Mexico in the 1940s: Modernity, Politics, and Corruption (review)

This is a richly detailed, narrative history of a fundamental decade of modern Mexican history that is beginning to receive the important scholarly attention the period fully merits. Niblo has conducted a masterful archival investigation, bringing forth letters, diplomatic commentary, and behind-the-scenes insight into business transactions, and political and labor conflicts that have largely remained hidden from public knowledge. He succeeds in illuminating many important questions concerning how, why, and with what consequences Mexico shifted from a radical social agenda in the 1930s to a repressive, conservative one in the 1940s. Although the author establishes at the outset his concern with reconstructing the "skeleton . . . [of] political and economic issues at the national level" and leaving to others more "innovative approaches focusing upon regional, social, and gender topics [that] can contribute additional insights" (p. xxi), many readers may nonetheless find themselves frustrated by the narrowness of his approach. Given the rich archival material he uncovered so successfully, Niblo might have sifted through the contents of that material with a finer, subtler set of methodological tools.

There is no question that understanding the 1940s is central to grasping the nature of Mexico's one-party state. If at the beginning of the decade "the village remained the center of the world" (p. 1), by the 1950s the rural emphasis of Mexican national politics had been "superseded by a new vision of a modern, urban, industrial nation" (p. 361). In the process, income distribution became one of the most unequal in the world and government promises of revolutionary transformation were reduced to "a torrent of anachronistic rhetoric" (p. 363) that masked an entrenched corruption. How is it that a regime that "reverse[d] many of the reforms for which millions of Mexicans had given their best since 1910" (p. 75) nevertheless consolidated its political authority, contained challenges from the left, while remaining fundamentally popular at the same time? This is the key paradox Niblo seeks to unravel.

The book opens with a broad, narrative sketch--a "mosaic" as he titles the chapter--of the sociocultural and political-economic landscape of Mexico in the 1940s. Here we are introduced to an assembly of useful statistical data that illustrate (if often in guesswork fashion) the transformations at hand: newspaper and magazine circulation, highways and vehicle registrations, placement of the workforce, ejido lands distributed, et cetera. These statistics are interwoven with abbreviated introductions to the role of popular and official cultural projects (e.g., festivals, cinema, sports, anthropology), but the subject of culture is dealt with superficially and not with particular finesse. In fact, one senses that Niblo saw a certain obligation to incorporate questions of "culture" (given present-day shifts in the field) and doing so in the introductory chapter proved convenient. Once out of the way, he delves into the complex narrative of political and economic crises and the consolidation of the authoritarian regime that is the heart of his study.

Historians now understand that the shift toward a more conservative fiscal development strategy in fact began after the 1938 oil expropriation under Cárdenas, and not in some overnight fashion following the 1940 election of Avila Camacho, his successor. Not only did Cárdenas hand-pick the more conservative Avila Camacho (choosing him over the preferred candidate by the left wing of the party, Francisco Mùgica), but Cárdenas did everything within his powers to assure the legitimacy and stability of Avila Camacho and, as Niblo reveals, of his successor Alemán as well. In fact, one of Niblo's central arguments is that Cárdenas remained loyal to the political machine he helped to institutionalize, thus leaving the left without a credible spokesperson at the national level. World War II, moreover, provided Avila Camacho with a "political windfall of the first magnitude" allowing him to "escape from the great shadow" (p. 115...