Teaching 'Aztec Classicism

Early Modern Myths in the Twentieth-Century Classroom

Bibliographic Data

ID2170422
AuthorsAlex J H Thomas (corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume30
Issue4
Pages545-567
Publication date2021-10-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Latin American Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1356-9325 • E-ISSN: 1469-9575
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13569325.2021.2020734
OpenAlexW4210993325
LanguageEN
References cited21

History has long been regarded a vital tool for emergent nation-states and subsequent nationalist regimes in unifying disparate groups around a common historical memory. And nowhere can such a memory be more effectively instilled in a population than in its schools, where the textbook gives state-approved narratives an unimpeachable authority in children’s minds. This essay traces the canonisation of a colonial, Classicised narrative portraying pre-Columbian Anahuac as the Mexican national past through its monumentalisation in state-approved textbooks until well into the twentieth century. By focusing on mythical Greco-Roman representations of the Acolhua monarch Nezahualcoyotl that emerged shortly after the Spanish Conquest and were consolidated in the early years of Independence, I contend that the projection of Mexican identity in schoolbooks rests upon a fictionalised, unifying conception of history steeped in European Classicism but used as a strategy of identification against the European. In doing so, this essay opens up a reading of history textbooks as Mexican sites of memory: sites which reflect the lost Indigenous cultures of Mexico yet simultaneously offer an ingrained European reading of those very cultures

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Classicism · Colonialism · Genealogy · Identity (music · Independence (probability theory · Indigenous · Literature · Mythology · Narrative · National identity · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · State (computer science · Classics · History · Indigenous Cultures and Socio-Education · Latin American history and culture · Law · Politics and Society in Latin America

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