From Dangerous Foreigners to Foreign Citizens: Challenging the Hegemony of Mexican Historical Nationalism

“You are Mexico. You turn 200 years of being proudly Mexican,” reads a Mexico City billboard. 2010 marked both the centennial of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the bicentennial of Mexican independence. Despite commemorating the breaking of ties with foreigners, there has been little scholarly attention to the role of foreigners and how they become Mexican. This paper builds on my first book to suggest that the Mexican government remains ambivalent about the role of foreigners and has organized much of the institutional oversight of foreigners in the hands of executive branch of government, including naturalizations. How the Mexican government grants citizenship and whom it naturalizes and denaturalizes (or strips of citizenship) offers insights into debates about the development of the Mexican nation-state, the cultural notion of mexicanidad, and the limits of inclusion. The paper both expands the debates about who is Mexican and also contributes to discussions about the meaning of citizenship in contrast to the status of foreigner and alien in a nation-state.