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This chapter introduces the central notion that Mexico and Mexicanness are constructs, shaped and performed through multiple modes for interfacing nationalist and tourist agendas. Establishing the focus on two specific practices, the Dance of the Old Men and Night of the Dead, from islands on Lake Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, discussion centers on ways in which both were appropriated for, and deployed as efficacious, iconic embodiments and referents of Mexico and Mexicanness from the postrevolutionary era of the 1920s to the present day. Issues concerning designations of indigenousness and folklorico, and the ideological movement of indigenismo are introduced, particularly relating to the P'urhépecha peoples. The term performism is coined to frame the discussion, engaging with the broadest conceptual understandings of performance, performing, and performativity, with the aim of drawing attention to the multiple cohering and cumulative political, ideological, epistemological, and aesthetic ideas, processes, actions, and strategies.

Chapter Seven deals with the period known as the Golden Age (1940 to 1968), contextualizing this with an overview of state policies regarding indigenismo, folklore and folklórico, and the role of government institutions such as INAH and INI. Two films, The Three Caballeros (Disney) and Maclovia, and the book A Treasury of Mexican Folkways are the focus of analysis in considering national and international dissemination. Discussion of the Lake Pátzcuaro region encompasses the burgeoning array of events using the Dance of the Old Men for local, private and political occasions; the initiation of hotel performances; the Festival of Music and Dance for Night of the Dead; and the role of the pedagogical institute CREFAL Finally, didactic and pedagogical regional dance publications and events, and the influence of the Ballet Folklórico de México are discussed.

As “salsa” celebrated its coronation and strong commercial success, other stylistic currents were emerging to signal the incubation of a new musical sensibility. In 1974, Afro-Philippine bandleader Joe Bataan released a Latin soul album, Salsoul, with a new small company. The album was so successful that the company took that title as its name, becoming Salsoul Records, and began to release musical production that did not fit into the Fania formula and was a deliberate rejection of mainstream salsa. In addition to Bataan’s work, which anticipated in important ways the emergence of Latin hustle, disco and hip-hop, Salsoul also put out the two landmark albums of the Grupo Folklórico y Experimental Nuevayorquino which became huge successes and began to elicit nervous responses from the Fania bosses. Grupo’s music combined a deep “roots” grounding in Cuban rumba guaguancó and a marked connection to jazz in its most serious experimental form. In all regards, the releases of Salsoul records and other alternative labels set the stage for a new, “post-salsa” Latino sensibility which was to take shape in the 1980s and subsequent years.