“La Parte Mas Dificil”: Recent Works on Nineteenth-Century Mexican History (original) (raw)

Culture of Empire: American Writers, Mexico, and Mexican Immigrants, 1880–1930

Hispanic American Historical Review, 2007

My major objection to this book is Levinson's tendency to make sweeping and hence misleading generalizations, of which I will mention but one. In chapter 1, he relies on the requirements issued by the Mexican government early in 1846 to determine who could vote and run in national legislative elections, arguing that "most of the predominantly criollo minority that took control of Mexico after independence favored a political structure that excluded the majority of Mexicans from meaningful participation in the life of the nation" (p. 12). He fails, though, to put the 1846 regulations in their proper historical context (they were specifically issued to help ensure the success of the monarchist plot organized by the Spanish minister in Mexico) and does not acknowledge the widespread popular political participation that occurred during the federal republic (1824-35), partly because the country's constitution granted broad suffrage rights to adult males. Despite this flaw, Levinson has produced a valuable work that complements Luis Fernando Granados's Sueñan las piedras: Alzamiento ocurrido en la ciudad de México, 14, 15, y 16 de septiembre de 1847 (Ediciones Era, 2003). Granados's book illustrates the activities of Mexico City's anonymous urban poor during the three-day mid-September 1847 riot against General Winfield Scott and the U.S. expeditionary army, while Levinson brings to life the heretofore-shadowy guerrillas who roamed the countryside and resisted both the foreign invaders and the Mexican state. Wars within War, which will appeal to specialists in nineteenth-century Mexican and U.S. history, the U.S.-Mexican War, and military history, could be used in undergraduate classes thanks to, among other things, its brevity, clarity, and lack of jargon. Given that the book's price will likely keep instructors from assigning it, though, the publisher should consider issuing a paperback edition.

Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico since the Civil War

Hispanic American Historical Review, 2003

Reviewed by John E. Kicza In 1987, John Mason Hart published Revolutionary Mexico, an influential overview of the Mexican Revolution. Disagreeing with the (still) dominant interpretation that the Revolution focused on internal Mexican disequilibria and inequalities, particularly in the agrarian sector, Hart argued that it was instead a struggle for national liberation against the economic imperialism that the United States had inflicted on the country, especially during the lengthy dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. Hart's new book, Empire and Revolution, consists of some 507 pages of detailed case studies of American investment undertakings and business involvement in Mexico from 1865 to the present day. As such, it can be understood as an effort to substantiate his argument in the earlier work. This is apparent also in the very unequal numbers of pages the author devotes to the different time periods. Hart commits some 63 pages just to the 12 years between the end of the American Civil War and the advent of the Diaz regime in Mexico, nearly 200 pages to the Diaz era from 1876 to 1910, some 130 pages to the "years of revolution" from 1910 to 1940," and just under 100 pages to the period from 1940 to 2000. The post-1940 era thus receives rather little attention, although most scholars of Mexico recognize that this is when American economic and cultural impact expanded enormously, eclipsing its impact on Mexico during all previous epochs. Further, until Hart reaches the post-1940 era, he concentrates almost exclusively on formal economic penetration of Mexico. However, in that final section, he abruptly shifts to a discussion of how American popular culture, drugs and criminality, and pollution affected Mexican life. Hart compiled this massive undertaking only after many years of research in business and government archives scattered throughout Mexico and the United States. His dedication and doggedness must be lauded. He shows himself to be very knowledgeable about modern Mexican history, adeptly weaving American financial involvement into Mexico's larger national narrative. The book's lively-and sometimes almost flippant-prose style carries the reader smoothly through what might otherwise have been dense and repetitive case studies. Despite his consistently negative view toward American economic involvement in Mexico over the last century and a half, Hart rarely engages in a systematic evaluation of its impact in any of these eras. He seems to think

The "Mexicanization" of the United States: Mexico in U.S. Public Discourse, 1862-1880

Between 1861-1865 the United States experienced immense social, political, and economic upheaval. The divided U.S. populace, unfamiliar with violent and turbulent aspects inherent of a civil war, used Mexico and, specifically, the term “Mexicanization” to describe their internal discord. Although the term was heavily politicized, “Mexicanization” carried racialized overtones—overtones that negatively and incorrectly portrayed Mexicans to the U.S. populace. “The ‘Mexicanization’ of the United States: Mexico in U.S. Public Discourse, 1862-1880” examines U.S. perceptions of Mexico in the latter half of the nineteenth century, specifically arguing that the use of the racial pejorative “Mexicanization” exacerbated the American populace’s negative view of Mexicans. Moreover, the use of the term illustrates the United States’ continued denigration of Mexicans in the years following the U.S. Civil War until the early twentieth century—an era in which the idea of Mexico is largely absent from the U.S. national narrative. Indeed, U.S. Border States and/or border territories had significant Mexican populations, and U.S. businesses invested heavily in Mexican industry. Yet the idea of Mexico, and its influence within the United States, is largely overlooked in lieu of U.S. internal matters, such as industrialization, Eastern European immigration, and the Progressive Era. Thus, “The ‘Mexicanization’ of the United States” analyzes “Mexicanization” rhetoric throughout the U.S. in latter half of the nineteenth century.

The Illusion of Ignorance: Constructing the American Encounter with Mexico, 1877–1920

Hispanic American Historical Review, 2013

This volume seeks to examine the images of Mexico reflected in United States newspapers, magazines, and published accounts, as well as the unsuccessful efforts by the Mexican government of Porfirio Díaz to change that image. Thus it is "a book not about Mexico but about Americans thinking about Mexico" (p. vi), quoting and examining articles from newspapers and magazines perceived as influential, as well as travel accounts published in book form in the United States. Given its focus on image, it provides little information or context about either country and is based primarily on items that are already well known to scholars of Mexico. Therefore this work will be of more interest to historians of the United States than to those specializing in Mexico or Latin America. Reflecting its chosen focus, the work is inevitably based primarily on previously published materials, save for the initial portion dealing mainly with the mission of John W. Foster as United States minister to Mexico. The volume consists of three separate and loosely connected sections or minibooks, each dealing with a distinct type of account, and each with its own introduction and conclusion. The work does illuminate some lacunae of a well-known history, particularly through its focus on Mexican efforts to influence the US press via unofficial diplomacy to promote and place specific types of articles and interviews reflecting a more positive image of Mexico and its development. The initial section deals with Foster's mission to Mexico and the Mexican campaign of its sometime diplomatic representative and sometime unofficial agent Manuel Maria de Zamacona y Murphy. Historians will find this the most valuable part of the volume, partly because it traces the propaganda efforts of Zamacona and partly because it makes the greatest use of primary sources, principally the papers of the US State Department. This section illuminates the uses of unofficial diplomacy and outright propaganda during the early phase of the Diaz regime. In taking a critical view of Foster's efforts, the author, contends that Foster was "consistently outmaneuvered by the Diaz administration" (p. xvi) and concludes that the view of Foster as one of the nation's initial professional diplomats, as projected in his autobiography, is a distortion to which scholars of Mexico and diplomatic history subscribe. The remaining sections rely heavily on published materials, focusing on leisure travel and reports thereof by Yankees in Mexico, and Mexican participation in various exhibitions in the United States. The overall theme is that the US view of Mexico reflected the Yankees' view of themselves and their mission in the world more than the realities of Mexico. It exaggerated the importance of the United States and reflected the viewpoint of the United States as not "a colleague of Mexico, but as her savior" (p. 96). Even when interest in Mexico increased, the author contends, Yankees continued to view their southern neighbor through a commercial lens as a market for products from the north rather than as a sovereign nation or even a producer of products that might be imported into the United