BOOK REVIEW: Querido Diego, te abraza Quiela (Dear Diego) by Elena Poniatowska

Introduction

Querido Diego, te abraza Quiela (Dear Diego) by Elena Poniatowska is a short novel (less than 100 pages) written as a series of letters from Russian painter Angelina (Quiela) Beloff to her (then) partner Diego Rivera. At the beginning of the novel, Diego has returned to Mexico after living in Paris for 10 years, where he painted in a cubist style. However, disillusioned with the Parisian art scene, he returns to Mexico “driven by a desire to participate in the government-sponsored mural program and create public art after the Mexican Revolution. With this project, the new Mexican postrevolutionary government sought to educate its citizens through art, and Diego Rivera felt compelled to contribute to this project of national identity.” Today, his work is known for laying the foundations of muralism in Mexican and international art. He left Paris in 1921; however, his wife of 10 years, the Russian painter Angelina Beloff, stayed behind. And in Querido Diego, te abraza Quiela (Dear Diego), Elena Poniatowska recreates Beloff’s voice as she writes to Rivera detailing her struggles, memories, and longings while living in an impoverished post-war Paris.

Elena Poniatowska is a French-born Mexican journalist and author known today for using her platform to give a voice to the disenfranchised, primarily women and the poor, and to shed light on social injustices. Her work highlights the struggles and experiences of the working class, indigenous communities, and women. Poniatowska is known for speaking about Mexican culture, society, and politics both in her journalistic and literary work and is currently one of the most prominent writers of Mexico today.  

What is Querido Diego, te abraza Quiela (Dear Diego) by Elena Poniatowska about?

On the surface, this novel is about a woman in love with a man who doesn’t want her. The novel, divided into twelve letters, dated from October 19, 1921 to July 22, 1922, portrays a broken-heartened Quiela (Diego Rivera’s nickname for her) waiting for her lover to send for her from Mexico City. But he never does; in fact, Diego Rivera will go on to marry three more times during his lifetime until his death in 1957. His most famous marriage was his third, to fellow artist and painter Frida Kahlo from 1929 to 1954, when she died on July 13^th. However, despite Angelina’s desperation and longing for Diego Rivera, her path is also one of self-discovery and independence. During those nine months in which Quiela writes to an indifferent Rivera, she breaks free of his influence and affirms her identity as a painter in her own right. She emancipates from Diego Rivera and creates a new version of herself that does not need him anymore; it is a version of herself that Rivera does not recognize, when she runs into him at a theater in Mexico City in 1935, and she is no longer the heart broken lover left behind in a cold and impoverished postwar Paris, but an artist who has made her own way.  

Narrative Style

Querido Diego, te abraza Quiela (Dear Diego) by Elena Poniatowska is an epistolary novella that recreates Angelina Beloff’s voice in twelve letters sent to Diego Rivera in Mexico City. “One way of considering this book would simply be as a collection of letters without a plot, just as one compilation of letters from one person to another would not necessarily have one. But if you take a closer look, it is possible to discern a plot that follows a theme of Quiela’s self-discovery and personal realization as she analyzes her present situation in the French capital and re-evaluates her relationship with her husband” (The Latin American Review of Books).

Character Analysis

Quiela

In this novella, Quiela “represents women artists of the 1920s, struggling to find their place in modern art. She is living in a time when the emancipation of women has broken many of the standard models and the protagonist struggles to fashion her own” (Dear Diego by Elena Poniatowska, EBSCO). Angelina Beloff worked principally as a painter and engraver in Paris and she became well known as a portrait-maker; eventually she became a French citizen. While married to Rivera, she painted representationally. But when Rivera left, Pablo Picasso taught her how to play with lines instead of copying them directly from reality and gradually she started to embrace the abstract style of cubism (Dear Diego by Elena Poniatowska, EBSCO).

Diego

As readers, we don’t have an account of Diego Rivera directly. Everything we know about him is told to us through Quiela’s letters, and the portrayal is not a good one. He is a man who leaves his wife and child alone to start a new life in his native country while his family languishes in the cold of the Parisian winter and postwar economy. He is a womanizer who “takes up with the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo while Quiela still waits for him in Paris,” and we, as readers, can’t help but blame him for neglecting his family. However, we are never told his side of the story and why he doesn’t answer Quiela’s letters.

Themes

Unrequited love and longing

At the beginning of the novella, Quiela is eagerly anticipating Diego to ask her to join him in Mexico. But as the story progresses, she realizes that Rivera has moved on without her. In her letters, however, she never fails to express her deep love for him and the impact that he has had on her work. This is one of the themes that stands out most prominently in the novel.

Self-discovery

The letters nonetheless also denote Quiela’s evolution as an artist and individual. When she was with Diego, Quiela’s work was intrinsically linked and heavily influenced by her husband. Now, she is learning how to paint without the influence of her lover; her metamorphosis is such that thirteen years after the end of their relationship Rivera no longer recognizes the woman he was once married to. Either he has completely erased his past or Quiela is no longer defined by her love for Rivera and she now stands formidably as a fully independent individual and artist in her own right.

Foreigners’ love of Mexico and its people

Quiela is Russian by birth and eventually she becomes a French citizen. However, in her heart, she is Mexican and wants to be in Mexico. She is in love with the country and its people. She moved to Mexico in 1932 and lived in the capital until her death in 1969, at the age of 90.

Love, neglect, and the struggle for female artistic agency in a male-dominated world

Quiela fought all her life to get away from Diego Rivera’s shadow. Even after she moved to Mexico, she was somewhat marginalized in her connections due to both of them moving in similar social and professional circles. The couple’s life in Paris was not easy, and Quiela sacrificed her creative development so that Rivera could paint. In 1921, Rivera was called back to Mexico by José Vasconcelos so he could paint after the Mexican Revolution. Beloff did not accompany him because there was not enough money for both of them to travel. Rivera never returned to Europe and he did not reunite with Beloff, but he was her connection to Mexico. In 1935, she was already living in Mexico and she did so for 37 years (Wikipedia, Angelina Beloff).

Rating

I Liked it but I Probably Won’t Read It Again.