Hstorical events do not represent themselves, they are represented, they do not speak, they are spoken for Hans Kellner essays

Hstorical events do not represent themselves, they are represented, they do not speak, they are spoken for Hans Kellner essays According to Thomas Benjamin in La Revolucion, history is much more than past events and the facts that describe them. It is also a collective memory and the way some reminiscences are passed on from generation to generation while others get lost or forgotten. Benjamin shows that people can fight with memories just as they fight with guns. In this way, memories may be as real, if not more so, than the "actual" events to which they refer. This is what happened during the Mexican revolution: Through such memories, the revolution with a small "r" became an all-compassing and almighty Revolution with a capital "R." In "Construction," the first section of La Revolucion, Benjamin discusses how from 1911 to 1928 each revolutionary faction put its own slant on the meaning of the political conflict within Mexico. For example, freelance writer Gaspar Bolanas wrote propaganda for newspapers and gave speeches that supported Madero. Bolanas and other Madero "voices," living in Mexico as well as Paris, New York and Havana, considered themselves interpreters of realitymaking events clearer and more easily understood by the masses. At the same time, however, they were creating a new occurrence that would go down in history as the "other reality," called the The Maderistas were not the only ones revising history. The factions of Villa, Emiliano Zapata, General Alvara Obregon, and Plutarco Elias Calles advanced their own versions of the Revolution and used them as ideological weapons to contest their rivals' positions. For example, the followers of Venustiano Carranza struggled to produce their own official memory, but because of competition from Zapatistas and Villistas, they never completely won the propaganda contest. Still, they did have some advantages over other political groups. They were well known for their highly intellectual members and made intensive...