Mexican Pink. The color that gives identity to a nation

Mexican Pink at embroidery

The Mexican Pink color is a visual icon that gives identity to the country, it is part of fashion, architecture, design, gastronomy, etc. For us it is so normal to see it everywhere that regularly when I give tours my tourists stop me to photograph flowers, murals or textiles of this beautiful color.

Although it is a very iconic color, it seems to me that it is not the only one, we have many colors that give us identity, such as the orange of the magnolia flower, the red of the Poinsettia flower, or the magenta of the grana cochineal (I will talk about this color in other posts), the range of colors in fruits, and above all the beautiful textiles of our indigenous communities that we love so much.  But there is no denying that pink is the most striking, a tone that wherever you get dressed reminds you of a hacienda in Mexico, its warm weather and its friendly people, personally I feel at home when I visit another country and pass by a Mexican restaurant, it is always full of colors and the one that stands out the most is pink, I immediately feel at home.

A color with history

This color has a long tradition in Mesoamerican cultures, the clearest example is in the archaeological site of Teotihuacan where you can find wonderful murals from 2,000 years ago and precisely in these murals you can see the color pink, along with an impressive range of colors, this pink is a degradation of the color red, which was obtained by an abundant mineral in the area called cinnabar, this mineral has been used since prehistoric times by humans, it is to emphasize the obtaining of different shades,  we can infer that it was also used in their textiles and books, this would be with obtaining the red color of an insect called cochineal grana and reproduced in the nopal cactus, this insect, when dried, was crushed with volcanic stone and served as a natural dye generating a crimson red color, if it was combined with other organic elements, an interesting range of colors was obtained, unfortunately none of these objects has survived, at least those of Teotihuacan (150 BC - 650 AD) due to the inclemencies of time, but many murals survived, we can visit them in my tour of Teotihuacan.

                                   Teotihuacán Mural

How the color of Mexico was found

Although with the arrival of the Europeans to American lands much has been lost, if the famous textiles survived, now called Mexican, but here in Mexico they are known by the indigenous community where they come from, it is estimated that only the state of Oaxaca has at least 300 different types of costumes, the most famous are the Tehuana dresses, many of them still use the colors of our ancestors as cochineal grana, indigo and purple snail, also the diverse embroideries they use are related to the indigenous cosmovision that has been in this continent for more than 20,000 years, this is the importance of colors in Mexico.

However, this association of a color as specific as pink to the country Mexico, is due to a Mexican artist Ramon Valdiosera, who was a writer, filmmaker, fashion designer and painter, very versatile.

Ramón Valdiosera

Ramon in the mid-twentieth century made several trips within the country, where he came in contact with all the variety of colors in the indigenous communities of different states, which led him to create in 1946 a Mexican brand that rescued the most characteristic aspects of the textile art of these communities, today this would be unacceptable by the cultural appropriation, but it was another time.

Valdiosera collection

In 1949 during a presentation of his fashion collection at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York, Valdiosera was interviewed by an American journalist about the color bougainvillea as the chromatic axis in his catwalk, which the artist pointed out that the decision to take that specific shade of pink came from its widespread use in Mexican culture, from flowers, textiles, toys, sweets, decoration and painting.

The journalist after Valdiosera's response launched the iconic phrase that will recognize Mexico's cultural heritage: So it is a Mexican Pink.

Nowadays this Mexican pink is really everywhere, it is in the cabs of Mexico City, it is seen in attires, in the facades of houses or stores, in the decoration of our national holidays, in the house of Luis Barragan, in the candies, etc. and I love this color, there really is a sense of identity in the Mexican pink.

Luis Barragán