Cycles of Conflict, Centuries of Change: Crisis, Reform, and Revolution in Mexico
26 Jun 2007-
TL;DR: Antonio Annino, Guillermo de la Pena, Francois-Xavier Guerra, Friedrich Katz, Alan Knight, Lorenzo Meyer, Leticia Reina, Enrique Semo, Elisa Servin, John Tutino, and Eric Van Young as discussed by the authors explore how Mexico's tumultuous past informs its uncertain present and future.
Abstract: This important collection explores how Mexico’s tumultuous past informs its uncertain present and future. Cycles of crisis and reform, of conflict and change, have marked Mexico’s modern history. The final decades of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries each brought efforts to integrate Mexico into globalizing economies, pressures on the country’s diverse peoples, and attempts at reform. The crises of the late eighteenth century and the late nineteenth led to revolutionary mobilizations and violent regime changes. The wars for independence that began in 1810 triggered conflicts that endured for decades; the national revolution that began in 1910 shaped Mexico for most of the twentieth century. In 2000, the PRI, which had ruled for more than seventy years, was defeated in an election some hailed as “revolution by ballot.” Mexico now struggles with the legacies of a late-twentieth-century crisis defined by accelerating globalization and the breakdown of an authoritarian regime that was increasingly unresponsive to historic mandates and popular demands. Leading Mexicanists—historians and social scientists from Mexico, the United States, and Europe—examine the three fin-de-siecle eras of crisis. They focus on the role of the country’s communities in advocating change from the eighteenth century to the present. They compare Mexico’s revolutions of 1810 and 1910 and consider whether there might be a twenty-first-century recurrence or whether a globalizing, urbanizing, and democratizing world has so changed Mexico that revolution is improbable. Reflecting on the political changes and social challenges of the late twentieth century, the contributors ask if a democratic transition is possible and, if so, whether it is sufficient to address twenty-first-century demands for participation and justice. Contributors . Antonio Annino, Guillermo de la Pena, Francois-Xavier Guerra, Friedrich Katz, Alan Knight, Lorenzo Meyer, Leticia Reina, Enrique Semo, Elisa Servin, John Tutino, Eric Van Young
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DOI•
01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: In this paper, the trajectories of state capacity in France (1789-1970) and Mexico (18101970) are investigated. But the authors do not consider the effects of external shocks on state capacity.
Abstract: ......................................................................................................................................... ii Preface ........................................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... v List of Tables .............................................................................................................................. viii List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... ix List of Abbreviations .................................................................................................................... x Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... xi Dedication ................................................................................................................................... xiii Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Case Selection: Revolutions, Popular Incorporation and the Evolution of Public Goods in France and Mexico .............................................................................................................. 8 1.2 Literature Review ......................................................................................................... 12 1.3 Argument: The Organizational Structure of Civil Society, Political Order, and StateSupplied Public Goods .......................................................................................................... 36 1.4 Explaining the trajectories of state capacity in France (1789-1970) and Mexico (18101970) ..................................................................................................................................... 44 1.5 Research Design and Plan of the Dissertation ............................................................. 48 Chapter 2: Critical Juncture: Popular Incorporation, the Social State and State Capacity ...................................................................................................................................... 53 2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 53 2.2 Measurement Challenges in the Study of State Capacity ............................................ 57 2.3 Conceptualizing State Capacity as Public Goods Provision ........................................ 66 vi 2.4 Operationalizing State Capacity as Public Goods Provision ....................................... 71 2.5 Critical Juncture: Popular Incorporation and the Social State ..................................... 74 2.6 War, Commodity Booms, and State Capacity in France and Mexico ......................... 97 2.7 Conclusion: The Puzzle of French and Mexican Political Development .................. 106 Chapter 3: An Organizational Theory of Political Development ......................................... 109 3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 109 3.2 Explaining the Effects of Exogenous Shocks: Strategies of Political Order ............. 111 3.3 Explaining Strategies of Political Order: The Organizational Structure of Civil Society ................................................................................................................................. 122 3.4 Explaining the Transition from Spoils Systems to Social Contracts: The Transformation of Social Relationships .............................................................................. 143 3.5 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 147 Chapter 4: The Atlantic Revolutions and the Structural Transformation of Organizational Life .............................................................................................................................................. 151 4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 151 4.2 France: Revolution and the Emergence of National Popular Movements ................. 154 4.3 Mexico: Independence and Parochial Political Organizations .................................. 201 4.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 240 Chapter 5: Organizational Structure, Popular Incorporation and Political Order ........... 245 5.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 245 5.2 France: Organizational Change and Political Instability ........................................... 250 5.3 Mexico: Lack of Resources and Political Instability ................................................. 301
67 citations
TL;DR: A focus on transformations in social property relations and engagement with historical sociological debates on modern state formation can contribute to an understanding of the social origins of the transition to capitalism in Mexico as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: A focus on transformations in social property relations and engagement with historical sociological debates on modern state formation can contribute to an understanding of the social origins of the transition to capitalism in Mexico. The basis for capitalist production there was created by primitive accumulation under the conditions of uneven and combined development. This situation can be understood as a “passive revolution” based on state intervention and mass mobilization from below that shaped capital accumulation and political modernization, resulting in a form of capitalism consistent with authoritarian and hegemonic influence.
65 citations
TL;DR: Our struggle has its inspirational roots in [our] national history and reality: our flag... is the same raised by Hidalgo, Morelos and Guerrero, Juarez, Zapata and Villa as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: “Our struggle has its inspirational roots in [our] national history and reality: our flag . . . is the same raised by Hidalgo, Morelos and Guerrero, Juarez, Zapata and Villa.” Genaro Vazquez Rojas, La Asociacion Civica Nacional Revolucionaria, 1968
28 citations
Book•
28 Jul 2015TL;DR: In this paper, Keller draws on declassified Mexican and US intelligence sources and Cuban diplomatic records to challenge earlier interpretations that depicted Mexico as a peaceful haven and a weak neighbor forced to submit to US pressure, and Mexico did in fact suffer from the political and social turbulence that characterized the Cold War era in general, and by maintaining relations with Cuba it played a unique, and heretofore overlooked, role in the hemispheric Cold War.
Abstract: This book is a history of the Cold War in Mexico, and Mexico in the Cold War. Renata Keller draws on declassified Mexican and US intelligence sources and Cuban diplomatic records to challenge earlier interpretations that depicted Mexico as a peaceful haven and a weak neighbor forced to submit to US pressure. Mexico did in fact suffer from the political and social turbulence that characterized the Cold War era in general, and by maintaining relations with Cuba it played a unique, and heretofore overlooked, role in the hemispheric Cold War. The Cuban Revolution was an especially destabilizing force in Mexico because Fidel Castro's dedication to many of the same nationalist and populist causes that the Mexican revolutionaries had originally pursued in the early twentieth century called attention to the fact that the government had abandoned those promises. A dynamic combination of domestic and international pressures thus initiated Mexico's Cold War and shaped its distinct evolution and outcomes.
27 citations
Book•
07 Aug 2017TL;DR: Schaefer argues that after the War of Independence non-elite Mexicans pioneered an egalitarian form of legal rule by serving in the town governments and civic militias that became the local faces of the state's coercive authority.
Abstract: Liberalism as Utopia challenges widespread perceptions about the weakness of Mexico's nineteenth-century state. Schaefer argues that after the War of Independence non-elite Mexicans - peasants, day laborers, artisans, local merchants - pioneered an egalitarian form of legal rule by serving in the town governments and civic militias that became the local faces of the state's coercive authority. These institutions were effective because they embodied patriarchal norms of labor and care for the family that were premised on the legal equality of male, adult citizens. The book also examines the emergence of new, illiberal norms that challenged and at the end of the century, during the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, overwhelmed the egalitarianism of the early-republican period. By comparing the legal cultures of agricultural estates, mestizo towns and indigenous towns, Liberalism as Utopia also proposes a new way of understanding the social foundations of liberal and authoritarian pathways to state formation in the nineteenth-century world.
27 citations