Those who were present say that on the afternoon of December 4, 1971, the Palace of Fine Arts was enveloped “in a fumarole with a combined smell of grass and incense.” That day, as announced in the newspapers, one of the venues Mexico’s most solemn cultural venues opened its doors for a “pop show” that lasted more than two hours and filled seats. The show included performances by dancers, poets, wrestlers, fakirs and rockers. It was a Saturday, five o’clock in the afternoon at Bellas Artes. However, the following Monday, the director of the National Institute of Fine Arts handed in his resignation and the event disappeared from official archives, according to writer Federico Rubli in his new book Prometeo 71 (Trilce, 2023). The journalist has been asking himself a question for several years: how did this event happen in the first place?
Rubli, 68 years old and 17 in December 1971, was not at Bellas Artes on the afternoon that Prometeo Espectáculo Pop was presented, although he has dedicated his life to writing about rock and was a reporter for the weekly México at the time was Canta, He was unaware of the event until 2017, when musician and manager Armando Molina emailed him with a newspaper clipping. Rubli was in disbelief and replied, “The truth is that this does not sit well with me with the repression and censorship against rock that was unleashed after Avándaro.” In September, the Avándaro rock festival took place a few kilometers from Mexico City, a Mexican-style woodstock that marked the rise and fall of rock in the country. The event outraged the government and press, and the genre disappeared from radio and concerts for a decade.
Federico Rubli shows one of the pages of his new book ‘Prometeo71’. Inaki Malvido
How was it then possible that the authorities had approved an event “so progressive, avant-garde and competitive,” Rubli wondered. First of all, how was it possible that the government of PRI member Luis Echevarría allowed it when the bill listed two groups that had played in Avándaro, Peace & Love and the Dug Dug’s. The journalist began a four-year investigation to “salvage a buried event,” he said at the book launch at a cafeteria in Mexico City’s Roma neighborhood this week. Rubli interviewed nearly twenty people whose memories sometimes became inaccurate. One of the first calls was to the painter Arnaldo Coen, who organized the event together with his brothers Amílcar and Aristides and together with the producer Roberto Mosqueira.
Coen told Rubli that the presentation approval was “a fortuitous, unexpected and fortuitous opportunity”: “We met the Director of Fine Arts at a party. We started talking to him about the show and he said, ‘Why don’t we put it in the visual arts? He offered us the box office and he couldn’t offer us anything else.” The 82-year-old painter, who won the 2014 National Science and Arts Award, wore black sneakers, baggy gray pants and two T-shirts under his vest on Tuesday. He has been bald for years but still has the unkempt beard he had when he was young.During the presentation, he sat with his cane in one hand and recalled that “amazing” afternoon: “The excitement of getting into the visual arts getting in was fascinating.”
In fact, Prometeo Espectáculo Pop had been presented for the first time months earlier at the Israelite Sports Center on the outskirts of Mexico City. Exhibiting it in the fine arts only required some adjustments as the space was larger. The show was the result of several experiments studied by various artists who met in the capital’s Zona Rosa in those years. Coen recalled the atmosphere in an interview for the book: “There was a really extraordinary variety of people that we met. In the end it was everyday life. If you wanted to meet someone, you went to the Zona Rosa, to one of the cafés, you went to the galleries, and artists from all kinds of disciplines met there.”
The original poster of ‘Prometeo Espectáculo Pop’. Inaki Malvido
On the day of the presentation at Bellas Artes, those who could not get tickets or could not pay for tickets at the stands and boxes “went like flies,” Coen recalled. About 2,000 people had been left outside the compound without entering it. The show began with a character reciting onstage the beginning of Prometheus in Chains, the Greek tragedy based on the myth of the Titan who defied the gods and suffered eternal punishment. The story was interrupted by another character jumping out of the audience and shooting at the man reciting. “A tremendous noise began. This shrill music led to zen music and some dancers camouflaged with the backdrop started coming out,” Coen recounted.
Performing during the show were fakirs, fire eaters and snake charmers, wrestlers, poets reciting verses, other dancers stripping to the rhythm of the blues and three of the most important rock bands of the moment: Peace & Love, the Dug Dug’s also made an appearance and Javier Bátiz, the star musician of the event. Rubli believes that one of the reasons his appearance was possible was because “the stone was hidden in the poster” and “went unnoticed” by the authorities. Felipe Maldonado, who played keyboards with Peace & Love, told Rubli: “I don’t think rock was ever played there again in the history of the palace.” Los locos del ritmo performed. At the end, playwright Juan José Gurrola appeared to deliver the closing monologue, and then the curtain fell.
Rubli’s book is full of pictures that give an idea of what it was like. Pages from Arnaldo Coen’s notebook with the first sketches; Newspaper clippings announcing “avant-garde activities”; Photographs of a nude dancer whose body is painted with pink, green and red circles, or a snapshot of Armando Nava, the leader of the Dug Dugs, wearing a tails on stage. “It was our way of breaking with this paradigm of official culture in the visual arts. We didn’t do it with that intention, that’s what happened,” said Roberto Mosqueira, who was the show’s producer and is 74 today. This was done without presumption, he assured: “We never have the meaning of a future and less of a present. We were there, we wanted to do something, we did it and that was enough.”
Arnaldo Coen in his studio Nayeli Cruz
The following day, Sunday, the Excelsior newspaper chronicled the show, and on Monday, Miguel Bueno, who had been director of the National Institute of Fine Arts for a year, handed in his resignation. Rubli makes some hypotheses in the book as to why Bueno licensed the show. His ideas come from interviews Bueno gave before his death in 2000: “At that time his relationship with the authorities was very bad and he felt that his departure from the institute was near. He may have thought that he no longer minds taking the risk of doing something innovative and revolutionary. With this he could set a sign of independence (…) On the other hand it was a way of showing the secretary [de Educación Pública, Víctor Bravo Ahúja] that he could put on an impressive show without a budget.”
Rubli, through requests under the Transparency Act, attempted to examine the records remaining at the INBA from that day. But he didn’t get the information he was looking for. “Officially and formally, there is no reference in the Institute’s archives (…) Prometheus did not exist,” the author writes in the book. He only found references in some publications, but these documents are not “official and formal”. “After the authorities described the show as an embarrassing, immoral and undignified act that should never have reached the Fine Arts Forum, it was to be expected that they would want to erase all traces of what happened,” claims the author.
A picture in the Chronicle of the newspaper “Excélsior” about “Prometheus Pop Show”. WITH KIND APPROVAL
Prometeo Espectáculo Pop organizers ran out of box office money and lost all the production they had prepared for the show. “Well we owed it, but we have to thank him,” Coen said Tuesday. He later explained, “It was a spontaneous act, born from the heart and gut, from an effort we put in, but at the same time it was hilarious. I remember buying charro shirts with shields on them [de México]Buy the Virgins of Guadalupe with sequins… I think that spontaneity is extremely important for creativity and above all for freedom. Freedom is the shield that those of us who want to engage in art can bring.”
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