The ‘Event’ of Nationalism

Abstract

This essay focuses on the role played by a series of events and how they were interpreted to have a foundational meaning for the creation of Mexican identity, nationhood and statehood. It compares the creation of Mexican statehood with the portrayal of Cuban nationhood, via the use of the supernatural signification and resonance associated with saints and/or apparitions of the divine. The three test cases used in this study are, for Mexico, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and for Cuba, the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre and the Virgen de Regla. In each case the events on which a sense of nationhood were pinned operate in a dual sense in that their meaning was constructed retroactively. The work of the French philosopher, Alain Badiou, particularly his study, L’Être et l‘événement (1988), is brought to bear in an attempt to argue through how the originary events achieved political meaning over time and did so via a process of nomination.