Spectacular Mexico

In the wake of its early twentieth-century civil wars, Mexico strove to present itself to the world as unified and prosperous. The preparation in Mexico City for the 1968 Summer Olympics was arguably the most ambitious of a sequence of design projects that aimed to signal Mexico\u2019s arrival in the developed world. In Spectacular Mexico, Luis M. Casta\u00f1eda demonstrates how these projects were used to create a spectacle of social harmony and ultimately to guide the nation\u2019s capital into becoming the powerful megacity we know today. Not only the first Latin American country to host the Olympics, but also the first Spanish-speaking country, Mexico\u2019s architectural transformation was put on international display. From traveling exhibitions of indigenous archaeological artifacts to the construction of the Mexico City subway, Spectacular Mexico details how these key projects placed the nation on the stage of global capitalism and revamped its status as a modernized country. Surveying works of major architects such as F\u00e9lix Candela, Pedro Ram\u00edrez V\u00e1zquez, Ricardo Legorreta, and graphic designer Lance Wyman, Casta\u00f1eda illustrates the use of architecture and design as instruments of propaganda and nation branding. Forming a kind of \u201cimage economy,\u201d Mexico\u2019s architectural projects and artifacts were at the heart of the nation\u2019s economic growth and cultivated a new mass audience at an international level. Through an examination of one of the most important cosmopolitan moments in Mexico\u2019s history, Spectacular Mexico positions architecture as central to the negotiation of social, economic, and political relations.