Long Live The Revolution?
Revolutions have unintended consequences. In 1910 Mexicans rebelled against an imperfect dictatorship; after 1940 they ended up with what some called the perfect dictatorship. Paul Gillingham’s book: Unrevolutionary Mexico, dives past the revolution of 1910, and shows that Dictablanda, a dictatorship that preserves civil liberties than rather destroying them, and where one party controlled and ruled over an inequitable economy for seventy years, and a system with the appearance of democracy that sustained elections, avoided military coups by removing the military from the political equation. Gillingham presents systemic corruption helped maintain political stability by undermining the legitimacy of governments and avoided revolutions that bestowed Cuba and other Latin American nations.
Gillingham uses the political and social evolution of the states of Guerrero and Veracruz as starting points as how two regions made up what we see as Mexico. As where Guerrero’s divided, impoverished state, lack of effective communication and its varied zones of violence with a central weak government, which Gillingham writes of Guerrero’s political history: “government of bandits, by the bandits, for the bandits.” (Gillingham, 41) that even today is stark reminder of the violence that still controls the region.
On the other side of the nation, we have Veracruz’s well-populated land of immense but unstable wealth and a wider range of political opportunity, better central government, and better communication in the state. Gillingham refers to Veracruz as “Rich state, poor state”. During the Alemán years, politics changed in Veracruz, gone were the old revolutionaries, different forms of governments radically changed throughout the region, and foreign ownership of railways and interests.
Both regions make up different economies, political elites, regional interests, such as Guerrero’s Acapulco, which Miguel Alemán helped build up as a huge tourist destination. The process of labor movements, the never-ending struggle for land, presented challenges for both regions. “In Guerrero revolutionary generals inhabited the governors’ places for decade after the revolution; in Veracruz they were quickly elbowed aside by civilians and licenciados.” (Gillingham, 73)
In Joseph and Buchenau’s “Mexico’s Once and Future Revolution” That the Mexican Revolution has evolved in myriad of ways and still “has legs.” The authors document their theory on: “to contest and negotiate politics within a discursive framework that embraces the legitimacy of revolution within the context of the modern nation-state” (Joseph and Buchenau 215) Gillingham views the revolution has outgrown itself, and the one-party system convinced the masses “the soft nature of Mexican authoritarism was not optional, but rather a pragmatic, half-improvised response to the constraints they faced.” (Gillingham,219) According to Vincent Gawronski, he describes the revolution has moved on from the one-party system: “The Mexican political system is in period of political transition, moving from classic semi-authoritarianism to a possible full-edged democracy, which in many ways is truly revolutionary for a system that for so long sacrificed democracy for political stability and one-party rule.” (Gawronski, 391)
Dictablanda was ushered in by Lázaro Cárdenas, who according to Gonzales: “remains Mexico’s most appealing twentieth-century president” (Gonzales, 258) and by making the revolution work through land and educational reforms, and nationalizing oil production. The importance of Mexico not becoming a military dictatorship likesome of its fellow Latin American countries, was reduction of defense spending. By keeping the military out of power was an agreement between the government and Mexico’s other social groups. This was very important collective bargaining that resulted in no military upheaval.
In conclusion, Gillingham’s assertion the revolution is over could be explained by that objects are not always as they appear, but the revolution is still there, it has evolved and managed to maintain itself in a one-party system that likes to portray that it has governed Mexico in one way or another.
References:
Gillingham, Paul. Unrevolutionary Mexico: The Birth of a Strange Dictatorship. Yale University Press. 2021
Gonzales, Michael J. The Mexican Revolution, 1910–1940. University of New Mexico Press, 2002.
Joseph, Gilbert M., and Jurgen Buchenau. “Mexico′s Once and Future Revolution: Social Upheaval and the Challenge of Rule since the Late Nineteenth Century.” Duke University Press, 2013
Gawronski, Vincent T. “The Revolution Is Dead. ¡Viva La Revolución!: The Place of the Mexican Revolution in the Era of Globalization.” University of California Press, University of California Press, 1 Aug. 2002,
