Eagle and the Virgin

Mary 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 coeditor 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.

“The Eagle and the Virgin is a necessary book, a selection of essays which allows readers to see in detail how a nation is invented and reinvented, how it experiences its achievements and its customs, both the good and the bad; and how it is internationalized and nationalized (since by 1940 Mexico was both a more cosmopolitan country and a more Mexican one). A delightful work.”-Carlos MonsivÁis “Steeped in a generation of new cultural and transnational analysis of state formation and popular expression, The Eagle and the Virgin raises the bar for studies of nation building and cultural politics in postrevolutionary Mexico. Particularly impressive is the volume’s sensitive analysis of contests over religious culture and symbols, its gendered understanding of state formation, and its handsomely illustrated treatment of the development of a Mexican revolutionary aesthetic.”-Gilbert M. Joseph, coeditor of The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics “The 16 essays that Mary Kay Vaughan and Stephen E. Lewis have compiled here inventively probe and synthesize the synergistic processes of nation building and cultural revolution that characterized Mexico in the period from 1920 to 1940. . . . The vibrancy and variety of these essays remind us that culture is integral to any analysis of this crucial period in the formation of Mexican national identity, because Mexico’s cultural revolution is so inimitable in its many contested manifestations. As this volume demonstrates, its very creativity and inconsistency are fundamental to understanding the complexity of the interactions that took place between the state and popular sectors.” - Susan M. Deeds (Hispanic American Historical Review)

• List of Illustrations xiiAcknowledgments ixIntroduction / Mary Kay Vaughan and Stephen E. Lewis 1I. The Aesthetics of Nation Building The Noche Mexicana and the Exhibition of Popular Arts:Two Ways of Exalting Indianness / Rick A. Lopez 23The Sickle, the Serpent, and the Soil: History, Revolution, Nationhood, and Modernity in the Murals of Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros / Desmond Rochfort 43Painting in the Shadow of the Big Three Frida Kahlo / Sarah M. Lowe 53Maria Izquierdo / Adrianna Zavala 67The Mexican Experience of Marion and Grace Greenwood / James Oles 79Mestizaje and Musical Nationalism in Mexico/ Marco Velazquez and Mary Kay Vaughan 95Revolution in the City Streets: Changing Nomenclature, Changing Form, and the Revision of Public Memory / Patrice Elizabeth Olsen 119II. Utopian Projects of the State Saints, Sinners, and the State Formation: Local Religion and Cultural Revolution in Mexico / Adrian A. Bantjes 137Nationalizing the Countryside: Schools and Rural Communities in the 1930’s / Mary Kay Vaughan 157The Nation, Education, and the “Indian Problem” in Mexico, 1920–1940 / Stephen E. Lewis 176For the Health of the Nation: Gender and the Cultural Politics of Social Hygiene in Revolutionary Mexico / Katherine E. Bliss 196III. Mass Communication and Nation Building Remapping Identities: Road Construction and Nation Building in Postrevolutionary Mexico / Wendy Waters 221National Imaginings on the Air: Radio in Mexico, 1920–1950 / Joy Elizabeth Hayes 243Screening the Nation / Joanne Hershfield 259IV. Social Construction of Nations An Idea of Mexico: Catholics in the Revolution / Jean Meyer 281Guadalajaran Women and the Construction of National Identity / Maria Teresa Fernandez Aceves 297“We Are All Mexicans Here”: Workers, Patriotism, and Union Struggles in Monterrey / Michael Snodgrass 314Final Reflections: What Was Mexico’s Cultural Revolution? / Claudio Lomnitz 335Contributors 351Index 357