UC Riverside

My dissertation project examines past and current understandings of the Jarabe Tapatío, which has come to be widely recognized as the national dance of Mexico. To conduct this investigation, I have utilized textual sources and oral accounts from personal interviews. I have also drawn on bodily renderings of the Jarabe Tapatío - some from my own practice of the dance, others that I observed in performance, and still others that I taught students to embody as imparted by Alura Flores de Angeles' "the God Mother of Mexican Dance." First, I investigate how the teaching and performance of the Jarabe Tapatío in 1920s and 1930s Mexico was sanctioned by the state to operate alongside a post-revolutionary nationalism which built up seemingly inclusionary polices that were in fact designed to eradicate the indigenous population, promote mestizaje as the ideal race for a homogeneous nation, re-affirm class positioning, and consolidate traditional gender roles. I examine the teaching and performance of the JarabeTapatío at events organized by the Secretary of Public Education (SEP) in rural schools, Cultural Missions programs, festivals, and weekly concerts. I unpack the love narrative as articulated by Flores de Angeles to examine the intersectionality of nation, race, gender, and class and how these constructs were incorporated within the costume, music, and dance movements of the dance. I also analyze the many ways in which several public presentations of the Jarabe Tapatío, by SEP school girls and by Nellie and Gloria Campobello- bodily consolidated and also contested post-revolutionary ideas as espoused by the SEP in the 1920s and 1930s. Secondly, I explore the teaching and performance of the Jarabe Tapatío in the twenty-first century to ask whether the dance has changed over time with immigration. I interviewed five twenty-first century United States practitioners and a number of dancers from California, Illinois, New Mexico, and Texas. In my interviews I found that contemporary performances of the Jarabe Tapatío ignited internal discussions concerning gender, race, class, and nation. Nonetheless, preservation of Mexican heritage assumed greater importance. Thus, a 1920s post-revolutionary ideology continues to be reinforced by these twenty-first century United States practitioners.