Identity and Nationalism in Mexico: Guerrero, 1780–18401

Abstract Nationalisms do not form at the expense of all previous solidarities and identities. Often nationalisms are instead based upon foundations laid by class, ethnicity, gender, or other identities. Nationalists stress identities which reinforce the unity they seek and simultaneously deny those that threaten that unity. An important part of this process consists of singling out foreigners as radically different ‘others.’The national identity constructed in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Guerrero, Mexico, stressed opposition to newly-defined foreigners and was intertwined with class, ethnic, religious, and political solidarities.