The Mexico City Reader

La Diana

Diana’s buttocks are stupendous, there’s no other word for it. At 21 inches across, you’d need arms five and a half feet long to hug them. Besides, they’re made of bronze, as is the rest of her. Two tons of metal to produce a hollow, eviscerated body, the perfect female chassis according (so they say) to the tastes of the average Mexican honcho who likes them chubby, with generous helpings above and below, and proper legs. As far as measurements go, this one amply fits the bill: 42 inches around the thigh (both right and left), 27.5 for the calves, 17 at the ankles. All this thanks to her towering stature: nine feet high, practically twice the average height of our national dwarfettes. In terms of the vital statistics favored by beauty competitions (bust, waist, and hips), Diana the Huntress could represent all of Chapultepec Park quite confidently with her 61–45–65.5 (quantities in inches). Adjusted to the proportions of a real female body 5 feet 8 inches in height, this translates as 34–25–37. Not bad. Lupita Elorriaga, Miss Mexico 1974, was exactly that height and her beauty could be computed as 36– 24–36, that is, two inches bustier than the bronze goddess, but slimmer 152 La Diana   around the midsection and hips. It comes down to the same in the end. Both are way out of reach for the city’s philanderers, who must content themselves with a look and a wish. They’ve had long enough to look at her, at any rate. Save for short periods off-duty when she has disappeared, whisked to a secret location for the purpose of cleaning her pedestal, undressing her, moving her to a different spot, or heaven knows what, Diana has remained steadfastly at her post over the fountain for thirty-two years. Six long presidential terms of maidenhood, aiming her arrowless bow at the North Star under the libidinous gaze of Chapultepec’s bronze lions; still waiting to be written up by Carlos Monsiváis, who left her out in his survey of Mexican camp. Or maybe a literary wink from Carlos Fuentes, or Octavio Paz, or any of the many scholars who claim to be so turned on by “Mexicanism” but have only theories for the Aztec goddess Coatlicue, the Virgin of Guadalupe, or the lovely Pepsicóatl when it comes to chinstroking about our matriarchal fiber. Not a word about her, oh no. Her, Mexico City’s sweetheart since 1942, solace of late-night drunks, patron saint of pubescent lusts, peerless rival of unliberated wives, touchstone of scandal for decent citizens; brazen virgin, shameless hussy, porno sculpture, whore of Babylon, tramp, courtesan, slut, loose woman soliciting right in the middle of Paseo de la Reforma: “See you by the Diana,” “Four o’clock at the Diana,” “One peso to the Diana please.” Ignored. Slandered. Blessed. All in all, important. Her story is worth telling. So here it goes. Something Simple and Bucolic As metropolitan journalists are fond of saying, those were tough times for Mexico and the world. During the second year of General Ávila Camacho’s presidency, our country declared war on the Axis powers, apparently because they had sunk our ship El Potrero del Llano. A national emergency was declared, and a law was passed making military service compulsory. It was 1942, the year that saw María Félix’s lovely face fill the screens for the first time in El peñón de las ánimas (The Mountain of the Spirits) and the release of Rodolfo Usigli’s play La familia cena en casa (The Family Dines at Home); the year a forty-five-year-old sculptor from Guanajuato , Juan F. Olaguíbel, applied himself happily to the task of La Diana 153 modeling and casting the bronze effigy of the Archer of the North Star at his studio in the neighborhood of San Bartolo Naucalpan. The idea for the statue was born months earlier, after Olaguíbel completed his demagogic, fifty-four-foot tall monument to the popular hero El Pípila in his native Guanajuato. Himself as distended in conceit as the colossal statue (which he considered a masterwork of stone), and no doubt striking much the same triumphant pose as he gave to the legendary hero of Mexican independence, the sculptor proclaimed his intention to gratify Mexico City with...