`La India Bonita', a beauty pageant celebrated in Mexico City in 1921, was a performance that embodied the concerns of revolutionary intellectuals seeking to build a `new Mexico' in the aftermath of the Porfiriato. Mexico's indigenous heritage and the figure of the feminine woman emerged as critical resources for nationalists, especially their efforts to combat the threat to the formation of national consciousness posed by feminism. This essay seeks to uncover the gendered construction of the rural mestiza in post-revolutionary Mexico, through a critical reading of representations both in the popular press and in the narratives of intellectuals such as the social scientist, Manuel Gamio, his peers, and predecessors.
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