Maximino Avila Camacho and the One-Party State

Maximino Avila Camacho and the One-Party State PDF Author: Alejandro Quintana
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739137492
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
Maximino Avila Camacho and the One-Party State: The Taming of Caudillismo and Caciquismo in Post-Revolutionary Mexico is a political biography of General Maximino Avila Camacho (1891D1945), one of the most powerful regional politicians in Mexico from 1935 to 1945. He was a member of an officially sponsored party, known today as the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which claimed to represent the goals of the Mexican Revolution (1910D1921) and which managed to win most federal and regional elections from 1929 until its first presidential defeat in 2000. Maximino (as he is commonly known) became a powerful politician at the time when the official party effectively transformed the Mexican political system from one based on the personal power of regional strongmen and political bosses relying on clientelistic networks (popularly known as 'caudillos' and 'caciques') to a modern one based on a centralized civilian administration supported by institutions. The story of Maximino, the powerful cacique of the state of Puebla, demonstrates that the emergence of the one-party-dominated Mexican state did not destroy caudillos and caciques but simply controlled them. Specifically, it shows how the official party incorporated these leaders and their authoritarian practices into the state's political machinery. The result was 71 years of one-party political domination based on a political culture that emphasized patronage, favoritism, corruption, coercion and co-optation. By tracing Maximino's career, from revolutionary soldier to powerful political leader, we learn how and why the goals that had originally inspired the 'party of the revolution'—primarily democracy and social justice—were sacrificed in order to empower it.

Maximino Avila Camacho and the One-Party State

Maximino Avila Camacho and the One-Party State PDF Author: Alejandro Quintana
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739137492
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 175

Get Book Here

Book Description
Maximino Avila Camacho and the One-Party State: The Taming of Caudillismo and Caciquismo in Post-Revolutionary Mexico is a political biography of General Maximino Avila Camacho (1891D1945), one of the most powerful regional politicians in Mexico from 1935 to 1945. He was a member of an officially sponsored party, known today as the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which claimed to represent the goals of the Mexican Revolution (1910D1921) and which managed to win most federal and regional elections from 1929 until its first presidential defeat in 2000. Maximino (as he is commonly known) became a powerful politician at the time when the official party effectively transformed the Mexican political system from one based on the personal power of regional strongmen and political bosses relying on clientelistic networks (popularly known as 'caudillos' and 'caciques') to a modern one based on a centralized civilian administration supported by institutions. The story of Maximino, the powerful cacique of the state of Puebla, demonstrates that the emergence of the one-party-dominated Mexican state did not destroy caudillos and caciques but simply controlled them. Specifically, it shows how the official party incorporated these leaders and their authoritarian practices into the state's political machinery. The result was 71 years of one-party political domination based on a political culture that emphasized patronage, favoritism, corruption, coercion and co-optation. By tracing Maximino's career, from revolutionary soldier to powerful political leader, we learn how and why the goals that had originally inspired the 'party of the revolution'—primarily democracy and social justice—were sacrificed in order to empower it.

In the Vortex of Violence

In the Vortex of Violence PDF Author: Gema Kloppe-Santamaría
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520975324
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
In the Vortex of Violence examines the uncharted history of lynching in post-revolutionary Mexico. Based on a collection of previously untapped sources, the book examines why lynching became a persistent practice during a period otherwise characterized by political stability and decreasing levels of violence. It explores how state formation processes, as well as religion, perceptions of crime, and mythical beliefs, contributed to shaping people’s understanding of lynching as a legitimate form of justice. Extending the history of lynching beyond the United States, this book offers key insights into the cultural, historical, and political reasons behind the violent phenomenon and its continued practice in Latin America today.

Street Democracy

Street Democracy PDF Author: Sandra C. Mendiola García
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496200012
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
No visitor to Mexico can fail to recognize the omnipresence of street vendors, selling products ranging from fruits and vegetables to prepared food and clothes. The vendors compose a large part of the informal economy, which altogether represents at least 30 percent of Mexico's economically active population. Neither taxed nor monitored by the government, the informal sector is the fastest growing economic sector in the world. In Street Democracy Sandra C. Mendiola García explores the political lives and economic significance of this otherwise overlooked population, focusing on the radical street vendors during the 1970s and 1980s in Puebla, Mexico's fourth-largest city. She shows how the Popular Union of Street Vendors challenged the ruling party's ability to control unions and local authorities' power to regulate the use of public space. Since vendors could not strike or stop production like workers in the formal economy, they devised innovative and alternative strategies to protect their right to make a living in public spaces. By examining the political activism and historical relationship of street vendors to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Mendiola García offers insights into grassroots organizing, the Mexican Dirty War, and the politics of urban renewal, issues that remain at the core of street vendors' experience even today.

The Metamorphosis of Leadership in a Democratic Mexico

The Metamorphosis of Leadership in a Democratic Mexico PDF Author: Roderic Ai Camp
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199780803
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
The Metamorphosis of Leadership in a Democratic Mexico is a broad analysis of Mexico's changing leadership over the past eight decades, stretching from its pre-democratic era (1935-1988), to its democratic transition (1988-2000) to its democratic period (2000-the present). In it, Roderic Camp, one of the most distinguished scholars of Mexican politics, seeks to answer two questions: 1) how has Mexican political leadership evolved since the 1930s and in what ways, beyond ideology, has the shift from a semi-authoritarian, one-party system to a democratic, electoral system altered the country's leadership? and 2) which aspects of Mexican leadership have been most affected by this shift in political models and when and why did the changes in leadership occur? Rather than viewing Mexico's current government as a true democracy, Camp sees it as undergoing a process of consolidation, under which the competitive electoral process has resulted in a system of governing institutions supported by the majority of citizens and significant strides toward plurality. Accordingly, he looks at the relationship between the decentralization of political power and the changing characteristics, experiences and paths to power of national leaders. The book, which represents four decades of Camp's work, is based upon a detailed study of 3000 politicians from the 1930s through the present, incorporating regional media accounts and Camp's own interviews with Mexican presidents, cabinet members, assistant secretaries, senators, governors, and party presidents.

Myths of Demilitarization in Postrevolutionary Mexico, 1920-1960

Myths of Demilitarization in Postrevolutionary Mexico, 1920-1960 PDF Author: Thomas Rath
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469608359
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
At the end of the Mexican Revolution in 1920, Mexico's large, rebellious army dominated national politics. By the 1940s, Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was led by a civilian president and claimed to have depoliticized the army and achieved the bloodless pacification of the Mexican countryside through land reform, schooling, and indigenismo. However, historian Thomas Rath argues, Mexico's celebrated demilitarization was more protracted, conflict-ridden, and incomplete than most accounts assume. Civilian governments deployed troops as a police force, often aimed at political suppression, while officers meddled in provincial politics, engaged in corruption, and crafted official history, all against a backdrop of sustained popular protest and debate. Using newly available materials from military, intelligence, and diplomatic archives, Rath weaves together an analysis of national and regional politics, military education, conscription, veteran policy, and popular protest. In doing so, he challenges dominant interpretations of successful, top-down demilitarization and questions the image of the post-1940 PRI regime as strong, stable, and legitimate. Rath also shows how the army's suppression of students and guerrillas in the 1960s and 1970s and the more recent militarization of policing have long roots in Mexican history.

Jenkins of Mexico

Jenkins of Mexico PDF Author: Andrew Paxman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190455764
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
In the city of Puebla there lived an American who made himself into the richest man in Mexico. Driven by a steely desire to prove himself-first to his wife's family, then to Mexican elites-William O. Jenkins rose from humble origins in Tennessee to build a business empire in a country energized by industrialization and revolutionary change. In Jenkins of Mexico, Andrew Paxman presents the first biography of this larger-than-life personality. When the decade-long Mexican Revolution broke out in 1910, Jenkins preyed on patrician property owners and bought up substantial real estate. He suffered a scare with a firing squad and then a kidnapping by rebels, an episode that almost triggered a US invasion. After the war he owned textile mills, developed Mexico's most productive sugar plantation, and helped finance the rise of a major political family, the Ávila Camachos. During the Golden Age of Mexican cinema in the 1940s-50s, he lorded over the film industry with his movie theater monopoly and key role in production. By means of Mexico's first major hostile takeover, he bought the country's second-largest bank. Reputed as an exploiter of workers, a puppet-master of politicians, and Mexico's wealthiest industrialist, Jenkins was the gringo that Mexicans loved to loathe. After his wife's death, he embraced philanthropy and willed his entire fortune to a foundation named for her, which co-founded two prestigious universities and funded projects to improve the lives of the poor in his adopted country. Using interviews with Jenkins' descendants, family papers, and archives in Puebla, Mexico City, Los Angeles, and Washington, Jenkins of Mexico tells a contradictory tale of entrepreneurship and monopoly, fearless individualism and cozy deals with power-brokers, embrace of US-style capitalism and political anti-Americanism, and Mexico's transformation from semi-feudal society to emerging economic power.

Routes of Compromise

Routes of Compromise PDF Author: Michael K. Bess
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496204034
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
In Routes of Compromise Michael K. Bess studies the social, economic, and political implications of road building and state formation in Mexico through a comparative analysis of Nuevo León and Veracruz from the 1920s to the 1950s. He examines how both foreign and domestic actors, working at local, national, and transnational levels, helped determine how Mexico would build and finance its roadways. While Veracruz offered a radical model for regional construction that empowered agrarian communities, national consensus would solidify around policies championed by Nuevo León’s political and commercial elites. Bess shows that no single political figure or central agency dominated the process of determining Mexico's road-building policies. Instead, provincial road-building efforts highlight the contingent nature of power and state formation in midcentury Mexico.

Dictablanda

Dictablanda PDF Author: Paul Gillingham
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822376830
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 517

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Book Description
In 1910 Mexicans rebelled against an imperfect dictatorship; after 1940 they ended up with what some called the perfect dictatorship. A single party ruled Mexico for over seventy years, holding elections and talking about revolution while overseeing one of the world's most inequitable economies. The contributors to this groundbreaking collection revise earlier interpretations, arguing that state power was not based exclusively on hegemony, corporatism, or violence. Force was real, but it was also exercised by the ruled. It went hand-in-hand with consent, produced by resource regulation, political pragmatism, local autonomies and a popular veto. The result was a dictablanda: a soft authoritarian regime. This deliberately heterodox volume brings together social historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists to offer a radical new understanding of the emergence and persistence of the modern Mexican state. It also proposes bold, multidisciplinary approaches to critical problems in contemporary politics. With its blend of contested elections, authoritarianism, and resistance, Mexico foreshadowed the hybrid regimes that have spread across much of the globe. Dictablanda suggests how they may endure. Contributors. Roberto Blancarte, Christopher R. Boyer, Guillermo de la Peña, María Teresa Fernández Aceves, Paul Gillingham, Rogelio Hernández Rodríguez, Alan Knight, Gladys McCormick, Tanalís Padilla, Wil G. Pansters, Andrew Paxman, Jaime Pensado, Pablo Piccato, Thomas Rath, Jeffrey W. Rubin, Benjamin T. Smith, Michael Snodgrass

The Dread Plague and the Cow Killers

The Dread Plague and the Cow Killers PDF Author: Thomas Rath
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108844480
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
The story of how a massive outbreak of animal disease transformed Mexican politics, society, science, and the wider world.

Revolution and Dictatorship

Revolution and Dictatorship PDF Author: Steven Levitsky
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691223580
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 656

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Book Description
Why the world’s most resilient dictatorships are products of violent revolution Revolution and Dictatorship explores why dictatorships born of social revolution—such as those in China, Cuba, Iran, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam—are extraordinarily durable, even in the face of economic crisis, large-scale policy failure, mass discontent, and intense external pressure. Few other modern autocracies have survived in the face of such extreme challenges. Drawing on comparative historical analysis, Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way argue that radical efforts to transform the social and geopolitical order trigger intense counterrevolutionary conflict, which initially threatens regime survival, but ultimately fosters the unity and state-building that supports authoritarianism. Although most revolutionary governments begin weak, they challenge powerful domestic and foreign actors, often bringing about civil or external wars. These counterrevolutionary wars pose a threat that can destroy new regimes, as in the cases of Afghanistan and Cambodia. Among regimes that survive, however, prolonged conflicts give rise to a cohesive ruling elite and a powerful and loyal coercive apparatus. This leads to the downfall of rival organizations and alternative centers of power, such as armies, churches, monarchies, and landowners, and helps to inoculate revolutionary regimes against elite defection, military coups, and mass protest—three principal sources of authoritarian breakdown. Looking at a range of revolutionary and nonrevolutionary regimes from across the globe, Revolution and Dictatorship shows why governments that emerge from violent conflict endure.