Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:00the revolutionary armed forces, Álvaro López Miera and the chief of
00:00:03general staff Roberto Legarazo
00:00:06Tolongo. You are informed, continue to enjoy the
00:01:03When Orozco didn't like the development a
00:01:06painting was taking, he wanted
00:01:08to destroy it.
00:01:10In Mexico, to the dismay of fellow artists and officials,
00:01:14including José Vasconcelos, he destroyed
00:01:18and erased several
00:01:19frescoes.
00:01:23During the years Orozco remained in New York,
00:01:26he occasionally tore up or ripped
00:01:29from their stretchers and burned several
00:01:32important paintings that had been favorably received by the
00:01:36press and the public.
00:01:39The reason the artist generally gave for eliminating a painting
00:01:43was: it bothers me. If
00:01:46one tried to dissuade him from his announced purpose, he defended
00:01:50his reasons with even more dramatic language,
00:01:53insisting that the painting had become a
00:01:57heavy stone around his neck, and that its
00:02:00very existence prevented his progress and
00:02:04hindered him from taking the next step.
00:02:47is very, very important, what
00:03:10masses should respect, right, that they were in
00:03:23Born in Jalisco, appreciated by the
00:03:25people of Guadalajara, Orozco carried out his most extensive mural work in the
00:03:29city of Guadalajara.
00:03:32At 52 years old, around 1935,
00:03:36he began the great task.
00:03:39And, without a doubt, the most important work of that era were the
00:03:43murals of the Hospicio
00:03:44Cabañas.
00:03:53That euphoria for painting murals that existed in Mexico City in the 1920s
00:03:56seemed to be fading, it was no longer interesting.
00:04:00Controversies and fights broke out, because filling
00:04:03walls no longer seemed to be in fashion.
00:04:07In fact, Orozco had decided to go into exile in the United States to
00:04:11be able to continue with his muralist passion, since in
00:04:13Mexico commissions had been paralyzed for several
00:04:17century. What
00:04:18Orozco wants to intervene. What years.
00:04:22However, a new political stage began in the country with the
00:04:25presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas and especially in Jalisco, with
00:04:29governor Everardo Topete. A group of
00:04:32enthusiastic Tapatios did not hesitate to offer the walls of the city of
00:04:35Guadalajara to the
00:04:37redemption, which is what artist.
00:04:39is A revaluation of nationalism also an already overcome Cristero
00:04:42War. A dispute between religious fanaticism
00:04:46and the anti-clerical government.
00:04:50They needed a secular affirmation of
00:04:53can be seen in the upper part of the spaces. Thus it was decided that the hospice with its
00:04:56chapel would be dedicated to civil and
00:04:59Mexican themes. and not to
00:05:01religious ones.
00:05:05Orozco's presence in Guadalajara is due to a series of
00:05:08favorable circumstances. The
00:05:12fact that he was in a situation of
00:05:15certain financial and
00:05:19professional difficulties in New York, which became known
00:05:23here in Guadalajara through his friends and
00:05:27admirers, among the promoters of his arrival in
00:05:30Guadalajara were the architect Luis Barragán, who met with
00:05:34Orozco in New York, the
00:05:37former governor José Guadalupes Uno,
00:05:40and these aforementioned people. and other people
00:05:43convinced the
00:05:46governor of how important it
00:05:48would be for that administration and for
00:05:52Jalisco to have or count on
00:05:55the work of their compatriot, although there
00:05:59were also intellectuals who disagreed with that idea of painting
00:06:03on walls, like Salvador Novo, who stated, "Painters
00:06:06can't see anything without thinking of spoiling
00:06:10it, they must have thought it improper,
00:06:13indecent, their desire to paint on the walls of
00:06:17buildings."
00:06:21But Orozco's trajectory was impeccable, moreover,
00:06:25he was a native of Jalisco, born
00:06:28in 1883 in Zapotlán el Grande,
00:06:31and then lived until he was 8 years old in Guadalajara,
00:06:35then he moved with his family to Mexico City where he stood out
00:06:38first for drawing and caricature
00:06:41and then murals of San Ildefonso,
00:06:45which at that time was the National
00:06:48Preparatory School.
00:06:51The commission was from the Secretary of Education José Vasconcelos in
00:06:541923.
00:06:56There he proved his great capacity as a muralist. Guadalajara
00:07:00knew of his abilities and they gave him the challenge. He had to
00:07:04give his best. The intellectual community was a bit
00:07:07divided, whether it was well done, whether it was a good project or not a
00:07:11good project. On the part of the government itself, there were those
00:07:15who said, among them the treasurer,
00:07:18that it was a waste of time to make those doodles, to be
00:07:22paying 400 pesos weekly, which at that time was certainly a
00:07:26respectable amount, because it wasn't just Orozco, it was his
00:07:29assistants, it was the bricklayers who were preparing the
00:07:33walls and so on, and it was also a time-consuming
00:07:35job. Furthermore, the greatest risk for politicians
00:07:39was that he was a terse, difficult man,
00:07:42he couldn't be told what to do or suggested
00:07:46anything to, he demanded absolute
00:07:48freedom.
00:07:51Dr. Carrillo Hill, a close friend and collector of his work,
00:07:55describes José Clemente Orozco thus:
00:07:59When I met Mr. Orozco, he was
00:08:02over 50 years old, he was of medium height, very
00:08:05thin, slightly stooped,
00:08:08dark-skinned, with sparse hair and dressed with great
00:08:12modesty. His face revealed his
00:08:16shyness and his reclusiveness. And he was
00:08:19always stern. He habitually spoke in a low
00:08:22voice. He wore thick glasses, as he couldn't see without
00:08:25them. And I think he was severely
00:08:28nearsighted. In his initial interactions, he seemed
00:08:32shy and distrustful, and his responses
00:08:35were abrupt, especially with people he didn't
00:08:38like. In contrast,
00:08:41he enjoyed it when he found
00:08:44someone he trusted and could
00:08:47expand in conversation.
00:08:50This man of select friendships was a tireless
00:08:53worker. In a few years in the city of Guadalajara,
00:08:57he painted with his only hand—he was
00:08:59one-handed—more than 2030 square meters of
00:09:03murals. In 1935, he began with the
00:09:07murals of the amphitheater of the rectory of the University of
00:09:10Guadalajara, then the staircase of the government
00:09:13palace, and in 1937
00:09:16he undertook the chapel of the ex-Hospicio
00:09:19Cabañas, which for many people is his greatest
00:09:22work. Justino Fernández
00:09:25equates it in importance in this essay, in
00:09:29this book where he
00:09:33establishes as
00:09:35emblematic works of Mexican
00:09:38culture, the Coatlicue, the altar of
00:09:42the Kings, and in terms of the
00:09:46modernity of Mexican
00:09:48art, the mural of the Hospicio
00:09:52Cabañas. Around 1796, the
00:09:56Bishop of Guadalajara, Juan Cruz Ruiz de Cabañas,
00:09:59requested permission to build a building to assist the
00:10:02homeless. He named it the House of
00:10:06Mercy. The building was commissioned to the renowned
00:10:09architect Manuel Tolzá. The
00:10:12aid house during the War of Independence was taken as a military
00:10:16barracks.
00:10:19It was not until 1829 that it recovered its original vocation
00:10:23and the assistance institution took the name of Hospicio
00:10:27Cabañas.
00:10:29These photos correspond to the years in which José Clemente Orozco
00:10:33began to work on his murals in this precinct. For
00:10:37some years it continued to be an aid house. The
00:10:41enormous spaces and the architecture of Manuel Tolzá
00:10:44seemed to be waiting for a painter to take
00:10:46them.
00:10:51This photo shows what the blank walls were like.
00:10:56Only the pendentives have some religious
00:10:58images.
00:11:01And so, who better than José Clemente Orozco to take advantage
00:11:05of the site?
00:11:13Orozco's pictorial project was planned to occupy all the
00:11:17spaces of the chapel, even the smallest
00:11:19ones. There are about 1200
00:11:23square meters of murals.
00:11:32Whoever walks through the nave will have the impression of being in a portico
00:11:35looking out at the city of Guadalajara, old and
00:11:38new.
00:11:46There is painted the archiepiscopal seat of Monsignor Cabañas
00:11:50or a modern political
00:11:54demonstration.
00:12:00In the commemorative panel of the murals, there is a cartel that
00:12:03mentions Governor Eberardo Topete and the three murals
00:12:07he commissioned Orozco to do in public
00:12:09spaces.
00:12:11The building painted here is emblematic because it was where
00:12:14his muralistic odyssey began. It
00:12:17is the University of
00:12:19Guadalajara.
00:12:23In the 1930s, the city was modernizing,
00:12:26growing. Currently, some of the buildings from that
00:12:29era can still be
00:12:31seen.
00:12:36At that time, there was an architectural debate that ranged from neo-colonial
00:12:40proposals to very modernist ones, such as those proposed by the
00:12:43renowned architect, Luis Barragán, who became
00:12:47a good friend of Orozco.
00:12:50He designed and built this house where he lived for a short
00:12:53time.
00:12:59José Clemente was passionate about architectural themes.
00:13:03Orozco intervened in these discussions about the urban
00:13:06image of the Tapatío capital.
00:13:22But let's go back to the murals. This panel is called the wheel of
00:13:26time, there is a concern to refer to
00:13:30technology and power, it is a
00:13:33resplendent wheel over several strata of
00:13:36vestiges. In these years there was a great
00:13:40impulse for roads. The Mexico
00:13:43Laredo highway was inaugurated as a great novelty. Public
00:13:46works generated a profuse iconography of the
00:13:49automobile. This panel alludes to that
00:13:52progressive enthusiasm that Orozco
00:13:55spoke about. Well, I think it is very clear
00:13:58a very intense historical
00:14:02reflection and a desire
00:14:05to
00:14:06intervene
00:14:10in the discourse on history.
00:14:13Most of the Hospicio Cabañas
00:14:16was painted as World War II approached, the Spanish
00:14:20Civil War was ending. Public
00:14:22opinion, that is, the body of
00:14:26journalists, those who write opinions in newspapers, the politicians
00:14:30who give speeches, generates the image
00:14:33of the great apocalyptic
00:14:35conflict.
00:14:38It is in this discussion that
00:14:43Orozco seeks is to propose a critical
00:14:46way of thinking about the past, a notion
00:14:50that for him has always, well, two sides.
00:14:53That of human sacrifice and the
00:14:57authoritarianism of religions and that of hopes for
00:15:04in the dome of the
00:15:06hospice.
00:15:14His interest in history and technology
00:15:18the chapel. In the vaults we find how
00:15:21he represents together the monsters of nature and
00:15:25society, the armors pile
00:15:28up, everything is a jumble of
00:15:31swords and metallic
00:15:32bodies.
00:15:36Let's see the combat that takes place on the far left of the
00:15:39vault.
00:15:43A two-headed horse illustrates the opposing forces that govern
00:15:46man. On the far left, the
00:15:50struggle between an automaton and an
00:15:52indigenous person.
00:15:56In other panels, the struggle is less even. The
00:16:00steel has done its job and the bodies appear defeated or
00:16:04dismembered.
00:16:08These are representations of the conquest of
00:16:10Mexico.
00:16:17Also in the vault of the main nave there are several oppressive
00:16:21characters. One panel shows Hernán
00:16:24Cortés, the other a
00:16:28friar. Both have at their feet the prostrate
00:16:31or dismembered figure of
00:16:34an Indian. Cortés with his empty
00:16:37body, without entrails, is a mechanical
00:16:40man, being advised by an
00:16:44angel, a female
00:16:47automaton.
00:16:49In the friar's panel, the angel carries a blood-stained canvas with the
00:16:53alphabet.
00:16:57Both panels are personifications of
00:16:59violence, of how culture and
00:17:03technology are imposed.
00:17:07panel represents the King of Spain,
00:17:09Philip, who is seen embracing a gigantic
00:17:13blood-stained cross,
00:17:16completing the triad of monumental and oppressive
00:17:18figures.
00:17:21Here Orozco paints the conquest, but his
00:17:25interest and curiosity for the history of Mexico is found in all his
00:17:28work.
00:17:42the circumstances in which José Clemente Orozco intervened
00:17:45in the building that is the University of
00:17:48Guadalajara, emerged from
00:17:52promotions that were made for Clemente Orozco to be here in
00:17:55Jalisco.
00:18:02Characters from Guadalajara's own culture such
00:18:06as Enrique Díaz de León,
00:18:10José Guadalupe Zuno, also
00:18:13Dr. Atl in a
00:18:16cultural group called "El Centro
00:18:18Bohemio".
00:18:21What Clemente Orozco does here, which
00:18:25Clemente Orozco does,
00:18:28expresses on the back
00:18:30wall a society that he considered to be
00:18:34in decadence.
00:18:37Monstrous, that manipulated the
00:18:40masses, they said what were
00:18:44the laws that the
00:18:47humility, but not only in humility, in
00:18:50misery, socially exposed, in total
00:18:54ignorance, right, so on that wall
00:18:58on the end wall is what Clemente
00:19:01Orozco does, to point out,
00:19:05to indicate the conditions in which the people, the masses,
00:19:19lived. But in the dome, as is Clemente
00:19:23Orozco's painting, as is the concept, as is what Clemente
00:19:27Orozco proposes, there is in a certain way the
00:19:30annunciation of how better forms of
00:19:33social coexistence, better
00:19:36constructions, of a more just, more
00:19:39egalitarian society, can be achieved, and that it is
00:19:42precisely through two-headed man for the
00:19:46two sides where knowledge,
00:19:48science and art
00:19:52move, where the technical, the
00:19:55scientific is, meaning that
00:19:57the university provides
00:20:05that. He claims
00:20:08that it is not possible for a society, a people to exist
00:20:11under those conditions, while another part
00:20:15has everything in their
00:20:18favor, from the laws to economic power.
00:20:33A direct negotiation
00:20:35with
00:20:39a official or something
00:20:42in which Orozco as a muralist submitted,
00:20:46I don't know about that. For that he had very
00:20:51little tolerance. Suddenly he played
00:20:53very harsh jokes. I think
00:20:57Everardo Topete painted his portrait on one of
00:21:01the panels of the Hospicio Cabañas. He had a photo taken and sent it with a
00:21:04note that he urgently needed to be paid and Topete understood the
00:21:08message. This gentleman's check, right now.
00:21:12But there is no
00:21:15concession in the discourse, that is, it was just a
00:21:18joke, really,
00:21:22what there is is a dialogue,
00:21:25a certain negotiation
00:21:28in the field of
00:21:30ethics, and that is what makes Orozco such
00:21:34an important artist, from my point of
00:21:37view, is that the
00:21:39negotiation to enter the public space will be equally
00:21:43intense and will be very, very effective almost
00:21:46always on his part, on the part of his agents like Alma Reed. The
00:21:50discourse will be critical and we will tell them things they won't
00:21:54like and you will
00:21:57forgive me, but what will be
00:22:00put here will be carefully
00:22:03chosen to cause you a problem. The point is precisely
00:22:07that this hypercritical discourse
00:22:10appears on the walls of the government palace,
00:22:14because if it appeared in a painting in a private gallery, in a
00:22:18magazine, whatever, in the era, they would probably have
00:22:22censored it and that would be
00:22:24it, no, they would have censored it and three people would have seen it
00:22:27and that's it. The point was to put
00:22:30that radically critical discourse in a very
00:22:33intolerant era for criticism,
00:22:37in which the Mexican state was very intolerant
00:22:41of direct criticism, that this
00:22:44appeared on the walls of a government
00:22:47palace, of a public university, or
00:22:50other state institutions, not to mention the Supreme Court of
00:22:54Justice. The theme of violence and
00:22:57authoritarianism is addressed in all the
00:23:00murals, but it is in the government palace where
00:23:04Orozco became direct,
00:23:06ruthless.
00:23:13The main invitation to work in the Tapatío capital was to
00:23:16intervene in the cube of this staircase.
00:23:23Orozco exalted the figure of Hidalgo, the hero who
00:23:26initiated the struggle for Mexico's
00:23:28independence.
00:23:32With force, he contrasted him with all the authoritarian
00:23:34figures who proliferated at that
00:23:37time. He did not criticize the past, rather
00:23:40he was implacable with his
00:23:42present.
00:23:47Actors like fascism and Stalinism and the
00:23:50church were at that moment active and
00:23:53threatening.
00:23:59If we look at the mural of the government palace, well, there are all
00:24:03the leaders of the moment equally,
00:24:07I mean, turned into not just laughingstocks
00:24:11but the purest expression of scorn,
00:24:14no, that is, there is no way out, there is no peace for the
00:24:18clean, there is no way out for... He is a skeptic,
00:24:22I don't know how much he would have read Nietzsche during his
00:24:25youth, but nevertheless one could think that there
00:24:29is one of the main sources of nihilism,
00:24:32no?
00:24:37The role that Hidalgo ends up having is that of leader of a
00:24:40popular rebellion, but it is a
00:24:43figure with two edges,
00:24:46because yes, it is a redemptive figure, very
00:24:50strong and everything and they put him in all the textbooks, even
00:24:54including the slaughter that is underneath, which has nothing
00:24:58positive and is not very flattering, and
00:25:01it is a massacre between workers of the 20th
00:25:07he seemed to have wanted to
00:25:11say is that he is indeed a very strong figure and at the same time very
00:25:14dangerous. The relationship between myth and violence
00:25:18is quite close.
00:25:23The non-religious
00:25:26discourses about political legitimacy
00:25:29end up
00:25:31being as authoritarian as the religious
00:25:35discourses that are the object of the opposite wall. He doesn't spare
00:25:39them either, not even jokingly.
00:25:53We continue.
00:26:02it breaks your body,
00:26:06it shatters your mind, it alienates you, it shatters your
00:26:10family.
00:26:13Crystal shatters your
00:26:15life.
00:26:18Choose to be happy, if you need help call the lifeline
00:26:22800 911
00:26:242000, government of
00:26:28Mexico.
00:26:33Fentanyl is a trap that ensnares you at the first
00:26:35contact,
00:26:41it disconnects your body from your
00:26:42mind
00:26:45and turns your head into a nightmare.
00:26:48Fentanyl kills
00:26:49you.
00:26:54Choose to live, call the lifeline. 800
00:26:58911, 2000, government of Mexico. They say
00:27:01like father, like son, as if the
00:27:04family were the origin and destiny.
00:27:07It will be everything that fills us with love and we fill with love, perhaps,
00:27:11the street becomes the studio and you the
00:27:14protagonist, you give everything for them unconditionally, without expecting anything
00:27:18in return, like the most beautiful form of love that I
00:27:21know, inherited, but also in some cases it can also be
00:27:25chosen, here among us Saturday
00:27:288:30 p.m.
00:27:32I believe that laughter is revolutionary, I believe that laughter breaks down the
00:27:36walls of power, it takes the
00:27:40solemnity away from idiots, it
00:27:42horizontalizes us, I don't think there's anything that makes a
00:27:46guy like Trump angrier than us laughing at him, he has
00:27:50gone after presenters and comedians who
00:27:53have laughed at him because they can't stand it, they say, with all the power I
00:27:56have, with all the money I have, with how important I am, and
00:28:00these slobs laugh at me. Well... Yes, there is no
00:28:03greater devaluation for a politician than being ridiculous, right?
00:28:06And that's the case of
00:28:09Trump.
00:28:14We'll be back.
00:28:28In the years when Orozco painted these frescoes, the Spanish Civil
00:28:32War broke out.
00:28:34It is possible to say that it is not only a reference to the conquest, but also to
00:28:38fascism. Cinema, newspapers and
00:28:42magazines used to publish news of the victims of the
00:28:45war. Fascism was a plague that was beginning to
00:28:49spread.
00:28:57The mechanized figures today look like a pile of
00:29:00scrap metal. Now they would be different
00:29:03monsters, but in the 1930s, machines, pulleys and
00:29:07levers operated by the working class were
00:29:09representations of very modern
00:29:12technologies.
00:29:16The massive bombings over Spain reminded him,
00:29:19they were a consequence of the age of
00:29:22metallurgy and weapons, symbols of high
00:29:25power.
00:29:29The dismemberment of enemies was not invented in the 20th
00:29:32century. Orozco combined it and placed it in the 16th
00:29:36century, with the
00:29:37conquest.
00:29:40By uniting two eras, he speaks to us of the universality of slaughter.
00:29:56Orozco used to write to his wife Margarita, whom he met in
00:30:00Veracruz when he was 32 years old, and with whom he had
00:30:02three children.
00:30:05The correspondence they maintained tells us about their daily life, their
00:30:09economic difficulties. He
00:30:11moved alone to Guadalajara to work on the murals and stayed in
00:30:15some downtown hotels.
00:30:18Margarita, everything is going well and I hope to be
00:30:22able to start painting next week, let's see
00:30:26if next Monday. The guys here are
00:30:30helping me well. I'm temporarily
00:30:32staying in another hotel near the station called
00:30:36Casa Morales, the rooms are as
00:30:39good as in the Roma and the food is slightly
00:30:43better. This boy, León
00:30:46Muñiz, is the one who says he is installing his bathroom in
00:30:50his house, and says he wants us to go with him,
00:30:53but you know I don't like a lot of people.
00:30:57strange and maybe I'll stay.