Los hijos de la revolucion: Familia, negocios y poder en Mendoza en el siglo XIX (review)

Scholars interested in the history of the Argentine "Interior" will welcome this new addition to the neglected field of regional studies in Argentina. Unlike other Latin American countries with a stronger tradition on regional studies, works with a focus outside of Buenos Aires and the pampas have been relatively scarce. Beatriz Bragoni's book provides a refreshing analysis of Mendoza's political, economic, and social reality during the nineteenth century.

Los hijos de la revolución is a fascinating and well-documented study of one Mendocino family, "los González." The reduction of scale of observation brings out the importance of kinship networks as a basis for economic, social, and political advancement, particularly at the local level. Solidly grounded in a rich corpus of public and private documentation, especially the records of the Archivo Familiar Panquegua (1827-1914), the study provides illuminating insights not only on the family's political and economic trajectory but also on Mendoza's during the difficult decades that preceded the consolidation of the national state.

The book is divided into five chapters and focuses on the complicated decades that followed the May Revolution. The first two chapters discuss the family's economic activities. From a modest start as local merchants, the González were able to create a solid and diversified family business that exceeded the local ambit and extended to Chile and the littoral areas. Bragoni's analysis uncovers several fascinating aspects of the family business: for example, the re-accommodation that followed the assassination of one of the brothers. The author concludes that the family built a successful collective business that lasted for several generations based on smart financial choices and, to a much greater extent, on the consolidation of personal relations, which included the members of the "parentela" as well as close friends.

Bragoni convincingly proves that personal networks acquired particular importance in the process of capital accumulation as well as resulting fundamental in social recognition. In order to uncover the family's position in the local social universe, the third chapter switches focus to the relatively more private sphere of marriage and residential patterns. Her analysis of marriage patterns illustrates well how the unions were mostly intended to preserve the family's patrimony, but at the same time it uncovers the limits of the family mandate and brings out the importance of individual decisions. Residential choices for both the living and the dead appeared as a main mechanism for public recognition. This is a fascinating chapter that, although it leaves the reader craving for more, serves as an appropriate transition to the last theme discussed in the book: the family's participation in the political scene.

In the last two chapters, Bragoni addresses the family transition from secondary political actors to preeminence in the provincial political scene with the inauguration of Carlos González as provincial governor in 1863, and the consolidation of the group known as "los Gonzalistas." As with their economic activities, flexibility, accommodation, and negotiation characterized this family's involvement in politics, especially when the local political panorama became more complex. Nevertheless, the group's failure to adapt to the new political rules of the last quarter of the nineteenth century determined their displacement by another local group, the "Civitistas."

This book deserves special recognition for several reasons. As mentioned earlier, along with other recent contributions to regional studies, such as Ariel de la Fuente's work on La Rioja and the volume edited by James Brennan and Ofelia Pianetto, it addresses a chronic imbalance in the Argentine historiography. At times we may wonder to what extent the experiences of this family re-create the situation of vast social structures. Nevertheless, it is only at this micro level of analysis that we are able...