Book description
This judicious history of modern Mexico's revolutionary era will help
all readers, and in particular students, understand the first great
social uprising of the twentieth century. In 1911, land-hungry
peasants united with discontented political elites to overthrow
General Porfirio Díaz, who had ruled Mexico for three decades.
Gonzales offers a path breaking overview of the revolution from its
origins in the Díaz dictatorship through the presidency of radical
General Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940) drawn from archival sources and a
vast secondary literature.
His interpretation balances accounts of agrarian insurgencies,
shifting revolutionary alliances, counter-revolutions, and foreign
interventions to delineate the triumphs and failures of revolutionary
leaders such as Francisco I. Madero, Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata,
Alvaro Obregón, and Venestiano Carranza. What emerges is a clear
understanding of the tangled events of the period and a fuller
appreciation of the efforts of revolutionary presidents after 1916 to
reinvent Mexico amid the limitations imposed by a war-torn
countryside, a hostile international environment, and the resistance
of the Catholic Church and large land-owners.
Michael J. Gonzales is professor of history and director of the
Center for Latino and Latin American Studies at Northern Illinois
University. He is the author of
Plantation Agriculture and Social
Control in Northern Peru, 1875-1933
as well as numerous articles on Peruvian and Mexican history.
