Increasing interest in US immigration policies — particularly as they affect undocumented youth and Generation 1.5 students — has drawn parallel interest in questions of national identity. Who, for instance, counts as American today, and whom are we responsible for educating? These questions drive research projects and policy debates from disciplines as wide reaching as education, international studies, anthropology, and applied linguistics. However, despite this interest, relatively little attention has yet been given to the experiences of Mexican youth in Mexico — or their particular role in the development of a national identity within their home country.
Elena Jackson Albarrán's new book, Seen and Heard in Mexico: Children and Revolutionary Cultural Nationalism, addresses this gap by exploring the surprisingly strong role that children played in the development of a Mexican national identity during the decades immediately following the revolution. Far from being inconsequential bystanders, Albarrán argues, children played a...
