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䊏 27 䊏 CHAPTER TWO The Storyteller’s Ruins I n David Scott’s examination of “political presents and . . . reconstructed pasts and anticipated futures” (1) in the nations of the Caribbean basin, he points out the urgent need to avoid viewing modernity as a single point or goal in the future, as “the larger developmentalist narrative of modernity” (113). In contrast, he underlines the fact that a more culturalist reading of modernity is a “kind of acculturation story, the story of innovation within adaptation” (113), leading to multiple visions of the modern and alternative views of how (or why) to strive for such objectives. As one might surmise, this movement would involve the construction or “invention” (113) of alternatives to dominant systems. Such a view implies a reconception of modernity in opposition to another image. The implication is that there are two differing strands of narrative involved. As Jameson sees this, it is instead a symptom of a “political discursive struggle” (9) over the implementation of a free-market system of economics or the reliance on some sense of ‘native’ alternative. As he concludes, “adversaries of the free market . . . can only be classed in the negative or privative category of the unmodern, the traditionalist ” (10). Rather than invent new terms for the internal elements of the polemic of modernity, let us instead open up the term to all of the periods and breaks of the dialectic in the Mexican context. Not a conscious decision but an ideological remnant, what story to tell and how to tell it come into focus within the larger arena of incipient capitalism and social change. One cannot ignore the conditions in which Mexicans will make their lives in order to find the variables between action and restraint, between choices and limits. Between 1932 and 2003, the duration of García Ponce’s life, seven decades of “electoral enthusiasm . . . and sincere disillusionment” (Gutmann , Meanings 164) occurred, public politics and private desires collided, the concept of legitimacy was on trial at every turn, the rituals of democracy played out or were thwarted, myths rose and fell, popular culture vied for power with elite culture, regionalism and the urban center continually clashed, screen actresses became elected congressional delegates, the Olympics came and went, immigration rates rose to record levels, tourism peaked and waned, privatization took over real estate, politicians and their friends became richer, the model of ejido agriculture all but disappeared (except at limited and publicly-televised moments), women banged on empty casseroles in the streets, the PRI was defeated at the polls to make way for the PAN (Partido de Acción Nacional) [National Action Party] as an opening to the new, Marcos and the Zapatistas emerged from the jungles of Chiapas to resuscitate the utopia of a long-dead revolutionary leader, and the social project of the Revolution survived in discourse if not always in practice. As practiced by the undefeated ruling party for seven decades, politics as an industry in and of itself began to be challenged by what Jameson has been sustaining all along: capital. The narratives of authority and of authoritarianism met the narratives of neoliberalism and of the liberation of the free market. The tilt toward determinacy regarded as a fixed part of the former—State, local, familial rule—met up with the more indeterminate , reaching a crisis in 1968 and again in 1988. Schmidt refers to this disequilibrium as “a less than almighty state” (37), but for our intents and purposes it can also signal the break and period of the modern. If we were to map out García Ponce’s early life according to his own words we would encounter a “porosity” (Gilloch, Myth 66) between memory and event reminiscent of Benjamin’s writings on his own relationship with the city of Berlin. Rather than walls—the backyard “bardas” (García Ponce, “Mi última casa” 43) of piled up stones dividing the family property in Yucatán from the next family’s plot of land—separating the two spheres, memory and desire intersect in the story line to produce dual narratives as ‘city-like.’ The dense networks of streets and alleyways are like the knotted, intertwined threads of memory which feed into the written text. “The open spaces . . . are like the voids and blanks of forgotten things. Lost times are the overlooked places” (Gilloch, Myth 67). The work of remembrance is, like modernity, dialectical. Places and events do not inhabit separate spheres, but rather coexist in the recollections of the...

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