Mexico at the Philadelphia and New Orleans Fairs
Many Mexicans viewed participation in world's fairs as one of the best ways of changing the widespread perception that Mexico was violent and uncivilized. During the first years of the Porfiriato the Ministry of Economic Development maintained that "[Mexico has been] splendidly endorsed by nature. . . . To show such riches and thereby open a wide road for the development of industry and commerce is a patriotic deed that we can achieve only by means of world's fairs."[2]
Although the belief that progress would be encouraged by participation in fairs appeared in the 1850s, not until the Philadelphia world's fair of 1876 did Mexico begin its official participation in international exhibitions. And not until the New Orleans world's fair of 1884 did Mexico undertake a major effort to postulate the ideal type of a modern Mexican nation.[3]
In 1875 Gabriel Mancera, special commissioner of the Mexican Board of Expositions in the United States, wrote two long letters in which he analyzed the possibilities and potential advantages of Mexico's participation in Philadelphia 1876 and thus convinced the Mexican government to participate. According to Mancera, economic and social problems in the United States would eventually result in migration to Mexico. In particular, he believed that workers' discontent in American cities was producing more repression than social reform and that some of the more disaffected laborers would eventually opt for migration to Mexico.[4]
Mexico occupied a small area of the 11,644-square-foot building prepared to hold products from various countries in the 256 acres of Philadelphia's Fairmount Park.[5] Mexico's stand was formed by a structure of arches with showcases. A New York newspaper described it as a stand "almost exclusively built with plaster casts which show all the notable features of Aztec architecture during Moctezuma's rule."[6] In fact, the style of the stand was not pure Aztec but, rather, neoclassical with some Aztec adornments. But Western eyes saw what they expected to see. To a British newspaper the Mexican stand was semi-Gothic.[7] In addition to this display, Mexico was represented in an annex of the Art Gallery, together with artwork from Chile and Argentina.[8] A Mexican newspaper announced that altogether, 300,000 pesos had been allocated from the national budget for Mexico's display in Philadelphia (see Appendix 2).[9]
In agreeing to participate in Philadelphia's exposition, despite Mexico's political and economic problems, President Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada aimed to acquire international recognition for his regime. The Mexican government argued that "to have declined the invitation would have amounted to being defeated. A defeat all the more appalling since it would have meant deserting the struggle, confessing impotence, recognizing Mexico as unworthy of participating among the learned peoples."[10] The government had good reason to be concerned by its lack of international credibility. In the United States a general anti-Mexican feeling arose as a result of the Mexican-American War, and the belief that Mexico was unstable and barbaric was widespread. For instance, the New York Times , commenting on the arrival of boxes containing the Mexican exhibit for the Philadelphia fair, observed: "It is universally understood that the staple production of these republics is their frequent and regular political revolutions. To box up a revolution and send it to Philadelphia is impossible."[11]
The image of Mexico created for the Philadelphia exposition, and the individuals involved, formed the bedrock for many future exhibitions. In 1876, however, the group of organizers still lacked cohesion and experience. Moreover, the group had been formed before the Tuxtepec rebellion that brought Porfirio Díaz to power, so several political readjustments, conciliations, and conflicts were yet to occur. In addition, the unstable economic situation of
Lerdo's regime limited the actions of the group at Philadelphia; the more ample budget of the Porfiriato gave wizards of progress greater range and ambition.
After Philadelphia, Mexico did not resume its attendance at international expositions until the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition that was held in New Orleans between 1884 and 1885.[12] This fair commemorated the first shipment of cotton from America to England, as well as the emergence of the post-civil-war American New South. It included a women's building and "the Exhibit of the Colored Races."[13] It was at this world's fair that the wizards of progress acquired a more or less clear configuration. In tracing back Mexico's presence in international fairs, Sebastián B. de Mier, the Mexican commissioner for the 1900 Paris world's fair, argued that Mexico's progress began to be internationally appreciated at the 1884 New Orleans fair.[14]
Gen. Díaz himself, at the time "on leave" from the presidency during Manuel González's tenure, briefly headed the Mexican Commission for the New Orleans world's fair. The commission included many of the wizards of progress and ranged from politicians like Mariano Bárcena to famous publicists like José Francisco Godoy, who was to become a diplomat and a polyglot freelance writer often hired by the Mexican government in its publicity enterprises (see Appendix 1).[15] In addition, the engineer Santiago Ramirez was asked to write a "special report on the occasion of the New Orleans Industrial and Cotton Exhibition" on Mexico's mining resources.[16]
Like its French counterparts, the New Orleans fair was a showcase for U.S. imperial aspirations, and Mexico, of course, was within the scope of those ambitions. Again like the French, the American fair organizers encouraged Latin American countries to participate and thereby lend credence to a U.S. commercial "protectorate," an unofficial support for the Monroe Doctrine. In 1884 Isaac W. Avery, who was responsible for encouraging Latin American countries to take part in the New Orleans fair, traveled around Latin America for nine months, publicizing not only the fair but also the Nicaraguan Canal project—which aimed to supplant the Panama Canal project of the French.[17]
Certainly Mexico's presence at New Orleans reflected both its domestic hopes and its international ambitions to find an outlet for its raw materials in the modern world economy. Thus, in New Orleans Mexico occupied a display of nearly 50,000 square feet within the main building of the fair, in addition to 200,000 square feet inside the gardens near the horticulture building. Without question, Mexico's attendance at New Orleans constituted the first major effort to portray itself as a modern nation on the world stage.
The Mexican presence in New Orleans was an expensive enterprise, though the U.S.$200,000 spent by the Mexican government would eventually pale before outlays at later world's fairs.[18] Díaz was informed of all financial procedures, and following the Lerdo regime's lead, the government
paid the total expense, although numerous private interests, from railroad companies to a Freemason lodge in Mexico City, which gave 400 pesos, made generous donations.
In this patronage, the Mexican state approximated the French model: the state ought to manage the economy and, through expositions, seek international prestige for the ultimate economic benefit of the nation. This pattern eventually led to total governmental sponsorship, including the cost of products exhibited and both local and international transportation expenses, as in the case of Mexico's attendance at Paris in 1900.[19]
In the exhibits, the wizards of progress chose not to exploit the Indian exoticism of Mexico but, rather, to emphasize an exoticism more familiar to European eyes: Moorish architecture. Ramón Ibarrola, in charge of the architectural and engineering works for the exposition, designed the Mexican pavilion (see Fig. 1). Known as the Mexican Alhambra, it was a multicolored steel-and-iron Moorish-style construction that housed Mexican minerals, including half a ton of silver displayed as a mountain.[20] The pavilion was in fact inspired not so much by Mexico's Moorish-Spanish legacy as by the popular Moorish horticulture hall of Philadelphia 1876, in which exotic and tropical products had been exhibited.[21] Ibarrola's pavilion of 1884 was built by the Keystone Bridge Company of Pittsburgh as a structure that could be assembled and dismantled.[22] In addition to the Mexican Alhambra, a wooden building was constructed to house both a Mexican martial band and a cavalry squadron. Indeed, according to those who commented on the fair, Mexico and Japan staged the two most impressive foreign exhibits at New Orleans.[23]
The Mexican exhibit was notable for its impressive displays of minerals and agricultural products, especially tropical fruits and vegetable fibers such as henequen. For balance, a Mexican steamship, built in English dockyards, was also exhibited to exemplify Mexican progressivism.[24] In the middle of the exhibition's main corridor was a model of the "ship railroad planned by Captain Eads for the Tehuantepec Isthmus."[25]
Mexican art was an important part of the nation's international image on display at New Orleans, as it had been in Philadelphia. In the arts section, Mexico's School of Fine Arts displayed paintings by such artists as José Obregón, Santiago Rebull, Gonzalo Carrasco, and José María Velasco. As I will later show, these artists were important contributors to Mexico's modern national image. In addition, the New Orleans fair, in common with that in Philadelphia, included a women's pavilion, in which the presidential canopy made by the girls of the National Secondary School and other works by Mexican women were on display.[26]
The New Orleans fair was followed by many less important international fairs held in the southern United States. But even New Orleans eventually paled in comparison with the greatest American world's fair: the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893, which crowned the inclusion of the American
Image not available.
1.
The Mexican Alhambra, as Mexico's pavilion at the 1884 New Orleans world's
fair was dubbed. The structure is now on the Alameda in Santa Maria la Ribera,
Mexico City. (Photograph by the author)
West into the great industrial development of the United States. In the meantime, those who constructed Mexico's national image moved their equipment and interests to the great European fairs—that is, to Paris.