Four Thinkers in the Twentieth Century Genealogy of <em>Mexicanidad</em>: Justo Sierra, Samuel Ramos, José Vasconcelos, and Octavio Paz

Abstract

The twentieth-century development of Mexicanidad underwent a series of treatments that changed how selfhood in Mexico was problematized and understood. Octavio Paz’s claim that Mexicanidad faced historical and philosophical obstacles in its development, such as the problem of solitude, allowed him to go beyond the accounts of Mexicanidad provided by Justo Sierra, José Vasconcelos, and Samuel Ramos. Paz’s account of Mexicanidad sought an explicit connection between the Mexican experience of solitude and the universal human experience of solitude. This paper demonstrates how Paz’s revised account addresses these and other problems in twentieth-century Latin American quests for national identity.

Keywords

• <i>Mexicanidad</i>
• <i>lo Mexicano</i>
• modernity
• solitude
• Justo Sierra
• Samuel Ramos