Category: Chingona

Artist Frida Kahlo, Chingona, Empowerment, Frida, Hope, Latino Rebels, Maribel Hernandez Designs, Self Identity, Strong Women

Reasons to Celebrate Frida Kahlo’s Birthday

Mona Alvarado Frazier

Around the blogosphere and Facebook, many are paying tribute to the artist, activist, feminist icon and chingona Frida Kahlo. Last year I remembered her anniversary.  Today is her birthday.  

https://www.facebook.com/LatinoRebels

Over a hundred years after her birth, Frida remains memorable. In addition to her art, much of this has to do with her honesty about emotional and physical pain, her activism, her love of country and her self-identity as a woman. These are reasons to celebrate Frida’s birthday. 

Frida Kahlo produced 143 paintings, 55 of which are self-portraits. When asked why she painted so many of these, Frida replied:

 “Because I am so often alone….because I am the subject I know best.”

Her honesty in her response is precisely why she is remembered. Similiar to her au naturel face of unplucked eyebrows and unshaven upper lip, this was a woman who was comfortable with her identity. What she highlighted in many photographs, was her indigenous and mestizo roots and the culture of Mexico. 


This was a woman who lived a life in physical pain from several injuries and still painted.

 “I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.” * 

.
She was a woman who lived a life marked by emotional pain and depression. Her beloved mother, Matilde Calderon, died of breast cancer. Her father, who encouraged her to paint after her horrible accident died of a heart attack. She had several miscarriages. Her husband, Diego Rivera, was infamously unfaithful.


“I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.” **

Frida was a ‘relatable’ artist. Carlos Fuentes, famed Mexican novelist said: 

“Frida found a way of painting pain – of permitting us to see pain and in so doing, reflecting the pain of the world. … She is a figure that represents the conquest of adversity, that represents how – against hell and high water – a person is able to make their life and reinvent themselves and make that life be personally fulfilling… Frida Kahlo in that sense is a symbol of hope, of power, of empowerment…”

Frida’s philosophy of life was described just days before her death, in her still life, using the words Viva La Vida (Long Live Life). 

This was a woman who took pain and depression, placed it on canvas along with her vision, and created beauty. It takes a strong woman to translate tragedy into beauty.  

 “It is not worthwhile,…to leave this world without having had a little fun in life.” ***

That, right there, sums it up. Happy Birthday, Frida.



*Letter to Ella Wolfe, 1938, quoted in Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera In a footnote, Herrera writes that Kahlo had heard this joke from her friend, the poet José Frías.

**Quoted in Time Magazine, “Mexican Autobiography” (27 April 1953) a year before her death.

*** Smithsonian Magazine

Birthdays, Chingona, Death, Family, Parents, Strong Women

A Meaningful Life

Mona Alvarado Frazier
alvaradofrazier.com




It’s my mother’s birthday. She’s on the other side of her early 80’s. 

Still a rebel with a cause. A chingona of the first degree, a strong woman.

Loves to eat, tell us stories, have a beer sometimes (only Corona), and laugh. 

We celebrated yesterday at a birthday barbeque in the backyard surrounded by four generations. 

Her favorite menu of carne asada, corn on the cob, chocolate cake with raspberries were among the spread. We forgot her diabetes for one meal. We didn’t want another tussle.


Amidst the talk of another year gone by, she begins counting grandchildren and greatgrandchildren, thirteen in total.  

“Look,” a friend said to mom, “look at all these fires you started.”

Mom leaned back, she looked pleased and nodded.

I heard her whisper, “Maybe my last year.” She’s been saying those words for the last several months. 

She reminds me that she’s glad I wrote down the stories of her childhood four years ago and gave them to my siblings and cousins. 

“It’s a good title, ‘Remembering before I Forget,’ she said, “because I’m really forgetting now.” And that reminds me that I have to revise the stories. Her cousin says that she recalled a few incidents incorrectly.  

She turns melancholy. It’s hard for her being the last sibling alive. We never had grandparents on her side of the family. She was orphaned at a young age. Remembering that she’s the last one alive is hard for me too. Sometimes I feel guilty we still have her and my cousins don’t have their moms and dads anymore. I think about how they feel when they see her.  

Mom looks to a near future of death, preparing for it by making all the arrangements and payments for her plot, selecting her songs, specifying the flowers, writing down her pall bearers (to include her granddaughters), giving me cards for the man who releases the doves. 

“And no crying, celebrate. I want Mariachi’s to play.”

Everytime I hear her say this I choke up. I’m gonna cry. I know it. And I don’t care. Many, many people will cry. And then I’ll remember all the funny stuff she says and does, all the while laughing. We’ll cry and later laugh, loud.  That’s a family thing, we laugh loudly.

We’ll remember her push for college, her feistiness, her marches for justice, persistence, her green thumb, her love of reading, her travels, her stories about her barrio. We’ll remember it all. 

But the time to cry isn’t now. 

We toast to her health and more birthdays to come.