ABSTRACT
In terms of teaching Latino literature, studies of Modernism focus on Latin American literature and the development of "modernismo". When teaching classes on this history of representation, one can intersect with the historical epoch of modernity and the cultural patterns of Modernism. As a population in the United States, Latins are predominantly viewed as recently arrived, having just immigrated from Latin America. The US Latins are people with ancestors in Spanish-speaking Latin America, and who were born, raised, and educated in the United States. Mexico has been represented in the United States popular imagination over and over and for a very long time. The post-Revolutionary Mexican state was in the midst of defining itself against the past dictatorship of President Porfirio Diaz, as well as its past status as a colony of Spain. Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultural patrimony, specifically through the Aztecs, gave the Mexican state a strategy for defining itself as a modern nation with a unique and monumental history.
