Myth and Image in Mexican History: Foundations and Legitimacy

Abstract

The article views the peculiar imaginary of Creole patriotism—and the role of myth and prophecy in the elaboration of this discourse—in the context of the role played by images as agents of memory and legitimation, from the colonial world to the present. This guided tour of the Mexican nation’s founding symbols offers new reflections regarding the successive changes of regime and the corresponding, “politically correct”, substitutions or modifications to which those themes were subjected. Following the repudiation of Cortés as the guide of a chosen people (himself the reincarnation of Quetzalcóatl and substitute for Huitzilopochtli), his place was taken by the Marian apparitions, in particular the figure of the Virgin of Guadalupe, as “a presence” pointing to a destiny. The reformulation of national myths during the period following Mexico’s independence represents a change of contents rather than containers. In this process, the restitution of indigenism and the idea of Anáhuac as a center both ancient and new, a state reinstated—or a “classical past”, as Clavijero imagined it—was to represent a sort of official and centrist discourse which even the evolutionist vision of Justo Sierra or the claims of the revolutionary agenda could not dispense with.