La Revolución: Mexico's Great Revolution as Memory, Myth, and History

5. Monument: From the Ruins of the Old Regime

M O N U M E N T From the Ruins of the Old Regime for more than twenty years, the skeletal iron frame of the Palacio Legislativo Federal, the national capitol, designed to be one of the triumphs of Beaux-Arts architecture of the age of Porfirio Díaz, dominated the skyline of Mexico City. The most important building that the Porfirian regime planned to build was never finished. As Mexicans say, “¡Así pasan las glorias del mundo!”—sic transit gloria mundi. During the 1930s the ruin was transformed into a modern monument, a triumphal arch to commemorate la Revolución. Mexican history was refashioned, literally and physically, in iron, stone, and bronze. The Revolutionary Tradition assumed physical shape and form. Commemorative monuments have as their most obvious purpose the evocation and celebration of the past in the present. They are constructed to memorialize heroes and events for various, but not always clearly evident , reasons. As exhortations to imitate worthy predecessors, monuments instruct citizens today and tomorrow what to believe and how to behave. As symbols of national glory and triumph, monuments promote horizontal and vertical solidarity, that is, they encourage persons of different locales, classes, and ethnicities, as well as different generations, to view themselves as one people, a nation. In this sense monuments are vital instruments in the invention and maintenance of a variety of “imagined communities.” As initiatives by states and regimes, monuments emphasize the real or alleged continuity between present rulers and the seminal events and heroes of history, thereby bestowing upon those leaders the sanction and legitimization of a revered past.1 Certain monuments are designed to create a setting for ritual performances , for commemorations and celebrations. The creation of a special space sets the stage for a concentration of political suggestions. Some monuments become identified with recurrent calendrical celebrations. The monument, the setting, the performance, and the particular day combine to evoke symbolic reassurance that the state, the regime, or the leader 117 5 is faithful to those considered the community’s founding fathers, and that authority, therefore, is legitimate.2 As stages for commemorative performances , monuments encourage people not simply to remember but to remember together, thereby affirming group solidarity and unity.3 Not unlike religious temples, certain commemorative monuments transform space so as to manifest sacrality. This transfiguration is effected by various symbolisms that bestow special meaning on the origin, construction , and history of the monument, and by recurrent rituals that stimulate the intersection of sacred time with sacred space, animating the monument and transforming visitors. A monument that becomes a sacred civic temple or shrine for a civic religion (based on nationalism or a particular political ideology) is a powerful political instrument capable of inspiring mass loyalty to the state, identification with the rulers, and sacrifice for those imagined communities called “the nation,” “the people,” or “the revolution.”4 The past is often contested terrain in politics. Collective memory is constructed , James E. Young reminds us: “There are worldly consequences in the kinds of historical understanding generated by monuments.” Commemorative monuments and civic celebrations shape, institutionalize, and disseminate particular versions of the past while at the same time excluding , suppressing, and devaluing other versions or traditions. When successful , they form part of a more comprehensive ideology or discourse that employs myths and symbols to promote loyalty and patriotism (read: conformity and obedience) to regime, state, and nation.5 The Monument to the Revolution is one of Mexico City’s most prominent landmarks and the most impressive commemorative monument in Mexico. It is a giant text of iron and stone designed to reflect and shape the nation’s collective memory. It embodies in its origins, construction, form, and sculpture almost every element of the two-decades-long revolutionary discourse of memory. The monument was built by the Revolutionary Family, according to a 1937 report, “to perpetuate the memory of the Mexican Social Revolution.”6 Today historians argue that it was built to enhance the legitimacy and authority of the postrevolutionary governing elite, “a tribute the institutional government made to itself.”7 These objectives , of course, are compatible one with the other, but they do not fully explain the monument. The monument was built primarily to unify symbolically la Revolución and to heal the wounds of memory. This intention, more than anything 118 perfor mance else, explains why and when it...