Carte d'adhérent à l'association de chasse et pêche du district fédéral de Mexico

BUNUEL Luis Membership card for the Mexico City Hunting and Fishing Association

Membership card for the Mexico City Hunting and Fishing Association, with original black and white identity photo of Luis Buñuel to recto. Manuscript signatures of the President and Secretary of the Association below.
To interior and verso, various stamps and signatures from the Mexican authorities.
The card has been repaired with adhesive tape, which has yellowed a little.
Luis Buñuel neither hunted nor fished, but obtained this permit to be allowed to practice shooting.
"I like guns and shooting them. I have owned up to 65 revolvers and rifles but I sold most of my collection in 1964, convinced that I was going to die in that year. I have fired my guns pretty much everywhere, even in my office thanks to a special metal box that I set up opposite me on some shelves. You should never shoot in a sealed room. I lost an ear like that Saragossa. My specialty has always been reflex-shooting with a revolver. You take a few steps, turn sharply around and fire at a cut out - a little like in Westerns" (Luis Buñuel, My Last Sigh, 1982).
Though Buñuel only devotes a few lines to his passion for firearms in his autobiography, it nonetheless played an important part in his life. This interest came from his father, Leonardo Buñuel García, who was the commercial agent for Remington and Smith in Havana at the end of the 19th century. Dealing arms as well as his role as a hardware salesman, he quickly amassed a large fortune thanks to this burgeoning market. "His father...had a gun shop. When the young Buñuel was ill, he would lend him a revolver to amuse himself with. He also took him to the firing range, something Don Luis would later do in Mexico with his sons Juan-Luis and Rafael. He had a veritable passion for these objects and at the age of fourteen, got into the habit of walking around with a Browning hidden under his clothes, a gun that would be confiscated from him in school. The scenes in which guns are shown in his films are beyond counting, particularly during his Mexican period" (Manuel Rodríguez Blanco, Luis Buñuel, 2000).