Ambitious Rebels: Remaking Honor, Law, and Liberalism in Venezuela, 1780–1850 by Reuben Zahler (review)

The Latin Americanist, June 2015 Among the more significant strengths of the work is the author’s contextualization of each failure of U.S. women’s organizational attempts to reach out to their Mexican counterparts. The author focuses on several key political ruptures in U.S.-Mexican diplomatic relations, such as the crisis of diplomatic recognition under President Alvaro Obregón, the oil controversy of 1926–27, President Plutarco Elı́as Calles’ stance on Nicaragua, the “Good Neighbor” Policy, and President Lázaro Cárdenas’ famed expropriation of the Mexican oil industry of 1938. These ruptures had profound effects on U.S. women’s potency in their relations with Mexican women’s organizations. In each case, the failings of U.S. women’s human internationalism was the result of a surge of revolutionary nationalism and the reaction of the U.S. government to the actions of Mexico. Pan-American Women is incredibly well written and accessible, and the author demonstrates a clear engagement with significant portions of the historiography of the Mexican Revolution, the history of feminism in Mexico, and U.S.-Mexican international relations. A wonderful addition to undergraduate or graduate seminar reading lists focusing on transnational women’s rights movements, Pan American Women would also pair with readings dealing with Chicana activism in the United States and transnational/translocal interactions with the rest of Latin America. While the specialist of the political and diplomatic history of the revolutionary period in Mexico may be left with a desire for a deeper interrogation of the concept of “revolutionary nationalism” in theory and in practice from 1920–1940, Threlkeld’s primary objective is to highlight the limits of U.S. women’s human internationalism in the postrevolutionary period. The importance of the work’s focus on Mexican and U.S. women’s interpretations of revolutionary nationalism and their approach to human internationalism should not be ignored. Threlkeld delivers a clear assessment of the failures of U.S. women at forging lasting feminist bonds with Mexican women’s groups, and the revolutionary nationalism that foiled so many of their attempts at international feminist organizing. Julian F. Dodson Department of History University of New Mexico AMBITIOUS REBELS: REMAKING HONOR, LAW, AND LIBERALISM IN VENEZUELA, 1780–1850. By Reuben Zahler. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 2013, p. 330, $26.95. Ezekiel Zamora, one of the leaders of the failed Liberal rebellion in Venezuela in 1846–1847, said that all he had to do to attract followers was tell them “that I had risen up to defend the Constitution of 1830 . . . They followed me because I invited them to defend the patria, liberty, and the law, which the Oligarchs had violated” (236). Reuben Zahler’s Ambitious 88 Book Reviews Rebels: Remaking Honor, Law, and Liberalism in Venezuela, 1780–1850 analyzes the development of political liberal culture that made Zamora’s assertion plausible by the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Drawing on a treasure trove of civil and criminal court cases, Zahler examines the interplay of liberalism, liberty, and law with more traditional concepts (honor and patriarchy), as they influenced elite policy making, political and social practices, and the consequences for Venezuelans, women and men, elite and poor. Zahler concludes that the failed rebellion in 1846–1847 happened, at least in part, because Venezuelan political culture was not mature enough to manage the contradictions between modern political, legal, and economic policies and traditional practices. Zahler’s work is consistent with and contributes to recent historiography that analyzes the evolution of the meanings of political liberalism for elite and popular classes in the nineteenth century (e.g., Peter Guardino for Mexico, James Sanders and Marixa Lasso for Colombia, and Charles Walker for Peru). Ambitious Rebels is historiographically significant for several reasons. First, Zahler’s source base, the texts of elites combined with analysis of the political language of civil and criminal cases heretofore unused by many Venezuelan (or other) historians, is unique. Second, Zahler’s assertion that modernity, in essence, was in the eye of the beholder is spot on and begs further analysis in multiple national contexts. Third, while successfully placing the analysis within the context of Latin American historiography , suggesting that Venezuela is not...