Make Nuevo León a kingdom again. Abelardo A. Leal's nostalgic project and the exceptionality of Monterrey

Abstract

This essay analyzes the nostalgic project of Abelardo A. Leal Leal Sr. (1899-1982), a writer and self-taught lawyer from Monterrey, father of Abelardo A. Leal. Jr. (1922-1994), who was editor, vice principal and president of El Norte for more than three decades. In El Nuevo Reyno de León: un Estado sin impuestos (1975), a text that articulates his nostalgic project, Abelardo Leal Sr. proposes to demand, before the International Court of Justice and the United Nations, that Nuevo León be restored the territory granted to Luis Carvajal y de la Cueva in 1579 under the heading of “Nuevo Reyno de León”, a demand that would make Nuevo León take over an important part of northern Mexico and even Texas. Far from approaching it as a historical curiosity, an absurdity or an eccentricity, I propose to place this project (written in the mid-1970s, amid the confrontation between local business elite and Mexican State) as part of the Monterrey's exceptionality narratives, an identity afirmations dense weave according to which Monterrey is a singularity in national history, a primal and essentialized particularity, whose “success” and “greatness” were formed behind the back, despite and against the center.