Peasants of Tláhuac (from: Mexican Art - A Portfolio of Mexican People and Places)

Arturo Garcia Bustos

This print is from a portfolio of ten black-and-white lithographs showing images of Mexican people engaged in daily activities, primarily labor and crafting, by ten different mid-century Mexican political printmakers and members of the Taller de Gráfica Popular print collective, printed on cream wove paper, each signed in pencil at lower right.

This lithograph by Bustos depicts an everyday scene from the time in Tláhuac, one of the 16 delegaciones (boroughs) into which Mexico's Federal District is divided. It is located on the south east edge of the district and while much is still rural in character, it has been undergoing urbanization with the fastest rate of population growth in Mexico City since the 1960s. Most of this urbanization is occurring in the northwest of the borough and in some of the larger communities, with the south and east still having significant tracts of farmland, which are under conservation. Much of the area is former lakebed where Lake Chalco and Lake Xochimilco met, with the town of San Pedro Tláhuac originally on an island. There are still some lake areas along with four major canals and wetlands, also under conservation status.