Interlude: Rome and Azatlan
The Criollos had a complex and often contradictory identity. Even before the annexation they had drawn parallels between themselves and both the Roman and Aztec Empires, after the annexation their newfound American character only added further complexity. On the one hand the Criollos were loudly and insistently American- as anyone who ever saw the 4th of July celebrations in Metropolis could attest- on the other hand their Americanism was predicated on New York’s support for the legacy of their existence as a foreign aristocracy. On the one hand the Criollos were enthusiastic participants in the
American Civic Religion, on the other hand they believed that the appearance of
Nuestra Senora had constituted a divine endorsement of the holy nature of Mexico. On the one hand they actively participated in the Fascist movement on the federal level, as the Fascists were the most supportive of accepting the Criollos as fully equal American citizens, on the other hand they rejected Fascist anti-racism in Old Mexico itself where they made much of the fact that they were white while the Mestizos and Indios were “red”. In theory they embraced their role as civilizers “Americanizing” the Mexican lower classes, in practice they were hostile to successful Americanization because it would mean the end of their stranglehold on political and economic power in Old Mexico.
This inconsistent sense of self- American and Mexican, republican and aristocratic, anti-racist and racist, European and New World- expressed itself in often paradoxical ways.
Take for instance the renaming of Mexican cities.
A small amount of renaming took place by Anglos in New Mexico (the OTL Mexican Cession and Northern Mexico), most notably of Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas where American settlers who identified with the biblical Children of Israel named their new state Canaan. There were a few other name changes, but for most part New Mexico kept its old Spanish place names. San Francisco remained San Francisco, Los Angeles remained Los Angeles, Mazatlan remained Mazatlan, etc. On the other hand, the renaming of places in Old Mexico was considerably more extensive, and despite the fact that all four Old Mexican states kept their pre-annexation names, more radical.
This may have been partly due to the fact that by 1875 all of the states of New Mexico (which had been acquired in 1846, 22 years before the annexation of Old Mexico) were predominantly Anglo or Native (in Sookobitʉ) and Hispanics were a visible but definite minority, whereas in Old Mexico the majority of the population was Hispanophone and Criollos and Anglos were minorities in mostly Mestizo and Indio states.
In other words: the Criollos felt threatened.
Mestizo women learning English under the tutelage of a Criollo teacher in Oaxaca.
The renaming of many of Old Mexico’s cities and towns by Criollo-ruled state governments was presented as an Americanization program. In practice it was less about embracing America than it was about rejecting Mexico. None of the major cities were named after famous Americans or founding fathers, and only one- Liberia- was named explicitly for America’s republican ideals. In fact it was often observed that the new names were less “American” than they were something else, a third category that was neither Mexican nor American. The new municipal names- which were largely applied during the 1870s- instead reflected contradictory themes of ancient Rome and modernity. They connected to a distant past the Criollos celebrated and to a new era they were eager to embrace, ignoring an intermediary period they wanted to forget.
This was also reflected in the
Esprit Américain school of art and architecture.
The
Espirit Nouveau artistic movement originated in France in the 1870s where it was descended from various iconoclastic reactions to cultural conservatism that had been simmering since France’s defeat in the Last Crusade twenty-years earlier.
Espirit Nouveau was a celebration of industry and technology, coupled with aesthetic inspiration from ancient Persian murals and medieval Muslim art. It used bright colors, stylized reliefs, and geometric patterns and arabesques. It could also be squarish, streamlined, and artificial, conveying speed and grandeur, a cultural embrace of the frantic mass-industrialization that characterized the Separate-verse.
Espirit Nouveau
patterns inspired Islamic Golden Age arabesques. Seriously, why is there not more Islamic/Arabic inspired Art Deco? You could do so much stuff with arabesques, or the geometric designs, or those arches in Cordoba.
Yes, yes, okay, it’s earlier Art Deco, but unlike OTL’s Art Deco
Espirit Nouveau was a more democratic movement that lacked its counterpart’s association with wealth, luxury, and the elite. Where Art Deco rejected mass manufacture in favor of individual craftsmanship,
Espirit Nouveau embraced the practice to provide thousands of copies of significant works of art such as
La Lumière Fantastique
(1877)- each, so the artist Théophile Rousselle insisted- as valid as the original, which the infamously transsexual sculptor promptly destroyed for philosophical reasons.
It’s hard to think of an artistic school less likely to catch on amongst the Criollo society of Old Mexico, and indeed when
Espirit Nouveau made its first American appearance in Montreal it seemed destined to be shunned in Metropolis.
Yet something curious happened.
The Criollo aristocracy loved modernity- or at least the appearance of modernity- and nothing was more modern at the time than
Espirit Nouveau. In France the artistic school might be democratic and even rebellious, in America it was the sort of foreign culture that the upper classes would have access to first and thus wouldn’t reach the lower classes until after they’d given it their own stamp. The first ten thousand copies of Rousselle’s
La Lumière or
Tape-à-L'oeil were rare enough across the Atlantic to be desirable by the upper crust, and samples of
Espirit Nouveau art and architecture began to appear, first just a few, but in growing numbers, in Old Mexico.It was the American Art Exposition in Metropolis in 1889 that opened the floodgates and gave the New World flavor of the movement its name;
Esprit Américain or American Spirit. It was less colorful than the French version, more “industrial”, more “machine-like”, more associated with wealth and power. Most noticeably, unlike
Espirit Nouveau that drew inspiration from ancient or mediaeval art of the Middle East,
Esprit Américain was seemingly obsessed with art and designs from Mesoamerican civilizations (although elements from Southwestern and Great Plains cultures were not unknown). Examples of the new school appeared across the United States, but it was Old Mexico, its birthplace, that became known as the touchstone of
Esprit Américain. Criollo city governments in Metropolis, Zenith, and Halcyon passed ordinances encouraging or requiring new construction to incorporate at least elements of Aztecan American Spirit, creating uniform municipal architectural styles.
Esprit Américain reliefs in downtown Zenith.
It was just another part of the ongoing effort by Old Mexico’s rulers to link the present with the distant past, papering over those inconvenient thirty-four years from 1821 to 1855 (not counting the thirteen years spent under American military occupation) when such a thing as Mexico had existed. It lasted until
La Mexicanidad and the
Espíritu Mexicano that followed the World War challenged the style’s hegemony in Mexico, and was eventually replaced wholesale by Rationalist architecture after the Great Pacific War.
You didn't think you were getting away without an Esprit Américain
-style Mesoamerican-revival step pyramid did you? Meet the Hidalgo State Capitol on the shore of (it's basically a large artificial pond with no relation to the original body of water) Lake Texoco. I swear to Joe Greenstein if I ever get fuck-you money I will build an effing Aztec-inspired art deco step pyramid and throw time-traveler parties in the penthouse at the top.