ABSTRACT
In the first half of the twentieth century, the Mexican government considered itself the legitimate heir to the social values of the Revolution of 1910. The State exerted a dominant role over the configuration of society, its institutions, spaces and material world. The construction of cultural institutions was intimately tied to an overarching nationalistic project, which included the dissemination of specific ideas regarding identity, the homeland, the past and the future.
In the second half of that century, the state moved towards neoliberalism, which created fundamental structural and ideological change in how the nation remembered the past. The State lost its power over social cohesion and over the ‘articulation and representation of collective interests’.
Focusing on three related phenomena that exemplify the lives and challenges of history museums in global contemporary Mexico City, this chapter examines how a once omnipresent State that controlled historical and cultural affairs has steadily lost ground and is having to negotiate the narratives, spaces and symbols of the past with other agents. State nationalism has been transformed in a context where diversity, and the push for democracy and globalisation, have all exercised significant pressure. At stake is, ultimately, ‘who has the right to re-present’ the national past.
