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Present
Madero Printing Press, Reading objects factory
Research, script and creation by Eréndira Meléndez Torres
This little ruler...
...is something we call a line gauge.
In Spanish, a pica is...
...a "cuadratín".
That's equivalent to around twelve pages...
...folded here.
Besides, on this side it has...
...inches...
...on this side it has centimeters...
...and here are the agate lines, used in newspapers.
You can see them here.
Now, if we measure the centimeters with the inches...
...or the agate line with the others, none of them match.
Everything is different.
So, for me and for everyone who works in the printing press...
...the "cuadratín", which is called "pica" in Spain...
...is the most exact measure.
It's a treasure. I have two of them...
...and I thought I'd lost one but I didn't.
I won't let them disappear.
Right.
I think I must start by saying I'm a Spanish refugee...
...and I arrived here in 1939...
...due to a...
...civil war that we, the Republicans, lost.
I was one of the children who were sent to France...
...and other children went to the Soviet Union...
...and England, and 500 of them came to Mexico...
...and they were the famous "Morelia children."
I was part of the group sent to France, I spent three years there...
...and then we were sent to a sort of concentration camp...
...and then we arrived here on the Sinaya ship.
First, I had a Republican passport...
...with the Republican government, created in Mexico...
...back when the Spanish government was exiled here...
...and in this country, thanks to Ávila Camacho...
...the Fine Arts Palace was declared Spanish territory...
...and a Republican Spanish government was created.
All the Spanish refugees got passports.
So, when we saw that...
...coming to Mexico was actually a final decision...
...we had to start thinking, and...
...particularly, I knew Vicente Rojo, from the USY...
...and the Espresate brothers, from the USY and the FUE.
Back then, Quico Espresate was a mechanic...
...Jordi was a college student.
I had met Pepe Azorín before the Madero printing press existed.
He was the press operator in a small workshop...
...that was on Reforma Avenue.
I'm talking about the year 1952 or 1951, the early 1950s.
When we realized that practically 80% of the work was done there...
...I told the Espresate brothers we should buy the press...
...as it was making a lot of money...
...but it wasn't for us, and...
Just now I remembered the owner's name, it was Servín.
So we talked with Tomás Espresate and Mr. Navarro...
...who ran the Madero bookstore...
...and Mr. Navarro had a vast knowledge of books and...
...they said they'd be pleased to purchase the printing press.
We didn't have that kind of money, as we were just 17 years old.
So, when he heard this, he agreed to sell it for 20,000 pesos...
...and back then, it was a very large sum of money.
They told me the price and asked me what I thought...
...and I said it was fair.
I did the math and calculated what we produced...
...and realized we could pay off the printing press in six months.
Mr. Tomás Espresate mortgaged his house...
...between 1949 and 1950.
The Madero printing press was founded...
Well, actually, it wasn't called Madero printing press yet...
...but Madero Bookstore printing works.
The Madero Bookstore was already famous...
...not only for selling books...
...but because it was the first one to sell Hachette, French books...
..which were very popular and sold a lot.
Plus, many Mexican politicians were regulars at the bookstore...
...I don't know if it was because the place was at 12 Madero St...
...but plenty of them visited the bookstore often.
The became good friends with Mr. Tomás...
...and the bookstore was their meeting place.
Everything revolved around the bookstore.
The first premises were at 71 Amberes street.
We started out in a little old house...
...that had wooden foundations...
...and I remember we had two machines there.
Well, we actually had a small machine...
...and it worked very well...
...and there was a garden, we put a roof over it...
...and the dining room was spacious, so we put a machine there...
...and another one in the living room...
...so we distributed them around the house.
By the way, we introduced one more machine when...
...we had our first serious client:
The USSR embassy bulletin.
It was our first magazine...
...so we had to buy another big machine...
...and we had to put it around 20 cms from the other one...
...and the work in that room became crazy...
...and the house moved so much that it affected...
...the foundations of the nearby houses...
...and obviously, we got a lot of complaints...
...and it got to the point where we had to leave the place.
The Zona Rosa area was changing too.
That area didn't exist back then.
So we moved to 1358 Aniceto Ortega St...
...which had a space of 500 meters...
...and it was a larger house, with an enormous garden.
We roofed it and built our large factory premises.
We were there until 1967.
Let's talk about the famous discipline...
...of the Madero printing press.
The discipline was imposed from the very beginning...
...and it meant "me against myself"...
...as I had to finish the work, and then I had an assistant...
...and then I worked with my typesetter...
...and we barely talked to each other, only the necessary...
...and then, when we went out for drinks, it was different...
...but work was work, period.
That was our discipline.
We didn't fool around.
"Quality work" became our motto...
...because seriousness, quality...
...and speed in the delivery were paramount to us.
That was our attitude from day one...
...until the last moments of Madero printing press.
Our fame and prestige stemmed from that.
We honestly always strived for perfection...
...and that's the reason why...
...I emphasize the discipline; you need it to achieve perfection.
You can't be careless.
During many years, both in Amberes St and Aniceto Ortega St...
...I had a room where I used to live and sleep.
Therefore, I spent 12, 15 or 16 years living in the workshop.
I spent more time there than at my home...
...but I didn't care. I had a work project...
...which I wanted to develop, and I did. I was...
...very happy at the printing press.
Everyone said I was crazy, as my hobby was my work...
...which I always liked. It was just like any other pastime.
My position was that of a boss.
I have never bragged about being a manager.
There was trust among everyone...
...because I was a left-wing man.
Everybody accepted him...
...and he was a very tough, strong man, but everybody knew...
...that everything would be fine, there was no...
-He says he had to assume his role... -Of course, he was...
-...of an "ogre". -...the head of the company.
And he was a formidable technician, as he had started out...
...as a printing press worker.
Yes, he knew the machines well.
And every time there was something new at Madero printing press...
...like a new machine, or a...
...new rotary printing press...
...or new photography elements...
...he had to know, and he knew, perfectly well, what could be done...
...with those machines and what demands they posed.
We have worked for many official dependiencies...
...and our main focus was their cultural needs.
That is, I mean to say...
...we have made commercial things, like labels...
...but I mean we've made cultural magazines...
...and they were different.
There was an anti-Franco affiliation...
...because of the clients and the magazines there were...
...and there was a strong political content...
...which appeared in several forms.
Let's say it was left-wing work.
My ambition was architecture...
...so I thought we should build the Madero printing press...
...and I was designing my own workshop.
Heberto Castillo lived across from us...
...and we became close friends, especially in 1968...
...and he designed the workshop special ceiling.
That was one of our successful moments...
...because we didn't have air conditioning...
...but there was a stable temperature at the workshop...
...as the ceiling was 10 cms of concrete...
...and 80 cms of space where the air could flow...
...and other 10 cms of concrete.
So that ceiling, which could be...
...extended at a large scale, 200 or 300 meters...
...of space without using any columns...
...allowed us to do as we pleased.
The architectural project was extraordinarily done by Azorín.
I think he had studied architecture, or he wanted to be an architect...
...but everything around the printing press workshop...
...that is, the new workshop which was on Avena street...
...was Azorín's idea, and it was excellent.
There was an upper floor...
...which overlooked the whole workshop...
...which was an advantage.
Perhaps it wasn't excellent quality, but it was really functional...
...and you could see from the linotypes to the binding machines...
...and the only things below were the camera obscuras...
...as well as the light tables and the negatives, below...
...that sort of level ground where there were tables...
...where the clients would make corrections or have meetings...
...and the designers were there too, so there was...
...a good relationship between the designers and the publishing directors.
All the editors were on that same floor.
All the departments in the workshop were connected by telephone...
...and by intercom.
So there was a complete visual control of all the departments...
...and the telephones helped too, so we could see the workers...
...and it was a perfect view of the workers.
Optical control is very important...
...as well as the phones, to give orders and watch everything.
Later, there was a floor for the printing press and a third one for Era publishing house.
We actually had a relationship with all the painters...
...and when they saw we had this printing press...
...they started asking to take part in the project.
Felguérez said, "I can paint a mural"...
...Ponce offered a painting for the main entrance...
...Vicente offered a painting to depict Madero and Era's union...
...Cortázar wanted to fix some things and Felguérez offered a mural...
...and Vicente wanted to paint a mural, but we were so busy...
...that we never got round to it.
We wanted to have a mural outside...
...on the upper wall of the entrance...
...for everyone to see, but it was never done.
The only comprehensive printing press in Mexico...
...that is, one that started by receiving pages and photos...
...in order to make a book, a brochure or anything similar...
...was Madero printing press.
We had copy editors, people who did gallery proof...
...designers, our printing press was the only one with 10 of them...
...and we started with Vicente Rojo; nobody else in Mexico had designers.
Thus, we could do the covers with screen printing...
...the text in offset...
...or in the printing press, because...
...the press was much better for typography, texts...
...and it was much cheaper...
...for a print run of 2,000 or 2,500 books.
In Mexico, there are print runs of 2,000 or 3,000 items...
...and only a few have a run of 10,000 or 20,000.
When we match colors...
...we use two colors and mix them, the way painters do.
What we used was a mixer...
...which made the process easier.
First, we mixed colors by hand, using a small proportion...
...and what's how we worked. It was a rough guess, actually.
-A rough guess. -A rough guess.
Most companies like ours send orders to factories...
...and the factory would take a week to process orders.
We would get a program today and it should be done by Friday...
..and it would be impossible to get the ink by then.
So we had a large ink warehouse...
...and we would mix them ourselves...
...and we would know what paper and varnish we should use.
We'd do our work using our own resources, without depending on anyone.
Back then we didn't use to design anything...
...in Mexico; design was used overseas, but not here.
For instance, a laboratory brochure from overseas already included a design...
...and we had to copy the design of that brochure...
...as there were no designers.
Vicente Rojo came in 1954...
...back when we didn't do any design ourselves...
...but we did buy the first linotype.
Vicente was a designer for the Fine Arts Palace...
...and he worked for Corzo printing press...
...and for Muñoz printing press...
...and he started bringing work for us.
Of course, he would say...
...he worked with the Bodoni typeface...
...and the Baskerville; we had the latter, not Bodoni...
...and he said we should buy the Bodoni...
...and we bought it immediately.
He started bringing the work from the Fine Arts Palace...
...along with that of the other printing presses, and he started...
...working with the University on the cultural diffusion...
...and he asked us to work with him on that project.
Our printing press started growing since then...
...and we needed new typefaces...
...and we also needed a designer.
Vicente, without being part of our printing press...
...would do some designs and bring them to us.
It was an advantage to choose the designs...
...and it was a great quality.
Then, Vicente got his first assistant in 1961...
...and then a second one. Well, an assistant designer.
I asked Azorín if, during the time-outs in our small workshop...
...we could create a small publishing house.
So he talked to Tomás Espresate, who was the manager of the whole thing...
...the creator of the workshop and a wonderful person.
Azorín talked to him...
...and Mr. Espresate established the conditions to...
...start a small publishing house...
...and he decided that...
...the people involved should only be young people.
He didn't want any seniors.
So it was us, the three Espresate brothers...
...Azorín and myself, and we all weren't 30 yet.
We managed to do a lot of work thanks to our innocence...
...our audacity and even our ignorance.
It must've been around 1960, it was done on a desk.
There wasn't a huge capital here...
...and we started everything...
...with a simple page and...
...Mr. Tomás let us have our publishing house during our time-outs...
...and our first book was The battle of Cuba, and it sold immediately.
If it hadn't sold in several weeks, perhaps we wouldn't have succeeded.
There were 3,000 copies, and they sold very quickly.
Back in 1968, when the University was closed...
...everything from the University came to our printing press.
So we took on the role of the University...
...and we did everything the University would do back then...
...and they didn't close us down. We were afraid they would...
...but they didn't, because we also worked for the PRI.
When Carlos Salinas de Gortari was the Minister for Economic Planning and Budget...
...I don't remember what we were doing.
I don't know.
When we were checking the machines...
...there was the cover of the USSR embassy bulletin...
...and the work we were doing with it.
Salinas saw it and said, 'Ah, you're doing subversive work!'
So I asked, 'Do you mean this or yours?'
He started laughing.
I wanted to know which one he meant.
The other piece was something for his party.
What I also liked about Madero printing press...
...is that, when we were working for the University...
...for the Fine Arts Palace, for the Modern Art Museum...
...the relationship there was in the Mexican intellectual world...
...was so big...
...that some even said Madero printing press was a myth; that's not true.
Madero was never a myth, it was a reality.
Of course, they'd always go to Vicente when they had some questions...
...plus, everything that...
...came out of the press had the Madero hallmark.
It was only logical: they were Madero typefaces...
...with the Madero style, which Vicente created, it was logical...
...for the products to have the Madero hallmark.
Thus, the Madero designers group was created.
We would work for Talleres Gráficos de la Nación...
...and their hallmark would go in all their art books.
They'd give us the work, we would print it...
...with the name Talleres Gráficos de la Nación.
We also made designs for Proceso and Vuelta magazines...
...as well as Nexos and...
-La Jornada? -La Jornada and...
-Artes de México? -Artes de México...
Madero is the only printing press that has been granted...
...an exhibition at a modern art museum.
I've never heard of anything similar in Latin America or Europe...
...but we were the first ones to be surprised by this.
When I sold it, I though they'd keep doing cultural items...
...and that the Madero policies would be observed...
...but it was a big mistake.
They didn't abide by the policies...
...right-wing people entered the place...
...the workers were treated differently...
...and they had to look for work in other printing presses...
...because they were broke.
They ended up selling it to the Canadians.
Here you put...
Here you put the measure you want.
"Madero" should be inverted...
...because when it's printed, it will be shown correctly.
That's why we learned to read backwards...
...as you can see, it's "Madero" backwards.
That's how we put it.
It was important to hold it with the thumb...
...and press it. Otherwise, the typefaces would fall off.
-Now do "Azorín". -No, no, thank you!
This is more than enough!