The lines between literature and journalism blurred in nineteenth-century Mexico. This was not only because the categories of “writer” and “journalist” overlapped but also because Mexico City's press was the main forum for publishing literature. Printing editions was expensive in a context with limited readership and competition from cheaper European imports. The newspaper offered a built-in audience and the opportunity to mobilize literature in the service of political critique. Publishing expanded in the late nineteenth century during the so-called Pax Porfiriana, which brought political stability and economic growth, but literature and journalism remained intertwined. Kevin Anzzolin's new book adds to a growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship on turn-of-the-twentieth-century cultural production by analyzing how Porfirian writers observed and critiqued journalism through fiction. Penning moralizing plotlines, these “guardians of discourse” crafted idealized visions of Mexico's public sphere, whose boundaries and rules of engagement, Anzzolin argues, they hoped to shape.
Guardians of Discourse...
