National identity : Between the homeland and the nation: Mexico, 19th century

Résumé

The Mexican highlands, political and symbolic center of the country, has been the focal region where the projects for the constitution of the nation and the articulation of the most diverse territories were woven. However, the historical analysis shows that the representation of the national territory, that is, its symbolic appropriation, suffered from a major deficit: the central elites never managed to symbolically and sentimentally integrate all the space over which sovereignty was formally exercised. In fact, both the broad Septentrión and the surface south of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec were left out of the symbolic representation of the true "homeland", which coincided with the central Mesoamerican area. Furthermore, according to the perception of the liberal elites of the 19th century, the border territories of the Mexican North were empty deserts devoid of all value and populated only by barbarian Indians. In contrast, the vision of the Anglo-American settlers represented those same territories as a kind of "promised land", capable of becoming a "garden" thanks to the work of the pioneers. If it is accepted that social representations guide and guide action, the contrasting representations of the northern territories by Mexican liberal elites and Anglo-Saxon settlers partly explain an apparently anomalous and enigmatic fact of the Mexican 19th century: the signing of the McLane Treaty. -Ocampo by Benito Juárez in 1859. the vision of the Anglo-American settlers represented those same territories as a kind of "promised land", capable of becoming a "garden" thanks to the work of the pioneers. If it is accepted that social representations guide and guide action, the contrasting representations of the northern territories by Mexican liberal elites and Anglo-Saxon settlers partly explain an apparently anomalous and enigmatic event of the Mexican 19th century: the signing of the McLane Treaty. -Ocampo by Benito Juárez in 1859.