La proyección de las artes escénicas mexicanas al exterior. El caso de la Feria Iberoamericana de Sevilla y las Misiones Culturales

Abstract

The years after the Mexican Revolution signified a stage of national consolidation in which the performing arts played a fundamental role in the formation of collective imaginations. There were numerous civic festivals and mass parties that included archetypal figures, music, costumes and colors, in charge of promoting a new Mexican nationalism in a majority illiterate population, dispersed in the fields of an immense territory and in a deep ignorance of “modernity”. The Ibero-American Fair in Seville represented the opportunity to project the nationalist discourse at an international level through the exhibition of Mexican archetypes. The present article aims to analyze the discursive profile presented by Mexico in 1929, as well as the possible interest that the Mexican government program Misiones Culturales aroused in Spain, in charge of promoting modernity in rural communities and at the same time collecting information on customs and folklore throughout the country.