STRIDENTISM: ANTECEDENTS, CHARACTERISTICS, AUTHORS AND WORKS - LITERATURE - 2025

The estridentismo was the only Mexican artistic and literary vanguard group in the twenties. It was an avant-garde multidisciplinary artistic movement founded by the Mexican poet Manuel Maples Arce (1898-1981) towards the end of 1921, and dissolved in 1927.

Despite being born in Mexico City, the movement developed formally in Xalapa, when the University of Veracruz chose to support the movement. Estridentismo is shown as a struggle against academicism and the patriarchs of Mexican national literature, trying to give insurgent artistic manifestations their own voice.

Illustration from the book Metropolis, by Manuel Maples Alce

Background

The estridentista movement is generated in the midst of a transformation process, that is, in a context of global crisis. The outbreak of the First World War has repercussions in Latin America, although it has not actively participated in the conflict.

Mexico needed to define itself as a nation, for this reason pictorial and literary works with a marked Mexican identity are generated. In the 1920s in Mexico, a powerful generational confrontation between two groups of young people was evidenced: those who advocate for national reconstruction and previous generations, who try to stay in power.

Mexican Revolution

At the beginning of the Mexican Revolution (1910) Mexico suffered an artistic stagnation. The moment of revolution arises as an opportunity for renewal; the questioning of traditional values ​​is revealed and, with it, the move towards modernity.

French trends

Modern societies were immersed in the industrial age, which applauded machinism and all the futuristic elements. The automobile, the tram, the airplane, the telegraph and the telephone, among other inventions, became the protagonists of modernity.

In literature, the modernist and symbolist forms were chronically attrition: writers copied French trends ad nauseam.

The writers who had lived in the time of Porfirio Díaz were still on their pedestals after Madero's rise to power and after Victoriano Huerta's military coup. However, very few writers saw the urgency of a new art.

Characteristics of estridentismo

Cult of progress

Stridentism was characterized by outlining itself towards the spirit of modernity, and cosmopolitanism and the urban take the center. There was a cult of progress associated with mechanical advancements.

This cult manifested its disagreement with the aesthetics in force at the time, thus assuming forms of black humor, snobbery and rejection of everything in the past. In this sense, it was a subversive movement both in thematic and in the form of the works.

The stridentist poets and painters had a certain aesthetic obsession with the modern city, even conceiving a utopia called “stridentópolis”.

Influences

Stridentism shares some characteristics of Cubism, Dadaism, Futurism and Spanish ultraism, but its focus is on the social dimension it takes from the Mexican Revolution.

This is why the Estridentistas were also related to the political insurgent movements faced with the elitism of modernism of the group called Los Contemporáneos.

Dynamism as the axis

Stridentism is inspired by the dynamic character of the modern world. The dizzying pace that calls out for abrupt changes both in the artistic and in the economic, political and social, is what drives and defines the Mexican avant-garde in all its dimensions.

Authors and outstanding works

The members of the Estridentismo were poets, painters and sculptors who knew how to promote themselves after the Mexican Revolution with the intention of giving a turn to the aesthetics prevailing until now.

This need for change responded to political-social variations; all members shared a similar modernizing cultural project.

Main representatives of the literary avant-garde

- Manuel Maples Arce, poet, initiator of the movement and spiritual guru of the group.

- Arqueles Vela, narrative writer.

- German List Arzubide, chronicle writer.

Interior scaffolding. Radiographic Poems was the first book published by the group in 1922. The work was written by Manuel Maples Arce.

According to the author himself, this work "is associated with the idea that, at the same time that the poet builds his work, he builds himself." The book works as an X-ray that shows the inner world of the poet.

Luis Mario Schneider, a scholarly critic of Stridentism, indicates the following about this movement:

«It is, without a doubt, the first Mexican literary movement to introduce something new in this century. Although the same cannot be said with regard to the other avant-garde currents with which it coincides, since the influences of Futurism, Unanirism, Dadaism, Creationism and Ultraism are too visible - only the relativism of the first Stridentist era - The moment the social ideology of the Mexican Revolution is adopted and incorporated into its literature, the movement acquires solidity, organization, and somehow separates itself from the rest of the international avant-garde.

Poetry

In stridentist poetry we see the absence of explanatory logic; there are also no grammatical links or anecdotal or ornamental descriptions. According to Marple Arce, the aim is to "relate or fuse terms of comparison so far apart that they produce surprise or expectation."

Stridentist poetry reflected this cult of progress through the admiration of the mechanical and new technological advances.

Experimentation

The Estridentist writings were full of formal and linguistic experimentation and were illustrated by strident artists, developing a specific style for the movement.

They produced their own picture books, magazines, pamphlets, and manifestos. The combination of text and image gave rise to its aesthetics to shape the political and artistic character of the movement.

Like the Futurists, we see in the Estridentistas symbols of modernity: skyscrapers, airplanes, telephones, railways and electric cables are proof of this.

Artistic internationalism and political nationalism combine to revolutionize the Mexican scene both artistically and politically.

Example

"Literary bumpers will

understand nothing

of this new sweaty beauty of the century."

(Urbe, Manuel Maples Arce).

References

1. Prieto González, José Manuel (2011). "The Mexican Stridentism and its construction of the modern city through poetry and painting". Scripta Nova: Electronic Journal of Geography and Social Sciences. University of Barcelona. Vol. XVI, no. 398.Available at ub.edu
2. Mora, Francisco Javier (2000). "Mexican stridentism: signs of an aesthetic and political revolution". Annals of Hispano-American Literature. University of Alicante. Available at magazines.ucm.es
3. Benedet, Sandra María (2008). The Narrative Of Stridentism: La Señorita Etc. De Arqueles Vela. Revista Iberoamericana, Vol. LXXIV, No. 224. Roosevelt University. Available at revista-iberoamericana.pitt.edu
4. Caplow, Deborah (2016). Stridentist Movement (1921–1928). Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism. Available at rem.routledge.com