Paper short abstract:

The contribution reflects about the competing character of regional indigenous memory cultures, national memoryscapes transmitted in public school education and social media as new forum for the production of historical conscience at the example of the so called “Mexican Caste Wars” (19th century).

Paper long abstract:

The contribution reflects about the competing character of regional indigenous memory cultures, national memoryscapes transmitted in public school education, and social media as new forum for the production of historical conscience at the example of the so called “Mexican Caste Wars”.

Those regional conflicts of the 19th century between indigenous or mixed rebel groups against the Republic of Mexico and its liberal elites, have become a topic of history teaching in the 1990-ies in the Mexican school system. Within the national myth making, those conflicts were turned into predecessors of the Mexican Revolution (1910 – 1920) and the resistance of indigenous groups against (land) exploitation is now interpreted as early form of national heroism. This national ideological interpretation meets in some regions with strong local memory cultures on resistance against land expropriation, related with traumatic experiences because of the loss of fathers, mothers, physical and mental injuries, periods of suffering (escape, hunger, homelessness and prosecution), turning the Mexican state into an enemy. One might suppose that in those instances, local and national memory cultures have to be competitive.

Based on interviews with teachers and workshops with school children among indigenous schools in Sonora and in Quintana Roo, the contribution shows, how school education strengthens local memory culture. The ethnographic data also shows how both systems are endangered by social media and changing working conditions because both transform transgenerational communication systems. Specifically social media promise a decolonial approach towards autonomous historical conscience, but tend to be governed by a global "user-cracy".