How is the Image of a Country Created?
Also in this issue: Soccer's relentless commercialization. Mexico pursues legal action over the deaths of Mexican nationals in ICE custody. Remembering Vicente Rojo.
Lea La Jornada Internacional en español aquí.
Dear reader, we have a question for you this week: What topics would you like us to cover in the newsletter? Please share your thoughts here.
Visualizing Mexico
At this time of kicks and goals, all eyes are on Mexico. What image do we reflect? How do we construct and portray the story we tell about ourselves to the rest of the world?
The exhibition Mexico: Route and Destination offers an x-ray of how the country’s image was built and projected abroad. On view at the National Museum of Art (MUNAL), the exhibit takes visitors on a journey through the earliest efforts to create a national self-portrait.
"In Mexico, that image was a collective creation: intellectuals, artists, and cultural promoters worked together, especially during the first decades of the twentieth century, to define and disseminate a national identity," writes exhibition curator Claudia Garay. Speaking with La Jornada, she adds: "How is a country's image created? Today we understand that certain categories remain popular, such as the idea of picturesque towns."
Indeed, throughout Mexico's history, from pre-Hispanic times to the twenty-first century, artists have sought to portray, reveal, celebrate, and sometimes conceal what Mexico is and how it should be seen. The question has remained constant. Posada, Rivera, Orozco, Covarrubias, Kahlo, Siqueiros, the Taller de Arte Gráfico, Izquierdo, Toledo, generations of political cartoonists, and many of Mexico's greatest photographers, among countless others, have all sought to capture the country's image for audiences both at home and abroad.
In another exhibition touching on the same question, artist Daniel Lezama told La Jornada‘s Merry MacMasters: “The real Mexico lives within all of us who have lived under harsh conditions. Those of us who have lived here have accepted this pact with the country, with all its risks and tragedies. ... Some of us understand that this is the hidden cost of our lives compared with belonging to other nationalities. Mexico and its mysteries—that’s what we can call it.”
At the same time, these artistic efforts continue to define how Mexico is seen around the world, from its pre-Hispanic heritage to the masterpieces of its modern artists. Their influence has even extended beyond Mexico’s borders, shaping visual culture in other countries, including the United States. For example, cartoonist Rafael Barajas notes that Miguel Covarrubias became “one of the principal founders of modern American caricature.” While living in New York, his drawings became famous for depicting what came to be known as the Harlem Renaissance.
El perico, by Jorge González Camarena. The brilliantly colored bird is held by a Tehuana woman, "one of the most important figures in twentieth-century Mexican art," explains researcher Deborah Dorotinsky.
Mis Sobrinas (1940), by María Izquierdo. Revolutionary for its time, the painting presents women as strong figures who never lower their gaze.
Architectural Anarchy of Mexico City (1953). A photomontage by Lola Álvarez Bravo, who pioneered the artistic use of the technique in Mexico.
The Quote:
"If 'national identity' varies according to social class, it also varies, and profoundly, according to gender. The nation taught to men has been very different from the one shown and imposed upon women."
—Carlos Monsiváis
In Case You Missed It
◻️ Soccer and the relentless commercialization of the world's game. The World Cup that concludes this Sunday has also shined a spotlight on the business of soccer. Former player and coach Ángel Cappa argues that Donald Trump and FIFA President Gianni Infantino reshaped this year's World Cup. "It has long been said that capitalism eventually devours everything it can, and its latest victim is soccer," writes Víctor M. Toledo. Another commentator argues that "neoliberalism, embodied by FIFA, has taken soccer away from the working class—even denying many fans the chance to attend matches. Over the past five decades, commercialization has turned it into an elite sport." Whether the ball games first played some 3,000 years ago were commercialized is impossible to know. At the same time, this year's World Cup has been the tournament's most transnational yet, with 286 players representing countries where they were not born.
◻️ Mexico pursues legal action over the deaths of its citizens in ICE custody. The Mexican government has launched four legal and diplomatic initiatives in response to the deaths of Mexican citizens while in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). "Under these circumstances, the Mexican state has a clear obligation to seek justice," La Jornada writes. Fuerza Migrante, a binational advocacy organization, welcomed the filing of criminal complaints but said the measures came "too late," noting that 17 Mexican nationals have died in ICE custody. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has also expressed concern over the deaths.
◻️ More than 75,000 Mexicans deported from the United States. During the first five months of 2026, 75,750 Mexican nationals were deported from the United States to Mexico, representing a 35 percent increase compared with the same period last year, according to the Mexican government.
◻️ Fewer cars manufactured in Mexico and fewer jobs? The annual review of the USMCA does not add uncertainty, insists Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s secretary of economy. The automotive industry is the economic sector most vulnerable to changes in North American trade rules. In recent days, Toyota confirmed that part of its production in Mexico will be moved to the United States, following the closures of Nissan’s plant in Morelos and the Cooperation Manufacturing Plant (COMPAS) facility in Aguascalientes. The automotive industry represents hundreds of billions of dollars in annual production and millions of direct and indirect jobs in Mexico. In this context, Enrique Dussel Peters raises the question of whether Mexico can afford to exclude Chinese electric vehicles, while Manuel Pérez Rocha L. argues that the time has come to replace free trade and current agreements with a model of trade based on justice.
◻️ Monsiváis supported social movements throughout his life. “Carlos Monsiváis was perhaps the most important and influential Mexican left-wing intellectual of the second half of the twentieth century and the first decade of this century,” writes Felipe Ávila, director of the National Institute of Historical Studies of the Revolutions of Mexico. In an essay, he traces Monsiváis’s lifelong support for social struggles, from the age of 16 until the end of his life.
◻️ Latin America: reactionary governments, CPAC, and the Atlas Network. “The new governments are bringing together different sectors of the ruling classes around a single objective: to regain formal power and become neocolonies of the United States,” writes Marcos Roitman Rosenmann. “Their victories would not have been possible without explicit interventionism, along with the support of the Trump administration.”
◻️ Remembering Vicente Rojo. Throughout the pages of La Jornada, as well as in magazines, books, and other spaces, Vicente Rojo left a lasting mark through his talent as a designer and artist. “His designs are inseparable from his paintings. On one side, he had his editorial work; on the other, his easels with his artworks,” explains Germán Montalvo.
🎥 What We Are Watching
Photographer Flor Garduño reveals how light, observation, and the right moment come together to create an unforgettable image.
The subscription is free.
Edited by David Brooks and Jim Cason in the United States, Tania Molina Ramírez in Mexico City, of La Jornada, and Elizabeth Coll in Tokyo, under the direction of Carmen Lira Saade and Guillermina Álvarez. More information.