A Sentimental Education for the Working Man: The Mexico City Penny Press, 1900 – 1910 by Robert M Buffington

Abstract

Buffington, Robert M. A Sentimental Education for Working Man: The Mexico City Penny Press, 1900-1910. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Robert M. Buffington, Professor of Women and Gender Studies at University of Colorado, Boulder, has written extensively on Mexican history. Buffington published a monograph: Criminal and Citizen in Modern Mexico (University of Nebraska Press, 2000), as well as several articles, and edited a volume with Pablo Piccato entitled True Stories of Crime in Modern Mexico (University of New Mexico Press, 2009). As such, he is an acknowledged authority on Mexican history. The author utilizes twenty-seven Mexico City penny press newspapers to illustrate how editors of these papers produced a sentimental education for working-class men that was patronizing, less coercive, more realistic, and more comprehensive than anything produced by authorities (5). The first two chapters explore efforts by penny press to construct popular alternatives to official stories and discuss how editors attempted to forge bonds of affection between popular figures like Miguel Hidalgo and Benito Juarez and working class. In essence, penny press editors plucked liberal icons from official histories, reinterpreted them as working-class heroes, and used them to criticize Porfirio Diaz's regime. Mexican Independence leader Hidalgo's courage in face of betrayals by his countrymen who colluded with imperialist Spaniards resonated with penny press criticisms that an unholy alliance between Diaz and foreigners impoverished Mexico. Similarly, penny press canonization of Juarez, hero of War of Reform and French Intervention, proved an excellent way to subvert official patriotic discourse because Juarez and Diaz had a tumultuous relationship. Penny press editors skillfully employed Juarez to make sarcastic references to Diaz. When Francisco Bulnes, a friend and favorite of Diaz, issued a blistering anti-Juarez polemic, penny press savaged him as a traitor to country. Editors assumed Bulnes spoke for Diaz and deplored Don Porfirio's seeming attempt to denigrate their Juarez, a martyr and a working-class hero. Ultimately, penny press helped forge a new national identity in which working-class men were the true patriots whose hard work and steadfast devotion would one day realize nation's destiny and redeem noble sacrifice of its immortal champions (97). In disseminating this vision, penny press argued that working-class were the people. From reinterpretation of Hidalgo and Juarez, Buffington moves to analysis of penny press efforts to write working-class men into national narrative as active participants. Editors argued that humble but heroic contributions of working-class to nation-building warranted their inclusion, not as passive beneficiaries but as full-fledged rights-bearing citizens (101). …