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‘Where Did the Other Heroes Go?’ Exalting the Polko National Guard Battalions in Nineteenth-Century Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2002

PEDRO SANTONI
PEDRO SANTONI
Affiliation:
Pedro Santoni is Professor of History at California State University, San Bernardino.
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Abstract

In 1848 the moderado administration of General José Joaquín Herrera staged public ceremonies to honour the ‘polko’ national guardsmen who had died defending Mexico City during the recent war with the USA. Herrera's government attempted to use the rituals to alleviate the pain of defeat and bring together a divided nation, as well as to reorganise the national guard into a military force manned by the well-to-do that would help preserve political stability and social harmony. Herrera's state-building project ultimately failed because the ceremonies could not surmount the tensions that afflicted Mexico. In the long run, the inability to restructure the national guard allowed Mexican statesmen in the late 1800s to disband that military force and to diminish its status in national patriotic discourse.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , November 2002 , pp. 807 - 844
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 1997 International Colloquium on the War Between Mexico and the United States, the 1998 Rocky Mountain Council on Latin American Studies and the 1999 Conference on Latin American History .The participants at these meetings, as well as Bryan Vizzini, Samuel Brunk, Richard A. Warren, Timothy M. Matovina and two anonymous JLAS reviewers, provided valuable insights and comments. Shannon Baker Tuller, Donald F. Stevens and Helia Román Bonilla supplied me with research materials, for which I am grateful. My deepest appreciation, however, goes to Paul Vanderwood, who read more than one incarnation of the work and nudged it along to its final form.