The magazine Horizonte (1926-1927) was one of the publications of the Etridentista movement once it established its presence in Xalapa (Veracruz). The “X” in Xalapa was added by the etridentistas; they designated the provincial enclave as the center of their cultural revolution. Although they published other magazines such as Irradiador [Irradiator] and Ser [Being], it was Horizonte that contained social and political topics, and at the same time fewer poems, appeals and irreverent texts that had characterized the group at its beginnings.
The ten issues of Horizonte, edited by Germán List Arzubide, are proof of the proletarian-ization of the etridentistas’] aesthetic and social stances. Horizonte is important not only because it published articles on modernity, but also because it contained writings on the group’s social causes, including the education revolution.
Estridentismo, an early Mexican avant-garde movement, arose at the end of 1921, at the same time as the Muralist movement. Its creator, and for some time its only member, was Manuel Maples Arce, a poet from Veracruz who openly denounced modernist poets and the pictorial academy. As evidenced by the group’s publications, the movement was related to Dadaism, Futurism, Ultraism and Creationism—in their European and Latin American strains. Indeed, Etridentismo was a movement focused on agitation strategies through its deep connection to a mechanical aesthetics. They promoted a new urban sensibility, wherein experiences amassed together simultaneously, at the same pace as modern life. The very name of the movement refers to the hustle and bustle of the city, but also to its will to be acknowledged both for its embedded transgressions and excesses.
