Surviving Mexico's Dirty War: A Political Prisoner's Memoir (review)

This translation of the Spanish-language Sendenero en tenieblas (2004) is a welcome addition to the near-empty shelf of contemporary studies of Mexico's dirty war, and on modern Guerrero more specifically. Only recently has the academic community begun to identify the massive repression associated with the dirty wars of the Southern Cone with events in Mexico in the 1970s (a neglect explicitly acknowledged by this English-language title).

The oppositional movements in the southwestern state of Guerrero have elicited few studies, most available only in Spanish and many, only through smaller outlets or private collections in Guerrero. These works, however, often focus on the guerrilla movements to the neglect of the public manifestations of discontent; the literature has tended to mythologize the leadership of teachers-turned-guerrilleros Lucio Cabañas and Genaro Vázquez Rojas. While a broader examination of the popular movements—culminating in public repression in the state capital of Chilpancingo in 1960, in Iguala in 1962, in Cabañas' hometown of Atoyac and in Acapulco in 1967—is still missing, this memoir is a welcome contribution towards filling that void.

Ulloa Bornemann played a relatively minor role in the political upheavals in Guerrero, the series of popular protests and government response that ultimately cost hundreds of lives, disappearances and the razing of entire communities. A middle class, educated and, by his own description, privileged mestizo, Ulloa's commitment to the radical politics being played out around him vacillated and ultimately was abandoned. This is not to minimize the price he paid— torture and a long prison sentence, first in Campo Militar Número Uno, then in the equally notorious Lecumberri Prison and finally, Santa Martha—but it does mean that this memoir is less revelatory of unswerving ideological dedication than the story of one man's inner journey, culminating in disillusionment and distancing himself from the colleagues and politics he had earlier embraced.

There are numerous strengths to this work: not only does it humanize the militant, but effectively positions him within the larger framework of family intimates, making this not just one man's story, but more broadly, the experiences (albeit from a single voice) that played out in the intersection of public and private. The memoir will also serve as a valuable primary source for scholars examining this period of Guerrerense activism, as Ulloa identifies numerous radicals from a range of organizations who came and went through these prisons. Additionally, the work serves to further illuminate the important distinctions between intellectual and popular class participants, and the privileges the former retained despite their activism. Ulloa does not shy away from detailing, nor does he apologize for, the efforts of his family to use their influence—including direct access to Secretary Jesús Reyes Heroles—to attain his freedom. Thus, the acknowledgement of his class privilege leaves the reader wishing for a fuller recognition of its implications for him and, particularly, its absence on those he left behind in each prison. What Ulloa leaves for the reader to assess is the relative weight of familial concerns, intellectual doubts about the movement itself, the impact of torture and incarceration, and the re-claiming of his more traditional professional trajectory, that resulted in his "synthesis of [his] moments of doubt" that led to his determination "to engineer [his] exit from the Organization as fast as possible" (p.127). His choices are controversial, mature and thoughtful, and assure the work's place within the powerful genre of testimonios.

In sum, this text provides an important personal component that contributes to humanizing and complicating often agonizing decisions and their ramifications. For educators, recognition of the continued historiographic privileging of the urban and intellectual participants in oppositional movements should accompany the use of this story. It will be of even greater value, both to scholars more generally and...