The University of Arizona Press
Forging a Mexican People
Collective Subjectivities in Postrevolutionary Print Culture, 1917–1968
Paperback ($35.00), Hardcover ($100.00), Ebook ($35.00)
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A new lens on conceptions of the Mexican state and the people
Forging a Mexican People shows how illustrated print culture helped to construct and deconstruct versions of “a people” in postrevolutionary Mexico.
Through meticulous research, Pablo Zavala uncovers the ways photographers, graphic artists, writers, and activists used print culture to challenge hegemonic conceptions of state-guided narratives and forge alternative collective subjectivities. This book offers a fresh perspective on the sociopolitical landscape of postrevolutionary Mexico, revealing how cultural artifacts simultaneously crafted and reflected the people vis-à-vis different political and social categories. By examining print culture, editorial practices, and related processes such as the creation, consumption, and distribution of said culture, Zavala’s research contributes to scholarship that has recently reexamined the construction of nationalism by moving away from the focus on state formation and addressing the horizontal and aesthetic dimensions in products by cultural producers from nonstate and grassroots political sectors.
Zavala examines the conceptual parameters of el pueblo by analyzing El Universal Ilustrado, El Machete, the Taller de Gráfica Popular, the protest graphic art used in Mexico City’s 1968 popular student movement, and graphic art used in California’s Chicano farmworkers’ struggle. Based on in-depth archival research, the work includes primary sources that have never been digitized, offering readers unique insights into the visual manifestations of Mexico’s postrevolutionary identity and their enduring significance.
Forging a Mexican People shows how illustrated print culture helped to construct and deconstruct versions of “a people” in postrevolutionary Mexico.
Through meticulous research, Pablo Zavala uncovers the ways photographers, graphic artists, writers, and activists used print culture to challenge hegemonic conceptions of state-guided narratives and forge alternative collective subjectivities. This book offers a fresh perspective on the sociopolitical landscape of postrevolutionary Mexico, revealing how cultural artifacts simultaneously crafted and reflected the people vis-à-vis different political and social categories. By examining print culture, editorial practices, and related processes such as the creation, consumption, and distribution of said culture, Zavala’s research contributes to scholarship that has recently reexamined the construction of nationalism by moving away from the focus on state formation and addressing the horizontal and aesthetic dimensions in products by cultural producers from nonstate and grassroots political sectors.
Zavala examines the conceptual parameters of el pueblo by analyzing El Universal Ilustrado, El Machete, the Taller de Gráfica Popular, the protest graphic art used in Mexico City’s 1968 popular student movement, and graphic art used in California’s Chicano farmworkers’ struggle. Based on in-depth archival research, the work includes primary sources that have never been digitized, offering readers unique insights into the visual manifestations of Mexico’s postrevolutionary identity and their enduring significance.
“Zavala’s Forging a Mexican People opens a window on an aspect of Mexican cultural history that has not yet been thoroughly explained: the long tradition of the graphic press that confronted, evaded, and destabilized the state’s attempted capture of popular culture. This fascinating work is an important new chapter in the history of state and pueblo in modern Mexico.”—Joshua Lund, author of The Mestizo State: Reading Race in Modern Mexico
“Forging a Mexican People is an outstanding analysis of radical printmaking in Mexico in the half century following the Mexican revolution. Zavala demonstrates the key role of revolutionary printmakers in forging a popular discourse of el pueblo and its struggle, even as the Mexican state sought to control and contain popular resistance.”—Enrique C. Ochoa, author of México Between Feast and Famine: Food, Corporate Power, and Inequality
“Forging a Mexican People is an outstanding analysis of radical printmaking in Mexico in the half century following the Mexican revolution. Zavala demonstrates the key role of revolutionary printmakers in forging a popular discourse of el pueblo and its struggle, even as the Mexican state sought to control and contain popular resistance.”—Enrique C. Ochoa, author of México Between Feast and Famine: Food, Corporate Power, and Inequality
302 Pages
6 x 9
Published: March 2026Paperback ISBN: 9780816553464
Published: March 2026Hardcover ISBN: 9780816556113
Published: March 2026Ebook ISBN: 9780816556120