Source: WTL photo© on site in Mexico City, 2008.
Image: Diego Rivera mural: Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda / Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Park (1947-1948). For detail centered on La calavera Catrina, see: => Sueño Mural F.
Comments: Approximately the middle one-third of the mural, overlapping with the previous page and the next page. Rivera has depicted himself as a boy just to the right of the two elegantly dressed women on the left. Just over the boy's right shoulder (to our left) is José Martí, and over the boy's left shoulder, next to Martí, is Frida Kahla, who was, of course, a great painter and also Diego Rivera's wife. The skeletal figure, which is actually just about in the middle of the entire mural, though here in this detailed shot is to the left, is known throughout Mexico as la Catrina (the "lady dandy"). Notice the similarity to the name of the horrific hurricane, Katrina, that struck New Orleans in 2005. The origin of this figure of Death is an etching by José Guadalupe Posada, la Calavera Catrina (1913); see: => La calavera Catrina. The figure became so famous in all Mexican social classes that it has come to be synonymous with the art of Mexico itself. Porfirio Díaz, the late nineteenth-century Mexican dictator, is the military figure behind the angel with its wings on the right side of this detail photo.
Humanities topic: What does "RM" stand for on the hot air baloon?
Study the mural with this series of photos: => Sueño Mural A; => Sueño Mural B; => Sueño Mural D; => Sueño Mural E; => Sueño Mural F; => Sueño Mural G; => Sueño Mural H.