Mexico

‘I am an American - a North American by geography, but a Mexican by nationality’. So says a smartly dressed young man to an ignorant young American tourist in a telling scene from this sympathetic film, which attempts to improve the knowledge and understanding of audiences living north of the Rio Grande about a place which many Americans visited as a holiday destination but few understood as a country in its own right.

After the war many Americans began to visit Mexico as a holiday destination. This March of Time film (which is amusingly scathing about the ignorance of the typical US tourist) delivers a sympathetic account of recent Mexican history, persuading the audience to see beyond the nightclubs of Mexico City and the fiestas of Oaxaca to the reality of a country which had seen many social upheavals since the 1910 revolution, and where poverty and illiteracy were still rife. The film, which emphasises Mexico’s important role as an ally during the war, also details the recent efforts of the government of President Manuel Ávila Camacho’s PRI party to improve education and literacy, deliver land reforms and invest in industry.