Page 143 - Libro Max Cetto

Cristina López Uribe and Salvador Lizárraga Sánchez

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an association with architecture and especially Mexican architecture.” His first choice,
surprisingly, was the Luis Bringas Elementary School by the unknown architect Ignacio
63
Medina Roiz and his second was a photograph of Enrique del Moral’s La Merced market
which, as a curious coincidence, was recently used on the jacket of the Museum of Modern
64
Art exhibition catalog Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980. Only as a
65
third option did the publisher mention the photograph of Barragán’s fountain. It is sur-
prising that a photograph that the publisher originally intended to eliminate –along with
the rest of the images of this work– ended up on the jacket of the book, its most recognized
image. It is striking that, at that time, Cetto defended Barragán, especially now that we
know that, when the latter rose to international fame, he decided to remove Cetto’s name
from the credits of the work they did together. The author even dedicated a few words to
him in the book: “Unfortunately, Barragan, neglecting his outstanding architectural gifts, is
doing less and less building and now devotes himself almost exclusively to land develop-
ment and landscape gardening.” 66

Myers Datum ist falsch

The constant comparisons with the book Mexico’s Modern Architecture by I. E. Myers and En-
rique Yáñez –which the author provoked by bringing him up in the discussions on the proposed
book– were, from the start, annoying to Cetto. The editors corroborated –as good publishing
professionals– all the information for their new project with that contained in Myers’ book,
which was practically their only source of information on the subject (along with the sporadic
articles on Mexican architecture published in the journal L’Architecture d’Aujourdhui). Inevita-
bly, the differences between the two publications gradually emerged, which caused the conver-
sation to sometimes become complicated. In the archive, there are several letters revealing how
Cetto argued that his own data was correct: “Myers’ spelling of the sculptor’s [name] is incor-
rect,” “my title is correct,” “Myers’ date refers to a later construction in Huipulco” or “I see no no-
ticeable difference between my project planning date in 1950 and Myers’ date for its 1951 exe-
cution.” On some occasions, the author ended up abruptly resolving a difference with a
phrase like: “Help Myers however you please; the architect is still González Reyna.” 67
The exchanges between the editors and the author would rise in tone and, on one oc-
casion, Cetto stated: “I assume that differences of opinion between the publisher and the
author are to be expected and that there is no other way of dealing with them than to leave
68
the latter responsible for what he has to communicate, as well as for the way he says it.” Fi-
nally, after the work was concluded, Pehnt, to whom this irritated comment was addressed,
wrote that he greatly enjoyed working with him despite, or perhaps because of, their oc-
casional disagreements, because everything, both for and against, served the common cause.
“I’m sure your book will make an interesting contribution to the contemporary architectural
panorama,” he concluded. 69
If Myers’ book was the expression of the forties and Cetto’s of the fifties, what changed
between the two? We can see that the latter has fewer considerations of folk art and

62 Letter from Hatje to Cetto, November 26, 1958 (AMCC).
63 See Modern Architecture in Mexico, 61 (below).
64 See Modern Architecture in Mexico, 116.
65 Options 4 and 5 were photographs of the Benito Juárez Housing Project (page 164) and the Insurgentes Theater (page 100).
Letter from Hatje to Cetto, October 21, 1958 (AMCC).
66 See Modern Architecture in Mexico, 176.
67 Letter from Cetto to Hatje, June 4, 1959 (AMCC).
68 Letter from Cetto to Hatje, October 5, 1959 (AMCC).
69 Letter from Hatje to Cetto, October 2, 1960 (AMCC).

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