Symbolic violence and sexualities in the myth making of Mexican national identity

Abstract

Symbolic violence has the capability to transform aspects of gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality and it is portrayed in a vast iconography, from myth, historic documents, prints and drawings. In this article I focus on two constructions of national identity that are entwined with gender and sexual roles: first, the mestizo myth, or the narrative of the common ethnic origins of the Mexican nation, and, second, the popular consumption of this national myth in the form of pictures and drawings depicting mestizo couples, the progenitors of idealized Mexican families conforming an integrative nation. To illustrate my argument I have used newspaper articles written by nineteenth-century women and picture cards of calendars and almanacs (mid-twentieth century) which give account of roles of sexuality and gender in shaping the nationalist mythology of common origin.

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