A stranger in the racetrack. Jacqueline Evans and the Carrera Panamericana, 1950-1954

Abstract

The Carrera Panamericana, held in Mexico between 1950 and 1954, meant for Mexican motorsports an important step in its process of institutionalization within the country. The event contributed to the development of the mass sports entertainment industry, generated a meeting point for the national and international automotive community, but it also developed the drivers who built upon themselves the foundational narrative of Mexican motorsport.the foundational narrative of Mexican motorsport.

Among its participants was British actress Jacqueline Evans, who had been living in Mexico since the 1940s. Around it, a narrative was woven that contrasted the nationalist elements of Mexican society, as well as the symbolic and cultural content of death from the second half of the 20th century in Mexico. Evans was, in the history of the Carrera Panamericana, the foreign (and strange) woman “infiltrated” into a dangerous activity, which for Mexican society was little linked to her gender: As a result, she faced a resistance that was clearly seen in the journalistic writings of the time. Despite this, she became the only woman (and one of the few people) who participated in all the editions of the Carrera Panamericana between 1950 and 1954.

For this reason, it is important to recover and analyze her experience as part of a series of transformations in the sport and automobile phenomenon. This is more latent if we consider the shortage of academic studies on this sporting event, but also the lack of written testimonies that detail their participation in the Carrera Panamericana. In this way, the legacy of Jacqueline Evans was buried by a predominantly macho narrative that must be rescued for the history of women within the motorsport.