The 1920s saw the emergence of a distinctive, new urban culture in the city of Buenos Aires. Although this culture did not extend to the borders of the nation, it was a national culture in the sense that it continually manufactured and reproduced images of Argentine national identity. Research conducted over the last two decades has greatly improved our understanding of this new culture. We know that it was, to a great extent, forged in the city's new, outlying barrios where manual workers lived side by side with skilled workers and members of the middle class. The relatively strong performance of the Argentine economy during these years made social mobility a more for realistic aspiration for more people than it had ever been before. Partly as a result of this economic reality, the new barrio culture revealed a less militant attitude on the part of porteño workers, a trend visible as well in the significant decline in membership and effectiveness experienced by labor unions. But the new cultural milieu reflected more than just economic prosperity; it was intimately tied to the birth of a mass culture disseminated by radio, cinema, and tabloid. In particular, the 1920s witnessed the commodification and massification of tango and football, two popular cultural practices that were now transformed into quintessential representations of Argentinidad.

On April 5, 1723, Juan Joseph de Porras, a mulatto slave laboring in an obraje de paños (woolen textile mill) near Mexico City, appeared before the Holy Office of the Inquisition for blasphemy. According to the testimony of six slaves, including Porras’ wife, while his co-workers prepared to bed down for the night in the obraje Porras had blasphemed over a beating he had received from the mayordomo (overseer) earlier in the day. Señor Pedregal, the owner of the obraje, testified that Porras was one of nearly thirty workers, all Afro-Mexican slaves or convicts, who lived and labored in his obraje without the freedom to leave.

The case against Juan Joseph de Porras and dozens of others like it in the Mexican archives raise important questions, not only about the makeup of the colonial obraje labor force, but also about the importance of Afro-Mexican slavery in the middle of the colonial period. Was the Pedregal labor force, composed entirely of slaves and convicts, the exception or the rule within obrajes of New Spain? If it was not exceptional, how important were slaves to that obraje and others like it? What exactly was the demographic makeup of the obraje labor force in the middle of the colonial period? And, how might the answers to those questions change our understanding of the histories of labor and slavery in colonial Mexico?

La medicina científica was a popular journal read by Mexican doctors at the end of the nineteenth century. Each edition contained articles on the latest research and developments in the profession and also medical news from around the world of potential interest to subscribers. An excerpt from a February 1889 entry noted that Carolina Schultze had recently passed her medical oral exams in France. One of the evaluators acknowledged her obvious skill and “the great service she will perform to society.” But the article's focus, and the probable reason for its inclusion in this Mexican journal, quickly turned to whether or not other women could match her talent. The author presumed that she was, in fact, unique. “The female doctor,” he said, “neither has been nor is nor ever will be more than an exception, as there are exceptional women in all fields of knowledge, art, science, and literature.” Even more suggestive about late nineteenth-century bias were the reasons why he thought that female doctors, if they must exist, should only specialize in the illnesses of women and children: “when women enter into the practice of a profession appropriate only to the strong sex, they are never satisfied with a secondary role and always want to shine in the front row.”

Following the revolution of 1910-1917, a new era took shape in the port of Veracruz, Mexico as residents (porteños) took to a variety of recreational pursuits that included baseball, social dances and, increasingly, film. No one activity proved more significant, however, than the revival of Carnival in 1925. That year, members of the Veracruz railroad workers union (Alianza de Ferrocarrileros) along with a coordinating committee made up of representatives from various community associations organized the first public celebration of Carnival in nearly five decades. Assembling just outside the union hall on the afternoon of Saturday February 21, 1925, hundreds joined in an afternoon parade that circulated through the central city. Carrying assorted musical instruments and noisemaking gadgets, an enthusiastic throng engaged in a hunt to capture a ritualistic “enemy of the people” known as Mal Humor. After members of the procession seized their prey, a tribunal headed by King Juan Carnaval tried the offender and sentenced him to death.