Mexico: A Brief History by Alicia Hernández Chávez (review)

The Latin Americanist, Spring 2007 experimentation. But also institutional losses seem to have hindered the democratic potential of the Republic since its formative years. Among them, the participation of laymen in trials, the regular visits of judicial officers to prisons and the release of those kept for arbitrary reasons, and civic traditions of policing embodied by coinisarios such as Hipolito Irigoyen, Argentina’s first democratic President, are noticeable. Besides stressing the value of transitional moments for the consolidation of institutions, the book suggests that choices made under conditions of emergency may persist, sometimes for centuries. This seems to be the case of fieros, privileges conceded by Spanish monarchs to the loyal resisting the Muslim occupation, which, transferred to America, became part of the ”republican legal framework” (15)and are to date enjoyed by the military. The book closes by evaluating the ways in which past institutional struggles and traditions transpire in Argentina’s present system of criminal justice. As the author skillfully shows, the past tends to perpetuate itself through procedural traditions. Considering the extensive archival research supporting the book, including records of difficult access, readers would probably benefit from a more detailed presentation of documentary accounts. This said, the book makes a major contribution, mostly arising from the author’s original focus on the confluence of laws, rules, and practices framing the state. Barreneche forces us to confront the many, frequently puzzling, facets of the law. Even under Bernardino Rivadavia or Juan Manuel de Rosas, he notices, the administration of criminal justice “was based on the law” (9). It was a law marked ”by its procedural features,” however, that made it possible for officials ”to be as arbitrary (but always as legal) as they wanted” (9). And it is precisely these long-lasting flexible procedural traditions of the administration of penal law in Buenos Aires that, if serving to adapt heterogeneous legal arrangements to local needs under colonial rule, after independence favored a ”conflictive coexistence between republican norms and their selective enforcement” (121). As the original core thesis of the book thus reveals to us, these legal and procedural traditions corrode the republican ideals they should serve at the same time that they still ground the criminal system in Argentina. Guillermina S. Seri Peace and Conflict Studies Colgate University MEXICO: A BRIEF HISTORY. BYALICIA HERNANDEZ CHAVEZ. TRANS. ANDY KLATT. BERKELEY: U CALIFORNIA P, 2006, P. 367, $24.95. A professor seeking a single-volume synthesis of Mexican history for his or her course and the interested student share one thing in common: both must wade through the immense body of scholarship that has been written on Mexico.Despite the voluminous works available to professors and interested Book Reviews observers, the current work under review should be at the top of their lists. There are two unique and outstanding features of Mcxico: A Brief History. First, because the author is Mexican this history of Mexico provides valuable insights from a Mexican perspective. Second, in addition to providing an excellent introduction to Mexican history, this book also represents a model on how to write national histories which should be of broader interest to historians on the craft of history. Although discussing the nature of history is beyond the scope of this review, it can serve as an optic with which to view and assess this work. Often the preface is where an author acknowledges her intellectual debts while providing a quick and easy introduction to the scope of the book and some of the conceptual and analytical issues raised throughout the work. With a great deal of reluctance, many readers would admit that they frequently skip over the preface and instead opt to read the more substantial parts of the book. The reader of Mexico: A Brief History must resist the urge to glance over the preface. By reading the preface (it is only four and a half pages long!) the reader will better understand the approach to history Alicia Hernandez Chavez is trying to advance. For example, the author dips into the substantial social science literature on Mexico, specifically political science and anthropology. Creating a dialogue between history and the social sciences is not new; indeed many historians test theoretical...