The department director, Luis Chávez Orozco, after observing Bergner’s skill and talent in knotted weaving, decided to invite her to the programme to have a workshop with this technique in the area of Ixmiquilpan for between 60 and 80 students.^[7] There, carpets would be produced for the Inter-American Indigenous Congress of Pátzcuaro, a town in Michoacán.

In this initial approach, we can see a cultural and disciplinary intersection. Starting in February 1940, Bergner developed the academic programme focused on the textile industry of the Mezquital Valley. From an almost anthropological perspective, by daily observation of the activities of weaving families, she studied and analysed the processes involved in working with different fibres and weaving techniques. Based on her observations, both Lena Bergner and Hannes Meyer compiled various images captured by photographer Gabriel Fernández Ledesma,^[8] showing Otomi women engaged in activities like the backstrap loom, images which she later translated into other visual works.

After studying the material and economic conditions, as well as the settlement patterns of the population, Bergner determined that ixtle would be the base fibre for production in workshops with various types of looms, a dyeing and a spinning centre where the working method would be cooperative.^[9] One of her most significant contributions was thinking of specialised dyeing centres, which would be the factor of change to offer more composition possibilities for a material that had rarely been used for experiments with contrasts.

Bergner’s observations about the feasibility of basing a textile industry on ixtle came to the result that it was viable in terms of extraction and transformation of raw materials. Another designer of the time, Clara Porset, a Cuban-Mexican, also wrote about this material and the Otomi people in 1948. Like Bergner, Porset observed the relationship between the Otomi people and this type of fibre, from the spinning process to the production of fabrics for furniture like chairs.^[10] Despite their efforts, in 1943 the project ended without establishing the workshops, due to two factors: first, a cultural issue, as the communication and integration of a foreign woman into indigenous communities and their so-called customs and traditions was an obstacle;^[11] second, problems with economic resources that were allocated to different programmes and sectors of the Department of Indigenous Affairs. However, one of the most valuable results of the programme was the manual on textiles she wrote between 1940 and 1943, which allows us to glimpse a theoretical perspective on design and material culture that emerges from textile work, where textiles were seen as objects inherent to human needs with symbolic, ritual and functional significance for societies.

Parallel to her pedagogical and research activities, between 1942 and 1946, Bergner developed eighteen exhibitions about the USSR at various venues.^[12] These exhibitions were part of a moment when Mexico carried out extensive antifascist propaganda with national campaigns to generate empathy with the Soviet Union following the country’s fascist invasion of 22 June 1941 by Germany.^[13] From that year, Mexico embarked on two major campaigns: the first aimed to highlight a positive image of the United States as part of the Allies, and the second was to work in favour of the USSR and against fascism. In this context, the Society of Friends of the USSR was born. Thus, the government took on the task of ‘shaping public opinion according to the needs imposed by the development of the [war] conflict’.^[14]

Learning to teach. Indigenous epistemologies and Lena Meyer-Bergner in Mexico

Transcultural intersections and knowledge exchange – Lena Meyer-Bergner and the Mexican culture (1939–1949)