Anita Brenner and the Jewish-Mexican Identity: a narrative analysis of the article Mexico: Another Promised Land in The Menorah Journal (1928). (Spanish)

• In Event: Evolution, Revolution, Space and Place

Abstract

This essay analyzes the short article Mexico: Another Promised Land (1928) published in the New York liberal Jewish newspaper The Menorah Journal. This article was written by the young Mexican reporter and anthropologist Anita Brenner (1905-1974) from the perspective of the life of a modern Jewish intellectual woman during the Mexican Revolution times (1910-1917), and afterwards. With this text, Anita Brenner established herself as the first woman of the twentieth century to speak of a Mexican Judaism in the Revolutionary and Post-revolutionary context of cultural and social insurrection. Unlike other of her publications on the Jewish theme, and even more so, the rest of her autobiographical work, this brief article marked the culminating point of the convergence between “the Jew” and “The Jewishness” in the western metaphor, and the experience of a Jewish woman in the Mexican modernity. Brenner offered, to the 200,000 readers of The Menorah Journal of the time, a translation of Mexican reality far from the usual vision of barbarism or from the land of bandits, and closer to Mexico as a place where modern intellectual, cultural and economic development were occurring. Hence the appealing title of the article considering Mexico as another option for a so-called Promised Land. This essay uses critical approaches of autobiography to analyze Brenner's article from two critical perspectives. On the one hand, I return to the act of writing as a form of liberation for a modern Mexican Jewish woman (Baskin 1994; Sidonie 1987; Arfuch 2007). On the other hand, I introduce Brenner's pioneering role in presenting the concept of Mexican Judaism in the new modernity of the twentieth century and dissect each of the parts that make up so, as well as discuss the myths and prejudices about Judaism in the Revolutionary and Post-revolutionary Mexican era. The importance of this analysis with one of Brenner's earliest texts lies in its contribution to the
discussion of Jewish identity in Mexico during the emerging modernity of the twentieth century.

Este ensayo analiza el artículo MEXICO: ANOTHER PROMISED LAND, publicado en 1928 en el periódico neoyorquino The Menorah Journal. Escrito por la joven reportera, periodista y antropóloga mexicana Anita Brenner (1905-1974), el artículo aborda la vida en México desde la perspectiva de una intelectual judía moderna. Con este texto, Brenner se convirtió en la primera mujer del siglo XX en abordar el tema del judaísmo mexicano en el contexto revolucionario de la insurrección cultural y social. A diferencia de otros de sus escritos sobre el tema judío y de su obra autobiográfica, este breve artículo marca el punto culminante de la convergencia entre "lo judío" como metáfora y la experiencia de una mujer judía en la realidad posrevolucionaria mexicana. El presente ensayo utiliza enfoques críticos hacia el discurso autobiográfico para analizar el artículo de Brenner desde dos perspectivas: por un lado, la escritura como forma de liberación para una mujer moderna judía mexicana; por otro, como la introducción del concepto de judaísmo mexicano en la nueva modernidad del siglo XX, y el análisis de los mitos y prejuicios sobre el judaísmo en la era posrevolucionaria mexicana (Baskin 1994; Sidonie 1987; Arfuch 2007). La relevancia de iniciar este análisis con uno de los primeros textos de Brenner radica en su contribución a la discusión sobre la identidad judía en México durante la emergente modernidad del siglo XX.

Author

• Ana Semo, Pennsylvania State University