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The Revolutionary Festival in Mexico: November 20 Celebrations in the 1920s and 1930s*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

David E. Lorey
David E. Lorey*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles, California
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Extract

The most important public ritual to arise from the experience of Mexico's Revolution of 1910 came to be held on November 20—“Revolution Day.” The date commemorates Francisco I. Madero's famous call to arms: on November 20 all towns in Mexico were to rise up against the 34-year rule of Porfirio Díaz. Although Madero was forced to take action before the appointed date and the Revolution got off to a premature start, November 20 has generally been accepted as the inception of the violent phase of the revolutionary struggle.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , July 1997 , pp. 39 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1997

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Footnotes

1

The author would like to acknowledge the many helpful suggestions of William Beezley, Samuel Brunk, Arturo Grunstein, Lyman Johnson, Laura Meyer, and Enrique Ochoa. I owe a particular debt to several anonymous readers for their detailed comments.

References

1 This study is part of an ongoing work that considers changes in, and the relationships among, three major Mexican holidays in the 1920s and 1930s (Cinco de Mayo, Independence Day, and Revolution Day) and several lesser ones (e.g., Tree Day, May Day, Flag Day, Armed-Forces Day, and the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe).

2 Various papers made estimates. In 1934, for example, La Palabra (November 19, 1934, p. 1) estimated 60,000.

3 This ratio is drawn from the U.S. case. See Ryan, Mary, “The American Parade: Representations of the Nineteenth-Century Social Order,” in Hunt, Lynn, The New Cultural History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), p. 133.Google Scholar

4 Recent scholarship has ignored November 20. Alan Knight, for example, makes no mention of Revolution Day in his enumeration of post-revolutionary holidays in his “Popular Culture and the Revolutionary State in Mexico.”

5 This general aim is similar to that of Rearick, Charles, “Festivals in Modern France: The Experience of the Third Republic,” Journal of Contemporary History 12:1 (January 1977), p. 436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Bantjes, Adrian A., “Burning Saints, Molding Minds: Iconoclasm, Civic Ritual, and the Failed Cultural Revolution,” in Beezley, William H., Martin, Cheryl English, and French, William E., eds., Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1994), p. 272.Google Scholar

7 Public symbols and shared meanings” is from Isaac, Rhys, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), p. 347.Google Scholar

8 This common-sense notion is developed at length by the Subaltern Studies Group [see Guha, Ranajit and Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, eds., Selected Subaltern Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)]Google Scholar and obliquely by Gramsci, Antonio [see “Notes on Italian History,” in Hoare, Quintin and Smith, Geoffrey Nowell, eds., Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971)].Google Scholar

9 Knight, Alan, “Popular Culture and the Revolutionary State in Mexico, 1910–1940,” Hispanic American Historical Review 74:3 (August 1994), p. 394;CrossRefGoogle Scholar see also Knight, , “Revolutionary Project, Recalcitrant People: Mexico, 1910–40,” in Rodríguez, Jaime E., The Revolutionary Process in Mexico: Essays on Political and Social Change, 1880–1940 (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1990).Google Scholar

10 The idea that ritual patterns emerge from a set of cases is from Kammen, Michael, A Season of Youth: The American Revolution and the Historical Imagination (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1978), p. 16.Google Scholar

11 Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana, Celebración del 20 de Noviembre, 1910–1985 (Mexico City, INEHRM, 1985).

12 Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana, Celebración del grito de independencia, 1810–1985 (Mexico City, INEHRM, 1985).

13 For example, no mention is made in Celebración del 20 de Noviembre of conflict among workers in 1935; see my discussion below.

14 In building my interpretations, I have drawn upon a wide literature concerning public ritual in Europe and the United States, and upon the growing field of Mexican cultural history. I have been particularly influenced by the rich contributions of Ozouf, Mona, Festivals and the French Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988)Google Scholar and Albán, Juan Pedro Viqueira, ‘Relajados ó reprimidos? Diversiones públicas y vida social en la Ciudad de México durante el Siglo de las Luces (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987).Google Scholar For one of very few kindred Latin American cultural historical approaches, see Plotkin, Mariano, Mañana es San Perón: Propaganda, rituales políticos y educación en el régimen peronista (1946–1955) (Buenos Aires: Ariel Historia Argentina, 1994).Google Scholar

15 Cf. discussion of types of celebrations in Hobsbawm, and Ranger, , eds., The Invention of Tradition, p. 9.Google Scholar

16 On print and reading, see Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 22–36,Google Scholar 67–82.

17 See, for example, French, William E., “Progreso Forzado: Workers and the Inculcation of the Capitalist Work Ethic in the Parral Mining District,” in Beezley, William H., et al., Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance, pp. 191–212.Google Scholar Cf. Lane, Christopher, The Rights of Rulers: Ritual in Industrial Societies: The Soviet Case (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 61 Google Scholar and passim; and Corrigan, Philip and Sayer, Derek, The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985),Google Scholar on “totalizing” and individualizing” components of state formation.

18 Beezley, , et al., Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance, p. 2.Google Scholar

19 In this connection, see Turner, , The Dynamic of Mexican Nationalism, pp. 266–272;Google Scholar and also Hunt, Lynn, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution, p. 68.Google Scholar

20 For similarities in the French case, see Weber, Eugen, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), p. 332.Google Scholar

21 “Simple merrymaking” is from Rearick, , “Festivals in Modern France,” p. 440;Google Scholar on shared enjoyment see Rosenzweig, Roy, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 2.Google Scholar

22 On government offices see, for example, El Demócrata, November 20, 1922, p. 1.

23 See, for example, El Demócrata, November 20, 1922, p. 1.

24 El Demócrata, November 19, 1919, p. 5.

25 Excélsior, November 21, 1921, p. 1.

26 The celebration of veladas did not disappear after the early period; in 1934, for example, a pro-Madero group announced its annual velada, with free admission and open seating, in the Palace of Fine Arts. See La Prensa, November 20, 1934, Segunda Sección, p. 1.

27 November 21, 1923, p. 3.

28 Diario de los Debates, Cámara de Diputados, XXIX Legislatura, November 11, 1920.

29 Cf. the “grassroots inventiveness” of Rearick, , “Festivals in Modern France,” p. 444.Google Scholar

30 Cf. Rearick, , “Festivals in Modern France,” p. 445.Google Scholar

31 See similar critical comments in the news media recorded in llene O’Malley, V., The Myth of Revolution: Hero Cults and the Institutionalization of the Mexican State 1920–1940 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), p. 24.Google Scholar

32 See Bendix, Reinhard, Nationbuilding and Citizenship: Studies of Our Changing Social Order (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), especially pp. 89–105.Google Scholar

33 See Ankerson, Dudley, Agrarian Warlord: Saturnino Cedillo and the Mexican Revolution in San Luis Potosí (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1984), p. 195.Google Scholar

34 Liewen, Edwin, Mexican Militarism: The Political Rise and Fall of the Revolutionary Army, 1910–1940 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1968), p. 45.Google Scholar

35 Liewen, , Mexican Militarism, pp. 106,Google Scholar 95, 120, and passim.

36 Liewen, , Mexican Militarism, pp. 58,Google Scholar 64, 118. Other methods were also employed: commands were fragmented; army division were put employed on public-works projects; the overall number of soldiers was reduced toward the target of 50,000; the military budget was gradually reduced beginning in the 1920s under Minister of War Amaro. In the 1930s, the budget was further reduced; schools were built for the children of military families; health benefits were increased; a life insurance system was established; obligatory service was established in 1939. See Liewen, Mexican Militarism, passim; and Ankerson, , Agrarian Warlord, pp. 195–197.Google Scholar

37 Salas, Elizabeth, Soldaderas in the Mexican Military: Myth and History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), pp. 36,Google Scholar 40.

38 Salas, , Soldaderas in the Mexican Military, p. 49.Google Scholar

39 On Zapatista soldaderas, for example, see Planearte, Francisco Ramírez, La ciudad de México durante la revolución constitucionalista (Mexico City: Ediciones Botas, 1941), p. 406.Google Scholar

40 Liewen, , Mexican Militarism, p. 94.Google Scholar

41 La Prensa, November 20, 1929, p. 3.

42 Excélsior, November 15, 1930, Segunda Sección, p. 3.

43 On the changing relative prestige of sports, see Loy, John W., McPherson, Barry D., and Kenyon, Gerald, Sport and Social Systems: A Guide to the Analysis, Problems, and Literature (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1978), p. 365.Google Scholar

44 Liewen, Edwin, Mexican Militarism, p. 95.Google Scholar

45 Excélsior, November 21, 1929, p. 1: “the military sports field is a place where chiefs, officials, and troops who form part of the military will continue to train themselves physically.”

46 La Prensa, November 20, 1929, p. 3.

47 La Prensa, November 21, 1929, p. 1.

48 November 21, 1931, Segunda Edición, p. 2.

49 In a similar vein, the same commentator also opines that the athletic parades benefited only the sellers of “character costumes”: La Palabra, November 19, 1933, p. 3.

50 November 20, 1930, p. 4.

51 La Prensa, November, 20 1932, p. 8.

52 La Palabra, November 19, 1934, p. 1.

53 On Sport and violence, see Loy, , et al., Sport and Social Systems, pp. 287,Google Scholar 288, 387; and Connerton, Paul, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Sanders, Thomas G., “The Social Functions of Futebol,” in Brazilian Mosaic: Portraits of a Diverse People and Culture, Summ, G. Harvey, ed. (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1995), pp. 159–162.Google Scholar

54 Ozouf, , Festivals, p. 103.Google Scholar

55 Cf. Ozouf, , Festivals, pp. 27–28.Google Scholar

56 See Thomson, Guy P.C., “The Ceremonial and Political Roles of Village Bands, 1846–1974” in Beezley, , et al., Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance, pp. 307–342.Google Scholar

57 See Vaughn, Mary Kay, “The Construction of the Patriotic Festival in Tecamachalco, Puebla, 1900–1946,” in Beezley, , et al., Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance, pp. 213–245.Google Scholar

58 Archivo General de la Nación (hereafter AGN), Ramo Lázaro Cárdenas, Vol. 107, Exp. 135.21/37.

59 Becker, Marjorie, Setting the Virgin on Fire: Lázaro Cárdenas, Míchoacán Peasants, and the Redemption of the Mexican Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), p. 5.Google Scholar

60 See Middlebrook, Kevin J., The Paradox of Revolution: Labor, the State, and Authoritarianism in Mexico (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), pp. 154–155;Google Scholar Cf. Mosse, George L., The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars Through the Third Reich (New York: Howard Fertig, 1975), p. 82.Google Scholar

61 It was not only on November 20 that the role of the military in Mexican society was recast in ritual events. A fascinating example of the theme of military action in constructive service to the new state is apparent in the celebration of “Tree Day” (February 20), which by the early 1930s featured military leaders planting trees in national anti-deforestation campaigns. See, for example, Excélsior, February 14, 1932, p. 7; in this year, the Secretary of War ordered chiefs of military operations throughout the country to “organize festivals in homage to trees and the plantation of as many trees as possible.” In 1935, Excélsior reported (February 15, p. 3.) that “… troops will be responsible for the care of the trees, thus fulfilling the intentions of the President of the Republic.”

62 See Knight, Alan, The Mexican Revolution (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), vol. 1,Google Scholar passim.

63 La Prensa, November 20, 1932, p. 3.

64 See Excélsior, November 19, 1934, p. 7; and November 21, 1934, pp. 1, 10, for details in Puebla and Veracruz. See also Loy, et al., Sports and Social Systems, p. 287.Google Scholar

65 See Anderson, Imagined Communities.

66 Meyer, , “Revolution and Reconstruction in the 1920s,” p. 239 Google Scholar

67 Meyer, Jean, “Revolution and Reconstruction in the 1920s,” in Bethell, Leslie, ed., Mexico since Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 205.Google Scholar

68 See Excélsior, November 15,1930, for reportage on the first time the churches complied with the law. See Knight, , “Popular Culture and the Revolutionary State,” pp. 401–406.Google Scholar See also Reich, Peter L., “Mexico’s Hidden Revolution: The Catholic Church in Politics since 1929,” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1991) p. 64.Google Scholar

69 Excélsior, November 21, 1930, p. 8.

70 La Prensa, November 19, 1934. In this year the parade was held on the Sunday previous to Tuesday the 20.

71 Excélsior, November 19, 1934, p. 6.

72 For a discussion of related development in U.S. parades, from which this quote is taken, see Ryan, , “The American Parade,” p. 139;Google Scholar also cf. Hobsbawm, Eric, “Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870–1914,” in Hobsbawm, and Ranger, , eds., The Invention of Tradition, p. 263.Google Scholar

73 See, for example, the sketches of parade floats in De Ovando, Clementina Díaz, Las fiestas patrias en el México de hace un siglo, 1883 (Mexico City: Centro de Estudios de Historia de México CONDUMEX, 1984).Google Scholar

74 See William H. Beezley, “Recreating the Creation of Mexico: Pondering the Nineteenth-Century Celebrations of Independence,” unpublished manuscript; also cf. Ryan, , “The American Parade,” p. 150.Google Scholar

75 See Soto, Shirlene, Emergence of the Modern Mexican Woman (Arden Press, 1990);Google Scholar Turner, Frederick C., The Dynamic of Mexican Nationalism (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1968), pp. 189–200;Google Scholar and Vallens, Vivian M., Working Women in Mexico during the Porfiriato, 1880–1910 (San Francisco: R&E Research Associates, 1978).Google Scholar Increasing female labor-force participation seems to have occurred primarily in the 1920s and 1930s among single women: see Thompson, Lanny, “Artisans, Marginals, and Proletarians: The Households of the Popular Classes in Mexico City, 1876–1950,” in Jaime, Rodríguez O. and Guedea, Virginia, eds., Five Centuries of Mexican History: Papers of the VIII Conference of Mexican and North American Historians (Mexico City: Instituto Mora, 1992), pp. 307–324,Google Scholar esp. pp. 317–318.

76 Excélsior, November 18, 1935, p. 8. The role of women in the Revolution was also commemorated: see, for example, El Nacional, November 20, 1936, p. 1.

77 El Nacional, November 20, 1936, p. 8.

78 See Bunker, Steven B., “‘Consumers of Good Taste’: Marketing Modernity in Northern Mexico, 1890–1910,” (M.A. Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1994)Google Scholar (quote is from page 2); and Williams, Rosalind H., Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982).Google Scholar

79 Cf. Maza, “separate and shared” spheres, Public Lives and Private Affairs, especially pp. 167–211.Google Scholar

80 Cf. Ryan, , “The American Parade,” p. 135.Google Scholar

81 Excélsior, November 20, 1931, Segunda Sección.

82 Excélsior, November 20, 1934, Página Editorial, p. 1.

83 Excélsior, November 20, 1937, p. 11.

84 Quoted in Bantjes, , “Burning Saints, Molding Minds,” p. 265.Google Scholar

85 In the early 1930s, the government began a major sports-education campaign. See, for example, the announcement of plans to create El Consejo Deportivo Nacional and la Confederación Deportiva Nacionales, Excélsior, November 20, 1932, p. 1.

86 For this connection between military and modern values and practices in the French case, see Weber, Eugen, Peasants into Frenchmen, p. 299 Google Scholarff.

87 La Prensa, November 20, 1930, p. 2.

88 Excélsior, November 21, 1930, Segunda Sección, p. 1.

89 Excélsior, November 21, 1930, Segunda Sección, p. 1. See also Loy, et al., Sport and Social Systems, pp. 381,Google Scholar 382.

90 Excélsior, November 20, 1933, Segunda Sección, p. 2.

91 See also French, , “Progreso Forzado,” in Beezley, , et al., Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance, p. 192 Google Scholar

92 Knight, , “The Political Economy of Revolutionary Mexico, 1900–1940,” in Abel, Christopher and Lewis, Colin, eds., Latin America, Economic Imperialism and the State: The Political Economy of the External Connection from Independence to the Present (London: Athlone Press, 1985), pp. 288–317.Google Scholar On the threat of alcoholism as perceived by Porfirians, see Piccato, Pablo, “El Paso de Venus por el disco del Sol: Criminality and Alcoholism in the Late Porfiriato,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 11:2 (Summer 1995), 203–241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see the classic for the colonial period, Taylor, William B., Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

93 On discipline, see Excélsior, November 18, 1940. For U.S. and European parallels, see Davis, , Parades and Power, p. 36;Google Scholar and Mosse, , The Nationalization of the Masses, p. 83.Google Scholar

94 MacLachlan, Colin M. and Beezley, William H., El Gran Pueblo: A History of Greater Mexico (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1994), p. 137.Google Scholar

95 In this connection, see Calles quoted in Bantjes, , “Burning Saints, Molding Minds,” p. 265.Google Scholar See also Loy, et al., Sport and Social Systems, p. 389,Google Scholar where it is suggested that sports competitions can structure a new ceremonial calendar. On new methods of establishing bonds of loyalty in the European case, see Hobsbawm, , “Mass-Producing Traditions,” pp. 263,Google Scholar 264–307.

96 Middlebrook, , The Paradox of Revolution, p. 83.Google Scholar

97 It is worth noting that May 1 never emerged as a central focus for the symbolic incorporation of labor within the postrevolutionary regime, as one might expect. May 1 celebrations tended instead to emphasize the unity of labor and, from the 1940s, national unity (during the war) and anti-communism.

98 Excélsior, November 21, 1929.

99 On concerns about the lack of labor unity, see Middlebrook, , The Paradox of Revolution, pp. 86–88.Google Scholar

100 Middlebrook, , The Paradox of Revolution: Labor, pp. 87,Google Scholar 89.

101 La Prensa, November 20,1932. p. 3.

102 Excélsior, November 20, 1935.

103 Apparently, the communists had goaded the gold-shirts earlier the same day by firing rockets into the ranks of their parade formation on one flank of the Zócalo: see Excélsior, November 21, 1935, p. 1.

104 Nava Nava, María del Carmen, Los abajo firmantes: Cartas a los presidentes, 1934–1946 (Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1994), pp. 77,Google Scholar 78.

105 Excélsior, November 21, 1935, pp. 1, 3. Photographs of the street battle are found in Excélsior, November 21,1935, Segunda Sección, p. 1; and Dulles, John W.F., Yesterday in Mexico: A Chronicle of the Revolution, 1919–1936 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961), p. 647.Google Scholar

106 Excélsior, November 21, 1936, p. 1.

107 El Nacional, November 20, 1936, p. 4.

108 Excélsior, November 21, 1936, p. 3.

109 AGN, Ramo Lázaro Cárdenas, Vol 107, exp. 135.21/37.

110 Excélsior, November 21,1936. Representatives of the Veterans of the Revolution and of the Confederation of Socialist Students also gave speeches during the demonstration. The contrast with earlier newspaper coverage is noteworthy: see in particular La Prensa for November 22, 1937.

111 See El Nacional, November 20, 1936, p. 4.

112 AGN, Ramo Lázaro Cárdenas, Vol. 107, exp. 135.21/37.

113 Excélsior, November 21, 1930. See Piccato, , “Criminality and Punishment in Post-Revolutionary Mexico,” paper presented at LASA, Washington, D.C, September 28–30, 1995.Google Scholar

114 Excélsior, November 21, 1931. Cf. Ryan, , “The American Parade,” p. 144.Google Scholar

115 La Palabra, November 18, 1934, p. 1.

116 Excélsior, November 18, 1940.

117 Middlebrook, , The Paradox of Revolution, p. 93.Google Scholar

118 Excélsior, November 21, 1936.

119 Cf. Ryan, , “The American Parade,” pp. 137–139.Google Scholar

120 See Turner, , The Dynamic of Mexican Nationalism, pp. 104–120,Google Scholar especially 115–120; also cf. Ozouf, , Festivals, p.167;Google Scholar and Lewis, , History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented, p. 12 Google Scholar and passim.

121 The other most commonly proposed date for celebration in the early 1920s was November 18, the day the Aquiles Serdán brothers of Puebla revolted. See El Demócrata, November 19, 1923, Segunda Sección, p. 1.

122 For a discussion of the beginning of the commemoration of Madero’s death, see O’Malley, , The Myth of the Revolution, p. 22.Google Scholar On the tendency to celebrate beginnings in general, see Beezley, “Recreating the Creation of Mexico.”

123 Urrea, Blas [Luis Cabrera], Veinte años despues: El balance de la Revolución; La campaña presidencial; Las dos revoluciones (Mexico City: Ediciones Botas, 1938), pp. 15;Google Scholar 230.

124 “La Tornafiesta,” El Demócrata, September 17, 1924, p. 3.

125 El Demócrata, November 20, 1920. p. 1.

126 Diario de los Debates, Cámara de Diputados, XXIX Legislatura, November 11, 1920, p. 21.

127 Excélsior, November 20, 1930, p. 1 (Tercera Sección).

128 Excélsior, November 20, 1929, p. 3.

129 The first official commemoration of Carranza’s death was held in 1930. See O’Malley, , The Myth of Revolution, p. 79.Google Scholar

130 Excélsior, November 20, 1931, p. 7 (Tercera Sección). See also O’Malley, , Myth of the Revolution, pp. 41–70;Google Scholar and Turner, , The Dynamic of Mexican Nationalism, pp. 117–119.Google Scholar

131 Excélsior, November 21, 1933, p. 1. See also the controversy over a film on Zapata in Meisler, Stanley, “Mexican Hero Zapata, Center of New Dispute,” Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1974, V:2.Google Scholar

132 Excélsior, November 20, 1940. p. 12.

133 Excélsior, November 20, 1930, p. 5. For a fascinating note on how bodily movement (such as sport parades or gymnastic exercises on the occasion of November 20), work to reinforce memory, see Connerton, , How Societies Remember, p. 72.Google Scholar Cf. McNeill, William H., Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

134 Excélsior, November 19, 1934. p.l

135 There were other ways of establishing the true revolutionary faith: many “new” revolutionaries tried to make the “old” revolutionaries appear disloyal to the revolutionary cause; Cárdenas in particular used the creation of a revolutionary “we” group to isolate a “them.” See Urrea, [Luis Cabrera], Veinte años despues, pp. 369–71.Google Scholar

136 Excélsior, November 21, 1929, Página Editorial, p. 5. In this connection, see also Camín, Aguilar and Meyer, , En la sombra de la revolución mexicana, pp. 189–194.Google Scholar

137 See in particular the discussion of the Zapata myth in O’Malley, , The Myth of the Revolution, p. 6:Google Scholar “the myth uses Zapata to imbue the campesinos with a non-revolutionary sentiment that Zapata himself did not have: dependence on and loyalty to the government.” See El Nacional, November 20, 1936, p. 1, on the case of women in the Revolution.

138 On the “unity” of revolutionary meaning, see Turner, , Dynamic of Mexican Nationalism, pp. 163–169;Google Scholar cf “México: Un diagnóstico: Una entrevista con John Womack Jr.,” NEXOS, February, 1996, 41. On “legends” about the French Revolution, see Ozouf, p. 171 and Rearick, “Festivals in Modern France,” pp. 442, 457. See also Maza, , Public Lives and Private Affairs, pp. 3–8 Google Scholar and passim.; and Lane, , Ritual in Industrial Societies: The Soviet Case, p. 141 Google Scholar

139 Cf. mixing of authentic, the romantic, and the symbolic in Kammen, Michael, A Season of Youth: The American Revolution and the Historical Imagination (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1978), p. 246;Google Scholar on the importance of the unifying tendency in Mexico, see also O’Malley, , The Myth of Revolution, pp. 32,Google Scholar 86, 116, and passim.; Hunt, Lynn, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution, p. 54.Google Scholar

140 Aguilar Camín and Meyer, En la sombra de la revolución mexicana, p. (?).

141 Córdova, Arnaldo, “La mitología de la Revolución mexicana,” in Florescano, Enrique, ed., Mitos mexicanos (México: Aguilar, 1995), p. 21.Google Scholar See also Camín, Hector Aguilar, “Mentiras fundadoras,” Proceso 1023 (June 10, 1996), p. 45;Google Scholar Aguilar Camín bemoans this sort of apotheosis, asking “Founding myths: are we condemned to live with them, to be unable to dissipate the fantasms that we ourselves have constructed?”

142 Organized parades, and particularly parade routes, must not in all cases be orderly. See Ryan, , “The American Parade,” p. 134.Google Scholar

143 That December 12 was a “patriotic” celebration, as well as a religious and ethnic one, is clear from Newspaper accounts: see, for example, Excélsior, December 12, 1921, p. 1, and Excélsior, December 12, 1926, Segunda Sección, p. 3 (“Catholics have received instructions to adorn the facades of their houses with the national colors so that all the city will appear festive as on the national holidays”); Excélsior, December 13,1940, Segunda Sección, p. 1 (the Virgin is “a symbol, now not only religious, but also patriotic”).

144 Weber, , Peasants into Frenchmen, p. 383.Google Scholar Cf. Rearick, , “Festivals in Modern France,” p. 437.Google Scholar

145 Quote is from Excélsior, September 16, 1932, p. 1. Notices of disorder abound. See, for example, Excélsior, September 16, 1921, pp. 6, Segunda Sección, p.l (assault; burglaries); Excélsior, September 17, 1921, Segunda Sección, p. 1 (shooting); Excélsior, September 15, 1926, p. Segunda Sección, p. 1 (activities of Red Cross); Excélsior, September 16, 1926, p. Segunda Sección, p. 12 (people hurt); Excélsior, September 17, 1927, p. 10f, September 16, 1935, Segunda Sección, p. 1, and September 18, 1935, Segunda Sección, p. 6 (robberies; flags stolen; thefts; delinquency); Excélsior, September 16, 1928, Segunda Sección, p. 8 (list of robberies; victims of patriotic acts).

146 Excélsior reported 500,000 for 1938; September 18, p. 1.

147 See photographs in Excélsior, September 15, 1934, Segunda Sección, p. 1. On the Feria de la Luz, see El Demócrata, September 16, 1924, p. 1. On the Porfirian celebration, see Beezley, William, “Amending Memories: The Nimble Mnemonics of Nineteenth-Century Celebrations of Independence,” paper presented at CHA annual meeting, August 25, 1995.Google Scholar

148 Excélsior, December 13, 1925, p. 1, and Excélsior, December 13, 1933, Segunda Sección, p. 1, report 200,000.

149 Excélsior, December 12, 1921, Segunda Sección, p. 1.

150 Excélsior, September 17, 1922, Tercera Sección, p. 4. Elites also had a good time, however. A cartoon from 1926 has an upper-class woman confronting her husband the morning after: “Last night you did not get home until early in the morning, and you were falling-down drunk.” The man replies: “I suffered an error: I couldn’t remember whether you said ‘have three drinks and come home at 10, or have 10 drinks and come home at three.’ ” Excélsior, November 17, 1926, Página Editorial.

151 Excélsior, September 17, 1926, p. 8; Excélsior, September 17, 1923, Página Editorial, p. 1; Excélsior, September 17, 1927, p. 10f.

152 See cartoons and jokes about Independence-Day celebrations (fights; police; pinching of women; “metropolis as insane asylum”; and alcohol use) in Excélsior, September 16,1921, Página Editorial, p. 1; September 17,1922, Tercera Sección, p. 4; September 16, 1923, Página Editorial, p. 1. For a parallel nighttime influence, see Rosenzweig, , Eight Hours for What We Will, p. 72.Google Scholar For women in parades in the United States, see Ryan, , “The American Parade,” pp. 147–48.Google Scholar

153 Excélsior, December 13, 1923, Segunda Sección p. 6. Many accounts emphasize the mixing of “all social classes” in the December 12 celebrations: see, for example, Excélsior, December 13, 1926, Segunda Sección, p. 4.

154 Excélsior, December 13, 1924, Segunda Sección p. 1 (protest of food and oil prices).

155 Excélsior, December 13, 1933, Segunda Sección, p. 4.

156 Excélsior, September 15, 1927, p. 3. On controlling disorder during the 1921 centennial celebrations, see Lacy, Elaine C., “The Centennial Celebrations of 1921 and Building the Revolutionary State,” paper presented at the IX Conference of Mexican and North American Historians, Mexico City, October 27–29, 1994.Google Scholar

157 Typical examples are Excélsior, September 15, 1934, p. 10; Excélsior, September 15, 1935, Segunda Sección, p. 4; Excélsior, September 15, 1936, Segunda Sección, p. 4; Excélsior, September 15, 1937, Segunda Sección insert. From cartoons, it appears that women expected to be included in these evening outings.

158 See, for example, Excélsior, September 15, 1931, Segunda Sección, p. 1; Excélsior, September 15,1932, p. 4; Excélsior, September 17, 1927, Segunda Sección, p. 1; El Demócrata, September 15, 1924, p. 1.

159 Excélsior, December 12, 1926, p. 3.

160 Excélsior, December 13, 1926, Segunda Sección, p. 4.

161 Excélsior, December 13, 1933, Segunda Sección, p. 1 and Excélsior, December 13, 1935, Segunda Sección, p. 1 (wounded with rocks, knives, and guns; robberies); Excélsior, December 13, 1930, Segunda Sección, p. 1; Excélsior, December 13, 1936, Segunda Sección, p. 9; Excélsior, December 13, 1937, Segunda Sección, p. 8; Excélsior, December 13, 1938, Segunda Sección, p. 6 (order; less drunkenness).

162 From Rosenzweig, , Eight Hours for What We Will, p. 71.Google Scholar

163 Excélsior, September 17,1922, pp. 1, 3; Excélsior, September 17,1923, pp. 1, 6. In Worcester bonfires replaced fireworks; accidents decreased but fires increased. See Rosenzweig, , Eight Hours for What We Will, p. 163.Google Scholar

164 Excélsior, September 17, 1923, pp. 1, 6.

165 Excélsior, December 13, 1930, Segunda Sección, p. 2.

166 Excélsior, September 19, 1935, p. 5.

167 For notices of attempts to bring celebrants under control and introduce order to the celebrations, see, for example, Excélsior, September 16, 1926 (police inspector general outlaws firearms from September 15 through September 17); Excélsior, September 15, 1928, Segunda Sección, pp. 1,7 (cantinas closed; firearms prohibited; fireworks banned).

168 Cf. Rosenzweig, , Eight Hours for What We Will, p. 5.Google Scholar

169 La Palabra, November 19, 1934, p. 5.

170 On contrasts between “respectable” and “rowdy” parades in the United States, see Davis, , Parades and Power, p. 159–161;Google Scholar and Glassberg, David, American Historical Pageantry: The Uses of Tradition in the Early Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), pp. 25,Google Scholar 30. Cf. Ryan, , “The American Parade,” p. 152.Google Scholar There is a parallel with the Safe and Sane July Fourth movement in the United States: see Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will, Chapter Six and Davis, Susan G., Parades and Power: Street Theater in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), p. 169.Google Scholar On replacements of traditional with official fests, see Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, Chapter 21, especially p. 387.

171 La Prensa, November 20, 1932, p. 3.

172 Cf. Rosenzweig, , Eight Hours for What We Will, p. 66.Google Scholar

173 Connerton, , How Societies Remember, p. 45.Google Scholar

174 Davis, , Parades and Power, p. 5.Google Scholar

175 Cf. Beezley, “Recreating the Creation of Mexico.”

176 Bantjes, , “Burning Saints, Molding Minds,” in Beezley, , et al., Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance, p. 262.Google Scholar

177 See Hobsbawm, and Ranger, , eds., The Invention of Tradition;Google Scholar see also Knight, , “Popular Culture and the Revolutionary State,” pp. 398,Google Scholar 399, 401.

178 As Alan Knight notes, neither anti-clericalism nor socialism took root among a “recalcitrant” Mexican people. See Knight, , “Popular Culture and the Revolutionary State,” p. 440.Google Scholar See also Nugent, Daniel, Spent Cartridges of Revolution: An Anthropological History of Namiquipa, Chihuahua (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).Google Scholar

179 Bantjes, , “Burning Saints, Molding Minds,” pp. 263–264.Google Scholar See also the German case in Mosse, , “Caesarism, Circuses, and Monuments,” p. 170.Google Scholar