Modernidad y ferrocarriles: Trayectorias urbanas de Juan Rulfo

Juan Rulfo's photography, specifically the reportage he did in 1956 on Mexico City's railroad neighborhoods, sheds important light on his body of work—both visual and literary—, establishing a direct dialogue with the discourses of Mexican development. These photographs, together with his more well-known series of Polaroids and other "minor" works, his frequent collaborations with the cinematographical industry, his participation in the production of travel guides, his editorial work, and his occasional short stories, all serve to contradict the supposed existence of Rulfian silence and establish a dialogue with his better-known works. Mexico City's urban history, Angel Rama's theorizing of transculturation, and Mary Louise Pratt's work on "contact zones," together with Ignacio Sánchez Prado's more specific explorations of how Juan Rulfo's literary generation rearticulated the languages of Mexican modernity, allow me to examine the heterogenous Rulfian "gaze" and draw attention to his sharp critique of the political imaginaries of the socio-historical context in which he worked.