The Misadventures of Giuseppe Chiarini's Circus in Mexico, or a Survival Guide for Itinerant Entertainers in Turbulent Times

Abstract

Press coverage of Giuseppe Chiarini's circus in Mexico during the downfall of Maximilian shows the entertainment entrepreneur adapting and altering his promotional messaging in response to a volatile political climate. That Chiarini operated a transnational enterprise at the time allows direct comparisons of the differing messaging he employed between Mexico and the United States on two controversial issues: republican versus imperial forms of government that divided Mexico and slavery that divided the United States. His politically splintered audiences in Mexico also offered differing interpretations of the import of his company's performance, and subsequently employed his circus to bolster the emergence of a national symbol. The record in Mexico suggests that the circus's methods of communication were less resistant to the application of political meaning than they were flexible in incorporating such meanings, allowing for them to attract and maintain the most diverse, and therefore largest, possible public.