El verdadero origen de La Catrina: ¿burla o símbolo?

Summary

The video traces how La Catrina evolved from a satirical image into a widely recognized Mexican symbol, while arguing that both meanings remain part of her identity.

Laughing at death and the powerful

• In 1792, Franciscan friar Joaquín Bolaños published The Portentous Life of Death, a humorous account that personified Death. Its comedy also carried a religious lesson: people should remember their mortality and live as good Christians.
• By the 19th century, newspapers published calaveras—satirical poems imagining living people, especially politicians and the wealthy, as dead. Their humor rested on the idea that death makes everyone equal.
• José Guadalupe Posada, born in Aguascalientes in 1852, learned lithography and engraving and began making political cartoons as a young man. After working in León, he moved to Mexico City in 1888.
• Under Porfirio Díaz, Mexico’s elite often adopted European, especially French, fashions. Men dressed this way were called catrines. Some poorer people also imitated the fashionable look; the video describes women who powdered their faces to appear like wealthy ladies.
• Cheap illustrated broadsheets were important because many people could not read. Posada worked for the popular printer Antonio Vanegas Arroyo, making images for news sheets and November calaveras. He followed Manuel Manilla, who had already drawn skeletons engaged in ordinary human activities.
• Posada’s calaveras depicted people from all walks of life—including politicians—as skeletons. Their message was that status and fine clothes could not protect anyone from death.

The skull that became La Catrina

• Around 1910–1912, Posada engraved a skull wearing a large, elaborate French-style hat. It had no full body. The image is generally understood as mocking people who copied European fashions: beneath the appearance, everyone is still just bones.
• Posada died in 1913, poor and largely unknown. His remains were later placed in a common grave, and his name faded from public memory.
• Later in 1913, a Vanegas Arroyo broadsheet printed the skull with verses about “garbanceras”—a derogatory term for Indigenous women who sold chickpeas but adopted the dress and makeup of wealthy women. The satire thus targeted people trying to pass as affluent, rather than simply mocking the rich. The verses were written by the press’s writers, not Posada.
• The skull was not called “Catrina” at the time. That name appeared later. In 1930, a book featuring Posada’s engravings and an introduction by Diego Rivera identified the image as the Calavera Catrina. The video notes that Rivera is often credited with naming it, though the exact origin of the name is uncertain.
• Posada’s work was revived by artists seeking a distinctly Mexican art. French painter Jean Charlot wrote an early article about Posada in 1925, and muralists including José Clemente Orozco regarded him as an important predecessor. Orozco had remembered watching Posada work through the printer’s street-facing window as a child.

Rivera’s transformation and the symbol’s spread

• In 1947, Rivera painted Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central. He gave the skull a full, elegant body and placed a feathered serpent associated with Quetzalcoatl around her neck. By setting her at the center of a procession of Mexican history, Rivera transformed a satirical engraving into a figure connected to national identity.
• Rivera also painted Posada beside La Catrina and depicted himself as a child holding her hand, presenting himself as Posada’s artistic heir.
• The mural became controversial because it included the phrase “God does not exist,” summarizing a statement by 19th-century liberal writer Ignacio Ramírez. Students scratched out the words in 1948; Rivera rewrote them, and the mural was eventually covered. It was displayed again after Rivera agreed to replace the phrase with a reference to the speech’s location and date.
• La Catrina later spread beyond the mural. In the 1970s, artist Juan Torres began making clay Catrinas in Capula, Michoacán, and local artisans adopted the craft. The town now holds an annual Catrina fair.
• After the 1985 earthquake damaged the Hotel del Prado, the mural was rescued by moving it intact with its supporting wall and structure. A museum was later built around it near the Alameda.
• Today, La Catrina appears in Day of the Dead face paint, parades, markets, altars, crafts, and popular media. The video also links Posada’s skeleton imagery to the skeletons in the film Coco.

Central conclusion

La Catrina is both mockery and symbol. She began as a joke about people imitating European status and fashion, but later artists—especially Rivera—and popular traditions gave her broader meaning. She has become a distinctly Mexican way to remember and celebrate the dead, even as her original satirical edge remains. The irony is that people now dress in the grand fashions the image once mocked.

Speakers and sources featured

• Speaker: An unnamed narrator; no interview speakers are evident in the subtitles.
• Historical people discussed or quoted: Joaquín Bolaños; José Guadalupe Posada; Manuel Manilla; Antonio and Blas Vanegas Arroyo; José Clemente Orozco; Jean Charlot; Diego Rivera; Ignacio Ramírez; Juan Torres.
• Written and visual sources mentioned:
  • Joaquín Bolaños, The Portentous Life of Death (1792).
  • November calavera broadsheets from the Vanegas Arroyo press, including the 1913 sheet referring to “powdered garbanceras.”
  • Monografía: Las obras de José Guadalupe Posada, grabador mexicano (1930), with an introduction by Diego Rivera.
  • Diego Rivera’s mural Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central.
  • Ignacio Ramírez’s speech, summarized in the mural inscription.
  • The film Coco, cited as a contemporary example of Posada-like skeleton imagery.