중남미

This article examines why the post-revolutionary state built public commemorative memorials such as the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City to glorify the Mexican Revolution and perpetuate its official memory. The significance of the Monument to the Revolution in reinforcing national integration and unification as well as in prolonging its commemoration has been only marginally discussed. Post-revolutionary leaders regarded the cityscape as an artifact of the Revolution, and therefore a way of demonstrating the direction of the national government following the prolonged revolutionary upheaval. The historian Patrice Elizabeth Olsen properly points out that the construction of the Monument to the Revolution was intended to reconstruct public memory of the Revolution as well as contemporary history, and to reconcile rival forces by removing Europhilic symbols of the Porfirio Díaz regime, such as the Palace of the Federal Legislature. The Monument adopted Prehispanic architectural forms to extol indigenous cultures and mexicanidad. Also inherent in the monument were the legitimation of post-revolutionary state and a symbolic reclamation of public space. The Monument to the Revolution in the capital city was paradigmatic, not only of revolutionary change, but also of a grand transition from the nationalist struggle for Independence to the liberal Reform of the mid-19th century, culminating in the Revolution of the 20th century. However, the enduring, evocative power of the Monument has had more to do with a subsequent modification that was carried out in the early 1940s, rather than with its original design and concepts in the previous decade. Its architect then designed an honored cemetery for five revolutionary leaders, and thereafter the meaning of the Monument and its linkage with the Revolution were definitively enhanced.