The School Day of the Dead: Persistence and Resignification of Nationalism: persistencia y resignificación del nacionalismo

Abstract

Day of the Dead has become the quintessential commemoration symbolizing the Mexican character. In this context, the Escuela de Bachilleres of the Autonomous University of Querétaro annually organizes its now-traditional Collective Altar and Offering Contest and Exhibition (CECAO), aiming to preserve Mexican traditions and strengthen social cohesion among students and the wider community. Through an ethnographic analysis conducted on October 29, 2024, including participant observation and conversations with students, this study examines how students, together with teachers and institutional actors, mobilize discourses and practices that reconfigure Mexican identity in dialogue with global references, local memories, and contemporary social demands. This reconfiguration is analyzed through the categories of speaking, choosing, acting, and consuming the nation, within the framework of banal, everyday nationalism. The findings show that CECAO functions as an institutional device that sustains nationalism through school-based commemorative practices, while also revealing tensions, transformations, and resignifications in the experience of Mexicanness, albeit always within the boundaries set by the institution’s discourse.