La Madre Matiana: Prophetess and Nation in Mexican Satire

On July 1, 1917, a publication calling itself La Madre Matiana hit the newsstands in Mexico City. The newspaper promised a bold take on politics and society, and its masthead revealed a mission both madcap and grandiose: "A prophetic, truth-telling newspaper; it will block the sun with a finger, bark at the moon, and serenade the morning star." ¹ This earnest but rather comical statement of endeavor appeared in each issue, and Mexicans of the time would have seen in addition an irreverent parody in the publication's name. The periodical's founder, Angel Prieto, had appropriated a clairvoyant character from popular lore to serve as his paper's alter ego. He chose well—the prophecies of madre Matiana had provoked Mexicans for over half a century and gained renewed prominence during the Mexican Revolution. In the years leading up to the newspaper's emergence, various publications had revisited the Matiana legacy. For example, a 1914 broadside repurposed an apocalyptic José Guadalupe Posada lithograph from the 1890s to illustrate its commentary on the prophecies' significance (see Figure 1). ² Titled "The End of the World is Near: The Prophecies are Fulfilled," it muses that the revolutionary unrest of the time was perhaps the prelude to the bloody dénouement predicted by the prophetess. Alternatively, the newspaper Ecos sought to dampen the Matiana-mania sparked by the 1914 U.S. occupation of Veracruz. Lamenting that the seer was "achieving indubitable celebrity among the popular masses," Ecos pronounced the prophecies superstitious nonsense and declared that pamphleteers were taking advantage of the credulous, particularly women. ³ In a different vein, exiled journalists in 1916 seized on madre Matiana as a means to ridicule the new revolutionary president, Venustiano Carranza. ⁴ How did this female visionary figure become the center of controversy and irreverent commentary? ⁵ Perhaps more importantly, why should present-day scholars interest themselves in her trajectory?

Figure 1.

Broadside. La Madre Matiana

Madre Matiana matters because she embodied conflicting but intertwined understandings of popular Catholicism, Mexican cultural identity, and feminine devotion that remained unresolved throughout the revolutionary process. Thus, scrutinizing Prieto's near-forgotten satirical newspaper yields important insights concerning the history of gender and nationhood in Mexico. First, La Madre Matiana enriches our understanding of the nuanced history of gendered representation in public discourse. Second, the newspaper's impersonation of a legendary prophetess and its stereotyping of female fanaticism opened a satirical space in which the fashioning of a secular national identity could take shape. Finally, La Madre Matiana transformed a popular figure and social type that symbolized irrationality and backwardness into an indelibly memorable Mexican heroine. In doing so the publication revealed an attempt to absorb—and contain—the strong associations attached to devout femininity and popular religiosity within revolutionary nationalism.

The relative weakness of national identities in Mexico during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries set the stage for La Madre (as the editorial staff nicknamed their publication). Generations of erstwhile nation-builders had struggled to achieve social consensus and a broad national sense of community. Over this long period, festering uncertainties fueled satirical expression in all its modalities. However mocking, satire usually flourishes amidst serious but less-than-revolutionary campaigns to effect social change and the obvious contradictions among social norms, professed ideals, government policies, and popular practices. According to Rubén Quintero, the genre has functioned since at least classical times as a predominantly reformist form of expression. ⁶ In essence, it resides among the tools readily deployed in efforts to "improve" society and thus often serves groups seeking to define themselves. ⁷ It is hardly surprising that we find satire embedded in the insecure nationalisms of Latin America. In the case analyzed here, La Madre offers us a unique entrée into the problematic history of nation-making in Mexico. ⁸

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