Reconciling Modernity: Urban State Formation in 1940s Leon, Mexico (review)

The Mexican presidential elections of 2000 marked not just the demise of the post-revolutionary regime but also, to a degree, the renaissance of an alternative political culture. That culture is conservative, Catholic, and localist, with deep roots in Bajío heartland states such as Guanajuato, the patria chica of Vicente Fox. It is the neglected history of this other Mexico that Daniel Newcomer seeks to salvage from oblivion. This is not yet another study of regional popular revolution; instead, Newcomer focuses on the conservative urban elite of León, Guanajuato, the self-proclaimed Catholic capitol of Mexico and a bulwark of sinarquismo. During the 1940s, León witnessed a bitter power struggle between conservative elites, represented by the Unión Nacional Sinarquista and later, the Unión Cívica Leonesa and the local PRM. This discursive battle to define Mexican society, politics, and culture culminated in the brutal massacre of citizens by the federal army in 1946.

Newcomer concludes that the León massacre actually signaled the end of decades of factional struggle and the beginning of an era of elite reconciliation and cooperation under the aegis of the post-revolutionary state. Conservative Catholic elites came to accept and even reproduce the revolutionary elite's discourse of modernity, economic development, urban renewal, and paternalistic democracy. The popular classes, on the other hand, were in practice largely excluded, and never embraced modernity. Newcomer thus argues that the revolutionary state failed to established hegemony. Instead, local elites fabricated a thinly veiled "hegemonic appearance" that belied popular consensus. Popular sectors recognized the "official story" as false and local elites as illegitimate.

This important revisionist thesis is, unfortunately, weakened by Newcomer's lack of social analysis. While his effort to examine elite discourse is in itself commendable, this focus leaves León's working class and its social agenda largely undefined. Newcomer argues that the city's popular sectors never conformed to either sinarquista or PRM molds and instead appropriated official discourses to pursue their independent agendas. Yet Newcomer barely discusses what these goals may have been. In contrast to earlier students of sinarquismo, Newcomer portrays the UNS as an elite-dominated organization without significant popular support. Frustrated UNS leaders complained that León's lower classes, including women, lacked the devoutly Catholic and deeply conservative culture they had expected and often failed to mobilize in support of the organization's Catholic crusade. Though Newcomer's insights offer a welcome corrective to essentialist interpretations, a more detailed analysis of popular politics and culture would have strengthened his argument. The PRM is portrayed in a similar light, and no attempt is made to identify its popular following. Newcomer views León's politics as an exclusively elite domain.

As a cultural historian, Newcomer relishes the role of flâneur. He strolls across the plazas and through the alleys of old León, picking his way through the rubble of buildings demolished to make way for the symbols of the new urban "aesthetics" of modernity, such as sewer systems and new housing developments, deconstructing elite discourse and ritual along the way. Unfortunately, he occasionally loses the reader on his circuitous ramble. The text is marred by verbose, repetitive, and obscure language ("quasi-elite," "symbolic liturgies," etc.), typos (missing accents in particular), and labyrinthine organization. Oddly, the book has only four illustrations, all indistinct city blueprints.

Despite these weaknesses, specialists will glean much of interest from this study. Newcomer has identified serious huecos in our knowledge of post-revolutionary state formation and sheds light on a much-neglected but crucial aspect of modern Mexican history. The alternative political culture that emerged in towns such as León during the 1940s is undoubtedly still of great relevance in Mexico today.