Editor's Comment 35: 3 Transnational finance, national citizens and socialist education

True to the vision of this journal, the research articles in this issue of Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos (35.3) provide deep insights into current matters of national and global import, even as they discuss and examine periods ranging between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first two articles analyze financial and economic matters. Article one, co-authored by Dr. Fernando Ciaramitaro (Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México) and Dr. Loris De Nardi (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparáıso, Chile) is titled "El régimen fiscal de los donativos en las Indias como alternativa a las asambleas estamentarias europeas: una reinterpretación del imperio (siglos xvi y xvii)." With an innovative text engaging disciplinary frames of economic history and political history, these scholars delve into international financial transactions and control, political negotiations and power dynamics across oceans. They offer a reinterpretation of contexts in the Americas through a European perspective, encompassing and connecting Mexico and the Indies with Mediterranean history and the Spanish imperial system, specifically in terms of raising taxes through voluntary donations.

The focus of discussion in the second article remains on governmental and private financial systems, but within the context of the immediate decades following Independence. In "Capital californiano, necesidad presupuestal y cambio poĺıtico: Juan Temple y el arrendamiento de la Casa de Moneda de México, 1827–1857," Dr. Omar Velasco Herrera (Facultad de Economía, unam) considers the murky dealings of high interest rates, licenses, and privileges; of minting coins; and of mines and other national property in a political setting that we would now label as privatizations. In the absence of banking institutions, the role of individuals in governmental financial institutions was prevalent. As Velasco Herrera describes, the new territorial configuration which altered the status of Californians did not restrict commercial relations, but rather resulted in stronger and reciprocal interactions. The article focuses on the role of one individual, Juan Temple, and the situation in which he leased the National Mint in Mexico, which was the most important in the continent at that time (and also the oldest mint in the Americas).

Articles three and four deal with the construction of nation and race, specifically through print culture and literature. In "Popular Narratives and Mestizo Horsemen: Creating a Racial Ideal in Nineteenth-Century Mexico, 1844–1896," Dr. E. Mark Moreno (Texas A&M University-Commerce, usa) offers an important argument for understanding national identity formation, specifically in relation to rancheros and chinacos—two figures on horseback. Through a careful use of a variety of print sources, the author discusses how rancheros and chinacos were clearly as much a product of the urban imagination as a reflection of rural Mexico. Dr. Moreno argues that the ranchero and chinaco images were the basis for the mestizo of the revolutionary era, indicating how they became the foundation for such works as José Vasconcelos's publications on the Cosmic Race. The article therefore showcases the importance of race theory in Mexico, as well as providing a reevaluation of the nineteenth century with regards to the formation of Mexican identity in the twentieth century.

The fourth article also focuses on identity and nation in print culture, with an examination of two twentieth-century literary works published in 1927 and 1943. In "Una ruptura en la fundación nacional(ista): tríangulos amorosos disgénicos en Margarita de niebla de Jaime Torres Bodet y El réferi cuenta nueve de Diego Cañedo," Dr. David S. Dalton (University of North Carolina at Charlotte) considers how two novels contradict nationalist discourse in the context of the emergence of nationalist mestizaje as an ideology. The author particularly draws on Doris Sommer's notion of "foundational fictions" (Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America, published by UC Press in 1993), whereby nineteenth century patriotism and heterosexual passion historically depended on one another to engender productive citizens. In his article, Dr. Dalton uses the comparative study of two important literary works from different historical post-revolutionary periods to tease out complex matters of national identity.

Finally, article five is...