The nation debate: the nationalist discourse in the liberal anti-Porfirian press

Abstract

In Mexico, as in most Latin American states, the nation building process was so slow, painful and bumpy, that for many scholars national processes were still unfinished in the twentieth century.  In the Mexican case, the porfiriato is considered as the national-state consolidation stage which made possible the unification of a successful national narrative, until it was interrupted by the Mexican Revolution.  However, beyond the achievements and the apparent consensus among the political class of the porfirian era, national issues generated controversial debates in the press and in open forums.  Faced with the national image built by the oligarchic and political elite, a certain sector of the press, associated with liberal opposition groups, questioned the arguments of the nation imagined by the ruling elite, but also reinforced some aspects of that national image, deeply rooted in the social imaginary. This text analyzes and explains a part of this debate through the study of the Mexican journalistic discourse in the period 1890-1910, particularly in those opposition newspapers identified with liberal ideology such as El Hijo del Ahuizote and others considered as harbinger of the Mexican Revolution such as Regeneración and El Demócrata.