El nuevo pasado mexicano: estrategias de representación en Atzimba de Ricardo Castro

Abstract

Taking as a point of departure theories developed in the social sciences that suggest that nationalist movements engender nations, nationalist art is defined not as that which expresses the national essence, but rather as that which effectively contributes to create the nation. Its style or its relationship, real or not, to folklore or to “the people” is irrelevant. Atzimba (1900), opera by Mexican composer Ricardo Castro (1864-1907), contributed to the creation of the Mexican nation by allowing educated, upper-class audiences at the turn of the 20th century to imagine Mexico’s extinct pre-Hispanic cultures and to internalize them as their own historical past. Castro utilized strategies of representation of the pre-Hispanic that are mediated by conventions of operatic exoticism, but anchored in the political need of Mexico’s leading elites to re-present the Mexican nation internationally as civilized and sovereign, with an ancient history of its own. This cultural work, and not the presumed use of pre-Hispanic elements, is what makes Atzimba a nationalist piece.

Keywords

• nation
• exoticism
• mexico
• ricardo castro
• nationalist opera