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The Leviathan on the ZOCALO: Recent Historiography of the Postrevolutionary Mexican State

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THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION. By ADOLFO GILLY. Translated by CAMILLERPATRICK. (London: Verso Editions and New Left Books, 1983. Pp. 407. Cloth $25.00, paper $11.50.)

LA CRISIS OBREGON-CALLES Y EL ESTADO MEXICANO. By DIAZRAFAEL LOYOLA. (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1980. Pp. 169.)

EN UNA EPOCA DE CRISIS (1928-1934): LA CLASE OBRERA EN LA HISTORIA DE MEXICO. Vol. 9. By CORDOVAARNALDO. (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1980. Pp. 240.)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

Thomas Benjamin*
Affiliation:
Central Michigan University
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Abstract

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Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by the University of Texas Press

References

Notes

1. Octavio Paz, “Twilight of Revolution,” Dissent 21 (Winter 1974):59.

2. Proceso 3, 5 March 1979.

3. According to Frank Brandenburg, “The Revolutionary Family is composed of the men who have run Mexico for over half a century, who have laid the policy-lines of the Revolution, and who today hold effective decision-making power.” See The Making of Modern Mexico (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 3.

4. Guillermo Palacios, “Calles y la idea oficial de la Revolución Mexicana,” Historia Mexicana 22 (Jan.-Mar. 1973):261-78.

5. This statement comes from Calles's famous “Grito de Guadalajara,” quoted in El Nacional, 21 July 1934.

6. From Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 284.

7. Richard Tardanico, “Revolutionary Nationalism and State Building in Mexico, 1917-1924,” Politics and Society 10 (1980):76-77. Also see his dissertation, “The Transformation of the Mexican State, 1917-1940,” Johns Hopkins University, 1979.

8. Edwin Lieuwen, Mexican Militarism: The Political Rise and Fall of the Revolutionary Army, 1910-1940 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1968), 57.

9. Studies on political consolidation during the Obregón-Calles period include Randall G. Hansis, “Alvaro Obregón, the Mexican Revolution, and the Politics of Consolidation, 1920-1924,” Ph.D. diss., University of New Mexico, 1971; David C. Bailey, “Obregón: Mexico's Accommodating President,” in Essays on the Mexican Revolution: Revisionist Views of the Leaders, edited by George Wolfskill and Douglas Richmond (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), 81-99; José Iturriaga de la Fuente, La revolución hacendarla: la hacienda pública con el presidente Calles (Mexico City: Sepsetentas, 1976); Jorge Alberto Lozoya, El ejército mexicano (1911-1965) (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1970); and Guillermo Boils, Los militares y la política en México, 1915/1974 (Mexico City: Ediciones El Caballito, 1975).

10. Calles, “Informe presidencial del 1 de septiembre de 1928,” in El Universal, 2 Sept. 1928.

11. “Popular Memory: Theory, Politics, Method,” in Making Histories: Studies in History Writing and Politics, edited by Richard Johnson, Gregor McLennan, Bill Schwarz, and David Sutton (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 213.

12. See, for example, Thomas Benjamin and Marcial Ocasio-Meléndez, “Organizing the Memory of Modern Mexico: Porfirian Historiography in Perspective, 1880s-1980s,” Hispanic American Historical Review 64, no. 2 (May 1984):323-64.

13. See, for example, José Castillo Torre, El PNR de México: como debe entenderse la razón de su origen y su función como instituto político de la Revolución Mexicana (Mexico City: Imprenta de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 1933); Gilberto Bosques, The National Revolutionary Party of Mexico and the Six-Year Plan (Mexico City: Secretariat of Press and Propaganda, National Revolutionary Party, 1937); Vicente Fuentes Díaz, Los partidos políticos en México (de Carranza a Ruiz Cortines) (Mexico City: published by the author, 1956); Rafael Corrales Ayala, “Características del estado mexicano,” and “Sentido y destino de la Revolución Mexicana,” in México: cincuenta años de revolución 3 (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1963), 263-69, 360-78; and Miguel Osorio Marbán, El partido de la Revolución Mexicana (ensayos), 2 vols. (Mexico City: Impresora del Centro, 1970). Also see José Luis Reyna, “Desde dentro y desde fuera: el PRI visto por los mexicanos,” Nexos 2 (May 1979):48-51.

14. Howard F. Cline, The United States and Mexico (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), 58. Also see Cline, Mexico: Revolution to Evolution, 1940-1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963); Robert F. Scott, Mexican Government in Transition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1959); Brandenburg, The Making of Modern Mexico; L. Vincent Padgett, The Mexican Political System (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966); and Lorenzo Meyer, “Del optimismo a la duda: el PRI visto por los norteamericanos,” Nexos 2 (May 1979):45-48.

15. Jesús Silva Herzog, “Rise and Fall of Mexico's Revolution,” The Nation, 22 October 1949, 395-96; and Is the Mexican Revolution Dead?, edited by Stanley R. Ross (New York: Knopf, 1966).

16. Gilbert M. Joseph, “Mexico's ‘Popular Revolution’: Mobilization and Myth in Yucatán, 1910-1940,” Latin American Perspectives 6 (Summer 1979):48.

17. México: la revolución congelada (“The Frozen Revolution”) is the title of a documentary

film released in 1971; Moisés González Navarro, “México: la revolución desequilibrada,” reprinted in González Navarro, México: el capitalismo nacionalista (Mexico City: 1970), 227-52; and John Womack, Jr., “A Middle-Class Insurgency,” a book review of Ramón Eduardo Ruiz's The Great Rebellion: Mexico, 1905-1924 (New York: Norton, 1980), in The New Republic (14 February 1981):34-36.

18. Lorenzo Meyer, “Historical Roots of the Authoritarian State in Mexico,” in Authoritarianism in Mexico, edited by José Luis Reyna and Richard S. Weinert (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1977), 19. Also see Meyer's excellent syntheses, “La etapa formativa del Estado mexicano contemporáneo (1928-1940),” Foro Internacional 17 (Oct.-Dec. 1977):453-76; and “El Estado mexicano contemporáneo,” Historia Mexicana 23 (Apr.-June 1974):722-52.

19. E. P. Thompson discusses the different approaches of sociology and history in “On History, Sociology, and Historical Relevance,” British Journal of Sociology 27 (Sept. 1976):387-402. Also see Philip Abrams, “History, Sociology, Historical Sociology,” Past and Present 87 (May 1980):3-16.

20. Córdova, La formación del poder político en México (Mexico City: Serie Popular Era, 1972), and La política de masas del cardenismo (Mexico City: Serie Popular Era, 1974); Leal, “The Mexican State, 1915-1973: A Historical Interpretation,” Latin American Perspectives 2 (Summer 1975):48-63; and La burguesía y el estado mexicano (Mexico City: Ediciones El Caballito, 1982); Anguiano, El estado y la política obrera del cardenismo (Mexico City: Editorial Era, 1975); Ianni, El estado capitalista en la época de Cárdenas (Mexico City: Serie Popular Era, 1977); and Bartra, “La revolución domesticada,” in Bartra, Campesinado y poder político en México (Mexico City: Editorial Era, 1982), 16-41. Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, 18.

21. Leal, “The Mexican State: 1915-1973,” 50.

22. Paz, “Letter to Adolfo Gilly,” in The Other Mexico: Critique of the Pyramid (New York: Grove Press, 1972), 131.

23. Paper presented at the seminar on “El movimiento obrero y la Revolución Mexicana” sponsored by the Dirección de Estudios Históricos del INAH, also published as “Del Leviatán al viejo topo: historiografía obrera en México, 1920-1930,” Historias 1 (July-Sept. 1982):41-54.

24. Hall, “Alvaro Obregón y el partido único mexicano,” Historia Mexicana 29 (Apr.-June 1980):602-22.

25. Romana Falcón, “El surgimiento del agrarismo cardenista: una revisión de las tesis populistas,” Historia Mexicana 27 (Jan.-Mar. 1978):333-86.

26. González Casanova, “El partido del estado: I. Antecedentes y umbral,” Nexos 2 (Apr. 1979):3-20; and “El partido del estado: II. Fundación, lucha electoral y crisis del sistema,” Nexos 2 (May 1979):3-19.

27. Hamilton, The Limits of State Autonomy: Post-Revolutionary Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 141.

28. Ibid., 280.

29. Bailey, “Revisionism and the Recent Historiography of the Mexican Revolution,” Hispanic American Historical Review 58, no. 1 (Feb. 1978):79.

30. Córdova, “Regreso a la Revolución Mexicana,” Nexos 3 (June 1980):5.

31. There are two very good dissertations on the subject, however. See Lyle C. Brown, “General Lázaro Cárdenas and Mexican Presidential Politics, 1933-1940: A Study in the Acquisition and Manipulation of Political Power,” Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1964; and Albert L. Michaels, “Mexican Politics and Nationalism from Calles to Cárdenas,” Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1966.

32. Córdova, “Regreso a la Revolución Mexicana,” p. 4.

33. Pereyra, “México: los límites del reformismo,” Cuadernos Políticos (Mexico City) 1 (July-Sept. 1974):56.

34. Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes, translated by Timothy O'Hagan (London: New Left Books and Verso Editions, 1973); Trimberger, Revolution from Above: Military Bureaucrats and Modernization in Japan, Turkey, Egypt, and Peru (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1978); and Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions.