The nationalist discours of a divided elite. Platicas de arquitectura of 1933

Abstract

In the 1930´s, cultural questions about tradition and nationalism that had been debated for over half a century, had radically been politicized. This attitude had divided the architectural guild, that had been kept more or less united ideologically for almost a century through the National School of Architecture. At the academical meeting called Pláticas de Arquitectura tension within the guild goes beyond each other’s loyalties to the University or to the State: the politicization of the questions in Pláticas meets not only a generational change, or at least not only, but also a cultural crisis within this guild which is transforming into a major political player in the cultural and economic projects of the Mexican state. A player who, paradoxically, in the early twenty-first century, still imagines nation and modernity from the ideological nationalism and indigenous racial point of view of the thirties.