Good family genes
Here we see one María del Carmen Mondragón Valseca, best known by her stage name of Nahui Olin.
Born in 1893 in Mexico City to an important family (more on that later) she was forced from the country in 1913 after the 10 Tragic Days of the Mexican Revolution and later grew into an artist’s model– known for her wide green eyes– before evolving into a painter and poet in the same vein as Frida Kahlo and others.
She died in 1978, aged 84.
The important family? Her father was Manuel Mondragón, general of the Mexican Army in charge of field artillery development and later Secretario de Guerra y Marina. He was also a noted weapons designer, perfecting a 75mm howitzer (the Saint-Chamond-Mondragón– which the Israelis still used in their 1948 war). His biggest claim to enduring fame, however, is in the rifles he designed to include an 1894 straight-pull developed in conjunction with SIG and his infamous M1908 self-loader, the first of its type in production.
Wrapped up in the drama of the Mexican Revolution, where he came up short, the good general died in San Sebastián, Spain in exile at age 63. But his rifles live on, just as much an art form as his daughter’s work, though beauty is, of course, in the eyes of the beholder.