Modernity Revised: A Conservative Rebel Finds a Place in Mexico’s Public Memory, 1873–2006

Mexico’s pantheon of national heroes grew suddenly in the wake of the 1910 Revolution. The enshrinement of the revolutionary chieftain, Emiliano Zapata, a process that began almost immediately upon his death in 1919, is familiar to historians and the general public alike. Less well known are the regional repercussions of Zapata’s movement and subsequent memorialization. Inspired broadly by Eric Van Young’s The Other Rebellion and more specifically by his contribution to William Beezley’s Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance, this paper analyzes the post-mortem career of a nineteenth-century outlaw, Manuel Lozada, who led a lengthy rebellion between 1855 and 1873 in what today is the central western state of Nayarit. Liberal officials effectively consigned Lozada to oblivion after orchestrating his death in 1873, yet he enjoyed an unlikely resurrection nearly fifty years later in the wake of Zapata’s assassination by state officials. Today Lozada’s heroic memory is preserved in public plazas and on government buildings. This presentation draws upon written correspondence, photographic evidence, and periodicals to suggest that differences in the ways they were memorialized immediately after their respective assassinations tell a more compelling story about nationalism, modernity, and public memory. Despite extreme differences in their initial public receptions, increasing similarities in collective remembrances of Zapata and Lozada in the wake of the Revolution demonstrate not only the profound changes that Mexico underwent between 1910 and 1920 but also the malleability of national discourse.