Early Biography Of Diego Rivera

Carlos Maria and Diego Maria Rivera Barrientos age one (Diego on right), 1887

Diego Rivera was born Jose Diego Maria along with his twin brother Jose Carlos Maria, who died at the age of two, in Guanajuato, Mexico in December of 1886 to Diego Rivera and Maria del Pilar Barrientos. The senior Diego Rivera is said to have been of Russian decent and to have fought alongside Benito Juarez, the first president of Mexico after the fall of the Emperor Maximillian of Mexico (1863-1867), and to have been the owner of silver mines around Guanajato. His mother was meztiso of mixed Spanish and Indian blood, as most people of Mexican decent are. This connection to historic revolutionary events through his father and the connection to indigenous peoples of the land through his mother gave the young Diego a sense of his worth as a Mexicano. This idea of Mexicanism is not truly explored or appreciated by the educated public of Mexico until the revolution of 1910 renews a sense of pride among the people of Mexico. Previous to this all art and culture was thought to have to be of European origin to be of any value or merit. The primary source of this European Culture for Mexico was derived from Paris. So it is no suprise that the young Diego Rivera idealizes French painters and art and that his goal as a young man was to study painting with Cezanne. The ruling classes of the late 19th and the very early 20th centuries imitated French culture, fashions and strove to speak French as often as possible. The Dictator President of Mexico Don Porfirio Diaz, said to have been of Zapotec Indian ancestry, had his wife help him bleach his skin a lighter shade of brown to better fit in with the Mexican aristocracy of the late 19th century. When Diaz fled Mexico in 1910 he went to Paris to live out the remainder of his years in the comfort and French style he had grown accustomed to at his Chapultapec Palace in Mexico City. Mexico was not culturally modern until the revolution of 1910 exposed the true value of the indigenous cultures and historical artifacts of past centuries, before this Mexico was only imitations of various European cultures built upon the ruins of thousands of years of indigenous cultures. The indigenous cultures of Mexico had long been suppressed and destroyed by European arrogance, disease and religion and were not considered of any value to the ruling elite. From the 16th to the early 20th centuries all cultural eyes looked to Europe for its art and culture, almost totally ignoring anything that had existed previous to the European’s appearance on the shores of Veracruz or the folk life of the descendants of the original inhabitants.