28 Facts About Concha Michel

Concha Michel was a Mexican singer-songwriter, political activist, playwright, and a researcher who published several projects on the culture of indigenous communities.

Concha Michel was one of the few women who performed in the corrido style.

Concha Michel created the Institute of Folklore in Michoacan and was one of the first collectors of folklore and preservers of the traditions of the Mexican people.

Concha Michel was a cultural icon having relationships with two presidents, and a broad range of Mexico's most prominent artists including Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Guadalupe Marin, Tina Modotti, Elena Poniatowska, Anita Brenner and others.

Concepcion Michel was born in 1899 in Villa Purificacion, Jalisco, Mexico.

Concha Michel was a precocious child and her parents sent her at the age of seven to school at the Convento de San Ignacio de Loyola, which her grandfather had built in the village of Ejutla, Jalisco.

Concha Michel stayed four years and learned to sing and play the guitar, but after organizing the other novices to run away and trying to set fire to one of the saints, Concha was expelled.

Dates of events during this period, according to Jocelyn Olcott are difficult to pinpoint, but Concha Michel had a daughter before her 15th birthday; lived briefly in New York; returned to Mexico; married, had a son, and divorced.

In 1918 Concha Michel joined the Communist Party and began a life partnership with Hernan Laborde, General Secretary and first Deputy of the PCM.

In 1932, Concha Michel decided to move to New York, where she attended the School of Social Sciences for about a year.

Concha Michel used her winnings to travel to Europe and the Soviet Union.

Concha Michel was a friend to Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

Concha Michel's plans were to help women gain land independently from their fathers or husbands, so that women's collectives could farm them for subsistence.

Concha Michel was not a feminist, though later activists would claim her as a proto-feminist, as she believed in working within the system of Mexican gender.

Concha Michel felt that men's endorsement and collaboration with women's projects were vital to their success.

In 1936, Concha Michel led a group of about 250 women to invade one of President Plutarco Elias Calles's estates, claiming it should be made into a woman's training center, since the revolution had given rural women nothing.

Calles's guards removed the women while Concha Michel was negotiating with him.

The next several years were devoted to women's issues, as Concha Michel helped reorganize the defunct Women's Revolutionary Institute, began serving as secretary for the Confederacion Campesina Mexicana and was heavily involved in federal policy-making.

Concha Michel provided the vocal accompaniment to the visual records left by the Mexican mural movement photography of Tina Modotti, Aurora Reyes, Frida Kahlo and others.

Concha Michel traveled throughout Mexico with President Cardenas attending rallies and mass organizational meetings, using her music to agitate for her political ideals and tell the stories of the revolution.

Concha Michel introduced Diego Rivera to his future wife, Lupe Marin and Marin Modotti and Concha Michel served as his models for various works.

At Kahlo's last exhibit in 1953, Concha Michel was by her side.

Concha Michel's vision focused on the duality of humankind, and she saw that there was a need for men and women to work together recognizing equal importance of their roles.

At around the age of fifteen, Concha Michel had a child named Yolia with a law student from Chihuahua named Fernando Casares.

Concha Michel placed the child in a foundling home so that she could work.

Concha Michel's daughter contracted bronchial pneumonia and died when she was seventeen months old.

In 1918, Concha Michel began a relationship with her life partner, Hernan Laborde.

Concha Michel died on December 27,1990, in Morelia, Michoacan at the age of 93.