Carlos Obregón Santacilia and Pablo Neruda

The two trajectories of these creators in appearance very different, coincided in the forty, in the Mexican cultural environment, to achieve each, great moments in their professional lives. This relationship of work and friendship remains as a witness, a book, the result of one of the most extraordinary editorial processes of the time. Go these lines that cross architecture and poetry to tell us a special story.

 

"This is my friend named Carlos,

it doesn't matter who, don't ask, they don't know,

had the goodness of good bread on the table

and a melancholy air of wounded knight."

Pablo Neruda. 1961.

Little is known about architects beyond their constructive legacy. We hardly know their tastes, their hobbies, their friendships outside of other architects with whom they worked, of whom they were disciples, or of whom they were teachers. The reality is that most of the architectural professionals who developed their work during the twentieth century belonged to broader intellectual circles through which they nurtured their work, broadened their vision of culture and debated art, Mexican politics and daily life.

One of the characters who came to enrich these circles during the 1940s was the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. In 1940, he was appointed Consul General of Chile in Mexico and upon his arrival in our country, he found an effervescent cultural life fed by numerous Spanish exiles residing in the capital. During this first visit, the poet testified that, as he would later write in his memoirs, "Mexico's intellectual life was dominated by painting", so he forged a good friendship with those who conducted it at the time: muralists José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

It is likely that thanks to them he also met a person who left a deep mark on the life of the Chilean: the architect Carlos Obregón Santacilia. Obregón from the beginning of his career sought to complement architecture with other arts and as in Mexico it was considered that painting was at a peak, had close treatment with muralists and integrated his works into several of his constructions. Remember that at the moment, he was carrying out works such as the Guardiola building or the Hotel del Prado, for which Rivera was preparing his famous mural Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Central.

In these years the architect Obregón was a very active person both in the architectural environment and in other cultural areas. He also served as president of the Society of Mexican Architects and was also dedicated to writing essays, presentations and other academic court texts. In the personal sphere, he liked to organize meetings to accommodate his friends, as when the architect Mauricio Gómez Mayorga published his book The Angel of Time, showing that "poetry is not at odds with architecture". It was not strange that they liked this one as they also enjoyed other arts, as well as the kitchen so he himself chose the menu for that festival.

Neruda left Mexico in 1943, but a few years later, when the architect Obregón traveled to Lima, Peru, to present a presentation at the Pan American Congress of Architects, he took the opportunity to tour some other countries, including Chile. There he visited Neruda and his wife Delia who even told him about the problems they were going through at the time. After his stay in Mexico, Neruda became so involved in his country's political life that he was even a senator from 1945 to 1946 and then, already as a member of the Communist party, he took over the propaganda for Gabriel González Videla's presidential campaign.

By the years of Obregón's visit, the whole landscape had changed and Neruda, betrayed by the new president he had supported, was in the middle of a lawsuit through the Senate and the press, so he was charged with slander and insults , desoriated, persecuted and forced to live underground. Two years later, in 1949, Neruda managed to escape his country and in August he returned to Mexico. His situation here was difficult, with few resources, sick and with all the emotional burden of the moments he had lived in his country. It was at those time that the idea of publishing the General Song began to be gestated.

To achieve this company, his Mexican friends supported him without hesitation. Soon an editorial commission was organized composed of people like María Asúnsolo, Enrique de los Ríos, Wenceslao Roces and of course, his good friend the architect Obregón. It was then decided that the edition would be financed through subscriptions. It is not uncommon for the architect to also be part of the first ones who made contributions at the time. Shortly before he had published Mexico as the axis of the ancient architectures of America and the ideas he expressed in this work about the importance of ancient Mesoamerican cultures, tradition and their projection as part of Mexican contemporaneity, they were compatible with Neruda's interest in expressing through his poems the struggle of the American peoples for their freedom since they were conquered.

In this way the committee decided that the first subscribers would obtain a numbered copy signed by Neruda, Rivera and Siqueiros, because the painters, to support their poet friend, elaborated an illustration for the book's guards. The price would be 100 Mexican pesos at the time. In the end, 500 copies were printed from this first edition and 300 books signed by the authors. In addition to the architect Obregón, among the subscribers were Ignacio Chávez, Gabriel Figueroa, Carlos Pellicer, Dolores Olmedo, Lázaro Cárdenas, Luis Buñuel, Luis Barragán, among other Mexican and international personalities.

The edition could be financed without problem, now we had to find a place to sign the copies. Again, the architect Obregón solved the problem by offering his tlacopac home as the site to hold long-awaited meeting. It was on April 3, 1950, when authors, subscribers and friends met to finish with one of the most extraordinary editorial processes of the time. Apparently, no further comment was made on the post after the event. Neruda traveled to Europe but the friendships he made in Mexico were endearing.

Today the Canto General is considered to be one of the most important books of Neruda, the top of the process of awareness of America, a rediscovery of Chile and the indigenous past of the continent. At the time of the preparation of the book of Neruda, Obregón also had one of its most emblematic buildings: the office building of the imss on the Paseo de la Reforma, inaugurated in the same year of the edition of the work of Neruda, 1950. The two trajectories of these creators in appearance very different, coincided in the forty, in the Mexican cultural environment, to achieve each, great moments in their professional lives.

When Obregón Santacilia died in 1961, Neruda wrote a poem in his memory, showing how he perceived him in life, as a good, generous, hard-working man, somewhat withdrawn and melancholy. We do not know if before his death they saw each other again at some point, most likely they kept correspondence communication, as he also hints in his poem, but still in the distance, through him he feels the loss of a good friend, someone who supported him in a or the most difficult moments of his life and that helped him with what would be one of the most important companies of his career.

"I write these words in my book thinking

that this naked goodbye in that it is not present,

this simple letter that has no answer,

it's nothing but dust, cloud, ink, words

and the only truth is that my friend is dead."

 

by Paulina Martínez Figueroa