebasará los 3 billones. Ya no se esperan ingresos espectaculares del petróleo, así que el dinero de los contribuyentes será usado como sustituto. Los de clase media y pobres, vale la pena aclarar, porque a menos que ocurriera hoy algo fuera de lo programado, los 400 grandes grupos empresariales continuarán disfrutando del privilegio de no pagar o pagar lo mínimo. No obstante la información contundente que reveló el Servicio de Administración Tributaria en la víspera, en el sentido de que con sólo aumentar un 5% la recaudación que proviene de esos grupos sería bastante para tapar el agujero fiscal, los capos del PRI, el PAN y el PRD chuchista optaron por ignorarla. No quieren malquistarse con los grandes empresarios, necesitan su apoyo, y el de sus televisoras, en la campaña presidencial.
Enrique Galván Ochoa. La Jornada 21/10/2009.
Nota:
En agradecimiento a sus votantes de todo el pais, el PRI y su aliado el PAN, les regala mas impuestos, IVA, impuesto sobre sus quincenas, internet y cable, etc. Asi que cada quince dias al recibir tu sueldo, al pagar en el super, al pagar gasolina y practicamente todo, acuerdate y agradece, al fin de cuentas seguiras votando por los mismos una y otra vez. Todo esto, ya lo sabemos, es resultado de la apatia, de tanto futbol y television. Asi que bravo, adelante y no cambies de canal, total unos pesos menos para tu familia. En algo somos buenos los mexicanos, somos los perfectos esclavos!
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Tina Modotti

Tina Modotti's house in Mexico City.
Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti was a beautiful woman, a minor star of the theater and silent film, and a political radical. She was born in Italy in 1896 and lived in San Francisco and Hollywood, then in Mexico City of the 1920s and in Berlin of the early 1930s.

For a brief seven years, Tina Modotti, as she is known, also was a fine-art photographer. She made still lifes appear as political symbols and flesh-and-blood women seem to be emblematic monuments.

But when she had to choose between art and devotion to the communist cause, she chose the cause. "I cannot solve the problem of life by losing myself in the problem of art" she wrote. First, though, she produced a visual legacy of beauty and strength.

Some have suggested that Modotti was introduced to photography as a young girl in Italy, where her uncle, Pietro Modotti, maintained a photography studio. Later in the U.S., her father briefly ran a similar studio in San Francisco. However, it was through her relationship with Edward Weston that Modotti rapidly developed as an important fine art photographer and documentarian. Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo divided Modotti’s career as a photographer into two distinct categories: "Romantic" and "Revolutionary." The former period includes her time spent as Weston’s darkroom assistant, office manager and, finally, creative partner. Together they opened a portrait studio in Mexico City and were commissioned to travel around Mexico taking photographs for Anita Brenner’s book, "Idols Behind Altars."

In Mexico, Modotti found a community of cultural and political avant guardists. She became the photographer of choice for the blossoming Mexican mural movement, documenting the works of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera. Her visual vocabulary matured during this period, such as her formal experiments with architectural interiors, flowers and urban landscapes, and especially in her many lyrical images of peasants and workers. Indeed, her one-woman retrospective exhibition at the National Library in December 1929 was advertised as "The First Revolutionary Photographic Exhibition In Mexico." She had reached a high point in her career as a photographer, but within the next year she was forced to set her camera aside in favor of more pressing concerns. [ Wiki ]
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The Twist

Giro (Twist) 1973 sculpture by Alexander Liberman at Rufino Tamayo Museum.
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The Liquid Clown

"Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality."
"A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free."
Nikos Kazantzakis
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New York City and Washington series continue in Sketches of Cities.
Gracias por su visita. / Thanks for visiting, please be sure that I read each and every one of your kind comments and I appreciate them all. Stay tune.