The "Anales del Museo Nacional de México" and the fabrication of Mexican memory and national history (1877-1911)

• In Event: Política, sociedad y desastres en México y el Caribe

Abstract

This paper analyzes how the Anales del Museo Nacional de México were related to the government's political project to fabricate Mexican memory and national history. The Annales contain historical, anthropological, archaeological, botanical and zoological studies about objects belonging to the pre-Hispanic societies. Treaties, essays and writings produced in the colonial period are also included. The publication represents an effort by the board of the Museo Nacional de México in making this material public. The hypothesis here defended is that of a close relation between the national ideology proposed by Porfírio Diaz administration and the Mexican intellectuality who organized the museum's magazine. The museum would be a promulgator of these ideals, of the recovery of the past and its redefinition in the present. Therefore, the historical-cultural approach to the analysis of Mexican identity construction is used to understand the political circumstances of the period between 1877 and 1911 and the contents of the documental volumes produced during these times.

Author

• Ana Carolina Machado de Souza