THE FIRST EXPOSITION OF MEXICO, A WINDOW TO THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS: Exhibitions and their speeches during the San Marcos Fair, Aguascalientes, 1851-1891

The cycle of local exhibitions (1851-1891) was a time for Mexico in general, and Aguascalientes in particular, to consolidate the republican nation, the liberal order, and bet on progress (a project of growth and development); with the exhibitions, a grain of sand was contributed to strengthen a collective imaginary.
The ideal context for the celebration of the exhibitions in Aguascalientes was found within the framework of the San Marcos Festival (currently the San Marcos National Fair) during the month of April, a time and moment deemed appropriate because the citizens were immersed in a festive atmosphere. The celebration, joy, and relaxation constituted the ideal setting to convey a political project, to speak of all the benefits of progress, to publicly reward those enterprising and hardworking individuals of the entity, to legitimize the different local elites (political, economic, cultural, intellectual). This was the purpose of the celebration of the exhibitions during the April fair.
Hence the name of the work: A Window to the Illusion of Progress, because it was a showcase, a display case, a glass through which one could see an image of the world, which did not necessarily match reality. However, the problem with these showcases, these display cases, and more so in the case of Aguascalientes, was that they were castles in the air; yet, it was a dream that the political class clung to, a window through which an illusion peeked; hence the need to promote works like the railway tracks or electric light, as a way to anchor this imaginary and transition to modernity. Hence the need to exploit the analysis of discourses, because they are hyperbolic, epideictic, manichaean, they shelter the philosophy of progress and the republican ideology, in addition to highlighting the great need to insert themselves into a Western and civilizational cultural logic. Under the idea of progress and the ideals of liberalism, the celebration of exhibitions throughout the Western world, which prided itself on being modern, is understood.

Throughout five chapters, it is shown how this practice was a pretext to instill the values of modernity and the philosophy of progress; and the discourses are analyzed for their great richness. In the first chapter, titled "Universal Expositions of the 19th Century: A Face of Modernity," it serves as an indispensable reference framework for the study of the expositions within the context of the role of San Marcos. The second chapter, titled "The San Marcos Exhibitions: A Liberal Project," discusses the group of people who promoted the exhibition project at the local level. The next section is titled "The Power of the Word: The Discourse," presenting theoretical elements for the study or analysis of the speeches or addresses of the award ceremonies of local exhibitions, based on the classical approaches of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, and the modern theory of argumentation by Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteca. Next, in the fourth chapter, "The Immutable Law of Progress," the philosophy of progress is presented in the positivist approach of Auguste Comte and the evolutionist approach of Herbert Spencer. The speeches serve as the bridge between the local and the universal (understood in European logics) because postulates from both philosophical systems frequently emerge in the discourse. Finally, in the last section, titled "The Topics of Progress," the discourse analysis is presented; the central theme of this section is the idea of progress as a basic postulate of positivist philosophy and the paradigm of modernity.