The most active sector of estridentismo thrived in Puebla, although a provincial and extremely conservative city. Germán List Arzubide (1898-1998), an artist with a militant trajectory, associated with the Communist Party, turned into the most successful ally of Manuel Maples Arce (1898-1981), the founding father of the movement. Additional signers of the manifesto were: Germán List Arzubide, Salvador Gallardo, and two hundred ghost signatories.Estridentismo was an early Mexican avant-garde movement, which arose in 1921, parallel to the muralist movement. Its creator and for a time only member was Manuel Maples Arce (1898-1981), a poet from Veracruz who rebelled against modernist poets and academic painting. Related to Dadaism, Futurism, Ultraism, and Creationism—in both its European and Latin American manifestations—Estridentismo was a movement centered on strategies to create disturbance and closely devoted to mechanical aesthetics. The followers of the movement tended toward new urban sensory values in which experiences accumulated simultaneously, at the rhythm and speed of modern life. The very name of the movement refers to city noise, as well as their wish to be heard for its embedded transgressions and excesses.It was a movement of artists devoted to literature, music, painting, engraving, photography, and sculpture. The movement’s center of operations was El Café de Nadie in Mexico City. Later on, it split to the city of Xalapa (Veracruz) where its members became involved in the educational revolution. It had several media outlets such as the magazines: Ser, Irradiador, and Horizonte.
