Description
Book SynopsisOffers an analysis of how Mexicans living in Oaxaca City experienced "modernity" during the lengthy "Order and Progress" dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. This book describes how Oaxacans, both elites and commoners, crafted and manipulated practices of tradition and modernity to define themselves and their city as integral parts of a modern Mexico.
Trade Review“In his fascinating saga of a provincial elite’s struggle to claim a place in Mexico’s late-nineteenth-century narrative of progress and nation building, Mark Overmyer-Velázquez reveals the centrality of the city to the modern ideal of Mexico. The politicians, workers, prostitutes, intellectuals, and clerics whose words and actions animate the pages of this book show us how the promise of modernity reconfigured domains of privilege and visibility. By documenting the civic rituals, administrative projects, literary ideals, and architectural plans through which Oaxaca’s Porfirian wizards built their Emerald City, Overmyer-Velázquez forces us to rethink our understandings of church-state relations, provincial cultural projects, and nation building in pre-Revolutionary Mexico.”—Deborah Poole, author of
Vision, Race, and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World“[T]he book provides an excellent picture of the fragmented and contested visions of modernity that emerged in the city of Oaxaca. It is a contribution to a growing body of literature on the history of regional cities and a welcome addition to the historiography of modern Mexico.” -- Claudia Agostoni * American Historical Review *
“Interesting and well written, this book makes a significant contribution to the study of Porfirian Oaxaca, while also transcending its geographic and temporal limits to lend insight into the ongoing global process of modernization.” -- Paul Hart * Hispanic American Historical Review *
“This is an empirically rich and methodologically suggestive work. As well as contributing importantly to Mexican urban historiography, Overmyer-Velázquez shows how the idea of modernity itself is unsettled by attentive readings of the historical record in a place like Oaxaca City. . . . It is, in sum, an excellent and original contribution to Mexican historiography and should provoke further research on the intersection of visual studies and history.” -- Raymond B. Craib * EIAL *
“
Visions of the Emerald City makes a significant contribution to the historiography of the Porfiriato. . . . Overmyer-Velázquez provides a reinterpretation of the Porfiriato and the reasons for the Revolution that should have scholars looking at more cultural explanations for the outbreak of war in Mexico in 1910 . . . . His analysis of Porfirian Oaxaca is solid and innovative. . . . The case he makes for Oaxaca’s cultural history in the Porfiriato stands out from other regional studies already published.” -- Nathan Clarke * The Latin Americanist *
Table of ContentsIllustrations and Tables ix
Preface xi
Introduction: Writing the Emerald City 1
1.
La Vallistocracia: The Formation of Oaxaca’s Ruling Class 17
2. The Legible City: Constructed, Symbolic, and Disciplined Spaces 40
3. “A New Political Religious Order”: Church, State, and Workers 70
4. “A Necessary Evil”: Regulating Public Space and Public Women 98
5. Portraits of a Lady: Visions of Modernity 122
Conclusions: The Consequences of Modernity 153
Appendix: Articles Cited from the 1857 Constitution 161
Notes 163
Bibliography 203
Index 221
