Reading the image, looking at the text: a commentary of two photographs about the Mexican Neo- Zapatismo

Abstract

This text is intended as a possible implementation exercise of the most comprehensive project to build a ‘Critical History of the Act of Looking’. For this reason, it initially presents the general outlines of this potential critical history of the act of looking before going on to review how the images of the indigenous Mexican have been constructed and modified within the history of Mexico in the 19th, 20th and 21st Centuries, particularly on the basis of their projection in the photographic records in which those images have been condensed. Finally, and on the basis of these theoretical and analytical premises, two widely disseminated photographs, currently valued as ‘classic’, of rebel neo-Zapatista women are studied and interpreted through an investigation of the context of their creation, their social impact, their various readings and possible general meaning.