Mexico Biography of Power A History of Modern Mexico, 1810-1996 Book

I have to confess I haven't read the English version of this book. But if it's anywhere as good as the 3-volume Spanish version, it is probably excellent.
Mexico, particularly in Latin America, is a mythical country. It has always had a vibrant popular culture. In Colombia, it used to be said that the upper class aspired to be English, the middle class wanted to be American, and the lower class wished to be Mexican. This is not intended to offend Mexico, but just a statement of its powerful pull over others. Amazingly, such an important country has never had such a strong historiography as much smaller ones, like Cuba. This has many reasons, one of them being that the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), probably the most effective political party in history, was able to co-opt most intellectuals either with favors or intimidation.

Therefore, much Mexican history used to revel in a hagiographical version of its pre-Columbian splendor and to celebrate politically correct milestones, such as Hidalgo's cry, Juarez's victory over Maximilian or the 1911 revolution, while glossing over other important but more embarrasing episodes, such as Iturbide's empire, Santa Anna's 30 year reign that led to the loss of the Northern half of the country to the US, Maximilian's closeness to Indian land rights (Indians in Mexico were never better treated than under Maximilian), the remarkably efficient Porfiriato (a 35 year-long dictatorship), or the extremely brutal aftermath of the revolution. This promoted a mythological self-view of Mexico that paved the ground for the economic catastrophe of Lopez Portillo and the political catastrophe of Salinas de Gortari.

For anyone interested in looking behind the cobwebs of official history and popular culture, Krauze is a godsend. In his work one can view the greater trends of Mexican history, and understand how a country may be both statist and hospitable to private business, officially anti-clerical but deeply religious, often in unorthodox ways, extremely violent but highly cultured, with an often radical foreign policy that belied a very conservative political culture.

As a Colombian I was very surprised at the conservative failure to win power from the 1870s to President Fox (in Colombia the conservatives have run the country for well over half of its existence). One, of course, has to see the origin of this in the alleged betrayal of the conservatives who supported Maximilian's empire, even though Maximilian himself wasn't conservative at all. And Mexico's complex attitude to religion can be traced to such ambivalent figures as Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (a nun-poet who was deeply critical of male domination in the Church) and Father Hidalgo (a revolutionary priest who is one of Mexico's Founding Fathers, who was close to freemasons and loved to indulge in forbidden readings and female companionship).

Mexico's strong nationalism is of course fueled by its closeness to the most powerful country in the world. Like Porfirio Diaz lamented, "We are so far away from God, and so close to the Americans". Also Mexico's Indian pride (maybe no country other than Paraguay, where dictator Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia forced whites and indians to marry, has a better tradition of metissage, although the rights of actual indians have historically been disregarded: cf. the Zapatistas in Yucatán) did not prevent it from receiving the greater part of Republican Spanish emigration after the Civil War.

So, Mexico is a complex country, perhaps more than most. It is also, after Argentina's self-combustion, the only Hispanic-American country to have a shot at the first world (Chile is actually getting there, but it’s much smaller than Mexico). Harvard's Huntington has decried Mexican influence in the US, and has even hinted that Mexico could use its presence throughout the South Western US to reclaim its former territories. That is highly unlikely. Mexico is fully aware that it has to live and work with its powerful northern neighbor (although that's not inconsistent with an official nationalist policy, for popular consumption). But these fears indicate that all North Americans should be interested in Mexico. And Krauze is a great place to start. Americans, in particular, do worse than to know more about their great southern neighbor.