DOCSLIB.ORG

After the Earthquake: Literary Responses to Catastrophe In

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
After the Earthquake: Literary Responses to Catastrophe In AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE: LITERARY RESPONSES TO CATASTROPHE IN MEXICO CITY, 1985-2000 BY JULIA GARNER-PRAZERES B.A., BOWDOIN COLLEGE, 2001 M.A., BROWN UNIVERSITY, 2003 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF HISPANIC STUDIES AT BROWN UNIVERSITY PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND JANUARY 2012 © Copyright 2012 by Julia Garner-Prazeres This dissertation is accepted in its present form by the Department of Hispanic Studies as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date________________________ _________________________________________ Julio Ortega, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date________________________ _______________________________________ Aldo Mazzucchelli, Reader Date________________________ _________________________________________ Beatriz Pastor, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date________________________ _________________________________________ Peter M. Weber, Dean of the Graduate School iii CURRICULUM VITAE Julia Garner-Prazeres was born in 1979 in Chicago, Illinois. She graduated summa cum laude from Bowdoin College in 2001 with a B.A. in Spanish and French. She received her M.A. in Hispanic Studies at Brown University in 2003. As a graduate student in the Hispanic Studies Department she was awarded the Kossoff Prize for Leadership in Teaching. She is currently a Lecturer at the University of Virginia-Charlottesville where she teaches courses in contemporary Latin American literature. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my deep gratitude to my advisor, Julio Ortega, for his suggestions and guidance throughout this process. A special thanks goes to the members of my committee, Aldo Mazzucchelli and Beatriz Pastor, for their generous participation. I am grateful to the professors in the Hispanic Studies Department for their support and inspiration throughout my graduate studies. I would also like to thank my parents and Luca for their patience and encouragement over the years. v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………...……1 I.1. Landscapes of Catastrophe I.2. Journalism and the Testimonial I.3. Science Fiction Time I.4. Mexican Disaster Fiction I.5. The Novels CHAPTER 1 Conquest, Catastrophe and Civil Society: Alternative Structures of Time in Carlos Fuentes’s Cristóbal Nonato……………………………………………………………32 1.1. The 1985 earthquake and its Impact 1.2. Cristóbal Nonato: Real and Imagined Catastrophes 1.3 Alternative Structures of Time 1.3.1. Popular Culture and the Cycles of Carnival 1.3.2. The Moment of the Earthquake 1.3.3. Apocalypse Then and Now 1.3.4. The Spiral of Open-Ended Struggle 1.4. Carlos Fuentes: Novelist and Social Critic CHAPTER 2 The Ruins of Modernization: Collapsing Structures in Ignacio Solares’s Casas de encantamiento………………………………………………………………77 2.1. The Deep City and the City of the Planners 2.2. Time Travel: A Critical Look at The Past 2.3. Tlatelolco and the Layers of History 2.4. Writing Crisis CHAPTER 3 Environmental Disasters and the Myth of the Five Suns in Two Novels by Homero Aridjis………………………………………………………………………..112 3.1. The Crises of the Nineties 3.2. Disaster Fiction and the Future of Mexico City 3.3. Contemporary Science Fiction and a Rehallucinated Past 3.4. Representation and Redemption vi CHAPTER 4 Disjuncture and Disaster: Past, Present and Future in Carmen Boullosa’s Cielos de la Tierra……………………………………………………………………149 4.1. Alienating Narratives 4.2. Present: Family History and Mestizaje 4.3. Past: The Failed Franciscan Project 4.4. Translation 4.5. Future: Dis-re-memberment in Atlántide 4.6. The Politics of Form CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………...190 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………201 vii INTRODUCTION In my dissertation I study science fiction representations1 of catastrophe in Mexican novels published after the 1985 earthquake through the upheaval of the nineties to show how these representations, with their deconstruction of temporality, permit a critical perspective on the present conditions of Mexican society and politics. My dissertation focuses on the fantastical conjoining of distinct temporalities and the fragmented narrative structures of novels of catastrophe by Carlos Fuentes, Ignacio Solares, Homero Aridjis and Carmen Boullosa. These Mexican novels of catastrophe fit within the conceptual framework of contemporary science fiction, and two theorists of the genre, Jean Baudrillard and Frederic Jameson, have provided support for my line of analysis. I examine the way science fiction time in these novels creates connections between historical periods through time travel, dystopian futurescapes, alternative realities that issue forth from a single moment of time, and historical or mythical elements that are de-contextualized. Since they are not constrained by the relationship of cause and effect, these works resemble the free associations of the imaginary of Mexico City as the site of catastrophe and they draw on Mexico’s unique template for disaster through myth and the conquest. In contrast to the testimonial and journalistic accounts of disaster, these novels exaggerate reality and weave together the “before” and “after” of a present catastrophe to compel the reader to think about whether Mexico’s trajectory could have been otherwise. 1 I am not referring here to the genre of science fiction in its narrowest sense, as a literature that explores the impact of science on society, but instead to a broader body of speculative writing that frees the play of time. 1 I.1. Landscapes of Catastrophe At 7:19am on the morning of September 19, 1985 an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale devastated Mexico City’s downtown just as many capitalinos were commuting to work and school. Estimates of the fatalities range between 5,000 and 20,0002, and the property and infrastructural damage in the areas in and around the Zócalo is calculated at $4 billion (Gilbert 579). In the worst affected areas entire buildings collapsed, trapping residents, dead and alive, in the rubble. Popular opinion maintained that President de la Madrid’s government was not only slow to respond but also negligent and even abusive in its handling of the crisis. While the authorities delayed rescue operations and in some cases even impeded access to the disaster zones, residents and volunteers spontaneously organized rescue brigades to pull people out of the ruins and provide food and shelter for the victims. Despite the tragic nature of the event, this moment has been hailed as the emergence of civil society in Mexico3. Abandoned by the government for the crucial first couple of days, citizens demonstrated an outpouring of solidarity and a spirit of collaboration and initiative in the immediate aftermath of the catastrophe that were unprecedented in the city’s history. At the same time that this catastrophe represents a watershed in Mexican history because it significantly strengthened civil society, it brought to light the failures of the priista state and the single-party system that had governed the country for nearly all of the twentieth century. The earthquake revealed cases of corruption in contracting, a 2 Estimates range from under 5,000 to 20,000, with 10,000 being the most commonly accepted figure. See Sergio Puente’s article “Social vulnerability to disasters in Mexico City: An assessment method” in Crucibles of Hazard: Mega-Cities and Disasters in Transition (306); and Alan Gilbert’s The Latin American City (139). 3 This view is held by the renowned social critic Carlos Monsiváis (No sin nosotros 9). 2 disregard for construction codes, the terrible state of disrepair of some government buildings, and unsafe factory conditions4, all of which exacerbated the damage and loss of life wreaked by the natural disaster. The victims were largely working-class people, who the party had an ideological commitment to and who were supposed to be the main beneficiaries of the policies of the PRI. The mismanagement of the 1985 earthquake exposed the flaws and unfulfilled promises of the priista government and deepened the disillusionment that began with the massacre of student protestors at Tlatelolco in 1968; it confirmed doubts about the state’s capacity to guarantee a democratic system that would raise the well-being of poorer sectors. After the earthquake, disappointment in the government’s ability to deliver an equitable and just society continued through the late eighties and nineties with a prolonged crisis that shook the foundations of modern Mexico. This turbulent political, social and economic period began with the contested presidential elections of 1988 in which Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas lost to the PRI’s candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari in what were widely believed to be fraudulent and fixed elections. In the next decade Salinas implemented a series of neoliberal economic policies, such as the privatization of state-owned banks and companies as well as the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1992. Salinas greatly reduced social welfare programs and repealed the ejido system of communally-owned farmland that had been in existence since the Mexican Revolution. In the impoverished state of Chiapas, on January 1, 1994 the 4 The earthquake uncovered the dangerous and exploitative labor conditions in the garment industry in the city’s downtown. After the earthquake, bribes were paid to government officials that allowed the clothing manufacturers to extract their machinery from the factories, in some cases before their employees
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Station and Train Surface Microbiomes of Mexico City's Metro
    www.nature.com/scientificreports OPEN Station and train surface microbiomes of Mexico City’s metro (subway/underground) Apolinar Misael Hernández1, Daniela Vargas-Robles1,2, Luis David Alcaraz3 & Mariana Peimbert 1 ✉ The metro is one of the more representative urban transportation systems of Mexico City, and it transports approximately 4.5 million commuters every day. Large crowds promote the exchange of microbes between humans. In this study, we determined the bacterial diversity profle of the Mexico City metro by massive sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. We identifed a total of 50,174 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and 1058 genera. The metro microbiome was dominated by the phylum Actinobacteria and by the genera Cutibacterium (15%) (C. acnes 13%), Corynebacterium (13%), Streptococcus (9%), and Staphylococcus (5%) (S. epidermidis; 4%), refecting the microbe composition of healthy human skin. The metro likely microbial sources were skin, dust, saliva, and vaginal, with no fecal contribution detected. A total of 420 bacterial genera were universal to the twelve metro lines tested, and those genera contributed to 99.10% of the abundance. The annual 1.6 billion ridership makes this public transport a main hub for microbe-host-environment interactions. Finally, this study shows that the microbial composition of the Mexico City metro comes from a mixture of environmental and human sources and that commuters are exposed to healthy composition of the human microbiota. Public transport systems provide the ideal environment for the transmission of microorganisms, as they carry a multitude of passengers, and their microbiomes, daily. Te metro can assemble an extensive repository of bene- fcial bacteria, such as commensals and symbionts, or harmful bacteria, becoming a vehicle for the transmission of infectious diseases.
    [Show full text]
  • A Political History of the Mexico City Metro, 1958-1969
    Grand Valley Journal of History Volume 4 Issue 2 Article 4 5-2017 Ticket to the Past: A Political History of the Mexico City Metro, 1958-1969 Maxwell E.P. Ulin Yale University, [email protected] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/gvjh Part of the Infrastructure Commons, Latin American History Commons, Other Political Science Commons, Policy History, Theory, and Methods Commons, Political History Commons, Transportation Commons, Urban Studies Commons, and the Urban Studies and Planning Commons Recommended Citation Ulin, Maxwell E.P. (2017) "Ticket to the Past: A Political History of the Mexico City Metro, 1958-1969," Grand Valley Journal of History: Vol. 4 : Iss. 2 , Article 4. Available at: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/gvjh/vol4/iss2/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@GVSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Grand Valley Journal of History by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@GVSU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Ulin: Ticket to the Past Introduction: Metro and Modernity in Mexico City Built upon the ruins of the Aztec capital stands a city of monstrous proportions. Mexico City, capital of the Mexican nation, sprawls an estimated 573 square miles across the Valley of Mexico. Over 8.84 million people call the city their home, while over 21.1 million live within the capital’s greater metropolitan areas.1 An urban goliath, it presently constitutes the largest urban conglomeration in the Americas and the twelfth largest metropolitan region in the world.2 As its urban edges stretch into the smoggy horizon, Mexico’s capital city looms large not just in life but in Mexico’s collective cultural imagination.
    [Show full text]
  • Parar En Seco*
    HECHOS/IDEAS WILLIAM OSPINA Parar en seco* En nada se conoce tanto el brío de un potro como en la capacidad de parar en seco. MONTAIGNE, Ensayos El gran malestar uando en el mes de marzo de 2016 los diarios mostraron que se había blanqueado la barrera coralina de Australia, Cmuchos en el mundo tuvimos la sensación de que la hora definitiva estaba llegando. Largo tiempo se creyó que el fin del mundo sería un solo evento catastrófico, una suerte de espectáculo cósmico como los que evoca Rafael Argullol en su admirable libro El fin del mundo como obra de arte. Lo que estamos empezando a ver más bien podría designarse como el Gran Malestar. No carecerá de catástrofes: las erupciones volcánicas desde Islandia hasta Indonesia, el continente de plástico del Pacífico, la desaparición de los hielos del Ártico, el peligro alarmante del derretimiento del permafrost de Siberia, que guarda frágilmente 5-20 pp. enero-marzo/2018 290 No. los mayores depósitos de metano del mundo, la muerte masiva de especies, como lo que se ha dado en llamar recientemente el Apocalipsis de las abejas, pero el actual calentamiento global, una evidencia cuyos diagramas nos alarman día a día en internet, * Este texto apareció originalmente Américas de las Casa como libro publicado en Barcelona puede no consistir en un mero aumento de temperaturas, sino en un por Navona Editorial en 2017. progresivo enrarecimiento de las condiciones de vida en el mundo. Revista 5 Lo sentimos con el clima, con veranos e raleza podría dar lugar a una súbita mutación inviernos cada vez más alterados, con el des- que vuelva a hacer de nosotros la más frágil plazamiento de los mapas vegetales, con la de las especies.
    [Show full text]
  • Download the 2016 Projects for Peace Viewbook
    2016 Projects for Peace THE VISION OF KATHRYN W. DAVIS Projects for Peace When Kathryn W. Davis turned 100 years old in 2007, she set out to challenge today’s generation of college students to undertake “Projects for Peace.” She said to the students: “Come forward with your ideas, shape them into actionable projects, and I’ll give you the resources to do your projects.” Students heard the call and responded to her challenge; this volume portrays what unfolded in the summer of 2016 as a result. They demonstrated that today’s youth — tomorrow’s leaders — want to be engaged, want to make a difference. The students’ projects took place in many different locations around the world, but all of them were built on person-to-person relationships, the role of leadership, and finding ways to improve the human condition in the quest for peace. We celebrate the life of Kathryn Davis as a leader — leading others in “preparing for peace.” Fellowships for Peace Established in 2007 as a sister program to Projects for Peace, Fellowships for Peace was envisioned 2016 by Kathryn W. Davis as another way to bring about a better world. Fellowships for Peace is a long- term investment in students and professionals poised to create change. Each year, 100 aspiring and experienced peacemakers from all walks of life are granted the funding they need for summer study Projects for Peace at the Middlebury College Language Schools and Middlebury Institute of International Studies at THE VISION OF KATHRYN W. DAVIS Monterey. Kathryn Davis Fellows for Peace receive the very best training in foreign language or policy studies, and go on to use their skills for the greater good — in peace-related professions and initiatives all around the world.
    [Show full text]
  • Derlas Vol. 6 No. 1 Biron
    DeRLAS Vol. 6 No. 1 Biron Delaware Review of Latin American Studies Vol. 6 No. 1 June 30, 2005 Symposium on the representation and use of urban spaces, April 7 - 8 at UD -- On movement Mexico City: The Sewer and the Metro Rebecca E. Biron Latin American Studies University of Miami [email protected] The title of this symposium, “The Representation and Use of Urban Spaces,” inspires me to turn the phrase around and consider how useful urban spaces represent cities. In other words, I wonder if a comparative reading of the sewer and the metro might help us rethink a widely-held view of today’s Mexico City. For many, that city embodies two dichotomous yet uncomfortably coterminous worlds: on the one hand, a pre-modern, indigenous, informal, poverty-based squatter culture; and on the other hand, a hyper- or post-modern, multi-cultural, tele-connected, globalized or world city. Mexico City has grown exponentially in an extremely brief period of time relative to other cities in the developing world. In 1940, 1.6 million people lived in Mexico City. By 2000, 18.5 million people occupied 310 acres. Some figures today reach as high as 26 to 28 million. From 1950 to 1982, the city expanded by 36.5 square meters per day. In order to keep pace with that growth rate, the sewer system has been in continuous development, in a wide variety of forms, for centuries. Although the metro’s first line was not opened until 1969, the system has been growing ever since.
    [Show full text]
  • 51ST ANNUAL CONVENTION March 5–8, 2020 Boston, MA
    Northeast Modern Language Association 51ST ANNUAL CONVENTION March 5–8, 2020 Boston, MA Local Host: Boston University Administrative Sponsor: University at Buffalo SUNY 1 BOARD OF DIRECTORS President Carole Salmon | University of Massachusetts Lowell First Vice President Brandi So | Department of Online Learning, Touro College and University System Second Vice President Bernadette Wegenstein | Johns Hopkins University Past President Simona Wright | The College of New Jersey American and Anglophone Studies Director Benjamin Railton | Fitchburg State University British and Anglophone Studies Director Elaine Savory | The New School Comparative Literature Director Katherine Sugg | Central Connecticut State University Creative Writing, Publishing, and Editing Director Abby Bardi | Prince George’s Community College Cultural Studies and Media Studies Director Maria Matz | University of Massachusetts Lowell French and Francophone Studies Director Olivier Le Blond | University of North Georgia German Studies Director Alexander Pichugin | Rutgers, State University of New Jersey Italian Studies Director Emanuela Pecchioli | University at Buffalo, SUNY Pedagogy and Professionalism Director Maria Plochocki | City University of New York Spanish and Portuguese Studies Director Victoria L. Ketz | La Salle University CAITY Caucus President and Representative Francisco Delgado | Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY Diversity Caucus Representative Susmita Roye | Delaware State University Graduate Student Caucus Representative Christian Ylagan | University
    [Show full text]
  • November 23, 2015 Wrestling Observer Newsletter
    1RYHPEHU:UHVWOLQJ2EVHUYHU1HZVOHWWHU+ROPGHIHDWV5RXVH\1LFN%RFNZLQNHOSDVVHVDZD\PRUH_:UHVWOLQJ2EVHUYHU)LJXUH)RXU2« RADIO ARCHIVE NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE THE BOARD NEWS NOVEMBER 23, 2015 WRESTLING OBSERVER NEWSLETTER: HOLM DEFEATS ROUSEY, NICK BOCKWINKEL PASSES AWAY, MORE BY OBSERVER STAFF | [email protected] | @WONF4W TWITTER FACEBOOK GOOGLE+ Wrestling Observer Newsletter PO Box 1228, Campbell, CA 95009-1228 ISSN10839593 November 23, 2015 UFC 193 PPV POLL RESULTS Thumbs up 149 (78.0%) Thumbs down 7 (03.7%) In the middle 35 (18.3%) BEST MATCH POLL Holly Holm vs. Ronda Rousey 131 Robert Whittaker vs. Urijah Hall 26 Jake Matthews vs. Akbarh Arreola 11 WORST MATCH POLL Jared Rosholt vs. Stefan Struve 137 Based on phone calls and e-mail to the Observer as of Tuesday, 11/17. The myth of the unbeatable fighter is just that, a myth. In what will go down as the single most memorable UFC fight in history, Ronda Rousey was not only defeated, but systematically destroyed by a fighter and a coaching staff that had spent years preparing for that night. On 2/28, Holly Holm and Ronda Rousey were the two co-headliners on a show at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The idea was that Holm, a former world boxing champion, would impressively knock out Raquel Pennington, a .500 level fighter who was known for exchanging blows and not taking her down. Rousey was there to face Cat Zingano, a fight that was supposed to be the hardest one of her career. Holm looked unimpressive, barely squeaking by in a split decision. Rousey beat Zingano with an armbar in 14 seconds.
    [Show full text]
  • Conservación De Vidrieras Históricas
    Conservacion de vidrieras historicas Analisis y diagnostico de su deterioro. Restauracion. - •.' ; --- I ; :.. -' -- .......- . /" � --- � .:.:-- - -,, --- " Conservacion de vidrieras historicas Analisis y diagnostico de su deterioro. Restauracion. Aetas de la reunion Seminario organizado por The Getty Conservation Institute y la Universidad Internaeional Menendez y Pelayo, en eonjunto con el Instituto de Conservaeion y Restauraeion de Bienes Culturales Santander, Espana 4-8 de julio de 1994 Coordinadores Miguel Angel Corzo, The Getty Conservation Institute Nieves Valentin, Instituto del Patrimonio Historieo Espanol, Ministerio de Cultura THE GETTY CONSERVATION INSTITUTE Los ANGELES Portada: Catedral de Leon. Detalle de la firma del arquitecto Juan Bautista Lazaro y del pintor Alberto Gonzales. Fotografiacortesi a de IPHE. Contraportada: Catedral de Leon. Otro detalle de la vidriera. Fotografiacortesia de IPHE. Miguel Angel Corzo, Coordinador Nieves Valentin, Coordinadora Helen Mauch!, Coordinadora de publicaci6n Fernando Cortes Pizano, Traductor JeffreyCohen, Diseiiadorgra fico de la serie Marquita Takei, Diseiiadoragra fica del libro Westland Graphics, Impresora Impreso en los Estados Unidos de America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 © por The J. Paul Getty Trust Todos los derechos reservados The Getty Conservation Institute trabaja internacionalmente para promover la apreciacion y conservacion del patrimonio cultural del mundo para el enriquecimiento y uso de las generaciones presentes y futuras. El Instituto es un programa operativo de The J. Paul Getty Trust. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Conservacion de vidrieras historicas: analisis y diagnostico de su deterioro: restauracion / [semina rio organizado por The Getty Conservation Institute y la Universidad Internacional Menendez y Pelayo, en conjunto con el Instituto de Conservacion y Restauracion de Bienes Culturalesl; coordinadores de la conferencia, Miguel Angel Corzo, Nieves Valentin.
    [Show full text]
  • Performing the Mexican Revolution in Neoliberal Times
    ABSTRACT Since the time of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, images associated with this nation-defining event have been presented in an array of media and cultural productions. Within the past two decades these images have been re-imagined, re-coded and re/de- constructed in reaction to social and cultural changes associated with a crisis of political legitimation and the demise of hegemonic revolutionary ideology, as espoused by the long-ruling Party of the Institionalized Revolution (PRI), amid the generalized implementation of neoliberal policies in the county. My dissertation argues that the ascendance of neoliberalism, with the opening of Mexican economic and political systems, has resulted in changes in the socio-cultural work performed by the Revolution- Nation-Gender triad. This trinity, solidified in the post-Revolutionary national imaginary, weaves the three notions together such that as hegemonic discourses of Revolutionary nationalism enter in crisis, discourses of gender are also destabilized. The dissertation consists of three main sub-arguments. First, I argue that the discourse(s) surrounding Revolutionary heroes has been integral to the (re)definition of the Mexican nation and that analyzing recodings of this discourse through the example of Emiliano Zapata reveals a destabilization of hegemonic nationalism. These changes have allowed alternatives to surface both in Mexico and across the border as part of a recoded ii transnational Revolutionary nationalism. As cracks opened in the Revolutionary edifice allowing alternatives to emerge, they have also opened space for alternative gender discourses. I next argue that a close analysis of representations of masculine gender roles as manifested in a variety of cultural texts, specifically through Revolutionary icons Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, reveals a crisis of the macho archetype in the contemporary Mexican nation.
    [Show full text]
  • EMBODYING MODERNITY in MEXIO: RACE, TECHNOLOGY, and the BODY in the MESTIZO STATE by Copyright © 2015 David S
    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.
    [Show full text]
  • Los Cuatro Jinetes Del Apocalipsis
    Los cuatro jinetes del Apocalipsis Vicente Blasco Ibáñez Prólogo En julio de 1914 noté los primeros indicios de la próxima guerra europea, viniendo de Buenos Aires a las costas de Francia en el vapor alemán König Friedrich August. Era el mismo buque que figura en los primeros capítulos de esta obra. No quise cambiar ni desfigurar su nombre. Copias exactas del natural son también los personajes alemanes que aparecen en el principio de la novela. Los oí hablar con entusiasmo de la guerra preventiva y celebrar, con una copa de champaña en la mano, la posibilidad, cada vez más cierta, de que Alemania declarase la guerra, sin reparar en pretextos. ¡Y esto en medio del Océano, lejos de las grandes agrupaciones humanas, sin otra relación con el resto del planeta que las noticias intermitentes y confusas que podía recoger la telegrafía sin hilos del buque en aquel ambiente agitado por los mensajes ansiosos que cruzaban todos los pueblos!... Por eso sonrío con desprecio o me indigno siempre que oigo decir que Alemania no quiso la guerra y que los alemanes no estaban deseosos de llegar a ella cuanto antes. El primer capítulo de Los cuatro jinetes del Apocalipsis me lo proporcionó un viaje casual a bordo del último transatlántico germánico que tocó Francia. Viviendo semanas después en el París solitario de principios de septiembre de 1914, cuando se desarrolló la primera batalla del Marne y el Gobierno francés tuvo que trasladarse a Burdeos por medida de prudencia, al ambiente extraordinario de la gran ciudad me sugirió todo el resto de la presente novela.
    [Show full text]
  • José Domingo Garzón Universidad Pedagógica Nacional
    Pensamiento palabra y obra ISSN: 2011-804X Facultad de Bellas Artes Universidad Pedagógica Nacional Garzón Garzón, José Domingo In gold we trust o ¿qué demonios vamos a hacer?. Pequeña farsa fuera de todo contexto Pensamiento palabra y obra, núm. 19, 2018, Enero-Junio, pp. 126-145 Facultad de Bellas Artes Universidad Pedagógica Nacional Disponible en: https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=614164649010 Cómo citar el artículo Número completo Sistema de Información Científica Redalyc Más información del artículo Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina y el Caribe, España y Portugal Página de la revista en redalyc.org Proyecto académico sin fines de lucro, desarrollado bajo la iniciativa de acceso abierto 126 (pensamiento), (palabra)... Y oBra In Gold we Trust o ¿Qué demonios vamos a hacer? Pequeña farsa fuera de todo contexto 127 No. 19, enero-junio de 2018. pp. 126-145 Dramaturgia: José Domingo Garzón Garzón (obra) (pensamiento), (palabra)... Y oBra IN GOLD WE TRUST O ¿QUÉ DEMONIOS VAMOS A HACER? Pequeña farsa fuera de todo contexto Dramaturgia: José Domingo Garzón Universidad Pedagógica Nacional. Licenciatura en Artes Escénicas. Proceso autónomo de creación, 2014 Estudiantes: Diego Muñoz, Katherine Martínez, Samantha Gutiérrez … y obra 128 (pensamiento), (palabra)... Y oBra In Gold we Trust o ¿Qué demonios vamos a hacer? Pequeña farsa fuera de todo contexto 129 No. 19, enero-junio de 2018. pp. 126-145 Dramaturgia: José Domingo Garzón Garzón A manera de resumen. Procesos autónomos de creación Escenario: Un raído telón, rojo desteñido, chamuscado en algunos lados, grafitiado en otros, manchado, decadente… parece pared de universidad pública. Este quizá sea uno de los principales patrimonios de la Licenciatura en Artes Escénicas de la Universidad Pedagógica Nacional.
    [Show full text]