Seth Fein. "Pedro Armendariz" (1997), pp. 102-02.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

MEXICO History, Society & Culture VOLUME I A-L

EDITOR MICHAEL S. WERNER Cartograp her T O M WILLCOCKSON, MAPCRAFT Woodstock, Illinois Indexer AEIOU, INC. Pleasantville, New York Commissioning Editor ROBERT M. SALKIN

FITZROY DEARBORN PUBLISHERS CHICAGO

LONDON

ARMENDARIZ, PEDRO Pinoncelli, Salvador, "La arquitectura en Mexico 1940-1960." In Apuntes para la historia y critica de la arquitectura mexicana del siglo X X 1900-1980, vol. 2, Cuadernos de arqrritectura y conseruacion delpatrimonio nrtisdco. Mexico City: Secretaria de Educaci6n Pliblica/Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1982. Ricalde, Hurnberto, and Gustavo Lbpez, "Arquitectura en Mexico 1960-1 980." In Apuntes para la historia y critica de la arquitecttcra mexicana del siglo AX 1900-1980, vol. 2, Cuadernos de arquitectura y conseruacion del pntrimonio artistico. Mexico City: Secretaria de Educaci6n Pliblica/Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1982. Rivadeneyra, Patricia, "Hannes Meyer en Mexico (1938-1949)." In Apuntes parn la historia y critica de la arquitectura mexicana del siglo X X 1900-1980, vol. 1, Cuadernos de arquitectura y conservacidn delpatrimonio artistico. Mexico City: Secretaria de Educaci6n Pliblica/Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1982. Rivera, Diego, " La huella de la historia y la geografia en la arquitectura rnexicana." In Cuadernos de Arquitectura 14 (September 1964).

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Rispa, Raul, editor, Barragdn: The Complete Works. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. Ruiz Barbarin, Antonio, "Rationalist Stage." In Barragin: The Complete Works, edited by Raul Rispa. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. Siller, Juan Antonio, "Precencia prehispinica en la arquitectura neoMaya de Yucatin." In Cuadernos de arquitectura mesoamericana 9 (January 1987). Toca Fernindez, Antonio, "Evoluci6n critica de la arquitectura en Mexico 1900-1 990." In La arquitectura mexicana del siglo AX, edited by Fernando Gonzilez Gortdzar. Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1994. Vargas Salguero, Ramon, "El Imperio de la Raz6n." In La arquitectura mexicana del siglo XX,edited by Fernando Gonzilez Gortizar. Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1994. Villagrin Garcia, Jose, Zoria de la Arquitectura, edited by Ram6n Vargas Salguero. Mexico City: UNAM, 1989.

ARMENDARIZ, PEDRO 1 9 12-63

N o actor more than Pedro Armendiriz exemplified the official nationalism of the so-called Golden Age of Mexican Cinema that climaxed in the 1940s. T h e favored star of the indtgena genre associated with the work of director Emilio "El Indio" Fernindez and cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, Armendiriz became the face of Mexico for foreign film audiences. By the end of his career, he had appeared in more than 4 0 Mexican films and almost 3 0 foreign productions, including important Hollywood features. Despite his nationalist roles, his career exemplified the transnational foundation of Golden Age Mexican Cinema. Born M a y 9 , 1 9 1 2 , i n C h u r u b u s c o , Mexico City, Armendiriz was reared as a n adolescent in San Antonio, Texas, and later attended the California Polytechnic Institute. As a young man he worked on the Mexican railroad and as a Mexico City guide to foreign tourists before entering acting. After a brief career on the stage, the future matinee idol made his screen debut in 1935 in Rosario, just as sound production was advancing in Mexico City studios. His rise to stardom, however, took place in the following decade, when Mexican film expanded internationally. Armendiriz's most notable work, undertaken during- the mid-1940s, involved romantic, often historical, films set in provincial Mexico. Frequently his roles were representations of Indians and mestizos. Armendiriz's connections t o the United States were complex, especially considering the nationalist label fre-

Actor

q u e n t l y applied t o his Mexican work. T h i s complexity reflected the Mexican industry's overall relationship with Hollywood and the U.S. government as it developed during World War 11. O n e of his early wartime roles, as the patriotic mestizo bandit Lupe in Soy puro rnexicano (1942), directed by Fernindez, demonstrates this pattern. To support Mexico's u n p o p u l a r wartime alliance w i t h t h e United States, the movie refashioned Mexican nationalism as antifascism, as part o f t h e nation's struggle for sovereignty rather t h a n collaboration with a historically imperialist aggressor. T h e film's representation of mestizaje as the ethnic symbol of the state set a pattern for postwar film-making through which Armendiriz became the leading- male filmic personification of the nation. (The production itself was born from the Mexican film industry's collaboration with the U.S. government, which, through the intervention of Nelson Rockefeller's Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, accelerated and shaped the Golden Age of Mexican cinema's industrial and ideological development.) In his numerous works with Fernindez and Figueroa, Armendlriz offered often passionate performances that personified official rhetoric in mass entertainment. Postwar films that centered on Mexican history and indigenous culture sought to strengthen the state's ideological project, producing nationalist cultural emblems that masked the ever-more conservative political and socioeconomic project

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fostered by the state. Figueroa's use of dramatically angled close-ups of the Mexican star accentuated the actor's physical features to craft an image congruent with official versions of nationalist ideology. His association with this cinematic nationalism of Fernindez and Figueroa included many features focused on, or at least set in, Mexican history. In Enamorada (1946), Fernindez and Figueroa's adaptation of Shakespeare's Taming of the S/?rew, Arrnendiriz played a Revolutionary general who wins the heart of an independent-minded provincial beauty (Maria Felix) by forcing her to yield to his patriarchal control. In many of these wartime films he played opposite Dolores del Rio. In Flor Siluestre (1943), as Jose Luis Castro, he defies his conservative, hacendado father by marrying a local commoner, Esperanza (del Rio), and joining the forces of revolutionary change, only to die tragically at the hands of bandits after the war is won. Bugambilia relates a similarly tragic love story, starring del Rio, set in nineteenth-century Guanajuato. In Las Abandonadas (1944), Armendiriz plays a Revolutionary-era general who falls in love with a virtuous woman (del Rio) forced into prostitution by circumstance. Again, the hero's untimely murder cuts short the love affair, but del Rio's character perseveres and triumphs through their son's success as an attorney. Armendiriz also portrayed other urban types in socially significant dramas. In 1 9 4 3 , for instance, he starred in the politically provocative Distinto Amanecer as Octavio, a union operative, who with the help of his lover Julieta (Andrea Palma), successfully escapes assassination by a corrupt governor (who has already murdered an honest labor leader) to fight for workers' rights. T h e themes of his most enduring Fernindez-Figueroa films, however, combined romantic visual representations of indigenous race and rural landscape with messages stressing social justice, condemning exploitation. In the iconographic Maria Candelaria (1943), for example, an over-sexed, corrupt mestizo merchant victimizes Armendiriz's character ( ~ b r e n z oRafael), who unsuccessfully defends the honor of del Rio before she is stoned to death over a false rumor of a romantic transgression with a white outsider. In La Perla, based on John Steinbeck's original script, he played Quino, member of an indigenous fishing village whose discovery of a gigantic pearl brings tragedy instead of happiness a t the hands of local white elites. T h e Mexican industry's first internationally distributed bilingual production, the movie was released in the United States as The Pearl in 1948. T h e Mexican company FAMA co-produced the feature with RKO at ~

Estudios Churubusco, the modern production site the U.S. studio built in partnership with Mexican media magnate Emilio Azcirraga during World War 11. Directed by Fernindez a n d p h o t o g r a p h e d by Figueroa, t h e film launched Armendiriz's crossover to Hollywood films. John Ford cast him in a leading role alongside his frequent Mexican film partner, del Rio, and Henry Fonda in The Fugitive (1947), based on Graham Greene's anti-anticlerical Mexican tale, The Power and the Glory (1940). Distributed by RKO, the film was shot entirely in Mexico, on location and at Estudios Churubusco, by Figueroa. (Fernindez served as Ford's assistant on the project.) T h e following year, the U.S. director cast Armendiriz as a Mexican-American in two films s t a r r i n g J o h n Wayne, as a Spanish-speaking U.S. army sergeant in Fort Apache and as an ultimately redeemed outlaw in Three Godfathers. In Tulsa (1949), starring Susan Hayward, he played an Oklahoma Native American involved in an oil controversy. The Torch (1950), another Fernindez-Figueroa collaboration, was an English-language remake of Enamorada; Paulette Goddard played Maria Felix's part. Although generally cast in Hollywood as Latin American, Mexican American, or Native American, Armendiriz's English-language roles traversed a wide spectrum. In 1955, he even starred in a Mexican-made, juvenile Disney farce, The Littlest Outlaw. And perhaps the actor is best known internationally as James Bond's Turkish ally in From Russia with Love (1963). Armendiriz's international career was not unprecedented, but it reversed the dominant migration pattern of many Mexican movie stars; such as his perpetual screen cornpanion Dolores del Rio, who repatriated, bringing Hollywood-obtained skills to the Mexican industry as it expanded in the 1940s. Instead, as the Golden Age - of Mexican Cinema waned in the postwar period, Armendiriz transferred his Mexican movie-acting experience (and Latin American boxoffice popularity) to Hollywood. But even as he played in international films, he continued to make Mexican movies. Notable of his later national work is his portrayal of Pancho Villa in the episodic historical trilogy directed by Ismael Rodriguez: Asi era Pancho Villa (Cuentos de Pancho Villa; 1957), Pancho Villa y la Valentina (1958), and Cuando ;Viva Villa! es la muerte (1958). Armendiriz committed suicide in 1963, after learning that he had terminal cancer. His son, Pedro Jr., has had a notable, although less successful, career as a film and television actor.