Funerals and Fanfare! A Concept with no time limit...

As I was finishing up my reading this morning and came across Paredez's introduction to Selenidad I was stricken by the possible connections that could be made between what he considers the cultural weight of Evita, Frida, and Selena gained in their deaths and the way in which morning for these women because a cultural place for identity construction. These processes remind me of state funerals in Mexico during the Porfiriato and Early Revolutionary years.

Paredez explains that he is focuses on "The important insights about the ways that assumptions about Latino consumption and mourning practices are positioned against normative standards for civil and national citizenship." () Yet what he fails to do is extrapolate the Latino/a practices back to their roots. If one looks at the practice of state funerals in Mexico, or the nationalized celebration of the Day of the Dead in Mexico City, it becomes clear that identity construction on a national level is very much connected to the consumerism and celebration of mourning. Funerals of state officials, revolutionary heroes, and celebrities served as points of unity for the whole of the state as well as provided a space for celebrating the state and the memory of the individual lost. Yet, it is not unrealistic to assume that the everyday individual did not know President Diaz's father-in-law, yet the massive state funeral and procession through the city, nevertheless, provided the people with an avenue of identity construction based on collective memory and mourning.

The Funeral of Venustiano Carranza in Mexico City, 24th May 1920

What seems to escalate the stories of Selena, Evita, and Frieda, are their international fame and their ability to co-exist across the border. Their deaths and veneration are particularly rich because they provide a group surrounded by difference (or a group that challenges white America's assumption of what is the US) and provides them with recognizable and famous symbols of what they are and how they can understand themselves. But as Paredez explains, even in their death the pants suit is modified to fit the mannequin, and the memory of these women is manipulated to serve multiple purposes.

- Sarah Howard

See:

Esposito, Matthew D. "The Politics of Death: State Funerals as Rites of Reconciliation in Porfirian Mexico, 1876-1889" The Americas 62(1)(2005): 65-94. 

Esposito, Matthew D. Funerals, Festivals and Cultural Politics in Porfirian Mexico: Albaqurque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010.