Gustavo Sáenz de Sicilia Olivares | |
---|---|
![]() Sáenz de Sicilia circa 1922 | |
Born | |
Died | January 15, 1950 64) [1] | (aged
Occupation | Film producer |
Years active | 1923-1937 |
Known for | Founder of Mexican Fascist Party |
Notable work | Santa Prisoner 13 |
Spouse | Elisa Urruchua Carmona |
Gustavo Sáenz de Sicilia Olivares (November 25, 1885 – January 15, 1950) was a Mexican silent film director, producer, journalist, civil engineer, and founder of Compañía Nacional Productora de Películas. [2] Sáenz de Sicilia is regarded as an important figure during the silent era of Mexican cinema as well as a key influence for the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. Throughout his life, he wrote for Excélsior under the pen name Ingeniero Gallo. [3] [4] [5]
A staunch anti-communist, Sáenz de Sicilia was also politically active. He founded the short lived Mexican Fascist Party as well as the far-right Confederation of the Middle Class (Spanish : Confederación de la Clase Media or CCM) organization in the 1920s and 1930s respectively. [3] [6] [7]
Gustavo Sáenz de Sicilia was born to Jesús Sáenz de Sicilia Aguilar and Maria Luisa Olivares Garces. His family were very wealthy aristocratics with close ties to the Porfiriato government. [8] [9] [3]
He studied at the Heroic Military Academy. After graduating, Sáenz de Sicilia studied civil engineering abroad in many different countries. [9]
Sáenz de Sicilia fought during the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s on the side of the Huertistas. [9] [10] According to Valentín Campa, he took part in the assassination of Gustavo A. Madero while under the command of Victoriano Huerta. [10]
Sáenz de Sicilia was an assistant to the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs during the Obregón presidency before being let go for "personal differences" in the early 1920s. [3] [4]
Sáenz de Sicilia began his silent film career in 1922 co-directing Aguiluchos Mexicanos with Miguel Contreras Torres. [4]
Sáenz de Sicilia produced as well as made his directorial debut with Atavismo, released in 1923. [4] [11]
In late 1928, Sáenz de Sicilia, along with his brother Enrique, founded the film production company Compañía Productora de Películas Nacionales S.C.L. with the motive to revitalize the Mexican film industry. [11] [3] The first film the company produced was La boda de Rosario starring Carlos Rincón Gallardo, written and directed by Sáenz de Sicilia himself. [11]
In 1930, he founded a film editorial entitled Filmográfico later named Cinema Reporter. [4]
In 1932, the production company released Santa starring Lupita Tovar. The film was a massive success. [11]
In February 1936, Sáenz de Sicilia filmed an anti-communist rally in Monterrey entitled Manifestación anticomunista de Monterrey. The film was barred from showing by the Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers. Following this incident, Sáenz de Sicilia retired from directing. [4] [11]
Gustavo Sáenz de Sicilia founded the Mexican Fascist Party in December 1922, drafting the party's manifesto titled Manifiesto del Partido Fascista Mexicano a la Nación a month later. [12] [7] The party set out to empower the middle class and counteract Bolshevik and communist influence in Mexico. [12] Sáenz de Sicilia announced in February 1923 that membership of the party had reached 100,000 members and discussed the possibility of the party reaching over a million members in 6 months time, a wildly exaggerated claim as membership of the party never exceed 400. [12] In April, Sáenz de Sicilia had told Carleton Beals there were 150,000 members in the fascist party. [13] In reality, the party never had a significant number of members and dissolved sometime in mid 1923. [12]
On June 19, 1936, Sáenz de Sicilia, along with his brother Enrique, founded the Middle Class Confederation (Spanish : Confederación de la Clase Media or CCM). The group was characterized to be far-right, fascist, and vehemently anti-communist. [7] [5]
The primary objective of the group, according to Sáenz de Sicilia, was to constitute a social defense and unity among the middle class as he considered the middle class in Mexico to have lacked rights and social protection in Mexico. An objective of the CCM was to unite with the Nationalist Mexican Youth, the Nationalist Association of Small Agricultural Owners, the National Civic Action and the National Pro-Race Committee groups. [7] [14] [5]
The group was heavily opposed to the government structure set forth by Lázaro Cárdenas as well as the nation-wide labor strikes which were occurring during this period. [7] [14] The group worked closely with other right-wing organizations including the Revolutionary Mexicanist Action paramilitary. [5]
The party was estimated to have between 30 and 40 members, a considerate number of them had been members of the Revolutionary Mexicanist Action. Most members resided in very upscale neighborhoods including Colonia Santa María la Ribera. [5]
In August 1936, Sáenz de Sicilia was arrested along with 8 others for displaying Revolutionary Mexicanist Action propaganda in Mexico City. [5]
In 1937, the organization tried unsuccessfully to organize an Ibero-American anti-communist conference in Havana. This drew interest and support from representatives of the fascist governments of Germany, Italy and Spain. [5]
The CCM became much more inactive sometime in 1939. This followed the government's crackdown on right-wing organizations after Saturnino Cedillo's rebellion in 1938. [3] Members of the CCM helped establish the Revolutionary Party of National Unification, supporting Juan Andreu Almazán's presidential bid in 1940. [3] [5] The CCM supported Almazán's campaign in exchange for financial support, however, the money was never delivered. [3]
The organization dissolved with little money and with insignificant political power at the beginning of the Camacho presidency. [3]
Gustavo Sáenz de Sicilia was a descendant of a powerful Spanish 17th century priest and farmer who was given plots of land by the Spanish Monarchy near both Popocatépetl and Iztaccihuatl. [8] [9] [3]
Sáenz de Sicilia died in Mexico City on January 15, 1950, of a cerebral hemorrhage. [1]
Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Notes | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1923 | Atavismo | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
1926 | Un drama en la aristocracia | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
1929 | La boda de Rosario | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
1932 | Santa | No | No | Yes | Also credited as Production Management | |
1932 | Una vida por otra | No | Yes | No | Co-written along with John H. Auer and Carlos Noriega Hope | |
1933 | El prisionero trece | No | No | Yes | ||
1938 | La cuna vacía | No | Yes | No | Co-written along with Miguel Zacarías | |
1949 | Rondalla | No | Yes | No | Based on Sáenz de Sicilia's Están Llorando los Trigales |
Lázaro Cárdenas del Río was a Mexican army officer and politician who served as president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940. Previously, he served as a general in the Constitutional Army during the Mexican Revolution and as Governor of Michoacán and President of the Institutional Revolutionary Party. He later served as the Secretary of National Defence. During his presidency, which is considered the end of the Maximato, he implemented massive land reform programs, led the expropriation of the country's oil industry, and implemented many key social reforms.
Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado was a Cuban politician who served as the president of Cuba from 1959 to 1976. He was a close ally of Cuban revolutionary and longtime leader Fidel Castro.
Roque Victoriano González Garza was a Mexican general and politician who served as acting President of Mexico from January to June 1915. He was appointed by the Convention of Aguascalientes during the Mexican Revolution, and had previously been an important advisor to President Francisco Madero and a member of the Chamber of Deputies. He was later a founder of the anti-communist, xenophobic, antisemitic, nationalist Revolutionary Mexicanist Action party and its leader from 1933 to 1934.
The Mexican Democratic Party was a Catholic social conservative political party in Mexico that existed between 1979 and 1997. At its height in 1982, the party had over 500,000 active voters and 12 seats in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies.
The Mexican Communist Party was a communist party in Mexico. It was founded in 1917 as the Socialist Workers' Party by Manabendra Nath Roy, a left-wing Indian revolutionary. The PSO changed its name to the Mexican Communist Party in November 1919. It was outlawed in 1925 by the government of Plutarco Elías Calles and remained illegal until 1935, during the presidency of the leftist Lázaro Cárdenas. The PCM saw the left wing of the nationalist regime that emerged from the Mexican Revolution—i.e. Cárdenas and his allies—as a progressive force to be supported. The PCM disappeared after helping form the Party of the Democratic Revolution, a split from the PRI led by the son of Lázaro Cárdenas, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas.
The National Synarchist Union was a Mexican political organization. It was historically a movement of the Roman Catholic extreme right, similar to clerical fascism and Falangism, implacably opposed to the policies of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its predecessors that governed Mexico from 1929 to 2000 and from 2012 to 2018. The organization was notably the only explicit right-wing movement in Mexico to garner such nation-wide support and influence during this era. At its peak in 1940, there were approximately 500,000 registered members. Mostly active in the late 1930s and early 1940s, its support for the Axis in World War II damaged its reputation. The organization experienced intense infighting in the mid-1940s which ultimately led to multiple schisms. The organization was dissolved as a political party in 1951 and largely faded into obscurity outside the city of Guanajuato, where it retained some local influence. In the 1980s, the UNS was reconstituted as the Mexican Democratic Party, which held seats in the Chamber of Deputies from 1979 to 1988, peaking at 12 Deputies in the 1982 election but losing its presence in 1988; the Mexican Democratic Party (PDM) dissolved in 1997, though two groups both claiming to be the legitimate UNS continued to exist.
The Communist Party of Mexico is a communist party in Mexico. It advocates internationalism of the proletariat, Leninist organizational theory based on democratic centralism, and Marxism-Leninism.
The Revolutionary Mexicanist Action, better known as the Gold Shirts, was a Mexican fascist, secular, anti-Semitic, anti-Chinese, anti-communist, ultra-nationalist paramilitary organization, originated in March 10, 1934 in Mexico City and operated until disbanded in 1936. With ultra-nationalist, strikebreaking roots and Nazi German support, the organization sought to expel Chinese, Jews, and communists from Mexico. The organization often violently engaged with labor movements associated with the Mexican Communist Party and with labor strikers.
Nicolás Rodríguez Carrasco was a Mexican general, revolutionary, and the founder and leader of the fascist paramilitary organization Revolutionary Mexicanist Action, better known as the Gold Shirts.
The Nationalist Front of Mexico, formerly known as the Organization for the National Will and the National Mexicanist Front, is a neo-fascist activist organization in Mexico.
General elections were held in Mexico on 7 July 1940. The presidential elections were won by Manuel Ávila Camacho, who received 94% of the vote. In the Chamber of Deputies election, the Party of the Mexican Revolution won all but one of the 173 seats.
The Mexican People's Party was a political party in Mexico, founded in 1977. PPM was led by Alejandro Gascón Mercado. PPM was mainly based in the Nayarit and Jalisco states.
The Mexican Fascist Party was a very minor political party founded in Mexico City in December of 1922 by Gustavo Sáenz de Sicilia. Officially based upon Italian Fascism, the party members drafted a manifesto entitled Manifiesto del Partido Fascista Mexicano a la Nación.
Colorina is a Mexican telenovela produced by Valentín Pimstein for Televisa in 1980. It was a remake of La Colorina, while remakes of Colorina are Apasionada and Salomé.
Ernesto García "El Chango" Cabral was a Mexican cartoonist and painter, famous for his contributions of caricatures to the publication Revista de Revistas; his work numbers almost 25,000 pieces.
Events in the year 1960 in Mexico.
Electa Arenal, born as Elena Electa Arenal y Huerta, was a Mexican artist, known best as a muralist painter, and sculptor.
The 1935 Revolution Day Zócalo Battle was a violent conflict that broke out during the Revolution Day festival of 1935 at the Zócalo between members of the Revolutionary Mexicanist Action and multiple organizations associated with the Mexican Communist Party. Members of the Revolutionary Mexicanist Action parading through the square were met by individuals associated with the Mexican Communist Party with the latter antagonizing the former. The brawl lasted about an hour and resulted in 46 to 50 injuries and 3 casualties. Among the wounded was Nicolás Rodríguez Carrasco, leader of the Revolutionary Mexicanist Action.
Hernán Laborde Rodríguez was a Mexican communist politician.
Sicilia is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires |journal=
(help)