UC Riverside

In this dissertation I argue that the recent fiction and film produced after the uprising of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) in 1994 in Chiapas displays a concern for re-examining the importance of the Mexican Revolution's multiple discourses. The novels and films included in this study are Muertos Incómodos: falta lo que falta (2005) by Subcomandante Marcos and Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Zapata (2006) by Pedro Ángel Palou, Nadie me verá llorar (1999) by Cristina Rivera Garza, Los años con Laura Díaz (1999) by Carlos Fuentes, El violín (2005) directed by Francisco Vargas Quevedo, and the documentary Los últimos Zapatistas: héroes olvidados (2002) by Francesco Taboada Tabone. All of these works reflect upon and reexamine the themes of the Mexican Revolution. In their works, they demonstrate a preoccupation for the unresolved social problems that includes attitudes of disenchantment with respect to the legacy of the Mexican Revolution. I introduce the concept of mitonimia to understand Emiliano Zapata as a key figure in the contemporary social movements. For the texts studied I use the concept of collective memory introduced by Maurice Halbwachs as well as cultural memory proposed by Jan Assmann. I conclude that there is a continuity of the Mexican's Revolution themes among this works in the present, that is to say, there is a persistent dialogue among the studied works and the present moment in Mexico.