MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) --In a society where conspicuous consumption is a minor
industry, an art book portraying wealthy Mexicans rolling in riches has the country's
intellectuals sputtering in outrage.

"Ricas y Famosas" shows its subjects -- mostly young women--vamping,
posing and playing amid extravagant possessions. In one photo, a
granddaughter of a former president poses in a tennis dress, one foot atop a
stuffed lion. In another, a woman sprawls across an enormous Buddha,
scattered with money and surrounded by a moat of champagne.

Yet another shows a woman in red hot pants, blue halter top and cowboy hat
sitting in a saddle, tapping ash from a cigarette while pouting before a large
painting of peasant revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.

Historian Lorenzo Meyer said Daniela Rossell's 176-page book--whose title
means "Rich and Famous" in English -- shows Mexico's wealthy "are not a
leading class, but a parasitic one."

Writing in the newspaper Reforma, he welcomed the book "in the same way an
oncologist should recognize the usefulness of a good image of cancer."

The book's subjects are supposed to be anonymous, but outrage grew when
newspapers identified some as the offspring of politicians within the Institutional
Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which governed from 1929 to 2000 while claiming
to represent Mexico's impoverished masses.

They include a granddaughter of ex-President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz and a son of
former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, shown in an almost priestly pose, a
rosary wrapped around hands held as if in prayer.

Rossell herself is the granddaughter of a PRI governor and many of the book's
subjects were childhood friends and acquaintances _ some of whom reportedly
threatened to sue her after seeing the work and hearing their homes described
as "vast kitsch palaces" in book reviews.

While most Mexicans fall below the official poverty line, mass-circulation
magazines routinely run portraits of the rich and famous posing with sumptuous
possessions behind the razor-topped walls of their estates.

The September issue of "Actual" magazine shows an art collector's garden,
complete with eight types of citrus trees. A photo of the collector posing in her
home carries the headline: "Her mother disinherited her for having bought a Han
dynasty spoon for $12,000."

Though such magazines are popular in Mexico, few Mexicans will ever see
Rossell's book, which itself is something of a luxury item. It had an initial
Mexican run of only 4,000 copies and a $39 price tag -- more than three times
what most Mexicans make in a day. It is also sold via the Internet in the United
States.

But the newsmagazine Proceso ran a cover story on the book and serious
newspapers have covered it heavily, mixing anger over flaunted wealth with
bemusement at decor that sometimes struggled to reach the dignity of kitsch:
sculpted blackamoors, mounted animals, tarty dresses.

Guadalupe Loaeza, whose novels portray Mexico's rich, agreed with Meyer's
description of the political and business elite as "parasitic."

"I think it reflects perfectly well the surroundings in which they live," she said.

She attributed the bad taste to people who had become rich overnight with the
help of political cronies.

"We are talking about people without education, without culture, without
tradition, without points of reference," she said. "They are like drug traffickers
when they become rich and have to launder money" through frivolous spending.

Roderick Camp, who has catalogued Mexico's elite, said the book may have
attracted such attention because "it is reaching an entirely different audience"
than the one drawn to society pages.

"When somebody actually comes out, particularly with a visual image, then it
really reinforces these rather distorted views (of corruption) -- which are not
entirely distorted," said Camp, who is a professor of government at McKenna
College in Claremont, California..

The 29-year-old Rossell earlier had exhibited the photos in New York and
Madrid and was in Berlin this week for an upcoming exhibition.

In interviews published soon after the book appeared, she seemed taken aback
by the attention, and by the anger of those portrayed.

Some, she said, had been "calling me names like traitor and leaving messages
on my answer phone."
 
 

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.