Gobernante y jugadora de pelota: Escultura monumental y política cultural en recientes exposiciones dedicadas a la mujer en la Huasteca posclásica

Two recent exhibitions dedicated to showcasing the social roles of women in the Mesoamerican Huasteca served as part of a symbolic-identity strategy developed to legitimate a new, inclusive model of Mexican political power. Centered on three monumental sculptures displayed and circulated through var...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Main Author:	Valdez Bubnova, Tatiana
Format:	Digital
Language:	Spanish / Castilian
Published:	UNIVERSIDAD ANTONIO NARIÑO 2026
Subjects:	análisis del discurso estatuaria huasteca género memoria cultural museografía Exposiciones y política cultural discourse analysis Huastec statuary gender cultural memory museography exhibitions and cultural policy análise do discurso estatuária huasteca gênero memória cultural museografia exposições e política cultural
Online Access:	https://revistas.uan.edu.co/index.php/nodo/article/view/2439
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

Description
Summary:	Two recent exhibitions dedicated to showcasing the social roles of women in the Mesoamerican Huasteca served as part of a symbolic-identity strategy developed to legitimate a new, inclusive model of Mexican political power. Centered on three monumental sculptures displayed and circulated through various publications, female figures were promoted as rulers of the Pre-Hispanic Huasteca, thereby presenting the public with a dimension of female social agency rarely recognized in Mesoamerican studies. This identification was disseminated through the museum and journalistic narratives —both verbal and visual— of two exhibitions held under the same title, Mesoamerican Huastec Women: Goddesses, Warriors, and Rulers, at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, Illinois, and the Museo Regional de La Laguna (MUREL, Torreón, Coahuila). This article examines the insertion of a motif into a governmental system of information dissemination. It is argued that both exhibitions formed part of the construction of a multimedia discourse in which ancient Huastec visual culture served as the material support for an updating of national cultural memory regarding the image of the pre-Hispanic woman. The symbolic value of this image is reconstructed through contemporary cultural policy using renewed concepts of gender, transmitted via official culture platforms so that a renewed image of the archaic woman may occupy a niche in national collective memory. Our study contributes to the debate on the political functions of museums, symbolic power, and the production of collective memory.