Time, history and politics: a comparative analysis on the bicentennial commemorations of the Argentinean and Mexican independence revolutions

Abstract

The article aims to compare the official Bicentennial commemorations of the independence revolutions that took place in Mexico and Argentina. The first objective is to analyze how two ideologically different governments commemorated the Bicentennial and represented the idea of revolution. The second is to see the relationships that these governments established with historical time. The sources used to achieve these objectives are the official speeches of presidents and the bicentennial celebrations. The thesis to be demonstrated is, first of all, that while Mexico tried to construct a reconciliatory memory, Argentina attempted to show the ruptures between the actors of the past and the present. Secondly, these two forms of commemoration gave rise to two different representations of the idea of revolution and two ways of representing the past-present-future triad.