To be completely honest, I was very skeptical coming into this class because I’ve never been very interested in art. Being from Mexico, I knew that I would at least find some aspects of the class interesting since I would learn about Mexico and the Mexican muralists; however, I was worried that I was going to find most of the art part of the class boring and useless. My mind was completely changed now that we are at the end of the term. I deeply enjoyed revisiting parts of Mexican history that I was familiar with, and I was very happy to learn many new things about my country’s history. The art segment of the class was also deeply enjoyable, since I realized that I was not just analyzing how a piece of work looked or what technique the artist used, but also the social and political context behind the piece. I found this to be fascinating, and it inspired me to write about communism in the Mexican Muralist movement, since I had no idea that communism had its own movement in Mexico. The process of writing the paper was certainly hard. I had to do a lot of research on the history behind the Mexican Communist Party, Rivera’ and Siqueiros’ involvement in the communist movement, and different works of art that exemplified the artists’ attempt to promote communism. In the end, my hard work was worth it because my paper turned out to be something I’m proud of. I believe I wrote a good paper that talks about and interesting issue, and in the process, I ended up learning a lot about my country.

After having written drafts and having worked on our e-portfolio for a few days, we split up in our small groups to get feedback from each other. In my group, each of us started by talking about our progress so far and showed each other our websites. Afterwards, each of us talked about what we had planned for the rest of our projects and asked for advice if someone had any questions. Everyone was at different stages by this point, so each conversation was a little different. For me it was particularly useful because it really helps me talk to other people when I’m writing a paper like this. I had written about 5 pages, but I still had some questions about how I should structure the rest of the paper and what sort of information I should include. We talked for a few minutes and I got several good ideas from everyone in my group, so I was very glad I had that conversation. Working with my group was also useful because it helped me answer several questions I had about the website. I wasn’t very happy with the theme I had, so one of the members on my team suggested I use the theme she was using. I ended up loving that theme and it is the one I’m currently using. People in my group also helped me deal with how to create the posts for the writing journal section and what type of information I should include in the home and about me pages. I learned last term how valuable it is to talk to your peers during the writing process, and things weren’t any different this time.

Starting to write this first draft was a challenge for me. I had to read many sources about several different things (Siqueiros, Rivera, and the Communist movement in Mexico), so I had a lot of information but I wasn’t sure what to do with it. For a couple days, I was stuck because my ideas were all over the place. Finally, I decided to start with my thesis and start building my paper around this. After thinking about it for a long time, I finally came up with my current thesis: Despite Rivera’s and Siqueiros’ attempt to promote the communist movement in Mexico through their murals, the new nature of Mexican politics that arose after the revolution prevented communism from ever gaining significant influence in Mexican society.

Once I had my thesis in place, I began writing step by step so that my paper would be clear and organized. I began with giving some background information about the emergence of the PCM in Mexico. I believed this was a good starting point since my reader needed to understand the movement before knowing its influence in the artists. My next paragraph was also to give background information, but now I provided context about the initial involvement of both artists with the PCM. My last paragraph focused on Siqueiros’ involvement more specifically, I started with Siqueiros because I had done more research about him than Rivera at this point. I had to do more research, so I decided to stop with this paragraph for this draft.

The last thing I did for this assignment was lay out my plan for the rest of the essay. I decided to organize the rest of the paper in the following way: continue by giving a specific example or examples of how Siqueiros’ art was influenced by his political ideas. I would then follow the same format of the last two paragraphs but focusing on Rivera. I would then explain how despite the artists’ attempt to promote communist ideals, the Mexican political environment of the time prevented communism from ever gaining any significant influence, I would finally end with a conclusion. I have a lot of research to do, but I feel confident with the structure what I have come up with for the paper, although things could change as I keep moving forward.

Knowing that my focus was going to be on Siqueiros and Rivera, my first approach to finding sources was using the summon website and searching for things like “Siqueiros and communism” and “Rivera and communism”. To find background information about communism and the muralist movement, I searched for things like “communism and the Mexican muralist movement”. I encountered a few articles, but I did not find very useful information overall. After discussing my issue with professor Moody, I decided to change my approach towards searching for sources. There were clearly not many articles specifically talking about Rivera’s and Siqueiro’s involvement with the communist movement, so I instead looked for biographies. These biographies covered a wide range of topics, but since communism was a big part of their lives, most biographies I looked at had sections talking about their involvement.

To gather information about the origins of the communist movement in Mexico, I checked out several books from the library that had very detailed information about the movement. I started learning about how the Partido Comunista Mexicano was created, and how artists were a big part of promoting this movement. One source even mentions Siqueiros and Rivera as being leaders of the movement, which was very useful. Although I have plenty of great sources at this point, I still need to do more research about certain elements that will be a crucial part of the paper. The most Important thing I have to learn more about is the involvement of el PRI with the communist movement. One of my main points in my paper is that the tight control that el PRI had in the country prevented communism from ever gaining any real momentum. I have one source explaining how Rivera was commissioned to recreate his Rockefeller Center mural in the Palace of Fine Arts despite its communist elements, because the government did not feel threatened. I also have sources explaining how when Siqueiros crossed the line, he was incarcerated and even exiled several times, which would help prove my point.

From the beginning of the term, what I was most interested about learning in this class was my country. At first, I was mainly interested in learning about los Tres Grandes and the Muralist movement, but as we read more and more I realized that this class was about more than just art. We learned about Mexican history and read about the social and political environment in Mexico in the early 20^th century. I knew most things that we were reading about, but one thing caught my attention, the fact that there had been a communist party in Mexico. In all my time learning about Mexican history growing up, I had never even heard of communism being a thing in Mexico. I wanted to learn more about the movement, so I decided that my paper would focus on the influence of communism in the Muralist movement.

The communist movement had a deep impact on both Rivera and Siqueiros, which is why I decided to focus my paper on both of these artists. My initial proposal focused on whether the communist ideals had conflicted with the ideas of the Muralist movement, and if they had attempted to promote communist ideals throughout their art. Overall, I wanted to learn if the muralist movement became, at least partially, a platform for communist ideals to be spread across the country.  As I started doing more research, the focus of my paper shifted slightly. I decided to instead focus on how the political environment in Mexico prevented communism from ever gaining significant influence despite the artists’ attempts to promote its ideals through their art. I still have to do more research on el PRI, but I’m liking where this paper is heading.