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Introducing La Reina Del Carnaval: Public Celebration and Postrevolutionary Discourse in Veracruz, Mexico*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Andrew Grant Wood
Andrew Grant Wood*
Affiliation:
University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma
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Extract

Following the revolution of 1910-1917, a new era took shape in the port of Veracruz, Mexico as residents (porteños) took to a variety of recreational pursuits that included baseball, social dances and, increasingly, film. No one activity proved more significant, however, than the revival of Carnival in 1925. That year, members of the Veracruz railroad workers union (Alianza de Ferrocarrileros) along with a coordinating committee made up of representatives from various community associations organized the first public celebration of Carnival in nearly five decades. Assembling just outside the union hall on the afternoon of Saturday February 21, 1925, hundreds joined in an afternoon parade that circulated through the central city. Carrying assorted musical instruments and noisemaking gadgets, an enthusiastic throng engaged in a hunt to capture a ritualistic “enemy of the people” known as Mal Humor. After members of the procession seized their prey, a tribunal headed by King Juan Carnaval tried the offender and sentenced him to death.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , July 2003 , pp. 87 - 107
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2003

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Footnotes

*

The author wishes to thank Monica Barczak, Travis DuBry, Brian Haley, Paul Vanderwood, Bruce Dean Willis and the editors of Ulúa in Xalapa, Veracruz for comments on earlier versions of thie essay as well as the anonymous reviewers at The Americas for helpful comments. Support for research in Mexico came, in part, from an Oklahoma Humanities Council 2002 Summer Grant and a Faculty Research Grant from the Office of Research at the University of Tulsa.

References

1 El Dictamen, 21 February 1925. Community organizations included the Sociedad Benéfica Veracruzana, the Sociedad Española de Beneficencia, the Real Club de España, the Chamber of Commerce, Rotary Club, Lonja Mercantil and the Centro Mercantil among others.

2 El Dictamen referred to Mal Humor simply as “the grim personality.”

3 El Dictamen, February 22, 1925. On ritual sacrifice and scapegoating as a unifying process see for example Girard, René, Violence and The Sacred trans. Gregory, Patrick (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), pp. 1–18,Google Scholar 39–44.

4 On this dynamic see Guss, David M., The Festive State: Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism as Cultural Performance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.Google Scholar Writings on Carnival in Veracruz include Cortés Rodríguez, Martha Inés, “Bailes y carnaval en Veracruz, 1925,” in Horizonte: Revista del Instituto Vercruzano de Cultura, vol. 1, no. 1 (March-April 1991), pp. 19–25;Google Scholar Cortés Rodríguez, Martha Inés, Máscaras: los espactáculos teatrales en Veracruz (1873–1975), El carnival de Veracruz en 1867 (Veracruz, Mexico: Veracruz: Instituto Veracruzano de Cultura) 1990;Google Scholar Cortés Rodríguez, Martha Inés, Los carnavales en Veracruz (Veracruz: Instituto Veracruzano de Cultura, 2000);Google Scholar Flores Martos, Juan Antonio, “Portales de múcara. Una etnografía del Puerto de Veracruz,” Dissertation in anthropology, Universidad of Madrid, 1999;Google Scholar Flores Martos, Juan Antonio, “Los encapuchados del carnaval del Puerto de Veracruz: una indagación etnográfica en la memoria cultural e imaginación urbana,” Sotavento: Revista de Historia, Sociedad y Cultura no. 4 (Summer 1998), pp. 57–115;Google Scholar Sánchez Fernández, José Roberto, Bailes y sones deshonestos en la Nueva España (Veracruz: Instituto Veracruzano de Cultura, 1998);Google Scholar Silva Martínez, Ana María, La historia de una alegría (Mexico City: Author's edition, 1973);Google Scholar García, Roberto Williams, Yo nací con la luna de plata: antropología e historia de un puerto (Mexico City: Costa-Amic Editores, 1980), pp. 31–35;Google Scholar Ortiz, Anselmo Mancisidor, Jarochilandia (Author's ed. 1971), pp. 123–29;Google Scholar and Díaz, Bernardo García, Puerto de Veraruz: imágenes de su historia (Jalapa: Veracruz, Archivo General del Estado de Veracruz, 1992) pp. 218–26.Google Scholar While scholarship on Carnival is wide ranging, important works on Carnival that have informed this essay include Bakhtin, Mikhail, Rabelais and his world (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984);Google Scholar Baroja, Julio Caro, El Carnaval: Análisis Histórico-Cultural (Madrid: Editorial Taurus, 1965);Google Scholar Gilmore, David D., Carnival and Culture: Sex, Symbol and Status in Spain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998);Google Scholar and Kertzer, David I., Ritual, politics and power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988);Google Scholar Brandes, Stanley, Power and persuasion (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1988);CrossRefGoogle Scholar DaMatta, Roberto, Carnivals, rogues, and heroes: An interpretation of the Brazilian dilemma (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991);Google Scholar Ladurie, LeRoy, Carnival in Romans (New York: George Braziller, 1979);Google Scholar Kinser, David Samuel, Carnival American Style: Mardi Gras at New Orleans and Mobile (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990);Google Scholar and Roach, Joseph, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

5 Pérez, Olivia Domínguez, “El puerto de Veracruz: la modernización a finales del siglo XIX,” Anuario 7 (Centro de Investigaciones Historicas, Universidad Veracruzana, Jalapa, Veracruz), 1990, pp. 87–102.Google Scholar

6 Díaz, Bernardo García, Puerto de Veraruz, pp. 124–135.Google Scholar

7 As elites directed the modernization of Veracruz, working class areas that existed just outside the wall of the old city such as La Huaca neighborhood experienced a growing concentration after 1870. As newcomers made their way to these areas in the city, some constructed makeshift, add-on structures (accesorías) made of tin, wood and stone while others crowded into older buildings that landlords had subdivided into rooms located around a common courtyard. Known as patios de vecindad, these tenements on the eve of the 1910 Revolution housed as many as sixty residents and operated as a shared space for cooking, dining, bathing and leisure activities.

8 Commemorating local resistance to alien attack during invasions of the city by the Spanish in 1825, the French in 1838 and the North Americans in 1847 and 1914, officials were quick in declaring Veracruz “four times heroic”(cuatro veces heroica). Scholarship on Veracruz during the Revolution includes Quirk, Robert E., An Affair of Honor: Woodrow Wilson and the Occupation of Veracruz (New York: Norton Publishers, 1962),Google Scholar Pasquel, Leonardo, La invasión de Veracruz en 1914 (Mexico City: Editorial Citaltépetl, 1976),Google Scholar Ulloa, Berta, Veracruz, capital de la nación, 1914–15 (Mexico City Colegio de México/Estado de Veracruz, 1986),Google Scholar Hart, John, Revolutionary Mexico The Coming and Process of the Mexican Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987)Google Scholar and Wood, Andrew G., Revolution in the Street: Women, Workers and Urban Protest in Veracruz, 1870–1927 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc., 2001).Google Scholar

9 On the emergence of the electrical and streetcar workers union, see Landa Ortega, Rosa María, “Los primeros años de la organización y luchas de los electricistas y tranviarios en Veracruz, 1915–1928.”Google Scholar Bachelors’ thesis in sociology, Universidad Veracruzana, Jalapa, Veracruz, 1989. Meantime, organizing efforts in the Veracruz countryside further complicated the state political picture. On this history see Salamini, Heather Fowler, “Orígenes laborales de la organización campesina en Veracruz.” Historia Mexicana 20, no. 2 (October-December, 1970): 52–76 Google Scholar as well as Heather Salamini, Fowler, Agrarian Radicalism in Veracruz, 1920–30 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971).Google Scholar

10 A bloody clash between rent strikers and police temporarily threatened plans for the festival. El Dictamen, February 6–10, 1925.

11 For a concise summary of Carnival in ancient and medieval times see Gilmore, pp. 9–10.

12 Veracruz historian Adriana Gil Marono suggests that Carnival emerged out of Corpus Christi celebrations. Marono, Adriana Gil, “Vida cotidiana y fiestas en el Veracruz ilustrado (siglo XVII),” Thesis in history, Universidad Cristobal Colón, Veracruz, 1992.Google Scholar On Corpus Christi in Mexico see also Curcio-Nagy, Linda A., “Giants and Gypsies: Corpus Christi in Colonial Mexico City,” (in) Beezley, William H., Martin, Cheryl English and French, William R. (ed.), Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1994), pp. 1–26.Google Scholar

13 Rodríguez, Cortés, “Mascaras,” p. 23–4.Google Scholar See AGN (Archivo General de la Nacion), Serie Inquisición, vol. 1,181, fojas 121–123v for clerical denunciations of chuchumbé and other popular practices. See also Fernández, Sánchez, Bailes y sones deshonestos, pp. 15–38.Google Scholar

14 Rodríguez, Cortés, “Mascaras,” pp. 28–29.Google Scholar See also Díaz, García, Puerto de Veraruz, p. 226 Google Scholar and González, Juan José, “Aportaciones para la historia de Veracruz: El Carnaval de 1867,” El Dictamen, June 11, 1964.Google Scholar

15 While generalizing from sources considering Carnival at the national level, less is known about the observance of Carnival in Veracruz during the Porfiriato. A very brief treatment of this history can be found in Cortés, , Los Carnavales en Veracruz, pp. 32–37.Google Scholar For a discussion of Carnival and other holidays in nineteenth century Mexico see Beezley, William, “The Porfirian Smart Set Anticipates Thorstein Veblen in Guadalajara.” (in) Beezley, et al (ed.), Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance, p. 174 Google Scholar and Beezley, William, Judas at the Jockey Club and other episodes of Porfirian Mexico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), p. 103.Google Scholar For reference to various local elite views on Carnival in Spain see Gilmore, pp. 11–13.

16 Some scholars talk about the “watering down of carnival” under government supervision while elsewhere, Carnival participants have apparently resisted “official meddling” in festival production. See for example, Mintz, Jerome, Carnival song and society: Gossip, sexuality and creativity in Andalusia (Oxford: Berg, 1997).Google Scholar

17 In the words of Roberto DeMatta, the Carnival encounter brings together “characters … not related by a hierarchical principle but by sympathy and by an understanding resulting from the truce that suspends the social rules of the plausible world, the everyday universe.” DaMatta, p. 42. Looking at Carnival in Andalusia, Stanley Brandes writes “[these festivals which] ordinarily might be perceived as highlighting social differentiation may be viewed equally well as bringing distinctive and opposing segments of a community together.” Brandes, Stanley, Metaphors of masculinity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980), p. 208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Quoted in Gilmore, p. 31. See also Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World.

18 Still relatively low literacy rates may have limited but did not necessarily prevent access to printed information on Carnival.

19 Two classic works on the emergence of national cultures and consciousness are Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, Verso Press, 1983)Google Scholar and Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence (ed.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).Google Scholar For the Mexican context see essays in Beezley, William H. and Lorey, David E. (ed.), Viva México! Viva La Independencia!: Celebrations of September 16 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc. 2001).Google Scholar

20 Comité Organisador de las Fiestas de Carnival to President Plutarco Elías Calles, February 19, 1925, El Dictamen, February 20, 1925. On the appeal of revolutionary nationalism and the forging of “official” history see Turner, Frederick C., The Dynamic of Mexican Nationalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), pp. 163–9 Google Scholar and Benjamin, Thomas, La Revolución: Mexico's Great Revolution as Memory, Myth and History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000).Google Scholar For a trenchant critique of certain revolutionary programs see: Knight, Alan, “Racism, Revolution and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910–1940,” (in) Graham, Richard (ed.), The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870–1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990) pp. 71–113.Google Scholar

21 El Dictamen, February 18, 1925.

22 Ibid., February 20, 1925.

23 Providing a democratic flourish to what otherwise engendered a purely medieval trope, the report in El Dictamen made a point of informing readers that the selection process had included a careful tabulation of votes by a notary public.

24 The classic phrase referring to this process is Clifford Geertz's notion of a society “tell[ing] stories to themselves about themselves.” Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973).Google Scholar

25 El Dictamen, February 17, 1925.

26 For an in-depth analysis of beauty pageants see Banet-Weiser, Sarah, The Most Beautiful Girl in The World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).Google Scholar

27 El Dictamen, February 22, 1925.

28 Jarochan refers both to the people of Veracruz Gulf Coast and by extension their regional blend of Indian, African and European heritage.

29 As beauty pageant scholar Sarah Banet-Weiser suggests, these women mediate an accepted “incitement of legitimate desire” engineered to reinforce “an institutionalized system of beliefs and practices.” Banet-Weiser, p. 8. For an interesting discussion of beauty pageants in Jamaica and the selection of Carnival Queen in Trinidad see Barnes, Natasha B., “Face of the Nation: Race, Nationalisms, and Identities in Jamaican Beauty Pageants,” (in) Springfield, Consuelo López (ed.), Daughters of Caliban: Caribbean Women in the Twentieth Century (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp. 285–306.Google Scholar

30 The maritime process had been adapted from the Club de Regatas private “La Reina de la Marina de Guerra” celebrations in previous years. For reportage see the Veracruz weekly El Arte Musical (albeit defunct by the end of 1924), September 23, 1923. The procession route subsequently changed slightly after a September 1926 storm destroyed much of Villa del Mar and the Yacht Club.

31 On organizing nineteenth century parades in U.S. cities see Ryan, Mary, “The American Parade: Representations of the Nineteenth-Century Social Order,” (in) Hunt, Lynn (ed.), The New Cultural History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 131–55.Google Scholar

32 El Dictamen took special care not only to document parade activities but also to provide a list of participants’ names, occupations and their addresses whenever possible. Description of Monday's children's parade, for example, included mention of Commodore Arturo F. Lapham, engineer Francisco de Rabeau, señorita A. Lechuga, and several other individuals.

33 Several “theme” floats included one by a group described as riding donkeys and calling themselves “Ku Klux Klanes” (supposedly a local dancing club). El Dictamen, February 25, 1925. For discussion of this group's participation in Carnival see Juan Antonio Flores Martos, “Los encapuchados del carnaval del Puerto de Veracruz: una indagación etnográfica en la memoria cultural e imaginación urbana.” Careful not only to mention participation by an assortment of individuals and groups, editors at El Dictaman published a correction regarding the name of the woman featured along with the Syrian/Lebanese entry in the auto parade as well as the construction materials used for the car. El Dictamen, February 26, 1925.

34 The term “descriptive representation” is borrowed from Hanna Pitkin. Cited in Ryan, , “The American Parade,” (in) Hunt, (ed.) The New Cultural History, p. 137.Google Scholar

35 El Dictamen, February 24, 1925. Throughout the entire weekend, detailed reports of well-to-do residents attending private, indoor gatherings in clubs, business associations and private homes highlighted the activities of more elite elements in Veracruz society.

36 See the 1933 film La mujer del puerto for some actual street scenes of Carnival in Veracruz.

37 Quoted in Díaz, García, Puerto de Veracruz, p. 226.Google Scholar

38 El Dictamen, February 26, 1925.

39 El Dictamen, February 14–15, 1926.

40 Ibid., February 18, 1927.

41 Ibid., February 16, 1926. Reports in El Dictamen from February 1926 describe the Mexico City Carnival taking place in Chapultepec Park and along Reforma Avenue. On February 17, the paper reported that five people had died during the celebration.

42 El Dictamen, February 9, 10, 1926.

43 Ibid., February 3, 5, 1927.

44 The changing character of modern Carnival following the first celebration in 1925 is part of a larger collaborative project making extensive use of historic photo collections at the State Archive in Xalapa and the Instituto Veracruzano de Cultura in the Port of Veracruz.