The Monterrey Elite and the Mexican State, 1880–1940

The Monterrey Elite and the Mexican State, 1880–1940
Author: Alex M. Saragoza
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2014-10-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 147730486X

After the Revolution of 1910, a powerful group of Monterrey businessmen led by the Garza-Sada family emerged as a key voice of the Mexican private sector. The Monterrey Elite and The Mexican State is the first major historical study of the "Grupo Monterrey," the business elite that transformed Monterrey into a premier industrial center, the "Pittsburgh" of Mexico. Drawing on archival resources in the United States and Mexico and the work of previous scholars, Alex Saragoza examines the origins of the Monterrey elite. He argues that a "pact" between the new state and business interests was reached by the 1940 presidential elections—an accord that paved the way for the "alliance for profits" that has characterized relations between the Mexican state and capitalists since that time. More than a standard business history, this study delves into both the intimate social world of the Garza-Sadas and their allies and the ideas, beliefs, and vision of the Monterrey elite that set it apart from and often against the Mexican government. In so doing, The Monterrey Elite and the Mexican State reveals the underlying forces that led to the most historic battle between the private sector and the Mexican state: the dramatic showdown in 1936 between the Garza-Sadas and then President Lázaro Cárdenas in Monterrey, Nuevo León.

Mexico in the 1940s

Mexico in the 1940s
Author: Stephen R. Niblo
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 440
Release: 1999-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0585292086

Attention to Mexico's history after 1940 stands in the shadow of the country's epic revolution of 1910-1923, and historians and scholars tend to bring their focus on Mexican history to a close with the end of the L_zaro C_rdenas presidency in 1940. Mexico in the 1940s: Modernity, Politics, and Corruption examines Mexican politics in the wake of Cardenismo, and the dawn of Miguel Alem_n's presidency. This new book focuses on the decade of the 1940s, and analyzes Alemanismo into the early years of the 1950s. Based upon a decade of intensive investigation, Mexico in the 1940s is the first broad and substantial study of the political life of the Mexican nation during this period, thus opening a new era to historical investigation. Mexico in the 1940s offers a unique interpretation of the country's domestic politics during this period, including an explanation of how political leaders were able to reverse the course of the Mexican Revolution; an original interpretation of corruption in Mexican political life, a phenomenon that did not end in the 1940s; and an analysis of the relationship between the U.S. media interests, the Mexican state, and the Mexican media companies that still dominates mass communication today. Mexico in the 1940s is an excellent volume for courses in Mexican history.

Alcohol and Drugs in North America [2 volumes]

Alcohol and Drugs in North America [2 volumes]
Author: David M. Fahey
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 968
Release: 2013-08-27
Genre: History
ISBN:

Alcohol and drugs play a significant role in society, regardless of socioeconomic class. This encyclopedia looks at the history of all drugs in North America, including alcohol, tobacco, prescription drugs, cannabis, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and even chocolate and caffeinated drinks. This two-volume encyclopedia provides accessibly written coverage on a wide range of topics, covering substances ranging from whiskey to peyote as well as related topics such as Mexican drug trafficking and societal effects caused by specific drugs. The entries also supply an excellent overview of the history of temperance movements in Canada and the United States; trends in alcohol consumption, its production, and its role in the economy; as well as alcohol's and drugs' roles in shaping national discourse, the creation of organizations for treatment and study, and legal responses. This resource includes primary documents and a bibliography offering important books, articles, and Internet sources related to the topic.

Catarino Garza's Revolution on the Texas-Mexico Border

Catarino Garza's Revolution on the Texas-Mexico Border
Author: Elliott Young
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2004-07-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822386402

Catarino Garza’s Revolution on the Texas-Mexico Border rescues an understudied episode from the footnotes of history. On September 15, 1891, Garza, a Mexican journalist and political activist, led a band of Mexican rebels out of South Texas and across the Rio Grande, declaring a revolution against Mexico’s dictator, Porfirio Díaz. Made up of a broad cross-border alliance of ranchers, merchants, peasants, and disgruntled military men, Garza’s revolution was the largest and longest lasting threat to the Díaz regime up to that point. After two years of sporadic fighting, the combined efforts of the U.S. and Mexican armies, Texas Rangers, and local police finally succeeded in crushing the rebellion. Garza went into exile and was killed in Panama in 1895. Elliott Young provides the first full-length analysis of the revolt and its significance, arguing that Garza’s rebellion is an important and telling chapter in the formation of the border between Mexico and the United States and in the histories of both countries. Throughout the nineteenth century, the borderlands were a relatively coherent region. Young analyzes archival materials, newspapers, travel accounts, and autobiographies from both countries to show that Garza’s revolution was more than just an effort to overthrow Díaz. It was part of the long struggle of borderlands people to maintain their autonomy in the face of two powerful and encroaching nation-states and of Mexicans in particular to protect themselves from being economically and socially displaced by Anglo Americans. By critically examining the different perspectives of military officers, journalists, diplomats, and the Garzistas themselves, Young exposes how nationalism and its preeminent symbol, the border, were manufactured and resisted along the Rio Grande.

William F. Buckley Sr.

William F. Buckley Sr.
Author: John A. Adams
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2023-03-23
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0806192305

In 1909, young William F. Buckley Sr. (1881–1958), who grew up in the dusty South Texas town of San Diego, graduated from the University of Texas law school and headed for Mexico City. Fluent in Spanish, familiar with Mexican traditions, and soon fit to practice law south of the border, Buckley was headed up the aisle to vast wealth and cultural power. On the way, he took a front-row seat at the Mexican Revolution and played a key role in steering the nascent oil industry through tumultuous and dangerous times. This book for the first time tells the story of the man behind the family that would become nothing short of a conservative institution, reaching its apogee in the career of William F. Buckley Jr., arguably the most prominent conservative commentator of the twentieth century. Buckley witnessed the overthrow and exit of President Porfirio Díaz, the rise of Madero, and the coup of General Victoriano Huerta, all while building the Pantepec Oil Company, the most profitable small petroleum producer in Mexico. He faced down Pancho Villa, survived encounters with hired assassins, evaded snipers in the streets of Veracruz, gambled and won in many a business venture—and ultimately was expelled from the country. As the narrative follows Buckley from his small-town Texas beginnings to the founding of a family dynasty, the streak of independence and distrust of government that would become the Buckley hallmark can be seen in the making. An eventful chapter in the life and career of a singular character, this dramatic account of a man and his moment is a document of political and historical significance—but it is also a remarkable story, told with irresistible brio.

The U.S.-Mexican Border Today

The U.S.-Mexican Border Today
Author: Paul Ganster
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2021-03-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1538131811

This comprehensive survey systematically explores the dynamic historic and contemporary interface between Mexico and the United States along the shared 1,954-mile international land boundary. Now fully updated and revised, the book provides an overview of the history of the region and traces the economic cycles and social movements from the 1880s through the second decade of the twenty-first century. The border region shares characteristics of both nations while maintaining an internal social and economic coherence that transcends its divisive international boundary. The authors conclude with an in-depth analysis of key contemporary issues. These include industrial development and manufacturing, bilateral trade, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, rapid urbanization, border culture, population and migration issues, environmental crisis and climate change, Native Americans, cooperation and conflict at the border, drug trafficking and violence, the border wall and security, populist national leaders and the border, and the Covid-19 pandemic at the border. They also place the border in its global context, examining it as a region caught between the developed and developing world and highlighting the continued importance of borders in a rapidly globalizing world. Richly illustrated with photographs, maps, charts, and up-to-date statistical tables, this book is an invaluable resource for all those interested in borderlands and U.S.-Mexican relations.

Artful Assassins

Artful Assassins
Author: Fernando Fabio Sanchez
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2010-11-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0826517285

The grim role of violence in shaping modern Mexican identity

Apostle of Progress

Apostle of Progress
Author: Joseph Justin Castro
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2019-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1496211731

From the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, Mexico experienced major transformations influenced by a global progressive movement that thrived during the Mexican Revolution and influenced Mexico’s development during subsequent governments. Engineers and other revolutionary technocrats were the system builders who drew up the blueprints, printed newspapers, implemented reforms, and constructed complexity—people who built modern Mexico with an eye on remedying long-standing problems through social, material, and infrastructural development during a period of revolutionary change. In Apostle of Progress J. Justin Castro examines the life of Modesto C. Rolland, a revolutionary propagandist and a prominent figure in the development of Mexico, to gain a better understanding of the role engineers played in creating revolution-era policies and the reconstruction of the Mexican nation. Rolland influenced Mexican land reform, petroleum development, stadium construction, port advancements, radio broadcasting, and experiments in political economy. In the telling of Rolland’s story, Castro offers a captivating account of the Mexican Revolution and the influence of global progressivism on the development of twentieth-century Mexico.

Cárdenas Compromised

Cárdenas Compromised
Author: Ben Fallaw
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2001-08-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822380242

Cárdenas Compromised is a political and institutional history of Mexico’s urban and rural labor in the Yucatán region during the regime of Lázaro Cárdenas from 1934 to 1940. Drawing on archival materials, both official and popular, Fallaw combines narrative, individual case studies, and focused political analysis to reexamine and dispel long-cherished beliefs about the Cardenista era. For historical, geographical, and ethnic reasons, Yucatán was the center of large-scale land reform after the Mexican Revolution. A long-standing revolutionary tradition, combined with a harsh division between a powerful white minority and a poor, Maya-speaking majority, made the region the perfect site for Cárdenas to experiment by launching an ambitious top-down project to mobilize the rural poor along ethnic and class lines. The regime encouraged rural peasants to form collectives, hacienda workers to unionize, and urban laborers to strike. It also attempted to mobilize young people and women, to challenge Yucatán’s traditional, patriarchal social structure, to reach out to Mayan communities, and to democratize the political process. Although the project ultimately failed, political dialogue over Cárdenas’s efforts continues. Rejecting both revisionist (anti-Cárdenas) and neopopulist (pro-Cárdenas) interpretations, Fallaw overturns the notion that the state allowed no room for the agency of local actors. By focusing on historical connections across class, political, and regional lines, Fallaw transforms ideas on Cardenismo that have long been accepted not only in Yucatán but throughout Mexico. This book will appeal to scholars of Mexican history and of Latin American state formation, as well as to sociologists and political scientists interested in modern Mexico.