Mexico's Once and Future Revolution

Book excerpt: In this concise historical analysis of the Mexican Revolution, Gilbert M. Joseph and Jürgen Buchenau explore the revolution's causes, dynamics, consequences, and legacies. They do so from varied perspectives, including those of campesinos and workers; politicians, artists, intellectuals, and students; women and men; the well-heeled, the dispossessed, and the multitude in the middle. In the process, they engage major questions about the revolution. How did the revolutionary process and its aftermath modernize the nation's economy and political system and transform the lives of ordinary Mexicans? Rather than conceiving the revolution as either the culminating popular struggle of Mexico's history or the triumph of a new (not so revolutionary) state over the people, Joseph and Buchenau examine the textured process through which state and society shaped each other. The result is a lively history of Mexico's "long twentieth century," from Porfirio Díaz's modernizing dictatorship to the neoliberalism of the present day.