Fui, vi, bailé: representaciones en pugna del sarao dado por la oficialidad francesa a la élite capitalina mexicana en el Teatro Nacional, el 29 de junio de 1863

Abstract

The paper explores some representations of the ball offered by the French army in Mexico City on June 29, 1863, having as its linchpin the iconographic and iconotextual analysis of the images that two French illustrated magazines –Le Monde Illustré and L' Illustration Journal Universel– and a Mexican cartoon newspaper –El Monarca– created regarding it. The informative pieces were contrasted with letters, reports and memoirs written by some of the attendees with the aim of showing the different discourses and positions with which the authors sought to legitimize or discredit the event and both its importance and consequences within the general strategy of the French Intervention. It is argued that the celebration and its paraphernalia functioned as a soft power strategy in which stereotypes about the hosts, guests, and the uninvited were extrapolated, consigning factions among them; likewise, two lithographs are proposed as possible visual references that the Parisian hebdomadaries could have used in the creation of their engravings.