José Guadalupe Posada

El día de los muertos

Las calaveras

• prints in which all the characters are skeletons The Spanish word "calavera" means "skull", and by extension "skeleton". In the present case it designates miming every conceivable activity in human existence. Most of these prints were prepared for sale around All Souls' Day, November 2, when it is traditional to sell figurines, toys, cakes, candy, etc., in the form of skeletons, and to make elaborate offerings to dead relatives. Posada used his calavera prints as social reportage, as minifestos and as political and social satire.

La Catrina

These bicyclists each represent a contemporary newspaper company between 1889 and 1895. All are presumedly "racing" to cover a story

or perhaps "competing" in the marketplace.

Don Quijote

Gran fandango y francachela de todas las calaveras

Calavera de Oaxaca

"Calavera del gato morrongo" or the Calavera of the alley cat.

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A cemetery, presumably crowded with victims of the then fairly new electrical conveyances. There were many disasterous accidents, one or which involved the future artist Frida Kahlo, who spent most of the rest of her life in a

wheelchair due to a horrible trolly accident in which her spine was broken in several places. Frida Kahlo later became

an internationally acclaimed surrealistic artist who was also known

Francisco I. Madero (1873-1913) was a wealthy lawyer from the north of Mexico who by 1910 had crystallized around himself the opposition to Diaz's reelection. Escaping from prison to the north, Madero slowly descended on Mexico city after the outbreak of the Revolution (Nov. 20,

1910) and entered the capital in triumph in the spring of 1911, becoming President a few months later. He failed to rally the country around him, however, and was forced to combat several rebellions. One of his own generals, turned against him, forced him to resign, then had him

murdered in 1913. One of the purposes of the depiction of "calaveras" is to remind us, those with power and those without power, that the end comes for us all.