An Anthropologist Orders a Beer

The extended turmoil associated with the decade-long armed portion of the Mexican Revolution provoked widespread concern about how the country would remake itself once the violence ended. Establishing a national esthetic as a means of unification played a significant role in this discussion, which began before hostilities ended. Some of the early manifestations of what might be regarded as Mexican nationalism arose from an appreciation of the land’s indigenous heritage while it was still under Spanish control. Although the willingness to fully embrace the indigenous components of its culture was largely a twentieth century phenomenon, by the late nineteenth century Mexican intellectuals did understand the nation to be essentially mestizo, or mixed race. It was from these premises that the discussion departed.

Japanese Farmers, Mexican Workers, and the Making of Transpacific Borderlands

Launched by Mexican farmworkers against Japanese farmers in Los Angeles, the 1933 El Monte Berry Strike became one of California’s largest labor conflicts. The strike evolved from a local conflict into an international problem in which anti-Japanese sentiment travelled across the U.S.-Mexico border, merged with Mexican nationalism, and forced Japanese residents in Mexico to issue an unexpected pro-strike statement against their co-ethnics in Los Angeles. Using Japanese diplomatic documents and local ethnic newspapers, this article details the process by which Mexican nationalism trumped ethnic solidarity among Japanese immigrants in the transpacific borderlands, where local and international concerns of Japan, Mexico, and the United States intersected. The exacerbating situation in Mexico, rather than in California, played a decisive role in the settlement of the strike.

Mexican Nationalism

Mexican nationalist thought, as articulated by Mexico’s most powerful politicians, scholars, and writers, was never intended to describe the nation as it was or as it is. Instead, it has always expressed aspirations: it has contained multiple and often-conflicting visions of the nation as it could be, should be, or might have been. Such nationalist thinking has followed two broad tracks. One is historical. It argues that the Mexican national character—lo mexicano, mexicanidad, the essence of what it is to be Mexican—was formed through the experience of a national history that was a series of painful and unfair losses overcome by heroism and persistence. This historical narrative begins with the conquest, culminates in the loss of almost half the national territory to the United States in 1848, and is brought to a happy conclusion by the Mexican Revolution. The other track that Mexican nationalist thought has followed has to do with race. Intellectuals and politicians have changed their conceptions of the relationship between Mexico’s indigenous people and other Mexicans over the years, with the most radical shift taking place in the transition from the Porfiriato to the Revolutionary government. But across the modern era in Mexico, the presence of indigenous people, the influence of indigenous cultures, and the memory of indigenous civilizations have shaped how Mexicans understand themselves and their nation. Both of these narratives have changed over time, being rewritten and reconstructed to serve the needs of a national state that was almost constantly in the process of remaking itself from independence through the first half of the 20th century. Both of these nationalist narratives, moreover, have been subject to intense scrutiny from revisionist historians, feminists, indigenous people, and other critics since at least the mid-1960s. Neither of these nationalist narratives has ever been fully accepted by the majority of Mexicans: alternative narratives emerged from—among others—peasant and indigenous communities, urban underclasses, and Catholic groups, and these narratives gave strength and shape to multiple forms of political and cultural resistance. Nonetheless, these twin discourses of Mexican nationalism persist in Mexico because they are embedded in so many aspects of daily life: textbooks, public policies, classic films, monuments, maps, and cookbooks.

The Mexican Revolution Migrates to Chicago

This chapter examines the Mexican immigrant liberal movement of Chicago. Mexican liberals were Mexican nationalists, and they subscribed to a democratic, reformist, anticlerical, and activist political culture informed by their participation in the Mexican Revolution. In Chicago, the liberals created a community and a reform movement that revolved around social welfare, educational, and criminal justice projects. Liberals were well-educated individuals who believed that education could empower Mexican immigrants and facilitate their upward mobility in the United States while allowing immigrants to retain their Mexican citizenship. As the liberal movement grew in size and influence, it succeeded in discouraging many Mexican immigrants from becoming U.S. citizens, and it imbued the Mexican population with a more sophisticated understanding of Mexican nationalism.

Giving shape to the past: Pre-columbia in nineteenth-century Mexican literary journals

The literary journal “El Museo Mexicano” (1843-1845) marked a watershed in Mexican nationalism, and sought to shape aspirations of an elite segment of nineteenth-century Mexican society eager to claim a post-colonial identity by exploring the cultural and historical strands that were combined in the young Republic. The editors solicited contributions from Mexican authors on a wide range of subjects, from descriptions of contemporary provincial life to accounts of recent discoveries of pre-Hispanic monuments and artifacts. The aim was to provide a more complete and up-to-date image of Mexico, rich in anecdotal detail and lavishly illustrated. In this paper I will explore how this new literary platform argued for the validity of archaeological investigation in the American context, and ultimately shaped how Mexicans perceived their past. Though my focus is primarily on the articles in “El Museo Mexicano” I will also analyze some of the visual tropes and traditions, from the picturesque to the grotesque that inspired illustration in other Mexican journals of the same genre.