Pareja oaxaqueña [Oaxacan Couple]

Jesús Escobedo was a member of the Taller de Gráfica Popular [People’s Graphic Workshop], a socially engaged art collective. In this lithograph, the artist reflects on the growth pf urban Mexico in the 1930s and 1940s. As the population and the number of vehicles transporting them increased, so did the need for automatic traffic lights, which Mexico City began installing in the 1930s. Here Escobedo seems to contrast this conspicuous sign of modern living, the electric traffic light, with the appearance of an Indigenous couple, dressed in traditional clothes. The older rhythms of life seemed forever altered by a set of electric signs regulating their movements through the public space.