Abstract

BELMONTE GREY, Carlos Alejandro. Ranchera comedy films during the "mexican" socialism. Revista Col. San Luis [online]. 2016, vol.6, n.11, pp.176-205. ISSN 2007-8846.

After the Mexican Revolution, the west of Mexico turned into the cozy territory of nationalist iconography, el charro and la china. Philosophers, historians, archeologists, writers, painters and other intellectuals described what they thought to be characters of Mexican society and what characterized their identity. They found that the Mexican person was not very far from the caricature thought up by North Americans: wild, rowdy, alcoholic, bandit and player. Artists and filmmakers started portraying this image of the Mexican person located in different regions of the country. Films comprised a part of this interpretation and they formed the structure of the nationalist recital in ranchera comedies, which would later turn into Mexican westerns in the times when President Cárdenas implemented his project of "Mexican socialism". This article looks for an explanation that allows us to understand why this film genre was born, in a historical context that was apparently not quite appropriate. It proposes that the government applied a negotiation strategy between the population and official organizations in order to introduce their modernization program. For this, they brought back folklore and combined it with the modernization discourse. In this manner, films are examples of the tension between tradition and modernity.

Keywords : Mexican cinematography; modernity; tradition; Mexican nationalism.

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