Abstract

This essay traces the development of the ideology that cast Mexico's prerevolutionary technocratic elite, the so-called cientííficos, as the masterminds of the country's ruination. It shows that anti-cientíífico discourse took the shape of anti-Semitic ideology, even though there were no Jews in the group. Anti-cientíífico rhetoric was first created by applying anti-Semitic invective taken directly from the Dreyfus Affair. The implications for Mexico's revolutionary nationalism are explored in the conclusion.