Wars within Wars: Mexican Guerillas, Domestic Elites, and the United States of America, 1846-1848 (review)

The topic of guerillas in the Mexican War warrants examination. Too often, writers have accepted the notion that Mexico's only resistance occurred on battlefields with well-known names. Small scale attacks and raids on U.S. columns and garrisons are easily dismissed as the work of bandits or local ranchers. Anyone who reads the published diaries of U.S. soldiers like Jacob J. Oswandel or Albert G. Brackett gets the sense that Mexico did in fact mount a vigorous, although unsuccessful, guerrilla campaign against the Americans who entered their county.

Mexican Guerillas, Domestic Elites, and the United States of America, 1846–1848 offers an analysis of the Mexican guerrilla activity in the Mexican War. The author, Irving W. Levinson, presents a fresh approach to the topic. A Latin American historian, he brings the viewpoint of that discipline to his subject. Readers will find his explanation of how the issue of class hampered Mexico's response to the war interesting and useful. Most U.S. historians have been conditioned to think of the war in terms of Americans versus Mexicans. For many readers, this book may be their first introduction into Mexico's class struggles, which pitted criollos, mestizos, and indios against each other as they grappled for power in the wake of independence. The withdrawal of troops from some rural areas to face the invaders actually allowed indigenous discontent to flare into local uprisings against Mexican elites. Moreover, the author points out the fact that most studies of the war have depended mainly on U.S. sources. Levinson incorporates Spanish language documents, adding information and a balance that is sometimes lacking. The author's strongest point is his analysis of the social aspect of the war on the Mexican people.

Military historians might be disappointed, though. Levinson's study is not an in-depth narrative of military operations by or against guerillas. The author's analysis is sometimes flawed, as when he declared Scott garrisoned Puebla following the fall of Mexico City, when in fact he left a force there prior to his march to the Mexican capital (p. 61). Moreover, he or his copyeditor should have caught the error that Taylor's army captured Monterrey in September 1846, not August 1846 (p. 16). Readers interested in guerilla activity during the war may want to consult Donald S. Frazier (ed.), The United States and Mexico at War: Nineteenth Century Expansionism and Conflict (Macmillan, 1998).

A book such as Mexican Guerillas, Domestic Elites, and the United States of America, 1846–1848 points out that there is still work to be done on interpreting seminal events such as the Mexican War. Historians from other disciplines like Levinson can bring new information, new methods, and a new way of looking at what may seem like a well-worn topic. Don't assume that a book about Mexican guerrillas has nothing to offer Texas historians.