Mexican Mosaic: A Brief History of Mexico by Jürgen Buchenau (review)

The Latin Americanist, June 2009 space from which a community expresses its reactions and feelings to destruction. The last chapter, Judah M. Cohen’s “The Ethnic Dilemmas of Latin American Jewry,” serves to masterfully close the book, complementing the previous chapters and the original idea of Lesser and Rein to review and expand the scholarship in the field. Cohen starts by giving some examples of Jewish expression in music, television, and art in Israel and the United States, by artists who credit parts of Latin America as a basis for their ethnic sounds and representations, promoting “the image of Judeo- or Israelo-Latinidad in markets where such perceptions indicate difference, and sometimes exoticism” (268). Cohen closes with observations on issues of ethnicity and proposes central questions for the future of Jewish-Latin American studies. This is a valuable collection of essays written by highly qualified scholars, achieving brilliantly the objectives proposed by the editors. Debora Cordeiro-Rosa Department of Modern Languages and Literatures University of Central Florida MEXICAN MOSAIC: A BRIEF HISTORY OF MEXICO. By Jürgen Buchenau. Wheeling , IL: Harlan Davidson, 2008, p. 164, $16.95. For a number of reasons, Jürgen Buchenau’s Mexican Mosaic is the most useful textbook that I have assigned in the past decade when teaching the history of Mexico. Although instructors look for a variety of things when selecting a main text, most expect it to be readable and to facilitate learning. The book’s low price helps to ensure that students will buy it, and its brevity increases the likelihood that they will read all of it. Because many general survey texts on Mexico range from four to eight hundred pages, undergraduates are often overwhelmed by their length and the amount of material. As a result, they sometimes ignore the text outright or struggle to identify what is relevant within it. Such long works can also restrict the instructor’s hand, since parts may not be assigned or fewer non-textbook readings may be used in the course. None of these problems arise with Buchenau’s book. Since most students who read this text are likely new to Mexican history , to improve their comprehension Buchenau smartly begins his account with a broad and thorough introduction that highlights the country’s geography , topography, regions, ethnic populations, major industries, micro and macro economies, foreign relations, wars fought (both domestic and foreign), national identity, popular culture, and national politics. To facilitate learning, a timeline of major events since 200 BCE, a glossary of Spanish terms, maps, photographs, and a bibliographical essay are included. The sixteen pages of photos can stimulate class discussion; they also illustrate the extremes of Mexican society since they include, among other 82 Book Reviews things, Mayan pyramids, modern urban monuments, and rural shacks, as well as portraits of the powerful and seemingly powerless. The book is well written, jargon-free, and engaging. In short, this is a straight-forward, student-friendly text that my entire class responded very favorably to. In their end-of-semester evaluations, my students said the book was “informative ,” “helpful,” “not overbearing,” and that it “complimented lectures and reinforced what [they] needed to know.” These positive assessments should not be surprising, since Buchenau used feedback from his own students on early drafts of the text. Although the book focuses mostly on Mexico since independence, its first of five chapters gives readers a good understanding of Mayan, Aztec, and Spanish society before 1492. The first chapter also examines the Conquest and the colonial period. Chapters two through five provide balanced interpretations of each major era of the nineteenth and twentieth century and, like many similar works, the book becomes increasingly detailed as it marches through history. In light of Buchenau’s expertise on the Porfiriato and the1920s, it is not surprising that presidents Porfirio Dı́az, Alvaro Obregón, and Plutarco Elı́as Calles receive more attention than most other chief executives. This concise book is very good at making Mexico’s long and complex history understandable to introductory students. It does this by focusing on just two broad themes, namely “the negotiation of power” and “Mexico in the global community.” Internationally, Buchenau addresses Mexico’s relations...