Everyday Life and Politics in Nineteenth Century Mexico: Men, Women, and War (review)

Everyday Life and Politics in Nineteenth Century Mexico: Men, Women, and War. By Mark Wasserman (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2000) 248 pp. $39.95 cloth $19.95 paper.

Mexico's nineteenth-century history, long regarded as hopelessly chaotic and populated by sycophantic leaders, has become a popular digging trench in recent years. Social historians have turned their attention toward the provinces, resisting the temptation to equate "national" history with the political maneuvering that took place in and around Mexico City. Scholars have also recast liberalism and conservatism as local and regional political movements (not as timeless ideologies), and in doing so have examined the trials, tribulations, and accomplishments of ordinary men and women. The advances in the field have made Mexico's nineteenth century ripe for an interpretive reassessment.

Wasserman has attempted such a new synthesis. The text is divided into three sections: "The Age of Troubles" (1821-46), "The Age of Civil Wars" (1846-76), and "The Age of Order and Progress" (1876-1910). Wasserman succeeds admirably in preserving the insights of an earlier generation of scholars, while incorporating the advances of the recent historiography. The author also grapples with the problem of telling a convoluted story in an effective manner. His solution is to mix biography and social history, introducing each section with a short biography of its tutelary caudillo. Antonio Leach section with a short biography of its tutelary the advances of the recent historiography. The author also grapples with the problem of telling a convoluted story in an effective manner. His solution is to mix biography and social history, inoppiness.

The greatest strength of the book is its attention to ordinary individuals and the ways in which they attempted to make the best out of a century of misadventure and adversity. Men and women fought tenaciously to preserve local autonomy, played elite groups against one another, and craftily resisted conscription, taxation, etc. Particularly welcome are the author's efforts to bring Mexican women back into a century long viewed as overwhelmingly male. Life was even more oppressive for women than for men; women faced fewer avenues of advancement, had to contend with social mores, and remained without political rights throughout the century.

Regardless of gender, Wasserman finds that war was a major factor impinging on everyday life. War not only led to death in actual combat or in war-related epidemics, but also lowered the living standards of all Mexicans by disrupting commerce, delaying technological innovation, and breeding political instability. Surprisingly, the tragic relationship between war and Mexico's nineteenth-century peoples has received little scholarly attention. Everyday Life and Politics in Nineteenth Century Mexico is a timely and informative work that anyone who has tried to teach this turbulent century of Mexico's history will readily appreciate.

Andrés Reséndez
University of California, Davis

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