Panorama of Géneros Populares During the Porfiriato Era
Panorama of Géneros Populares During the Porfiriato Era

Summary/Abstract: In writing an introductory study on the recovery and publication of 12 popular plays from the Porfiriato era, located in the collections of the General Archive of the Nation and the National Library of México, two questions arose: the theatrical genre to which they belong, and consequently, which genres of 19th-century popular theatre influenced the recovered works. To this end, a chronological criterion places the 12 plays within the period of Mexican theatre history marked by the creation of the Mexican Society of Authors (1905-1906). The influence of the Spanish género chico on the Mexican plays may be evident, but not unquestionably due to the predominance of the Classic Género Chico, but rather from its manifestation as variety shows (varietés), lowbrow entertainment (género ínfimo), and revues, and the free-flowing influence of vaudeville, whose stage in Spain, and therefore in México, was influential from the 19th century until the first decade of the 20th. Meaning that the discourse of the scriptwriters of the Porfiriato flows from a grotesque mechanism of cultural criticism, inherited from more than one popular theatrical genre.

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