Performance in the Zócalo: Constructing History, Race, and Identity in Mexico's Central Square from the Colonial Era to the Present

Martínez, Ana

doi:doi:10.3998/mpub.10160834

Performance in the Zócalo: Constructing History, Race, and Identity in Mexico's Central Square from the Colonial Era to the Present

Ana Martínez 2020

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For more than five centuries, the Plaza Mayor (or Zócalo) in Mexico City has been the site of performances for a public spectatorship. During the period of colonial rule, performances designed to ensure loyalty to the Spanish monarchy were staged there, but over time, these displays gave way to staged demonstrations of resistance. Today, the Zócalo is a site for both official government-sponsored celebrations and performances that challenge the state. Performance in the Zócalo examines the ways that this city square has achieved symbolic significance over the centuries, and how national, ethnic, and racial identity has been performed there.

A saying in Mexico City is "quien domina el centro, domina el país" (whoever dominates the center, dominates the country) as the Zócalo continues to act as the performative embodiment of Mexican society. This book highlights how particular performances build upon each other by recycling past architectures and performative practices for new purposes. Ana Martínez discusses the singular role of collective memory in creating meaning through space and landmarks, providing a new perspective and further insight into the problem of Mexico's relationship with its own past. Rather than merely describe the commemorations, she traces the relationship between space and the invention of a Mexican imaginary. She also explores how indigenous communities, Mexico's alienated subalterns, performed as exploited objects, exotic characters, and subjects with agency. The book's dual purposes are to examine the Zócalo as Mexico's central site of performance and to unmask, without homogenizing, the official discourse regarding Mexico's natives. This book will be of interest for students and scholars in theater studies, Mexican Studies, Cultural Geography, Latinx and Latin American Studies.

ISBN(s)

978-0-472-13209-6 (hardcover)
978-0-472-12706-1 (ebook)

Subject

Citable Link

The Templo Mayor is made of gray, somewhat crumbled stone walls, one of which holds rows of carved skulls. The ornate cathedral stands in the background.

View of the cathedral and the Zócalo from the ruins of the Templo Mayor

From Introduction

Fig. 1. View of the cathedral and the Zócalo from the ruins of the Templo Mayor. (Photograph by the author.)

Fue el Estado

From Introduction

Fig. 2. Fue el Estado [It was the state] demonstration. (Photograph courtesy of Eduardo Velasco Vásquez and Rexiste.)

Uppsala Map of Mexico-Tenochtitlán ca. 1550

From Chapter One

Fig. 3. The Map of Mexico-Tenochtitlán, circa 1550. (A color version of this image is available online. Courtesy of Uppsala University Library.)

Urban and architectural plan of Mexico’s square.

Plaza Mayor, 1562–1566

From Chapter One

Fig. 4. The Plan of the Plaza Mayor, 1562–66. (Courtesy of University of Arizona Special Collections.)

Mexico City, S. XVI

From Chapter One

Fig. 5. Sixteenth-century Mexico City, plan reconstructed by Antonio García Cubas, 1929. The borders of the Spanish town or traza are darker (red). (A color version of this image is available online. Courtesy of the Archivo Histórico de la Ciudad de México, AHCDMX.)

Landscape map painted in colors with captions in Latin.

Tenochtitlán plan attributed to Hernán Cortés

From Chapter One

Fig. 6. Tenochtitlán. Plan attributed to Hernán Cortés, Praeclara Ferdinandi Cortesii de Noua maris Oceani Hyspania narrativo . . . (Nuremberg: Friedrich Peypus, 1524). (Image courtesy of Newberry Library, Chicago.)

Color painting with a central perspective and two market stalls on each side. A large group of people appear in the stalls and in front of them.

El Parián, S. XVIII

From Chapter Two

Fig. 7. El parián, by an unknown artist, circa 1770. Oil on canvas. Private Collection. (A color version of this image is available online. Courtesy of Bridgeman Images.)

Color painting. Large groups of people are engaged in different activities in the markets and in the outdoor spaces. A procession is located at the painting’s foreground.

Plaza Mayor de la Ciudad de Mexico, ca. 1766

From Chapter Two

Fig. 8. Plaza Mayor de la Ciudad de México, by an unknown artist, circa 1766. Oil on canvas. Museo Nacional de Historia, Ciudad de México. (A color version of this image is available online. Courtesy of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.)