Synopses & Reviews
In the hands of the state, music is a political tool. The Banda de Mand#250;sica del Estado de Oaxaca (State Band of Oaxaca, BME), a civil organization nearly as old as the modern state of Oaxaca itself, offers unique insights into the history of a modern political state.
and#160;In The Inevitable Bandstand, Charles V. Heath examines the BMEand#8217;s role as a part of popular political culture that the state of Oaxaca has deployed in an attempt to bring unity and order to its domain. The BME has always served multiple functions: it arose from musical groups that accompanied military forces as they trained and fought; today it performs at village patron saint days and at Mexicoand#8217;s patriotic celebrations, propagating religions both sacred and civic; it offers education in the ways of liberal democracy to its population, once largely illiterate; and finally, it provides respite from the burdens of life by performing at strictly diversionary functions such as serenades and Sunday matinees.
and#160;In each of these government-sanctioned roles, the BME serves to unify, educate, and entertain the diverse and fragmented elements within the state of Oaxaca, thereby mirroring the historical trajectory of the state of Oaxaca and the nation of Mexico from the pre-Hispanic and Spanish colonial eras to the nascent Mexican republic, from a militarized and fractured young nation to a consolidated postrevolutionary socialist state, and from a predominantly Catholic entity to an ostensibly secular one.
Review
"The questions raised by the authors are important and the empirical contribution of the volume significant."—Eric Van Young, Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Review
"A fascinating book that provides an original, well-documented perspective on modern Mexico."and#8212;A. Vergara, CHOICE
Review
and#8220;Alegreand#8217;s study fills a significant void. . . . An in-depth study of labor activism in the context of Mexicoand#8217;s Cold War experience is long overdue in the scholarly literature.and#8221;and#8212;Susan Gauss, associate professor at the University at Albany, SUNY, and author of Made in Mexico: Regions, Nation, and the State in the Rise of Mexican Industrialism, 1920sand#8211;1940s
Review
and#8220;A new, broadly learned, critical, illuminating, and highly significant account of Clemente de Jesand#250;s Munguand#237;aand#8217;s important part in the struggles for Mexico. This is a book every historian of Mexico should read; its value will last long.and#8221;and#8212;John Womack, author of
Zapata and the Mexican Revolutionand#160;
Review
and#8220;The most thorough and extended intellectual history yet written of the Catholic Church as it faced up to the Reform, if not one of the better cultural histories of the Reform written from any angle.and#8221;and#8212;Matthew Butler, author of Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexicoand#8217;s Cristero Rebellion: Michoacand#225;n, 1927and#8211;1929
Review
andldquo;An important contribution to historical studies, complementing the existing body of work on our understanding of Oaxaca, and adding a crucial piece to the puzzle.andrdquo;andmdash;Mark Brill, associate professor of musicology and world music at the University of Texas at San Antonio and the author of Music of Latin America and the Caribbeanand#160;
Review
"A solid addition to the study of postindependence Mexico."and#8212;Choice
Review
andquot;[Railroad Radicals in Cold War Mexico] is a long overdue addition to Mexican labor history.andquot;andmdash;Myrna Santiago, American Historical Review
Review
andquot;The Plan de San Diego is one of the most valuable and original additions to the literature of the Mexican Revolution to be released in recent years.andquot;andmdash;Mark E. Benbow, American Historical Review
Review
andquot;Harris and Sadlerand#39;s efforts to re-insert Mexico, the Mexican Revolution, and diplomacy into the history of the Plan de San Diego add an important dimension to our understanding both of this incident and of the early-twentieth-century U. S. Southwest and Borderlands more broadly.andquot;andmdash;Lisa Pinley Covert, New Mexico Historical Review
Synopsis
Often translated as “revolt,” a pronunciamiento was a formal, written protest, typically drafted as a list of grievances or demands, that could result in an armed rebellion. This common nineteenth-century Hispano-Mexican extraconstitutional practice was used by soldiers and civilians to forcefully lobby, negotiate, or petition for political change. Although the majority of these petitions failed to achieve their aims, many leading political changes in nineteenth-century Mexico were caused or provoked by one of the more than fifteen hundred pronunciamientos filed between 1821 and 1876. The first of three volumes on the phenomenon of the pronunciamiento, this collection brings together leading scholars to investigate the origins of these forceful petitions. From both a regional and a national perspective, the essays examine specific pronunciamientos, such as the Plan of Iguala, and explore the contexts that gave rise to the use of the pronunciamiento as a catalyst for change. Forceful Negotiations offers a better understanding of the civil conflicts that erupted with remarkable and tragic consistency following the achievement of independence, as well as of the ways in which Mexican political culture legitimized the threat of armed rebellion as a means of effecting political change during this turbulent period.
Synopsis
The Plan of San Diego, a rebellion proposed in 1915 to overthrow the U.S. government in the Southwest and establish a Hispanic republic in its stead, remains one of the most tantalizing documents of the Mexican Revolution. The plan called for an insurrection of Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and African Americans in support of the Mexican Revolution and the waging of a genocidal war against Anglos. The resulting violence approached a race war and has usually been portrayed as a Hispanic struggle for liberation brutally crushed by the Texas Rangers, among others.
The Plan de San Diego: Tejano Rebellion, Mexican Intrigue, based on newly available archival documents, is a revisionist interpretation focusing on both south Texas and Mexico. Charles H. Harris III and Louis R. Sadler argue convincingly that the insurrection in Texas was made possible by support from Mexico when it suited the regime of President Venustiano Carranza, who co-opted and manipulated the plan and its supporters for his own political and diplomatic purposes in support of the Mexican Revolution.
The study examines the papers of Augustine Garza, a leading promoter of the plan, as well as recently released and hitherto unexamined archival material from the Federal Bureau of Investigation documenting the day-to-day events of the conflict.
Synopsis
Despite the Mexican governmentand#8217;s projected image of prosperity and modernity in the years following World War II, workers who felt that Mexicoand#8217;s progress had come at their expense became increasingly discontented. From 1948 to 1958, unelected and often corrupt officials of STFRM, the railroad workersand#8217; union, collaborated with the ruling Institutionalized Revolutionary Party (PRI) to freeze wages for the rank and file. In response, members of STFRM staged a series of labor strikes in 1958 and 1959 that inspired a nationwide working-class movement. The Mexican army crushed the last strike on March 26, 1959, and union members discovered that in the context of the Cold War, exercising their constitutional right to organize and strike appeared radical, even subversive.
Railroad Radicals in Cold War Mexico examines a pivotal moment in postand#8211;World War II Mexican history. The railroad movement reflected the contested process of postwar modernization, which began with workers demanding higher wages at the end of World War II and culminated in the railway strikes of the 1950s, a bold challenge to PRI rule. In addition, Robert F. Alegre gives the wives of the railroad workers a narrative place in this history by incorporating issues of gender identity in his analysis.
Synopsis
Mexicoand#8217;s
Reforma, the mid-nineteenth-century liberal revolution, decisively shaped the country by disestablishing the Catholic Church, secularizing public affairs, and laying the foundations of a truly national economy and culture.
and#160;and#160;The Lawyer of the Church is an examination of the Mexican clergyand#8217;s response to the Reforma through a study of the life and works of Bishop Clemente de Jesand#250;s Munguand#237;a (1810and#8211;68), one of the most influential yet least-known figures of the period. By analyzing how Munguand#237;a responded to changing political and intellectual scenarios in defense of the clergyand#8217;s legal prerogatives and social role, Pablo Mijangos y Gonzand#225;lez argues that the Catholic Church opposed the liberal revolution not because of its supposed attachment to a bygone past but rather because of its efforts to supersede colonial tradition and refashion itself within a liberal yet confessional state. With an eye on the international influences and dimensions of the Mexican church-state conflict, The Lawyer of the Church also explores how Mexican bishops gradually tightened their relationship with the Holy See and simultaneously managed to incorporate the papacy into their local affairs, thus paving the way for the eventual and#8220;Romanizationand#8221; of Mexican Catholicism during the later decades of the century.and#160;
Synopsis
The
pronunciamiento, a formal list of grievances designed to spark political change in nineteenth-century Mexico, was a problematic yet necessary practice. Although pronunciamientos rarely achieved the goals for which they were undertaken and sometimes resulted in armed rebellion, they were nonetheless both celebrated and commemorated, and the perceptions and representations of pronunciamientos themselves reflected the Mexican peopleand#8217;s response to these and#8220;revolutions.and#8221;
The third in a series of books examining the pronunciamiento, this collection addresses the complicated legacy of pronunciamientos and their place in Mexican political culture. The essays explore the sacralization and legitimization of these revolts and of their leaders in the nationand#8217;s history and consider why these celebrations proved ultimately ineffective in consecrating the pronunciamiento as a force for good, rather than one motivated by desires for power, promotion, and plunder. Celebrating Insurrection offers readers interpretations of acts of celebration and commemoration that explain the uneasy adoption of pronunciamientos as Mexicoand#8217;s preferred means of effecting political change during this turbulent period in the nationand#8217;s history.
About the Author
Will Fowler is the Director of Research of the School of Modern Languages at the University of St. Andrews. He is the author of many publications, including Latin America since 1780; Tornel and Santa Anna: The Writer and the Caudillo, Mexico, 1795-1853; and Santa Anna of Mexico, available in a Bison Books edition. Contributors include Ivana Frasquet, Manuel Chust, Josefina Vázquez, Michael Ducey, Shara Ali, Reynaldo Sordo, Timothy E. Anna, Kerry Anne McDonald, Michael Costeloe, Melissa Boyd, Rosie Doyle, and Germán Martínez Martínez.