Introduction

The title of the special issue that José Villalobos and I have co-edited, "Memory and Nation in Contemporary Mexico," consists of terms whose meanings must be understood as contested and debatable. Each term raises a number of questions, to which there are at least as many valid responses. To whose memory do we refer? To what extent, if at all, does the nation exist as something separate from people's lived experiences and memories? Furthermore, the way these terms work together is also open to interpretation. What does the issue's title suggest by its juxtaposition of "memory" and "contemporary?" Where do the terms "nation" and "Mexico" overlap, and where do they differ? Of course, José and I do not presume to have definitive answers to such questions, but we do believe that the specific studies contained in this issue provide engaging, valuable, and diverse responses. In addition, these studies ask many other questions and demonstrate various approaches to them. Most importantly, the pieces that comprise the issue not only address the general topic encapsulated by its title, but they also question and expand the paradigms that the title suggests.

Though open to discussion and contestation, the topic of this special issue is limited by its reference to Mexico. The issue's discussion of nation and memory is grounded in relation to historical events, cultural production, and discourse that share the common trait of shaping a specific nation and how it is comprehended and imagined. Therefore, my introduction aims to establish a broad constellation of historical reference points that may help some readers—especially those who are not specialists in Mexican and/or Latin American studies—to contextualize the articles that make up this issue. Though each article stands on its own merits, together they assemble an innovative, variegated, and significant perspective on contemporary Mexican cultural production and the social, cultural, and political contexts to which it responds and that it shapes. A particular strength of how these articles work together is their diversity regarding genre and media. Included in the pieces are discussions of theater, the historical novel, photography, the political thriller, journalism, the chronicle, the political essay, Subcomandante Marcos's communiqués, music, and film. This diversity showcases the contributors' analytical methodologies, and it calls attention to the ways in which different forms of cultural production approach and relate to the general question of the nation.

The Spanish Conquest persists as a fundamentally important historical event that obviously pre-existed the Mexican nation, but that still informs dominant and resistant conceptions of contemporary Mexico. The social, economic, political, and cultural legacies of the Conquest and the Colonial Period continue to have an enormous impact on Mexican society. One manifestation of this impact is the manifold struggle over Mexico's cultural identification. And one general question regarding identification has remained centrally important: Can Mexico's indigenous and European traditions be reconciled? If so, how? The origin of this question has long been defined as the encounter between Hernán Cortés—whose army defeated the Aztec Empire in 1521—and "La Malinche," the indigenous woman who served as Cortés's interpreter. The figure of La Malinche has been remembered through many different lenses and in many different ways, appearing in texts ranging from Bernal Díaz del Castillo's sixteenth-century auto-biographical chronicle to Octavio Paz's twentieth-century essays on modern Mexican culture.

Maarten van Delden's contribution to this special issue carefully analyzes two recent readings of La Malinche's story, a play by Hugo Rascón Banda and a novel by Marisol Martín del Campo. Van Delden productively contextualizes La Malinche in relation to contemporary Mexico, and he develops an insightful method for re-historicizing La Malinche, for distancing her story from the centuries of interpretations, distortions, and instrumentalizations that have shaped it.

As was the case for many nations throughout Latin America, Mexico achieved its independence from Spain in the early nineteenth century. As was also typical, independence did not quickly (if ever) lead...