Eagle And the Virgin

by Vaughan, Mary Kay; Lewis, Stephen E.; Lopez, Rick A. (CON); Rochfort, Desmond (CON)

• ISBN13: 9780822336570
• ISBN10: 082233657X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-03-30
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

When the fighting of the Mexican Revolution died down in 1920, the national government faced the daunting task of building a cohesive nation. It had to establish control over a disparate and needy population and prepare the country for global economic competition. As part of this effort, the government enlisted the energy of artists and intellectuals in cultivating a distinctly Mexican identity. It devised a project for the incorporation of indigenous peoples and oversaw a vast, innovative program in the arts. The Eagle and the Virgin examines the massive nation-building project Mexico undertook between 1920 and 1940.Contributors explore the nation-building efforts of the government, artists, entrepreneurs, and social movements; their contradictory, often conflictive intersection; and their inevitably trans-national nature. Scholars of political and social history, communications, and art history describe the creation of national symbols, myths, histories, and heroes to inspire patriotism and transform workers and peasants into efficient, productive, gendered subjects. They analyze the aesthetics of nation-building made visible in murals, music, and architecture; investigate state projects to promote health, anti-clericalism, and education; and consider the role of mass communications from cinema and radio to road-building. They discuss how national identity was forged among social groups, specifically political Catholics, industrial workers, middle class women, and indigenous communities. Most importantly, the volume weighs in on debates about the tension between the eagle (the modernizing secular state) and the Virgin of Guadalupe (the Catholic defense of faith and morality). It argues that despite bitter, violent conflict, the symbolic repertoire created to promote national identity and memory-making eventually proved capacious enough to allow the eagle and the virgin to coexist peacefully.Contributors: Adrian Bantjes, Katherine Bliss, María Teresa Fernández, Joy Elizabeth Hayes, Joanne Hershfield, Stephen E. Lewis, Claudio Lomnitz, Rick A. López, Sarah M. Lowe, Jean Meyer, James Oles, Patrice Olsen, Michael Snodgrass, Mary Kay Vaughan, Marco Velázquez, Wendy Waters, Adriana ZavalaMary Kay Vaughan is Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her books include Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1930-1940. She is a co-editor of the journal Hispanic American Historical Review. Stephen E. Lewis is Associate Professor of History at California State University, Chico. He is the author of The Ambivalent Revolution: Forging State and Nation in Chiapas, 1910-1945.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	1	(22)
Mary Kay Vaughan
Stephen E. Lewis
I. The Aesthetics of Nation Building
The Noche Mexicana and the Exhibition of Popular Arts: Two Ways of Exalting Indianness	23	(20)
Rick A. Lopez
The Sickle, the Serpent, and the Soil: History, Revolution, Nationhood, and Modernity in the Murals of Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros	43	(52)
Desmond Rochfort
Painting in the Shadow of the Big Three
Frida Kahlo	58	(9)
Sarah M. Lowe
Maria Izquierdo	67	(12)
Adriana Zavala
The Mexican Experience of Marion and Grace Greenwood	79	(16)
James Oles
Mestizaje and Musical Nationalism in Mexico	95	(24)
Marco Velazquez
Mary Kay Vaughan
Revolution in the City Streets: Changing Nomenclature, Changing Form, and the Revision of Public Memory	119	(18)
Patrice Elizabeth Olsen
II. Utopian Projects of the State
Saints, Sinners, and State Formation: Local Religion and Cultural Revolution in Mexico	137	(20)
Adrian A. Bantjes
Nationalizing the Countryside: Schools and Rural Communities in the 1930s	157	(19)
Mary Kay Vaughan
The Nation, Education, and the ``Indian Problem'' in Mexico, 1920--1940	176	(20)
Stephen E. Lewis
For the Health of the Nation: Gender and the Cultural Politics of Social Hygiene in Revolutionary Mexico	196	(25)
Katherine E. Bliss
III. Mass Communications and Nation Building
Remapping Identities: Road Construction and Nation Building in Postrevolutionary Mexico	221	(22)
Wendy Waters
National Imaginings on the Air: Radio in Mexico, 1920--1950	243	(16)
Joy Elizabeth Hayes
Screening the Nation	259	(22)
Joanne Hershfield
IV. Social Constructions of Nation
An Idea of Mexico: Catholics in the Revolution	281	(16)
Jean Meyer
Guadalajaran Women and the Construction of National Identity	297	(17)
Maria Teresa Fernandez Aceves
``We Are All Mexicans Here'': Workers, Patriotism, and Union Struggles in Monterrey	314	(21)
Michael Snodgrass
Final Reflections What Was Mexico's Cultural Revolution?	335	(16)
Claudio Lomnitz
Contributors	351	(6)
Index	357