Rethinking the nation: Mexico 2010
Professor Mauricio Tenorio Trillo puts Mexico’s centennial celebration into perspective
Professor of Latin American History Mauricio Tenorio Trillo’s Historia y celebración: México y sus centenarios was published this summer by Tusquets Editores, in Mexico. In this series of essays reflecting on the year 2010, which will mark the bicentennial of Mexican Independence, and the centennial of the Mexican Revolution, Tenorio uses the 1910 centenary celebration of independence as a central point of departure.
A massive effort by the Porfirian government that took place over seven years, and incorporated the work of scientists, artists, politicians, and historians, this event marked one of the first national celebrations of its kind. The aesthetic centerpiece of the centenary was a series of visual representations of Mexico’s pre-Colombian and colonial past, and the revolutionary struggle; these displays fell in chronological order along Paseo de la Reforma, and led up to the Monumento de la Revolución. Tenorio uses this presentation of the nation as a way to see how Mexico envisioned its past, present, and future in this critical moment in the nation’s history.
Over the last hundred years, he asks, how has this image been preserved or realized? In what ways has it faded? Historia y celebración: México y sus centenarios examines presentations of national identity over time, the “mythification” of the nation’s past, and Mexico’s image in the international context, following an overarching conceptual thread which suggests that rather than celebration, the year 2010 may merit a careful rethinking of the nation.
Conference publication probes at the legacy of Andrés Molina Enríquez’ Los Grandes Problemas Nacionales
Last September, the Katz Center for Mexican Studies sponsored a colloquium on the multiple and conflicting legacies of Andrés Molina Enríquez’ book, Los Grandes Problemas Nacionales, one hundred years after its publication. Molina is considered to be one of the principal intellectual precursors of the Revolution of 1910 (its Rousseau, according to some), and his book has long been regarded as one of the most influential studies of Mexico’s social problems produced in the 20th century; it also provided the intellectual foundations for Mexico’s post-revolutionary agrarian reform program.
Papers from the colloquium will be published jointly by El Colegio de Mexico and the Katz Center for Mexican Studies, in an edited volume entitled Andrés Molina Enríquez, ¿esquina con qué? Un siglo de Los Grandes Problemas Nacionales. The volume will include:
- “El Artículo 27 (1917-1992): Del triunfo del agrarismo a través Molina Enríquez al epitafio del agrarismo a través de Molina Enríquez.” Fernando Escalante, El Colegio de México.
- “Molina Enríquez y el lenguaje jurídico de la propiedad en México: cinco fracasos y un triunfo.” Antonio Azuela, UNAM.
- “Molina Enríquez: agua y soberanía en México.” Alejandra Nuñez Luna, Harvard Law School.
- “Los Grandes Problemas no Nacionales de Molina Enríquez: Mestizaje, tierras e imperios.” Claudio Lomnitz, Columbia University.
- “Mestizología Porfiriana: Molina Enríquez y cien años del México mestizo.” Mauricio Tenorio, CIDE & University of Chicago.
- “Los pueblos de Molina Enríquez: historia y reforma agraria.” Emilio Kourí, University of Chicago.
Latin American History Professor Emilio Kourí, who will edit the volume, writes that Andrés Molina Enríquez, ¿esquina con qué? Un siglo de Los Grandes Problemas Nacionales is not so much an homage to Molina Enríquez or his book, but rather a reflection on “grandes problemas nacionales” (literally), as seen from the past, the present and the future.
