Gonzales, M: The Mexican Revolution, 1910-1940

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 Diaz, who had ruled Mexico for three decades. Gonzales offers a path-breaking overview of the revolution from its origins in the Diaz dictatorship through the presidency of radical General Lazaro Cardenas (1934-1940) drawn from archival sources and a vast secondary literature. His interpretation balances accounts of agrarian insurgencies, shifting revolutionary alliances, counterrevolutions, and foreign interventions to delineate the triumphs and failures of revolutionary leaders such as Francisco I. Madero, Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, Alvaro Obregon, and Venustiano 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 landowners.