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‘Que el cielo un soldado en cada hijo te dio …’: Conscription, Recalcitrance and Resistance in Mexico in the 1940s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2005

THOMAS RATH
THOMAS RATH
Affiliation:
Columbia University.
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Abstract

Conscription and resistance to it can tell us much about state–society relations in Mexico in the 1940s. The state's implementation of conscription was obstructed by limited bureaucratic and coercive capacity, and by the continued political autonomy of the regions. Popular protests and the hundreds of petitions sent to the central government provide a glimpse of popular views of the army, state, nation, notions of respectability, and the family. The extent of both violent and more ‘loyal’ resistance to the draft shows the continued vigorous contestation of state policies by Mexican society at different levels, and it illustrates the limits to the popular legitimacy of the central state.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , August 2005 , pp. 507 - 531
Copyright
2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The research for this article was completed with the support of the Economic and Social Science Research Council (UK), and two grants from the Latin American Centre, St Antony's College, Oxford. Alan Knight supervised the original MPhil. thesis on which this article is based and provided invaluable guidance and criticism. Paul Gillingham was most generous in sharing his own material and insights. My thanks also to Pablo Piccato for additional readings and criticism. Responsibility for any errors is mine. All translations are mine unless otherwise attributed. Archival research took place in the Public Record Office (PRO), London, the Hemeroteca Lerdo de Tejada, Mexico, and the Archivo General de la Nación (AGN) Mexico. Abbreviations for the Ramo de Presidentes are: Lázaro Cárdenas (LC), Manuel Avila Camacho (MAC), Miguel Alemán (MA). Gobernación is abbreviated as GOB. The title quotation is from Mexico's himno nacional, itself the focus of government wartime propaganda efforts. See footnote 75, below.