Mexico at the World's Fairs

This intriguing study of Mexico's participation in world's fairs from 1889 to 1929 explores Mexico's self-presentation at these fairs as a reflection of the country's drive toward nationalization and a modernized image. Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo contrasts Mexico's presence at the 1889 Paris fair—where its display was the largest and most expensive Mexico has ever mounted—with Mexico's presence after the 1910 Mexican Revolution at fairs in Rio de Janeiro in 1922 and Seville in 1929.

Rather than seeing the revolution as a sharp break, Tenorio-Trillo points to important continuities between the pre- and post-revolution periods. He also discusses how, internationally, the character of world's fairs was radically transformed during this time, from the Eiffel Tower prototype, encapsulating a wondrous symbolic universe, to the Disneyland model of commodified entertainment.

Drawing on cultural, intellectual, urban, literary, social, and art histories, Tenorio-Trillo's thorough and imaginative study presents a broad cultural history of Mexico from 1880 to 1930, set within the context of the origins of Western nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and modernism.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1997.

Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo is Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS I
PREFACE I
INTRODUCTION

PART I· PORFIRIAN MEXICO AND WORLD'S FAIRS

1. France and Her Followers
2. The Imperatives of Mexican Progress
3· Mexico and the World at Large
4· The Wizards of Progress: Paris 1889
5· The Aztec Palace and the History of Mexico
6. Mexican Anthropology and Ethnography at the Paris Exposition
7· Mexican Art and Architecture in Paris
8. Mexican Statistics, Maps, Patents, and Governance
g. Natural History and Sanitation in the Modern Nation
10. Irony

PART II· WORLD'S FAIRS AND MEXICO AFTER
THE REVOLUTION OF 1910

11. Toward Revolutionary Mexico
12. The 1922 Rio de Janeiro Fair
13. The 1929 Seville Fair

EPILOGUE
APPENDIX 1. THE PORFIRIAN WIZARDS OF PROGRESS
APPENDIX 2. THE ECONOMIC COST OF WORLD'S FAIRS

NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX