Fiesta y olvido. Revista Amanecer (1948), recodo de la promoción cultural en Chiapas, México

Abstract

Towards the end of the 1940s and early 1950s, an editorial project appeared in Chiapas, Mexico under the cultural policy of Governor Francisco Jose Grajales. This project was developed in the Ateneo de Ciencias y Artes de Chiapas and the Department of Press and Tourism, and resulted in the publication of two important products, although of different fate: the Ateneo magazine and the Chiapas magazine. The above cannot be understood without looking at its margins. One of them is located in the year 1948, the same year that, at its end, witnessed the rise of Francisco Grajales to power. At that time, the magazine Amanecer appeared outside every institution, which was directed by a high school student, Mercedes Camacho, and had a fleeting life: nine monthly issues are the measure of its existence. In it we find the germ of what would come later: publishing projects as cultural promotion strategies, the formation of intellectuals or cultural elites and the institutionalization of the field of art and culture. It is these three axes that are announced in Amanecer and suggest the beginning of a practice of cultural promotion that lasted for years in Chiapas.