Recent Regional Studies of the Mexican Revolution
1980; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 15; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1017/s0023879100032519
ISSN1542-4278
Autores Tópico(s)Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America
ResumoHistorians have long complained that research on the regional and local impact of the Mexican Revolution has been eclipsed by macro-level analysis of national politics, including studies of formal institutions (the army, the Church, political parties) and biographies of “great men.” Very few of the global studies of the Revolution published in English have paid more than token attention to its regional complexity. It is ironic, for example, that until recently the most detailed, if idiosyncratic, treatment of regional politics in the 1920s was provided by Ernest Gruening's Mexico and Its Heritage (London: Stanley Paul & Co., 1928). Its devastatingly drawn picture of violence at the local level was richly documented from official archives opened to the author by the Calles government in an effort to discredit its enemies. More recently, Jean Meyer's study of the period 1910–40 has provided historians with an analysis that offers both a general characterization of the revolutionary process and a narrative that is informed throughout by a keen appreciation of the Revolution's regional and local variations. Another particular merit of this and other work by Meyer is its iconoclastic vigor and insistence on viewing the Revolution as an event that deepened Mexico's dependence upon international capitalism, providing revolutionary leaders with abundant opportunities for personal enrichment.
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