The development of Mexican national identity after the Revolution

The Development of Mexican National Identity After the Revolution

[Name]

[Instructor]

[Course]

[Date]

The Development of Mexican National Identity After the Revolution

Introduction

Many truisms about the place of indigenous cultures in Mexican society about what defines Indianness , and about the extent to which Mexicans saw themselves as all part of a cohesive national community , were not outcomes of a seamless history of mestizaje (cultural and racial mixing between Indians and Europeans , but were products of post-revolutionary nationalist discourses . This challenges the common tendency among historians and

the public to impose current assumptions from the present onto the past . Historians often assume , for instance , that the Mexican nation has long been culturally integrated and bound by a common sense of mestizaje . As this will show , however , both the cultural integration , and the promotion of ethnicized national identity are fairly recent events that developed after the Mexican Revolution of 1910

Mexican novelist and political commentator Carlos Fuentes recently observed that the most enduring outcome of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920 ) has been the cultural transformation and nationalist self-discovery that came in its wake . The post-revolutionary movement marked the biggest attempt in Mexican history , he argues "to recognize the cultural sacrificed (Fuentes 1996 : 66-67 " This is a study of cultural transformation . More specifically , it is a study of the post-revolutionary development of Mexican national identity particularly the popular arts both on the national level

The Birth of Mexican Cultural Nationalism

At the turn of the twentieth century Mexico was poised to enter modernity . But Mexico was not yet a nation in the modern European sense of the term . The rapid pace of change coupled with the complete reorientation of values during the previous century had deepened ethno-racial divisions in Mexican society . The European models for national unity embraced so enthusiastically as part of the "discourse of futurity " during the anti-colonial struggle against Spain had not resulted in the construction of any sense of mexicanidad . This is demonstrated by the fact that throughout the nineteenth century national identification had remained limited to the Creole class and some upwardly aspiring Mestizos (Chorba 2007

During the revolutionary period , a new nationalism emerged - one that was founded on the democratization of society and the reconsideration of foreign influences on the country 's economy and culture (Franco 1967 71 . In a search for their true national origins , Mexicans were rejecting the cultural patrimony of Anglo-Saxon Europe (and the United States ) in an effort to construct meaningful cultural symbols from their own past . The prevailing sentiment was that Mexico would have to find an independent solution for the political , economic and racial problems that impeded progress - one that drew its strength from the Mexican people themselves . The autochthonous response must by necessity question the detrimental role that foreign (capitalist ) development had played in exploiting the country and in obstructing national unity (Lomnitz-Adler 1992

In a speech before the House of Representatives in 1925 , labor leader Vicente Lombardo Toledano expressed the besieged attitude of the Mexican people

The...