QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

The Zócalo, Mexico City

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

Partial views of excavated Templo Mayor, Mexico City

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

Still from Indio Fernandez’ El Rapto, with María Félix and Jorge Negrete

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressorare needed to see this picture.QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

Some examples of classic Mexican calendar graphics

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

“la ánima sola”(the solitary/lonely soul):believer’s version

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

Anima sola: kitsch, chillante version

Doris Sommer, Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (1991)

Romance as allegory: “star-crossed lovers who represent particular regions, races, parties, economic interests…Their passion for conjugal and sexual union spills over to a Sentimental readership in a move that hopes to win partisanMinds along with hearts” (5)

Erotics of politics: “national iedas are all ostensibly grounded in ‘natural’ heterosexual love and in the marriages that provided aFigure for apparently nonviolent consolidation [of turbulent Nations] . . .Romantic passion gave a rhetoric for the hegemonic projects in Gramsci’s sense of conquering the antagonist through Mutual interest, or ‘love’, rather than through coercion” (6)

Popcatepetl legend

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressorare needed to see this picture.