El Cinco De Mayo : An American Tradition by 
Borderlands Saints : Secular Sanctity in Chicano/a and Mexican Culture by
In Borderlands Saints, Desirée A. Martín examines the rise and fall of popular saints and saint-like figures in the borderlands of the United States and Mexico. Focusing specifically on Teresa Urrea (La Santa de Cabora), Pancho Villa, César Chávez, Subcomandante Marcos, and Santa Muerte, she traces the intersections of these figures, their devotees, artistic representations, and dominant institutions with an eye for the ways in which such unofficial saints mirror traditional spiritual practices and serve specific cultural needs. Popular spirituality of this kind engages the use and exchange of relics, faith healing, pilgrimages, and spirit possession, exemplifying the contradictions between high and popular culture, human and divine, and secular and sacred. Martín focuses upon a wide range of Mexican and Chicano/a cultural works drawn from the nineteenth century to the present, covering such diverse genres as the novel, the communiqué, drama, the essay or crónica, film, and contemporary digital media. She argues that spiritual practice is often represented as narrative, while narrative-whether literary, historical, visual, or oral-may modify or even function as devotional practice.
Carrying the Word : The Concheros Dance in Mexico City by
In Carrying the Word: The Concheros Dance in Mexico City, the only full length study of the Concheros dancers, Susanna Rostas delves into the experience of this unique group, whose use of dance links rural religious practices with urban post-modern innovation in distinctive ways even within Mexican culture, which is rife with ritual dances. The Concheros blend Catholic and indigenous traditions in their performances, but are not governed by a predetermined set of beliefs; rather, they are bound together by long standing interpersonal connections framed by the discipline of their tradition. Tracing the history of the Concheros dance in Mexico City, Rostas explores the construction of identity and belief, both individual and communal, through dance. The book offers new insights into the experience of dancing as a Conchero, and of how the Concheros manifest their spirituality by means of the dance while also exploring their organization and practices. Carrying the Word: The Concheros Dance in Mexico City provides a bridge for new audiences to experience the Conchero dance tradition, and will be of interest to students and scholars of contemporary Mesoamerica. Those studying identity, religion, and tradition will find this social-anthropological work particularly enlightening.
Cosmopolitanism in Mexican Visual Culture by
Since the colonial era, Mexican art has emerged from an ongoing process of negotiation between the local and the global, which frequently involves invention, synthesis, and transformation of diverse discursive and artistic traditions. In this pathfinding book, María Fernández uses the concept of cosmopolitanism to explore this important aspect of Mexican art, in which visual culture and power relations unite the local and the global, the national and the international, the universal and the particular. She argues that in Mexico, as in other colonized regions, colonization constructed power dynamics and forms of violence that persisted in the independent nation-state. Accordingly, Fernández presents not only the visual qualities of objects, but also the discourses, ideas, desires, and practices that are fundamental to the very existence of visual objects. Fernández organizes episodes in the history of Mexican art and architecture, ranging from the seventeenth century to the end of the twentieth century, around the consistent but unacknowledged historical theme of cosmopolitanism, allowing readers to discern relationships among various historical periods and works that are new and yet simultaneously dependent on their predecessors. She uses case studies of art and architecture produced in response to government commissions to demonstrate that established visual forms and meanings in Mexican art reflect and inform desires, expectations, memories, and ways of being in the world--in short, that visual culture and cosmopolitanism are fundamental to processes of subjectification and identity.
A History of Boxing in Mexico : Masculinity, Modernity, and Nationalism by
The violent sport of boxing shaped and was shaped by notions of Mexican national identity during the twentieth century. This book reveals how boxing and boxers became sources of national pride and sparked debates on what it meant to be Mexican, masculine, and modern. The success of world-champion Mexican boxers played a key role in the rise of Los Angeles as the center of pugilistic activity in the United States. This international success made the fighters potent symbols of a Mexican culture that was cosmopolitan, nationalist, and masculine. With research in archives on both sides of the border, the author uses their life stories to trace the history and meaning of Mexican boxing.
Imperialism and the Origins of Mexican Culture by
With an empire stretching across central Mexico, unmatched in military and cultural might, the Aztecs seemed poised on the brink of a golden age in the early sixteenth century. But the arrival of the Spanish changed everything. Imperialism and the Origins of Mexican Culture chronicles this violent clash of two empires and shows how modern Mestizo culture evolved over the centuries as a synthesis of Old and New World civilizations. Colin MacLachlan begins by tracing Spain and Mesoamerica's parallel trajectories from tribal enclaves to complex feudal societies. When the Spanish laid siege to Tenochtitlán and destroyed it in 1521, the Aztecs could only interpret this catastrophe in cosmic terms. With their gods discredited and their population ravaged by epidemics, they succumbed quickly to Spanish control--which meant submitting to Christianity. Spain had just emerged from its centuries-long struggle against the Moors, and zealous Christianity was central to its imperial vision. But Spain's conquistadores far outnumbered its missionaries, and the Church's decision to exclude Indian converts from priesthood proved shortsighted. Native religious practices persisted, and a richly blended culture--part Indian, part Christian--began to emerge. The religious void left in the wake of Spain's conquests had enduring consequences. MacLachlan's careful analysis explains why Mexico is culturally a Mestizo country while ethnically Indian, and why modern Mexicans remain largely orphaned from their indigenous heritage--the adopted children of European history.
Liminal Sovereignty : Mennonites and Mormons in Mexican Culture by
Uses cultural representations to investigate how two religious minority communities came to be incorporated into the Mexican nation.
Mexicanos : A History of Mexicans in the United States by
Responding to shifts in the political and economic experiences of Mexicans in America, this newly revised and expanded edition of Mexicanos provides a relevant and contemporary consideration of this vibrant community. Emerging from the ruins of Aztec civilization and from centuries of Spanish contact with indigenous people, Mexican culture followed the Spanish colonial frontier northward and put its distinctive mark on what became the southwestern United States. Shaped by their Indian and Spanish ancestors, deeply influenced by Catholicism, and often struggling to respond to political and economic precarity, Mexicans play an important role in US society even as the dominant Anglo culture strives to assimilate them. With new maps, updated appendicxes, and a new chapter providing an up-to-date consideration of the immigration debate centered on Mexican communities in the US, this new edition of Mexicanos provides a thorough and balanced contribution to understanding Mexicans' history and their vital importance to 21st-century America.
The Mexican Transition : Politics, Culture and Democracy in the Twenty-first Century by
Until the year 2000, when Vicente Fox of the National Action Party won the presidential election, Mexico was ruled by one of the most enduring autocratic regimes of the twentieth century, the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Here Roger Bartra chronicles the key moments that led to the Mexican transition to democracy and reflects on the different aspects of civic culture, the political process, and electoral struggles that played a role in that journey. Bartra also explores the setbacks that have plagued the nation since Fox's election, including the war on drug trafficking, and offers some insightful conclusions about Mexico's political future.
Religious Culture in Modern Mexico by
This nuanced book considers the role of religion and religiosity in modern Mexico, breaking new ground with an emphasis on popular religion and its relationship to politics. The contributors highlight the multifaceted role of religion, illuminating the ways that religion and religious devotion have persisted and changed since Mexican independence. They explore such themes as the relationship between church and state, the resurgence of religiosity and religious societies in the post-reform period, the religious values of the liberals of the 1850s, and the ways that popular expressions of religion often trumped formal and universal proscriptions. Focusing on individual stories and vignettes and on local elements of religion, the contributors show that despite efforts to secularize society, religion continues to be a strong component of Mexican culture. Portraying the complexity of religiosity in Mexico in the context of an increasingly secular state, this book will be invaluable for all those interested in Latin American history and religion.Contributions by: Silvia Marina Arrom, Adrian Bantjes, Alejandro Cortázar, Jason Dormady, Martin Austin Nesvig, Matthew D. O'Hara, Daniela Traffano, Paul J. Vanderwood, Mark Overmyer-Velázquez, Pamela Voekel, and Edward Wright-Rios
The Taco Truck : How Mexican Street Food Is Transforming the American City by
Icons of Mexican cultural identity and America's melting pot ideal, taco trucks have transformed cityscapes from coast to coast. The taco truck radiates Mexican culture within non-Mexican spaces with a presence--sometimes desired, sometimes resented--that turns a public street corner into a bustling business. Drawing on interviews with taco truck workers and his own skills as a geographer, Robert Lemon illuminates new truths about foodways, community, and the unexpected places where ethnicity, class, and culture meet. Lemon focuses on the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, and Columbus, Ohio, to show how the arrival of taco trucks challenge preconceived ideas of urban planning even as cities use them to reinvent whole neighborhoods. As Lemon charts the relationships between food practices and city spaces, he uncovers the many ways residents and politicians alike contest, celebrate, and influence not only where your favorite truck parks, but what's on the menu.
Tezcatlipoca : Trickster and Supreme Deity by
Tezcatlipoca: Trickster and Supreme Deity brings archaeological evidence into the body of scholarship on ?the lord of the smoking mirror,? one of the most important Aztec deities. While iconographic and textual resources from sixteenth-century chroniclers and codices have contributed greatly to the understanding of Aztec religious beliefs and practices, contributors to this volume demonstrate the diverse ways material evidence expands on these traditional sources. The interlocking complexities of Tezcatlipoca's nature, multiple roles, and metaphorical attributes illustrate the extent to which his influence penetrated Aztec belief and social action across all levels of late Postclassic central Mexican culture. Tezcatlipoca examines the results of archaeological investigations'objects like obsidian mirrors, gold, bells, public stone monuments, and even a mosaic skull'and reveals new insights into the supreme deity of the Aztec pantheon and his role in Aztec culture.
Thrown Among Strangers : The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California by
Every California schoolchild's first interaction with history begins with the missions and Indians. It is the pastoralist image, of course, and it is a lasting one. Children in elementary school hear how Father Serra and the priests brought civilization to the groveling, lizard- and acorn-eating Indians of such communities as Yang-na, now Los Angeles. So edified by history, many of those children drag their parents to as many missions as they can. Then there is the other side of the missions, one that a mural decorating a savings and loan office in the San Fernando Valley first showed to me as a child. On it a kindly priest holds a large cross over a kneeling Indian. For some reason, though, the padre apparently aims not to bless the Indian but rather to bludgeon him with the emblem of Christianity. This portrait, too, clings to the memory, capturing the critical view of the missionization of California's indigenous inhabitants. I carried the two childhood images with me both when I went to libraries as I researched the missions and when I revisited several missions thirty years after those family trips. In this work I proceed neither to dubunk nor to reconcile these contrary notions of the missions and Indians but to present a new and, I hope, deeper understanding of the complex interaction of the two antithetical cultures.
Troubled Memories : Iconic Mexican Women and the Traps of Representation by
Analyzes literary and cultural representations of iconic Mexican women to explore how these reimaginings can undermine or perpetuate gender norms in contemporary Mexico.
¡México, La Patria! : Propaganda and Production During World War II by
During the 1930s Mexico was undergoing a healing process after three decades of revolutionary turmoil and reform. In this climate, the coming of World War II became a major turning point in the legacy of the Mexican Revolution, offering the country a unique opportunity to unite against a common external enemy. The war also thrust the nation into an international forum as Germany and the United States launched propaganda campaigns to win over the Mexican people. nbsp; In ¡México, la patria! Monica A. Rankin examines the pervasive domestic and foreign propaganda strategies in Mexico during World War II and their impact on Mexican culture, charting the evolution of these campaigns through popular culture, advertisements, art, and government publications throughout the war and beyond. In particular, Rankin shows how World War II allowed the wartime government of Ávila Camacho to justify an aggressive industrialization program following the Mexican Revolution. Finally, tracing how the American government’s wartime propaganda laid the basis for a long-term effort to shape Mexican attitudes toward the country’s neighbor to the north, ¡México, la patria! reveals the increasing influence of American culture on the development of Mexico’s postwar identity.
Image from Vecteezy
May 5th is Cinco de Mayo, the yearly anniversary of Mexico’s defeat of the French Empire in the Battle of Puebla back in 1862. While in Mexico, this day is only really recognized in Puebla, in the USA, it has morphed into a big, commercial celebration.
Why is it such a big celebration in the USA?
It began back in the 60s, when Mexican-American activists started to raise awareness of this historic event to honor their heritage, and bridge the gap between the two cultures. Cities with large Mexican-American communities subsequently started to commemorate the date with parades, parties, mariachi music, Mexican folk dancing, and traditional foods such as tacos and mole poblano.
According to The New York Times, since 1989, the date has become more commercial as a result of US importers of Mexican beer brands pouring resources into its promotion. However, over time there has been some confusion around the significance of these celebrations, with people mistakenly believing May 5th to be the anniversary of Mexico gaining independence from Spain, which is actually on September 16th.--DOMESTIKA.
--DOMESTIKA
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