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Tinisima

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Before reading this novel, what I knew of Tina Modotti came from a single Edward Weston photograph. A beautiful woman with penetrating eyes.

Once I began to read "TINISIMA", I became utterly captivated with the life of Tina Modotti. Elena Poniatowska has a way of making the narrative read as if Tina Modotti herself were relating various happenings from her life to the reader, while the author adds her own commentaries as a supplement.

The more I read of this novel, the more I found myself curious about this woman and her life. It got to the point that I could hardly tear myself away from finishing this novel, though it pained me to see how Miss Modotti was manipulated and abused both by some of her friends/compatriots and the Stalinist system she once served so faithfully. I believe it was a mistaken faith, but I respect Miss Modotti for the courage of her convictions. She had good intentions, a big heart, but was prone to blind herself to the evils of Stalinism. Therein lies the ultimate tragedy of her life.

Tina Modotti could have gone on to become one of the greatest photographers of the last century had she not threw herself wholly into Marxist/Stalinist politics. Perhaps it is for that reason that she is not widely known today.

I wish I could have known Tina Modotti. I would have loved to have had lots of conversations with her in some café or small restaurant. While I'm sure we would not agree on a number of issues, I like to think we would have become close friends.

Thank you, Elena Poniatowska, for a beautiful book.

Tina Modotti es el personaje ideal para una novela fascinante. Eso es en realidad lo que Elena Poniatowska, con su prosa bella y precisa nos brinda con esta biografia. Su abarcador andar por la vida, sus vinculos con la vanguardia artistica, cultural y social de la epoca, son narrados afable y certeramente en este libro. Un panorama de epoca increible se nos brinda en estas lineas que nos traen una Tina llena de pasiones, ardiente amante, luchadora incansable, humana y trascendente: asi es tambien su historia.

Mexico is like a noisy neighbor you do your best to avoid. A lot of the noise is unintelligible; in a different language.

Politicians want to build a wall to keep Mexican migrants out physically, but they might feel differently about our neighbors if language and culture were not the real barriers to that which might bridge the distance between us.

Understanding.

Mexican authoress Elena Poniatowska, for example, needs a translator. Barring calls from some important New York publisher seeking to enlist the scribe's bilingual talents, a brief discussion covering two of her books will have to serve as a small step toward the goal of mutual comprehension between our two cultures.

The writer was born Princess Helene Elizabeth Louise Amelie Paula Dolores Poniatowska Amor in France circa 1932. Her father was a Polish nobleman and her mother of Mexican nobility; something they must have had either prior to the revolution of 1910, or perhaps earlier, before the reforms of Benito Juarez.

She fled to Mexico during World War II and, in spite of her blue-blooded lineage, took up with the international left. This inclination comes forth loud and clear in her literature and in the columns she still pens for the progressive "La Jornada" out of Mexico City.

Her most famous work is "La Noche de Tlatelolco"; a journalistic work that recreates, through interviews and the perusal of public documents, the government's massacre of Mexican students in 1968.

In "El Tren Pasa Primero" (The Train Passes First), Poniatowska delivers a narrative and nonfictional portrait of a railroad workers union leader named Trinidad Pineda Chinas.

Thanks to a review of the book on a Spanish-language Web site "La Pagina de Cuentos" (The Story Page), we can tell you the actual subject is a gentleman by the name of Demetrio Vallejo.

Like Benito Juarez, Mexico's first indigenous president, Vallejo was an Indian from Oaxaca who grew up speaking Zapotec and had to learn Spanish along his difficult and arduous life path.

According to "The Story Page," Poniatowska interviewed the union leader extensively back in '70s and that work served as basis for "The Train Passes First."

It is a story in line with another book of hers, "Tinisima," about the actress, photographer, Soviet spy, and hospital nurse Tina Modotti in its scrupulous renderings of how rebels and militant leaders suffer at the hands of power.

Vallejo, a self-taught intellectual and telegraph worker employed with the then-national railway lines, took up cudgels against the government and the unions it was in cahoots with by forming a truly effective syndicate that delivered on bread-and-butter issues its members demanded.

So effective was Vallejo that in 1959 he paralyzed the country with a strike, forced the government's hand, and was thrown in jail for 11 years where he spent a lot of time defying brutal beatings, organizing common criminals against prison administrators, and hunger-striking.

Poniatowska opts for a shuffled narrative; later events recounted first, his odd youth as an overweight mama's boy in the tropical jungle next, followed by a strange and poignant epilogue wherein, if our Spanish is up to snuff, Vallejo/Chinas rides off (by train) into the sunset with his niece and loyal supporter Barbara, carrying his baby in her belly.

It is the story of an incorruptible public man with many private shortcomings that may ring familiar to those linked with the famous or supremely driven. He goes through women like water, his only wife leaving one day with the children never to see him again.

Very resourceful, Vallejo/Chinas manages to get himself a sultry, curvaceous women friend while in jail, but after he gets out and returns to "the fight," she tires of the routine and leaves, too.

In both books, Poniatowska spends a lot of time listing names of union members and leftist militants long-forgotten and, perhaps, known only to their contemporaries in the first place.

She seems to understand that rebels and outcasts are, well, cast out, pushed to the shadows by those who won the battles they lost and that, in writing a book, she can in some small way, recuperate them; inscribe their legacies on pages born of her own fight.

Kind to the workers movements of Mexico, "El Tren Pasa Primero" is also a loving tribute to the railroad itself. Poniatowski weaves beautiful passages that remind us that before there was a union of workers, endless meetings, and unmet demands, there was the powerful steam engine that promised escape from the mosquito-infested waterholes populated by peasants only waiting to be touched by word of that wondrous Mexico diverso.

Peasants like Vallejo.

"Tinisima," is the superior book probably because, all his nobility aside, Vallejo/Chinas can't hold a candle to Modotti in the personal story category.

A fox lady by anyone's standards, Modotti migrated with her family from Italy to San Francisco in the 20th Century's first years. Grown up fast, Tinisima went to Los Angeles and made for a fabulous flapper in silent films, made a lover of photography pioneer Edward Westin, who made a fabulous photographer out of her in turn.

Together they traveled to post-revolutionary Mexico and befriended Diego Rivera, Leon Trotsky and other politico/cultural luminaries of that scintillating (or so Poniatowska makes it seem) place and era.

A rampant seductress, Modotti met her match in a Cuban exile and communist revolutionary assassinated by government agents as they walked arm-in-arm down a Mexico City street.

Leaving everything about her sexy past behind, except for the cigarettes, Modotti became part of the 1930s international communist ferment, moved to Russia, and barely escaped the Gulag before going to Spain where she worked in a war hospital on the Republican side.

Modotti was forced to flee the advancing fascist army over the Pyrenees into France, assisting the famous Spanish poet Antonio Machado to peace and sad death on the other side.

Being a player in history can suck, but Modotti's story, especially the Spanish chapter as rendered by Poniatowska, is one of the most heart-wrenching renderings to be found in contemporary lit.

From there, with a few more dramas betwixt, Tin-EEEEE-sima winds up on a boat full of Spanish Civil War refugees denied port entry the world over. Somehow she gets to Mexico, which was very kind to Spanish expatriates, and tries to reconstruct a life, while being disillusioned by what she sees as a betrayal of the revolution's promise.

Like the many cigarettes she smoked throughout every sacrifice and adventure, Modotti, 48, extinguished quietly in the back of cab, exhausted by the life Poniatowska masterfully transmits to print.

Elena Poniatowska calls her beautiful biography of Tina Modotti "a novel". She, in fact, has probably interviewed more people who knew Tina and were there than anyone else. Her novel is a moving compilation of all of this.

Elena Poniatowska loved Tina Modotti with a supernatural passion. Despite that she was able to write a panoramic epic with historical accuracy and scope that is breathtaking. I have read everything written about Tina Modotti that is available without special library or collection access, and this is clearly one of the best references.
But it is dangerous. There is a rapture here that might exceed the small frame of the tormented subject. Perhaps the almost religious raptures with which Poniatowska paints the prose story are better suited for hagiography than the life of a mere mortal.
For me, the aching emptiness in the middle of Tina's life is precisely mortal. She was a pilgrem on a very earthbound path, who had lost sight of any supernatural calling early in her childhood, if in fact it ever was a motive. Tina took care of everyone, and still managed to be brilliantly selfish. She found a place for every ambition and passion she felt, except for the desire for a family of her own.
It is difficult to tell her story right now. The true extent of Stalin's monstrosity has been overshadowed for fifty years by Hitler and the holocaust. It is only within the last few years that the enormity of betrayal underlying the outcome of the Spanish Civil War has begun to be understood and discussed in fair proportion. In the context of over-politicizing the external circumstances of women in the century, and the failure to understand Stalinism, the true story of Modotti can barely be heard above the clamor of militant mythologies.
Even if Poniatowska errors on the side of a romantic, impossibly representative 20th century woman at the expense of the true, earth bound person, it is worth the trouble trying to keep things in perspective. This is wonderful writing, and wonderful writing always threatens to obscure its subject. Caveat Lector, but if you have any interest in any aspect of this story, read the book.

Tina Modotti led a fascinating life. If it were ultimately tragic, well, whose isn't ? Born into a poor family in northwestern Italy, she emigrated with them to America as a teenager. She married young, to an artistic sort of fellow, got into the silent movies, went to Mexico with her husband, and fell in love with Edward Weston the famous photographer, who left his wife and family to be with her. As one of the bright lights and sexual epicenters of the Mexican artistic renaissance of the 1920s, Modotti sparkled like a Roman candle. Her last (and true ?) lover was a Cuban revolutionary who got himself assassinated by her side in 1929. She was almost 33. The Mexican government tried to implicate her in the murder, finally deporting her to Europe the following year, despite the best efforts of Diego Rivera and the Mexican Communist Party. From then on, Tina floundered. Germany did not suit her, life in Russia in the `30s was anything but pleasant---she subordinated all her individuality to the needs of the party. She became a Comintern agent in Europe, winding up in Spain, where she slaved away throughout the whole Civil War, fleeing to France at the end, and returning to Mexico with her faithless last husband, also a Communist Party operative. She died there in 1941.

OK, that's the outline of her life in a single paragraph. If you want to know how she fit into all the various circles of her acquaintance, if you want to know what Tina thought about any of this, if you would like any sort of psychological grasp of what makes a person live this way, why so much insecurity, why the need to be controlled (ideas that don't even come up in this shallow work)---then, for God's sake, read another book. This is a journalistic, fictionalized biography. Nothing wrong there, such things could be excellent. It depends on what journal we are talking about, though. TINISIMA, in my opinion, derives from the "National Enquirer". We definitely learn about her sexual activities and feelings, because the writer had her eye firmly on the marketplace. We waltz through her love life, but Tina remains an enigma. We are treated to endless cascades of names, some of which may be more familiar in Mexico than in North America, true, but still the presence of many can only be likened to cameo appearances in certain flashy Hollywood movies. Ernest Hemingway, Leon Trotsky, Frida Kahlo, Palmiro Togliatti, Norman Bethune, Lazaro Cardenas, William Z. Foster, Octavio Paz, Garcia Lorca---the list is endless, but to what purpose ? As a novel, not a biography, Poniatowska could have portrayed Modotti's character as deeply and intimately as she wanted. There was nothing to stop her. Instead, we get "People" magazine.

I don't know another book about Tina Modotti unfortunately. I wanted to find out more about her, and, after a fashion, I did by reading TINISIMA, but I believe the real biography, fictional or serious, has yet to be written. The praises lavished on the book on the frontispiece and back cover should be taken with a large number of grains of salt. This book is seriously flawed-it is neither a biography nor a good novel. 3 stars is a generous rating.

I found this book to be a wonderful historical novel where prolific writer Elena Poniatowski blurs the lines between fact and fiction leaving you believing more than doubting the accuracy of the stories. As you read this book you will go back in time, to a time of Communist idealism that was creeping into Mexico, especially it's artists ideals, specifically the circle surrounding Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. More of a backdrop to the time period the book does not dwell on the relationship between Frida and Tina. It does however explore the Communist movement in Mexico right after the Mexican Revolution. Mostly the book explores the romantic life of Tina in her pursuit of a better society for mankind that takes her globe trotting from nation to nation, from one hot spot to another, hiding and seeking refuge, eluding police and authorities all the while in her quest for an ideal vision. Much of the book evolves around the time Tina spent in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. This along with her devotion to the men of her life including but not limited to photographer Edward Weston, Cuban communist Julio Mella and agent Vittorio are the passions that fueled her incredible life. Each chapter has a small black and white photograph from Tina Mondotti's archives. If you have never seen her photographs it is worth checking out. I have another book that features her photographs in Mexico and they are superb reflections of a time now only found in the remotest corners of Mexico. The story in this book has Tina accused of murder, implicated in murder or assassination, deported only to resurface and genrally moving about the globe on various passports and identities. Although this is a romantic version of her clandestine life it is based on thorough research. Incidently, in the current film version of Frida, Ashley Judd plays Tina in the torrid tango dance scene between her and Frida which reults in one of the more memorable visuals of the movie. Elena Poniatowski is a skilled writer who lets her passions dictate her style and the result is powerful image as to who the shadowy Tina Mondotti was. I would recommend this book to those that like historical novels, the Spanish Civil War, Mexico or the intrigue and story behind one of the most fascinating womens life in the early days of Communist spies . This is a grand novela featuring an extraordinary and intimate portrayal of a passionate woman.

Not only does Tinisima by Elena Poniatowska allow the reader to get a glimpse of Tina Modotti's life, but it also is very engaging for those interested in the history of Mexico, Spain, and the Soviet Union, especially in the context of the Communist Party in the former two countries. The book peeked my interest even more regarding Mexican history and the history of the Spanish Civil War. The book is also extremely wonderfully written. I haven't read other books by Poniatowska, but I plan to now.

Tina Modotti really comes alive in this text. I read the translated version & it was hard to put down. The text is rich with details, and I was interested to discover that Modotti's photographic career was a relatively small part of her life. I learned a lot about Communisim. Also good is DEAR DIEGO.

and I could not put the book down. The importance of my Spanish immersion classes became secondary to the adventures and passion of Tina in Mexico and abroad. Poniatowska successfully gives readers a glimpse into the life of this artist and activist. Poniatowska gives attention to the social and political environment that contributed to Tina's transformation from a goddess to a committed communista who gave her life to the cause.