Funerals, Festivals, and Cultural Politics in Porfirian Mexico

Abstract

Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz did not rule by repression and co-optation alone. As Matthew Esposito’s book on national commemorations and state funerals reveals, the Díaz regime relied on memorialization, “the active construction of official memory through the use of state ceremony,” for its legitimacy and survival (p. 4). Over the course of its lengthy 35 years of rule, the dictatorship performed countless commemorations and held 110 state funerals, events so common in the Mexican capital that hardly a month went by without one. The ceremonies had many functions. Díaz and his cronies used them to establish and maintain rule, to project images of “Order and Progress,” and, later in the period, to display Mexico as a land of material wealth. The events also served as opportunities to encourage “citizens to remember an official version of the past,” uniting Mexicans through the common bond of shared history (p. 5). Esposito looks at his subject through the lens of nation building and hegemony, concepts that he presents skillfully in the introduction but weaves less effectively into the rest of the book. Although he analyzes holiday celebrations such as Independence Day and Cinco de Mayo, his biggest contribution to cultural history and to the scholarship on nation building and statecraft lies in his detailed exploration of state funerals.Through numerous examples, Esposito shows us the Porfirian patriarchs’ intense efforts to orchestrate what were essentially hero cults and cults to the dead. Leaders went to great lengths to stage these rituals of rule, which involved a formal lying in state as well as an elaborate funeral procession. These were spectacular affairs with huge hearses and mounds of flowers. The entire Mexican capital shut down and the processions were made to take circuitous routes in order to maximize attendance. (A map of Mexico City highlighting the procession routes and cemeteries would have been a useful addition to the book.) While the funerals were intended to be serious, solemn occasions, they often descended into pandemonium, complete with fights, theft, and the destruction of property. Thousands mobilized for the events, which resonated with “a nation of citizens who worshipped ancestors on the Day of the Dead, national heroes monthly, and Catholic saints daily” (p. 56). Esposito explores the omnipresence of death in a capital with chronically low life expectancy. His first chapter looks at the practices surrounding death for ordinary Mexicans, from rented coffins used solely during the funeral services to the funeral tramcars that traveled on shoddy, bumpy tracks, often sending coffins flying into the streets.No great man or war hero to bury? No problem! The Porfirian regime could always repatriate the bones of a historical figure as it did with Mariano Arista, whose remains were shipped back from Portugal. The mid-nineteenth-century president had been a forgotten figure until the government decided to rebury him and restore him to national memory. Eulogies celebrated Arista as a martyr of democratic institutions, a leader who had voluntarily stepped down from power, in a funeral that occurred, not coincidentally, at the same time President Díaz was relinquishing his own rule to allow for the presidency of Manuel González. One of the most fascinating aspects of Esposito’s work is his analysis of how the funerals and celebrations were used to rewrite history. For example, the memorial service for Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, the former president overthrown by Díaz, emphasized Lerdo’s career as a judge rather than a president. The state funerals commonly memorialized the great heroes and events on the one hand and glorified Díaz on the other. Díaz consistently inserted himself into the historical narrative in ways that legitimized his rule, making his dictatorship seem like part of the natural progression of history, to the point of depicting himself as a friend of his enemies. When it came to promoting his own image, the dictator seems never to have missed a beat. The Díaz regime had a decided interest in “keeping the dead alive in the national conscience” (p. 5). Esposito brings these ceremonies to life in a work that should be of interest to historians and graduate students.