Pantomime Operation

Eloísa Mora Ojeda

Fernando Gamboa rescued the Mexican artworks when the city downtown was set afire during the 1948 Bogotazo riots after the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, and his actions became a mythic tale. Upon his return to Mexico, Fernando Gamboa, the curator and exhibition rescuer, was celebrated in many ways, one of which was the recounting of his great feat through a corrido, or ballad. Isabel Villaseñor, a young artist and corrido composer, wrote it to commemorate the Bogotá event. At that time, corrido sheets (hojas de corrido) featured lyrics often accompanied by images. In this case, the hoja de corrido included an engraving by Mexican artist José Chávez Morado. In 2013, as part of the artwork Pantomime Operation by Eloísa Mora Ojeda, the artist worked with a corrido band from Pueblo Nuevo, Oaxaca called Los Mineros del Progreso. Los Mineros del Progreso played and recorded Isabel Villaseñor’s amazing piece of Mexico’s musical archive as well as their own corridos.

The musical project was a section of Pantomime Operation, which is an index of the archival intervention done by Eloísa Mora Ojeda as a blog: volumen13.wordpress.com