BUNKER - Consumers of Good Taste

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States
'Consumers of Good Taste:' Marketing Modernity in Northern Mexico, 1890-1910

Author(s): Steven B. Bunker
Source: Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Summer, 1997), pp. 227-269
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the University of California Institute for
Mexico and the United States and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
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'Consumers of Good Taste:' Marketing Modernity
in Northern Mexico, 1890-1910*
StevenB. Bunker
University of British Columbia
Durante la tiltima mitad del porfiriato, se desarroll6 una incipiente cultura

de consumo en las areas urbanas e industriales del norte mexicano, como
Monterrey y Chihuahua. Este estudio examina c6mo el consumismo tuvo
cabida dentro del sistema de creencias de modernizacion porfirista.
Ademas, pretende ilustrar el impacto del consumismo en la vida cotidiana
a traves de la publicidad, el crecimiento de tiendas departamentales y la
transformaci6n de las diversiones y celebraciones piblicas.
On the night of Mexico's centennial on September 16, 1910, in

place of the usual military parade, the residents of Monterrey wit-
nessed a carefully orchestrated extravaganza showcasing the estab-
lishments and wares of their city's downtown commercial core. For
days the much-awaited Competition of the Fagades (Concurso de
Fachadas) had captured the city's attention as shoppers and side-
walk strollers had wondered what lay behind the blanketed win-
dows of the stores along Morelos street. As six o' clock neared, ex-
pectant citizens gathered at the end of the street, arriving as
passengers in automobiles, carriages, and coaches or as pedestri-
ans. At the stroke of six, employees all along the thoroughfare
turned on light switches and unveiled the large show windows of
stores and business houses. The crowd moved through the shop-
ping district that store owners and event organizers had "trans-
formed into one grand open theater with the show windows serv-
*Anearlierversion of this articlewas presentedat the QualicumHistoryCon-
ference in Parksville, British Columbia, February,1995. I would like to thank
WilliamE. Frenchat the Universityof BritishColumbiafor his advisingskillsand re-
search funding support, as well as ShannonBakerand the anonymousreviewersof
MS/EMfor their thoughtfulcomments and editing.
Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 13(2), Summer 1997. ? 1997 Regents of the University of California.
227

228 Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos
ing as the stage settings."1 The store fronts acted as the focus of the
crowd's attention, as onlookers discussed the merits of each estab-
lishment to decide upon a winner. Department stores such as La
Reinera, Treviiio, and M. Cirno y Compafiia joined other enterprises
in receiving lavish praise for their flashing colored lights, national
flags, emblems and bunting, and other eye-catching decorations
placed in and around their show windows. The local businessmen
who had organized this display could only be pleased that the fol-
lowing day's front-page headlines called it "One of the Most Bril-
liant Events in the History of Monterrey."2
The central importance of storefronts and business faSades in
this celebration testifies to the new culture of consumption that
emerged in the Porfiriato. While historians have dealt with the cul-
tural, social, and economic impact of the productive forces of capi-
talism, they have yet to broach the effects of consumerism upon
Mexican society.3 Both production and consumption characterized
the rapidly growing and transforming urban milieu in which in-
creasing numbers of Mexicans lived. This consumerism, as well as
being essential to economic growth, came increasingly to define
the culture and self-image of Mexicans. For many, participation in
this market exchange signified being part of Mexico's moderniza-
tion efforts. Consumerism can be placed within a larger Porfirian
modernization belief system that Alan Knight has called a develop-
mentalist ideology, whose adherents embraced the values of moral
reform, civic pride, hygiene, nationalism, and economic progress
patterned after Western European and other North American eco-
nomic and cultural models. The believers of this ideology consti-
tuted a class of urban Mexicans who titled themselves the gente
decente, or respectable people. As lowly municipal clerks as well as
powerful businessmen, teachers, shopkeepers, government offi-
cials, store managers, journalists, white collar workers, and mem-
1. Monterrey News, 17 September 1910, 1
2. Ibid.
3. See, for example, Stephen H. Haber, Industry and Underdevelopment: The
Industrialization of Mexico, 1890-1940 (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1989); and Mario Cerutti, Burguesfa, capitales e industria en el norte de Mextco:
Monterrey y su dmbito regional (1850-1910) (Monterrey: Alianza Editorial,
1992). Two recent efforts to analyze a consumer culture In Mexico include Nora
Perez-Ray6n, "La publicidad en Mexico a fines del siglo XIX: Expresi6n del pro-
greso econ6mico y la modernidad porfirista, transmisora de nuevos valores y mode-
los culturales," Soctol6gica 9, 26 (September 1994): 195-222; William H. Beezley,
"The Porfirian Smart Set Anticipates Thorstein Veblen In Guadalajara,"in Rituals of
Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico,
ed. William H. Beezley, Cheryl English Martin, and William E. French (Wilmington,
Delaware: SR Books, 1994), 173-90.

Bunker: Marketing Modernity in Northern Mexico 229
bers of the working classes, particularly artisans, they all claimed a

place for themselves within respectable society, defining them-
selves more by means of these cultural values of developmentalism
rather than by economic considerations.4
At the turn of the century, the gente decente were particularly
influential in the prospering urban areas of the north. Cities such
as Monterrey in Nuevo Leon, and Chihuahua City in Chihuahua,
fostered a consumer culture that stemmed from their proximity to
influential and established U.S. consumer markets combined with
their own rapid growth in terms of the economy, population, and
wealth.5 The gente decente, or the "consumers of good taste" as
one journalist called them, could purchase both domestically pro-
duced and imported consumer goods, benefitting from their
cities' position as railway hubs for an increasingly inexpensive rail
network.6
Consumerism was a largely urban phenomenon. City planners
and service industries in Monterrey and Chihuahua built urban in-
frastructures to facilitate the movement of commodities and labor
in the name of rapid population growth, increased efficiency, tech-
nology utilization, public safety, and hygiene. During the period
between 1871 and 1900, Chihuahua City grew from 12,000 to
30,000 residents, while Monterrey increased from 14,000 to 79,000
between 1869 and 1910.7 Electric power grids provided energy to
industries, stores, and commercial businesses, as well as lighting for
the streets. Paved roads and electric trams moved people to and
from their homes, work, stores, and entertainment venues. Tele-
graph and telephone systems crisscrossed business districts and, in
4. For more information on the gente decente and their developmentalist ide-
ology, see Knight, The Mexican Revolution, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1986), especially vol. 2, 510-511; William E. French, "Prostitutes and
Guardian Angels: Women, Work, and the Family in Porfirian Mexico," Hispanic
American Historical Review 72, 4 (November 1992): 529-53; William H. Beezley,
Judas at the Jockey Club and Other Episodes of Porfirtan Mexico (Lincoln: Univer-
sity of Nebraska Press, 1987). For artisan efforts to gain membership in respectable
society, see Alan Knight, "The Working Class and the Mexican Revolution, c.
1900-1920," Journal of Latin American Studies 16 (May 1984): 51-79; and
William E. French, "'Progreso Forzado': Workers and the Inculcation of the Capital-
ist Work Ethic in the Parral Mining District," in Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resis-
tance, 191-212.
5. Knight, The Mexican Revolution, vol. 1, 40.
6. Monterrey News, August 29, 1905, 4. The term "consumers of good taste"
arose in a newspaper article praising the sophistication of patrons who imbibed the
various award-winning beers of the Cerveceria Cuauhtemoc. From 1873 to 1910
freight rates drop from 10 cents/km/ton to 2.3 cents/km/ton, Haber, Industry and
Underdevelopment, 16.
7. Knight, The Mexican Revolution, vol. 1, 40.

the case of telephones, began to be available for domestic con-

sumption. According to La Voz de M6xico in 1895, "there is no
street where one does not find something being constructed and it
is incredible the value that lots have reached in the city."8
The gente decente integrated consumption into its larger social
vision, conveying and reiterating its perceptions of gender roles
and superior class position through its participation and inclusion
into a consumer culture. This arrangement led to a mutually satisfy-
ing relationship between consumer and vendor, the gente decente
and the advertising and consumer industries. Paradoxically, as par-
ticipation in this culture of consumption reinforced some gender
roles and separate spheres of influence it also subverted ideas of
female domesticity by opening up new territories of public space
to gente decente women. Society continued to glorify women and
ensconce them in a cult of feminine domesticity that portrayed
them as mothers and "GuardianAngels" of the Mexican home, but
the expanding market economy necessitated that they be con-
sumers as well as household providers.9 Women became shoppers
who needed to leave the home in order to meet their families' new
consumer needs. Department stores and urban shopping and enter-
tainment districts became zones of consumption defined by the
presence of women.
At the same time, moral reformers, local businessmen and gov-
ernments set out to control and transform urban social space so
that its appearance harmonized with the refined image of urban
modernity held by enlightened Mexicans. The festival calendars in
Monterrey and Chihuahua also began to reflect the official culture
of the gente decente, but consumerism alone did not change these
events. The new organizers transformed the public celebratory cal-
endar by merging their partiality for the vision of the modern con-
sumer world with the contemporary, Porfirian ideologies of moral
reform, civic pride, and state building. Businessmen became central
8. Alexander Saragoza, The Monterrey Elite and the Mexican State,

1880-1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988), 41. For an introduction to
northern development, see Guillermo Beato and Domenico Sindico, "The Begin-
ning of Industrialization in Northeast Mexico," The Americas 39, 4 (April 1983):
499-518; Haber, Industry and Underdevelopment; Miguel Tinker Salas, In the
Shadow of the Eagles: Sonora and the Transformation of the Border during the
Porfiriato (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming 1997), chapters 2
and 9; and Mark Wasserman, Capitalists, Caciques, and Revolution: The Native
Elite and Foreign Enterprise in Chihuahua, Mexico, 1854-1911 (Chapel Hill: Uni-
versity of North Carolina Press, 1984).
9. For more on this Mexican middle class cult of domesticity, see French,
"Prostitutes and Guardian Angels."

figures in the organization of festivals new and old, secular and reli-
gious. They figured in the workings of nationalist holidays such as
Independence Day, the new and expressly commercial Carnival in
Monterrey, the old Trades Procession, and the Santa Rita festival.
By the late nineteenth century, the residents of Monterrey and
Chihuahua lived in an environment characterized by the glorifica-
tion of personal and family consumption, where definitions of so-
cial norms and the ideal image of a modern Mexican centered
around the act of consumption. Consumers, however, had to en-
sure that whatever they purchased enhanced their personal mod-
ern image, that the item they bought or the event they attended
embodied the larger values of modernization upheld by the gente
decente and Porfirian society. Fortunately, consumers had a new
guide to help them in this task: the new mass-circulation newspa-
per and the advertising it contained.
Mass-Circulation Newspapers and Advertising

With modernity came the rise of the mass-circulation newspa-
per and the science of advertising. Newspapers, purchased on the
streets or delivered to the home, became a necessary accoutrement
and guide to the city for enlightened urban dwellers. Literate Chi-
huahuans, over one-quarter of the state population, comprised the
major market for these papers. Because of the iconographic nature
of consumer advertising and the status of being seen simply look-
ing at the pages, illiterate citizens bought newspapers as well.10 In
general, these readers could browse through the daily journals to
find out about new developments around the world and in town.
For some, local news meant checking on new businesses in the
area. For others reading newspapers and their advertisements al-
lowed them to keep in touch with the latest available products and
services of stores and entertainment venues.
The editors of these mass-circulation newspapers realized that
their readership and advertisers had given the journals a mandate
10. Nearly 28 percent of Chihuahuans were literate, and specific groups such
as artisans boasted rates of nearly 35 percent with even higher levels among the
gente decente. Knight, The Mexican Revolution, vol. 1, 40; and Knight, "The Work-
ing Class and the Mexican Revolution" 53. For a concise summary of newspapers
from Mexico City and several states, see Aurelio de los Reyes, Los origenes del cine
en Mexico (1896-1900) (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1983), 7-21; on
the debate over the impact of advertising, see Michael Schudson, Advertising, The
Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society (New York:Basic
Books, Inc., 1984); Perez-Ray6n, "Lapublicidad en Mexico"; and Ellen Gruber Gar-
vey, The Adman in the Parlor:Magazines and the Gendering of Consumer Cul-
ture, 1880s to 1910s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

to advance the image of a modernizing and increasingly affluent

society. Thus, they publicized consumer goods, services, and other
progressive advances made in their cities, regions and the world.
Mass-production technologies made particularly newsworthy sto-
ries, for they created new consumer products and lowered prices
for traditional ones, such as cigarettes.1 Journalists reported on the
domestic consumer industries that ranged in size from the huge
Cerveceria CuauhtCmoc-Monterrey's "mother industry"12-to the
smaller but highly efficient, electrified tortillerias. These industries
fed, quenched the thirst, clothed, cleaned, and housed Mexicans of
all classes. From the coarse cotton clothing made for workers to the
bottled sparkling mineral water from the Topo Chico resort, there
existed products for both the affluent and wage earners. Around
Monterrey and Chihuahua, the goods commonly produced for mass
markets included bread, crackers, food sauces and pastes, vinegars
and oils, butter, preserved meats, carbonated water, chocolate,
sweets, beer, liquors, ice, matches, veils, soaps, cosmetics, per-
fumes, cigarettes, beds, and some furniture both for home and
office. 13
The Monterrey News in Monterrey and El Correo de Chi-
huahua in Chihuahua were two examples of this new breed of
daily paper. Founded in 1892 by American entrepreneur Joseph A.
Robertson, the Monterrey News became a highly successful Eng-
lish-language daily, read by Mexicans and Americans alike. Robert-
son launched a Spanish edition in 1906, yet even then the English
edition continued to print bilingual and occasional Spanish-only
advertisements.14 El Correo, edited by Silvestre Terrazas from
1898-1912, was a Spanish-language newspaper dedicated to the
propagation of Catholic reform ideas. These two newspapers dis-
agreed on politics and religion, but they shared a consumerist per-
spective of progress and they encouraged their readers' incorpora-
tion of a consumerist world view through articles, editorials, and
especially advertising.
Advertising incorporated new, sophisticated, attention-grab-
bing techniques. In the past, most advertisements had relied on a
style of simple text and unassuming size, and some stores and com-
11. Haber, Industry and Underdevelopment; and Rosalind Williams, Dream
World: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1982), 10.
12. Saragoza, The Monterrey Elite, 5.
13. Mario Cerutti, Burguesfa, capitales e industria en el norte de Mxtico,
180.
14. See, for example, Monterrey News, 30 August 1908, 6; 19 December
1908, 3 of the Christmas supplement.

panies continued this format. By the early 1900s, large companies

were introducing brand names and often completely new products
using the modern technologies of photography with drawings and
even serial cartoons. Advertising texts also began to instruct and tit-
illate their readers in large half- or full-page ads. Mexican and
American manufacturers, department stores, and mass entertain-
ment shows instituted campaigns that implied that their consumer
goods would deliver an ideal lifestyle. These ads suggested social
success through key words and images pertaining to progress, fash-
ion, and hygiene that advertisers carefully chose to strike resonant
chords in Porfirian psyches.
Supporting their advertisers, many newspapers defined "news"
as developments for consumers.15 Articles on business ventures,
while ostensibly written as news stories, came across as advertise-
ments. The Cerveceria Cuauhtemoc, for example, could rely on fre-
quent press publicity, whether in support of its high public profile
at public events or simply to extoll both the company and the
virtue of its products. The Monterrey News promoted the brewery
for its efforts to "bring [men] comfort and happiness, and open the
way to a higher civilization."16
The opening of the La Estrella cracker factory, owned by the
powerful Terrazas clan, illustrated the integration of advertisements
and articles in promoting favored players in the consumer-market
field. In January 1905, La Estrella advertised on the front page of El
Correo that it would be opening its new steam-powered bakery to
the public. It let its potential customers know, in bold letters, that it
was "the first of its kind in the state" making the "purest and best
quality bread" using only fresh leavening agents, nothing fer-
mented. Emphasizing its new technology and playing up the Por-
firian concern for hygiene, it continued on to note that its bread
was "mechanically produced, absolutely clean;"'7 in other words, a
far superior product than its less progressively baked counterparts.
Furthermore, for the next month, the hip Locales y Personales col-
umn on page one of El Correo suggested that La Estrella was the
place for pan, in fact it was "the best in the city."'8
15. The MonterreyNews, El Correo de Chihuahua, and, to a lesser extent,
the Chihuahua Enterprise formed the body of my research work. Skimming
through other newspapers such as El Imparcial and El Tiemposuggests that their
emphasis on consumption closely matched that of other official or progress-
oriented journals.
16. TheMonterreyNews, 29 August1905, 4.
17. El Correo, 16January1905, 1.
18. See, for example, El Correo, 1 February1905, 1, as well as the two weeks
preceding and following this article.

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The highly competitive tobacco industry also basked and bat-

tled in the limelight of the newspapers and public discourse, each
firm vying for consumer loyalty with dazzling contests and by iden-
tifying its brands as the most modern and fashionable. The tobacco

wars illustrate a wider phenomenon in modern consumption; cor-

porations emphasized selling an "image" along with the product it-
self, using distinctive brand names and advertising through print
and public spectacle.
Mass-production technology and huge capital investments pro-
vided the means to carve out a national market for cigarettes. This
development directly resulted in smaller companies being squeezed
out or forced into mergers in order to stay competitive.19 This
process soon left only two major players on the field: El Buen
Tono-owned by Ernesto Pugibet-which also held a controlling
interest in La Cigarrera Mexicana and thus captured 50 percent of
the market, and La Tabacalera Mexicana, which held a 12 percent
market share.20 Together, at maximum capacity, they could pro-
duce over six billion cigarettes a year by utilizing automated ciga-
rette machines imported from France. Hundreds of employees
complemented these machines in El Buen Tono's huge, modern fac-
tory that also provided recreational entertainment to off-duty
workers and doubled as a showcase of Mexico's progress to foreign
dignitaries.21
Using impressive graphics and minimal text, the advertisements
for El Buen Tono let consumers across Mexico know that it was the
first, the largest, and the most modern tobacco manufacturer in the
country. One ad featured a woman worker standing behind a huge
cigarette rolling machine with a caption of "UltimaPerfecci6n de El
Buen Tono,' S.A."The ad proclaims that this machine absorbs all to-
bacco dust, making El Buen Tono's cigarettes "the most perfect and
hygienic in the Republic."22Another ad series illustrates a cigarette
factory that spanned several blocks. In a picture of modern urban
efficiency, smokestacks billowed over male and female workers as
they streamed into the front doorway. Bicyclists and automobiles
completed the portrait, sharing the street with company delivery
trucks and well-dressed pedestrians who hopped over the electric
tram tracks.23
The spectacular marketing battle waged by these two firms had
19. ContemporaryMexicansrecognized the possibilityof a tobacco monop-

oly. The editor of La Gaceta de Policfa frequentlynoted with concern the potential
monopoly of El Buen Tono as it attemptedto edge LaTabacaleraMexicanaout of
the market.See, for example, 11 February1906, 6, and 18 February1906, 6.
20. Haber,Industry and Underdevelopment,48.
21. Tony Morgan,"Proletarians,Politicos,and Patriarchs:The Use and Abuse
of CulturalCustoms in the EarlyIndustrializationof Mexico City, 1880-1910," in
Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance, 156.
22. El Correo, 3 February 1906, 4.
23. Ibid., 5 October 1907, 3.

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_a mis ingeniofi que se conoce, sistema DecouflI, de Parls.
NOTA.-- Vnlse cnn seguindn plana el informe emitido por cl Con,sejo Silperior (le Snlubridnd
sobro la mejora introdulcidaen esta mtiquinn por mcdio de un npnrnto (ic lielosl ]:iterntndle, cl celll
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the mark of a Barnumesque epic. El Buen Tono and La Tabacalera

employed female hostesses to hand out free samples to men at bull-
fights and at theaters; women received red roses rather than ciga-
rettes, a fascinating example of gendered marketing considering
the fact that women smoked at this time. The tobacco companies
presented free public films and variety shows on their factory

grounds or at public events; promotions escalated into more outra-

geous spectacles, including the use of a dirigible and Mexico's first
airplane to advertise the various brands.24
After bringing their customers these novelties, El Buen Tono
and La Tabacalera fought each other for a larger market share by en-
gaging in a lottery campaign that offered prizes encompassing the
exceedingly generous and the truly bizarre. Smokers mailed one
hundred empty El Buen Tono packets to Mexico City in order to
receive one ticket in the company's lottery draw, while La Taba-
calera's ads crowed about the ease of its contest that required only
one packet to enter with 100 peso prizes in randomly distributed
packs.25 By early 1906 El Buen Tono regaled its customers with a
grand prize of 5,000 pesos and subsidiary prizes totaling another
1,800 pesos. Several months later, in a constant game of one-up-
manship, La Tabacalera enticed smokers with a grand prize of
10,000 pesos and ten subsidiary prizes of 1,000 pesos. El Buen
Tono did not equal this largesse, although it did offer a monthly lot-
tery totaling $12,500 pesos by 1910.26 In addition to cash prizes,
the companies offered smokers the opportunity to win a house, a
French car, and even a crocodile.27
These campaigns dangled the possibility of affluence to Mexi-
can consumers by linking the cigarette with Porfirian notions of
modernity, wealth, and leisure. They took the historically estab-
lished lottery and adapted its rewards to reflect what Porfirian soci-
ety prized most. While cash signaled prosperity, it was modern con-
sumer luxury goods, such as the automobile and the respectability
of house ownership, that signified social success in turn-of-the-
century Mexico. To a cross-class audience, the free film shows and
the presence of cigarette-bearing salesgirls at the theater, the bull-
fight, and other spectator events had an effect similar to that of the
lotteries: They cultivated the association of the cigarette as an ob-
ject to be consumed at leisure events and in circles of successful
arrivistas, a product that literally offered a ticket to the Porfirian
good life.
The tobacco companies paralleled their lottery competition
with aggressive print campaigns. The supposedly impartial articles,
innovative graphics, and cartoons in the newspapers depicted ciga-
rettes as the ticket to a dream world of success for which most of
their consumers could only puff and pray. For example, El Correo
24. Morgan, "Proletarians, Politicos, and Patriarchs, 155-156.
25. El Correo, 20 April 1906, 4; 16 April 1906, 4; Morgan, "Proletarians, Politi-
cos, and Patriarchs," 155.
26. El Correo, 18 April 1906, 4.
27. Morgan, "Proletarians, Politicos, and Patriarchs,' 155.

helped to raise the social stock of cigarettes, praising evenly both El

Buen Tono and La Tabacalera. Covering the events at a Kermesse, a
fundraising festival held by Chihuahua's respectable society, the pa-
per spent considerable column space commenting how El Buen
Tono and its "Canela Pura" brand were the clear choice for "the ele-
gant society of Chihuahua." For good measure the article men-
tioned a doctor who stood up, announced himself a happy, heavy
smoker of the "delicious 'Canela Pura"' and proceeded to recom-
mend that the spectactors purchase a pack from one of the beauti-
ful, wandering cigarette girls.28
La Tabacalera received its support in articles such as the one en-
titled "Siempre 'Flor de Canela"' which recounted how a group of
friends met at the fashionable high-society Casino Club to compete
for the Shooting Club's Cup of Honour.29 One friend said that he
smoked only the "Flor de Canela" brand produced by La Tabacalera,
a tobacco firm "whose fame was increasing greatly." Another men-
tioned that he would smoke no other product. The one doubter,
"Chente," expressed skepticism, but he decided to try one after the
local representative from La Tabacalera announced that he would
donate a magnificent Winchester Automatic rifle to the winner. The
rich flavor of "Flor de Canela" swept Chente into extolling the
virtues of these cigarettes whose smoke was inoffensive, unlike
other brands. All the guests praised his phrases and Chente went on
to win that rifle. Just in case El Correo's readers got a little suspi-
cious, the article concluded with the message: "All this is not an ad-
vertisement, but it is the truth."30
In the realm of paid advertisements, the El Buen Tono ad series
created by the Mexican publicist Juan Bautista Urrutia and consist-
ing of nine-panel cartoon strips was perhaps the most fascinating
byproduct of the tobacco companies' marketing war. Urrutia pos-
sessed a keen grasp of Mexican popular culture and his vignettes
provided a history of Mexican street culture from 1903 to the Revo-
lution. His drawings often resembled those of Jose Guadalupe
Posada, Manuel Manilla, and other famous chroniclers of Porfirian
popular culture. His comics illustrated the influence of large-scale
business interests in the consumer industry; these firms marketed
multiple products through the medium of a single advertisement.
The creators of these comics advertised not only El Buen Tono cig-
arettes, but also "Moctezuma" brand beer, "El Vulcano" beds, and
even the Mexico City newspaper, El Imparcial. Most importantly,
this series offered a rich commentary on Mexican society and hu-
28. El Correo, 9 February 1909, 1.
29. Ibid., 8 May 1906, 1-2.
30. "Todo esto 'no es un reclame, pero es verdad'"

mor as advertisers worked cultural mores and social angst into their
efforts to sell cigarettes. Each cartoon ad advanced "Canela Pura"or
"Superiores" cigarettes as a savior for the protagonist who usually
sought love, economic success, and social prestige. The ads cov-
ered a wide variety of subjects and portrayed a world of fantasy and
the fantastic. Judging from their longevity, they must have commu-
nicated successfully with the intended audience.31
As in the lottery campaign, these ads presented El Buen Tono
cigarettes as a dream maker, a sure thing in a constantly changing
world of fads and phony panaceas. One ad focused on a man's
quest to put on weight. Tired of enduring taunts from friends who
nicknamed him "dragonfly" for his slender physique, our hero
Popote (drinking straw) sought a solution. First he tried dozens of
the health elixirs and patent medicines that crowded Mexican ad
space and store shelves at this time.32 Upon their failure he turned
to an unsuccessful hydrotherapy that only gave him a cold. To no
avail he worked out at the gym, rode a bicycle, and played sports.
Not even eating heaps of food helped him to put on weight. At
wit's end he considered writing a will, but a friend intervened and
convinced him to smoke a "CanelaPura."A miracle occurs, and sud-
denly we see our portly protagonist puffing contentedly as he
toasts his friend over a mug of "Moctezuma."One might speculate
that the final message of this ad characterizes how El Buen Tono
wanted Mexican smokers to relate to its products: Popote hoists a
beer in honor of "Canela Pura" cigarettes, "to which he owes the
realization of his constant desires."33
Along with sharing the satisfaction of desires, the ads com-
bined scenes of traditional Mexico and modern technology, and de-
picted El Buen Tono as a driving force of technology. The dirigible
that El Buen Tono brought to Mexico in 1907 found its way into
two ads, both of which claimed that only the smoke of Canela Pura
cigarettes kept it aloft while the fumes of other brands would cause
the downfall of the airship. In the first ad a European-dressed man
implored a mixed-class crowd to have faith in the new technology,
proving his claim by landing the smoke-filled balloon in the middle
of a bullfight to the cheers of the crowd.34 In the second, a famous
31. Juan Manuel Aurrecocchea and Armando Batra, Puros Cuentos: la histo-
ria de la historieta en M6xico, vol. 1 (Mexico: Editorial Grijalbo, 1988), 122.
32. For background on many of the patent medicines sold in the United States
and Mexico at this time, see Sarah Stage, Female Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and
the Business of Women's Medicine (New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Inc., 1979).
33. El Correo, 8 February 1908, 3. "... en honor de los cigarros CANELA
PURA, a los que debe la realizaci6n de su constante anhelo."
34. Ibid., 28 March 1908, 3.

CAPIrTAL
ocIAi.:, ELBUEN.TONO,S . GEt.i
A. _,i-tco '
:$.6.5' s0 0 0
*.',xc::.'0.li
$.500,00
.6 'MEXICO. E.PG-l
' BI' a
[
:~~.l ~''.g::nrln
~ :"::i~,'r:.
IW"~:::~
,1,,:'
-.
,, R. b tiano Popot( tenfu,un,i delga- Eau burlt Ifidtueron A Popnte- Aigulen le aconsie6 el tratamlen;to '
. dox tal. que sus umigom luJtmuitizuron hu.icnr la manera dc crenr mlccutlo, y hidroterOpico, pero o dinico quo con.- :
QC conelpodticonotnbrcdc '-J.a iib.iula. al cfeto ingrir6 algunan doccm13 do siguid fu6pscar una pulmonlf mo .,
?0 Mfrancosdc reconatituyentT. Trocotuda, -
~
:4: '
obeontrnua-los *port l -
l:bl_ro.l
I .
a b e e i: kwcan
Popote. deccpclonado. penil en ha IPrsodilo inuporidot A termlnarH Poe Sotqns q alo tasnereco llf'mr .p
c5rou tmttamento, y locomunlcfl Irn
cln cIrctnro, un y Cttbu.siano.t felIzynoplercde^;
malgo, que para quitarle tan negro hbltndos pcsdo opado Vrcorar oportunldad de ebebr cervea oMoorw ;,
pemlento, loobfteqtiidu clgarrbdo tamafi arpriia _ - en honord loscigarro â
?CANILA PmUR. ' .
>^.
u- '
.... : "' - * * . '
A
..loe que deb, Is re,llx6ad?:deaopsuiur
uconctant nheloh -:,.
,
,
ho -;.
"ELBUEN
TONO". a I' ty'la propie,lad
8. A. tieneregiBtrada,oUffoirme de estoaanouno1o,8
Grandes- Premios, Parfs 1900 y :St..Louis
MiSsourl.i;9:i
-. i.amejorCorvezade la Repblicai beslade'Moctezum riz
European aeronaut, Mr. Hamilton, succumbed to the "stupid idea"

of the devil to substitute the smoke of "Canela Pura"with another
brand. He became tangled in the new electric wires and electric
street lights that were spreading throughout urban areas. Next we
see a mob of dozens of sombrero-sporting Mexicans pelting the
devil with stones for tarnishing the good name of El Buen Tono.35
35. Ibid., 27July 1907, 3.

Bunker: Marketing Modernity in Nortbern Mexico 241
.
CA;ITAL'SOCIAL: BUEN S
TONO,
$ 6.500,000 \ MEXICO.
_
i
Ondo *I pdbUoosupo I* eu 4d,mc.
del Y M(r.'Hmailton,parn reconfortfe opuanr lo
p
U&ruetl6 sradw contrael. diblo. qe-mn- aotumbrsdo vaaode oervoe Moerxz%wA jumndo.
tidia foH d El BuenTono. hablAtr el que no volver i usaren iutawoenaonaotruhuam(o
y esntpaa da me.xlcanose
r psablcoo T&oritto y ex qulci1de lowineuosparablea GC,xu Pua
dgiarroma
.L B.UE TONOS, A..tiene TiWtrda, onformea la loy,la propiedad

de esto anunoiot.
QrG.ndes Prealos, Paris 1900 y St. Louis Missouri 1904.
La major Cerveza de la Rep6blica es la do Moctezuma-Orizaba.
These ads suggested that Mexicans could now negotiate the posi-
tives and negatives of modernity with the help of "Canela Pura."
Other consumer-good technologies such as the automobile oc-
cupied a central position in these cartoons. In one case, two young
lovers drive a motorcar as a get-away vehicle36 while in another, a
36. Ibid., 28 June 1906, 3.

lwnih rgesvetikn
ur, nth
tikig
portrayed
rbbr
technology
ub
ihsoe
as
itoth
a positive
pnckelie
force that,
icim
com-
CAPI,AL
SOCL: EL BUENTONO,
S. A. D.-ORG ,.R iL
$ 6.500,000 MEXICO. E. PUGIBET
;
~ ~? . -3.." y.Z,' ~ .- -
Oolaea. el felnoo mecnlco. apurd Ye

meojido. tond un
Impeacll ylo no ecp opade tole
ColAn borobre
nn potrer Tsodcor e Mocrzou .prlmero us n6. ue oglpron6edcodel .rr Wecat:dlmo: bibfaInventdoun
y iddirgld tmnqmilaemnte n cona rotf or sorl*eun
. *ciclo-volAnte
prdoximocboque Y rusolvid-provechbr- '
_-
( 1. dJ VuLCAI*o "a
- _
tIem
~comrnt .
co n .n oomet lo pra ajutar lamcdentaa i odad (t
.
A
&al pure.,mont en su tr o r tro . i ufoa
,
empr.
enii . verci
e,,ndi
prendid6 nae~ hazfi ,mntd
wfpulle-.e dr
mdns'L l te
tentoo.
ynoâ,
ertiginoo
"l. roeo b.c dC
dlbdete
rnreo,l ~ ildorto. t reco
=o- -
codll un
do de couvenoe'lyo ? ofieere uo erro
t-ure<SL M -la
Blon.tleli,Irs ,beati neowdaddt quocan aniL.de CA P A'Ox
Qraner Pe *
Prdi*btS. d
"Cnea
an Afewrsalwsfogvnvr
glsfMcezm ber.37
Advertisers
bie me, wudsvetewrl.In
sro deba. '
?? 6?olenemente nocbocAooop r Alo" ciewTO
CA. KU Niu.
* to del Fnundo.
Ts O".S. A. tieneregistrada,
ELBUtNe iala y, la propiedad
oonforme dfoeta antniom.
OGrandes Premios, Paris 1900 y St. Louis Missouri 1904.
La maejor Celza doe a Republica es la do Moctezuma-Orlzaba.
chauffeur flattened a pedestrian but revived him by lighting up a

"Canela Pura," sticking a rubber tube into the pancake-like victim,
and blowing in the rich smoke. Afterwards, all was forgiven over a
glass of Moctezuma beer.37
Advertisers portrayed technology as a positive force that, com-
bined with progressive thinking men, would save the world. In one
37. Ibid., 4 August 1907, 3.

instance an inventor named Colaza read of an impending collision

of Halley's comet with Earth and decided to take action because, as
the ad tell us, "he was not a man capable of tolerating such a cata-
clysm."38After a fine meal, a Moctezuma beer, and a good sleep on
an El Vulcano bed, he attached wings to his bicycle and climbed to
the stars to speak to the rogue comet. To no avail, he tried to con-
vince the comet to change its course, but finally he reinforced his
arguments with a "Canela Pura."The comet instantly promised not
to hit the Earth and flew off with a cigarette dangling from its
mouth. Colaza returned to become famous and wealthy by describ-
ing at conferences how the full flavor of "Canela Pura" cigarettes
had saved the world from destruction.
This story of rags-to-riches had many variations and became
increasingly common after the economic crash of 1907, perhaps
giving fallen members of respectable and working-class society
something to cling to, or simply providing them with gallows hu-
mor. Whatever the case, ads suggested that only the consumption
of goods, whether cigarettes or beer, could provide a solution to
personal and national crises.
Cachivache (worthless fellow), the once-great banker, fell vic-
tim to the crisis of 1907 and lost millions of dollars. For temporary
employment he tried street entertaining, but children stoned him
and dogs bit him. Writing love letters proved futile and he quit, de-
claring that twentieth-century love does not need epistles. Com-
pletely resigned to his fate, Cachivache found the still-burning butt
of one of El Buen Tono's "Superiores" cigarettes and quickly in-
haled its pleasurable secrets. He became a cigarette vendor in the
plaza, then started his own stand, wearing successively better
clothes to match his rising economic fortunes. Cachivache finally
returned to the world of high finance and offered up his personal
experience as a remedy for the economic crisis. The ad left the
reader with the statement that the rich aroma of "Superiores" at-
tracts foreign capital, and the image of a smoking cigarette leading
sackfuls of ambulatory German marks, French francs, Spanish pese-
tas, United States dollars, and British pounds off a rowboat onto
Mexican soil.39 In this ad, personal consumption provided a neces-
sary helping hand to the Porfirian self-made man. At the same time,
the ad implied that the engine of Mexico's economic recovery
relied not so much on the producer economy but rather on the
consumer economy and specifically, consumption of El Buen Tono
cigarettes.
38. Ibid., 30 November 1907, 3.

39. The Monterrey News, 22 August 1908, 3.

Urrutia drew upon widely appealing themes of love, marriage,

domesticity and the problems they created to promote their ciga-
rettes as saviors. In a society based on honor and shame, sexual re-
lations between young lovers had to be negotiated with the
strictest decorum as the honor of the young woman's family re-
mained at stake. The reality of courtship and marriage frequently
did not coincide with this social ideal; El Buen Tono and Urrutia
played on this angst in comic advertisements. Their ads provided an
expose both of the tensions bred in the courtship process between
lovers and parents and the lovers themselves, as well as the pitfalls
present in the sacred institution of marriage.40One might speculate
that El Buen Tono hoped that the reader may equate the consump-
tion of its cigarettes with a panacea for Mexican society's romantic
problems as readily as he or she identified with the plight of the
protagonists.
With the help of Canela Pura and Superiores cigarettes, protag-
onists such as Carrizo (Reed), Camaron (Shrimp), and Cacahuate
(Peanut) set out to win their girl's love. Their nemeses included
mothers-in-law, chaste heroines, and angry ranchero fathers. Our
first hero, Cacahuate, smuggled his girl from the bedroom of her
ranchero father's house, using what appeared to be a three-wheel
moped as his get-away vehicle. The ranchero hunted them down
until their engine exploded and then led them off with tires around
their necks. Resigned to his fate, Cacahuate lit up a cigarette from
which a rich aroma exuded to pacify immediately the father, Don
Serapio. In the final panel a beaming Don Serapio sat at the kitchen
table with his daughter and Cacahuate, now bride and groom; all
were laughing, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. So the ad
ends, telling its readers that we must thank the rich aroma of
"Canela Pura" for the formation of a new family blessed with the
sanctity of a legitimate marriage.41
Our next hero, Carrizo, played the caring but spineless hus-
band at the mercy of a meddling mother-in-law who walked him
to and from his office to prevent him from seeing his friends, and
beat him with a broom if he embraced his wife. Not only will she
not let them dine in peace, but she also drank his "Moctezuma"
brand beer. The young couple cannot enjoy the theater as the
mother took the best seat, and when they came home she slept in
their wedding bed made by "ElVulcano."At the end of their tether,
40. William French, "'TeAmo Muncho': Loveletters from Porfirian and Revolu-
tionary Chihuahua" (paper presented at the Canadian Historical Association Meet-
ing, Calgary,June 1994).
41. El Correo, 28June 1906, 3.

]
CAPITAL
SOCIA.: EL'BUEN
TONO, S. OA. IRrOaR
G :
$-6.500;000 MEXICO, 9 EPUGIBioT.
?, '- *
d ... .-. !00, '
. '. ftelcidadprecla.onmofr]'e,
no so
pero Indti{lePierce edom tos aballoi
d.In tan c-lcll. dera
4.
Cntihont tn.inM*rtn!m.entar i .
&Den Scrnpio qilnn, a de la m porqno el fnri- v clided, pero cl motor rC t. ?
i meont, y al puntla h1 iuid la ppieta. btnndo ueFro logrGdorca alcance. paro otrodo.
: : ' ..
C,, . :",'t:: ' a
^'0 -,. CCicacn1te.r.tfinad?o oon ptO

anmierteX lrIl Oaronea a ee, "l-S11
Q Y ios reStos el vehf,nlor cnleroent c n!i n cgarro (Jo,LA Pun ryoltda Dnn ecraplo empufd uo lbo""
seierptri
para coyuncdr eo Infelcar p prediiol
loh rico asu par leno.
aromstat l zcAa, Icccrvcznt
MIocn Tn blnde
prdlfupgoeca. anar a ?ed do
ruogana del ra- Po T
Iunp,CAI.A d cuyo
rlqu.etmo .
..
s0 dba la or.ado ut
?":'-?' . . ' . aroma
che.. '
*...."..:, *
ntoho tr
Rnam , >
A tienoregiatrada,
BtJTNTONt, 8A.
EL ofnformoala y, laropiedaddeoet69anun ooa .
Grandes Premios, Parrs igOO y St. Louis Missourl '9Tind
La mejpr Cerveza de la Rep1blica es la do Moctezuma.Orlzaba.
the couple decided they must either commit suicide or murderthe

mother to end this horrid state. Suddenly, a faithful friend appeared
and, after being informed of the situation, recommended "Canela
Pura" to humanize the monster, an interesting insight into the ef-
fects of nicotine. Next we see Carrizo trembling like a reed as he
offered his mother-in-law a pack of cigarettes. Voila! Her personal-
ity improved instantaneously as she smoked contentedly in her

A
l!APITAL$DOCAL
l BUET S DIREORER --.
, 5.000000:* MEXICO._
PE.I. E.Pri:BI
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l2.QIbd4 d?P%f W .
fos5n /aafra/os
m oi' i/uo idn o yt.o . ^ m/masOZ(wVttif/ /aft rrc fci
ri4/
fdo/i,n / o 'c t,g iCe rodof/nsfoemohtri J or/, do s d ôv una ' iosYs p.
0to.rosm/r
Zev/
s
'ELRUE#TO#O"gA./ihn,if trca, on.?b Iso #fy,!sprop/~dsodd##tos suncio:.
GrandesPremios,Paris 1900 y S' Louis Missouri
1904',
rocking chair and the couple kissed in the background. Again, the
ad tells the reader to thank "Canela Pura" for its pacifying effects
and for finding a cure for mothers-in-law.42
The final story involves the tale of Camaron and the beautiful
Elena, a parody of the ideal Porfirian fairytale of love. The reader is
told that Camaron's intense passion for love must remain unre-
42. El Correo, 27 October 1906, 4.

Bunker:MarketingModernityin NorthernMexico 247
quited, for Elena has decided she will die celibate. One day she
changed her mind and, from her balcony over a street swarming
with jubilant men, she declared she will give herself to the man
who will send his love to her via a dove. Camaron searched tire-
lessly, until finally a buzzard is attracted by his cigarette and
promises to deliver the letter in return for a smoke. The deal is
made and the buzzard delivers the note to a startled Elena. She de-
cided a buzzard has the same value as a dove and, in a picture of a
well-to-do marriage ceremony, the young couple was married. The
ad leaves the reader with "Superiores" cigarettes integrated into an
ideal image of Porfirian domestic bliss with a twist. Camaron sits on
his rocking chair with a fez on his head, a cigarette in his mouth,
and a newspaper in his hands. To complement this image of do-
mesticity his wife dutifully dotes on him, while the "Superiores"-
smoking buzzard cares for their newborn.43
Such dominant Porfirian images of an ideal family life extended
beyond the advertising of cigarettes and factored into the market-
ing strategies of widely diverse companies. In a more serious vein
than El Buen Tono, these advertisers sought to present their prod-
ucts as essential accessories to the contented states of matrimony
and domesticity. Furniture stores, phonograph dealers, and East-
man-Kodak cameras literally illustrated ways for consumers to use
their products. Their images often projected a vision of domesticity
manufactured and sold in the United States, images that found en-
thusiastic acceptance among many northern Mexican consumers
who easily related them to Porfirian values of domesticity and so-
cial status. An ad created by the Monterrey furniture dealer, J. M.
Carr & Company, portrayed a wealthy and elegant middle-class
couple in the foyer of their sumptuously decorated home complete
with a grandfather clock, easy chairs, plush drapes and other fine
furniture. Titling the ad "Home Sweet Home," Carr asked the Amer-
ican colony and Mexican readers of the Monterrey News "Wouldn't
You Like to Be Here? This is Homelike. Let Us Furnish Your Home
and You Will Be Satisfied."44 Eastman-Kodak also advertised its
products as essential to any family, energetically entering the north-
ern Mexican consumer market in the years preceding the Revolu-
tion. Its ads frequently sported a domestic theme, such as a father
taking a picture of his wife as she leaned over their toddler tightly
stuffed in a baby stroller, or a mother immortalizing her two young
toddlers with a Kodak "Brownie" camera.45
43. TheMonterreyNews, 11July 1908, 3.

44. Ibid., 19 January 1910, 8.
45. Ibid., 29 May 1910, 8; 15 April 1910, 8.

The phonograph, manufactured both by Edison and Victor

brands, proved to be a hot entry in the new field of consumer tech-
nological wonders. Advertisers aggressively marketed this product
as home entertainment for the family. Popularly known as the talk-
ing machine, the phonograph caught the imagination of those en-
amored by this blending of modern technology and culture. Ma-
chines sold for twenty-seven to twelve hundred pesos and played
four-minute records, delivering the sounds of opera by Enrico
Caruso and Louisa Tetrazzina in addition to orchestra, marching
band, and comic selections from around the world.46 The phono-
graph reached a truly international audience in Chihuahua; a Chi-
nese-language ad placed by the Calder6n Hermanos store in Ciu-
dad Juarez solicited requests for a free catalog of newly arrived
Chinese Opera records imported from Canton.47
The ads of the Victor Phonograph distribution agent in Monter-
rey, the Sonora News Company, made the family home entertain-
ment emphasis explicit. They routinely depicted a nuclear family
of a father, mother, and three daughters sitting around the dining
room table listening thoughtfully to a Victor record player.48
Well-dressed in a finely furnished home, the family centered their
whole attention on the product, next to which sat a stack of
records from which the family could make their next selection and
thus spend an evening at home so entertained.
Together, advertising and mass-circulation newspapers pro-
duced articles and images that blended consumption with other
"modern" values to present a world of modern Mexico and modern
Mexicans. They reveal the efforts of El Buen Tono and other do-
mestic companies to develop a national consumer market. Foreign
goods dominated much of the consumer market, with companies
from the United States strongly influencing the northern consumer
tastes, while the French nearly monopolized the dry good and de-
partment store business in the central regions of the country.49
New technologies such as the railroad, tramways, electricity,
paving, and the telephone, among others, helped to create a grow-
ing market of consumers who bought into the capitalist culture of
46. Ibid., 18 March 1906, 15; 23 May 1909, 4; 24 February 1910, 8; and 15 Au-
gust 1909, 5.
47. El Correo, 30 August 1908, 4. For information on Chinese merchants, see
Tinker Salas, Shadow of the Eagles, chapter 2.
48. Monterrey News, 6 October 1907, 8.
49. For information on French-owned department stores, see Maurice Proal
and Pierre Martin Charpenel, L'Emptre des Barcelonnettes au Mextque (Marseille,
France: Editions J. Laffitte, 1986); and Jose Cecefia Cervantes, Mcxico en la orbita
imperial (Mexico: Ediciones "ElCaballito,' 1970), 72-75.

work and spend. Advertising and mass-circulation newspapers

identified consumerism as part of the package that would help
readers to succeed in love, business, and family life, and they sug-
gested the new department store as the correct place to buy these
aids to Porfirian personal fulfillment.
Women and Consumption: Department Stores

Advertising messages supported the gente decente's emphasis
on family and domesticity, but the realities of urban capitalism miti-
gated this ideal and gave women an active and visible role in the
public world. Employment in the production and service industries
provided this exposure for working class women, but for women of
greater affluence and leisure it was the new world of consumption,
especially in department stores, which offered them a place outside
the home.
Mexican department stores, like other component parts of the
consumer culture, reinforced older gender roles and defined new
ones. In the United States, the new public space of the department
store was clearly marked as bourgeois female territory: socially de-
termined gender roles cast women as consumers, and store prac-
tices encouraged and intensified this tendency.50 Mexican stores
appear to have duplicated this arrangement; despite economic class
differences, both customers and sales staff were generally female.51
As in other emerging consumer societies of Western Europe and
North America at this time, changing Mexican male and female
social roles mirrored the new divisions of the economy into pro-
duction and consumption.52 Males represented the producer econ-
omy, the force that brought home the paycheck and created prod-
ucts for the market. This logic cast women as consumers, steadily
replacing their position of domestic producers with the new role
as purchasers of household goods in the urban market.
This dichotomy is supported by the ratio of female-to-male
50. SusanPorterBenson, Countercultures:Saleswomen,Managers,and Cus-

tomers in American DepartmentStores, 1890-1940 (Urbana:Universityof Illinois
Press, 1986), 76.
51. For female workers, see Monterrey News, 19 December 1909, p. 1, of the
Christmas supplement. To promote early shopping, the Ciudad de Londres depart-
ment store urged its customers to "think of the workers-girls with aching bodies
and pale drawn faces..." The largely female clientele is reflected in the lists of store
lottery winners. See El Correo, 8 June 1908, 1; and 14 January 1909, 4.
52. For this duality of female shopper and male breadwinner, see the cartoons
in the Monterrey News, 25 March 1909, 4, and 9 April 1909, 4; and in Rachel
Bowlby,Just Looking:Consumer Culturein Dreiser,Gissing and Zola (New York:
Methuen & Co., 1985), 18-35, 81, and 89.

shopping advertisements in the newspapers that clearly indicates

that females were the target market. Like their North American and
European counterparts, Mexican establishments spent a wildly dis-
proportionate percentage of their advertising budget on female
fashion. Newspapers had weekly fashion supplements sponsored
by stores that burst with photographs of the latest styles from Paris
and New York as well as smart dressing and hostessing ideas.53
Nowhere did men's clothing receive such attention. Men's ads
tended to be in a minority and, with a few exceptions, followed a
no-nonsense bulletin-style format.
Some wage-earning women patronized these new "Palaces of
Consumption,"54 but the leisured women of the gente decente had
the time and the affluence to find a second home in the department
store. Both Mexican and foreign women had an opportunity to es-
cape the confines of the house to meet friends and spend their
leisure time taking advantage of the facilities, entertainment, and
services provided by department stores.55 Mexican store managers,
fighting among themselves and against competitors in San Antonio,
El Paso, and Laredo for consumer dollars, sought to create an at-
mosphere of refined leisure for these women. In particular, they
drew upon the most recent technological advances as well as tradi-
tional definitions of high culture and grandeur to create this desired
setting. As in the United States and Canada, those women who
wished to stay at home could place orders by phone or have a boy
come by the house daily to collect their requests. Every Mexican
department store had a phone order switchboard and by 1910
many affluent patrons had domestic service as the telephone
branched out from its original confinements in business districts.56
This service attracted customers and burnished the store's modern
image. "Try our twentieth century way of Telephonic Shopping,
53. See, for example, Monterrey News, 15 April 1906, 20; 29 April 1906, 13.
These weekly supplements ran every Sunday and included the full-page section of
hostess and fashion tips entitled "Fadsand Fancies for Feminine Eyes."
54. The phrase is Susan Porter Benson's in Countercultures, 82.
55. Based on the lists of prizewinners of the lottery held by the El Nuevo
Mundo department store, non-Mexicans consisted of 10 percent to 20 percent of
the clientele. For these lists, see, for example, El Correo, 8 June 1908, 1; and 14 Jan-
uary 1909, 4.
56. For the active promotion of shopping by telephone by both telephone
companies and department stores in Canada, see Michele Martin, "Hello Central?"
Gender, Technology,and Culture in the Formation of TelephoneSystems (Mon-
treal, Quebec: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1991), 147. In Monterrey and Chi-
huahua, every department store had a phone number and the soliciting phone sales
was a regular component of department store ads. See, for example, the El Nuevo
Mundo department store ad in El Correo, 19 October 1908, 4.

beckoned one Monterrey store to its customers, and try it they

did.57
But other women preferred the sociability of the store. Here
they had access to free phones, cool drinking water, wash rooms,
check rooms for their parcels, as well as lounges in which to rest,
chat, and have a refreshment with friends; finally, they could have
their heavy cargo sent home by free home delivery.58These ameni-
ties meshed with cultural recreations. The Sonora News Co., in
Monterrey, kept an Art Room Display which it claimed to be "the
grandest artistic indoor display of fine paintings, silverware, and
cut glass ever made in Monterrey."59In Chihuahua, El Nuevo Mundo
offered a huge exposition of china and crystal as well as seasonal
expositions of its latest novelties.60 Managers used sales and lotter-
ies in an effort to bring in customers and to turn over stock quickly.
Unheard of even two decades before, full two-page advertisements
trumpeted storewide sales of 10 to 40 percent off.61 Raffles pro-
vided another gimmick, with prizes valued from 10 to 180 pesos.
The type of awards offered by El Nuevo Mundo suggest that these
raffles catered to a gente decente clientele that was female as well
as family- and home-oriented. Austrian home furniture worth 180
pesos went to the first-place winner, while subsequent winners re-
ceived gifts with which to fashionably entertain, such as porcelain
coffee jugs, serviettes and serviette rings, a soup tureen and plates,
and wine glasses. Games for the whole family could also be won, as
El Nuevo Mundo awarded baccarat games for adults, stuffed dolls
and toy pianos for girls, and toy cars and variety games for boys.
Winners also had their fashion needs attended to, from prizes of
underwear for men and women, to clothes of cashmere, bolts of
silk and wool, and even flannel from England.62
Private diaries of middle-class women and public schedules of
department stores in upstate New Jersey and Paris during this time
give an insight into how the entertainment and pleasures of the
department stores fit into consumer lives. These women noted de-
partment store sales and special events along with holidays and reli-
gious festivals, integrating the world of consumption into their
57. Botica del Le6n, Monterrey News, 15 December 1907, 12.

58. See, for example, El Correo, 29 February 1908, 3; 19 October 1908, 4; also
Monterrey News, 15 December 1907, 3.
59. Monterrey News, 15 December 1907, 3.
60. El Correo, 6 February 1909, 4; 20 October 1908, 4.
61. See, for example, El Correo, 29 February 1908, 2; 18 August 1908, 3; and
Monterrey News, 31 August 1909, 3; 12 September 1909, 2.
62. El Correo, 14 January 1908, 4.

daily lives.63 In Mexico, department stores actively promoted this

merger of holidays and consumption by offering seasonal promo-
tions from the ubiquitous Christmas free-for-all to the sale of plas-
tic flower wreaths for the Mexican Day of the Dead.64 Langstroth
Sucs. in Monterrey, for example, provided a modern festival atmos-
phere in 1907 with its Coney Island Electric Park, billed as "the first
ever seen in Monterrey." For free entrance, parents and children
could browse at the amazing world of lights while checking out the
one hundred thousand toys and perhaps entering a Christmas raffle
in the hopes of winning one of twenty prizes.65 With images like
this, Mexicans could no longer doubt that they had finally entered
the modern age.
The department store stood as the most visible icon of this new
era of mass consumption and spectacle that so thrilled many urban
Mexicans. Over a period of two decades, entrepreneurs in the retail
trade in Europe, the United States, and Canada modified traditional
ideas of retail business that anticipated a new business philosophy
tailored to mass consumption. This development culminated in the
full-fledged department stores of the 1890s, which Mexican and
foreign businessmen soon transported to Mexico. Mexican store
owners, influenced by the policies of United States stores across
the border, shared the new emphasis on quick stock turnover by
implementing the policy of entree libre so that customers could
enter without feeling obligated to buy, as well as fixed pricing,
clearly-marked merchandise, and eagerly patronizing commission-
paid sales staff. In doing so, these storeowners reflected a trend that
turned away from basing store presentation and stock selection on
the satisfaction of stable needs and instead adopted the strategy of
inventing new desires among their clientele.66 No longer did con-
sumers face the haggling and confrontational style of previous sell-
ing techniques, but rather entered a comfortable, pleasant environ-
ment noted above that encouraged hassle-free browsing, and
particularly, the phenomenon of impulse buying. Smart operators
in this new system took to heart the observation that modern con-
sumption "is a matter not of basic items bought for definite needs, but
63. Bowlby, Just Looking, 32; and William R. Leach, "Transformation in a Cul-
ture of Consumption: Women and Department Stores, 1890-1925" Journal of
American History 71, no. 2 (September 1984): 336.
64. For Day of the Dead advertisements placed by El Nuevo Mundo, see, for
example, El Correo, 27 October 1909, 4.
65. Monterrey News, 12 December 1907, 8; 15 December 1907, 12.66.
Bowlby,Just Looking, 2.
66. Bowlby, Just Looking, 2.

of visual fascination [with] remarkable things not found at home."67

Northern Mexican consumers could choose from a variety of
new department stores. Some were simply older stores renovated
and expanded into a department format while others were com-
pletely new, patterned after their European and American forerun-
ners. In Chihuahua, consumers could choose from Fischbein Her-
manos with its branch in Parral; Las Tres B.B.B.; the upgraded
Ketelsen y Degetau; or the gem of the city's department stores, El
Nuevo Mundo, with its modern design and over ten departments
including food, perfumes, silks, fashions for women and girls, sport-
ing goods, men's attire, and several other sections. These last two
stores also included sizable pharmacies, particularly the Botica Cen-
tral owned by Ketelsen y Degetau, that sold everything from medi-
cines to cosmetics and assorted weight-loss equipment.
Monterrey shoppers and their children found delight in the de-
partments of Langstroth Sucs., the undisputed toy king with over
one hundred thousand different toys at Christmas, "the largest and
best assorted stock of toys in the North of the Republic."68 The
Sonora News Co. competed with La Ciudad de Londres, a branch of
the store in Mexico City that boasted of four stories of departments
frequented "by the most select of the high society of the Mexican
capital."69The gigantic La Reinera store, first founded in 1855 and
then renovated and expanded to a modern department format in
1901, held a special place in Monterrey.70 The choices appeared
limitless, for if they tired of the novelties at the stores noted above,
consumers could take one of the new electric trams or a coach
over to Al Puerto de Hamburgo and be served by multilingual sales-
clerks, or perhaps visit the ever-popular Sorpresa y Primavera
owned by Manuel Cantu Treviiio and the sponsor of the Monterrey
News "Ladies Style" section.
In these new stores, Mexican consumers engaged in mental as
well as physical consumption. In a modern consumer culture, shop-
ping and consumption stress the ongoing creation of desires and
cannot be viewed merely as a series of mechanical completed
acts.71 Therefore, in addition to offering various services, sales, lot-
67. Guy Debord, La Societ du Spectacle (Paris, France: Editions Champ Libre,
1973), cited in Bowlby,Just Looking, 1.
68. Monterrey News, 12 December 1909, 2, of the Christmas supplement.
69. Ibid., 11 August 1909, 4.
70. Saragoza, The Monterrey Elite, 42.
71. Cynthia Wright, "'Feminine Trifles of Vast Importance': Writing Gender
into the History of Consumption;' in Gender Conflicts: New Essays in Women's
History, ed. Franca lacovetta and Mariana Valverde (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1992), 232.

teries and entertainments, store managers in Monterrey and Chi-

huahua realized that the exhibition of goods was of paramount
importance in drawing these mobile consumers into their stores.
Elaborate window displays became the trademark of successful
shopowners, as everyone from department stores to watchmakers
set about making their front windows a stage to win the hearts of
passersby. Stocked with toys, modern gadgetry, and the latest
mass-produced, ready-to-wear fashions for the whole family, de-
partment store windows enticed a cross-class clientele to satisfy
their desires. Whereas in the past when windows often displayed
nothing, either for lack of ideas or because the owner saw such dis-
plays as tasteless, now stores boasted about their imaginative dis-
plays and tried to outdo their competitors. The three-story El
Nuevo Mundo took advantage of its ideal location on the corner of
Victoria and Aldama to install and decorate huge display windows
wrapped around both exposed sides of its ground floor.72
Store and display designers realized presentation required an
artistic touch and eye-catching appeal, and they borrowed design
concepts of past grandeur to meet modern needs. Color, glass, and
light were no longer limited to stained glass windows in churches
and civic buildings as store owners used this impressive arsenal in a
commercialized context for both interior and street-side displays.
Attentive to the actions of their retail competitors across the bor-
der in Laredo and San Antonio, store owners in northern Mexico-
whether Mexican, North American, or European-picked up ideas
from the design schools in commercial display that sprang up in the
United States to train professionals in this field. Most likely they re-
ceived the latest trade news via their competitors or directly from
design innovators such as L. Frank Baum-the creator of the Land
of Oz-who disseminated their knowledge through shopkeeper
periodicals such as the Dry Goods Economist.73
Together with modern consumption's class-blind acceptance
of the peso, these shop displays took an age-old struggle over fash-
ion and luxury to new heights. Women of a lower economic status
eagerly accepted the opportunity presented to them to imitate their
social superiors with cheap copies of exotic fashions from San An-
tonio, Paris, and New York. Their social superiors tended to buy tai-
lored or better-quality, ready-to-wear clothing from the stores, yet,

73. William Leach, "Strategists of Display and the Production of Desire," in
Consuming Visions: Accumulation and Display of Goods in America,
1880-1920, ed. Simon J. Bronner (New York: W W Norton & Company, 1989),
107.

on the streets, the casual onlooker often could not notice any glar-
ing difference. Such a development caused a great deal of conster-
nation among Mexico's moral reformers who viewed the blurring
of class distinctions through fashion and luxury as dangerous. What
constituted daily attire when worn by members of the gente de-
cente became wasteful luxury and a sign of social decadence when
slipped onto a social inferior. One nineteenth-century contributor
to the Diario de MWxicoeven declared that women should be put
in uniform according to their social class.74
Merchandisers, by providing fashion for the many, public dis-
plays, and free access to all, gave an illusion of social equality. The
Porfirian social reality proved this different. Strolling through urban
cores looking at the window displays did provide middle-class fam-
ilies and those aspiring to such status a new form of leisure. Inside,
theoretically all social classes could rub shoulders, united by a cul-
tural vision of consumer plenty and progress even if some could af-
ford it and others could not. In addition to the opportunity of buy-
ing at sales, many stores did carry goods for both big and small
budgets. After announcing its tailoring department carried "the
finest imported Woolens," La Ciudad de Londres added that it
"carr[ied] a large assortment of popular priced goods, for the
Miner, the Farmer and the Mechanic."75Its competitor, the Sorpresa
y Primavera store, also exhibited this cross-class inventory: "THE
PRIDE OF DRESS is praise worthy in every one whether rich or
poor. In our great stock can be found both the expensive and
the cheap to suit the needs of all. Your money will go furthest
here... "76
For all its appearance of social equality, the department store
itself actually reproduced more general class and gender conflicts.
Work on Mexican department stores has yet to be done, but one
may tentatively conclude that they would share many of the charac-
teristics of stores in the United States.77 This possibility is sup-
74. Jean Franco, "Women, Fashion and the Moralists in Early Nineteenth-Cen-
tury Mexico," in Homenaje a Ana Maria Barrenechea, ed. Lia Schwartz Lerner and
Isaias Lerner (Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1984). For further debate on fashion across
the industrializing world in the late nineteenth-century, see MarianaValverde, "The
Love of Finery: Fashion and the Fallen Woman in Nineteenth-Century Social Dis-
course"; Victorian Studies 32, 2 (winter 1989): 169-188; in Mexico, see French
"Prostitutes and Guardian Angels," 548.
75. Monterrey News, 19 December 1909, 8.
76. Ibid., 8 April 1906, Saturday supplement.
77. A study of Mexican department store organization will form the corner-
stone of this author's dissertation, based on the archives of Mexico City's first
department store, El Palacto de Hterro.

256 MexicanStudies/EstudiosMexicanos
ported by the similarities in staffing and the social makeup of

department stores in both countries combined with a tendency of
Mexican managers to emulate the policies of their northern com-
petitors. Store clerks in the United States attended to wealthier pa-
trons first; managers soothed middle-class sensibilities by physi-
cally separating departments with "popularly-priced" goods from
those that respectable ladies might visit. Moreover, tensions some-
times flared between poorly paid working-class salesgirls, male
managers, and their upper-class female customers.78 Finally, what
terminated the illusion of a consumer paradise and brought the re-
ality of social inequality to the foreground was, of course, the
price-tag discreetly attached to the object of desire.
Northern Mexican department stores were jewels in the Por-
firian crown of modernization and developmentalism. Architec-
turally imposing, they drew upon all the new technologies of mod-
ern urban infrastructures, such as electricity to display their goods,
tramways to bring their customers, telephones to permit customers
to order, and the revamped postal service to provide goods to their
rural customers. Moreover, they promoted a model of cultural be-
haviour sanctioned by the modernizing societies of Western Eu-
rope and the rest of North America.
Department stores helped to reinforce older gender roles and
defined new ones through their position as feminine gente decente
territory. Women still remained the guardians of the household, en-
suring the material needs of the family through their purchases, act-
ing as the consuming counterpart to the producing male. Now,
however, they received social sanction to escape the confines of
the household, to invade public space, and to converse with their
counterparts in the luxuriously appointed salons of the new de-
partment stores.
Mass Entertainments and Public Celebrations

Mass consumption and urban living for both middle and lower
classes bred mass culture characterized by commercialized enter-
tainments and corporate sponsorship. Almost all appeared to cater
to the sensibilities and income of the gente decente. City dwellers
experienced new amusements that resulted from the recent tech-
nology of cinematography and the expanding rail system on which
traveling American Carnival shows and their crowd-pleasing spe-
cial effects rode to town. Organizers also cleaned up popular per-
78. Benson, Countercultures, 75-123.

formances such as the circus and vaudeville to make them suitable

for respectable audiences.
Sports such as the traditional bullfight and the new contest of
baseball provided forms of mass entertainment that rapidly became
commercialized. The large, captive audiences provided an excel-
lent market for advertisers. Bullfighting arenas became billboards
for the dozens of huge banners plastered onto, and hung around,
the ring and the different seating levels. Hungry audiences also fos-
tered a unique market for increasingly mass-produced and brand
name food, cigarettes, and novelty items that hawkers in the stands
hustled to satisfy. Still in its infancy, baseball took northern Mexi-
cans by storm. As early as the 1890s, crowds of nearly one thou-
sand flocked to watch the binational Chihuahua Blues play in Chi-
huahua City, an attendance level that surpassed by far those in the
nation's capital.79
Cinemas sprouted up in the urban cores of northern Mexico as
part of the commercial districts anchored by the department
stores. Patrons of the Salon Fausto in Monterrey watched and mar-
veled at the wonder of moving picture technology with film shorts
from the United States bearing such titles as "Indian Gratitude,"
"The Lion Bride and the Hindu Ring,' and "The Spirit of '76."80
More commonly, the new film shows built on existing enter-
tainment traditions by acting as chasers for vaudeville shows, a sig-
nal to the audience that the show had finished. The long and often
sordid popular history of vaudeville provided an excellent con-
veyor for the new medium of cinematography. At the Zaragoza the-
ater, Monterrey's other film venue, viewers watched moving pic-
tures after the Cosmopolites troupe had finished their show.81
Chihuahuan audiences had the opportunity to watch the Interna-
tional Theater's three hour "Cinematography and Vaudeville Show"
(Cinemat6grafo y Variedades).82
Recent developments in the U.S. popular entertainment indus-
try affected the complexion of the American acts that hit Monter-
rey like a deluge in the summer of 1905. Writing about turn-
79. Beezley,Judas at the Jockey Club, 20. For more on the Chihuahua Blues,
see the Chihuahua Enterprise, 16 September 1899, 8; 24 March 1900, 1; 5 May
1900, 8; and for its Mexican and American team roster, see 10 May 1902, 2.
80. Monterrey News, 6 July 1909, 1. For information on the Mexican cinema,
see de los Reyes, Los origenes del cine; and Aurelio de los Reyes, Cine y sociedad
en M6xico, 1896-1930, vol. 1, Vivir de Sueflos (1896-1920) (Mexico: Universidad
Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico, 1981).
81. Ibid., 10 December 1908, 4.

of-the-century amusements in New York, Kathy Peiss notes how

entrepreneurs gave moving picture shows their debut in "refined
vaudeville" that sought to make this popular theater respectable for
women and children. By 1910, cinema had become an industry on
its own in Canada and the United States and an important leisure ac-
tivity for the working class and for women.83 It became such an
integral part of lower-class recreation that the Canadian Ottawa
Journal rallied against a proposed civic tax on cinemas, for such a
tax "would simply put a great deal of clean, educative pleasure out
of the reach of the poorer people of the city's population."84In the
rest of North America, the lower classes embraced the cinema as an
important entertainment destination. By 1910 in Mexico this diver-
sion appeared to attract a cross-class audience, playing in both the
elegant Sal6n Fausto as well as in vaudeville shows.
Many American circuses and shows found that wintering south
of the border all but guaranteed enthusiastic and plentiful crowds
for their performances. They competed with Mexican shows such
as the Treviio circus, giving Mexican audiences a taste of the differ-
ences between gringo shows and their own. Even American com-
mentators had to admit that while their shows had better music,
the Mexican one-ring circus made viewing a lot easier than the
chaotic three rings of the northern acts.85
In Monterrey, the arrival of one of these new shows sent a shot
of adrenalin into the urban world. Organizers whipped up public
interest via print media, word of mouth, and the chain reaction set
off by curious consumers. First, advertisers filled the newspapers,
and the local bill posters covered the city "with the glaring posters
and the announcements of the coming of another big show."86
Word of mouth took over as potential audiences decided whether
to see "Bell, The King of Clowns" at the Plaza Juarez or perhaps
attend the comfortable Teatro de los Heroes to watch the amazing
Professor Hermann and his company of French illusionists followed
by a film show.87 For women and children, the appropriately named
83. By 1910, 75 percent of movie-goers in the United States were working
class, a significant but unspecified number of these were women. Kathy Peiss,
Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New
York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 146.
84. Ottawa Journal (Ottawa, Ontario) cited in the Monterrey News, 1 July
1910, 4.
85. On the music, see Monterrey News, 7 March 1906, 3. With regards to the
circus format, see ibid., 22 July 1905, 3.
86. Ibid., 22July 1905, 3.
87. Ibid., 31 July 1909, 2; El Correo, 31 January 1908, 4; 20 January 1908, 1.
The Bell Family Archive is located in the Special Collections of Mary Couts Burnett
Library at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas. It includes advertisements,

Teatro Progreso offered "Clean, classy, vaudeville" featuring, among

others attractions, "Monterrey, A Musical Skit, and Miss Mexico.
The Miller Brothers' "101 Ranch Wild West" seemed to promise ex-
citement. They guaranteed real value and real stunts, promising
"NO melodramatics, NO make-believes" and, best of all, "NO
molly-coddlers" among its cast of cowboys, vaqueros, sefioritas,
guardias rurales, and steerthrowers.88 The combined Dr. Carver
and Treviiio show always caused a stir. The "Girl in Red" was the
star attraction, plunging forty feet on the back of her "High Diving
Horse" in her "Dip of Death."
For transportation to the shows, audiences relied on the elec-
tric trams. Show promoters, realizing the importance of the new
public transportation system, frequently arranged with the street
car companies to stop directly in front of their venues. They noted
in their ads the safety value of the arrangement, whereby employ-
ees would escort women and children to and from the sidewalk to
the door.89 Standing at the entrance, after all the hype and recom-
mendations from friends, only the ticket booth remained between
the audience and satisfaction. Entrance fees offered a space for
everyone; they ranged from ten to fifty centavos for a seat in the
second class section to a box for six people costing nine pesos.90
Enlightened northern Mexicans and foreign nationals viewed
the booming commercialized amusement industry as a sure indica-
tor of their city's, and their nation's, march towards progress and
civilization. As one group of carnival onlookers exclaimed, the
number of shows present "is due to the fact that Monterrey is be-
coming citified and must have the amusements of a city."91Citizens
swelled with civic pride at the number of American and Mexican
entertainments they could attract with their disposable income, de-
lighting in the novelties that each new show brought. These shows
also provided a venue to sell the mass-produced carnival kitsch
and other goods that served as prizes or souvenirs for fair and
show-goers looking for ways to impress girlfriends and lighten
their pockets.
One typical carnival took place on Zaragoza Plaza in Monterrey.
Organizers split the plaza in three sections: in the first, flaring signs
show programs,newsclipping, and other papers on RichardBell and his entertain-

ing familyduringtheir careersthroughoutMexico.
88. MonterreyNews, 3 December 1908, 2.
89. See, for example, ibid., 25 December 1907, 6.
90. El Correo, 15 November 1906, 3; and Monterrey News, 25 December
1907, 6; 17 December 1907, 3.
91. Monterrey News, 24 March 1906, 8.

expounded the wonders of a volcanic show; in the second, a huge

exhibit of poisonous snakes was set up; and in the third, fair-goers
contemplated posterity by experiencing "the joys of having your
picture taken in any pose or posture that you happen to admire."92
The electric light show presented "a modern sight," illuminating a
suave gentleman entertaining the crowd with magical legerdemain.
He spoke to the multitude in Spanish and English, reflecting the bi-
national nature of the onlookers. So too did the barker for the
snake charmer who "in irreproachable Spanish told the Mexican
show-goers of the viciousness of the snakes."93 As the people
moved on they visited the photograph gallery, taking only five min-
utes to have their picture emblazoned on a postal card, on a button,
or "in any novel manner that you choose." Hawkers beckoned curi-
ous audiences to purchase wares that had very little practical pur-
pose, but as one commentator stated, it was these "patriotic but-
tons, canes and other knick-knacks on which the youth of a city
are so anxious to spend their money."94
Public events offered more sophisticated environs for spending
money than did carnivals, vaudeville, and other types of shows.
Held outdoors in public parks and open spaces, these highly publi-
cized events were usually organized by the more affluent in Mexi-
can society through the medium of social clubs such as the "Club
Sorosis." The events themselves were not unique, having existed for
decades, but by the turn of the century large corporations such as
El Buen Tono and the Cerveceria Cuauhtemoc and smaller local
businesses dominated the atmosphere. These companies found the
events an excellent environment in which to increase their profile
among the city's most conspicuous consumers. Participants, mostly
drawn from the middling and elite classes, eagerly accepted the
companies' presence for their entertainment and novelty value.
Meanwhile, the companies enveloped their products and corporate
image with a veil of refined luxury and technological wonder.
Businesses reaped benefits for their community involvement
not once, but twice. They received publicity and cultivated good-
will not only among the participants, but also among the literate
public who read of their beneficent exploits in the mass-circula-
tion newspapers delivered the next morning. These readers kept
up with what was new in their community and quickly recognized
the high status of products associated with, and consumed by, the
social and economic winners in Porfirian society. Typical affairs in-
92. Ibid.
93. Ibid.
94. Ibid.

cluded Mexican and foreign national holidays, and, in particular, the

ever-popular fiestas to benefit the victims of natural disasters
across the nation.
Bastille Day in Monterrey was one such event, occasioning a
great deal of fanfare among the French community and the capital's
native elite. French businesses and other sympathetic establish-
ments adorned their buildings in French and Mexican flags and
bunting, the streetcar lines made special preparations to handle the
crowd as late as midnight, and the organizers rented the popular
Alameda park to set up a variety of booths, bandstands, and game
areas. All along the Alameda festival-goers would eat, drink, and
throw confetti to celebrate the French national holiday. Plazas and
parks such as the Alameda provided the usual point of congrega-
tion for the gente decente during their recreations like Bastille Day
or the fund-raising Kermesses. Rationally designed parks, like the
Alameda, consisted of walkways, benches, trimmed hedges, stat-
ues, and shady trees. Private citizens contributed to their develop-
ment, donating land and often paying for improvements such as
lighting. Fernando Izaguire, the treasurer of the Number Two
smelter in Monterrey, donated a plaza of seven thousand square
meters while the distinguished young ladies and women of the
fundraising Club Sorosis paid over three thousand pesos to install
thirty-four arc lamps in the Chihuahua City Lerdo de Tejada park so
that they could hold festivals there.95
In 1905, the celebration organizers combined Bastille Day with
a fundraising benefit to aid survivors of an earthquake in Guana-
juato. Over ten thousand people paid to gain admittance and thou-
sands more held their own celebrations outside. Once inside "the
people indulged themselves in the many pleasures of life, which
can be had only when money is expended freely and no thought of
the pocketbook is given."96The entertainment clustered around the
dozen or so stands set up along the brightly lit Midway, named and
patterned after the Columbian Exposition held in Chicago. Promi-
nent local consumer businesses owned these stands, selling their
products and donating the proceeds to the disaster victims. The
companies did not just erect plywood carnival booths, but rather
created an atmosphere of elegance and escape in their seating ar-
95. For costs, see Municipal Treasurer to Municipal President, Chihuahua, 19
August 1907, expediente 29, caja 68, Fondo Porfiriato y Terracismo, Tomo 1,
Secci6n: Secretario, Archivo Hist6rico Municipal (AHM), Chihuahua. For lighting
contract, see General de la Vega to Don Jose As6nsolo, Jefe Politico Chihuahua, 29
May 1907, exp. 29, caja 68, AHM. For the donated park, see Monterrey News, 14
June 1905, 8.
96. MonterreyNews, 24 March1905, 8.

eas. The trendy Topo Chico bottled water company and the Toluca
brewery set a high standard for the displays of other companies;
their guests milled about a grotto-style setting, attended to by beau-
tiful young women and bathed by soft light emanating from electric
lights concealed within the imported moss that draped the site.97
No one, however, could compete with the awe-inspiring stand
of the Cerveceria Cuauhtemoc. Situated near the bandstand and en-
circling the central fountain, the organizers made their territory a
testament to the Mexican nation, its progress, its high culture and,
of course, its fine beer. Decorators strung hundreds of electrified
Japanese lanterns with streamers of Mexican and French colors
along the thirty-foot flag pole rising from the fountain. To ob-
servers, its effect at night was "something bewildering and a mur-
mur of surprise went up from those gathered in the enclosure at
the time."98The stage artists attested to Mexico's fine transportation
network by lavishly, yet artistically, displaying fresh flowers brought
from all over the Republic to make the scene "a fairyland."The en-
trances to the enclosure consisted of arcades made of blossoms
and vines entwined with ribbons. Honeysuckle, roses, lilies, and
other flowers completed the scene.99
Within this dreamscape the bon ton of Monterrey society ate
and drank. The sexual division of the seating arrangement pre-
sented a display of gender roles among Mexico's modern
well-to-do. In the center of the stand, male employees attended to
the wants of the men "unaccompanied by ladies," while hundreds
of women were seated around the core of men at small tables,
"served by some of the most beautiful young ladies Monterrey can
boast of" who "flitted about" in large, white aprons with the pic-
ture of Cuauhtemoc embroidered thereon.100 Blending opulence
and conspicuous consumption with the gendered social setting of
this public display, the gente decente revealed how its members
premised their vision of modernity upon the strict division of gen-
der roles.
The Cerveceria appeared to have a knack for defining its prod-
ucts as the choice of the modern drinker. It pulled off another en-
viable publicity coup at another aid benefit by absorbing all of the
expenses and turning the event into one huge advertisement for its
97. Ibid., 14 July 1905, 1; 15 July 1905, 1.
98. Ibid., 15July 1905, 18.
99. Ibid., 15July 1905, 18.
100. For a similar display of gendered dining arrangements see William H.
Beezley, "Dining with the Dictator and Crowning the Virgin: Forging Images of
Mexico's New Society" (paper presented at the Canadian Historical Association
Meeting, Learned Society's, Calgary,June 1994).

brewery through a public film show. The brewery organizers first

held the show in the Teatro de los Heroes to raise funds for the ben-
efit. Then, however, they took the show outside to the Paseo Boli-
var for a free public viewing so that all social classes could see the
magnificent and modern images of Mexico's most progressive in-
dustry. More than three thousand people grasped the opportunity
to see this new technology that allowed them literally to peer inside
the famous beerworks and watch "each and every task executed at
the massive factory by the many people employed there."'10On the
film, they saw the ice-making factories and refrigerator rooms, the
furnace system, and finally the huge vats of frosty brew just before
the machines bottled the amber liquid that was the pride of Mex-
ico. Finally, the audience watched as thirty railroad cars zoomed off
to distribute the famous "Saturno"and "Carta Blanca" brands and
their "civilizing influences"102 to the far-flung corners of the Re-
public. As the reporter reminded its readers the next day, the
Cerveceria ranked among the best in the world, and its products
"are the delight of consumers of good taste."'103
The ideology of the day linked beer consumption, nationalism,
and progress, a bond vividly forged by brewers in public celebra-
tions and entertainments. Beer represented a civilized beverage
renowned for its healthful influences, consumed by all classes in
the productive countries of Western Europe and the rest of North
America. It offered an alternative to the lower-class symbolism of
pulque or mescal that Mexico's rulers blamed for the low produc-
tivity and constant inebriation of Mexican workers. Drinking beer
allowed the gente decente both to differentiate itself from the
lower classes and to offer them a moral example of how to build a
stronger, more progressive nation. Equally important, the Cerve-
ceria Cuauhtemoc prided itself upon its Mexican ownership, its
ability to survive American competition, and its technological
prowess and self-sufficiency that allowed it to manufacture its own
bottles and patent a number of process improvements. Beer in the
North appeared to point the way to Mexico's future.'04
Leading members of these "consumers of good taste" sought to
instill the official culture of the gente decente in the festival calen-
dars in Monterrey and Chihuahua. Consumerism alone did not
102. Monterrey News, 29 August 1905, 4.
104. On the development and technical prowess of the Cerveceria, see Bar-
bara Hibino, "Cerveceria Cuauhtemoc: A Case Study of Technological and Industrial
Development in Mexico," Mexican Studies/Estudtos Mexicanos 8, 1 (winter 1992):
23-43.

change these festivals; new organizers instilled the events with

their modernizing vision that included not only consumerism but
also the contemporary Porfirian ideologies of moral reform, state-
building, and civic pride.
In Chihuahua, sometime between 1905 and 1908, theJunta de
Festejos de Santa Rita, dominated by the Chamber of Commerce,
took over control of staging the Santa Rita festival from the
ayuntamiento, the town council. The businessmen who made up
this committee consciously converted this celebration of Chi-
huahua's patron saint from a religious-oriented feature of popular
culture into a celebration of capitalism. Expelled were the gam-
bling, the cantinas, and the vices and lewd songs of popular cul-
ture that came with them. The Junta de Festejos expanded the fi-
esta from eight to ten days, thus shedding the festival of its
traditional religious time significance.105
The festival of Santa Rita became a major tourist event. The
Chamber of Commerce created and distributed the program of the
festival and organizers ensured that these programs were distrib-
uted throughout the whole state. The new railroad became instru-
mental in achieving high participation rates. Organizers made
arrangements with railroad companies to subsidize festival excur-
sion rates by as much as forty percent.106 These inducements
brought visitors from local towns and neighboring states, whether
they were Mexican or American, first-class ticket holders or sec-
ond-class. As a result of these efforts, attendance increased provid-
ing a larger audience to partake in the values of the fair and benefit-
ting local businessmen with more festival-goers with money to
spend.
TheJunta de Festejos valued the fair explicitly and primarily for
its economic merits. In a letter to Jefe politico Don Jose Asunsolo,
the Junta stated that the purpose of the Santa Rita Festival was to
attract the largest possible number of visitors to Chihuahua so that
the city's business and industry would have the opportunity to in-
crease trade and also to forge business transactions with foreign
capitalists. By doing so, the fair would "improve the economic con-
ditions that are found here."107
105. Junta de Festejos de Santa Rita to Don Jose Asinsolo, Jefe Politico del Dis-
trito de Iturbide, Chihuahua, 13 May 1908, expediente 34, caja 68, AHM;
Chthuahua Enterprise, 29 May 1909, 1. I would like to thank William Beezley for
suggesting the religious significance of this time change.
106. Junta de Festejos de Santa Rita, Program for 1909, Chihuahua, expediente
29, caja 69, AHM.
107. Junta de Festejos de Santa Rita to DonJose Asuinsolo,Jefe Politico del Dis-
trito de Iturbide, Chihuahua, 13 May 1908, expedient 34, caja 68, AHM.

Businessmen found testaments to their social prominence not

just in the organizational control of the event, but within the very
activities themselves as the festival reproduced the dominant exist-
ing social and cultural values. The contests at Santa Rita reflected
the tastes of the gente decente and the businessmen in its ranks by
including specific categories for capitalists.108 Horse races, for ex-
ample, had categories for businessmen riders, gentlemen riders, the
military, and the Rurales. Automobile races, featuring both two and
four cylinder varieties, clearly catered to the wealthier set of Chi-
huahuan society. The local shooting club, an elite group to be sure,
designated the Santa Rita festival as the time for their annual com-
petition. It was in the new parade format, however, that Mexicans
witnessed the greatest expression of the confluence of consump-
tion and production occurring in urban Mexico.
Festival organizers introduced highly-regimented parades of
floats into the Santa Rita celebration that explicitly reinforced the
primacy of capitalism. While maintaining a traditional torchlight
parade on the opening night, the organizers switched the limelight
onto key branches of the Chihuahuan economy. Opening cere-
monies now featured festival sponsorship messages given from the
parade floats that represented commerce, industry, agriculture, and
mining.109 These floats then joined various organizations approved
by the state and local governments, such as mutualist and employee
groups, and traveled down the main streets of the city.
Displays such as this gave companies a chance to juxtapose and
legitimize both themselves and their products through public rit-
ual. As in the fundraising benefits mentioned earlier, the parades
and the floats allowed companies to present themselves as good
corporate citizens. Industries not only sponsored the fair, they en-
tered floats that exemplified modernity and "culture."One brewery
constructed an Eiffel Tower float that was "greatly admired."'10The
local agencies of the Monterrey, Toluca, and Orizaba brewers typi-
fied a more direct marketing approach. Their float had an immense
beer bottle with men in it drinking beer. According to the reporting
journalist, "this made no end of fun for the onlookers."111
The infatuation with parade floats and their advertising poten-
tial encompassed other celebrations as well. The Chihuahua Trades
Procession held on September 14, 1901 did not feature workers,
108. See, for example, Chthuahua Enterprise,16 May1908, 10.

109. Juntade Festejosde SantaRita,Programfor 1909, Chihuahua,expediente
29, caja 69, AHM.
110. Chihuahua Enterprise,14 September1901, 1.
111. Ibid., 5June 1909, 1.

but specially decorated floats that vied to outdo each other and
earn "the murmurs of admiration from the spectators." To create
consumers and cultivate their image as job-providing, beneficent
patrones of society, companies distributed samples to the specta-
tors. La Fabrica de "ElLeon" had a miniature soda plant on its float
and attracted considerable attention when the bottles of fine soda
were distributed in the crowd. Dozens of "urchins" followed the
float of the La Estrella cracker factory, all anxious to get samples of
its splendid products.112The transformed Santa Rita festival and the
Trades Procession reveal how changes in public rituals involved not
only the guiding force of middle-class values of morality and
progress but also the infusion of consumer culture into the events.
The newly revamped Carnival in Monterrey followed the gen-
eral format adopted by the Santa Rita organizers. Although still pre-
ceding Lent, the new and expressly commercial Carnival lost any
religious vestige as organizers rivaled their Chihuahuan counter-
parts in glitter, secular emphasis, and corporate involvement. Here,
too, a committee of prominent local businessmen took control of
the organization. Reacting to the number of wealthy U.S. business
people who visited Monterrey each year after the Washington birth-
day celebration in Laredo, they decided to hold an event to reflect
the growing status of the city and to attract capital and tourist
dollars.
Monterrey revealed its best face to visitors and its citizens in
the new Carnival in 1906. Held in the downtown commercial and
business centers of Comercio and Zaragoza streets and Zaragoza
plaza, the festival confirmed the organizers' claim to the urban
space and their perception of progress. The venue was as "light as
noontime on a midsummer day" as arc lights strung above the
street shone in competition with colored lights illuminating busi-
ness fronts and shop windows. Tens of thousands of people
strolled along the urban core tossing confetti, admiring and gawk-
ing at the brightly decorated business establishments that provided
a stage for the festival's entertainment. The National Bank building
was crowned "with a halo of pure white incandescent lights" as
were the Banco Mercantil, the Puerto de Veracruz, the Fabricas de
Francia, and even the high profile Wagner and Levien Music Com-
pany which had decorated its store in lights of the Mexican colors.
The trendy pharmacy and novelty shop, the Botica de Leon, re-
moved the Kodak cameras and the abdominal trusses from its win-
dows to decorate its two-story building with lights, Mexican flags,
112. See ibid., 7 September 1901, 1, and 14 September 1901, 1.

and garlands. The Dressel hardware store continued this patriotic

theme, placing two large pictures of President Diaz and Governor
Reyes in the front windows.1l3
The department stores of the district gave their window dis-
plays of consumer goods a patriotic and festive air. Owners of the
La Reinera store covered it with lights from top to bottom, decorat-
ing every window in the building. The crowd became so thick
around these windows that people had to pass in the middle of the
street. The artistic displays of the Trevinio store also drew lavish
praise from onlookers and commentators. A Monterrey News jour-
nalist remarked that "the windows of an Eastern city [meaning East-
ern United States] could not have been decorated with less regard
of cost, nor with more artistic taste."114At the end of this festive
commercial corridor, the crowd passed through a gigantic arch
erected jointly by the Topo Chico mineral water company and the
Cerveceria Cuauhtemoc to see, finally, the brightly lit municipal
palace and the plaza. To one onlooker, the decorated building
fronts and bright shop windows "[made] the streets look more like
those in some dream city of Fairyland than those of a hustling busi-
ness district."115
In the aftermath, the organizers considered optimistically mak-
ing this Carnival a new city tradition. Blending consumerism with
the age-old tradition of Carnival promised to attract people from all
over the region to celebrate the festival and spend their money. To
encourage the practice, the organizers had arranged for discount
rail fares to attract the crowds who had played their expected role
of festive, visual consumers drinking in the sights and fattening the
coffers of local merchants. Journalists observed that the people re-
mained orderly and that drunkenness and disorder seemed a thing
of the past; organizers believed that "there is nothing which will
bring capital to a city quicker," than crowds like these. Public cele-
brations thus became profitable for the organizers, an outcome
accepted by the majority of the city's self-proclaimed progressive
citizenry. A remarkable expression of conventional wisdom by a
local journalist illustrates the blending of the established tenets of
production with those of consumption: "capitalists do not invest
their money in dead towns... Monterrey has learned the magic of
advertising and has the grit to show what it advertises."116
113. Monterrey News, 2 March 1906, 1; 6 March 1906, 6.

114. Ibid., 2 March 1906, 1.
115. Ibid.
116. Ibid., 4 March 1906, 4; 6 March 1906, 6; 7 March 1906, 8.

Conclusion
By the time of the 1910 centennial, a culture of consumption
had become synonymous with the public culture of northern Mexi-
can cities. It became a means by which 'enlightened' Mexicans con-
veyed their vision of a modern Mexico, integrating and disseminat-
ing the messages of consumption with the principles of economic
progress, nationalism, moral reform, personal and public hygiene,
and civic pride. As members of the gente decente, manufacturers,
store owners, and advertising agencies portrayed an ideal lifestyle
of personal fulfillment and social respectability largely based on the
values held by themselves and their potential clientele. They as-
serted that this lifestyle could only be obtained through the con-
sumption of goods and services, particularly their own, offered in
the consumer market. Mexicans concerned with "civilizing" and
"modernizing" their society accepted the messages of the con-
sumer culture. They had the disposable income to pursue, if not re-
alize, the dream world that consumer goods seemed to promise.
While mass consumption and participation in the urban mar-
ket may have encompassed most urban Mexicans, the consumer
culture expounded by mass-circulation newspapers and depart-
ment stores was a decidedly class- and gender-based one. These
institutions and their forms of advertisement established the frame-
work, rules, and images of consumption; they defined good taste,
propriety, and refinement. Furthermore, building upon the gente
decente's concept of clearly divided gender roles, they established
consumption as a feminine trait. They gained customers' attention
with eye-catching appeals, whether through comics, photography,
and interesting texts for newspaper ads, or the use of glass, color,
light, and a new emphasis on commercial art within the stores. On
the one hand, the consumer desire created through these tech-
niques crossed class boundaries, instilling a new phenomenon of
mental consumption among city dwellers. Window shopping and
browsing through store displays became new leisure activities for
the affluent and the poor. On the other hand, while all could partic-
ipate in craving the objects of their desire, the consumer whose
pocketbook enabled her to affirm her own and her family's class
position was the ideal target for the department store and for much
of the advertising world.
The purveyors of a consumer ethic reached beyond the depart-
ment store to target public entertainments and celebrations as pub-
lic spaces for the messages of consumption. Show and festival orga-
nizers transformed or adapted older forms of entertainment and

celebration to introduce new types of mass diversion and a new

standard of commercialized amusement reflecting new values, par-
ticularly those of Mexico's middle and upper classes. Refined
vaudeville was aligned with the new technology of cinematogra-
phy, joining new American carnivals and shows and the old cir-
cuses as standard entertainment fare. The traditional bullfight
arena, draped in advertisement banners and populated by brand-
name cigarette, novelty, and food vendors, became a transmission
site for the culture of consumption to a society-wide audience.
Consumer industries and businesses targeted a respectable clien-
tele with displays and by sponsoring public events. In doing so,
they entrenched themselves and their products as a welcome and
integral feature of the festivities. As the new consumer culture was
incorporated into the celebratory calendar, northern urban Mexi-
cans became further enmeshed in a consumer ethic. Collectively,
these events supported a process that was making consumption as
well as production a visible part of the public culture. Urban con-
sumption and the consumer culture it nurtured permeated the daily
discourse and social relations of urban Mexicans, creating a host of
new public contexts for old social struggles.


BUNKER - Consumers of Good Taste

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Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States

'Consumers of Good Taste:' Marketing Modernity in Northern Mexico, 1890-1910

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Durante la tiltima mitad del porfiriato, se desarroll6 una incipiente cultura

On the night of Mexico's centennial on September 16, 1910, in

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This content downloaded from 185.44.78.31 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 22:28:36 PM

bers of the working classes, particularly artisans, they all claimed a

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the case of telephones, began to be available for domestic con-

8. Alexander Saragoza, The Monterrey Elite and the Mexican State,

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Mass-Circulation Newspapers and Advertising

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to advance the image of a modernizing and increasingly affluent

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panies continued this format. By the early 1900s, large companies

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234 Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

The highly competitive tobacco industry also basked and bat-

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wars illustrate a wider phenomenon in modern consumption; cor-

19. ContemporaryMexicansrecognized the possibilityof a tobacco monop-

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236 Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

the mark of a Barnumesque epic. El Buen Tono and La Tabacalera

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grounds or at public events; promotions escalated into more outra-

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helped to raise the social stock of cigarettes, praising evenly both El

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European aeronaut, Mr. Hamilton, succumbed to the "stupid idea"

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.L B.UE TONOS, A..tiene TiWtrda, onformea la loy,la propiedad

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242 Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

Oolaea. el felnoo mecnlco. apurd Ye

chauffeur flattened a pedestrian but revived him by lighting up a

37. Ibid., 4 August 1907, 3.

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instance an inventor named Colaza read of an impending collision

38. Ibid., 30 November 1907, 3.

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Urrutia drew upon widely appealing themes of love, marriage,

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Bunker: Marketing Modernity in Northern Mexico 245

^'0 -,. CCicacn1te.r.tfinad?o oon ptO

the couple decided they must either commit suicide or murderthe

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C O t/m af'9 ste//s

C:LCoL79i[1frr, t V ''ot w c - fsA

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43. TheMonterreyNews, 11July 1908, 3.

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The phonograph, manufactured both by Edison and Victor

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work and spend. Advertising and mass-circulation newspapers

Women and Consumption: Department Stores

50. SusanPorterBenson, Countercultures:Saleswomen,Managers,and Cus-

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