Eleventh International Conference on The Image

Abstract

President Benito Juárez (1958-1972) is considered the founder of contemporary liberalism in Mexico. This paper focuses on the visual pedagogy of the Liberal Party headed by Juárez during the Reform wars (1857-1861) and the Second Empire (1863-1867). Even though paintings, prints, and emblems were crucial to promote Juarez’s project and to shape his iconic image, historians have mostly preferred written texts as primary sources. However, the Liberal Party launched a visual pedagogy based on liberty allegories, military emblems, animals, and other symbols, to represent the Mexican fatherland. These images circulated on several supports and artworks, including furniture and upper-classes daily life objects. On the other hand, several painters and sculptors from the San Carlos Academy supported the dominant political project at producing paintings and sculptures related to liberty allegories, and they portrayed the liberal heroes. This liberal imagery embraced different traditions, including the pre-Hispanic symbolism, classic mythology, and colonial art styles, such as baroque and neoclassicism. I argue that the Liberal Party’s visual pedagogy conveyed a contradiction: Juárez and his Party promoted individual rights, secularism, and the sovereignty of the people. However, images did not directly symbolize those rights and values. Images enhanced the alleged greatness of the liberal heroes and epitomized the power of one person, according to the artistic fashions of the colonial upper classes and viceroys. Indeed, images reveal conservative inertias of the liberal project and visually reinforced the colonial political culture in Mexico.