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Mexico’s Crucial Century, 1810 – 1910: An Introduction

2012; Duke University Press; Volume: 92; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-1545899

1527-1900

Mark Wasserman,

Mexican Socioeconomic and Environmental Dynamics

This volume marks the fourth in what must be one of the most productive collaborations in Latin American historical scholarship. William H. Beezley and Colin M. MacLachlan first coauthored El Gran Pueblo: A History of Greater Mexico, now in its third edition (2003), a visionary attempt to treat the history of Mesoamerica and the US Southwest as one narrative. They then undertook a broader project, Latin America: The Peoples and Their History (2nd ed., 2006), a succinct view of the region. Lately, Beezley and MacLachlan have turned once again to Mexico with Mexicans in Revolution, 1910 – 1946: An Introduction (2009), and Mexico’s Crucial Century, 1810 – 1910, under review here. These works represent a valuable look at the panorama of modern Mexican history.MacLachlan and Beezley’s latest is a survey of Mexican history in the long nineteenth century. The authors outline two themes, first, that this epoch can only be understood in terms of a conflict between ideologies, and second, that Mexico’s geographical proximity to the territorially and economically expansionist United States caused many of its problems. The book features a detailed political narrative that begins with the wars of independence, concluding that the decade of turmoil (1810 – 21) severely hampered both the economic and political development of the new nation. It then winds its way through the rivalries between federalists and centralists and between Liberals and Conservatives, featuring Antonio López de Santa Anna as the dominant figure of the era; then through the catastrophic losses incurred in wars against the rebellious province of Texas and the imperialistic United States, emphasizing the precariousness of the US victory. The narrative continues with the Wars of the Reform, the Maximilian interlude, and the rise of Porfirio Díaz. MacLachlan and Beezley push Benito Juárez, whom historians usually place at the center of midcentury politics, into the background, focusing more on Maximilian, Porfirio Díaz, and Manuel González. The authors give over the greatest part of the book to the 35-year dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. They consider his regime deeply flawed, doomed by the social and economic changes its policies brought about and by the stubbornness of Díaz, who adamantly refused to groom a successor.The political narrative is standard fare. The authors’ assessment of the major figures is evenhanded. Maximilian, for example, is not so much a fool as a misplaced, gullible liberal. González was not a puppet of Díaz, but rather a loyal soldier who did the dirty work for his superior. They depict Díaz as the preeminent leader of the nineteenth century, not so much the oppressive villain of revolutionary propaganda as a shrewd political manipulator, sometimes overshadowed by his energetic, much younger wife, and ultimately done in by his hubris.The authors interrupt the political narrative only in chapter 6, “The Social and Economic Pyramid,” which describes Díaz-era social classes. There is, however, an occasional whimsy (always with a point to be made, of course, though never overtly). This is exemplified by the vignette about doña Leona Vicario’s participation in the wars of independence; the story of Eugene Robertson’s 1835 escapades in a hot-air balloon; the relation of Jaime Nuno’s writing the national anthem in 1853; the tale of Julio Chávez López, an Indian socialist in the 1860s; the soap opera – like sagas of the Mexican payment of 300,000 pesos to the United States to satisfy an outstanding debt, and the 1883 honeymoon trip of Díaz and his second wife Carmen Romero Rubio; and the description of the annual, extravagant banquet in honor of the rurales (rural police) during the Díaz dictatorship. We thus learn successively about the substantial role of women in the wars of independence, the fascination Mexicans had for European technology and culture (modernity), the efforts of Conservatives to forge national identity, the opposition in the countryside to Juárez’s restored republic, the importance of diplomatic recognition of the Díaz government by the United States in the late 1870s, and the deceptive glitter of the Díaz era that covered up the inherent weaknesses of the regime.As to be expected in a general work of this kind, I have a number of disagreements with the authors’ interpretations. First, to my mind they underestimate the importance of popular participation in politics, especially at the state and local levels. As a result, they do not emphasize enough the issue of local autonomy, which was at the basis of political debate and practice throughout the nineteenth century. Second, they underplay the basic stability of local and even national politics throughout the period. Third, they marginalize Benito Juárez, who was, perhaps, the century’s greatest leader. Fourth, and probably most important, the authors overemphasize the role of the United States in causing Mexico’s difficulties. Nonetheless, MacLachlan and Beezley have written another important contribution to the field.