Expanded Timeline
Expanded Timeline
1897
Julia Jiménez González is born in Milpa Alta (High Field), a small farming community, on January 28, the second oldest of six sisters.
1904
Luz is a student at Elementary School #4 in Milpa Alta.
1908
Luz enters Concepción Arenal Upper Primary School.
1911
Emiliano Zapata, who speaks Nahuatl, asks the people of Milpa Alta to fight against government forces during the Mexican Revolution.
1912
Milpa Alta is at the center of the fight between the Zapatistas and the federal soldiers. Luz is forced to leave school and her school is burned down in 1914.
1916
Venustiano Carranza’s men kill Luz’s father and uncles áin the massacre in Milpa Alta. Luz and her family leave Milpa Alta to live in Santa Anita on the edge of Mexico City and have to find a way to make a living.
1918-1919
Luz wins first place for the “Loveliest Flower of the Field,” a contest among native girls in Santa Anita. She takes the name Luciana for the contest and later goes by Luz or Doña Luz as a sign of respect when she is older. Luz’s family returns to Milpa Alta in 1919 after Zapata’s death, but Luz stays in Mexico City and later in life intermittently in Milpa Alta.
1920
At the Open Air School of Painting at Chimalistac, Luz models for Fernando Leal and others. Luz continues to model until her death. Leal paints Luz in India con Frutas.
1921-1922
Luz models at the Open Air School of Painting in Coyoacan, particularly for Fernando Leal and Jean Charlot. She models for Fernando Leal’s, Campamento de un colonel zapatista (Encampment of one of Zapata's colonels).
Luz models for Diego Rivera and Fernando Leal at the National Ildefonso Preparatory School. Rivera uses Luz as a representation of Faith in his mural The Creation.
Leal paints Luz in his mural Festival of Lord Chalma, and she becomes his favorite model.
As a nation grappled with what it meant to be Mexican in the post-revolutionary world, muralists painted large depictions on public walls/buildings.
1923-1924
Luz models for Diego Rivera’s painting, La Molendera, and for the mural Marketplace in the Secretariat of Public Education’s in Mexico City. The
1924-1925
Luz takes Anita Brenner (writer), Jean Charlot (artist) and others to the Sanctuary of Chalma. Anita Brenner and Jean Charlot become godparents for Concha (Conchita), Luz’s daughter. Luz had a distant relationship with Manuel Hernández Chaparro, Concha’s father. Luz supported herself and Concha.
1926
Luz is a model for Diego Rivera’s painting, The Tortilla Maker and the Flower Vendor. Luz works as a maid. Edward Weston and Tina Modotti take photographs, including Luz and her daughter. Luz is a cook for Anita Brenner.
1929
Benjamin Lee Worf, a North American linguist, uses Luz’s talents as a Nahuatl speaker.
Diego Rivera paints murals in the National Palace, using Luz as one of his models.
1932
Luz models for Diego Rivera’s La maestra rural (The Rural Teacher).
1936
Luz applies to the Secretariat of Education to be a Rural School Teacher but is rejected. In The Weaver, Rivera paints Luz using a back-strap loom, the type used for centuries.
1937
Luz works as a resource for Nahuatl for Mariano Silva y Aceves at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
1940
Milpa Alta hosts the First Aztec Congress, which mainly determines what written Nahuatl should look like.
1941
Luz is a linguistic resource for American Robert Barlow. Throughout her life, Luz also sells clothing and other articles that she and other women create to sustain herself and her family.
1942
Luz narrates stories that Anita Brenner edits and Jean Charlot illustrates, The Boy Who Could Do Anything & Other Mexican Folk Tales. Luz did not receive her promised one third of the profits of this book. She stays at the home of Diego Rivera with her daughter Concha while she works as a model.
1943
Luz models at the La Esmeralda School of Painting, where Frida Kahlo teaches.
1945- 1947
Luz lives with the Jean Charlot family and takes care of the Charlot children, who treat her as family.
1948
Stanley Newman and Luz collaborate in expanding a small Nahuatl grammar book. His voice recording of Luz’s story of Tepozton is the only known sample of her voice. The recording is archived at Indiana University in the Languages of the World collection. Fernando Horcasitas, a North American anthropologist, meets Luz. He and Luz work together until her death.
1950
Luz writes several essays in Nahuatl, which are published in Robert Barlow’s Nahuatl language newspaper, Mexihcatl Itonalama.
1956
Horcasitas and Luz teach students Nahuatl at the College of Mexico City.
1957
Luz relates stories to Anita Brenner that become the book, Juan el tonto y los Banditos (Dumb Juan and the Bandits), illustrated by Jean Charlot.
1960-1965
Luz returns to Mexico City to live with her daughter, Concha and her grandchildren.
1961
The national daily newspaper Excélsior publishes an article about Doña Luz’s life, and a television program Working Women, interviews Luz.
1963
Horcasitas and Luz move to the Institute of Historical Research at the National University, where she recounts in Nahuatl the stories of Milpa Alta before and during the Revolution to their students.
1965
Doña Luz Jiménez is hit by a car in Mexico City and dies on her 68th birthday, January 28th.
1972
After translating and editing Luz’s stories and recollections over the years, Horcasitas publishes Life and Death in Milpa Alta: A Nahuatl Chronicle of Díaz and Zapata.
1979
Fernando Horcasitas and Sarah O. Ford publish Nahuatl Tales of Doña Luz Jiménez. Both the Nahuatl and accompanying Spanish versions are by Luz Jiménez.
1994
The American author Frances Karttunen writes the biography of Luz Jiménez Between Worlds that Horcasitas had begun.
1997
An exhibition at the Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo, Coyoacán (Mexico City) spotlights drawings, paintings, sculptures, and photographs of Luz Jiménez.