ABSTRACT In the 1920s, the Saturday Evening Post championed an ideology of progress that applauded hard work, “clean living,” and American economic interests. Editor George Horace Lorimer believed this ideology was being threatened by the government and people of postrevolutionary Mexico. This article shows how Lorimer used text and photography to construct a stereotypically backward Mexico that by contrast proved the superiority of US business culture. It argues that the Post’s framing of Mexico, ostensibly based on eye-witness observation, actually filtered out evidence of progress and naturalized a premodern “Mexicanity” that drew on centuries-old clichés about sloth and disorder.
Tad Tuleja (Fri,) studied this question.