Article
Spanish
ID: <
10670/1.xlhjl9>
Abstract
In the first decades following independence, Mexican national holidays were based on the Catholic Monarchy's model of festivities: the main setting was the Cathedral, the nation was represented as a corporate body and therefore heterogeneous and hierarchical; the formalities with the authorities were fundamental as they displayed the power of the National’s Patronage. The funeral celebrations of 1823, 1836 and 1838 testify to the recovery of the culture of saintly relics. However, the civic ceremonies of September 1842, which celebrated the president Antonio López de Santa Anna, simultaneously culminated the sacralisation of the presidential body, and contributed to reduce the importance of Catholic spaces and ceremonies, in favour of a military ceremonial and the more secular space of a romantic cemetery, resulting in a more homogeneous representation of the nation.