Since the independence movements of the nineteenth century, political leaders throughout Latin America have struggled to construct a unified sense of identity by the creation of what Carrie Chorba calls nationalist discourses, “specific discursive strategies” used to characterize a nation. Mexico, for a myriad of reasons, including its proximity to the United States, the Mexican Revolution (1910 – 17), the strength and longevity of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and regionalism, holds the “distinction among all other Latin American nations of being one of the most tenacious producers of this brand of narrative” (p. 8). Focusing on the late twentieth century, Chorba asks: What is Mexican national identity? How is “identity discourse,” an element of nationalist discourse, constructed? Concentrating on novels, films, and political cartoons from the 1980s and 1990s, Chorba shows that the thorny debate over what should define mexicanidad (Mexicanness) continued at the end of the twentieth century....
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