A History of Boxing in Mexico

Boxers wrapped in Mexican flags have become an iconic image of the patria. Stephen Allen argues in A History of Boxing in Mexico: Masculinity, Modernity, and Nationalism that this national eminence emerged during the 1930s in concert with changing ideals. The sport of boxing both shaped and was shaped by Mexican identity alongside performances of gender and modernity. Allen contends that boxers became symbolic figures used by the elite in order to brand the revolutionary nation as commercialized and fit for mass consumer capitalism. At the same time, boxers themselves sought high-status careers and the rewards of celebrity. Through the sport, its adherents, and its pugilists, Mexicans made sense of an urbanizing and industrializing world. Lofty abstracts—courage, discipline, mexicanidad—played out in emotional theaters mediated by corrupt officials, media magnates, and international rivalries.Allen primarily examines the sport from the 1940s to the 1980s with a combination of archival documents, specialty periodicals, oral interviews, and a broad array of secondary literature. He tracks the sport from its 1930s acceptance in Mexico to the golden age of the 1940s, the celebrity culture of the 1950s, and, finally, the shifting gender landscapes of the 1960s and 1970s. He attaches each era to a particular star fighter (as indeed did the Partido Revolucionario Institucional [PRI] government sponsors), giving close coverage to Rodolfo “Chango” Casanova, Raúl Macías, Vicente Saldívar, Rubén Olivares, and José Nápoles. He successfully uses these exemplars to demonstrate ideas that transcend boxing itself. Earning popularity for the sport required eschewing its foreign origins, which Allen reveals in the context of the developing polarity between Mexico City and Los Angeles. In one of several contradictory threads, he shows how boxing became Mexican at the same time that Los Angeles did. The sport flourished in Los Angeles between the 1932 and 1984 Olympics hosted there due to the late arrival of other national sports leagues but more crucially to the influx of Mexican migrants that marked the city as racially different from other US centers. World War II and mass television viewing shaped the sport, as did shifting attitudes to immigration and political developments in Mexico, as the PRI lost legitimacy and the economic miracle faltered. Some of Allen's best analyses come in his use of cultural sources such as corridos and fan writings, which add depth to considerations of how boxing mattered, how much, and for whom.A History of Boxing in Mexico offers significant insights into Mexican identities. A strength of this work is how Allen builds on the methods of Clifford Geertz by looking for “deep play” via a close reading of the fights and fighters. In this, the sport becomes a theater in which people “tell stories to themselves about their nation's place in the community of nations following World War II” (p. 12). Allen's intention to find deeper meaning in the boxer's experience is welcome and leads to a sophisticated discussion of changing masculinities. Embedded in the pageantry of the boxing match, from training to postfight analyses, one finds contradictory ideas about male respectability, brutality, decorum, stoicism, and local pride versus international standing. The match could be exultant or, equally, tragic. Mass media played its part in this by increasing the stakes of the sport both rhetorically and financially. As aspects of masculinity received varying focus over time, so too did related ideas of race. An emotional masculinity emerges in his analysis in which public and personal expectations of self-discipline, family values, and proper manners shaped how boxers acted and how fans reacted to them. Lower-class men, often with indigenous features, overcame their stereotyped nature in the ring by showing hard-earned skill and self-control. The PRI and sports promoters set this story at the heart of boxing's theater; the match in the ring—win or lose—redeemed lower-class manliness and reflected directly on national honor. The boxer stood in for masculine citizenship and even, as Allen shows, financial prudence. These fighters became the center of a fervent cult of transnational competition framed in ways of understanding Mexican manhood. Through the 40 years of this study, we see this cult develop along with the culture of the nation more generally, and most especially, Allen demonstrates a significant transformation during the countercultural 1960s.Ultimately Allen's work delivers an excellent use of sports as a lens to see national change as well as a great history of boxing itself. This well-written and substantially researched work contributes a unique view of Mexico and Mexican identity between the 1930s and 1980s. Well suited for specialists, students, and boxing aficionados, A History of Boxing in Mexico offers new approaches to understanding masculine nationalism. In showing the complex ties between identities, mass media promotions, and cosmopolitan visions, Allen has landed a sweet scholarly uppercut

Aesthetics · Art · Capitalism · Courage · Elite · Masculinity · Modernity · National identity · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Popularity · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports and Physical Education Studies · Sports, Gender, and Society

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