The Last Caudillo: Álvaro Obregón and the Mexican Revolution (review)

It has long been assumed that a string of dominating "Great Men" have largely shaped history. More recently, historians have challenged such an approach, wondering why we continue to fixate upon elite males and so obsessively identify them as the real movers and shakers. It is no surprise then that Mexican history has its own Great Man tradition. Publications on specific presidents and military men can be found nearly everywhere. Visit any used bookstore on Donceles Street in central Mexico City and see for yourself.

With this proviso in mind, Jürgen Buchenau's concise biography of Mexican political giant Álvaro Obregón can be fully appreciated for its artful construction and consistency in connecting the revered Sonoran to a larger social whole. The Last Caudillo initially beckons with a striking black-and-white cover photo of a still relatively young, mustachioed Obregón. We see him pictured with powerful, penetrating eyes, clear skin, starched shirt. and tie. No hint of the (soon-to-be) infamous lost arm can be discerned.

Buchenau ably marches us from Obregón's somewhat difficult frontier upbringing in Huatabampo, Sonora, to the lofty heights of Mexican society. Married in 1903 at the age of 23, Obregón would experience significant loss by the time he was 29. His wife died while giving birth, as did two of his four children. Grief-stricken, he immersed himself in his business. Continuing in the family agricultural tradition, he grew chickpeas for export and in 1909 developed a harvester for the tasty legumes.

Shortly thereafter, the Maderista phase of the Revolution of 1910 broke . In Sonora, two factions took up the cause. One, which attracted future notables such as Adolfo de la Huerta and Benjamin Hill and was comprised of middling and upper class landowners, was represented by José María Maytorena. The other, a mixed bag of anarchists and socialist-leaning radicals influenced by the tragic events of the miners' strike in Cananea, Sonora, some four years earlier (and including the future revolutionary governor of Yucatán Salvarado Alvarado) also set out to make their mark. Yet despite this formidable lineup of change-makers, Obregón affiliated himself with neither faction but rather unheroically "sat out the 1910 Revolution altogether" (p. 43). Responding to those who wondered about his decision, he explained that his family came first. For some, this was an unforgivable sin. For others who similarly remained on the sidelines including a Guaymas schoolteacher named Plutarco Elías Calles, Obregón's strategy probably appeared quite reasonable.

A year later, however, political opportunity arose and Obregón ran for mayor of his hometown, Huatabampo. Following the vote count, it was found that the first-time candidate had won against an opponent largely affiliated with the entrenched Porfirian machine. When the incumbent called the election results into question, Guaymas delegate Adolfo de la Huerta helped render a sympathetic ruling to his soon-to-be new friend and colleague Álvaro Obregón. As Buchenau notes, the "victory . . . gained [Obregón] his first significant political post as well as something more valuable—acquaintance with one of the rising stars in Sonoran politics" (p. 45).

This early phase in his personal and political life helped bring Obregón in contact with a wide variety of people, while also "provid[ing] the toolbox that he would use in his subsequent career in the revolution" (p. 46). In the engaging narrative that ensues, Buchenau's The Last Caudillo calls on an impressive array of primary sources to render an evenhanded portrait of Obregón as it appropriately casts him as a pivotal figure in the making of modern Mexico. Appropriately, the book title is provocative, in that it makes us think critically about the role of the Great Man, the "charismatic leader" in history. More specifically, Buchenau taps into the historiography of the Latin American strongman or "caudillo" in considering Obreg...