Changes

The book of related articles, Everyday Forms of State Formation, Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico, is the result of a scholarly conference on the relationship between popular cultures in Mexico and the post-Revolutionary Mexican State’s hegemonic project. The complex variety and nuance often overlooked when addressing such large concepts like state, culture, hegemony and revolution are not ignored by the authors who contributed to this body of work, but are instead recognized and interrogated. After years of incomplete historical interpretation, the participants of the conference sought to understand the connection between these concepts and the actual experience of the Mexican Revolution.

The Mexican Revolution has been described by populist historians as a monolithic event, the sublime convergence of popular demands for bread and liberty. The Mexican revoutionary state’s hegemonic project was demonstrated by the state-sponsored education programs and support of muralists promoting an image of a unified and successful revolutionary experience in Mexico. In 1968 the massacre of students and protesters in Tlatelolco dispelled the illusion of the institutionalized revolutions. Many historians abandoned the grand narrative of the Revolution in favor of smaller, regional studies of specific events and experiences. These studies were limited in scope in and application, but safe from the death drop to the disillusion experienced by the intellectuals who watched their revoltutionary government disappear earnest student revolutionaries on the eve of the ’68 Olympics.