Tag: Mexico stamp

Here is a perhaps mythic story of 6 young Mexican Army cadets who suicided after witnessing losing to an American invasion force. Thus becoming an inspiration to a new nation. Now to a more mature nation rapidly emigrating to the USA, perhaps not so much.  So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The stamp today is 1930s Latin American, more specifically Mexican. Stamps of this period and place seem to be poorly printed and seem bizarrely martial. Strongmen with clownishly elaborate uniforms and monuments to forgotten skirmishes where there were no good guys. This may seem harsh, but it is the perception. This is where a philatelist can be of help. I am rather fond of the fun uniforms and self important monuments. This website gives me the time to dig out the story behind. So if you are like me, read on.

The stamp today is issue A115, a 50 centavo stamp issued by Mexico in 1934. The stamp features the Monument to the Brave Cadets at Chapultepec. It was part of a 15 stamp issue showing various Mexican monuments. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used. There are stamps from this set that lack the watermark. This pushes their value into the several hundreds of dollars.

Mexico had declared itself independent in 1821. Spain did not at first recognize this and there was fighting. The country was sparsely populated and many of the people were indigenous and did not have a loyalty to Spain nor Mexico. The central government was unstable, corrupt and had little control of the provinces. One great thing they had done was ban slavery in Mexico. This made life in what is now the American populated Mexican state of Texas difficult as the Southern American settlers had brought their slaves with them. After the Mexican leader Santa Ana had violated the Mexican constitution, American settlers declared an independent country of Texas. Mexico did not recognize an independent Texas and sent troops unsuccessfully to reclaim the area. The country of Texas was slave owning, making it the first territory in the world to ban slavery and then bring it back. This outraged abolitionists in the north of the USA. American President Polk however pushed further and offered to annex Texas as a slave state. This was accepted by the Texans. He then offered to buy from Mexico the territory between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande River, moving troops into the area. Mexico refused the sale and then attacked the forward American troops starting the Mexican American war.

An expeditionary force under Winfield Scott made America’s first amphibious assault at Veracruz and after heavy fighting marched toward Mexico City. Near Mexico City was Chapultepec Castle, which was being used as the Mexican Army’s military academy. Outnumbered, the Mexican commander ordered a retreat but 6 cadets disobeyed  and tried to hold out fighting to the death. One of the cadets, climbed the tower wrapped himself in the Mexican flag and jumped to his death to avoid the flags capture by the Americans. Mexico City still fell and Mexico lost much territory but a legend was born. A much needed legend. Only 7 of the 19 Mexican provinces had contributed to the failed war effort and after the war there was some soul searching locally as to whether Mexico indeed was a real country. The American invasion  force told a different story. That the Mexican Army had run away so quickly that they abandoned the child Cadets.

The statue on the stamp was visited surprisingly by President Truman, who said that he liked all bravery wherever he could find it. Also in 1947 a mass grave was found near the castle that added some credence to the story and allowed Mexico to attach names to the Cadets.

While the monument on the stamp still exists. A much larger monument featuring a marble statue and 6 columns to the cadets at the entrance  to Mexico City’s biggest park was built in 1952. This was ordered for the 100th anniversary of the battle, but a little late.

Well my drink is empty but this is the kind of story where I get to pour another so I can raise a glass to all that fought in that war on both sides. The war was not popular on either side, but that does not mean that we should not honor the brave men who did their best in a difficult situation not of their choosing. Come again  for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

It is fun when a foriegn country show off it’s folk culture and then you look it up many years later and the whole thing has been reimagined by outsiders. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp shows males doing a crescent moon dance in the Mexican region of Puebla. It is supposed to represent two tribes coming together to attack a foe, usually a jaguar or a viper. The man sliceing at the foe from every direction is impossible to defend against.

Todays stamp is issue C195, a one Peso airmail stamp issued by Mexico in 1950. It was a 13 stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

Moon dancing has changed a little bit in Mexico since this stamp. Since the 1990s a blond, white mystic named Chandani has been bringing back the moondance now for females only and dedicated to ancient God of the earth Pachamama. Chandani had tired of the masculinity of the feminist movement and learned of old ways of dancing in crcles in the moonlight while a drum plays from older Mexican grandmothers steeped in the ways of the ancients. To best open the channel to Pachamama, it is best to do it four nights in a row. Men are kept outside the circle but are standing by to keep the campfire going, serve hot chocolate, and prepare sweat lodges.

Cynics might note that Pachamama was Inca not Aztec and was attached to the harvest and rainfall that don’t seem to interest the moderns. Old rituals included sacrificing guinea pigs and llama fetuses to win Pachamama’s favor. Thankfully the moderns have not yet brought that back. The conversion of Latin America to Catholicism saw the idea of Pachamama somewhat susumed  in the icon of the Virgin Mary.

Well my drink is empty. I guess a circle for praying does cross over into Christianity. Remember Johnny Cash singing the hymn Will the circle  be unbroken. Come again tomorrow when there will be another story to be learned from stamp collecting

What is a country to do when the other political side comes to power after much time in opposition and proves to be just as bad as who they replaced. Perhaps the healthiest thing to do is admit it, and in Mexico after the 1910 revolution that is what Mexican author Mariano Azuela did with his novel, “Los de Abajo” which means the underdogs. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering  from The Philatelist.

This stamp is from the period around their Olympics when there was an optimism that the country was finally emerging as an important place. Part of that emerging is presenting figures in the local arts that a wider audience doesn’t know but perhaps should. Mr. Azuela main literary works center around the Mexican civil war of the 1910s that he was a part of. Notice on the stamp he is displayed as a distinguished older gentleman rather than a younger hothead. By the 1970s, it was less important what he wrote but instead the fact that one of us was indeed writing.

Todays stamp is issue A301, a 40 Centavo stamp issued by Mexico on April 26th, 1974. It was a single stamp issue honoring author and physician Mariano Azuela a little late for his birth century the previous year. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

Mariano Azuela was born the son of a successful rancher in Lagos de Moreno. He studied religion and  local history under Father Augustin Riviera,( and married the Priest’s niece). He then shifted his studies to medicine. Mexico was nearing the end of the long rule of Porfirio Diaz and like most of the young and educated, he opposed Diaz. After the 1910 revolution the other side briefly came into power and Azuela  served as a public health official. The country was breaking down into a long civil war and Azuela joined Pancho Villa’s force as a medic.

It was from this experience that Azuela wrote his most important novel “The Underdogs”. The lead character Macias has a misunderstanding with a wealthy landowner and Diaz’s Federales police come to arrest him. Not finding him they cruelly kill his beloved dog Dove. Now on the run, Macias builds a group of fellow angry misfits that have various grudges against the government. The interesting part is that the group becomes if anything more cruel than the hated dictator. Every night Macias changes what they are fighting for. One day it is to recreate the Aztec empire and the next it is to cruelly avenge some past slight. Meanwhile the long suffering Mexican peasants are preyed upon by both sides. The end of the book has Macias try to go home having lost most of his misfits only to be hunted down by his enemies for one final? gunfight. The Civil War in Mexico lasted 10 years and as in the book all the figures are left with a foul smell.

The book became famous and was soon translated and sold widely in the USA. The book influenced many later generations of left political Hispanic writers and is still an object of study in Hispanic studies departments.

Well my drink is empty and I am impressed that Mexico proved sophisticated enough to feature an author who told the real story instead of some lesser piece of glossing over. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

In the 1910s, Mexico had a revolution that left it with a one party state of the political left, the PRI. This was of course a repudiation of remnants of Spain in favor of the indigenous who the PRI would better represent. Artists could get on board with that, and a flowering of muralists brought forth political work heavily influenced by modern European art trends. So this is how something as mundane as an agricultural conference gets it’s own mural of Pachamama in her birthday suit ready to deliver her bounty to worthy PRI party Mexicans. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The stamp seemed nuts when I first saw it. I knew Mexico was a center of modern art in the first half of the 20th century. So I was not surprised by the style of art, but connecting it with an agricultural conference was where it lost me. Mexico was trying to connect the traditions of the pre Spanish indigenous who believed the Earth was a universal mother, a Pachamama, that provided. Thus the connection to agriculture and no doubt a lesson in Mexican culture for the attendies from the north, who probably were just there to find what foodstuffs Mexico had to sell.

Todays stamp is issue A157, a two Centavo stamp issued by Mexico on July 1st, 1942. It was a six stamp issue in various denominations, three of which were airmail. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 40 cents used.

According to Incas that recorded better the more widely held Latin American tradition, the land was considered the mother of life, the Pachamama. She was to be worshipped as it was through her that nature provided her bounty. Disruptions in that were related to her annoyance. On her Challa’s Tuesday holiday, food and candles were to be buried in her honor and priests would sacrifice llamas and guinea pigs to her. Pachamama had a husband/son called Inti that represented the sky. Their children were then sent to Earth to be the keepers of civilization. After the arrival of the Spanish and the addition of Catholic tradition, Pachamama became less vengeful and more in the image of the Virgin Mary. The Mexican muralist on this stamp was reverting away from that. Pachamama as depicted is a long way from virginity.

The modern art movement  in Mexico centered around muralists that painted murals on indigenous and class struggle subjects on public buildings in Mexico. The most famous of these was Diego Rivera. As it was being paid for by the PRI government, the subject matter was limited but the output attracted a wider following. This was especially true of left leaning Jewish art patrons of New York City. The patrons of New York paid better than the Mexican government so many of the mural artists eventually made their way there.

The lack of social and economic progress in Mexico eventually affected the muralists. In the 1950s, the rupture movement saw the output become less nationalistic and more dark and surrealist. The now deeply intrenched PRI party no longer identified with the output and stop supporting it.

The USA has always done a lot of trading with Mexico but the buying mainly centers on manufactured goods and petroleum. Less than 10% are fruits and vegetables and tequila if you want to classify that as agricultural. Mexico buys from the USA corn, soybeans, and meat and agriculture is the one area with Mexico where there is a USA trade surplus.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the muralists of Mexico. Hope is fleeting and the pressure to go north and sell out was inevitable, but that initial spark of belief and creativity created something lasting. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Getting the Olympics to come to Mexico was a big deal. Mexico was determined to show itself a modern country, with an indigenous culture but a part of the modern  world. Well sometimes the modern world brings with it some baggage. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Mexico’s many stamp issues leading up to the games feature artwork by famed muralist Diego Rivera. His work is both modern in the cubist style and often distinctly political. There was a movement in Mexico at the time called Mexicanidad that tried to get away from Spanish colonial culture and instead base culture on the indigenous people. Mexicans like Rivera were forefront in bringing this sensibility to the world stage. It is a testament to how widespread the movement that the right of center Mexican government chose this style to present.

Todays stamp is issue C337, a 2 Peso airmail stamp issued by Mexico on March 21st, 1968. This stamp featured athletes playing volleyball and was part of a four stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 30 cents used.

Mexico City was awarded the Olympics beating out Detroit, USA and Lyon, France. It was a conscious decision to feature a third world city. The Olympic Committee was under the very traditional leadership of Avery Brundage. He was very opposed to the commercialization and pollicization of the Olympics. This was thought by some to be unrealistic and even classist. Perhaps, but that was the original idea of the modern Olympics, See https://the-philatelist.com/2019/02/07/1924-paris-olympics-the-last-of-the-modern-olympics-that-paid-homage-to-the-ancient-greeks/    .

Mexico was pressured heavily by the left leading up to the games. Many strikes suddenly popped up, with unions sensing this was the time to ask for more. Students then occupied a Mexico City university wanting revolution, not Olympics. They were in Latin America not Berkley and the army quickly surrounded them and mowed down hundreds and arrested the rest. Bet Nixon wished he could get away with that.

Once the games began, it was the turn of American blacks to distract from Mexico’s fresh face. The many black athletes started using raised fists during medal ceremonies to protest what they felt were the plight of blacks in the USA. Blacks in the USA were much better off than African blacks or even the average Mexican, but the cameras were there. Avery Brundage thought the display terribly disrespectful to the athletes own country and banned them permanently from the Olympics. Brundage’s old school tactics were not the future. Politics and professional athletes were the future. After offending Jews by continuing the 72 games after the Palestinian attacks, he was put out to pasture and accused of antisemitism. Don’t feel too bad for Mr. Brundage, the widower retired to a German spa town marrying a German Princess less than half his age. He spent his last years spending quickly his vast fortune.

Well my drink is empty, and I will pour another and toast the original idea of the Olympics, gentleman getting stronger physically and spiritually through physical competition. It can be no surprise that a stamp collector will commiserate with the old school among us. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

It would be so much better for the United States if Mexico was more prosperous. Aid, Mexican favored trade deals, legal guest workers have all been attempted to give Mexico a boost. Yet today there is a crisis at the border and since this stamp 25 percent of the population of Mexico has migrated out. There was a period between the forties and the seventies where it looked like this sad fate might be avoided. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp tries to put a brave face on economic progress. A Mexican made car travels on a modern highway and has been doing so for 25 years, which equates almost exactly to the American Interstate highway system. A closer look though reveals the flaws. The highway shown is only 38 miles long between Mexico City and a weekend getaway. It is a high toll road, so only available to the wealthy few in Mexico. The car is a Mexican assembled Renault 12, a modern in the day French car but one with only 54 horsepower so barely capable of expressway travel. When Mexico became slightly more open to foreign cars, the Renault factory quickly closed. Things are not quite as rosy as they seemed.

Todays stamp is issue C544, a 1.4 Peso airmail stamp issued by Mexico on November 30th, 1977. It was a single stamp issue that celebrates the 25th anniversary of the first section of the Autopista toll federal highway system. According to the Scott catalog the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

World War II was progressive for Mexico. They stayed out but opportunities for legal guest workers opened with the USA and there was a more friendly relationship with the USA. Mexicans had proved capable of factory work and the government set up a system that promoted local production of goods and kept out import competition. Exports to the USA were allowed and unique in the history of Mexico there was a twenty year period where Mexico was able to maintain a fixed exchange rate with the USA, which lessened the constant third world problem of capital flight. The government, a stable one party system, stigmatized immigration to America and cooperated with USA immigration to curb illegal crossers. The time saw on average 7 percent annual economic growth. However the population was growing so fast that it worked out to only 3 percent growth per capita.

In the seventies, the pattern of growth broke down. Excessive, non productive spending by the government saw to the first of many Peso devaluations. Naturally wage growth did not make up for the Peso’s buying power decline so the industrial worker paid a huge price. The industrialization had given the worker some skills and that opened up the ability to perform more than just agricultural work in America but much better paying jobs in construction and industry.

By the 80s, workers were flooding out of Mexico and there was the sad picture from the old days of the government looking north with it’s hand out. Bailouts followed and Mexico’s successful industrial policy was liberalized which saw much of it become foreign owned. The illegalities of illegal immigration expanded to drug and sex trafficking and law and order further broke down. The location next to the USA has seen Mexico, the 75 percent that stayed doing well by Latin America standards but the gnp per capita is a little less than 15 percent of the USA. This is about on a level with Brazil or China. I am sure the Mexicans hoped for more by now.

The Autopista system may have started the same time as the American Interstate system, but progress is slow and use is less due to the high tolls,(US$ .20 per mile). See below the gap filed current rout map. The best selling car is the Nissan Versa that is more highway capable and made in Mexico. Nissan is now owned by Renault and the Versa is a French design so what goes around comes around.

Well my drink is empty and after all the tolls there is nothing left to pay for another round. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

In 1910, Mexico celebrated 100 years of independence from Spain. So figures from the movement get their due in the form of a stamp issue. Among them the first female to be featured on any Latin American stamp. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This is another overly formal and impersonal Latin American stamp featuring a long gone figure. Leona Vicario was a young adventurous women of independent means who helped her country break away from Spain out of love for it and her man. This issue is from a long time ago and a different culture, but there should have been some way to include this history on the stamp. The 2010 200th anniversary Mexican issue does a better job with Miss Vicario.

Todays stamp is issue A37, a two centavo stamp issued by Mexico in 1910. The stamp features Mexican independence figure Leona Vicario and was part of an 11 stamp issue in various denominations on the centennial of Mexican independence. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents.

Leona Vicario was born to a wealthy Spanish merchant and his Mexican born wife. They died when Leona was 18 and she inherited their vast fortune. She bought a villa next door to her uncle but was free in a way that few women were in her time. At her Royalist uncle’s suggestion, she became engaged to a Spanish lawyer. When he transferred back to Spain without marriage, she took up with a pro independence lawyer named Andres Quintana Roo over her uncles objections. He was involved in the struggle for independence. She took up his cause and made donations and acted as a messenger for the movement.

When Leona’s activities were found out she fled and married her lover. At her uncle’s suggestion she returned to her villa but was detained by the Spanish authorities. With help from the rebels she was able to escape but this time she had her property confiscated. To partially make up for this the revolutionary Congress granted Leona a pension. Post independence she worked as the first female journalist and her husband was a prominent politician and judge. A Mexican state was named after him and Leona’s profile has graced a version of the Mexican 5 Peso coin. The two are buried together at the Independence Colum in Mexico City.

Well my drink is empty and I am left wondering how different Miss Vicario’s life would have been if her first intended hadn’t transferred back to Spain without her. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.