Judas at the Jockey Club

Throughout this book the author mainly tries to s

The countryside was viewed as being backwards by Diaz, Europeans, and foreign investors. Foreign visitors were confused by the ways in which these people lived. The countryside had no type of technology and refused to gain any such technology that was beginning to be used in the cities and other countries. As more foreign influence came to Mexico more technological advances involving tools and other sorts of machinery come with as well. The countryside people refused to use or gain any ideas from the modernization of Mexico. One example of this is the two-handled plow. If countrymen ever got one they would cut off one handle to keep the old plow design in use. The wheelbarrow is another example of this refusal to modernize. They refused new farming techniques and saw modernized machinery as “the devil.” It is very obvious in Beezley’s book that tradition was very important in the country and old techniques were bound to remain. This was an attempt to keep American and Mexican culture separate by the poor. The poor had already been informed that they could no longer wear their regular attire but that they must wear top hats and button up shirts. The poor simply saw their culture coming to an end with so many American influences in other parts of the social society.

It had long been a tradition in Mexico to watch cockfights and attend the bullring, but with the entrance of Diaz these Mexican cultural events came to an end. Because Diaz longed for political and national recognition he prohibited bullfighting in Mexico. This type of event was seen as showing how underdeveloped Mexico was and this was the last thing that Diaz wanted. It had long been a tradition that the bullfights showed a sense of society as a whole, but with a growing foreign community and Diaz’s hope for modernization many more organized sports began to play large roles in Mexico. A large reason for the growing influence of American sports was because of the economic success that occurring in Mexico. It was baseball and bicycling that took the place of bullfighting. These two separating the elite and underclassmen more than ever.

Even though many new games and recreational activities were imported into Mexico to help promote modernization they were only for a selected crowd. These activities create growing tensions between the elite and non-elite in concerns to being traditional or modern. More concerns to the changing of Mexico’s society occurred with the burning of the Judas’s and celebrations taking place around these burnings.

Both traditions of baseball and bicycling were adopted from American culture. Baseball became a major influence on determining the elite and bicycling even more so. Baseball caught on very quickly and fairly large crowds, of elite, were drawn to watch the growing American sport of ba

Some topics in this essay:
Jockey Club, Mexico American, Mexico Riding, Mexico Diaz, Diaz Europeans, American Mexican, Dead Carnival, Ban Johnson, Mexico Messages, William Beezley, modernization mexico, jockey club, mexico diaz, mexico people, sports recreation, judas jockey club, judas jockey, poor country people, elite elite, refused gain, country people, baseball bicycling, foreign influence mexico, mexico diaz elite,