INTRODUCTION

Jan Assmann argues that commemorative practices often take the form of festivals through which social groups engage with the past and articulate the foundations of collective identity. This identity, however, is not part of everyday life, since “collective identity depends on ceremony, something that sets it apart from daily routines,” by establishing a specific time for the community to come together and enabling the enactment and reinterpretation of historically significant elements (^{Assmann, 2011, p. 38}). Similarly, ^{Lisa Lewis (2018)}, in her analysis of cultural performances in Wales, notes that festivals are moments of structured social relations that “serve as portals to the experience of what it means to be from a place at a particular moment […] and shape our ability to make meaningful claims about our identity” (pp. 21, 27).

This article examines the annual event known as Fiesta en La Misión, held in the municipality of Ensenada, Baja California, as an “invented tradition” through which collective cultural memory can be accessed. The repetition of a shared ritual renews interpretations of the past and contributes to the consolidation of a sense of unity by fostering the circulation of knowledge about national and local history, as well as the lived experience of collective remembrance. The analysis is based on fieldwork that included the conduction of semi-structured interviews with residents of the town of La Misión during 2020, 2021, and 2024. Some of these interviews were conducted virtually due to the public health contingency caused by COVID-19. In addition, participant observation and audiovisual documentation were carried out of the different components of Fiesta en La Misión, drawing on the program of civic, artistic, and sporting activities held on May 28 and 29, 2022.

Festivities function as a means of transmitting cultural memory. Cultural memory refers to that dimension of collective memory that becomes visible through material forms and is oriented toward a distant past, toward events situated in the “absolute past.” From this past, elements are deliberately selected and preserved, a process that requires specialized institutions to ensure both their conservation and the transmission of meanings that allow them to remain relevant in the present. This selective process reaches into the past only to the extent that the chosen elements are able to convey knowledge about a shared “we” (^{Assmann, 2008, p. 113}), thus forming a corpus of “texts, images, and rituals specific to each society at a given historical moment, whose cultivation serves to stabilize and transmit the self-image of that society,” which each generation reuses and reinterprets (^{Assmann, 1995, p. 132}). Such processes constitute a form of institutionalization of commemorative practices that transform “factual history into remembered history” (^{Assmann, 2011, p. 38}).

Jan Assmann also defines communicative memory as the form of memory through which individual and collective identity is shaped in everyday life. It is characterized by a temporal horizon of approximately 80 to 100 years, is tied to the lifespan of its social carriers, and centers on the transmission of personal and shared experiences (^{Assmann, 2008}). Both cultural memory and communicative memory involve specific uses of the past and are closely interconnected in social practice. For an element of the past to remain actively present within cultural memory, it must convey a form of truth that is meaningful for the group and take shape as a “figure of memory.” Such figures are composed of an idea and an image that refer to an event, a person, or a place, and they transmit a narrative that provides the group with temporal and spatial coordinates (^{Assmann, 2011, p. 24}).

The work of selecting, interpreting, preserving, and transmitting events, figures and traces of the past is entrusted to specialists, such as academics, priests, poets, and teachers, and is carried out in accordance with the values of the group, particularly those of political and cultural elites (^{Assmann, 2008}). Thus, the past is constructed and remembered in relation to the motivations, objectives, and expectations of the present, and these representations sustain the notion of continuity and unity within the group. Such continuity depends on the means used for the preservation, retrieval, and transmission of the elements of the past that shape processes of remembrance, as well as on the repetition and interpretation of those elements and their meanings (^{Assmann, 2011}). Maintaining meaning through interpretation entails an ongoing process of value formation and reinforcement, as well as the hierarchical ordering of the relevance of the elements that make up the repertoire of memories. This relationship enables the construction of formative and normative narratives about the past that transmit knowledge, define the boundaries of a shared “we,” and indicate the range of possible forms of collective action (^{Assmann, 1995, p. 132}).

In the case of Fiesta en La Misión, a dense network of practices and figures of memory conveys the historical trajectory of the town and its inhabitants within the broader framework of national history and in dialogue with the official nationalism of the 20th century. This festival enables the representation of both the nation and the locality on two levels: a normative level of temporal continuity that transmits knowledge of the past and narrates an “immemorial” nation, and a performative level that expresses local identity and binds the community through embodied practices that refer to a specific time and place (^{Lewis, 2018}).

The cyclical repetition of the festival gives rise to the shared experience of remembering as a community, and this remembrance is situated within a territory understood as “a surface marked […] by an infinity of traces of past group activities,” which function as “points of reference for memory” (^{Giménez, 2009, p. 21}). The festival itself has played an important role in the organization of an “identity-based territory,” shaped through shared experiences during the cultural performance within the Baja Californian scenery (^{Giménez, 1999}; ^{Giménez, 2005}). A distinctive feature of the festival is that the residents of La Misión recognize it as an effort to recover “tradition” and history, in which many of them participated, while also acknowledging the role of the “expert” who helped create it and the “figures of memory” that constitute it.

Fiesta en La Misión represents a process of cultural memory formation that can be described as an “invented tradition.” This concept, proposed by Eric Hobsbawm in 1980, is closely related to cultural memory, as both refer to the recovery of elements from a distant past and their use in symbolizing group identity. The emphasis of Eric Hobsbawm on the formation of national identity, based on the analysis of practices that mobilize the historical past in order to establish a sense of continuity with the present, is especially useful for understanding Fiesta en La Misión.

In the introduction to their classic work The Invention of Tradition, ^{Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983)} define tradition as ritualized practices characterized by stability and invariability. In this collection of essays, the authors focus on a particular dimension of cultural memory and the historical moment of its formation, namely nationalism and the nation-states of the 19th century. As Assmann notes, cultural memory has been largely shaped by elites, who are responsible for selecting, preserving, and transmitting meanings of the past, since power requires the narration of its origins in order to secure legitimacy (^{Assmann, 2011}).

The consolidation of modern nation-states created especially favorable conditions for selecting and organizing elements of the past into politically oriented narratives and figures of memory. These “invented traditions” comprise sets of practices that “seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition” (^{Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983, p. 1}), and were “invented, constructed and formally instituted” in order to produce a version of the historical past aligned with the political and cultural objectives of ruling elites. (^{Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983, p. 1}).

Assmann and Hobsbawm converge in emphasizing the central role of the past in the legitimation of power in the present (^{Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983}). According to Hobsbawm, traditions may be “invented” within official or political spheres, as well as within nonofficial or social contexts. Within the social sphere are those groups “whose objects were not specifically or consciously political” when they appeal to the past in forming practices that express identity and seek social cohesion (^{Hobsbawm y Ranger, 1983, p. 263}). Nevertheless, he argues that the state provides the broader framework within which such non-official initiatives develop, maintaining the connection between official and non-official traditions. The case of Fiesta en La Misión offers an opportunity to examine the interaction between “invented traditions” emerging from the political sphere and those arising within the social arena, as well as the articulation and transmission of collective memory through the repetition of an “invented tradition” during a period marked by the decline of official nationalism in Mexico.

PROMOTING “MEXICANIDAD” ON THE NORTHERN BORDER THROUGH CULTURAL POLICY

By the late 19th century, following the political transformations associated with the decline of monarchical regimes in the Western world, new narratives promoted the nation-state as the foundation of political organization, grounded in the presumed linguistic, racial, and religious homogeneity of social groups inhabiting a defined territory (^{Blancarte, 2007}). From this model emerged the idea of national identity, aimed at shaping “a community of belonging that offers its members a shared space and time” (^{López Caballero, 2011, p. 137}). In Mexico, various intellectual and political elites sought to articulate interpretations of a common past in order to assert Mexico as a distinct historical entity and to establish that distinctiveness as the basis for national identity. This endeavor can be traced to the currents of Creole patriotism in the 19th century and to the Mexican nationalism that developed after the revolutionary movement of the early 20th century (^{Brading, 1988}).

Since Mexico Independence, the pre-Hispanic past as a foundation of the Mexican nation was promoted through the creation of museums, archaeological excavations, and the production of historiographical works that celebrated the grandeur of Indigenous civilizations. However, this interpretation clashed with another that traced the nations origins to its Hispanic heritage. Each of these genealogies formed part of the political and ideological struggles that accompanied the consolidation of Mexico as a state throughout the 19th century.

In the 1880s, several intellectuals argued that the antagonistic interpretations of the pre- Hispanic and colonial past posed an obstacle to strengthening the idea of a unified nation. In 1884, Vicente Riva Palacio published the collective work México a través de los siglos, the first written work to articulate a progressive narrative linking the successive stages that defined the distinct character of the Mexican nation: the pre-Hispanic past as a civilizing foundation; the viceroyalty as the decisive juncture that gave rise to a mestizo nation; and Independence and the Reform as the foundational periods of the modern nation and the consolidation of the national territory (^{Florescano, 2005}). This conciliatory interpretation of the historical development of Mexico codified the political unity forged after protracted disputes among competing national projects in the decades following independence, establishing key events of national foundation and formation and consolidating itself as the Mexican historical canon.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the governments that arose from the Mexican Revolution renewed efforts to define what constituted “national identity.” Because the “people,” understood mainly as peasants and Indigenous communities, had participated extensively in the armed struggle, the political elite acknowledged the necessity of incorporating them as recognized actors within the new political project. Consequently, “popular culture gradually acquired the status of national culture” (^{Pérez Montfort, 2005, p. 73}). Although artists and intellectuals devoted their attention to studying “the multiple cultural expressions of the majorities,” they emphasized the Indigenous root as the “defining element of mexicanidad and of the popular” (^{Pérez Montfort, 2005, pp. 73–74}).

This cultural nationalism reached its most dynamic phase during the 1920s and 1930s and, according to Ricardo Pérez Montfort, was shaped by an elite that approached popular culture from central Mexico. The wide range of cultural expressions present across the national territory encouraged the mass media, with the acquiescence of the state, to produce stereotypes aimed at fostering unity and consensus. In this context, national gender stereotypes became consolidated in figures such as the charro, the china poblana, and the women of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. At the local level, repertoires of “typical” elements were also established, including dress, cuisine, handicrafts, and festivals (^{Pérez Montfort, 2007, p. 121}).

These traditions were successfully diffused among the Mexican population through the mass media, providing support for the idea that its members constituted a nation (^{Taylor Hansen, 1995}). At the same time, with the support of government agencies and private institutions, scientific research, artistic initiatives, and a wide range of commemorative programs and activities were actively promoted. As a result, national imaginaries, understood as shared symbolic representations of the nation, appeared in newspapers, prints, calendars, films, and civic events, serving as popular vehicles for disseminating the idea of the nation and a common sense of national belonging (^{Florescano, 2005}; ^{Ruiz Mendoza, 2020}).

Mexican traditions and stereotypes promoted in the interest of fostering a national identity were largely associated with the cultural expressions, styles, and rhythms of life practiced in central and southern regions of the country. However, northern Mexico did not remain outside this broader effort to identify its “distinct cultural expressions” (^{Pérez Montfort, 2005, p. 73}). Northern identity formation developed at the margins of official nationalism, and the consolidation of specifically northern Mexican traditions and stereotypes can be traced to the 1950s, driven in part by the production and circulation of popular music performers and ensembles from the state of Nuevo León. This musical genre was characterized primarily by the sounds of the accordion, the bajo sexto, and huapango rhythms. Although the initial aim of promoting this music and its associated dress was to highlight the cultural and economic dynamism of the city of Monterrey, it ultimately became a broader reference point for the northern region within the postrevolutionary cultural imagination (^{Valdovinos García, 2015}).

Cultural nationalism, however, also began to decline during the 1950s. By that time, what was considered “typically Mexican,” along with the identification of national culture with popular culture, had become consolidated as the symbolic link between the state, the nation, and “the people.” As a result, the governing elite increasingly delegated the reproduction of mexicanidad to the educational system and the cultural industries. Carlos Monsiváis observes that “national concerns become burdensome to capitalist development” (^{Monsiváis, 2015, p. 159}) in the context of economic expansion that fostered the growth of an urban middle class with more cosmopolitan interests and aspirations (^{Monsiváis, 2015}). This gradual distancing of the state from an explicit commitment to “the national” became more evident as the twentieth century progressed, culminating in a turning point in the mid-1980s with the adoption of a neoliberal economic model. This shift marked the end of the interventionist state and the explicit abandonment of the economic and social frameworks derived from the Revolution (^{Salazar, 2004}).

Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, “the national largely shifts from the political sphere to the cultural industry” (^{Monsiváis, 2015, p. 168}). Yet one space remained in which the state continued to play a direct role in reinforcing nationalism and national culture, at least until the 1990s: the border with the United States. The relationship with its northern neighbor has been a central component of Mexican nationalism since the 19th century. For this reason, the Mexican state sought to preserve its influence over the shaping of “mexicanidad” in this region, under the premise that national culture is something that “has always existed and that it is our obligation to protect from external contamination and aggression” (^{Monsiváis, 2015, p. 166}). This stance functioned as a defense of sovereignty in the face of the perceived threat of U.S. cultural colonialism among the inhabitants of the northern borderlands.

Since the colonial period of New Spain, the geographic north of the country had been portrayed as a hostile space, largely due to its arid landscape and to its inhabitants, whose nomadic ways of life did not align with the sedentary ideal of civilization associated with central and southern Mexico (^{Valenzuela Arce, 2003}; ^{Rajchenberg & Héau-Lambert, 2007}). During the first half of the 19th century, and again toward the end of the 20th century, northern Mexico was also associated with a recurring loss of sovereign control as a result of invasions, wars, alliances, political upheavals, and economic transformations (^{Vizcarra, 2005}). Most notably, the defeat in the war with the United States (1846–1848), which resulted in the loss of more than half of the national territory, triggered a profound crisis in Mexican political and intellectual thought, prompting reflection on how to address the consequences of these events and prevent further territorial losses (^{Suárez Argüello, 2007}).

By the 20th century, in an effort to accelerate economic development in Mexico, substantial investments were directed toward the northern region by foreign companies engaged in the exploitation of agricultural, livestock, and mining resources. As a consequence, northern residents had greater contact with the United States than with their own country, due to the distance and geographic barriers that isolated them, making the region increasingly economically dependent on its neighboring nation. This situation also contributed to border societies being regarded for a long time as distinct from those in other regions of Mexico, and to their inhabitants being criticized for an alleged preference for learning English and a tendency to adopt United States consumption patterns (^{Taylor Hansen, 2000}).

However, as Giménez notes, drawing on Barth, social groups can define their limits and maintain their identity boundaries in the face of social, political, and economic changes, as well as in everyday interaction with other groups; in fact, it is the capacity to maintain boundaries “in interaction with other groups that defines identity” (^{Giménez, 2009, p. 19}). Some of the elements that mark identity boundaries are territory and history, understood as the expression of a “sense of cultural continuity” (^{Giménez, 2009, p. 20}), both of which are put into performance during the festival.

The conditions of economic and demographic development promoted by the presidential administrations from 1934 to 1952 led to Baja California becoming a federal entity in 1952. The articulation of a regional history as part of a growing nation, or the identification of cultural traditions specific to the population, had not been a significant issue in Baja California. Thus, after its elevation to the status of a “free and sovereign” state, the need arose to search for the “traditions” of Baja California—as other states had done in the post-revolutionary period—in order to create a distinct identity that would support the newly acquired political autonomy. As a full member of the federation, the political and economic elite of Baja California showed interest in writing the history of its own development, while also seeking to demonstrate loyalty to the Mexican Republic and to eradicate negative conceptions about this border region, aims that were shared by part of the educational sector of the entity (^{Ruiz Mendoza, 2020}).

Accordingly, between 1963 and 1968 efforts were made to establish a branch of the Sociedad Mexicana de Cultura in Tijuana, with the aim of reinforcing Mexican culture through art, literature, theater, and dance, and thereby strengthening national identity along the northern border (^{Ruiz Mendoza, 2020}). Later, during the 1970s, a broader process unfolded in Baja California marked by the creation of new institutions devoted to cultural promotion, cultural policy, and scientific and academic research, all pursuing the same objective (^{Ochoa Tinoco, 2009}; ^{Ruiz Mendoza, 2020}).

During the administration of Milton Castellanos Everardo (1971–1976), the state government established the Dirección de Difusión Cultural del Gobierno del Estado, which identified research on the history of Baja California as one of its principal activities. Through this initiative, the government of Baja California called on academic researchers to deepen scholarly work on the historical and cultural foundations of the region and to provide younger generations with “the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of historical and cultural roots” (^{Franco Martín, 2012}). In an initial phase, historical interpretation in Baja California focused on the viceregal period. Unlike other regions of Mexico, the peninsula does not contain monumental pre-Hispanic settlements that materially anchor representations of an Indigenous past. Instead, the most visible historical remains correspond to the architectural complexes of the mission foundations established in Baja California in the late 17th century, a missionary presence that formally concluded in the mid-19th century.

Local policies were aligned with federal government concerns. Border regions, and particularly the northern border, became key settings for the final phase in which the Mexican state acted as a central agent in shaping national identity and promoting mexicanidad through cultural policies that included the invention of traditions and the explicit participation of specialists dedicated to recovering and interpreting the past. Among the civic and cultural initiatives promoted during the 1970s and 1980s to strengthen Mexican identity in border communities were flag ceremonies and regional folk dances (^{Ruiz Mendoza, 2020}). These activities were largely encouraged by members of the teaching profession, who within the social, cultural, and ideological fabric of the population operated in close alignment with state policies, serving as community leaders and as mediators of the nationalist discourse advanced by the federal administration of the period (^{Martínez, 1977}).

In the mid-1980s, the federal government of Mexico, through the Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP), introduced the Border Cultural Program to preserve and promote expressions of Mexican culture in border areas, with the aim of strengthening awareness of national sovereignty and identity (^{Agreement of 1985}). The program supported the development of cultural infrastructure, particularly the creation of museums and libraries, as well as publications focused on northern Mexico (^{Ochoa Tinoco, 2009}). It also prioritized the organization of a national corps of cultural promoters who would encourage community participation, promote Mexican literature and theater, and especially foster dance and folkloric performances, ensuring that residents in the northern border region had access to the promotion and dissemination of national culture (^{Martínez, 1977}).

CONCLUSIONS

The creation of the festival resulted from two complementary processes. At a first creative level, the Fiesta en La Misión constitutes a proposal that articulates a chronology of events associated with the present-day settlement: the presence of Kumiai Indigenous communities, the establishment of a Dominican mission foundation, and the formation of ranches and ejidos. This systematization of events follows the historiographical stages promoted by postrevolutionary cultural policies, which sequence national history into pre-Hispanic, colonial, modern, and post-Mexican Revolution periods.

Since the 1920s, popular festivities were regarded as central components of “national culture,” and the promotion of “typical” celebrations became a constant during the period of cultural nationalism. The Fiesta en La Misión exemplifies a process of cultural memory formation encouraged by the state and led by a professional trained in tourism studies and cultural management, who was also deeply engaged with local and national history. As Assmann argues, the endurance of efforts to articulate elements of the past depends on the transmission of knowledge considered meaningful for the group (^{Assmann, 2008}). The festival is regarded by residents of La Misión as a “recovery” of tradition, even though the integration of these figures of memory into a single festivity did not exist prior to 1979.

At a second creative level, the Fiesta en La Misión represents an exercise in the creation of cultural practices, in which residents of the town form a horizontally organized participatory community. These practices, also shaped by traditions promoted through national discourse—such as regional dances, attire, and music—are part of an ongoing process of recreation and transmission of knowledge. Such processes contribute to fostering a sense of belonging at the community level while engaging with shared ideas about mexicanidad along the border, that is, with a national and mestizo identity.

This ceremony transmits knowledge of a distant past as well as of a more recent past that, for some, still forms part of communicative memory. Within that temporal link, group identity has been reinforced. As in any process of identity and memory formation, mechanisms of selection are carried out by a specific group of individuals responsible for defining the predominant narrative. Thus, although the creation of the Fiesta en La Misión is described among residents as a collective effort to generate a sense of belonging, it is evident that, even if other identities likely coexist within the community, leadership in organizing the celebration rests with the Grupo de Vaqueros de La Misión.

Professor Reyes and Professor Martínez Tadeo participate from an academic perspective that reinforces the predominance of ranching identity and traditions in La Misión. Even so, the enthusiasm with which the festival has been embraced indicates broad participation within the town and suggests that selected elements of the past convey values and practices considered meaningful across the population: history, tradition, family, rodeo, education, and celebration.

The death of Professor Mario Reyes in 2021 generated uncertainty regarding organizational aspects of the festival, as he had been responsible for securing sponsors to ensure that the event was held. As a result, questions remain about whether traditions and forms of knowledge established three decades ago can endure without that leadership, or whether they will gradually transform in order to adapt to changing needs within La Misión.

It is worth noting that one strategy aimed at preserving the knowledge generated around the celebration has been the initiative of the Grupo de Vaqueros de La Misión to propose the festival and the practice of rodeo in La Misión for inclusion on the Cultural Heritage list of the State of Baja California. Currently, the required documentation has been prepared; however, the deliberation process by state authorities remains on hold.

In 2022, Professor Martínez Tadeo secured official recognition of Calabaceado dance as part of the Cultural Heritage of the State of Baja California. In front of the La Misión elementary school facilities stand large metal letters identifying the community as “Cuna del Baile Calabaceado,” marking an initial step in the institutionalization of this network of “figures of memory” as components of cultural memory in Baja California and La Misión.

The Mexican state proved successful in its effort to construct a “national culture” during the first half of the 20th century, and the reach of nationalist transmission through education remains visible among those who continue to organize the festival. The elementary school remains not only an academic space, but also a site of social gathering and of transmission of national values and cultural practices. The Fiesta en La Misión, as an “invented tradition” that each year takes the form of a cultural performance, demonstrates how lived experience of place, narrated history, and shared memory express both community and nation.