Planning and Financing the Mexican Centennial

On April 1, 1907, President Díaz appointed a ten-member commission to organize the Centennial celebration.¹ Commission chair Guillermo Landa y Escandón, the governor of the Federal District, pledged to make the event “historically significant” and to arouse “popular enthusiasm” for the president’s “service to the grand ideals that people desire who seek to live in the bosom of civilization.”²

The Centennial planners courted international attention by inviting official delegations from Europe, Asia, and the United States and by underwriting visits by journalists from major newspapers in the United States, Europe, and Canada. Planners also organized international conferences and invited distinguished scholars and university administrators from abroad who were interested in Mesoamerican culture and history.³

At the same time, the Centennial Commission targeted the hearts and minds of Mexicans. Organizers linked Independence-era heroes with Benito Juárez and Porfirio Díaz and promoted liberalism and secularism to overshadow the Catholic Church’s cultural and educational preeminence. National political and civic integration—the forging together of Mexico’s far-flung and racially diverse provinces—benefited from railroad construction, urbanization, and the expansion of print media during the Porfirian era.

Porfirians intended that civic culture fashioned in Mexico City would spread into the provinces through public schools and celebrations such as the Centenario. Centennial committees at the state, district, and municipal levels organized festive events and commissioned the building of monuments, parks, schools, hospitals, and other public structures.⁴ For liberals, the Centennial provided the perfect occasion to associate Mexican Independence with Porfirio Díaz and material progress. On the day the general turned eighty, the traditional “Grito” speech marked a hundred years of independence, fifty years of Liberal rule, and thirty-four years of political stability.⁵

In 1910 the federal government underwrote Centennial events in the capital and hoped that businesses, wealthy liberals, and professionals would make donations. This was not an unreasonable expectation. Companies had benefited from the pro-business policies of the Díaz dictatorship, and merchants, professionals, and liberal politicians also profited from political peace and prosperity. Still, only three cabinet secretaries made contributions of five hundred pesos to the Centennial Commission and professionals, and corporations gave sparsely.⁶

This pattern of giving suggests that company directors viewed the celebration as an advertising opportunity rather than a political or civic obligation. They focused on organizing the commercial parade that would be viewed by tens of thousands of potential customers and receive extensive newspaper coverage. On the other hand, contributions given to the Centennial Commission with no strings attached may be spent on activities that brought no attention to the donor or to the company. It is also likely that businesses located in the provinces preferred to underwrite Centennial celebrations closer to their places of business. We know, for example, that a railroad company paid for the Independence Day celebration in Puebla in 1869 and that President Juárez and his cabinet attended.⁷ Moreover, in company towns such as mining communities in the north, corporate sponsorship of Independence Day celebrations would have enhanced patron-client relations and pleased municipal authorities.

Mexican professional groups gave little to the Centennial Commission. For example, collectively, attorneys contributed 133 pesos, architects 133 pesos, notaries public 159 pesos, and educators 1,500 pesos.⁸ Why the lukewarm response? Despite the desirability of developing a civil culture centered on liberalism, there was not a strong tradition of giving to secular causes. Moreover, some professionals had limited financial resources and perhaps fluid political ties to the government. Among the Porfirian inner circle, high-profile individuals made respectable donations, but most contributed to the Centenario in other ways. For example, Justo Sierra and other cabinet members hosted major events, and wealthy elites invited visiting dignitaries to stay in their mansions.

Commissioners spent lavishly on balls, banquets, and receptions where attendance was restricted to visiting dignitaries and local elites. These events gave the Centenary an aristocratic cast and cost large sums. For example, Roberto Nuñez in the Finance Ministry complained to José Limantour that outlays for the gran baile alone surpassed $300,000.⁹

The cost of transporting, housing, and feeding dozens of foreign journalists and editors, overwhelmingly from major US newspapers, represented another major expense. Positive foreign press coverage of the Centennial would impress investors, promote Mexico’s image as a modern country, and enhance the reputation of the regime. Certainly, no correspondent or editor would be predisposed to criticism after his trip had been underwritten. Other costly events included the historical procession and a statue of Morelos, who was a key figure in the promotion of the mestizo nation.

The government also paid for monuments and public buildings from the federal budget. These structures included monuments of historical figures and events important in the construction of national identity, public schools that promoted secularism, and waterworks and hospitals that improved public health. Construction costs far surpassed other Centennial-related activities and amounted to substantial investments of federal funds. For example, the cost of the Independence Monument alone exceeded Mexico’s total expenditures for the 1889 Paris Exhibition.¹⁰ Construction costs for Centennial building projects surpassed ten million pesos.¹¹

Setting and Audience

Parades such as the Desfile Histórico unfolded along avenues that could accommodate large allegorical carriages, hundreds of marchers, and large audiences. Events such as the Grito were held in the Zócalo, the ancient capital’s major square and political center. Marchers in parades frequently assembled at the Nuevo Bosque de Chapultepec and then proceeded down the Paseo de la Reforma that linked the western suburbs with downtown. As Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo has observed, this area resembled Haussmann’s remodeled Paris, and it cast the image of an ideal city. The area included mansions, well-maintained gardens, an electrified trolley system, street lighting, modern plumbing and sewer systems—all services largely unavailable in other parts of the city. The Paseo de la Reforma’s wide dimensions accommodated parades and large crowds, and the trolley service made it accessible to spectators from throughout the city.¹² As parades entered into the city center, however, streets narrowed and overcrowding sometimes contributed to unruly behavior.¹³

Glorietas (large roundabouts) with monuments honoring famous people intersected the Paseo de la Reforma at strategic locales. According to Barbara Tenenbaum, Porfirian “nationalist mythologizers” used the monuments as texts to associate heroic figures with the regime’s agenda. For example, the Cuauhtemoc Glorieta honored the Aztec emperor who defended Tenochtitlán against Hernán Cortés, which associated Mexico with its pre-Columbian heritage.¹⁴

The Zócalo provided the perfect setting for large-scale Centennial events. It had accommodated ceremonies since Aztec times, and it remained the setting of political and ecclesiastical authority. The national Cathedral, built in the 16th century with stones from torn-down Aztec temples, occupied one side of the square and faced government buildings where liberal politicians crafted anti-clerical policies.¹⁵

The Zócalo also represented the confluence of rich and poor in Porfirian Mexico. Government and church officials shared the plaza with a mix of vendors, artisans, beggars, and thieves living nearby in crowded and unsanitary tenements and flophouses owned by the wealthy.¹⁶ Further east of the square, tens of thousands of peasants forced from their land by hacienda expansion and population pressures crowded into crude adobe structures on the city’s edge. They lived in squalid conditions without ventilation, potable water, and proper sanitation— unhealthy environments that spawned deadly diseases and produced high mortality rates.¹⁷

The Zócalo’s proximity to tenements and shanty towns made it easier for the poor to attend Centennial events.¹⁸ Their presence, however, caused officials concern over the negative image created by Mexico City’s underclass, particularly in the eyes of foreign dignitaries and investors who they wanted to impress. Beginning in 1897, police had begun to detain the urban poor and imprison them at a rate of ten thousand per year. However, for every slum dweller hidden from public view a replacement arrived from the countryside. As the Centennial approached, city officials required indigenous men to exchange peasant breeches for trousers, sombreros for felt hats, and sandals for shoes. Similar attempts to change native fashion occurred in the provinces, and everywhere they proved unenforceable.¹⁹

Visitors to Mexico City, therefore, saw modern architecture juxtaposed with tenements and slums, and they heard Indians speaking more Nahuatl than Spanish. For some travelers, this mix of the modern with the traditional may have conformed to their image of Mexico as an exotic place. But Mexican elites wanted Mexico to be viewed as a modern country and assumed that visiting dignitaries shared their assumptions informed by Social Darwinism, which categorized Indians as racially inferior to Caucasians.

Organizers had arranged for foreign delegates to stay in mansions but had done little to accommodate ordinary visitors arriving from the provinces and the United States. Large turnouts should have been expected because of the grand occasion and the existence of a network of railroads, largely built during the Porfiriato, which linked the capital with the US border and the intervening provinces. The stream of visitors, including many Mexican Americans, arriving for the celebration strained the capabilities of local hoteliers and merchants, as described by eyewitness Frederick Starr, the University of Chicago anthropologist:

Throughout the month all trains reached the city loaded with passengers. Thousands of young fellows born from mixed parents in the United States, many of whom had never seen the country of their fathers before, came to visit the land where one or the other parent was born. Crowds of citizens from the outlying states, who had never seen the capital, made their first trip to the great city, many times taking their first journey on a railroad train. The hotels were crowded, and no rooms were empty; crowds were turned away without a place to sleep; the price of lodging was doubled, trebled; rooms in private houses were held at staggering rates; prices of restaurants soared upward; cocheros considered every day a festival and collected double fares accordingly.²⁰

Wealthy visitors and foreign delegates escaped these inconveniences. Among invited western European nations, only Britain declined to send a delegation, citing official mourning over the recent death of King Edward VII. Nevertheless, Mexico City’s British community still participated in the festivities and praised President Díaz for his many accomplishments.²¹

Spain and the United States sent particularly large delegations, indicative of the significance both nations attached to the occasion. Special Ambassador Curtis Guild Jr., the former Governor of Massachusetts, led the US contingent and shared the limelight with Henry Lane Wilson, US Ambassador to Mexico. Both officials praised President Díaz in public ceremonies, and Guild called him “the greatest living American.”²² The head of the Spanish delegation, the Marques de Polavieja, appeared well chosen for the job. Polavieja had been military governor of Cuba during the Ten Years’ War (1868–1878) and served as a close advisor to King Alfonso XIII. According to Genaro García, the Centenario’s official chronicler, Polavieja’s Mexican mother and military background gave him kinship with General Díaz. In two showpieces of the Centennial, Polavieja presented Díaz with the Order of Carlos III, an honor granted by Spain to only one living dignitary, and the uniform of José María Morelos y Pavón, confiscated by Spanish officers after the patriot’s capture and execution.²³ As a gesture to Spain, Mexico commissioned a statue of Queen Isabela and Díaz laid the first stone.²⁴

Delegates and elites attended balls, banquets, and garden parties, and they dressed for the occasions. Advertisements in the Mexican Herald referred to the “Centenario Season” and the department store “La Ciudad de Londres” offered a special selection of clothing, perfumes, soaps, and powders chosen by their “French artist designer” to create a “true Paris effect.”²⁵ These product lines reflected the influence of French-founded department stores in shaping middle-class consumerism.²⁶

Parades and Processions

Parades presented versions of Mexican history and public policy compatible with Porfirian liberalism. In form and scale, parades resembled colonial processions organized by the Crown that reinforced the social and political order.²⁷ In 1910, Guillermo de Landa y Escandón and José Casarín fashioned a “Desfile Histórico” as a three-act presentation of Mexican history that culminated in independence. The parade depicted the encounter between the conquistador Hernán Cortés and the Emperor Moctezuma outside of Tenochtitlán; the Paseo del Pendón, a colonial era ceremony that commemorated the subjugation of the Indians; and the entry into Mexico City of Independence leaders that represented the final victory over Spain.²⁸

In Act I, 809 elaborately costumed individuals representing conquistadors and Aztecs marched down the Plaza de la Reforma into the Zócalo where they reenacted the historic encounter. Moctezuma’s entourage included Indians outfitted as lords from the valley’s city-states, pagan priests, warriors and servants, all in period costume and weaponry. Moctezuma himself was carried by attendants in an ornate litter. Marchers dressed as conquistadors closely followed. Cortés and his captains led an army consisting of cavalry, infantry, crossbowmen, musketeers, Tlaxcalan warriors (key indigenous allies), Catholic priests, Indian servants, and Doña Marina (“La Malinche”), Cortés’ Indian mistress and interpreter. A drum and bugle corps contributed to the martial ambience.²⁹

Open in new tab

Figure 1. Moctezuma.

Published by permission of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, University of Texas at Austin.

Open in new tab

Figure 2. Indian archers.

Published by permission of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, University of Texas at Austin.

Open in new tab

Figure 3. Cortés.

Published by permission of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, University of Texas at Austin.

Open in new tab

Figure 4. Spanish musketeers.

Published by permission of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, University of Texas at Austin.

In Act II, the Paseo del Pendón procession re-created a colonial ceremony without its religious trappings commemorating the subjugation of the Indians. The parade consisted of several hundred colonial officials dressed in powdered wigs accompanied by Indian officeholders representing Santiago and Tlaltelolco districts. Marchers walked through downtown streets into the Zócalo where they assembled under a platform decorated with banners emblematic of royal sovereignty. A colonial official presented a banner that symbolized Spanish domination over the Indians to the Viceroy, who deposited it in the municipal palace.³⁰

In Act III, Agustín de Iturbide led the “Army of the Three Guarantees” into the Zócalo. He shared the stage with mounted men representing Guadalupe Victoria and Vicente Guerrero, allies of Morelos and Mexico’s first presidents; liberal politician Manuel Mier y Terán; and conservative statesman Anastasio Bustamante. The procession also included allegorical carriages that commemorated Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla and the battle of Cuautla, remembered for Morelos’s military tactics. The parade did not honor the rank and file of insurgent forces that included Indians.³¹ El Diario estimated that 200,000 persons witnessed the Desfile Histórico.³²

Centennial organizer José Casarín went to great lengths to recruit Indians for Act I. He rounded up indigenous prisoners from the National Penitentiary and asked Governor Próspero Cahuantzito of Tlaxcala to select 110 natives for Cortés’s entourage, and Governor Manuel Sánchez de Rivera of San Luis Potosí to deliver 250 Indians, including twenty local women who were “renowned for their natural beauty.” Indians in San Luis Potosí required some convincing, fearing that the invitation was a ruse to force them into military service.³³

For Act III, Centennial planners recruited Caucasians to portray Spanish officials and Agustín de Iturbide.³⁴ Organizers had initially omitted Iturbide from the Desfile Histórico, which provoked criticism from conservative circles. For example, the Catholic newspaper El Tiempo editorialized that planners’ “preoccupations with sectarianism” would cause the public to forget the “hero Agustín de Iturbide,” a criticism that rang true. Pressure from Mexico City’s City Council, where conservatives remained influential, finally convinced the Centennial Commission to include Iturbide in the parade.³⁵

The Desfile Histórico presented municipal authorities with problems in crowd control. People began assembling at first light along the downtown streets that led into the Zócalo. Soon their numbers swelled to two hundred thousand, and soldiers could not maintain order. A contingent of mounted police then arrived and “with pitiless cruelty” (in the words of an eyewitness) rode their horses into the crowd and caused widespread panic, especially among women and children. Fleeing spectators damaged government offices, destroyed furniture, and ended up in jail. Two days later, President Díaz blamed the disturbance on “popular violence,” and El Diario criticized inadequate planning by organizers.³⁶

Open in new tab

Figure 5. Crowd scene on Avenida San Francisco.

Published by permission of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, University of Texas at Austin.

A commercial parade promoted material progress, and reflected the influence of French mercantile interests in Mexico City. The Centro Mercantil carriage displayed Mexican and French national flags, along with busts of Hidalgo and Morelos representing “La Patria,” Benito Juárez “Justice,” and Porfirio Díaz “Peace.” Additional carriages displayed scenes from Louis XV’s France that likely appealed to Porfirian elites and visiting dignitaries but must have seemed odd to ordinary Mexicans.³⁷

Remaining carriages celebrated principal economic activities of the Porfiriato. The industry float saluted “science, work, precision, and force,” reflecting the regime’s “Order and Progress” motto inspired by positivism. The mining carriage was accompanied by troops, sometimes needed as strike breakers, and two costumed women representing “Gold and Silver.” Banks’ float presented a “cornucopia of treasure” display, and the agricultural carriage carried produce and colorfully dressed farmers. Several floats outfitted by individual businesses, such as the Compañía Cervecería, advertised their products.³⁸ Overall, the parade promoted business, investment, and consumption.

Open in new tab

Figure 6. Compañía Cervecería carriage.

Published by permission of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, University of Texas at Austin.

Spaniards, Morelos, and the Mestizo Nation

The Centennial celebration inspired reflections on state formation and national identity. Organizers portrayed both the independence period and the Porfiriato as milestones in state building and celebrated Morelos as symbolic of Mexico’s mestizo identity. Spain’s return of Morelos’s uniform and presentation of the collar of Carlos III to Díaz also signified reconciliation between the mother country and its former colony.

Antipathy toward Spaniards remained strong among Mexicans who regarded them as arrogant and money driven, a stereotype reinforced by the prosperity of resident Spanish merchants, bankers, and textile producers during the Porfiriato.³⁹ As the Grito approached, a Catholic newspaper feared that Mexico City’s popular classes, “after drinking copious quantities of pulque [a common alcoholic beverage],” would celebrate the occasion by “attacking mother Spain and our Spanish brothers.”⁴⁰

From Spain’s perspective, the Centenario presented an opportunity to improve its relations with Mexico by honoring Porfirio Díaz. With ceremonial pomp, the Marquis de Polavieja presented Díaz with the Real y Distinguida Orden del Carlos III, the highest honor that Spain could bestow on a foreigner. In his acceptance speech, Díaz praised the reforms of Carlos III as enlightened administration, perhaps unaware of their role in causing unrest in the colonies.⁴¹

The Spanish community in Mexico, recognizing the opportunity to heal old wounds, arranged for the return of Morelos’s uniform to Mexico. The grateful Díaz government granted the uniform the equivalent of a state funeral. Similar to a body in a funeral procession, the uniform rested in an ornate carriage accompanied by a large contingent of soldiers. At the head of the procession, an honor guard carried an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico’s Indian patron saint and symbol of the Hidalgo and Morelos rebellions. The procession made its way from the Spanish Embassy to the National Palace, where President Díaz hosted a celebration that included ringing of the Cathedral bells, performances by military bands, and a solemn hoisting of the flag that reportedly left everyone in tears.⁴² In his speech, the president praised Morelos as Mexico’s “greatest hero” and “most famous man.” The opportunity to hold the fallen leader’s uniform in his hands, the general continued, constituted “the most satisfying event of my life.”⁴³ Morelos also received praise from Porfirian dignitaries who commented on the hero’s mestizo heritage. For example, Génaro García, the official chronicler of the Centenario, wrote that “Morelos is the legendary figure par excellence. He is also the mestizo who symbolizes the new race with all the greatness of the others, and, for this reason, Morelos is the genuine representative of Mexican nationality.”⁴⁴ In major addresses, Isidro Fabela, a public intellectual and future revolutionary, praised Morelos as the greatest independence leader and “the genius of our race,” and Foreign Minister Enrique Creel and Education Minister Justo Sierra compared Morelos to Napoleon.⁴⁵ Through these words, liberal leaders linked mestizaje with national identity, rather than promoting Creole heroes associated with Mexico’s Hispanic heritage. Father Morelos’s excommunication by the church and execution by the Crown also made him a martyred secular hero attractive to liberals.

Promotion of the mestizo nation reflected mestizos’ majority status and Porfirians’ assumptions about the limitations of Indians.⁴⁶ Justo Sierra wrote: “We need to attract immigrants from Europe so as to obtain a cross with the indigenous race . . . for only European blood can keep the level of civilization that has produced our nationality from sinking, which would mean regression, not evolution.”⁴⁷ Antonio García Cubas, a prominent geographer and intellectual, viewed Mexico’s natural order as Creoles running government and business, mestizos excelling as workers, and Indians laboring in the fields.⁴⁸ Non-Indians used “Indio” as a derogatory term and Porfirio Díaz, a mestizo with Indian features, sprinkled powder on his face to appear whiter.⁴⁹ For Porfirian elites, Caucasian France stood as a symbol of cultural sophistication, as suggested by the references to French history and culture in the Centennial celebration.⁵⁰

In preparation for President Díaz’s “Grito,” organizers decorated the downtown area with patriotic symbols and placed neon designs on the twin towers of the Cathedral that read: “1810 Libertad” and “1910 Progreso.”⁵¹ This colorful display graphically linked the independence and Porfirian eras and symbolized the church’s subordination to the state. In effect, the national center of ecclesiastical authority had been reduced to a billboard for a secular celebration.

Despite rain and cold weather, an estimated one hundred thousand persons crowded into the Zócalo and watched the fireworks that preceded Díaz’s speech.⁵² Likely fortified by pulque and vendor food, celebrants could have glanced upward where elites and diplomats were enjoying a fine dinner on the presidential balcony. Suddenly, gunshots rang out. A throng of demonstrators, pushing their way through the crowd to the National Palace, hoisted a large portrait of Francisco Madero and shouted Maderista slogans. Federico Gamboa, the sub-secretary of foreign relations, calmed the alarmed German ambassador by “suavely lying,” as he put it, that the disturbance was a pro-Díaz demonstration.⁵³

Frederick Starr witnessed another Maderista demonstration that disrupted the celebration. Near the Columbus glorieta on the Paseo de la Reforma groups opposing Díaz’s reelection assembled carrying banners entitled “The Daughters of Cuauhtemoc” and “The Benito Juárez Anti-Re-electionist League.” Starr observed that the Maderistas appeared to be “common people” led by men in suits. Their orderly, even dignified, protest was disrupted when the chief of the mounted police, Castro, ordered his cavalry with swords drawn into the crowd again and again, only to see the Maderistas re-assemble in orderly fashion, similar to non-violent tactics used later by civil rights demonstrators in India and the United States. Finally, police on foot encircled the Maderistas and forced them to disband. Many leaders were arrested and taken to the notorious Belém prison, but their bravery suggested troubles ahead for the regime.⁵⁴

Educating the People

The Porfirian state’s quest for modernization included investing in public education and health care. For liberals, public schools served as vehicles for national integration through scientific learning and formation of a civic culture. President Díaz, in his famous 1908 interview with the US journalist James Creelman, stated:

I want to see education throughout the Republic carried on by the national Government. I hope to see it before I die. It is important that all citizens of a republic should receive the same training so that their ideals and methods may be harmonized and the national identity intensified. When men read alike they are more likely to act alike.⁵⁵

Important people officiated at school openings and educational congresses during the Centenario. For example, Díaz presided over the opening of a normal school for primary school teachers, and Justo Sierra hosted government-sponsored educational congresses, including the Primer Congreso Nacional de Estudiantes, the Primer Congreso Nacional de Educación Primaria, and the Congreso Internacional de Americanistas. The inauguration of the new national university, which replaced the institution founded by the Catholic Church, included the awarding of honorary degrees to Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie, and José Y. Limantour, the prominent presidential advisor and financier.⁵⁶

The Centennial also promoted Mexico’s image as the cradle of civilization in the Americas, comparable with ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, China, and Persia. For the celebration, the government organized a tour of Teotihuacán for scholars attending the Americanists meeting and founded the International School of Anthropology with Franz Boaz, a prominent anthropologist, as the first director.⁵⁷ The Porfirians also expanded the Museo Nacional de Arqueologia, Historia y Etnologia and appointed the energetic Leopoldo Batres as director. As Christina Bueno has shown, the Díaz administration asked citizens to donate precolonial antiquities from their private collectors to the museum and ordered construction crews expanding Mexico City’s drainage system to turn over artifacts they unearthed. Batres also collected treasures from archaeological sites in the provinces and oversaw the reconstruction of Teotihuacán.⁵⁸ President Díaz himself hosted the opening of the remodeled museum. The president posed for publicity photographs before intricately carved sculptures of the Aztec Calendar and the Aztec Water God. For the Centenary, the museum also featured an exhibit of contemporary Indians outfitted in ancient Aztec attire.⁵⁹

Museums, archaeological sites and international congresses drew attention to precolonial cultures and encouraged tourism. People who could build Teotihuacan or carve elaborate stone sculptures demonstrated engineering and artistic skills worthy of universal admiration and study, and Porfirians wanted to connect ancient greatness with contemporary Mexico. However, they resisted associating pre-Columbian cultures with contemporary Indians. Apart from recruiting Indians to march in the Desfile Histórico and to pose in museum displays, Centenario organizers considered natives an embarrassment and attempted to keep them public view.

In Mexico, eminent scholars and political leaders alike succumbed to pseudo-scientific theories to explain contemporary natives’ social degradation and poverty. For example, at the Americanists meeting in Mexico City, anthropologists applied phrenology to conclude that Indians were racially inferior based on their skull and bone structure. Jesús Díaz de León, a member of the Sociedad Indianista Mexicana, also reasoned that Indians were engaged in a contest of survival of the fittest, favoring a Darwinian explanation over military, political, and economic considerations.⁶⁰

Porfirians believed that Indians should be transformed either via race mixture or acculturation. Through public education, liberals reasoned that Indians could acquire knowledge and skills that would increase their productivity and weaken their ties to the church. The process of educating the masses, however, remained a work in progress. Despite significant increases in education budgets, national literacy rates improved only modestly from 14.39 percent to 19.74 percent between 1895 and 1910. In Mexico City, the nation’s cultural and academic center, literacy rates stood at a more impressive 45–65 percent in 1910.⁶¹

The Centenario, Génaro García proudly wrote, did not cater exclusively to upper-class interests but included many acts of public charity. His most prominent example was the new insane asylum, the Manicomio General, opened with great fanfare by President Díaz outside of Mexico City in Mixcoac. The new facility, built by the president’s son Porfirio Díaz Jr. for over two million pesos, replaced two institutions founded by the Catholic Church in 1576 and 1700. The asylum complex consisted of twenty-four buildings and two pavilions that included doctors’ offices, examination rooms, and staff quarters. According to García, the facility placed Mexico in the forefront of mental health treatment.⁶²

However commendable the Manicomio may have been, it is instructive that García considered it an act of charity, rather than a social service provided by a modern state. His characterization of mental illness as a lower-class problem also reflects elite prejudice based on social status and race. Mentally troubled elites (and they must have existed) had the option of consulting psychiatrists or withdrawing from public view under the protection of family members.

The Xochimilco potable water works represented another project that alleviated a public health problem. By channeling spring water from a nearby rural area into Mexico City, the new system increased supplies of clean water and reduced the incidence of disease from polluted sources. Centennial commissioners organized tours of the water works that, according to a recent study, visualized water as a timeless, placeless resource. The final cost of the project came to 19 million pesos or roughly 250 million in 2014 dollars.⁶³

Patriotic Symbols and the National Community

A variety of patriotic ceremonies, monuments, and symbols celebrated the patria and bolstered the regime. Father Hidalgo’s baptismal font, described by Frederick Starr as notably ordinary and ugly, was carried in a procession from the train station to the National History and Ethnology Museum. The font was accompanied by Hidalgo’s elderly granddaughter, appropriately named Guadalupe, along with thirty thousand schoolchildren.⁶⁴ By associating the priest with his progeny, real and symbolic, organizers gave the event a familial character. Unaware bystanders, however, may have been unsettled by the visual results of Father Hidalgo’s failed celibacy.

Children also participated in a patriotic ceremony that simultaneously pledged allegiance to the flag and to the national dictator. Organizers assembled some forty thousand children at eleven parks and plazas who saluted the flag in special ceremonies. The largest group, numbering six thousand, gathered in the Zócalo with President Díaz presiding. Frederick Starr left us this description:

The greatest interest of course was at the central plaza of the city, where the celebration was witnessed by President Diaz and the members of his cabinet. When they appeared upon the balcony of the national palace, they were greeted with cheers and the waving of thousands of national flags. After some music, hundreds of the smallest children, with a little flag in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other, advanced to the great flag which had been raised and deposited their flowers. After that, the thousands of other children advanced in orderly groups and, passing beneath the national emblem, repeated the vow of allegiance to the flag, and sang the Song to the Banner which had been written for the occasion. After all had saluted the flag, the army of children sang the national hymn, all kneeling at the passage where the national land is invoked, and remaining in a kneeling position to the close of the stanza. When they arose, they waved their flags to the President with enthusiastic vivas, while the bells of the cathedral pealed.⁶⁵

The ceremony reflected the paternalistic relationship Díaz cultivated with the public. As the Centenary approached, the president received numerous requests for support from needy mothers with large families, veterans, and descendants of the próceres de la independencia. Relatives of prisoners and social reformers also requested pardons or reductions in sentences for the incarcerated, which a petitioner noted had been granted by Argentina during its Centennial of Independence. Schoolchildren from the Tenango Valley also asked the president to free prisoners in Mexico State and reminded him that Father Hidalgo had freed inmates in 1810. Such a comparison may have appealed to the president, given efforts to associate him with the próceres during the Centenary. It is unknown how many requests Díaz honored.⁶⁶

Commemorative artifacts for the Centennial celebration ranged in size from stamps to massive marble monuments. A notable stamp juxtaposed a portrait of Hidalgo labeled “1810 Libertad” with a portrait of Díaz labeled “1910 Paz,” repeating a Centennial theme. Although small in size, stamps, posters, and other portable material effectively conveyed political messages sometimes lost in elaborately designed monuments or buildings. For example, at the opposite end of the visual scale, Centennial organizers erected an independence monument in a glorieta along the Paseo de la Reforma. French-trained architect Antonio Rivas Mercado designed a rectangular base adorned with bronze statues that featured a boy leading a lion, representing “the people, strong in war and docile in peace,” and four seated women, representing peace, law, justice, and war.⁶⁷ Additional bronze statues honored independence leaders Morelos, Vicente Guerrero, Nicolás Bravo, and Hidalgo, with the latter in the center position holding a flag.⁶⁸ The monument’s most prominent feature was a towering column capped by a statue of a bare-breasted, winged woman partially clothed in Grecian robes that depicted Winged Victory, a widely recognized symbol of republican liberty in Europe.⁶⁹ As Barbara Tenenbaum explains, however, to Mexicans Winged Victory looked like an angel, and the monument has been known ever since as “The Angel.”⁷⁰

Open in new tab

Figure 7. The Independence Monument.

Published by permission of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, University of Texas at Austin.

Centennial organizers also unveiled a monument unmistakably dedicated to Benito Juárez, an architect of La Reforma, the period known as Mexico’s second movement for independence. Located astride the Avenida Juárez bordering Alameda Park in the Historic Center, the marble structure featured Juárez seated on a throne, fitted with a gardenia crown and attended by two allegoric women representing Glory and Mexico. According to the Mexican Herald, the Doric monument represented Juárez as “strong,” “unadorned,” “severe,” and as “pure” as the white Italian marble itself.⁷¹ Constructed at a cost of $390,685 pesos, the structure also featured two bronze lions designed by Paris-trained Mexican sculptor Guillermo Cárdenas.⁷²

Open in new tab

Figure 8. The Juárez Monument.

Published by permission of the Nettie Lee Benson Collection, University of Texas Libraries, University of Texas at Austin.

The Juárez monument linked the so-called Benemérito de las Américas (also known as the “Mexican Moses”) with the Centennial of independence and his liberal successor, Porfirio Díaz. Juárez’s leadership in crafting, implementing, and preserving La Reforma fashioned the secular framework for Díaz’s “Order and Progress” regime. Juárez, a full-blooded Zapotec Indian, also symbolized acculturation through education and secularism, and his rendering in white marble conveyed a visualization of an Indian transformed.⁷³

Porfirians in the provinces celebrated the Centennial through festivals and inaugurating monuments, schools, buildings and infrastructure projects indicative of progress under liberal rule. Structures included municipal halls, parks, libraries, and statues, as well as electric lighting, telegraph, and telephone lines. Oaxaca, the birthplace of Juárez and Díaz, opened 64 public buildings and 51 schools, and Guerrero founded 141 schools, which far outpaced other states.⁷⁴ Both Guerrero and Oaxaca had large Indian populations. The city of Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso, also unveiled a statue of its namesake to the applause of twenty-five thousand celebrants.⁷⁵ Throughout Mexico, the Centennial celebrated education and material progress as building blocks of modernity.

Among foreign nations, the United States had the most at stake in Mexico in terms of geo-politics and investments. In his memoir, US Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson praised the Centennial celebration as the “crowning event” of President Díaz’s career. He mentioned the careful preparations, including the “large sums of money spent . . . in publicity and in securing the presence of notable and distinguished people” and the fabulous balls, banquets, and monuments.⁷⁶ Wilson himself had presided over the dedication of the monument to George Washington, with President Díaz and foreign dignitaries in attendance. It was with sincere sadness that Wilson lamented Díaz’s overthrow in 1911, expressing regret at the Mexicans’ inability to appreciate their secular messiah:

The celebration closed with the impressive ceremony of the apotheosis, followed by a magnificent ball, over which the President and Mrs. Diaz presided with true monarchical dignity and ceremony. Diaz was crowned the savior and ruler of Mexico, but even while the acclamations of vast throngs were reverberating through the palaces and streets of Mexico City, the hour of disaster was drawing nigh; the great structure which had been built up by the wisdom, sobriety, and patriotism of one man had not been built strong enough to withstand the storms which presently broke forth; from the pinnacle which he had reached, Díaz fell to an abyss and with him fell his country.⁷⁷

Wilson conveyed a sense of loss with the overthrow of a stable government friendly to US business interests that would require renegotiation with different leaders under new rules. Nevertheless, Díaz’s legacy would endure in other ways. The 1910 Centenary celebrated political stability, material progress, and mestizo identity, all of which remained fundamental features of modern Mexico.

Discussion of the Literature

Students interested in the themes of state formation, national identity, and commemoration could begin by consulting Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities; Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger’s The Invention of Tradition; Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer’s The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution; Matt K. Matsuda’s The Memory of the Modern; Eugen Weber’s Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914; Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugent’s Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico; and Rebecca Earle’s The Return of the Native: Indians and Myth-Making in Spanish America, 1810–1930.⁷⁸ These books discuss different theoretical approaches, analyze national experiences, and provide useful bibliographies.

William H. Beezley and David E. Lorey compile studies of Mexican Independence Day celebrations from the early republic to 1921, including several by senior scholars.⁷⁹ Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo explores inter-related cultural themes and links the Centenary with Mexico City’s spatial and cultural evolution.⁸⁰ Annick Lempériere compares and contrasts the two Mexican Centenaries.⁸¹ Michael J. Gonzales places the Centenaries within the context of political and cultural continuity and change.⁸² Rafael Tovar y de Teresa chronicles Centennial events and publishes numerous photographs from the period.⁸³ María Eugenia Ponce Alcocer publishes letters to Díaz requesting pensions, jobs, financial support, and pardons on the occasion of the Centennial.⁸⁴ Maria de las Nieves Rodríguez y Méndez de Lozada shows how Posada used images of Halley’s Comet over Mexico City in May of 1910 to symbolize an impending social and political collision.⁸⁵ Jeffrey M. Banister and Stacie G. Widdifield analyze an engineering achievement showcased during the Centennial celebration.⁸⁶