Wooden canoes with graceful butterfly fishing nets gliding across Lake Pátzcuaro and the festive glow of candles and marigolds on the now famous Noche de los Muertos have made this region of Michoacán, Mexico, a must-see tourist destination. Jennifer Jolly's Creating Pátzcuaro, Creating Mexico uncovers the history behind this iconic status. In a welcome contribution to the burgeoning field of Mexican tourism studies and related scholarship on postrevolutionary art and nation building, Jolly argues that Lázaro Cárdenas's long-standing ties to Michoacán and the city of Pátzcuaro transformed the region into a model for cultural policy and a microcosm of Mexican development initiatives during his presidency (1934–40). Further, she asserts that the creation of a visual aesthetic in Pátzcuaro, rooted in notions of the local and traditional, was part of a modernizing process. With this book Jolly joins a generation of scholars who are rethinking the 1920s and 1930s in Mexico....

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