RACE, TECHNOLOGY, and the BODY in the MESTIZO STATE by Copyright © 2015 David S. Dalton Submitted
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by KU ScholarWorks EMBODYING MODERNITY IN MEXIO: RACE, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE BODY IN THE MESTIZO STATE By Copyright © 2015 David S. Dalton Submitted to the graduate degree program in Spanish and Portuguese and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________ Chairperson, Stuart A. Day ________________________________ Luciano Tosta ________________________________ Rafael Acosta ________________________________ Nicole Hodges Persley ________________________________ Jerry Hoeg Date Defended: May 11, 2015 ii The Dissertation Committee for David S. Dalton certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: EMBODYING MODERNITY IN MEXICO: RACE, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE BODY IN THE MESTIZO STATE ________________________________ Chairperson Stuart A. Day Date approved: May 11, 2015 iii ABSTRACT Mexico’s traumatic Revolution (1910-1917) attested to stark divisions that had existed in the country for many years. After the dust of the war settled, post-revolutionary leaders embarked on a nation-building project that aimed to assimilate the country’s diverse (particularly indigenous) population under the umbrella of official mestizaje (or an institutionalized mixed- race identity). Indigenous Mexican woud assimilate to the state by undergoing a project of “modernization,” which would entail industrial growth through the imposition of a market-based economy. One of the most remarkable aspects of this project of nation-building was the post- revolutionary government’s decision to use art to communicate official discourses of mestizaje. From the end of the Revolution until at least the 1970s, state officials funded cultural artists whose work buoyed official discourses that posited mixed-race identity as a key component of an authentically Mexican modernity. Throughout this dissertation, I argue that post-revolutionary state and lettered officials viewed the hybridization of indigenous and female bodies with technology as paramount in their attempts to articulate a new national identity. As they fused the body with technology through medicine, education, industrial agriculture and factory work, state officials believed that they could irradicate indigenous “primitivity” and transform Amerindians into full-fledged members of the nascent, mestizo state. In the pages that follow, I analyze the work of José Vasconcelos, Emilio “El Indio” Fernández, El Santo, and Carlos Olvera. These artists, and many others, used very different media and produced their works during different decades; however, each artists’ work posits the fusion of the body with technology as key to forming an “authentic,” Mexican identity. The most remarkable finding of my study is that thinkers with vastly different worldviews concurred with the idea that technology could modernize indigenous bodies and thus aid in their assimilation to the modern, mestizo state. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am fortunate to have spent the last four years with incredible colleagues and mentors at the University of Kansas. I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to each professor that I have worked with since arriving. Without fail, my professors were willing to work with me as I found ways to connect my own research agenda to their areas of specialization. The feedback they gave was invaluable as I developed several term papers into sections of my dissertation. I am especially grateful to the members of my committee for their guidance. I truly value the collaboration of Dr. Rafael Acosta, who was always available to talk about ideas for this and other projects. I met Dr. Jerry Hoeg at the Ometeca conference in Laramie Wyoming in 2010. His familiarity with science and literature has proven especially helpful in refining my arguments. It was in Dr. Nicole Hodges Persley’s course on race and performance that I first conceived of this project’s theoretical framework. I doubt that I would have ever come up with the idea that cyborg identity could interface with and amend racial identity were it not for the conversations that we had both in and out of class. Dr. Luciano Tosta has given me excellent feedback with great suggestions about how to tie my research more broadly into Latin American Studies. He was always available to discuss this project, both as a dissertation and as a book in embryonic form. Although she is not on my committee, Dr. Jill Kuhnheim helped me to make this project what it is as she challenged me to refine my thought. I would especially like to thank my adviser, Dr. Stuart Day, for his stalwart support and his faith in a project that would marry posthuman theory with critical race theory to discuss post-revolutionary official mestizaje in Mexico. He was always available when I would drop by his office to discuss the dissertation, scheduling, and other aspects of graduate student life. I cherish the conversations we had about Mexico, the profession, and life in general. v I could not have asked for a better program than the one at KU. Both the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Latin American and Caribbean Studies have supported my research and professional endeavors in many ways. I was fortunate to receive travel grants from Latin American and Caribbean Studies on two separate occasions. One of these facilitated my archival work at the Secretaría de Educación Pública in Mexico City. This shaped my understanding of the extent to which public education institutionalized mestizo normativity following the Revolution. I have also had the great privilege of working with excellent colleagues in the department. I would like to express a special thanks to Zeke Stear and Jake Rapp, both of whom were especially helpful as they read drafts of chapters and shared insights about my project. I am especially grateful to my family for their support and patience. My parents instilled me with a love of reading from a very young age; as such, this dissertation is their accomplishment as well. I also wish to thank my brothers and sisters who have supported me in many ways. I have enjoyed the sometimes raucous conversations about cyborgs, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and so forth with each of them. Last, but certainly not least, I want to thank my wife and children for their support. Ariadna has been very understanding as I have at times seemed to abandon ship while writing different segments of this dissertation. I am so very grateful to her for supporting me from my first day of the PhD. I could not have done this without her understanding, support, and above all love. My sons Davidcito and Dan Armando have also sacrificed fun Daddy time to let me finish this project, and I am forever in their debt. There were nights where Dan Armando would wake up at 2:00 in the morning and refuse to go back to sleep until I stopped writing and went to bed (he’d even wake up if I tried to sneak back to the computer). As the time passes, I’m sure that little nugget will be among the sweetest memories of my KU experience. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 Notes ......................................................................................................................... 43 Chapter 1 ..................................................................................................................................... 55 Notes ......................................................................................................................... 94 Chapter 2 ................................................................................................................................... 102 Notes ....................................................................................................................... 149 Chapter 3 ................................................................................................................................... 157 Notes ....................................................................................................................... 202 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 210 Notes ....................................................................................................................... 229 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................... 233 1 Introduction (Re)Constructing the Racialized Body through Technology Constructs of race in Mexico—as in most parts of the world—are nuanced and at times contradictory. Two almost antithetical experiences I had while living in northern Mexico illustrate this fact. In Monclova, Coahuila I saw a man pick up his clothes from a lavandería. Upon finding that a worker had broken the plastic clip on his laundry bag’s drawstring, he shouted “¡India bruta!” and left the building. A few months afterwards, some friends in Matehuala, San Luis Potosí invited me to dinner, where a woman said, “Todos somos de una sola raza aquí. No hay racismo como en Estados Unidos.” Her statement caught me off guard because it seemed antithetical to the scene I had witnessed in nearby Coahuila. This led me to question how Mexican discourses could seemingly disapprove of racial