The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics ed. by Joseph M. Gilbert and Timothy J. Henderson (review)

Book Reviews I13 Gilbert,Joseph M. andTimothyJ. Henderson, ed. TheMexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. Pp. 792. $24.95.) This volume is a most sincere attempt to depict Mexico in all its complexity, an object carried out superbly and in an altogether unprecedented fashion. Very seldom has a reader, an analytically -challenged subgenre by definition, done as much justice to any Latin American country. Anyone who has the patience and dedication to go through its more than seven hundred pages (with volumes this thick, it is also a matter of wonder that University presses are able to make any money) will be rewarded with a more than judicious grasp of the Mexican experience. Perhaps that is also why, as the authors remind us, people find themselves habitually transfixed by the Aztec nation. Though they may at times be unaware of it, Mexican nationals doubtlessly count among the most identity-driven people anywhere. Hence, the least a volume rigorously dedicated to the analysis of Mexico might accomplish is to replicate the sense of fascination emerging from its established (and some lesser acknowledged) exercises of identity. Quite literally, The Mexico Reader does a great job at positing an understanding of a Mexico in flux, at constant conflict with itself, beset by the tensions between tradition and modernity. The volume is divided into eight parts. The introductory segment deals with the quest for a definition of national identity, so-called “Mexican-ness.” The contributors’ list involves the usual suspects: U.S. ambassador Joel Poinsett; revolutionary ideologue JosC Vasconcelos; Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz; anthropologist Guillermo Bonfil Batalla; cultural critic Roger Bartra; journalist Alma Guillermoprieto (identified mostly as the New Yorker’s Latin American correspondent); as well as the lyrics of two rancherus by Jost Alfredo Jime‘nez and Cuco SBnchez. This latter element begins to insinuate an approach that will become, in the end, one of this volume’s most solid contributions: its willingness to embrace a more ample construct of Mexico, relying substantially on cultural forms previously neglected by the American academe. The excerpts are brief, well chosen, and nitidly translated , and though the reader might already be acquainted with some of them (Vasconcelos, Paz, and Bartra are virtual staples of the U.S. language academe), their canonical nature more than justifies their presence. In this sense, the book’s first segment is quite adept at leveling the field. Before dwelling on more prosaic matters, it is indispensable that contact between the public and The Latin Americanist Winter/Spring 2004 these texts is guaranteed. Parts I1 through V are thoroughly historical, intending to review Mexico pre-Columbian, colonial, emancipatory, and revolutionary pasts. Mexico’s indigenous past is re-visited and contextualized within the scope of the Spanish imperial project, carefully laying out the terrain for the eventual emergence of the United States into the picture. After all, several centuries of isolation lie between the arrival of CortCs’s expedition and the burning of the Alh6ndiga de Granaditas. It is a remarkable period in Mexico’s history, a distinct past, a time when its reality, regardless of whatever it involved, was unconcerned by matters brewing up north and when the definition of alterity was almost entirely dictated by the Spanish language, and not by Anglo-Saxon standards . Joseph and Henderson do a masterful job at selecting texts that depict and clarify greatly the vast impact of the colonial experience upon the Mexican condition: the Pop01 Vuh, the old chronicles, the accounts of the people in power, and, true to form, sor Juana. Unlike earlier times, which emphasize cultural antagonism and ethnic disparity, the nineteenth century (Part IV) is portrayed as a period of transition, during which a young population struggles to gain its foot on history. It embodied, according to the selection by these editors, an instance to think the nation, distinguishing clearly between the Mexican revolt, with a narrowly defined idiosyncrasy, and that of the rest of Latin America, guided chiefly by motives of rudimentary societal consolidation. In short, this segment discusses the foundations of a national narrative. The manuscripts by Mariano Otero and Luis GonzAlez y Gonzdez are particularly enlightening. Preceding the analysis of the revolution...