Vast Factories, Glass Bottles, and Made-up Women: Visions of Modernity in Mexican Beer and Tequila Ads, 1910–40

During the Mexican Revolution (1910-1940), government officials and independent temperance reformers tried to combat what they believed to be the growing problem of alcoholism. In particular, they attacked pulque: because of its centuries-long association with native peoples and a more racially-diverse lower class, its supposedly anti-hygienic nature, and the traditional methods in which it was produced, they argued that its drinkers were not modern and were keeping the nation from progressing. While eschewing the notion that drinking alcoholic beverages challenged modernity, the owners of tequila and beer companies, and their advertising agents, were all too happy to play off of commonly-held prejudices against pulque and the people who drank it. In examining over two hundred newspaper and radio advertisements, posters, signs, labels, and pamphlets, I found that this publicity claimed that men, women, and children could in fact become modern by consuming intoxicants, specifically, beer and tequila. To contrast with pulque, they used messages about hygiene and purity, factory production, and a “pleasant smell.” Unlike pulque’s stereotypical consumers, ads depicted beer and tequila drinkers as almost exclusively urban, middle- to upper-class, and white. In other words, in spite of, or perhaps in reaction to, the revolutionary drive to make a more inclusive society, alcohol executives and the media painted a picture of modernity that was much more exclusive.