The Mexican Revolution, 1910-1940 (review)

Michael J. Gonzales, noted Peruvianist and author of two articles on copper mining in northern Mexico, in this latest book describes the revolution and provides extensive coverage (nearly one-third of the text) of the Porfiriato. Lucid, engaging, and containing interesting anecdotes, this political survey of the Mexican Revolution makes liberal use of relevant photographs, mostly taken from The Wind That Swept Mexico. As such, the book will engage college students as a part of a Mexican history class. Whether specialists will agree that the book is the "pathbreaking overview" its advertising claims is somewhat more debatable.

In its introduction, Gonzales asserts that the revolution was "popular and agrarian." Unfortunately, the evidence offered does not substantiate this interpretation. Alan Knight, who reinvigorated this provocative thesis in the 1980s, persuasively argued his case by presenting a myriad of examples of localized riots and rebellions seeking either land or village autonomy. In contrast, the current volume highlights contentions over national leadership; when it does discuss the popular classes, it focuses on industrial workers and miners, particularly copper miners, who were tangential to the development of the revolution, especially before 1915. As a result—in its emphasis on the national heroes and villains (Madero, Huerta, Zapata, Villa, Carranza, Obregón, Calles, and Cárdenas) and the Constitution of 1917 as a blueprint for social change—the book more closely resembles the "prorevolutionary" official histories that dominated the historiography in the 1940s and 1950s, than some new pathbreaking study. In short, Gonzales's interpretation will not persuade the growing consensus of scholars who find that the revolution had a great deal more in common with its Porfirian antecedents than its participants imagined, and that the overarching theme of the four decades was the prevalence of continuity over change.

The book seems strongest when examining the Obregón and Calles presidencies. It reports recent contributions concerning the return of the Porfirian oligarchy at the local level, and the pragmatic nature of agrarian reform in the 1920s. Thereafter, it returns to its "prorevolutionary" posture by waxing enthusiastic about Lazaro Cárdenas's presidency, treating Cardenismo as a nearly unstoppable "juggernaut" instead of mere ad hoc, New Deal-style reformism. In describing the post-1920 period, a "pathbreaking" text might have examined the importance of policies resulting from the implementation of Article 28, which allowed the activist state to establish urban social programs such as public housing, public health, food price subsidies, and rent control. Likewise, an innovative work might consider the interesting question of whether the period under discussion ended in 1946, rather than 1940. As William Beezley and others have suggested, the later date marked the time when civilians replaced revolutionary veterans in the presidential palace, and thereafter inaugurated no new social welfare programs. (Avila Camacho's 1944 social security act was the last of these major programs.)

In examining the Madero and Huerta periods more closely, this reviewer found the text's interpretation to be unpersuasive, and at times even misleading. By focusing almost exclusively on military campaigns, the text glosses over the six months of negotiations that brought Madero to power and neglects the Porfirian and civilian Maderista programs for labor, educational, moral, and agrarian reform that bore fruit later. The text ignores Madero's well-meaning attempt to create democracy by asserting that he "appointed" state governors and local officials.

Finally, the number of factual errors contained in these pages were troublesome. Just limiting the discussion to pages 93 and 94, Bernardo Reyes's revolt occurred in 1911, not 1912; he was not jailed in the same cellblock as Félix Díaz; and the place where Reyes was shot during the Decena Trágica, the Zócolo in front of the National Palace, was scarcely an "entrenched Federal position." Scholars who better know the...